Stand for climate truth.
by Dr. Ed Berry
In the late 1960s, I traveled to South Africa. I saw children with their legs bound to purposely turn them into cripples for life, presumably so they would make money from donations.
Today, I see children in America and other countries with their minds bound to purposely turn them into mental cripples for life, presumably so they will support votes for a political cause that in the end will destroy their own country. These children have suffered mind-warping child abuse. This abuse has caused them mental and physical harm.
What is worse? A crippled leg or a crippled mind?
Those born after about 1995 have been severely harmed. Their teachers, media, and government have programmed them from early ages to believe human CO2 is destroying their world. Their teachers have used fear to make them believe. Fear is known to be the most permanent way to program children’s minds to believe anything. The children are helpless against these immoral tactics.
Their teachers have molded these children into a climate alarmist cult that rejects true science. Once inside the cult, the children can no longer think for themselves. They become servants of the BORG that controls them.
The young people who have become climate alarmists have never been taught true science. For example, how many young people can understand the following simple science?
Climate alarmists make four invalid claims:
- Human CO2 has caused all the increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1750, or above 280 ppm.
- Increased atmospheric CO2 causes global warming.
- Global warming causes bad stuff to happen.
- Therefore, human CO2 causes bad stuff to happen.
Let’s focus on claim #1. Here is why it is wrong:
- Simple physics shows that human CO2 causes about 18 ppm of today’s 410 ppm level of atmospheric CO2, while natural CO2 causes 392 ppm. Human CO2 is insignificant to climate.
- By contrast, the IPCC claims that human CO2 causes 130 ppm of today’s 410 ppm, while natural CO2 causes 280 ppm.
IPCC is the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
It is easy to prove with high-school physics that the IPCC claim is wrong. According to the UN IPCC, the annual flow of human CO2 into the atmosphere is about 4.4 ppm per year and the natural CO2 inflow is about 98 ppm per year.
According to simple physics and common sense, the percent of human CO2 in the atmosphere equals the percent of human CO2 in the inflow. It is like a recipe. What you put into a bowl is what is in the bowl.
So, get your calculator and do the math. The total of 4.5 ppm per year and 98 ppm per year is 102.5 ppm per year inflow into the atmosphere. The human contribution is 4.5 divided by 102.5 or 4.4 percent. Therefore, the contribution of human CO2 to atmospheric CO2 is 0.044 times 410 ppm or 18 ppm.
Therefore, reducing human CO2 emissions will not reduce atmospheric CO2 enough to make any difference in the climate. Alarmism is junk science. There is no climate emergency.
The physics model also explains why continuing human CO2 emissions will not further increase atmospheric CO2 … but that is another subject.
How do the IPCC and climate alarmists justify their claim that human CO2 increased atmospheric CO2 by 130 ppm?
Answer: They reject physics. We are not talking about rocket science. We are talking about what they should have learned in high-school physics.
One IPCC argument is that natural CO2 flows freely out of the atmosphere, but human CO2 goes into 4 bins. The CO2 in the first bin flows freely out of the atmosphere. The CO2 in the second bin flows slowly out of the atmosphere. The CO2 in the third bin flows very slowly out of the atmosphere. And the CO2 in the fourth bin stays in the atmosphere forever. This claim is junk science. It is like a wee-wee-wee 4-little-piggy nursery rhyme.
Figure 1 illustrates IPCC’s 4 bins for human CO2.
Everyone who believes this wee-wee-wee 4-little-piggy argument rejects science. IPCC scientists believe it. National Climate Assessment authors believe it. Climate alarmists believe it. Too bad they are all wrong.
The truth is nature can’t tell the difference between human and nature CO2 because CO2 molecules are identical no matter what their source.
Download two new scientific papers as free PDF files.
Two recent peer-reviewed scientific publications prove the IPCC alarmist theory is wrong. Both show why human CO2 does not change atmospheric CO2 enough to change the climate. Both prove the UN IPCC climate theory is wrong.
- Edwin X Berry: Human CO2 Emissions Have Little Effect on Atmospheric CO2, published on July 4, 2019.
