Where Did The CO2 Come From?

[MSimon]

About one half the CO2 emitted by man gets taken up by plants.

For every molecule of CO2 added to the air 50 molecules need to be added to the oceans to keep the balance.

Where did all that other CO2 come from?

[tomclarke]

OK, so you are now questioning CO2 sources and sinks? I agree, the simple "fossil fuel CO2 goes about 40% to increasing the atmosphere CO2" although correct leave out a lot of the detail.

The basic picture is:
We have a large biosphere Carbon reservoir with annual cycle exchange between it and atmosphere
We have a large ocean Carbon reservoir in equilibrium with atmosphere where the equilibrium is changed by temperature change, so that higher temperature => more CO2 outgassing
We have FF burning that pushes never before seen CO2 out into the atmosphere.

The thing you need to take into account is the time constants. The biosphere sink has a relatively fast exchange time - a year or so. The ocean sink has a very long exchange time 100s of years because outgassing is very slow. We know this BTW from OOM calcs or paleological records where CO2 in atmosphere lags temperature change.

So the causal order is like this:

Burning FFs => 40% makes it to more CO2 in air with occupancy of 200 years. After 200 years or so that air CO2 would indeed go to the ocean sink.

However after much less than 200 years the CO2 in the atmosphere has changed the temperature which alters the ocean/atmosphere equilibrium in the direction of more CO2 in atmosphere. I'm not sure how large or small this effect is, but it does not matter. We are interested in temperature change over 50 - 100 years where the CO2 stays in the atmosphere.

In the longer term it is true that its very important whether outgassing due to increased temperature dominates over CO2 absorption. I think (hope) that it is a much smaller affect. In which case we can reckon CO2 in the atmosphere will go away over a 200 year timescale if not replenished, which is good to know.

Now, the science for the above timescales is not contentious and well known. Do you want me to find it for you?

About one half the CO2 emitted by man gets taken up by plants.

For every molecule of CO2 added to the air 50 molecules need to be added to the oceans to keep the balance.

Where did all that other CO2 come from?

[TDPerk]

We have FF burning that pushes never before seen CO2 out into the atmosphere.

Abject ignorance is no way to make a scientific argument.

It is well accepted fact even among the warmists (which they handwave away and refuse to address--thereby imputing magical forcings to human released CO2) that the geologic record shows CO2 lags temperature increases, generally several hundred years.

I should ask you, over what time range and temperature record do you think there is anything unprecedented about CO2 level today?

[tomclarke]

We have FF burning that pushes never before seen CO2 out into the atmosphere.

Abject ignorance is no way to make a scientific argument.

It is well accepted fact even among the warmists (which they handwave away and refuse to address--thereby imputing magical forcings to human released CO2) that the geologic record shows CO2 lags temperature increases, generally several hundred years.

I should ask you, over what time range and temperature record do you think there is anything unprecedented about CO2 level today?

Over 15m years for level, and much longer (not sure how long, maybe till the last mega-volcano) for speed of increase.

[choff]

The nuclear bomb tests raised the carbon 14 content in the upper atmosphere, when they were banned in the 1960's C14 returned to pretesting levels in ten years, you can look it up. It's a very reasonable indicator of how long manmade GHG will last, and remember, this was created directly in the upper atmosphere, didn't have to climb all the way from a chimney pipe.

[TDPerk]

The nuclear bomb tests raised the carbon 14 content in the upper atmosphere, when they were banned in the 1960's C14 returned to pretesting levels in ten years, you can look it up. It's a very reasonable indicator of how long manmade GHG will last, and remember, this was created directly in the upper atmosphere, didn't have to climb all the way from a chimney pipe.

And it had to filter back down to be absorbed. C14 half life is over 5000 years, it was normal removal mechanisms that got it out of the atmosphere. No one is arguing with reality more than the AGW fraudsters.

[tomclarke]

The nuclear bomb tests raised the carbon 14 content in the upper atmosphere, when they were banned in the 1960's C14 returned to pretesting levels in ten years, you can look it up. It's a very reasonable indicator of how long manmade GHG will last, and remember, this was created directly in the upper atmosphere, didn't have to climb all the way from a chimney pipe.

And it had to filter back down to be absorbed. C14 half life is over 5000 years, it was normal removal mechanisms that got it out of the atmosphere. No one is arguing with reality more than the AGW fraudsters.

Shall we look in more detail at the science?

You are confusing (and its easy to do) molecular lifetime in atmosphere - which is small - with CO2 lifetime - which is very long.

Why are they different? Well the atmosphere CO2 is in equilibrium with large current sinks: the top of the ocean and the biosphere. Both of these are saturated - in the sense that although they will readily swap CO2 with atmosphere they cannot absorb more CO2.

I hope this answers the folk science meme here. A little background research would have done this for you...

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=80&p=3

There is a pretty picture with approx quantities and lifetimes.

If you don't agree with this shall we go to the source science - written no doubt by all sorts of different scientists - not just your hate-figure climatologists?

You might see what WUWT has to say about this, and what those posts miss out from their treatment (for example they may miss out the issue about molecular vs CO2 lifetime).

The typical WUWT paper makes a naive and simple analysis of some aspect of climate science and finds a massive anomaly (half of these will be on the AGW is wrong side of any debate - the other half get dismissed, correctly, by denialists as wrong). Because the simple-minded analysis supports the denialist faith it does not get the level of scrutiny that it should, and even though if you follow carefully you'll probably find the errors explained somewhere the weight of WUWT opinion will be faith-based and uninformed and so casual reading will not show you these errors. There are decent scientists who contribute to WUWT and explain this stuff (John Nielson Gammon is an honourable example of this) but most just get sick of explaining the same things over and over again and give up.

