Climate Change - the big debate

[turbobloke]

s2art said:

ludo said:

FunkyGibbon said:

Ludo we seem to be going round the same circles re: increase of CO2 in atmosphere as we did on Sunday...

If we get agreement on whether the rise in CO2 is anthropogenic, I'd be happy to move on, however at the moment there isn't much point in going any further. The data is unequivocal on the source of CO2, it is more ambiguous how much warming it would cause, so if the mass balance argument can be dismissed by saying it is the "wrong paradigm", I would be wasting my time discussing anything more interesting than that. Given the non-engagement with my lengthy post made earlier on, I think my inital thought not to bother with this thread seems spot on in hindsight.

I dont think you have understood a word that has been posted. We have been discussing two different positions, the IPCC long time to equilibrium and the Essenhigh short time to equilibrium. Only the IPCC position allows for the rise in CO2 to be anthropogenic, and this is contradicted by a lot of evidence. It is by no means 'uniquivocal' on the source of the CO2, in fact its the opposite.
Perhaps Segalstad can explain it better than I.

http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm

There may be the beginnings of a consensus here as I too doubt that anything worthwhile has been understood. Of itself that's not a crime, but continuous stupicide has an element of culpability about it.

[s2art]

turbobloke said:

unless you can get a crash course in kinetics and thermodynamics, as it's absolutely pointless discussing this with you when, even after alternatively worded and very clear explanations from more than one person, you are still no further along the path of enlightenment.

I would have thought just 'A' level Chemistry with an introduction to equilibria would be sufficient to get a qualitative grasp of the arguments. Even that seems missing with Ludo.

[kerplunk]

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:

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

Edited by kerplunk on Tuesday 13th October 19:11

[turbobloke]

FunkyGibbon on Sunday said:

So, can you help answer my second point with some evidence of a causal correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures?

FunkyGibbon said:

Any news on this?

May I offer evidence to the contrary?

Half a dozen peer-reviewed papers resemble this - data from Monnin et al (2001):



Note that time runs right to left in this plot

The ~10^2 year lagtime temperature-to-CO2 for interglacial shifts is a common feature. This is self-evidently the reverse order for causality to operate in terms of carbon dioxide driving the shift, the temperature shift caused the carbon dioxide increase. Monnin et al (2005) wrote about the last glacial termination: "The close correlation between CO2 concentration and Antarctic temperature indicates that the Southern Ocean played an important role in causing the CO2 increase".

For the modern era, recovery from the Little Ice Age began in 1715 or thereabouts, and carbon dioxide levels began rising a couple of hundred years later. The coincidence of industrialisation and weak science have been seductive to some, no doubt there is a molecule or two up there from my two V8s but the fact remains the entire lot has caused no visible signal in global climate data.

Overall there is no credible evidence anywhere of carbon dioxide leading a climate shift. Volcanic eruptions don't produce too much and the long-lasting aerosol cooling wins out again after the initial irradiance drop-off due to particulates. By then the partition equilibrium will...OK I'll stop there as I can already see what's coming from True Believer HQ on the material posted so far.

Edited by turbobloke on Tuesday 13th October 19:27

[turbobloke]

FunkyGibbon on Sunday said:

So, can you help answer my second point with some evidence of a causal correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures?

FunkyGibbon said:

Any news on this?

May I offer evidence to the contrary?

Half a dozen peer-reviewed papers resemble this - data from Monnin et al (2001):



Note that time runs right to left in this plot

The ~10^2 year lagtime temperature-to-CO2 for interglacial shifts is a common feature. This is self-evidently the reverse order for causality to operate in terms of carbon dioxide driving the shift, the temperature shift caused the carbon dioxide increase. Monnin et al (2005) wrote about the last glacial termination: "The close correlation between CO2 concentration and Antarctic temperature indicates that the Southern Ocean played an important role in causing the CO2increase".

For the modern era, recovery from the Little Ice Age began in 1715 or thereabouts, and carbon dioxide levels began rising a couple of hundred years later. The coincidence of industrialisation and weak science have been seductive to some, no doubt there is a molecule or two up there from my two V8s but the fact remains the entire lot has caused no visible signal in global climate data.