- Hermann Harde: What Humans Contribute to Atmospheric CO2: Comparison of Carbon Cycle Models with Observations, published on June 12, 2019.
Please click on the links and download these two papers. Every download adds to the attention a paper gets. You may be surprised that you can understand much of my scientific paper even if you are not trained in science.
Please bring these two scientific papers to the attention of your elected representatives and conservative media. You will help bring climate truth to the people. You can make a difference.
Also, notice these papers are not “opinions” because the climate alarmists will try to pass them off as such. These papers are slam-dunk proof the IPCC is wrong. They will prevail in court if a smart lawyer uses them.
Science, like legal trials, has a default position. Most law, for example, assumes an accused person is innocent until proven guilty. The same holds for science. The default position (known as the null hypothesis) is that all climate change is assumed to be natural until proven to be human-caused. Human CO2 is innocent until proven guilty.
No one has proved that human CO2 causes climate change because natural CO2 prevails over human CO2 in the atmosphere. Natural CO2 emissions increased since 1750 enough to increase atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppm to 392 ppm. The human effect is only an additional 18 ppm. The human effect on climate is completely negligible and removing it completely will not eliminate the dominant natural climate change.
The two referenced scientific papers take the additional step. They prove all the IPCC arguments, that the IPCC uses to claim a human cause, fail science. Checkmate. These papers cannot be ignored in any serious discussion of climate change.
Help me bring climate truth to the world.
Imagine a world with no climate alarmism. We would be able to focus on things that matter and not waste our time and money on climate distractions. Junk climate science would not distort politics and the economy. Colleges would not require students to join sustainability programs. Kids would not proclaim climate emergencies. Governments would save money. Power generation would be more reliable and cost less. Children and students would learn real science rather than fake science. It might help them pay off their college loans.
I am building a new website where we can work together to accomplish this goal. It will be a membership website where you can interact with other people. It will include seminars that explain in ordinary language why climate alarmists are wrong. It will provide the science and explanation necessary to win in public debate, but we will not be distracted by more science than is necessary to achieve our political goals. It will provide the simplest and most powerful arguments that you can use to counter the climate alarmists.
We have already won the science debate, but few people understand this. The alarmists have no scientific case. Now we must win the political debate.
Several people have offered to help fund my work. I thank them very much. My new website will make this possible. The work we plan to do will require money.
Already, thousands of people have signed up on my email list. If you are not already on my email list, you may sign up on edberry.com to get information about what I am doing.
Our task is great. We must show the public why human CO2 does not change the climate. Our goal is to get climate change out of politics and back into science.
The idea that we have a “climate emergency” is a product of a crippled mind.
Our job is to stand for climate truth.
The Figures below have been added to this post to assist in the discussion in the comments.
Dear Dr. Ed, thank you for sending this excellent analysis. Even as a retired trial lawyer, I understand what you are saying. You verify that my early opinion is right: the EVIDENCE does not support the claim.
I look forward to reading your new website.
Glad I signed up for your newsletter Dr. Berry. You are spot on and your explanations are easy for the uneducated folks such as I to understand……….
With Heartland’s recent ICCC 13 just completed we have multiple examples of the acceptance of this erroneous IPCC dogma even in some of the staunchest of skeptics. Watch the videos at https://climateconference.heartland.org/ and count how many times these well founded and thoughtful speakers allude to the human cause of recent CO2 increase even as they point out that rise is not causing climate change. Wouldn’t they be much more effective if they started with the truth that The rise is largely natural? I have been hammering on this for several years in my puny way so I really appreciate this effort by Dr. Ed and look forward to helping as I can.
I would like to see it get exposed on WUWT, JoNova, Climate Etc. and several of the other main climate sites as well as the alarmist sites.
Dear DMA,
All scientists must use the null hypothesis. It applies to all three steps of climate change theory. Human CO2 must be assumed to not cause the increase in atmospheric CO2 until proven to do so. No one has ever proved human CO2 is the cause of the increase.
The Heartland-sponsored scientists who accept the idea that human CO2 has caused all the increase above 280 ppm, have not followed the null hypothesis. They have followed their “feelings” rather than science. It is unfortunate for climate truth that good scientists on our side do not follow the scientific method.