Incidentally a careful person would be naturally skeptical of your argument. If CO2 really has such a short lifetime in the atmosphere we would need a much larger emmission than exists from FFs to create the current concerntration. There is also no natural source that I can think of that would give a steadily monotonically increasing emmission rate over 50 years and therefore model the observed CO2 increase, whereas that is exactly what you would expect with long CO2 occupancy. The hypothesis is bust because it does not fit the facts, and anyone with a skeptical disposition (like me) would see that.

Finally - another thing left out here - is that while the nuclear test C14 is small in comparison to the total sink mass, the total anthrthropogenic concentration is significant, so the isotopoc fimgerprint of the FF emmissions is seen in changing isotopic content in the atmosphere - even though this gets mixed with the sinks.

There is lots of work on this stuff, looking at local isotopic concentration changes as well as overall. Shall we post it and crawl over it so you can see how the climate scientists doing this are deliberately lying? (Hint - it will not be ny of the usual crowd - this is a different field with, according to denialist faith of the extreme form promoted by some here, completely different but equally untruthful scientists).

So: there is quite a lot of good science here simple enough for us to validate from first principles - I'm happy to do this if this folk science false meme persists?

[tomclarke]

Noone is arguing with reality more than AGW fraudsters

Let me correct that - since we've now had 2 or 3 denialist memes posted here and shown 100% bust when subjected to simple analysis.

Noone is arguing with reality more than AGW denialists

There are people in this debate reckoning ECS is lower, and therefore no action will be needed for quite a while, who are not transparently wrong/lying like the denialists. It is worth paying attention to their strand of opinion, as well as the ones who reckon ECS is higher than IPCC best guess. I hope that reality goes to the low side, but can't say I know this.

And I'm arguing with some heat here because what people seem to be basing their faith on - or at least what thy post here - is a collection of easily exposed misinformation. It is a shame that such things have so much traction on the internet. But I guess I should not be surprised.

[TDPerk]

"You are confusing (and its easy to do) molecular lifetime in atmosphere - which is small - with CO2 lifetime - which is very long."

You're confused, The significance of the C14 being removed from the atmosphere so quickly, despite it's long half life, is that the assumption the AGW modelers make that human released CO2 will remain in the atmosphere for around 100-200 years on average is abjectly, utterly, perfectly disproved by by isotopic signature being so ephemeral.

You haven't said one thing to explain that fact.

Instead of gabbling about WUWT, are you saying C14 bearing CO2 is preferentially removed from the atmosphere at a far faster rate than other CO2? Are you saying the C14 bearing CO2 didn't leave the atmosphere as fast as choff mentioned? Some combination of the two?

Address the actual hole in your hypothesis, or admit you're just here to troll.

"the total anthrthropogenic concentration is significant"

But it's not chemically different. You are perilously close to acknowledging AGW is based on the idea human released CO2 is magically bad stuff.

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014 ... in-the-us/

Please note Australia is having one of it's coldest winters on record, a curiously planetary local event.

[TDPerk]

"Both of these are saturated - in the sense that although they will readily swap CO2 with atmosphere they cannot absorb more CO2."

So you are claiming an osmotic effect caused the C14 to be preferentially absorbed while C12 was released?

Interesting if true but it also means then there's less excuse for the ocean not warming as atmospheric CO2 increases, if the air/ocean interface is that efficient.

[tomclarke]

"Both of these are saturated - in the sense that although they will readily swap CO2 with atmosphere they cannot absorb more CO2."

So you are claiming an osmotic effect caused the C14 to be preferentially absorbed while C12 was released?

Interesting if true but it also means then there's less excuse for the ocean not warming as atmospheric CO2 increases, if the air/ocean interface is that efficient.

No, not at all. The total mass of the sinks is greater than the mass of CO2 in the atmosphere. So when things are well mixed the atmospheric isotopic changes reduce.

I guess I should look at the numbers but I can't be bothered! This is uncontentious stuff, and as I said above there is another "no science needed" reason to reject the hypothesis that anthropogenic CO2 emmissions do not result in the observed CO2 increase because CO2 occupancy in atmosphere is short. That is internally inconsistent with the observed CO2 record - which BTW you can also get from woofortrees.

[tomclarke]

"
Interesting if true but it also means then there's less excuse for the ocean not warming as atmospheric CO2 increases, if the air/ocean interface is that efficient.

What makes you think the ocean is not warming? Even Roger Pielke Snr, a well known climate skeptic, agrees that OHC is inceasing.

The longer time constants relate to mixing with deeper ocean layers. There is an awful lot of deep ocean.

[TDPerk]

What makes you...of deep ocean.

The government's own data.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/26/n ... t-century/

[TDPerk]

Roger Pielke Snr is no skeptic, he's a warmist. He's only out of the clique because he doesn't there's any C to go with the AGW.

[tomclarke]

What makes you...of deep ocean.

The government's own data.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/26/n ... t-century/

That is surface land and ocean temperature, nothing to do with ocean heat content.

Since we have had ENSO negative for surface temps over the last 15 years, and ENSO affects temperature by altering ocean mixing, bringing up more cold water from the deeps, it is not surprising that the ocean surface temperature has not gone up quite as much as normal or as land an ocean (try comparing the two).

However WUWT has done its usual cherry picking. Note the exact instructions for which end-points to choose? Try choosing 2000 and 2014 instead of 2001 and 2013. That gives you a +0.13C/decade trend or around about the overall AGW signal average. Which shows you that 15 years is to short to establish a reliable trend especially if end-points are arbitrarily chosen on unsmoothed data.

If you read WUWT you get individual tidbits of info devoid of context presented in a dishonest way (why choose endpoints that minimise the positive trend, why not point out that trend calculation in this way is grossly sensitive to endpoints and essentially meaningless?) that supports denialist faith.