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.
Between 1964 and 1984, amplified Delta C14 that was measured
at Vermunt Austria decreased by almost 80%.
During the same period, CO2 increased by 7%.
You’re dreaming.
Dear Dave and Ian,
Do we agree that we can calculate the concentration of 14C as follows?
14C = D14C * 12C
If so, then I will run this calculation because I already have the data for D14C and 12C. I should be able to run this and post the result here by tomorrow.
Ed,
Since D14 is the deviation of the isotope ratio from a standard value, that formula will give you the excess C14 over the (presumed constant) cosmic ray produced amount, not the total amount. I believe that you will find that this excess cannot be fit by a single time constant exponential. Harde gave an argument that the process had to be represented by a single time constant, but his argument hinged on the wrong assumption that the flow between atmosphere and (sea plus land) was one way. It is not. I am about to send some carbon that vegetation has removed from the atmosphere, back into the atmosphere by burning some slash on my property.
Dave
Dear Dave,
Good point about the “standard value.” Since the standard value is 1000 points above the actual ratio (the way I read the references on 14C) then the formula should be:
14C = (D14C + 1000) * 12C
since the definition of D14C is:
D14C = (14C / 12C) – 1000
Ed,
No that’s not right.
Let Rm be the ratio of C14 to C12 in some sample
Let Rs be the “modern carbon standard” ratio. I have not been able to find an exact value for this; it is somewhere around a part per trillion. It gets complicated because of fractionation. Think of it as what you would have measured for atmospheric carbon in 1950, before the bomb tests. Then by definition
delta C14 = ( Rm/Rs-1)* 1000
The 1000 is there just to express the usual numerical value more conveniently in “parts per thousand” rather than as a small number with a couple of zeros after the decimal point. So for example if
Rm=Rs then delta C14 is 0 but if
Rm=1.1*Rs, then delta C14 =100 parts per thousand
Dave
Ed,
Since you are tied up I will do the analysis you said you would get to. (I don’t have enough to do during the quarantine.) Continuing from my previous post:
Rm(t) is the measured C14(t)/C12(t) ratio in some atmospheric sample
Rs is the constant, pre-bomb-test standard value for this ratio
By definition deltaC14(t)=(Rm(t)/Rs-1)*1000
For clarity I am explicitly showing which quantities change with time. So
Rm(t)=(deltaC14(t)/1000+1)*Rs.
We are interested in how the excess of C14 over its pre-bomb-test value changes with time, so call that dC14(t). (This is the quantity that you mistakenly thought was deltaC14.)
dC14(t)=C14(t)-C14o, where C14o is the pre-bomb-test abundance of C14. Similarly
dC12(t)=C12(t)-C12o
Using Rs=C14o/C12o, a little algebra gives
dC14(t)=Rs*(deltaC14(t)*C12(t)/1000+dC12(t)).
I read off deltaC14(t) from your Figure 2, read off C12(t) from a Mauna Loa plot, and used C12o=315ppm to get dC12(t). Here is what I got for every five years from 1970 to 2010, for the quantity inside the parantheses on the right hand side, which is proportional to the measured C14 concentration in the atmosphere. The units are unimportant. The shape of the time dependence is.
1970 177
1975 148
1980 122
1985 104
1990 95
1995 87
2000 89
2005 93
2010 95
I was surprised to see a slight increase in atmospheric C14 in recent years. Fossil fuels of course contain no C14, but apparently as C12 from fossil fuel emissions exchanges with carbon in the sinks, there can be a net migration of C14 to the atmosphere.
Note that the above is not some model such as you have produced. This is data from the C14 measurements and from the Mauna Loa observations properly combined. It is data that any model, including yours and Hermann Harde’s , has to replicate. Both of your models fail, but the IPCC/ Bern model looks at least qualitatively correct. You CANNOT explain the C14 data with a simple, relatively short time constant, exponential absorption. And since the flows between the atmosphere and the (land plus sea) go in both directions, there is no reason that you should expect a simple exponential decrease of the net change.
This result is not merely the loss of “one check point” of your model. This result invalidates your entire scheme. I say again, please prominently retract your mistaken conclusions about the role of humans in accounting for the observed increase of atmospheric CO2, and if you have contact with Hermann Harde, please ask him to do the same.
Dear Dave,
Thank you for putting your interpretation of 14C data in your comment so I can reply.
To provide an extended explanation of 14C data, I added a new post. This new post explains the D14C and pMC units with appropriate references for your further study. It goes further than is possible in a comment.
Your comment requires two fundamental corrections:
First, your attempt to calculate 14C content by multiplying by Mauna Loa data introduces an error because the D14C units do not contain any reference to the prevailing 12C content. D14C represents “the 14C content.” It is rather obvious that the scientists who work on 14C dating needed to construct a measurement of 14C that does not depend upon the prevailing 12C content.
Second, your calculation of the “excess of C14 over its pre-bomb-test value” shows you still do not understand the definition of balance level. If you wish to test the Physics model, you should produce a complete data set without a lower cutoff and let the Physics model find the appropriate balance level and e-time.
In conclusion, the Physics model properly replicates how 14CO2 flows out of the atmosphere. The IPCC has no model that can replicate the 14C data. So far, there are no corrections needed on my side but the IPCC climate claims violate physics.
Ed
David Andrews
I see that Dr. Ed has responded while I was typing this reply. I am not addressing the same points as he did so I will ask you my question as well.
In Salbys video at (https://edberry.com/blog/climate/climate-physics/what-is-really-behind-the-increase-in-atmospheric-co2/) from time about 37 :40 to about 49:10 he presents an alternate analysis that doesn’t reference the C14 curve. He clearly states this analysis is independent of others he has presented. It relies on the conservation equation, standard math, and data from Mauna Loa. He concludes the anthropogenic CO2 is about 3% of the atmospheric content. this is very similar to Dr. Ed’s and Professor Harde’s conclusions. My question: Is Salby in error in this analysis as well?
Ed,
Thanks for the reference to Stenstrom, et. al which is more complete than the source I was using. But you continue to make the same mistake. D14C DOES contain reference to other carbon isotopes in the sample. D14C is NOT simply proportional to the C14 concentration.
Think about how the measurement is made with a mass spectrometer. The sample is ionized, and the total charge delivered in a beam of C14 is measured for some period. How can you normalize that measurement so that it tells you something about the abundance of C14, rather than the size of the sample or your patience in making the measurement? You simultaneously measure the charge delivered in the beam of another isotope and report the ratio. (The other isotope appears to generally be C13, not C12 as I had assumed. C13 is much less abundant than C12, but still much more abundant than C14 and any statistical errors are still dominated by the C14. So change all the 12’s to 13’s in my earlier comment if you wish. It changes nothing.) If thinking about the measurement doesn’t help, look at the definition of one of the A’s (I called them R’s) in Stenstrom equation 16: the units are Bq/kg C. Bq is a measure of the C14 content, as it is the radioactive isotope. How “hot” a sample is tells you nothing about its abundance, unless you also know what the carbon in the sample weighs, hence the units. Only ratios are easily measured. Only ratios have the information you need to date something.
Your second comment, objecting to my talking about “excess C14” is also misplaced. This delta can be negative, and it usually would be in a classic C14 dating measurement, since the C14/C13 ratio would be smaller than the 1950 standard in, say an old Egyptian tomb, because of the half life of C14.