They even ignore Munshi’s statistical proof that the correlation between annual human CO2 emissions and annual change in atmospheric CO2 is ZERO! Science requires that they either prove Munshi is incorrect or they accept that conclusion that human CO2 is not the cause of the rise in atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm. But their only comment about Munshi’s result is to say, “Well, I think human CO2 is still the cause of the increase even though the correlation is zero.” That conclusion is NOT science. Anyone who denies Munshi’s result MUST provide a valid scientific argument that zero correlation does not mean there is no cause and effect.
They have all had the opportunity to challenge me in debate emails and on this website. The few that have challenged me quickly found that their argument failed physics.
The bottom line is, according to the scientific method, I am correct and they are wrong.
I certainly agree with this statement;
“Imagine a world with no climate alarmism. We would be able to focus on things that matter and not waste our time and money on climate distractions. Junk climate science would not distort politics and the economy.”
One very real issue that will happen one day is another Carrington Event that will destroy a large part of the electrical grid. This is a very real threat to the nation that will happen and it is obvious that due to the time and resources being wasted on this hoax about anthropogenic climate change being caused by an essential for all life on earth trace gas, CO₂, no actions are being taken to minimize the damage that this solar storm will cause.
Transformers can be protected with Faraday cages at very little cost. When one considers that some of these large transformers take up to 2 years to build, then they must be transported and obviously installed, it makes it all the more disappointing to see time and resources going towards defending a hoax about how CO₂ is a devil in the sky that is going to cause the planet to be incinerated instead of efforts being made to deal with actual problems that will occur, such as another Carrington Event.
It needs to be mentioned that there are only two countries at this time that can produce these transformers and the United States is not one of them. It is Germany and South Korea that produces them and if the damage done by this solar flare is widespread, there is a slim chance that the US will get transformers before other orders are filled.
If The National Geographic can understand this to be a problem, even though they have become a big promoter of the hoax about climate change caused by CO₂, then some of what they report should be paid some attention to.
What If the Biggest Solar Storm on Record Happened Today?
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110302-solar-flares-sun-storms-earth-danger-carrington-event-science/
http://energyskeptic.com/2015/power-transformers-that-take-up-to-2-years-to-build/
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/Large%20Power%20Transformer%20Study%20-%20June%202012_0.pdf
I am a realistic skeptic and therefore I know that what alarmist ignore is these truths. The sun makes up 99.86% of the mass of the solar system. Carbon dioxide is .03% of the earth’s atmosphere. Of the two, the sun or CO₂, which do you believe has the most influence on the earth’s climate? The people associated with the essential for the survival of modern civilization, the fossil fuel industries, also know the correct answer and will continue to supply the resources that are in demand while alarmist supply nothing of value to anyone, not even yourselves.
“Troll-A Platform: Largest Object Ever Moved by Man March 12, 2013
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/03/troll-platform-largest-object-ever.html
“Transocean Sets World Record for Deepwater Drilling
http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/127610/Transocean_Sets_World_Record_for_Deepwater_Drilling
Love your work.
Dr Ed
Thank you so much for this work. It is music to my mind! I am no physicist but I do understand the scientific method and model validation so have been highly skeptical since reading Prof Bob Carters book when it came out in 2010. I have been trying to convince colleagues and friends alike that my emissions are not igniting the planet and finally I have EVIDENCE. As a previous comment said I think it would be a good idea to send it to other climate sites such as WUWT to give it max exposure if you have not already done so.
Sorry, I’m a bit late to comment on this…
With the enormous complexity of what makes-up the “climate” — wouldn’t it be possible to demonstrate that spike in CO2 concentration may be a “harbinger” for global cooling?
(a) The ice cores analysis may show compressed levels of this life-giving gas (due to e.g. diffusion) and current level peak may be just normal pitch for all recent (400kybp+) swans songs of interglacials
(b) CO2 and other constituents of our atmosphere are not one-way-mirror; they block a bit of the incoming as well as outgoing IR radiation (inconvenient fact?)
