Climate Change - the big debate

[ludo]

turbobloke said:

kerplunk said:

FunkyGibbon said:

ludo said:

Yes, the environment is trying to get back to an equilibrium level, that is why it is taking in more CO2 than it is giving out. In other words the environment is a net sink. If it is a net sink, how can it be responsible for the long term rise?

How fast can the environment remove the CO2? Well, obviously not as fast as we are currently emitting it, otherwise atmospheric concentrations wouldn't be rising.

Yes that is all fine - but where is the evidence for a direct causal correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperature levels?

TB has linked to data (numerous times, but repeated above) that shows quite clearly that increase in temp leads to increase in CO2 not the other way round.

Now, where are the data that suggest the converse? I don't mean commentary that suggests this on a website, but the actual observed data? I'd like the opportunity to examine and read the data if possible.

but nobody claims co2 initiated temperature changes in the past - it warms/cools for other reasons and co2 feeds back accordingly. Is a lag surprising in this scenario to you?

The lag rules out carbon dioxide as a climate driver, something you skip over too lightly.

if temperature driven ocean outgassing were the only way in which atmospheric CO2 concentrations could increase, you would have a valid point, but it isn't (we can put it there directly by burning fossil fuels) so you don't.

[turbobloke]

ludo said:

turbobloke said:

kerplunk said:

FunkyGibbon said:

ludo said:

Yes, the environment is trying to get back to an equilibrium level, that is why it is taking in more CO2 than it is giving out. In other words the environment is a net sink. If it is a net sink, how can it be responsible for the long term rise?

How fast can the environment remove the CO2? Well, obviously not as fast as we are currently emitting it, otherwise atmospheric concentrations wouldn't be rising.

Yes that is all fine - but where is the evidence for a direct causal correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperature levels?

TB has linked to data (numerous times, but repeated above) that shows quite clearly that increase in temp leads to increase in CO2 not the other way round.

Now, where are the data that suggest the converse? I don't mean commentary that suggests this on a website, but the actual observed data? I'd like the opportunity to examine and read the data if possible.

but nobody claims co2 initiated temperature changes in the past - it warms/cools for other reasons and co2 feeds back accordingly. Is a lag surprising in this scenario to you?

The lag rules out carbon dioxide as a climate driver, something you skip over too lightly.

if temperature driven ocean outgassing were the only way in which atmospheric CO2 concentrations could increase, you would have a valid point, but it isn't (we can put it there directly by burning fossil fuels) so you don't.

The source is irrelevant. No carbon dioxide increase - including the recent increase - has occurred before the temperature increase. In numbers, the remperature started rising again after the Little Ice Age (1700 ish) well before tax gas levels started to increase (1850 ish).

I have a point as the data shows that temperature changes always precede carbon dioxide increases, past and present. Your point is actually no point at all.

There is no visible human signal visible in global climate data with established cause and effect to anthropogenic carbon dioxide, until there is the entire tax gas edifice is irrelevant.

[s2art]

ludo said:

s2art said:

ludo said:

Yes, the environment is trying to get back to an equilibrium level, that is why it is taking in more CO2 than it is giving out. In other words the environment is a net sink. If it is a net sink, how can it be responsible for the long term rise?

How fast can the environment remove the CO2? Well, obviously not as fast as we are currently emitting it, otherwise atmospheric concentrations wouldn't be rising.

It can be responsible by (the oceans) reaching a different temperature, such that the equilibrium constant changes. If the CO2 from emissions was staying longer in the atmosphere the isotope ratios would be different.
If Segalstad and Essenhigh (and a few others) are right the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will be mainly determined by temperature, looks like a approx 80% temperature driven 20% emission driven amount from early, back of a fag packet, calculations. No doubt these calcs will be refined.

Edited by s2art on Tuesday 13th October 19:59

Go to ClimateAudit, see if you can convince them of their error. If you manage to convince Steve McIntyre and Ferdinand Englebeen (note they are both climate skeptics already, so it should be easy), I'll concede defeat!

Give them time. More indicative stuff;

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/03/the-avail...

[ludo]

s2art said:

ludo said:

s2art said:

ludo said:

Yes, the environment is trying to get back to an equilibrium level, that is why it is taking in more CO2 than it is giving out. In other words the environment is a net sink. If it is a net sink, how can it be responsible for the long term rise?

How fast can the environment remove the CO2? Well, obviously not as fast as we are currently emitting it, otherwise atmospheric concentrations wouldn't be rising.