The analysis of my earlier note stands as written.
You make further mistakes in your new note which I will comment on there.
For your information, I have never taught climate science and am retired anyway. My career was in high energy physics, applied superconductivity in industry, and my university teaching was only in the physics department. My initial investigation of websites such as yours was to see if there was anything to be learned from “alternate views” to the climate science that is taught in universities. I have not found any, and I have looked on other “denier” sites as well as yours. Where we would probably agree is that the most extreme disaster scenarios are not credible. But we do have a serious public policy issue that involves science, more serious than the more immediate one plaguing us now. I will continue to press you to act like a scientist by retracting erroneous conclusions rather than continuing to confuse the public.
DMA
You recommended Salby to me some months ago, and I started to watch the video. But I was put off by his beginning diatribes about how alternate views were not getting published, and never got to the meat of his argument. Maybe sheltering in place now will give me time to go back to it. There is a good reason for reviewers to reject demonstrably wrong papers: there are enough real problems for researchers to work on without everyone having to figure out what somebody’s errors were.
For me the fact that alternative views are not being published solidifieds my understanding that the consensus side did not have good responses to the first principal derivations that falsified their assumptions. The processes of Harde being censored (https://hhgpc0.wixsite.com/harde-2017-censored ) and Salby being fired (https://mlsxmq.wixsite.com/salby-macquarie/page-1f ) are blots on the consensus record and are the opposite of a scientific response. Kohler’s review of Harde is hollow and in error as explained later in that video I referenced where Salby shows the Bern model Kohler sites produces nonphysical results.
Hi Dr. Ed.
And thank you for your blog, your research and the latest pre-prints. Very interresting.
I have a question; It has beeen widely reported in the media that levels of NOx and SO2 are down over many cities around the world due to the ongoing crisis. Not a single word on CO2 in the same context though. Following Copernicus (Windy) for some time during the crisis these drops in local levels has not been seen for CO2. Howcome? Windy has actually (from what I can see, but check) removed the possibility to track SO2 and CO2 recently, but my bookmarks still work.
When it is possible to pinpoint a reduction in SO2 and NOx-levels in many places sholdn’t that also be the case for CO2 when factoring in the Maxwell-Boltzman’s distribution, statistical physics and the gas laws?
On/close to ground level. Locally. When you see a significant drop in the lowest emissable gases from fossile burning wouldn’t it be logical to see the same for the largest? As the emissionfactor (g/Gj) for fuel oil is 76600 (CO2) ~250 (SO2 (w. 0,5% sulphur)) and 190 NOx shouldn’t we see dramatic drops locally in CO2-levels (which btw we don’t) given most gases act similar in distribution? Given the ratio is even higher for Coal (think China). Mol.mass for CO2/N2O/NO2 is also fairly similar at 44-46 g/mol . With SO2 at around 66 g/mol. Rystad Energy estimates global fosile energyconsumption is down 30-50%. So why doesn’t it show? Production/demand is only down ~10% due to stategical storage building around the world.
I’ve been following Windy (Copernicus) and can not pinpoint any changes in CO2-levels when following various GPS-locations in China I’ve bookmarked. Am I way off here? Or are these non(or micro)-drops emerging evidence of high natural CO2-levels?
And when should we start to see flattening levels on groundstations like Mauna Loa and Baring Head? IF one were to apply the Bern-model? Not seen yet at least.
Hope for some insight from the expert.
Stay safe! All the best from Norway.
Dear Dave,
Thank you for your comment. We will have to agree that we disagree on the points that you have made.
Since neither of us is an expert in the field of carbon 14 measurement, we may have to wait until an expert, like Kristina Stenström or other, explains why one of us is wrong.
Meanwhile, I have nothing to retract because the paper by Stenstrom et al. clearly states that D14C measures the “content” of 14C in the atmosphere.
Dear AD,
Thank you for your comment. I have been thinking along the same lines as in your comment as it relates to CO2. The worldwide human emissions of CO2 have decreased since about mid-April. At some future date, the world economy will restart and the human emissions will come back. But the interval of the economic downtime may provide a unique opportunity to test the IPCC climate theory (or really the IPCC assumptions).
At the appropriate time, I will show my calculations of the decrease in atmospheric CO2 as predicted by the 2 opposing theories: the IPCC theory and my theory. Anyone will be able to check my calculations.
Meanwhile, here is a preview of the predictions. The numbers will depend upon data on how much decrease there will have been in human CO2 emissions during the period.
The IPCC theory says the human-caused rise of 138 ppm in atmospheric CO2 will decrease according to its Bern model offset by the human inflow that continues during this period. IPCC says that natural emissions will have been constant during this period.
My theory says the human-caused rise of 33 ppm in atmospheric CO2 will decrease according to the Physics model offset by the human inflow that continues during this period. My theory says natural emissions will continue to increase during this period.
The Physics model calculates an outflow about 2 times that of the Bern model but IPCC’s 138 ppm is 4 times that of the Physics model. So, the IPCC theory will predict a decrease in atmospheric CO2 at least 2 times greater than the Physics model.
However, the Physics model will add the continuing natural emissions during this period and this will make the IPCC prediction of CO2 decrease maybe 10 times that of the Physics model prediction. My key point is that the 2 predictions will be dramatically different and, therefore, easy to distinguish in the coming data set..
My guess is the data will show the IPCC climate theory is clearly invalid while the Physics model is correct within the accuracy of the data. So, if the present decrease in human emissions holds long enough to provide a good data set, we may end up with solid proof that the IPCC theory is wrong.
Let the data decide!
DMA
I watched the whole Salby video, not just the part you highlighted. Some comments:
1. His argument that global temperatures hadn’t really changed was odd. He said if we subtract the rise in such and such a four-year period, lowering temperatures in subsequent years, then did that again a decade or two earlier, in the end we would have no measured temperature rise!? Does he really expect to convince anyone that therefore temperatures haven’t changed? No true scientist treats data like that.
2. I was amused by the Feynman clips with derogatory comments on social sciences. (I have seen that interview before, and I am aware of his opinions. I was scheduled to teach an adult ed course on Feynman and his science this spring, but it was cancelled by the pandemic.) It is Salby, not Feynman, calling climate science a social science, and I disagree with that characterization. The interesting social science question is why non-scientists’ opinion on the subject of climate change correlates so closely with political beliefs. Given the strong consensus on climate change among scientists, that has unfortunately led to a dangerous disrespect of science from one side of the political spectrum. Of course, the Salby’s and the Berry’s would have you believe that only their error riddled stuff is true science.
3. Salby’s main argument that humans are not responsible for the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 is that he finds insufficient correlation between the details of changes in human emissions and the growth of atmospheric CO2. This is the section you highlighted. We should step back and note that a.) broadly speaking human emissions have been increasing over the past couple of decades and b.) the atmospheric CO2 vs time curve has a positive second derivative. Of course, that is the sort of correlation you would then expect if human emissions were the important factor. But Salby ignores that and instead models the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere with time as linear(!) Then he notes changes in the human emissions and from that makes suspicious “fits” to data and with NO DISCUSSION OF ERRORS extracts a value for the net contribution of human produced carbon in the atmosphere. Granted it is a talk not a paper (to Hermann Harde and perhaps a few others) but no climate science professional would expect to get this sort of loose analysis published. Salby’s professional failure appears to be not the conclusions he gets (as he would like you to believe.) His failure is lack of rigor. I am certain that were he to do a rigorous analysis, he would find that he could conclude little about how to separate “natural” from “human” carbon with this sort of analysis. Probably he knows that.