(c) As the famous physical chemist himself mentioned, not CO2, but carbonic acid is the “thing;” little is done (nothing I can find on the IPPCPolicy Change) on the effect of its dissociation in the humid atmosphere — not only on its IR absorption spectrum (etc.) but on cloud formation/precipitation and other, thermodynamic, chemical (e.g. w. O3) and even its mechanical qualities…
Dear Dr. Ed
I am, like many of the others who have already commented, delighted that we now finally have something concrete to work with during ongoing discussions about AGW with family, friends, and colleagues. I have already persuaded the family (they keep telling me to stop talking about it!). Having some proper material to combat the alarmist keyboard warriors will be very useful.
Just a note re your new website….make sure it is tuned by an SEO specialist. If done correctly your site will be on page one on Google for many regularly searched terms.
Good luck and thanks.
Ed,
As a physicist, I take offense with your claim that “simple high school physics “ refutes the IPCC analysis. As I pointed out elsewhere, the amount of what you call “natural CO2” in the atmosphere is driven by human activity. The carbon is just making a second or third or fourth pass through the atmosphere after being released from some fossil fuel. You promised to address this a while ago, but in the meantime leave erroneous information posted.
You further argue that the increased CO2 that humans are not responsible for does not cause global warming in any case. Perhaps you also are one of those who argue that global warming is not happening. I detect a pattern: you will make any argument to reach the predetermined conclusion that human activity has no bearing on climate. That is not science, my friend, it is religion. What I do not understand is how you came to believe that religion. Perhaps you do not really believe it but like the cash that bullshit generates. I don’t like making harsh claims like that, but people in your camp have made the same claim about real scientists.
Dave
Dear Dave,
As a physicist, I invite you to present your best scientific argument that the recycling of human-produced CO2 causes a significant increase in atmospheric CO2. The question is not whether it recycles. Of course, it does. The question is how much it increases atmospheric CO2.
I will give you all the space you need on this website to make your best scientific case to support your position. That is assuming you have a scientific case.
Or do you prefer to spend your time “as a physicist” by taking “offense” at claims that disagree with your preconceived, unsupported notions about climate change, and by making ad hominem attacks on those with whom you disagree?
Ed
Ed,
Thanks for the invitation to discuss my “preconceived, unsupported notions” about the important role of human activity in determining CO2 levels in the atmosphere. But the ideas I present below are hardly unsupported. They underlie the science of climate change. The real challenge I have is getting you to see where your model is wrong. I tried once before and apparently failed, but I will try again.
As you certainly know, conservation laws are powerful tools in physics. For example, if we know that the sum of two quantities is conserved and we measure the change in one of them, we can infer how the other has changed as well. A quantity which we can be confident is conserved is the total amount of carbon on the earth. (Ignore C14 decays and meteors with carbon falling on us.)
CO2 on the other hand is NOT conserved. It is produced when we breathe or when fossil fuels burn, and it is transformed by plants into biomass. It is therefore convenient to follow the carbon rather than the CO2. Since pre-industrial times, somewhere around 500 Gtons of carbon in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas have been removed from the ground and burned. Where is it now? The conservation of carbon says it must be somewhere.
Your analysis said it didn’t stay in the atmosphere for more than a few years after the fossil fuel was first burned. Perhaps the total tonnage of plant life has increased? Perhaps much is dissolved in the oceans, making them more acidic?
The professionals say “all of the above”, and you can find a nice figure summarizing the conclusion of one analysis. https://public.wmo.int/en/resources/bulletin/annual-global-carbon-budget (I tried unsuccessfully to paste the figure here.) The symmetry of the graph expresses the conservation of carbon: what was removed from the ground or by deforestation (top half of graph) is distributed between the land, sea, and atmosphere (bottom half of graph).
Back to a critique of your paper. You are correct that on any given day the TWO WAY exchanges of carbon between the biosphere and the atmosphere swamp the human caused ONE WAY transfer of carbon from underground to the atmosphere. But once the carbon has been “put in play” by burning fossil fuels, it will become part of the larger “natural” cycle. Evidently plants are not able to hold it all, and the oceans and atmosphere take up the slack.
