Climate Change - the big debate

[Guybrush]

Well, 600 million years ago when the CO2 in the atmosphere was 100 times greater, the earth was cooler. So stick that in your tax-raising, congestion-charging, speed limit-reducing, orifice Broon.

[Blib]

Mr Will said:

im said:

And....thump...




Now it'll show up on my 'Contributions' listing

You know we have a "watch" button which does the same thing, don't you?

I have dealings with Im.

Unfortunately, he's 'thick', 'dim' and he resembles a 'suckerfish'. *



*I say this in a loving and caring way.

Edited by Blib on Tuesday 13th October 09:29

[im]

Blib said:

Mr Will said:

im said:

And....thump...




Now it'll show up on my 'Contributions' listing

You know we have a "watch" button which does the same thing, don't you?

I have dealings with Im.

Unfortunately, he's 'thick', 'dim' and he resembles a 'suckerfish'. *



*I say this in a loving and caring way.

[dickymint]

Back to topic.


Just read a good article in the Sunday Times - front page of the News Review entitled "Why everything you think you know about GW is WRONG".

Unfortunately it's not available at The Times Online so I found this......

http://climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu/think2/post/g...

Edited by dickymint on Tuesday 13th October 09:46

[chris watton]

Sorry about yet another cut'n'paste job, but this made me smile this morning:

"Inconvenient kids tell the eco-fascists where they can stick it"



http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/...

"My heroes of the week are Kouros (7) and Roxanna (6) from Blackheath, photographed protesting outside the Climate Camp on their doorstep in the summer.

Their proud father tells me the trustafarian crusties inside the wire thought the placards were jolly sweet – till they read what they actually said."

And, "An inconvinient journalist"

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/1000...

Edited by chris watton on Tuesday 13th October 11:43

[IainT]

Mr Will said:

im said:

And....thump...

Now it'll show up on my 'Contributions' listing

You know we have a "watch" button which does the same thing, don't you?

I didn't but I do now!

[Mon Ami Mate]

Climate change - yes.

Man made - no.

[kerplunk]

cont'd from t'olde thread...

s2art said:

I suspect I am wasting my time but....

Ludo, as TB says, you are operating under the wrong paradigm. Nobody is saying that adding CO2 will not increase the amount in the atmosphere. The question is; how much? And the answer depends on what the equilibrium amount is for the given temperature and the time taken to get to equilibrium.

If the time taken to get to equilibrium is relatively long (the IPCC position) then CO2 will accumulate approximately in proportion to the anthropogenic sources minus some 'sinks', (there is more to it than that but its a reasonable approximation). If the time to equilibrium is relatively short then anthropogenic sources cannot be the primary cause of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

So we have two theories, the IPCC long time to equilibrium and Essenhigh (and others) short time to equilibrium. If the latter is closer to the truth then it must be temperature being the primary cause. If the former then CO2 emissions.

The problem with the IPCC position is that to make the numbers work they have to invoke an ad-hoc, 'then a miracle occurs' mystery mechanism; the missing sink. And this is no small thing, its 50% of the CO2 that gets 'sunk'.
The beauty of the Essenhigh position is that the 'missing sink' disappears. There is no missing sink if time to equilibrium is short.

No true scientist would prefer a theory which requires ad-hoc mystery mechanisms. If one is found then the theory can be resurrected. The Essenhigh position is simpler; it requires no ad-hoc mechanisms.

Doesnt mean its correct, perhaps you could consider what tests might falsify it. (isotope distributions may be one such, but it seems that may not be conclusive).

s2art, I appreciated this clear summing up, do you want to kick Essenhigh around some more? I have an itch!

Edited by kerplunk on Tuesday 13th October 16:08

[s2art]

kerplunk said:

cont'd from the t'olde thread...

s2art said:

I suspect I am wasting my time but....

Ludo, as TB says, you are operating under the wrong paradigm. Nobody is saying that adding CO2 will not increase the amount in the atmosphere. The question is; how much? And the answer depends on what the equilibrium amount is for the given temperature and the time taken to get to equilibrium.