4. Everyone understands that the carbon cycle is complicated, with flows to and from the atmosphere that are larger than the one-way flow between fossil fuels and the atmosphere. Salby tries to summarize this with a draining bathtub analogy. (I think this might be where you claim the conventional (IPCC) analysis is “unphysical”.) Tell me, how does a draining bathtub account for wildfires in the Amazon? Does the fact that C14 abundance vs time does not follow a simple exponential curve with a single time constant (which was a central and erroneous argument of Berry) mean that the C14 data itself is “unphysical”? It looks somewhat like the Bern model. Good models need to be as simple as possible, but they can’t be too simple. That might be a Feynman quote.
In summary, there is nothing here to change my low opinion of “denier science”. My only surprise is that while Salby argued temperatures weren’t really changing, and that the increase in atmospheric CO2 was not from humans, he neglected to make the further argument that it didn’t matter that humans were not responsible for the CO2 increase, because CO2 has nothing to do with global temperatures anyway.
Hear! Hear!
David Andrews waxes on about upholding the standard of science.
Yet he seems comfortable with or simply ignorant of these and
similar events which have undermined the scientific method,
conduct that has become the standard of climate “science”.
What a disgrace.
Philip
Requiring papers to meet a minimal standard does not undermine the scientific method. It is necessary to keep the science going forward, not backwards. And it seems that those whose papers are rejected can always publish them on a blog.
“1. His argument that global temperatures hadn’t really changed was odd.”
Salby wasn’t arguing that the temperatures didn’t change but that the odds of them changing as they did (in four year spurts) when the forcing grew smoothly and nearly linearly were insignificant.
” It is Salby, not Feynman, calling climate science a social science, and I disagree with that characterization.”
I believe Salby’s point was that if there is nothing that can disprove the hypothesis it is not rigorous science and much of climate science by models is just that.
” His failure is lack of rigor. I am certain that were he to do a rigorous analysis, he would find that he could conclude little about how to separate “natural” from “human” carbon with this sort of analysis. Probably he knows that.”
So you have determined that his lack of rigor invalidates his analysis. Which step in the derivation was the one where the rigor slipped and he went down the wrong path to his erroneous conclusion?
“I think this might be where you claim the conventional (IPCC) analysis is “unphysical”.
So the fact that the Bern model will sequester CO2 out of the atmosphere when there is no CO2 left in the atmosphere doesn’t bother you? Maybe it only works when there is more than 280 PPM but the IPCC forgot to specify that part. Can you calculate at which concentration the Bern model changes its assumed constant natural absorption rate ?
DMA
The main problem with Salby’s analysis on both the temperature rise and his attempt to separate human and natural carbon is his complete disregard or sensitivity to error analysis. That is what I meant by “lack of rigor.” The temperature data obviously has a lot of noise in it, but there is a clear upward trend, and one that becomes even more significant if the two most recent years are added. You can’t make any meaningful statements about “spurts”. In his separation of human from natural carbon, he makes biased “fits” (at least based on the dotted lines he draws), then assumes these fits have no errors and extracts an error free result. We teach freshman lab students how to handle data better than that.
You say climate science, because it uses models, is not falsifiable. It may be true that models with adjustable parameters leave wiggle room. But climate models made ~2000, on balance, did a pretty good job of predicting 2020 temperatures. Those who argue that we should dismiss what 2020 models predict about 2040 remind me of those who dismissed what epidemiologists said about coronavirus in January. Junk science comes with a risk.
I don’t know what parameter values the Bern model is good for, but it is plain silly to criticize it by pointing out that it fails for extreme parameter inputs. You want to criticize them for not specifying, but give Salby a pass for not quoting the uncertainties in his answer? I will tell you again why he didn’t: the uncertainties are so large as to make his answer meaningless, and I suspect he knew that. Let him prove me wrong.
[This is a reply to your April 17 comment.]
David Andrews,
Exit advice: You really should read carefully before issuing proclamations.
But then, that’s a feature of unscientific bias.
What DMA referred to was not about publishing papers.
After Salby presented research that contradicted the party line,
he was demoted and then fired. Harde was not seeking to publish a paper.
He sought to reply to a criticism. From the link that DMA supplied,
what was censored (i.e., gagged) was Harde’s response to Kohler’s
hand-waving criticism which, as DMA noted and is shown clearly in the video,
was rife with error. In a court, limiting evidence to one side would be promptly quashed,
because it prevents the determination of fact. It is for this very reason
that such conduct is not science. It is, however, climate “science”.
To declare that one is protecting science by embracing
the concealment of evidence, even in response to criticism,
strikes me as grossly hypocritical.
Philip
You imply that Salby was fired because his conclusions “contradicted the party line.” Did you not consider that his embarrassingly shoddy handling of data, not his conclusions, was the reason?
There is a nice saying in science that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” If someone comes to you and says that he has mental telepathy, you would be right to be skeptical of his extraordinary claim, and you would insist on careful, controlled demonstrations. You may not like it, but (contrary to what Dr Ed asserts) at this point in time the burden of proof is on climate skeptics. If one comes forward with a well argued case, he will be listened to. Early in 2019 William Happer, then a member of Trump’s National Security Council, a climate change skeptic with a respected career in physics, proposed a national high level debate on the climate question. To my disappointment, it didn’t happen. The administration certainly had the power to make it happen, but got cold feet. I can guess why. Salby, Harde, and Berry do not come close to making a credible case.
Dear Dave,
Everyone has a political opinion, including me. And you have done a fair enough job in arguing science in most of your previous comments. However, your comment above is purely your own “extraordinary claims” wherein you have presented NO evidence to back up your opinions.
You do not know why Salby was fired. You CLAIM Salby did not handle data properly. In your opinion, what data caused the university to terminate Salby’s employment?
Have you studied Salby’s book? In my opinion, it is the best climate physics book available. His video calculation shows that temperature change precedes change in carbon dioxide.
Consider the parallel case of Peter Ridd. Ridd took his case against the university to trial, and he won. His case is evidence that universities will terminate the employment of professors who do not support the IPCC agenda.
You claim climate skeptics have the “burden of proof”. You do not understand how science works. The issues in climate science are the proclamations, theories, ideas, and assumptions of the IPCC. The scientific “burden of proof” is upon the IPCC and its supporters.
Maybe you do not understand how to use the null hypothesis in science. The null hypothesis for climate change is that “all climate change is assumed to be natural until proven otherwise.”
Your claim that the proposed “high-level climate debate” was cancelled because of Salby, Harde, and me is ridiculous. You can rest assured that those who planned for such a debate did not consider any participation by Salby, Harde, or me.
However, if I were planning such a debate, I would ask: Who will serve as judge and who will serve as jury?
It is clear that such a debate will not change any alarmist minds because the alarmists did not choose their side using logic, so logic will never change their minds.
Here is my challenge to you.
What is your argument and evidence to support the ridiculous IPCC claim that human carbon emissions have caused all the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1750 and above 280 ppm?