Here is an analogy using swimming pools. A 50 % full swimming pool has a massive pump circulating hundreds of gallons per hour of water through a filter. The level of the pool does not change. One day an inch of rain falls. Thereafter the pool level is one inch higher. Wouldn’t we be correct in saying that the rain caused the pool level to rise, even though many more gallons came into the pool through the filter circuit, even when it was raining?
Dave
I really do not understand why Man burning fossil fuels putting “carbon at play” is of any importance, whatsoever. Why? Because carbon is being “put into play” by natural means in much larger amounts. So much so, Man’s contribution is meaningless.
Every single volcanic CO2 source on Earth is putting carbon into play…all the time. Carbon from underground…and into the atmosphere…even the upper atmosphere.
The fact is, you may totally removed Man’s entire contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere, and doing so, achieve absolutely no change in the climate of this planet. None.
Dear Dave, You wrote:
“But once the carbon has been “put in play” by burning fossil fuels, it will become part of the larger “natural” cycle. Evidently plants are not able to hold it all, and the oceans and atmosphere take up the slack.”
You have provided nothing but handwaving. Without numbers, you have no working hypothesis and no basis to support your belief that human CO2 is a major cause of the increase in atmospheric CO2.
Sorry for my delay in replying to your comment. I got sidetracked by a critique of my paper by another professor from another university. His critique was inconsequential because he does not understand my paper or the Physics model. Nevertheless, because of all the VIP’s he added to his email list, I needed to reply to all of his 55 comments and organize his comments and my replies. This took time. Later, I will provide information on this document I created.
Here is the bottom line of our discussion as I see it. My paper does not claim to have calculated the effect of human CO2 on the carbon cycle. My paper is only a starting point to such a calculation. Now, I have completed that calculation. No IPCC paper calculates the carbon cycle correctly. I posted above the IPCC AR2 Fig. 6.1 that describes IPCC’s view of the effect of human CO2 on the carbon cycle. In my calculation, I use the same IPCC data to show the IPCC numbers in its Fig. 6.1 are incorrect, especially the numbers for the human contribution. Seems like no one who does calculations for the IPCC understands physics and how to do numerical calculations. The IPCC provides junk science in return for its billions of dollars of research funding.
Finally, I just completed the first valid calculation of the human CO2 effect on the carbon cycle. I am now writing a paper that describes my calculations that I will submit for publication. I will post more information on this website as I organize it for readers.
Suffice it to say at this point that the results of my calculation, which include the new carbon that human CO2 adds to the carbon cycle, rejects your hypothesis that human CO2 has caused all or even most of the increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1750.
Carbon output from volcanoes is estimated at about 1 sixtieth of carbon output from human burning of fossil fuels. If you have a scholarly article that says something different, show me. Assertions from somebody’s website don’t count.
The “natural” flows of carbon between the biosphere and the atmosphere indeed are much larger than the flows directly generated by humans. But those large flows are two way flows, back and forth between the atmosphere and the biomass, to which we humans add a smaller one way flow. Read again my swimming pool analogy. And while you are at it, ask yourself where the 500 billion tons of carbon emitted by humans over the last 100 years have gone. Then work out whether that amount of carbon in the form of CO2, added to the atmosphere, could account for the well documented increase in CO2 over the last half century. (Alternately, you could read someone else’s calculation.) You can argue that CO2 is eliminated when a plant transforms it to some hydrocarbon. But you can’t argue that carbon atoms are transformed into something else, unless you believe in alchemy.
Scientists estimate that volcanoes worldwide emit, on average, about 1.5 million metric tons of CO2 per day. But, this estimate is purposely far too low, because it is based on measurements from only 33 active volcanoes. (This estimate is said to amount to 2% of what human activity causes. But, we are not talking about ALL human activity, just the activity putting CO2 “at play” such as burning coal and fossil fuels.)
I think we agree there are many more volcanic sources of CO2 than just 33. But, that is a safe number of volcanic peaks to limit a study and keep volcanic CO2 estimates low. But, realistically, how many active volcanic sources of CO2 emissions are actually out there? Thousands?