If the time taken to get to equilibrium is relatively long (the IPCC position) then CO2 will accumulate approximately in proportion to the anthropogenic sources minus some 'sinks', (there is more to it than that but its a reasonable approximation). If the time to equilibrium is relatively short then anthropogenic sources cannot be the primary cause of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

So we have two theories, the IPCC long time to equilibrium and Essenhigh (and others) short time to equilibrium. If the latter is closer to the truth then it must be temperature being the primary cause. If the former then CO2 emissions.

The problem with the IPCC position is that to make the numbers work they have to invoke an ad-hoc, 'then a miracle occurs' mystery mechanism; the missing sink. And this is no small thing, its 50% of the CO2 that gets 'sunk'.
The beauty of the Essenhigh position is that the 'missing sink' disappears. There is no missing sink if time to equilibrium is short.

No true scientist would prefer a theory which requires ad-hoc mystery mechanisms. If one is found then the theory can be resurrected. The Essenhigh position is simpler; it requires no ad-hoc mechanisms.

Doesnt mean its correct, perhaps you could consider what tests might falsify it. (isotope distributions may be one such, but it seems that may not be conclusive).

s2art, I appreciated this clear summing up, do you want to kick Essenhigh around some more? I have an itch!

Edited by kerplunk on Tuesday 13th October 14:50

Thanks, but I am at the limit of my knowledge now. We need someone, perhaps TB, with more expertise and detailed knowledge to take this further.
The one area I would be interested in, on this particular subject, is the isotope distribution. That should be able to differentiate. Seemingly this is debatable and I dont understand why. Remember its perfectly possible that we actually have some form of half way house between the two, and some of the CO2 rise is due to emissions, some to natural warming.

[B Oeuf]

Maybe we need a poll, along the lines of

you can believe that the planet is warming up naturally

you can believe that the planet is warming up unnaturally

you can believe that CO2 has a part to play

you can believe that CO2 has no part to play

you can believe that man has a part to play

you can believe that man has no part to play

you can believe that the planet is cooling naturally

or similar

you can believe that the planet is cooling unnaturally

[turbobloke]

s2art said:

kerplunk said:

cont'd from the t'olde thread...

s2art said:

I suspect I am wasting my time but....

Ludo, as TB says, you are operating under the wrong paradigm. Nobody is saying that adding CO2 will not increase the amount in the atmosphere. The question is; how much? And the answer depends on what the equilibrium amount is for the given temperature and the time taken to get to equilibrium.

If the time taken to get to equilibrium is relatively long (the IPCC position) then CO2 will accumulate approximately in proportion to the anthropogenic sources minus some 'sinks', (there is more to it than that but its a reasonable approximation). If the time to equilibrium is relatively short then anthropogenic sources cannot be the primary cause of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

So we have two theories, the IPCC long time to equilibrium and Essenhigh (and others) short time to equilibrium. If the latter is closer to the truth then it must be temperature being the primary cause. If the former then CO2 emissions.

The problem with the IPCC position is that to make the numbers work they have to invoke an ad-hoc, 'then a miracle occurs' mystery mechanism; the missing sink. And this is no small thing, its 50% of the CO2 that gets 'sunk'.
The beauty of the Essenhigh position is that the 'missing sink' disappears. There is no missing sink if time to equilibrium is short.

No true scientist would prefer a theory which requires ad-hoc mystery mechanisms. If one is found then the theory can be resurrected. The Essenhigh position is simpler; it requires no ad-hoc mechanisms.

Doesnt mean its correct, perhaps you could consider what tests might falsify it. (isotope distributions may be one such, but it seems that may not be conclusive).

s2art, I appreciated this clear summing up, do you want to kick Essenhigh around some more? I have an itch!