It can be responsible by (the oceans) reaching a different temperature, such that the equilibrium constant changes. If the CO2 from emissions was staying longer in the atmosphere the isotope ratios would be different.
If Segalstad and Essenhigh (and a few others) are right the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will be mainly determined by temperature, looks like a approx 80% temperature driven 20% emission driven amount from early, back of a fag packet, calculations. No doubt these calcs will be refined.

Edited by s2art on Tuesday 13th October 19:59

Go to ClimateAudit, see if you can convince them of their error. If you manage to convince Steve McIntyre and Ferdinand Englebeen (note they are both climate skeptics already, so it should be easy), I'll concede defeat!

Give them time.

I won't hold my breath on that one, but give it your best shot!

s2art said:

More indicative stuff;

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/03/the-avail...

Yes, and if you read the comments, you will find Ferdinand Englebeen has already pointed out the flaws.

BTW, the second quote from Englebeen I gave earlier explains exactly why the short residence time argument is misleading, let me know if you have any comments on it.

[kerplunk]

kerplunk said:

turbobloke said:

kerplunk said:

turbobloke said:

Hi keplunk.

You seem to be less time-limited. Care to share...your paleo? You offered a few ppmv and I'm about to see you, or raise, depending on the source

Ok haven't spent much time on this so just tossing this in for you to gnaw on The obvious thing (to me)to look at is ice core data and we've all seen the graphs of co2 levels going back several hundred thousand years with a huge unprecedented spike at the end but I wanted to try and find something more 'high resolution' than that and found this:

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/lawdome.html

Etheridge and other bods said said:

The atmospheric CO2 reconstructions presented here offer records of atmospheric CO2 mixing ratios from 1006 A.D. to 1978 A.D. The air enclosed in the three ice cores from Law Dome, Antarctica has unparalled age resolution and extends into recent decades, because of the high rate of snow accumulation at the Law Dome drill sites (Etheridge et al. 1996). Etheridge et al. (1996) reported the uncertainty of the ice core CO2 mixing ratios is 1.2 ppm. Preindustrial CO2 mixing ratios were in the range 275-284 ppm, with the lower levels during 1550-1800 A.D., probably as a result of colder global climate (Etheridge et al. 1996). The Law Dome ice core CO2 records show major growth in atmospheric CO2 levels over the industrial period, except during 1935-1945 A.D. when levels stabilized or decreased slightly.

So we have a period there encompassing the MWP and LIA showing a range of only +/-4.5 ppm

Possibly genuine misunderstanding here, but a common interpretation of paleo- is that it implies a prehistoric timeframe. In fact, it's a definition thing. I thought I was pushing it to mention the 80ppmv change in Monnin et al (2001) as that barely stretches back to paleo-anything.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been up to 17 - 18 times current levels in paleotime

it's greek for old - that'll do me

so any comment? Odd no similar spikes in that period but maybe if we went back further the resolution reduces and some spikes could be missed (I don't know that, just saying) but it at least pushes it further out of field.

If we're saying the current spike is down to the warming oceans we're saying that co2 levels stayed quasi-stable for at least a thousand years, from a warm period and then a cold period, and then just when we started chucking up loads of co2 into the atmosphere the oceans suddenly started behaving this way, increasing levels by a wapping 40% (and rising, and accelerating...)

so any comments on this TB?

Further to the above, the warming after the li'l ice age appears to have caused an increase in CO2 at first rising by about 40ppm in ~150 years and then shot up another 70ppm in the last ~50 years. The coincidental timing with the pattern of man-made emissions is quite remarkable.

[Negative Creep]

Has anyone seen that storybook CO2 advert? I mean seriously, how can the get away with such blatant scaremongering? It annoyed me so much I had to switch on the landing and kitchen lights just to feel better

[kerplunk]

Negative Creep said:

Has anyone seen that storybook CO2 advert? I mean seriously, how can the get away with such blatant scaremongering? It annoyed me so much I had to switch on the landing and kitchen lights just to feel better

I was so full of righteous indignation I shat myself.

[sa_20v]

Negative Creep said:

Has anyone seen that storybook CO2 advert? I mean seriously, how can the get away with such blatant scaremongering? It annoyed me so much I had to switch on the landing and kitchen lights just to feel better

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

[Negative Creep]

I should add that this time next month I will be flying halfway around the world. Once in New Zealand I will be buying an old, uneconomical, large engined car to drive around in. Now that is acting on CO2!

[LongQ]

This is a sort of parallel topic so perhaps deserves its own thread. I haven't spotted an existing thread to post it into - at least not one that looks like it will do it justice.

It's an essay by Indur Goklany that succinctly put the socio economic case for fossil fuel energy use. It's posted at Watts Up With That for this link but may well be elsewhere too.

Here's the link:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/12/linking-heal...