We know volcanic CO2 sources exist, on land, under the ice, and under the sea, which have never been measured and are not monitored. For example, recently one ice smothered volcano in Iceland has been found to emit 12k to 24k metric tons of CO2 each day. There are dozens more, just like it, in Iceland and Antarctica, completely ignored by “studies.”
I am wondering. Exactly what is the percentage of Man-made CO2 production, which is entirely created by fossil fuel combustion? If world-wide volcanic activity has doubled during the same period we noted an increase in upper atmosphere CO2 levels, is this of any interest? Why do people like to talk in Metric Tons..and not PPMV? Why is Man’s CO2 production of any concern, since it is only 18PPMV of the 410PPMV in the atmosphere?
If we could magically make all the CO2 created by the United States to vanish overnight, how would lowering atmospheric CO2 by 4PPMV effect the climate? Especially, when the seasonal flux in atmospheric CO2 is 6PPMV?
Thanks for researching volcano CO2 output estimates. You found 2 percent of human fossil fuel burning. I found 1/60. Close enough. The difference is that I accept the scientists numbers whereas you are sure there is a conspiracy to keep them low. Why would a scientist do that? Why would another scientist not call him out if he did? What you do not appreciate is how fiercely skeptical and competitive scientists are.
By the way, attributing a lot of CO2 to volcanoes seems to be a common misconception. I don’t know how that story got started.
I would like you to tell me where you think the fossil fuel carbon goes. If you think there is a 10x more carbon coming from volcanoes, then you have to tell me where all that carbon went as well. The graph at the top of this threads might help you get started.
I do not need to tell you where any particular CO2 molecule goes, as Nature treats all CO2 molecules exactly the same, no matter their source or origin.
As for people deliberately lying about the Climate, this has been a constant for decades…and is the norm, not the exception. Fallacy, propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, fictional variables, contaminated data, falsified data, bad modeling, emotional conditioning, hysteria, and horrific fantasies of climatic disasters, which are always imminent….are the daily routine.
But, who cares? Outside of Socialist politics, the entire Man-made CO2 issue is meaningless, and blaming our 18ppmv for Global Warming is absurd on its face. How much more absurd is the notion of reducing Man’s CO2 by 20%, and thinking THIS actually would be worth all the cost and misery it would take to do so?
If the entire population of the United States were removed from Earth, along with every molecule of CO2 caused by it, you will have reduced World wide atmospheric CO2 by a whopping 4 ppmv. Meaningless.
The swimming pool with the pump is not a good analogy for the flow of CO2 into and out of the atmosphere but it allows the demonstration of an important aspect of the data. A time based analysis of the pool would show a correlation of the rate of change in the level to the rate of rainfall. The data for changing rates of emissions does nor correlate to atmospheric CO2 content. ( https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/19/co2responsiveness/ ). This analysis is consistent with Dr. Ed’s findings. The IPCC has declared that all of the recent change in atmospheric content is due to humans. For that statement to be true there would necessarily have to be a correlation between the cause (rate of emissions) and the result (atmospheric content growth) but there is none. The fact is that neither the atmospheric content ( your pool) nor the emissions either natural or human (your rain) are constant and if the if the rain is tiny compared to the pump flow but the pump flow is irregular you have to use Dr. Ed’s and Herman Harde’s method to calculate the proportion of atmospheric content that is human sourced.
You may have misunderstood my pool analogy. I will spell it out. Take the water in the pool as the carbon in the atmosphere. Take the large circulation through the filter as the large flow of carbon back and forth between the atmosphere and the biosphere. The filter intake is atmospheric carbon being taken in by plants. The filter output is carbon being put back in the atmosphere by decaying leaves, forest fires, etc. With no human involvement this system found a rough balance and the pool level (atmospheric carbon content) was roughly constant. Now add some rain, that is some carbon previously dormant but injected by humans into the system. In the simple pool model, all of the human generated carbon goes into the atmosphere, that is into raising the pool level. I know that is not completely true. Some of it goes instead into acidifying the oceans. Some of it increases the biomass. For an analysis of the complicated question of how this new carbon actually gets distributed, see the graph that Dr Ed kindly added to the top of this thread, and the accompanying paper. The point of the analogy was to illustrate that the pool level (atmospheric carbon content) could be influenced by a relatively small flow of rain (human transfer of carbon from the ground to the atmosphere).