Edited by kerplunk on Tuesday 13th October 14:50

The one area I would be interested in, on this particular subject, is the isotope distribution. That should be able to differentiate. Seemingly this is debatable and I dont understand why. Remember its perfectly possible that we actually have some form of half way house between the two, and some of the CO2 rise is due to emissions, some to natural warming.

To kerplunk: without 'doing a s2art' but using numbers and Essenhigh's methodology, that's about it.

Wider: in terms of the above comment on half-way house, Dr Roy Spencer agrees:

So, I keep coming back to the question: If warming of the oceans causes an increase in atmospheric CO2 on a year-to-year basis, is it possible that long-term warming of the oceans (say, due to a natural change in cloud cover) might be causing some portion of the long-term increase in atmospheric CO2?

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/05/global-warming...

Spencer has a fit and arrives at 20% anthropogenic and 80% natural, anticipating 'vehement objections'. He won't have to wait long on here


That article has a link to this one, which shows that the isotope data is not a sufficient condition to demonstrate the 'result' warmists claim for it.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/increasing-atm...

For those who are neither thick nor dim, with no chumpishness or suckerfishosity in sight, this representation of the data is sufficient to demonstrate, qualitatively, a significant non-human contribution to the increase.

[kerplunk]

s2art said:

kerplunk said:

cont'd from the t'olde thread...

s2art said:

I suspect I am wasting my time but....

Ludo, as TB says, you are operating under the wrong paradigm. Nobody is saying that adding CO2 will not increase the amount in the atmosphere. The question is; how much? And the answer depends on what the equilibrium amount is for the given temperature and the time taken to get to equilibrium.

If the time taken to get to equilibrium is relatively long (the IPCC position) then CO2 will accumulate approximately in proportion to the anthropogenic sources minus some 'sinks', (there is more to it than that but its a reasonable approximation). If the time to equilibrium is relatively short then anthropogenic sources cannot be the primary cause of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

So we have two theories, the IPCC long time to equilibrium and Essenhigh (and others) short time to equilibrium. If the latter is closer to the truth then it must be temperature being the primary cause. If the former then CO2 emissions.

The problem with the IPCC position is that to make the numbers work they have to invoke an ad-hoc, 'then a miracle occurs' mystery mechanism; the missing sink. And this is no small thing, its 50% of the CO2 that gets 'sunk'.
The beauty of the Essenhigh position is that the 'missing sink' disappears. There is no missing sink if time to equilibrium is short.

No true scientist would prefer a theory which requires ad-hoc mystery mechanisms. If one is found then the theory can be resurrected. The Essenhigh position is simpler; it requires no ad-hoc mechanisms.

Doesnt mean its correct, perhaps you could consider what tests might falsify it. (isotope distributions may be one such, but it seems that may not be conclusive).

s2art, I appreciated this clear summing up, do you want to kick Essenhigh around some more? I have an itch!

Edited by kerplunk on Tuesday 13th October 14:50

Thanks, but I am at the limit of my knowledge now. We need someone, perhaps TB, with more expertise and detailed knowledge to take this further.
The one area I would be interested in, on this particular subject, is the isotope distribution. That should be able to differentiate. Seemingly this is debatable and I dont understand why. Remember its perfectly possible that we actually have some form of half way house between the two, and some of the CO2 rise is due to emissions, some to natural warming.

Ok no probs (btw I think there's almost certainly a temperature component but paleo evidence appears to constrain it to a few ppm)

I'll express the itch anyway and leave it hanging for anyone to pick up. I guess it can be summed up mostly concisely as.. How does Essenhigh's analysis demonstrate a short time to equilibrium?

To expand on that a little, I can't get my head around how his test results are in any way novel - they appear to be inline with IPCC figures for the same (as he says in the abstract) for both RT residence time and the long term 'adjustment time'. The only way I can make it work if if he is using the RT of 5-15 years to say that this the time it takes for an injection of CO2 into the atmosphere to be re-absorbed (sequestered) into the oceans/biosphere (and the Co2science link as posted by s2art in the last thread points to this interpretation) but this is at odds with other definitions of RT which is the average time it takes for a molecule of CO2 to be EXCHANGED with the ocean/biosphere (see various 'dye in a bathtub' analogies).