Beyond 'the science' we (humanity) need to consider whether the risks, whatever they may be, are more significant than the benefits. In terms of fossile fuel usage (and some international sociology) this essay sets out the benefits, the socio-economic developments since fossil fuels started to play a large part in people's lives the differences in effects over time between the early creators of industrial technology and the yet to adopters.

I think it clearly and succinctly puts a case that establishes a basis for what is available to be lost and gained by whom around the world in the fossil fuel face off.

What do you think?

(and should it have its own thread?)

[Marquis_Rex]

Negative Creep said:

I should add that this time next month I will be flying halfway around the world. Once in New Zealand I will be buying an old, uneconomical, large engined car to drive around in. Now that is acting on CO2!

Beat you to it (but in the USA)- and my 1970 V8 will be receiving a capacity upgrade to 8.3 litres . When I see all the omni-present Priuses around here I'll blip the throttle to compensate

[thinfourth2]

ludo said:

Data are not the same thing as information., the commentary is often neccessary to properly interpret the data. If that were not true, there would be no need for scientists. Having said which, if you want to play with the data, try woodfortrees.org, e.g.



http://woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/normalise/mean:6...

Note the rising trend in temperature and CO2, but that if anything direct solar forcing (PMOD) has declines whilst temperatures have gone up. However, correlation is not causation.

Oh look a graph covering 30 years

30 years sounds like a long time

Its not the planet is billions of years old. So a graph that covers 30 years in a system that work in a time scale of thousands of years proves nothing more then you can draw squiggly lines.

If you insist on saying that this graph is valid then i can say with 100% accuracy that we are all going to freeze to death in june next year.

This time last month it was warm and sunny, today it is cold and crappy, therefore taking your own standards of time frames i am sure by june next year the entire country will be well below zero and we will all be frozen to death.

[turbobloke]

kerplunk said:

so any comments on this TB?

No idea what you expect me to say.

You know from this and other threads that the position I take regarding timescales is that cherry-picks from True Believers demands a response, so I will discuss Hansen comments relating to 7 years / IPCC comments relating to decadal timescales / even Al Gore's movie with its 600,000 year limit on interglacials (iirc). Even ludo's 30 year plot using the A-level project website that has appeared yet again below. But, this doesn't confer or imply any validity. If some people ascribe something extraordinary to post-industrialised climate, then when you go back through that point to the pre-industrial era, there should be no artificial limit to support emotive terms like 'unprecedented' when the quantity attached to such a term is in fact far from unusual.

At the moment we have more than 350ppmv tax gas. Does that mean that the last time the planet saw 350ppmv it represents an industrialised civilisation with mechanised transport that died out and hasn't yet been discovered by archaeologists? Or that there was an Al Gore of the day maybe with four legs or possibly just four cells, with curiously effective policies on swamp emissions that somehow sorted it?

Taking a simplistic view that over a cherry-picked timescale a certain quantity is remarkable, represents an unscientific approach that doesn't float my boat. If then that quantity - the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide - has led to absolutely nothing visible in global climate temperature data, then I suspect the variable in question, atmospheric carbon dioxide, is being used as a proxy-scare on a propagandised uninformed audience. When the temperature link is not only missing but causally inverted and future temerpatures are just as likely scary cold as scary warn, not least as cold is far more scary, then I get back to collating research evidence on the ocean acidification junkscience that's just around the corner.

[LongQ]

Of course we also need to be confident with the veracity of the data it we are to derive useful information.

Starting in 1979 to match the availability of the satellite record is reasonable and conceptually better than relying solely on ground based reading, given 'the science', but only provided we can verify the numbers. I'm not sure we can.

Satellite measurements are not full proof values and have always required adjustment and interpretation even before the 'raw' data are released. Changes in ground based stationbs, the operation of them and, more recently, changes to the technology used, mean there is no consistency for many of them. In fact there is an ever reducing consistency of location for historical record comparison. Statistical techniques may overcome these limitations and give valid interpretations but right now I'm not convinced that such techniques exist reliably enough to allow the conclusion that people seem to be drawing. Worse, I don't think we are scientifically anywhere close to being able to form a useful and appropriate policy for future social development.

It seems to me that most of the values that underpin the calculations that point to climate calamity are based on some nth level iteration of various sets of raw data that themselves are of suspect probity. Because they are 'the data' they are not open to critical assessment? I hope that is not the general view.

As a result of this caution I rarely trust any graph to be a representation of 'truth'.

[ludo]

Picking up on Kerplunks point about ice cores:

The Vostok ice cores show that current CO2 levels are unprecedented at least over the last 400,000 years (1).



note there is no cherry picking here, I have just used the original Vostok ice core dataset (and the instrumental record and other ice cores for the insert), without choosing a particular start date. If you have a longer ice core dataset, do feel free to post it.