I am not familiar with the correlation study you reference but will look at it. I will note that saying all the CO2 increase in the atmosphere is due to human activity is not the same as saying that growth in the atmospheric content itself will be perfectly correlated with emissions, because of the other sea and land sinks for carbon. The previously cited paper says that, luckily for us, the sea and land take up a significant part of it. And you can’t say there is zero correlation between emissions and growth in atmospheric carbon. Both are positive. Further, emissions are increasing and the Keeling curve has a positive second derivative.
The question I will ask you as I have asked Dr Ed (no response) and another commenter (no response) is: where do you think the 500 billion tons of carbon that humans have dug up and burned is now? Are you saying it’s all in the oceans? Or all in increased biomass? Since you think you can rule out a significant amount being in the atmosphere, you must predict more acidic oceans than we actually have. I really would like someone on your side of this argument to think about that and give a considered answer.
The short answer is : It is distributed among the natural sinks in the same proportion to other CO2 that it flowed out of the atmosphere. It is likely that more of it is in land based biomass than the 5% it was of the atmosphere just because it originates on land and much of it gets absorbed within days of being emitted.
DMA
I agree that it would be distributed among various sinks. I want to read Harde’s paper before commenting on this further.
In the meantime I have read the tambonthongchai paper you linked in an earlier comment. You misrepresent that analysis when you say “The data for changing rates of emissions does nor correlate to atmospheric CO2 content. ” The paper shows very clearly that it does correlate. Only when the main trends (increasing emissions, strongly correlated with increasing rate of increase of atmospheric CO2) are subtracted out do the residuals show no further correlation. I agree that leaves room for some hypothesis like “the volcanoes are increasing at a similar rate as human emissions” but another summary of the paper would be: “the noise in the emissions data does not correlate with the noise in the atmospheric CO2 content.” Not a surprise at all. Unfortunately the author makes no statements about error bars on the data, and since it is not her data probably is unable to. There is no use in looking for correlations in fluctuations of similar size as the measurement error. I estimate the error by looking at the fluctuating data points, and see no hope for extracting more than the major trends. She apparently considers each wiggle to be significant.
Dave-you say ” With no human involvement this system found a rough balance and the pool level (atmospheric carbon content) was roughly constant.”
I think this is incorrect. Net emissions varied a lot on annual timescales. See
https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/what-is-really-behind-the-increase-in-atmospheric-co2/
at about 31 minuets. On longer timescales CO2 content varied widely, being as high as it is today as recently as the 1940s and about 7000 years ago as determined by chemical analysis and proxy methods. The ice core determinations are questionable and not very good resolution as described by Dr. Salby later in that same video. Over very long time scales CO2 varied widely with our present readings about as low as it ever was.
The fact that both emissions and atmospheric content are growing gives a spurious correlation unless you compare changes in rates of growth.
( https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/11/02/spurious-correlations-in-time-series-data/ )
DMA and Dr Ed
With this latest goofy assertion that CO2 was as high in the 1940’s as it today, I am signing off of this website. I had planned to read the Harde article but I will assume it is as weak as the tambonthongchai one. I don’t want more hidden volcanoes. I get the feeling that you are putting me on. I investigated this site to see the caliber of climate denying “science “ and have found out.
Dr Dave
Well I’m sorry I chased him off. I thought he would be interested in Beck’s work on chemical CO2 analysis and Wagner’s stomata papers. I have tried to understand why some ice core guys are so sure that the core CO2 measurements are accurate but I have not seen good refutation of Jaworowski’s analysis. Even Alley seems less than believable when he declares them reliable in one sentence and pronounces CO2 as the “climate control knob” in the next. I hope I did not state any real errors.
From what I read, you didn’t chase off Dr. Dave. He retreated to the bunker
of climate ‘scientists’, who cannot prevail on a level playing field:
“We will not debate the science – It’s settled.”