Overall there is no credible evidence anywhere of carbon dioxide leading a climate shift. Volcanic eruptions don't produce too much and the long-lasting aerosol cooling wins out again after the initial irradiance drop-off due to particulates. By then the partition equilibrium will...OK I'll stop there as I can already see what's coming from True Believer HQ on the material posted so far.

Edited by turbobloke on Tuesday 13th October 19:27

[ludo]

s2art said:

ludo said:

FunkyGibbon said:

Ludo we seem to be going round the same circles re: increase of CO2 in atmosphere as we did on Sunday...

If we get agreement on whether the rise in CO2 is anthropogenic, I'd be happy to move on, however at the moment there isn't much point in going any further. The data is unequivocal on the source of CO2, it is more ambiguous how much warming it would cause, so if the mass balance argument can be dismissed by saying it is the "wrong paradigm", I would be wasting my time discussing anything more interesting than that. Given the non-engagement with my lengthy post made earlier on, I think my inital thought not to bother with this thread seems spot on in hindsight.

I dont think you have understood a word that has been posted. We have been discussing two different positions, the IPCC long time to equilibrium and the Essenhigh short time to equilibrium.

No, as I have pointed out, the mass balance argument is a simple accounting exercise, it doesn't assume anything is in equilibrium (which is a good job as the ocean/atmosphere are not in equilibrium). The mass balance argument does not depend on any assumption about how the exchange of CO2 between the atmosphere actually works, it is merely the logical inference of the observed anthropogenic emissions and the observed rise in atmospheric CO2.

[turbobloke]

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

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

[s2art]

ludo said:

s2art said:

ludo said:

FunkyGibbon said:

Ludo we seem to be going round the same circles re: increase of CO2 in atmosphere as we did on Sunday...

If we get agreement on whether the rise in CO2 is anthropogenic, I'd be happy to move on, however at the moment there isn't much point in going any further. The data is unequivocal on the source of CO2, it is more ambiguous how much warming it would cause, so if the mass balance argument can be dismissed by saying it is the "wrong paradigm", I would be wasting my time discussing anything more interesting than that. Given the non-engagement with my lengthy post made earlier on, I think my inital thought not to bother with this thread seems spot on in hindsight.

I dont think you have understood a word that has been posted. We have been discussing two different positions, the IPCC long time to equilibrium and the Essenhigh short time to equilibrium.

No, as I have pointed out, the mass balance argument is a simple accounting exercise, it doesn't assume anything is in equilibrium (which is a good job as the ocean/atmosphere are not in equilibrium). The mass balance argument does not depend on any assumption about how the exchange of CO2 between the atmosphere actually works, it is merely the logical inference of the observed anthropogenic emissions and the observed rise in atmospheric CO2.

Thus ignoring all the evidence to the contrary. For instance;

'Segalstad's mass balance calculations show that IPCC's atmospheric CO2 lifetime of 50-200 years will make the atmosphere too light (50% of its current CO mass) to fit its measured 13-C/12-C ratio. This proves why IPCC's wrong model creates its artificial 50% "missing sink" (Segalstad, 1996)'

And you dont need to assume anything is in equilibrium, merely that the atmosphere and oceans will be doing their utmost (obeying the laws of physics) to achieve equilibrium. That is the whole point of this debate; how fast can they do it?

[turbobloke]

s2art said:

ludo said:

s2art said:

ludo said:

FunkyGibbon said:

Ludo we seem to be going round the same circles re: increase of CO2 in atmosphere as we did on Sunday...

If we get agreement on whether the rise in CO2 is anthropogenic, I'd be happy to move on, however at the moment there isn't much point in going any further. The data is unequivocal on the source of CO2, it is more ambiguous how much warming it would cause, so if the mass balance argument can be dismissed by saying it is the "wrong paradigm", I would be wasting my time discussing anything more interesting than that. Given the non-engagement with my lengthy post made earlier on, I think my inital thought not to bother with this thread seems spot on in hindsight.

I dont think you have understood a word that has been posted. We have been discussing two different positions, the IPCC long time to equilibrium and the Essenhigh short time to equilibrium.