Now it is clear from this that the pre-industrial level of C02 (about 280 ppmv) were about average for an interglacial period, at least for the last four cycles. The post indistrial peak is clearly much higher than the preceding interglacials shown.

So lets assume that CO2 lags temperature by 800 years and that the outgassing of CO2 is proportional to the change in temperature. We can see that at the end of each glaciation (a temperature change of about 10 degrees C) you get a rise in CO2 concentrations of roughly 100 ppmv.

The post industrial rise also of about 100ppmv however doesn't occurr 800 years after the end of a glaciation, the most recent interglacial started about 11,000 years ago, so the recent rise can't be attributed to that.

Have we seen a change in global temperatures of about 10 degrees C about 800 years ago that could explain the magnitude of the current rise (assuming the 800 year lag argument is the correct cause)? No, there was only the medieval warm period that was only about as warm as it is today. That shows very clearly that the current peak in atmospheric CO2 is not due to temperature driven outgassing with an 800 year lag.

(1) Of course CO2 levels have been higher in the past, but then so have temperatures and sea levels and the Sun has been brightening at a rate of 10% per billion years and the continents are not in the same place any more and plant life has evolved, etc. etc. so if you want to argue that the CO2 levels of the Devonian era have something to say about todays climate, you would have to make a case why all of those other factors do not confound the inference.

[ludo]

LongQ said:

Of course we also need to be confident with the veracity of the data it we are to derive useful information.

Starting in 1979 to match the availability of the satellite record is reasonable and conceptually better than relying solely on ground based reading, given 'the science', but only provided we can verify the numbers. I'm not sure we can.

Satellite measurements are not full proof values and have always required adjustment and interpretation even before the 'raw' data are released. Changes in ground based stationbs, the operation of them and, more recently, changes to the technology used, mean there is no consistency for many of them. In fact there is an ever reducing consistency of location for historical record comparison. Statistical techniques may overcome these limitations and give valid interpretations but right now I'm not convinced that such techniques exist reliably enough to allow the conclusion that people seem to be drawing. Worse, I don't think we are scientifically anywhere close to being able to form a useful and appropriate policy for future social development.

It seems to me that most of the values that underpin the calculations that point to climate calamity are based on some nth level iteration of various sets of raw data that themselves are of suspect probity. Because they are 'the data' they are not open to critical assessment? I hope that is not the general view.

As a result of this caution I rarely trust any graph to be a representation of 'truth'.

I would just point out that I deliberately used the UAH satelite data (a) because it shows the weakest trend not the highest (so I couldn't be accused of cherry picking) (b) because it doesn't use any ground based station data and (c) becuase is it curated by two noted sceptics, Roy Spencer and John Cristy. If they are satisfied that the various corrections are neccessary, I don't really see why we should doubt them.

As I said before I posted the image, data are not the same thing as information and that correllation does not imply causation

Edited by ludo on Wednesday 14th October 10:54

[turbobloke]

ludo said:

Picking up on Kerplunks point about ice cores:

The Vostok ice cores show that current CO2 levels are unprecedented at least over the last 400,000 years

note there is no cherry picking here...

Righto.

And if levels were higher 400,001 years ago (just making a point)?

And if today's 'high' levels aren't doing anyhting except helping crops to grow?

Carbon dioxide levels are basically irrelevant unless the upshot is doing something bad, not the case. Get yourself out of grossly inadequate climate models and sniff the atmosphere.

[ludo]

turbobloke said:

ludo said:

Picking up on Kerplunks point about ice cores:

The Vostok ice cores show that current CO2 levels are unprecedented at least over the last 400,000 years

note there is no cherry picking here...

Righto.

And if levels were higher 400,001 years ago (just making a point)?

and if levels were lower 400,001 years ago (just making a point, namely that your point is pointless, you can always disregard the data we do have by saying "what if" about data we don't have, but it doesn't advance the discussion).

Fine, produce some data and we can have a discussion about them. You will notice I was careful to say in what sense todays level was unprecedented (note also the footnote) so as not to overclaim on the data we have.

turbobloke said:

And if today's 'high' levels aren't doing anyhting except helping crops to grow?

Carbon dioxide levels are basically irrelevant unless the upshot is doing something bad, not the case. Get yourself out of grossly inadequate climate models and sniff the atmosphere.

I note that you chose not to attempt to refute the observation that there has not been a temperature change in the last 800 years big enough to explain the observed rise in C02 using the "C02 lags temperature by 800 years" argument, that is strong evidence for the rise being of anthropogenic origin.