As to your short answer above concerning the ultimate destination of CO2
after it has been removed from the atmosphere, there is a shorter answer,
one that is established by Carbon 14 and is inherent in Salby, Harde,
and Dr. Ed’s paper: The ultimate destination is irrelevant.
Dr Ed and DMA,
I had prepared a short response to Dave Andrews question to put certain assumption into perspective. However, it seems he will no longer visit this website. Anyway, I will still offer my view here for your perusal.
Quote from Dave Andrews: “The question I will ask you as I have asked Dr Ed (no response) and another commenter (no response) is: where do you think the 500 billion tons of carbon that humans have dug up and burned is now?”
A back-of-an-envelop calculation to answer the question:
The world has additionally greened about twice the area of the USA (9,834 million km2 x 2)(NASA, April 26, 2016);
One hectare of forest absorbs approximately 6.4 tonnes of CO2 per year (Canadian Council of Forest Ministers). Other plants such as hemp will absorb much more CO2 (22 tonnes/hectare/crop) (GoodEarth Resources PTY LTD) but for this purpose only natural occurring forest flora will be considered;
Much of the CO2 absorbed by plants will eventually be returned to the atmosphere. The percentage is highly dependent on how the vegetation dies. We shall use the extreme conservative estimate that 10% will remain in the ground (on average this number will be more significant);
This gives a YEARLY EXTRA absorption of CO2 by plants due to the ADDITIONAL GREENING of the planet to the tune of 12.5 trillion tons of which 1.25 trillion tons (or more) will remain in the ground.
Consequently, I’d say that the 500 billion tons of carbon that humans have dug up and burned goes back where it came from. After all, how did it get there in the first place?
Ok, it is just a rough calculation, but it does put our importance as humans in perspective. 500 billion tons of carbon is insignificant compared to the world’s annual plant carbon cycle. And this excludes the oceans.
Modern farming employs this knowledge and no, CO2 is not a pollutant. It is what allows to feed exponentially more people using less agricultural land expanses and permits for reestablishment of natural flora and fauna on unused land which will sequester even more CO2. That is, if it does not get used for the production of detrimental “biofuels”, including the wholesale destruction of rainforests. Or for mining rare earth elements for windmills leaving behind extremely toxic and radioactive dumps and lakes. Or is misused for low density energy wind and solar farms harming both fauna and flora. Or for the harvesting of wood to be burned for energy causing more real pollution than most fossil fuels.
But think of this, notwithstanding the vast expanses of land that have been cleared by humans for “renewable” energy sources and vast increases in urban heat islands, nature was able to provide for ever more greens. None of the alarming predictions by Malthus, or of “overpopulation”, “resource scarcity”, “the ice age is coming”, “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming”, “climate change”, or “climate emergency” have materialized. Why is that? Is it because we overestimate our importance, knowledge, and power or is it because nature can teach us far more than we think we know? Lessons that include knowledge of human factors in respect of ingenuity and adaptability of freely enterprising people?
I am neither a Climate Change “Alarmist” nor a “Denier”. Rather, pragmatism and rational are my trademarks. I have a deep respect for Nature and detest real pollution. Having professionally acquired extensive knowledge in Human Factors and been daily responsible for the safety of thousands of people, it is my second nature to not trust people, base decisions on assumptions, or accept proselytization from authority. You want to know about the planet’s carbon cycle? Then study the cycle without conflation with climate or any other unrelated disciplines.
As all of the above alarming predictions have been debunked, assuming we are in the same framework for this to be true so as not to be perpetually asking WHY (paraphrasing R. Feynman), now my question to you as I have asked others is: do you know why climate scientists (and others) have abandoned the teachings of Richard Feynman and the scientific method?
George.
Dr Ed
Correction – I noticed I have written trillion instead of billion in the following paragraph:
“This gives a YEARLY EXTRA absorption of CO2 by plants due to the ADDITIONAL GREENING of the planet to the tune of 12.5 billion tons of which 1.25 billion tons (or more) will remain in the ground.”
George.