The Mauna Loa data showed an increase of CO2 to 418 ppm just before the levels started their yearly decrease because of Northern hemisphere photosynthesis. So in that 1 month window, early March to early April, when human fossil fuel emissions decreased drastically because of the COVID-19 shutdown, Mauna Loa figures kept going up.
Thus a real world experiment has now showed that man made CO2 emissions have no correlation to atmospheric net CO2. We knew that anyway from detrended time series analysis. However the alarmists don’t accept statistical arguments or even scientific experiments. It is catastrophic that we had to send the world into an economic depression in order to carry out the accidental experiment that we performed.
Your description didn’t match my recollection of Salby’s lecture, so I watched it again. It’s clear that you don’t understand it. But then you don’t understand Dr. Ed’s physics treatment either. Most of your latest confused rant doesn’t deserve a response. But two fallacies are so absurd that they are worth correcting.
As one who works on biomedical data, I find your claims regarding temperature preposterous. That temperature has changed is obvious. The question Salby addressed is how it changed. He showed that, in contrast to continually rising CO2, the net temperature increase over the last 60 years followed from just two brief pulses of heating. They occupied only 10% of the overall period. For the other 90% of the period, there was no net heating, even though CO2 rose continually. The absence of a trend is the same behavior that is widely recognized to have existed over the last two decades, referred to as the “pause”. Salby’s analysis shows that, except for those two brief pulses of heating, this is how temperature behaved for the last 60 years. If you are unable to grasp the difference between two isolated events and a continuing trend, then you’re wasting your time (and others’) trying to interpret data.
Related is your strident claim of a disregard of error. Unfortunately, it is not matched by your comprehension. In his analysis of a trend in temperature, Salby showed that the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis (that the temperature increase could have resulted simply through chance) is nowhere near the probability that is necessary for the existence of a physically meaningful trend. In relation to error, it doesn’t get more definitive and, notably, more “rigorous”.
Salby did not “model the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere with time as linear”. He showed that, for CO2 to have increased *as was observed*, its removal from the atmosphere (including CO2 emitted by humans) must be fast, much faster than is assumed by the IPCC. That, he showed, makes the human contribution small. It has likewise been shown by Drs. Berry and Harde.
Your claims of lack of rigor are ironic. If anything differentiates the physics treatments of Drs. Berry, Harde, and Salby from the IPCC’s artificial data and contrived models, ingredients that you accept uncritically, it is rigor. Pity you don’t understand it.
Ed,
I hadn’t meant to imply that it was your, Salby, and Harde’s work that discouraged the White House from a national climate change debate, but I see my wording was ambiguous. I suspect Happer drafted the complete skeptic’s case, it was reviewed, and someone decided it best not to expose the overall weakness of the argument. Merchants of Doubt, like the recently departed Fred Singer, don’t need to convince to succeed. They just need to sow enough doubt to give politicians cover. Skeptics survive by being nimble like guerilla fighters. A decisive, all in battle would be their Waterloo.
I don’t know what is in Salby’s personnel file, nor am I particularly interested. But the chorus of self-pity by skeptics that their brilliant analysis is not being heard (the video is a typical example) gets old. The sad fact is that skeptics’ conclusions are being heard far more than they deserve. An important segment of the media, you know which one, airs them exclusively. Non-scientists are easily taken in when the results line up with what we would all like to hear. Some cannot take the truth.
Your bizarre view of science apparently leaves no room for human caused climate change because you assert both
1.The “null hypothesis” requires anything other than “natural” climate change be “proven” and
2. One cannot prove any theory is true, only that it is not true.
Can’t you see the absurdity of these two statements together? Here is a very brief history:
1. The greenhouse effect was predicted in the 19th century, while CO2 levels were stable around historical values.
2. CO2 levels rose in the 20th century.
3. Temperatures rise, more or less according to the predictions, in the 21st century.
This sounds to me like a classic scientific success story. Sure, climate change is more complicated than Einstein predicting the sun would bend starlight. But don’t tell me the ball is in my court. It is in yours. You ask me to defend the IPCC view. Why? Are you too lazy to read the 1000+ pages of analysis?
I will do you the favor of telling you the obvious weakness of Berry + Salby + Harde. You are vague about where the anthropogenic carbon goes, and where the “natural” carbon comes from. I think, but I am not sure, that you believe the anthropogenic carbon goes mostly into the ocean, and the “natural” carbon comes mostly from the ocean.
Since roughly only half of the anthropogenic carbon emissions are needed to account for the growth in atmospheric carbon, you have to tell me why 97% of the anthropogenic carbon (using Salby’s numbers) get sucked up by the oceans while at the same time about half of that amount already in the oceans is being transferred to the atmosphere. Does that sound reasonable to you?
But I know where you got a wrong steer. You misinterpreted the C14 data, which seemed to show, but didn’t, that a pulse of carbon put into the atmosphere was absorbed by land and sea sinks, and stayed absorbed, with a short time constant. Your error, and Harde’s, was in interpreting “delta C14” as the change in C14 concentration relative to a ~1950 standard, rather than the change from an isotope ratio standard. This makes all the difference in determining the time scale in which the environment absorbs carbon put into the atmosphere, whether by an a-bomb test or by burning fossil fuels.
You suggested that we “agree to disagree” on this. Shall we agree to disagree on whether 1+1=2 as well? On Friday I emailed Jocelyn Turnbull in New Zealand, the lead author of the paper whose data you used in your C14 plots, and asked for her definition of “delta C14”. I had hoped for a response today, but got none. I will give her another couple of days, then contact others if necessary. Stay tuned.
Dear Dave,
Your comment has three distinct sections. Your first section has nothing to do with the core of our discussion. Or shall I say debate?
Your third section about 14C, while relevant, also has nothing to do with our core discussion because nothing in my post above relies upon the e-time I found using the D14C data. But, apparently, you don’t understand that fact.
So, we shall have to wait until we gather some expert opinions about the meaning of the definition of D14C. Meanwhile, I say D14C is a measure of the 14C content in the atmosphere, and you say it is not. There is nothing else either of us can say on this subject to convince the other.
Therefore, I wish to focus our discussion on your second section that I will reply to in a separate comment. Here I quote your second section where you wrote the following:
_________________________________________________________________
The following is by Dave Andrews:
Your bizarre view of science apparently leaves no room for human caused climate change because you assert both
1.The “null hypothesis” requires anything other than “natural” climate change be “proven” and
2. One cannot prove any theory is true, only that it is not true.
Can’t you see the absurdity of these two statements together?
Here is a very brief history:
1. The greenhouse effect was predicted in the 19th century, while CO2 levels were stable around historical values.
2. CO2 levels rose in the 20th century.
3. Temperatures rise, more or less according to the predictions, in the 21st century.
This sounds to me like a classic scientific success story.
But don’t tell me the ball is in my court. It is in yours. You ask me to defend the IPCC view. Why? Are you too lazy to read the 1000+ pages of analysis?
I will do you the favor of telling you the obvious weakness of Berry + Salby + Harde. You are vague about where the anthropogenic carbon goes, and where the “natural” carbon comes from. I think, but I am not sure, that you believe the anthropogenic carbon goes mostly into the ocean, and the “natural” carbon comes mostly from the ocean.