[turbobloke]

Kerplunk - you have clearly been looking at 'paleo' evidence and find it to be constraining.

What is it and where is the particular evidence you looked at? Do you have a link or can you cut and paste any data?

[ludo]

Oh well, I promised myself I wouldn't bother with the new thread as if "its the wrong paradigm" has suddenly become a reasonable form of argument, there is little chance of a rational discussion. However, as turbobloke has kindly posted the data that proves Essenhigh (and himself) wrong, here goes:

turbobloke said:

As I said, the rate at which atmospheric CO2 increases is almost always less than the level of human emissions, and this is well illustrated in the data provided by Dr Spencer. If the environment were a net source then the increase in atmospheric CO2 would be more than human emissions, as the increase would represent human emissions, plus the amount contributed by the environmental source. And indeed, we do indeed see that in the graph, there are spikes where the rise is sometimes above human emissions. This tends to happen in following strong EL-Nino years, e.g. 1972 and 1998, when the ocean surface in the Pacific is warmer than usual. This shows the increase in CO2 is affected by temperatures, but the effect isn't enough to make the environment a net source, other than in the occasional exceptional year.

However, most of the time, the rise is less than emissions, which means that the environment is soaking up some of the anthropogenic emissions, rather than emitting (when averaged over a whole year). It is a simple bit of accounting, the annual rise in CO2 must balance the amount we emit, plus environmental emissions minus environmental uptake, and for them to balance, there is no way the increase can be less than human emissions without the environment being a net sink.

Temperature does have an effect on the amount of CO2, it has a modulating effect from year to year, but it isn't responsible for the long term trend. One of Dr Spencers other articles (IIRC it was on WUWT), where he showed that if you differentiated the Mauna Loa time series (which gets rid of the long term trend) there was a good correllation with the Southern Oscillation Index, showing the two are related. However, if the correllation is only there after you get rid of the long term trend, it is pretty obvious that the correllation isn't responsible for the long term trend.

The problem with the Spencer article turbobloke gave was a lack of understanding of regression analysis. Regression analysis assumes that the explanatory variables are not causally related, however in this case, the rise in sea surface temperature is purported to be due to the increase in the greenhouse effect due to the increase on anthropogenic emissions. That means Dr Spencers analysis is only valid if AGW is false, and hence isn't a very good counter-argument against AGW. However, Dr SPencer is not a statistician, so it isn't surprising he should make mistakes (and this is a very common one) with statistical tools.

s2art said:

The problem with the IPCC position is that to make the numbers work they have to invoke an ad-hoc, 'then a miracle occurs' mystery mechanism; the missing sink. And this is no small thing, its 50% of the CO2 that gets 'sunk'.

That is incorrect, if you read the IPCC reports, they have a very good idea where the bulk of the CO2 goes, try performing a google image search for "carbon cycle" and you will find many diagrams like this one that show the scale of the fluxes (note that the ocean gives out 2 gigatons of carbon less than it takes in). So that objection is misinformed.

s2art said:

The beauty of the Essenhigh position is that the 'missing sink' disappears.

Actually Essenhigh's position has a much larger problem, namely that it can't explain why the annual rise in CO2 is less than human emissions (both of which are known with reasonable accuracy).

BTW, if anyone is in any doubt about whether Essenhigh thinks that man is not responsible for the rise, his paper says:

Essenhigh said:

With the short (5−15 year) RT results shown to be in quasi-equilibrium, this then supports the (independently based) conclusion that the long-term (100 year) rising atmospheric CO2 concentration is not from anthropogenic sources but, in accordance with conclusions from other studies, is most likely the outcome of the rising atmospheric temperature, which is due to other natural factors. This further supports the conclusion that global warming is not anthropogenically driven as an outcome of combustion. The economic and political significance of that conclusion will be self-evident.