No, as I have pointed out, the mass balance argument is a simple accounting exercise, it doesn't assume anything is in equilibrium (which is a good job as the ocean/atmosphere are not in equilibrium). The mass balance argument does not depend on any assumption about how the exchange of CO2 between the atmosphere actually works, it is merely the logical inference of the observed anthropogenic emissions and the observed rise in atmospheric CO2.

Thus ignoring all the evidence to the contrary. For instance;

'Segalstad's mass balance calculations show that IPCC's atmospheric CO2 lifetime of 50-200 years will make the atmosphere too light (50% of its current CO mass) to fit its measured 13-C/12-C ratio. This proves why IPCC's wrong model creates its artificial 50% "missing sink" (Segalstad, 1996)'

And you dont need to assume anything is in equilibrium, merely that the atmosphere and oceans will be doing their utmost (obeying the laws of physics) to achieve equilibrium. That is the whole point of this debate; how fast can they do it?

[kerplunk]

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

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 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...)

[ludo]

s2art said:

ludo said:

s2art said:

ludo said:

FunkyGibbon said:

Ludo we seem to be going round the same circles re: increase of CO2 in atmosphere as we did on Sunday...

If we get agreement on whether the rise in CO2 is anthropogenic, I'd be happy to move on, however at the moment there isn't much point in going any further. The data is unequivocal on the source of CO2, it is more ambiguous how much warming it would cause, so if the mass balance argument can be dismissed by saying it is the "wrong paradigm", I would be wasting my time discussing anything more interesting than that. Given the non-engagement with my lengthy post made earlier on, I think my inital thought not to bother with this thread seems spot on in hindsight.

I dont think you have understood a word that has been posted. We have been discussing two different positions, the IPCC long time to equilibrium and the Essenhigh short time to equilibrium.

No, as I have pointed out, the mass balance argument is a simple accounting exercise, it doesn't assume anything is in equilibrium (which is a good job as the ocean/atmosphere are not in equilibrium). The mass balance argument does not depend on any assumption about how the exchange of CO2 between the atmosphere actually works, it is merely the logical inference of the observed anthropogenic emissions and the observed rise in atmospheric CO2.

Thus ignoring all the evidence to the contrary. For instance;

'Segalstad's mass balance calculations show that IPCC's atmospheric CO2 lifetime of 50-200 years will make the atmosphere too light (50% of its current CO mass) to fit its measured 13-C/12-C ratio. This proves why IPCC's wrong model creates its artificial 50% "missing sink" (Segalstad, 1996)'

having looked at the article, they also rather misleadingly use "missing sink" to refer to the entire net environmental sink (i.e. the difference between anthropogenic emissions and increase in atmospheric concentrations), even though as the other article you quoted explains, we know where most of the sink is, only 10% at most is "missing".

s2art said:

And you dont need to assume anything is in equilibrium, merely that the atmosphere and oceans will be doing their utmost (obeying the laws of physics) to achieve equilibrium. That is the whole point of this debate; how fast can they do it?

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.

How about having a look at ClimateAudit, you know the well known skeptic site that devotes itself to auditing the science of climate change, they accept the mass balance argument. If you think they are wrong, why not pop over there and convince them of their error.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2469

ClimateAudit said:

That the increase of CO2, at least in the past 50 years, is mainly man-made already follows out of the mass balance (CO2 expressed as gigaton carbon, 1 ppmv change in the atmosphere is about 2.1 GtC in the total air mass):

Csources + Cemissions = Csinks + dCair
where Cemissions = 2.5-6.5 GtC/yr (emissions are increasing over the 50 years)
and dCair = 1-6 GtC/yr (the yearly change of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in average is increasing over the 50 years)
and Csinks = Csources + 3 GtC +/- 2.5 GtC

That means that, at least over the past 50 years, in every year the increase in the atmosphere was smaller than the emissions. Thus the sum of all possible natural influences (mainly due to temperature variability) in every year was more sink than source. Thus oceans + vegetation can't be huge sources of CO2, except for a longer term temperature increase/decrease. Theoretically, the oceans or vegetation could be net sources, but then the other one need to be a larger sink to receive the excess CO2 + a part of the emissions.

Note I looked at a climate skeptic blog to find the best answer to this particular issue!

[s2art]

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

[FunkyGibbon]

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.