Since roughly only half of the anthropogenic carbon emissions are needed to account for the growth in atmospheric carbon, you have to tell me why 97% of the anthropogenic carbon (using Salby’s numbers) get sucked up by the oceans while at the same time about half of that amount already in the oceans is being transferred to the atmosphere.
Does that sound reasonable to you?
Dear Dave,
Here, I address the second section of your recent comment.
I wrote, “The null hypothesis for climate change is that all climate change is assumed to be natural until proven otherwise.” That is not the way you phrased it.
Have you studied in a formal manner the philosophy of science and the scientific method? Your arguments suggest you have not.
What you call absurd is the proper use of the scientific method.
What you list as history is not evidence to support the IPCC claim.
What you claim is a “classic scientific success story” is a classic error in your science. History does not prove cause and effect. Events do not prove their cause.
When you claim the ball is in my court based upon your preceding statements, you have assumed that the IPCC claim has somehow been proven true by your review of selected history.
By contrast, my post proves the IPCC core assumption – that human carbon emissions have caused all the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide above 280 ppm – is invalid.
IPCC’s core assumption contradicts IPCC’s own data as well as physics. But apparently, you don’t get it.
My post above is very detailed where the human carbon goes, but you don’t understand my post.
And finally, you write:
I have explained how human carbon moves through its carbon cycle.
Figure 7 shows IPCC’s distribution of natural carbon. This represents the long-term equilibrium distribution in percent for both the natural and human carbon cycles according to IPCC data.
IPCC’s data also provide the six e-times for the six natural carbon outflows between land, atmosphere, surface ocean, and deep ocean. These natural e-times must apply to human carbon as well as to natural carbon.
Figure 10 shows the results as of 2020 when annual human carbon emissions are numerically inserted into the atmosphere and human carbon in the atmosphere is allowed to flow to land and surface ocean, and from surface ocean to deep ocean, using the natural carbon e-times found in IPCC’s data. It is a very straight-forward calculation. IPCC should have done it.
To get the combined result of natural and human carbon flows, simply add the human carbon result of Figure 10 to IPCC’s natural carbon result of Figure 7.
Figure 10 shows all the human carbon emissions since 1750 have added only 31 ppm to the atmosphere by 2020. (My improved model calculates 33 ppm.)
The above is the proper way to compute the effects of human carbon emissions. It eliminates the nonsense you write as “only half of the anthropogenic carbon emissions are needed to account for the growth in atmospheric carbon” and human carbon getting “sucked up by the oceans,” etc. Your whole paragraph with these statements is junk science.
The result of my post raises a problem for the IPCC. It negates IPCC’s core assumption. It proves nature had to cause about ¾ of the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide above 280 ppm to get today’s level of carbon dioxide. This simple result negates all IPCC’s claims about climate change.
Ed, very interesting to hear about your sailing career. So, not only in climate science but also in sports we share some similar preferences and motivations. I was not as successful as you, but nevertheless two times German champion in a Dinghi sailing class and a third place at the Word Championship of the Quarter Tons.
Since at this time I’m preparing my motor boot for watering, I cannot spend too much time to participate in this discussion, about which I got aware yesterday. But here a few comments which relate to some statements of David Andrews from March 10 and the following discussion on this blog:
David Andrews writes: Harde’s analysis explicitly make clear that he takes it as the excess concentration of C14 from bomb tests, over and above that produced by cosmic rays, and your (Ed’s) comments indicate that is your interpretation as well. That interpretation is wrong. A little research shows that isotope specialists use it as a measure of the deviation of the C14/C12 isotope ratio from a standard value.
Indeed, they use a measure of the deviation from a standard, but this is the 14C activity of the NBS oxalic acid or the absolute international standard activity (AISA). Exactly this definition can be found in my paper, but interested people will only find it, when they read the whole article, including Appendix B, Eqs (35 and 36). There is also listed the standard reference for this definition (Stuiver&Polach).
I don’t know from where David Andrews derived his definition, but generally radiocarbon data are given in D14C units (“D” stands for the Greek Delta) and they represent the fractionation-corrected per mil-deviations from Oxalic Acid standard activity corrected for decay.
It holds: D14C = (14A_SN/14A_ABS – 1)*1000 per mil with A_SN as the sampling activity normalized for isotope fractionation to 13C, and A_ABS as the absolute international standard activity. A_SN relates to a well defined volume and not to the CO2 concentration, and this activity is compared with the standard, not with the 14C concentration in the atmosphere, and therefore, 14C is returning step by step to its old, pre-bomb-testing value.
The activity is measured directly by the radioactive beta decay from 14C to 14N or by the accelerator mass spectrometry method. Figs 5 and 13 in my paper and the respective plots in Ed’s paper show the 14C-decay over time, and it makes no difference for this decay to plot the D14C-values or the excess concentration of 14CO2 from the bomb tests. They both reflect the dilution of 14CO2 molecules in the atmosphere, and therefore, 14C is an important tracer for the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Compared to the direct 14C-counting rate the D14C-values are only fractionation corrected, i.e., related to any d13C-variations over time (here “d” stands for the small Greek delta). But this correction is of no concern, when the reader looks to my Fig. 13.
It should also be stressed again that this 14C-decay only represents an upper limit of the CO2-residence time. I already mentioned this in my last comment from January 15. After an uptake a CO2 molecule can be re-emitted from the surface layer of the ocean or by decomposition of plants. While for 12C and 13C isotopes a direct re-emission is indistinguishable from all other molecules of a reservoir, 14C is identified by its radioactivity.
The re-emission of the 14CO2 isotopologues is proportional to their concentration in the upper layer, and this concentration passes off with a decay time determined by the sequestration time or dilution and mixture process with the other molecules in the reservoir. This represents the apparent absorption time, while the true absorption time can only be shorter (see also Eq.(37) in Appendix B of my Earth Sciences paper).
I also briefly mentioned a second independent method in my January comment, when analyzing the seasonal oscillations on the Mauna Loa curve. They also reveal an upper limit of 11 yr for the CO2 residence time.
So, apparently not Berry and Harde make erroneous conclusions, but some opponents on this blog. The measured activity A_S or corrected A_SN is: A_SN = A_ABS*(1+D14C). The exponential decay of A_SN is the same as that of D14C.
I avoid to respond to all the other attacks and defamations of Murry Salby. Such a blog is not the right place to appreciate the outstanding services Murry rendered for his brave fight for true science.
H. Harde
Dr Harde
Thank you for weighing in on this C14 isotope question. Please consider the following measurement protocol:
1. A sample of gas is taken from the atmosphere, right now in 2020.
2. Through the magic of chemistry the carbon from the CO2 in that sample is transformed into a quantity of oxalic acid.
3. A carefully prescribed amount of that acid, say 1.000 grams, is put inside a counting system to record the rate of C14 decays.
4. Using all the correct conversion factors, the properly normalized activity (counting rate) is compared to a standard activity, the rate that would have been obtained using the same procedure in 1950.
5. From the plots that you and Dr Berry exhibit, I would expect the activity measured in 2020 to be very close to the activity measured in 1950, since the variable DeltaC14 is now near 0, ie little or no deviation from the standard.