Edited by ludo on Wednesday 14th October 11:10

[plasticpig]

ludo said:

Picking up on Kerplunks point about ice cores:

The Vostok ice cores show that current CO2 levels are unprecedented at least over the last 400,000 years (1).



note there is no cherry picking here, I have just used the original Vostok ice core dataset (and the instrumental record and other ice cores for the insert), without choosing a particular start date. If you have a longer ice core dataset, do feel free to post it.

Ice core data is not necessarily valid with regards to CO2 levels.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html...

Article said:

Ice, the IPCC believes, precisely preserves the ancient air, allowing for a precise reconstruction of the ancient atmosphere. For this to be true, no component of the trapped air can escape from the ice. Neither can the ice ever become liquid. Neither can the various gases within air ever combine or separate.

This perfectly closed system, frozen in time, is a fantasy. "Liquid water is common in polar snow and ice, even at temperatures as low as -72C," Dr. Jaworowski explains, "and we also know that in cold water, CO2 is 70 times more soluble than nitrogen and 30 times more soluble than oxygen, guaranteeing that the proportions of the various gases that remain in the trapped, ancient air will change. Moreover, under the extreme pressure that deep ice is subjected to -- 320 bars, or more than 300 times normal atmospheric pressure -- high levels of CO2 get squeezed out of ancient air."

Because of these various properties in ancient air, one would expect that, over time, ice cores that started off with high levels of CO2 would become depleted of excess CO2, leaving a fairly uniform base level of CO2 behind. In fact, this is exactly what the ice cores show.

"According to the ice-core samples, CO2 levels vary little over time," Dr. Jaworowski sates. "The ice core data from the Taylor Dome in Antarctica shows almost no change in the level of atmospheric CO2 over the last 7,000 to 8,000 years -- it varied between 260 parts per million and 264 parts per million.

"Yet other indicators of past CO2 levels, such as fossil leaf stomata, show that CO2 levels over the past 7,000 to 8,000 years varied by more than 50 parts per million, between 270 and 326 parts per million. We also know that there have been great fluctuations in temperature over that time period -- the Little Age just 500 years ago, for example. If the icecore record was reliable, and CO2 levels reflected temperatures, why wouldn't the ice-core data have shown CO2 levels to fall during the Little Ice Age? "

[kerplunk]

turbobloke said:

kerplunk said:

so any comments on this TB?

No idea what you expect me to say.

Oh I dunno - something about what paleo evidence tells us about co2 responses to temperature changes perhaps?

turbobloke said:

You know from this and other threads that the position I take regarding timescales is that cherry-picks from True Believers demands a response, so I will discuss Hansen comments relating to 7 years / IPCC comments relating to decadal timescales / even Al Gore's movie with its 600,000 year limit on interglacials (iirc). Even ludo's 30 year plot using the A-level project website that has appeared yet again below. But, this doesn't confer or imply any validity. If some people ascribe something extraordinary to post-industrialised climate, then when you go back through that point to the pre-industrial era, there should be no artificial limit to support emotive terms like 'unprecedented' when the quantity attached to such a term is in fact far from unusual.

At the moment we have more than 350ppmv tax gas. Does that mean that the last time the planet saw 350ppmv it represents an industrialised civilisation with mechanised transport that died out and hasn't yet been discovered by archaeologists? Or that there was an Al Gore of the day maybe with four legs or possibly just four cells, with curiously effective policies on swamp emissions that somehow sorted it?

Taking a simplistic view that over a cherry-picked timescale a certain quantity is remarkable, represents an unscientific approach that doesn't float my boat. If then that quantity - the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide - has led to absolutely nothing visible in global climate temperature data, then I suspect the variable in question, atmospheric carbon dioxide, is being used as a proxy-scare on a propagandised uninformed audience. When the temperature link is not only missing but causally inverted and future temerpatures are just as likely scary cold as scary warn, not least as cold is far more scary, then I get back to collating research evidence on the ocean acidification junkscience that's just around the corner.

err ok you seem to have written an editorial piece throwing in True Believer references and the Al Gore evil one.

I thought you wanted to discuss what the paleo evidence tells us about the co2 response to temperature changes. You asked me for my evidence twice. Isn't it fair to say that this current 100ppm+ spike in response to a 1 degree C rise in temperature since the LIA is pretty unusual?

Clearly it's problematic for your theory that we can't see any similar responses, not just going back 1,000 years, but also hundreds of 1000's of years through several warm-cold periods with swings of temperature 10x as big as the rise since LIA. This evidence appears to constrain the response to 10ppm/C at most.

And then we have that amazing coincidence with man-made emissions...