Personally, I would have said that if humans were emitting 29 Gt of CO2 per year and the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 was about 15 GT, then it seems pretty odd to say that the rise wasn't wholly caused by anthropogenic emissions, it seems like common sense to me!

[kerplunk]

turbobloke said:

Kerplunk - you have clearly been looking at 'paleo' evidence and find it to be constraining.

What is it and where is the particular evidence you looked at? Do you have a link or can you cut and paste any data?

I'm time constrained now but i'll try and find some later

[turbobloke]

In (possible) answer to one specific question, I wonder if two quantities are being confused?

Half-life as described for dacay of the bomb isotope signal is the time taken for a sample with initial content N to fall to N/2. This will, obviously, be the same time as it takes to fall from N/2 to N/4 and so on.

Residence time is the average 'lifetime' of a molecule of gas in the atmosphere, i.e. the average time taken for a molecule of X to be removed. The picture created by this is complicated by the fact that the population of carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere isn't constant, which is where we came in.

Use of 'lifetime' is claimed by some to be confusing. Probably requires a risk assessment.

Depending on definition of residence time, you can get this, from a common definition:

half-life = ln 2 x residence time

[s2art]

Re Missing sink.

ludo said:

That is incorrect, if you read the IPCC reports, they have a very good idea where the bulk of the CO2 goes, try performing a google image search for "carbon cycle" and you will find many diagrams like this one that show the scale of the fluxes (note that the ocean gives out 2 gigatons of carbon less than it takes in). So that objection is misinformed.

Nope. The missing sink is still there, and they do not know where it goes. There is work going on, but its certainly not clear at all.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php...


"To figure out exactly what is happening, we need improved models and more atmospheric observations."

[s2art]

ludo said:

Actually Essenhigh's position has a much larger problem, namely that it can't explain why the annual rise in CO2 is less than human emissions (both of which are known with reasonable accuracy).

On the contrary, Essenhigh's position explains why the annual rise is less than the emissions. That is the crux of his theory!

As expected my attempt at an explanation was wasted.

[ludo]

turbobloke said:

In (possible) answer to one specific question, I wonder if two quantities are being confused?

Half-life as described for dacay of the bomb isotope signal is the time taken for a sample with initial content N to fall to N/2. This will, obviously, be the same time as it takes to fall from N/2 to N/4 and so on.

Residence time is the average 'lifetime' of a molecule of gas in the atmosphere, i.e. the average time taken for a molecule of X to be removed. The picture created by this is complicated by the fact that the population of carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere isn't constant, which is where we came in.

Use of 'lifetime' is claimed by some to be confusing. Probably requires a risk assessment.

Depending on definition of residence time, you can get this, from a common definition:

half-life = ln 2 x residence time

I think this is the source of the confusion as analysis often forget the fact that there is an exchange going on, rather than simply a removal of CO2 molecules from the atmosphere.

For example if a different CO2 molecule were released everytime it it absorbed a molecule from the atmosphere, the residence time for an individual molecule of CO2 could be as short as 5 years (as Essenhigh and the IPCC agree on) without there being any change in the atmospheric CO2 concentration. I suspect this is where Essenhigh's error lies, although his conclusion is directly refuted by the data anyway.

In the real world, this exchange isn't instantaneous, it takes about 6 months as it is the result of a seasonal cycling, but looked at over the course of a whole year, the argument is still valid.

HTH

[turbobloke]

s2art said:

ludo said:

Actually Essenhigh's position has a much larger problem, namely that it can't explain why the annual rise in CO2 is less than human emissions (both of which are known with reasonable accuracy).

On the contrary, Essenhigh's position explains why the annual rise is less than the emissions. That is the crux of his theory!

As expected my attempt at an explanation was wasted.

Yes, and yes. Surely you know by now it's an absolute waste of time discussing science, never mind climate science, with a certain individual.

This is all I have to say.



ETA having just read the response to my post, it's not all - I need this as well.

Edited by turbobloke on Tuesday 13th October 16:48