Now ask the question: how does the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere in 2020 compare to the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere in 1950? The answer is, IT’S UP BY ABOUT 30%, the same amount that C12 has increased during that period. Activity is measured in Becquerels per kg of carbon. The Becquerels come from the C14. The great majority of the kg of carbon come from C12. The measurement protocol implicitly yields an isotope ratio, not an absolute quantity of C14. Therefore when you find the isotope ratio has returned to its old value, you know that the C14 is tracking the C12, ie up 30% since 1950. I am ignoring fractionation effects for simplicity, but they are small as you show in your Appendix B.
You can of course convert deltaC14 to concentration of C14 by using say the Mauna Loa data as a measure of C12 vs time. I did that roughly in a separate post. That will give you a post bomb test C14 vs time curve much different from the DeltaC14 curve that you and Dr Berry plot and incorrectly interpret as proportional to concentration. You will find that you cannot fit it with a single time constant exponential. You will find that bomb test C14 hangs around a lot longer than you thought. You might even conclude that anthropogenic carbon does the same.
Ed,
Here are some comments on the scientific process. You are too focused, I believe, on the dubious notion of scientific “proof”. An analogy made by Jennet Conant is more illuminative. Science is like a crossword puzzle. You are never sure about your first entry in a puzzle, but once you are able to link down and across entries your confidence grows. In a similar way, good scientific theories correlate seemingly unrelated phenomena. Newton could predict how fast a falling apple accelerated, just knowing the period of the moon (one month) and some distances. In his second Messenger Lecture on The Relationship Between Math and Physics, (video available online) Feynman makes a similar point about finding consistency rather than ”proving”. He talks about the contrast between “Greek” and “Babylonian” math. The Greek style is on display in high school geometry, where one proves more and more complicated theorems from some set of self-evident axioms. The Babylonian style is to make reasonable guesses, then see if things hang together. Feynman himself was very much a Babylonian and developed Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) with some brilliant guesses, which he found to be internally consistent but not linked to self-evident axioms. His sidekick Freeman Dyson later cleaned up some of the math connections with other approaches to the topic. Dyson was more Greek-like, but in no sense did he “prove” QED. It was the spectacular agreement between data and QED predictions on many different phenomena that made everyone believe the theory.
There is a piece of the scientific process that we all agree upon: the primacy of data. I recall you have used a Feynman quote on this, but the notion goes back to Francis Bacon in the 16th century. We all agree that failure to account for some phenomena, after uncertainties are taken into account, requires a theory or model to be modified or dropped.
So my little history of climate change ideas in a previous post “proved” nothing, I know. But the IPCC view of climate change is successful in correlating various seemingly unrelated observations: the rise in atmospheric CO2, the growing acidity of the oceans, average temperature rises both globally and regionally, the rate of consumption of fossil fuels, even the way that C14 concentration in the atmosphere changed with time after atmospheric nuclear testing. It has demonstrated some predictive ability, an important achievement, in that models from 2000 got conditions in 2020 about right. The IPCC viewpoint is not “proven” in the same sense as the Pythagorean Theorem, but it deserves to be taken seriously. In yours and Harde’s model, on the other hand, these things are mostly uncorrelated or wrongly predicted. The rise in CO2 is “explained”, you say, by an ad hoc increase in temperature which is not dependent on anything. The growing acidity of the oceans is confusing because, you say, carbon is coming out of the oceans. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are, you say, not relevant to anything else that is happening. Kohler makes many more valid criticisms. Finally, your model doesn’t fit the C14 data. I have posted on that separately.
A short question to Dr. Andrews:
Have you an idea, from where 14C is coming? Fossil fuels are devoid of 14C.
Radioactive CO2 is formed in the upper atmosphere. It is not generated from CO2 and not proportional to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, but results from the reaction: 14N + n –> 14C + p.
Therefore, the 14CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is in first order independent of the total CO2 concentration. It is measured as activity per volume, not as ratio to 13C or12C.
The only influence of an increasing total CO2 concentration results from re-emission of already absorbed 14CO2 molecules back to the atmosphere. I already mentioned this in my last post. This re-emission is proportional to the 14C concentration in the upper layer, which declines with a decay time determined by the sequestration time or dilution and mixture process with the other molecules in the reservoir. This decay we cannot directly trace.
With a simple balance equation for these emission and decay processes and considering some fraction for the back-pumping of 14CO2, one can easily prove that this gives in good approximation again an exponential decay for the 14CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, which within the error limits is observed as such pure exponential decay in the D14C-plots. And to make this again clear: These plots directly reflect the excess 14C concentration.
It has already several times been mentioned in Ed’s paper, in my Earth Sciences paper and in my last post that due to this re-emission the measured 14C-decay only reveals an apparent e-folding time of 14C, which represents an upper limit of the true CO2-residence time.
The only important point and thus the basic question is: Can CO2 stay in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years and further emissions are strongly cumulating, as claimed by the IPCC and derived from the Bern-model, or can we expect a much faster uptake and approach to new steady-state conditions of the climate system? The 14C-decay data tell us this must be shorter than 11 or 15 yr. That’s all.
H. Harde
Dear Dave,
Your historical review of the scientific method is welcome. However, this history does not justify or support your claim that I am “too focused… on the dubious notion of scientific ‘proof’.”
You are the one who thinks incorrectly that the IPCC theory is proven just because of a seeming correlation between the rise in human carbon emissions and the rise in atmospheric CO2.
You write:
“But the IPCC view of climate change is successful in correlating various seemingly unrelated observations: the rise in atmospheric CO2, the growing acidity of the oceans, average temperature rises both globally and regionally, the rate of consumption of fossil fuels, even the way that C14 concentration in the atmosphere changed with time after atmospheric nuclear testing.”
Nothing in your above paragraph shows human carbon emissions caused all the rise in atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm.
Alternatively, Salby, Harde, Berry, and many other scientists have shown that a different order of cause and effect also supports all the facts you list. Their proposed order of cause-effect is stars, cosmic rays, sun, cloud cover, surface temperature, release of natural carbon, increase in ocean carbon level, and increase in natural atmospheric CO2 level.
Now, with two contrasting ideas on the table, we must look for contradictions to each idea.
Fact #1: IPCC’s human and natural carbon cycles are inconsistent which proves IPCC’s core assumption is invalid.
Fact #2: Munshi shows the detrended correlation of these two variables is zero. No correlation means no cause and effect. So, the effect of human emissions on atmospheric CO2 is insignificant.
If you follow true physics, you must reject IPCC’s core assumption.
Fact #3: IPCC’s climate models use incorrect physics.
Fact #4: the presumed correlation between climate model output and surface temperature exists only because the modelers set curve-fit parameters to best cause such correlation to exist.
So, since you added climate models to your argument, if you follow true physics, you must reject cause-effect indications provided by the climate models.
Fact #5: the historical record of global temperature after 1750 correlates much closer with the solar irradiance than with the level of atmospheric CO2.
Fact #6: the historical record of global temperature and CO2 shows temperature changes lead CO2 changes.
So, if you follow physics, you cannot support IPCC’s theory.
You claim you have found problems in the models by Harde and Berry. That is certainly a worthwhile attempt.
However, you imply that if you can show that Harde and Berry made errors, then the IPCC theory is correct. Such logic is absurd.
In proper logic, you must first agree that the IPCC theories have failed because they contradict physics. Then, you can try to show that the arguments presented by Harde and Berry are incorrect.