[ludo]

Here is a more detailed comment from the chap who wrote the ClimateAudit article, that explains why the half life of an individual molecule does not directly give the decay times of atmospheric concentrations.

FerdinandEnglebeen said:

7. Extra: how much human CO2 is in the atmosphere?
A lot of people is confused about this point: Only a few percent of the atmosphere is currently from human origin. That is because every year about 150 GtC of CO2 (somewhat less than 20% of the CO2 content) is exchanged between the atmosphere and the oceans/vegetation. That means that every single CO2 molecule from human origin has a 20% chance per year to be incorporated in vegetation or dissolved into the oceans. This makes that the half life time of human CO2 in the atmosphere is only about 5 years. This was confirmed by the fate of 14C, increased due to atomic bomb testing, after the tests stopped. Thus if humans emit 8 GtC in a given year, next year some 6.5 GtC is still of human origin, the rest was exchanged with CO2 from the oceans and vegetation. The second year, this still is 5.3 GtC, then 4.3 GtC, etc... This is not completely accurate, as some of the "human" CO2 comes back next year(s), especially from vegetation, as much of vegetation is one-year old leaves, which rotting returns a high part of CO2 incorporated in previous years. This is less the case for the oceans, where more of the absorbed CO2 disappears into the deep oceans, where it isn't directly traceable anymore. There are techniques to follow human CO2 even there, where they use other recent human-made gases like CFC's to track the past emissions. Anyway the "half life", that is the time period in which half of the human induced CO2 disappears, is about 5.2 years.

Over longer periods, humans continue to emit (currently about 8 GtC) CO2. The accumulation over the last years thus is 8 + 5.3 + 4.3 + 3.5 + 2.8 +... or about 40 GtC from the emissions over the past 30 years. That is only 5% of the current atmosphere...
Some conclude from this that humans are only responsible for 5% of the CO2 increase and thus, as far as that influences temperature, also only for 5% of the temperature increase. But that is a wrong assumption...

The previous paragraphs are about how much human induced CO2 still is in the atmosphere. That is about the origin and fate of individual CO2 molecules, which atmospheric lifetime is governed by the seasonal turnover (back and forth flows) of about 150 GtC in/out the atmosphere from/to oceans and vegetation, and has nothing to do with the fate of the extra amount of CO2 (as mass) that humans emit, neither with the increase of total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere as result of that. The latter is governed by the net amounts which year by year are incorporated into oceans and vegetation. That is only 1-7 GtC/year (variable due to temperature variability) or in average about 55% of the emissions. The half life time of this extra CO2 (as mass) is much longer than the half life time of an individual CO2 molecule: around 40 years [20]. Thus if we should stop all CO2 emissions today, then the increase of 100 ppmv since the start of the industrial revolution would be reduced to 50 ppmv after some 40 years, further to 25 ppmv after 80 years and 12.5 ppmv after 120 years...

The IPCC comes with much longer half life times, according to the Bern model. This is a combination of relative fast (upper oceans), slower (deep oceans) and very slow (rock weathering) sinks for the extra CO2. They assume that the first, relative fast, sink of CO2 will reduce in capacity over the years. Some media talk about hundreds to thousands of years that the extra CO2 will be in the atmosphere. That is true for the last part of the curve, as the smaller amounts of CO2 are getting slower and slower into the sinks. But the bulk (87.5 %) of the extra CO2 will disappear within 120 years.

From several discussions, I know that it is quite difficult to understand the two different mechanisms which govern the fate of human CO2 in the atmosphere: the fate of individual molecules, governed by exchange rates (turnover) and the fate of an increase in total CO2, governed by absorption rates (sink capacity). Here I try to give an example of how to interprete the difference:

in particular, read this example:

Englebeen said:

Let us say that you start the day in your shop with € 1000.00 in your cash register, all 1000 euro is in 1 euro pieces, all stamped in France. During the day, you have about € 200.00 expenses from goods delivery and you receive € 192.00 back from sales. At the end of the day, you have € 992.00 in your cash register, not only with French euro's anymore, but part of them are now stamped in Germany, Belgium, Spain,...
Next day, you add some € 16.00 from your own personal money, only euro's stamped in The Netherlands, to the cash register to start a fresh day with € 1008.00. During that day the same happens as in the previous day: € 200.00 expenses, € 192.00 income. Thus the day ends with € 1000.00 in your cash register, with now an increase of Netherlands euro's (but less than what you have added). Next day, you add € 16.00, again in Netherlands euro's and end the day with € 1008.00. You can repeat that for a few weeks, until you run out of personal money... Over several weeks, you will see that the number of euro's from The Netherlands slowly increases in ratio, but that the increase of the total amount in the cash register is only 50% of what you add on a daily base. That means that you have a problem: your expenses are larger than your income. That also means that despite the huge daily exchanges (which result in a rapid reduction of Netherlands euro's), that has no influence at all on the total amount of money you have at the end of the day, only what you have added yourself and the (negative) difference of the total balance counts. In this case there is no (net) addition of money from your daily bussiness, only a daily loss.

The difference between the two half life times of CO2 is comparable to at one side the fate of the number of Netherlands euro's in the cash register at the end of each day (which depends of the amounts which were added and exchanged that day and the composition of the exchanges), while on the other side, the second half time only depends of the total sum of euro's that is added and what rests from all tarnsactions at the end of the day. That is independent of the height of each individual transaction or the number of transactions, or the composition of the transactions: the total loss/gain at the end of the day is what you have earned or lost that day... In this case, there is a continuous loss of CO2 added by humans, which means that all natural flows of CO2 in/out the atmosphere together, over a full year, gives zero net addition to the atmosphere: nature acts as a sink for human CO2...

As shown in chapter 5, there is little doubt that humans are fully responsible for most of the increase of CO2 in the past (at least halve) century, that means that - as far as there is an influence of CO2 on temperature - that humans may be responsible for (a part of) the temperature increase. How much, that is an entirely different question, as that mainly depends of the (positive and negative) feedbacks that follows any increase of temperature...

http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_meas...

[Shoot Blair]

Can we not just simplify these threads into a visual cycle.....

......A cyclic flow chart....

As much as I'm behind Turb, it really is time for you lot to go and have a fight in the car park.

[turbobloke]

Shoot Blair said:

Can we not just simplify these threads into a visual cycle.....

......A cyclic flow chart....

As much as I'm behind Turb, it really is time for you lot to go and have a fight in the car park.

Is it a bring your own paradigm ruck?

Ludo's looks a bit old, but has people with interesting names still living in it. I wouldn't want to make anybody homeless in a period of global cooling and increasing energy costs.

[ludo]

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?

As I said, if we can ever agree on whether the rise is anthropogenic, I'll get onto it, but in the mean time, have a look at recent articles on skepticalscience.com, which deal with exactly that

FunkyGibbon said:

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.

This is a well known argument that is known to be misleading, see e.g. http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperatu..., esentially for paleoclimate there was only one way to get increase atmosopheric CO2, which was temperature driven degassing. However, now there is another way, which is for us to put it there directly by burning fossil fuels. As a result, there is now a way for CO2 to lead temperature instead of lagging it.

FunkyGibbon said:

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.

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.

[ludo]

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!

[kerplunk]

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?

[turbobloke]

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.

There is no credible evidence for feedback in modern times either, with what warmists claim as 'unprecedented' carbon dioxide levels. Lindzen and Choi showed that, and we've seen the ERBE vs Models data enough times.

Overall, long timescale paleodata shows that the climate operates negative feedback. Short timescale, troposphere data shows that the atmosphere operates negative feedback.

The data shows that an already warm atmosphere has more degrees of freedom than climate models account for, and can lose energy to space at a faster rate than models predict. ERBE data bears that out also. Models assume carbon dioxide radiative forcing causes global warming (no evidence in the data) and the 'dangerous' positive feedbacks from degassing and water vapour are in there too (no evidence, see above).

If positive feedback occurs, it will be offset to a significant excess by the cooling effect of negative feedback from cloud changes (Spencer). Overall, data suggests that the climate system has a strong thermostatic control mechanism which operates in precisely the opposite sense to the way IPCC computer climate models have been programmed. It's hardly surprising they churn out expensive and misleading GIGO.

I think we also saw this about the possible role of clouds in recent cooling.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/09/the-2007-2008-...