Your use of Kohler to challenge Harde and me is invalid because we have shown that Kohler is completely wrong. To use Kohler, you must first show that the arguments Harde and I have made against Kohler fail. You have not done that.
Finally, Harde’s comment herein shows that D14C is a valid measurement of the level of 14CO2 in the atmosphere. So, your 14C argument fails.
In conclusion, you have not shown the IPCC is correct or that Harde and I are incorrect.
Ed and Hermann
We need to put to bed this question of what Delta C14 means. Here is a reference and a link to an article by one of the authors whose data you used. You will find equation 5 of interest.
DELTA C14 IS NOT ACTIVITY PER VOLUME!! IT IS THE FRACTIONAL DEVIATION OF THE ISOTOPE RATIO FROM A STANDARD!!!
“On the use of 14CO2 as a tracer for fossil fuel CO2: Quantifying uncertainties using an atmospheric transport model” – Turnbull – 2009 – Journal of Geophysical Research:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2009JD012308
After you have considered the implications of this quite important correction to the meaning of the data that you use in your analysis, I would be very interested in your comments.
Ed,
Your “Fact 1”, often repeated, is nonsense and you have been told this many times. You make the argument that a relatively small, compared to the circulating “natural carbon, input of additional carbon from fossil fuels cannot become the main source of increases in atmospheric carbon. This is NOT at all illogical as you say. I will repeat an analogy I made months ago. A swimming pool [the atmosphere] has a massive flow through a filter system [your “natural carbon” cycle], but the pool level [atmospheric carbon concentration] doesn’t change. A gentle rain begins to fall [fossil fuels are burned], many fewer gallons/sec than the filter circuit, but now the pool level rises [CO2 goes up]. You say in this situation that the pool level rise must be due to the filter circuit because the flows are higher. Everyone else recognizes that it was the rain that raised the level. The rain raised the level because there was nowhere else for the new water to go. Human input to the carbon cycle is small compared to the amounts in circulation, but the environment is not the infinite sink that you and Harde imagine. The C14 data show that there is no place else for the anthropogenic carbon to go. (Well not quite. The oceans can take about half of it, and the rest accumulates in the atmosphere.)
Your “Fact 2” is similarly nonsense. “Detrended correlations” is also what Salby argued, though he didn’t call them that. Human emissions have gone up over the years. This is consistent with the concentration of atmospheric CO2 having a positive second derivative with respect to time. (If you put in carbon at a higher rate, the level increases more rapidly.) But people seeking “detrended correlations” ignore this main feature and try to read significance into the wiggles in the data after that main trend is taken out. And they do it with no discussion of data uncertainties, time lags, etc. Hogwash by people apparently incompetent with data.
Your “Fact #3” is wrong. It is your so called “physics” (and Harde’s) that does not fit the C14 data. You have said elsewhere that any model that is inconsistent with the C14 data should be discarded. I agree. Retract your paper.
Your Facts 4 through 6 have nothing to do with human contributions to atmospheric CO2. Since you failed in that analysis, why should I debate you in other aspects of climate science? But I will say that you show a pattern that I have seen elsewhere in the denier community: if you have lost one argument on why humans are not causing climate change, try another.
I have said before about your and Harde’s C14 error: an honest mistake is just an honest mistake. We all make them. But failure to correct such a mistake after it is pointed out is scientific misconduct. Science is generally self-correcting, but only when the participants have integrity. It has now been over seven weeks since I brought the error to your attention and you have not retracted anything. Do you really expect to still be called a scientist?
Dear Dave,
Is calling me a “denier” the best you can do? If you had lived in Galileo’s day, would you have called him a “denier” as well?
You are not arguing science. You are arguing to protect your belief in your climate religion.
Fact #1: You do not understand my Preprint #2. My preprint proves IPCC’s human carbon cycle uses different physics than IPCC’s natural carbon cycle. Yet, you do not understand that this result puts your climate belief in checkmate.
Your pool analogy proves you do not understand my Preprint #2. Your gentle rain analogy to the addition of human carbon to the carbon cycle is fine. But you have omitted the firehose that is also pouring water into the pool, which represents the addition of new natural carbon to the pool. So, you blew it! You earned yourself a big “F” on your test.
Fact #2: Have you ever read a book on how to be fooled by statistics? You think a seeming time-series correlation proves a cause and effect?
Remember when there was a near perfect correlation between the height of the hemlines on New York models with the water level in Lake Titicaca? Which was the cause, and which was the effect, Dave?
You write, “If you put in carbon at a higher rate, the level increases more rapidly.”
Exactly. That is the relationship that statisticians have tested, and its correlation is zero.
Statisticians have tested for a delayed effect and for longer periods up to 5 years, but still zero correlation. So, you are without a correlation to support your assumed cause and effect.
Zero correlation does not mean human emissions have no effect on CO2 but it does mean human emissions are not the dominant effect.
Fact #3 (according to you): You believe D14C does not measure 14C content. I agree this is a valid subject, but you have not proved your case. Until you do prove your case, I have nothing to retract.
Suppose you find proof that we must adjust the D14C data to get a proper measure of 14C content. I will welcome that because it may support my Preprint #2. But such information will NOT change my Preprint #2 because my Preprint #2 is independent of the D14C data. But I already told you that and you do not get it.
My Preprint #2 models the whole carbon cycle (unlike my Preprint #1). It is the best carbon cycle model that exists. It uses the time constants in IPCC’s data. It shows how a pulse of carbon in the atmosphere will decrease. (This decrease, if you follow it, does not follow a simple curve like the 14C data.) It proves, using IPCC data, that human emissions have increased atmospheric CO2 by only about 33 ppm as of 2020.
You have not shown there is any error in my Preprint #2. You follow the true believer groupthink. You continue your climate beliefs even when they are proved to be wrong. Science works when the participants have integrity and understand physics.
Ed, the C14 issue is not rocket science. YOUR reference, Jocelyn Turnbull, defines Delta C14 in a paper I gave you a link to . Using her data correctly shows that inputs of carbon to the atmosphere do NOT disappear without a trace with a time constant of 16 years. The effect of a “pulse” of carbon put into the atmosphere CANNOT be characterized by a single time constant as you and Harde were led to believe because of your error. Knowingly misusing her data, which you are now doing, is scientific misconduct plain and simple.
Dr. Berry,
Waiting impatiently for your new post.
David,
You need to stop your leftist propaganda. Is there some gate on the sinks that only allows natural carbon? Please tell us how these sinks differentiate between natural carbon and fossil fuel carbon so that they only allow 50% of natural carbon? Is there a throttle valve on the sinks that only allows 50% of the fossil fuel carbon into the sink? Please explain what physical law does this?
You do realize who this is Dr. Berry? He is a charlatan.
Stephen,
Nature does not distinguish between natural and anthropomorphic carbon. Everybody gets that. Ed simply made up the tale that the IPCC doesn’t. But this “fire hose of natural carbon” that Ed refers to, much bigger than the “drizzle of fossil fuel carbon”, is in fact RECYCLING carbon from all sources. It is called “the carbon CYCLE” for a reason. My analogy of a high volume filter circuit on a pool is not exact but appropriate. There is a fire hose draining the pool as well as filling it. But the land and sea sinks are limited in what they can absorb on a decades long basis, and the new carbon from fossil fuels injected into the cycle gets split, roughly 50-50, between the atmosphere and oceans.
Do me and yourself a favor and look up the definition of Delta C14 in equation 5 of the Turnbull article I cited a week or so ago. Then ask yourself why Ed is still arguing the point.
Dear Dave,
First, I did not “make up the tale” that IPCC treats human carbon differently than natural carbon. IPCC reports with this invalid concept. You just can’t read.
Second, the “fire hose” I added to your analogy adds new carbon to the carbon cycle just as human carbon adds to the carbon cycle. This natural addition to the carbon cycle is independent of the recycling of carbon already in the carbon cycle. I am surprises you don’t get this.
Third, you may claim there is a 50-50 split between the oceans but your claim contradicts IPCC’s data for the natural carbon cycle. Are you now introducing your own data into this discussion?
Fourth, please provide a valid proof of your claim about D14C. Then, show or indicate what you think is a valid measure of 14C content. Otherwise drop the subject. Kristina Stenstrom is an acknowledged expert on 14C and she wrote that D14C measures the content of 14C in the atmosphere. So, are you claiming she is wrong?
Dear Dave,
Now, you add a new claim to your D14C diatribe. First, it was about the issue of whether D14C is a measure of 14C content. Now, you have added the crazy idea that something I wrote implies that 14C magically disappears. What are you thinking? I imply no such thing. Again, all you are proving by your comments is that you are not able to understand simple physics.
On the first issue, I referenced Kristina Stenstrom who is an acknowledged expert on 14C and she wrote that D14C measures the “content” of 14C in the atmosphere. So, are you claiming she is wrong?
On the second issue, do you not understand the difference between my Preprint #1 and Preprint #2? Preprint #2 includes the carbon cycle. It shows that a pulse does not decrease with a single “apparent” time constant. I explain why this is so and why this is apparent. Rather than teach you, I will test you to see if you can explain what causes the change in the apparent time constant. Any guesses?
Dear Stephen,
My revised and updated preprint is on the way. Today, I finished my Word and PDF version. It will take me another day to add it as a new post on this website.
Ed,
There is nothing wrong with Stenstrom’s paper. Of course D14C is a measure of the C14 in the atmosphere. But it is not PROPORTIONAL to the C14/volume as Harde said in a recent post and which you assumed in that erroneous plot you called “the most important result in climate science”. It is the fractional deviation of the isotope ratio as both Stenstrom and Turnbull state. And when you use the same definition of DC14 that the experimenters used, allowing C14/volume to be correctly calculated, that so called “most important result” becomes a misfit between your simple model and DATA. I sketched the analysis for you previously.
I don’t believe you are as dense as you are pretending to be in this discussion. I believe that you just don’t want to admit a glaring error that helps explain your wrong conclusions, which no one in the scientific community believed any way. I notice that Harde has stayed silent since his blunder calling DC14 a “per volume” measure. Presumably he too is embarrassed by his mistake. Are you there Dr Harde? Do you want to speak the truth in this discussion or do you want to hide?
I have seen a tendency in politicians to refuse to ever acknowledge an error. I hope we can keep that disease from science.
Dear Dave,
Since you agree Stenstrom’s paper is correct and Stenstrom says D14C is a measure of the “content” or level of 14C, then you have no case. Harde used the term “volume” as a translation from his native German. But in our English terms, we are discussing not the volume but the content or level of 14C.
Stenstrom and others who define how to measure the level of 14C agree that D14C is a valid measure of 14C content. They use D14C in their carbon dating. They do not multiply D14C by the level of 12C or 13C, as you suggest.
Think of it. Why would the professionals in 14C dating use units that had to be converted as you claim? They use units of measurement that make carbon dating as easy as possible.
If you read their work carefully, you will find they normalize 14C data to remove dependence on the level of 12C or 13C.
Dave, you have no case. You should worry more about the blatant errors that your IPCC people have made.
By the way, speaking of calling for retraction of published papers, you should call for the retraction of all IPCC reports and all papers that support IPCC’s invalid core assumption. You should also call for retraction of Cawley (2011) for his faulty physics that goes into IPCC climate models. Then, you must also call for retraction of all papers, such as Kohler et al., that depend upon Cawley (2011) for their conclusion. Be honest, Dave.
Dr B,
Everything OK?
Dear Stephen,
Thank you for your interest. Personally, I am doing fine and in excellent health. I have a lot of things going on. I am updating my website so I can add my planned climate education videos. On the flip side, my desktop computer is due for a major upgrade because it is slowing me down. Like everyone else, I have only so much time. When I have delays in replying to comments, it is because I am working on other things related to my website.
Last week, I completed a private review of my new preprint which included scientists who still “believe” human carbon has caused all the increase in CO2 even though they admit that my preprint is accurate. One scientist completely checked my numerical calculations by using a different method and found our two methods agree to 2 decimal places. No one has found ANY scientific error of any kind in my preprint. My new Preprint is posted but not yet public because I will add some additional material based upon the comments in this now completed review.
Meanwhile, I had to block some comments to this post because they were personal attacks on the messenger (me) rather than a discussion of science. The authors, of course, will accuse me of blocking contrary opinions which I never do. I allow all good arguments that focus on the science. But I do not allow outrageous personal attacks or continuous repetition of already stated opinions.
The attacker you’re talking about has attacked other prominent scientists on other web sites so don’t take it too personally. He is a charlatan who resorts to personal attacks when his obfuscation tactics don’t work.
Thank you for a very thorough article about a very important subject.
Just now in the last few days, Dr. Spencer has posted on his website that Nature takes CO2 out at a rate of 2.3%/year times [current CO2 concentration – 295 ppm].
There is absolutely no scientific basis for this notion. It is a mathematical construct designed to support the notion that most of the increase in atmospheric CO2 above the baseline of 295 ppm has been caused by man.
Dear Stephen, You are correct. Dr. Spencer published the same article in a CO2 Coalition report.
Spencer is incorrect out of the starting gate because he continues to believe the IPCC core hypothesis that human CO2 causes all the increase in atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm. That hypothesis conflicts with the scientific method, the Equivalence Principle, and IPCC’s own data for the natural carbon cycle.
Spencer’s conclusion is: “I find that a 43% reduction in anthropogenic CO2 emissions in 2020 would — in the absence of natural fluctuations in the carbon cycle — lead to a halt in the observed rise of atmospheric CO2 in 2020 over 2019 levels.” That incorrect conclusion is the result of its incorrect starting assumption.
Correct physics shows that natural emissions have increased atmospheric CO2 by about 100 ppm since 1750 while human emissions have increased CO2 by about 33 ppm.
Therefore, if nature keeps increasing the CO2 level as it has since 1750, even if we could stop ALL human carbon emissions, we would not halt nature’s continuing increase in CO2. Unless nature changes its course, nothing we can do will return CO2 to 2019 levels.
Yes, Dr. Spencer is a good man and scientist. He’s just stuck on this. He believes man has caused the CO2 to increase. And, maybe humankind
has caused natural emission to increase somehow. I think Chic Bowdrie believes this. Do you think this is possible? I think that would show up as a systematic change and Salby believes it is random.
Is the ‘Land’ including sea bed ?