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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by climatereason

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verytallguy

So, would ordinary people prefer life BEFORE the Industrial revolution or AFTER I? I think we know the answer to that.

So IF we have influenced co2 levels through our industrial activities it has been, on the whole, a good thing.

At what point does it become a bad thing? If we have affected the climate so radically almost immediately we started emitting co2 is it possible to put the genie back in the bottle with billions more people all wanting a better life with all that entails?

No answers to that, just that we need to stop looking at the industrial revolution as the cause of all our problems. It was the start of a golden era for mankind.

tonyb


Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Ferdinand Engelbeen

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Greg,

My calculation is for the oceans only. Vegetation is a different story.
What is clear is that the biosphere as a whole is a net absorber of CO2 over periods longer than 2-3 years: the earth is greening…

There are two opposite movements in vegetation:
– seasonal: CO2 goes down with temperature, δ13C goes up.
Mainly a reaction of NH extra-tropical forests on spring-summer-fall growth of leaves and stems.

– inter-annual: CO2 goes up with temperature, δ13C goes down.
Mainly a reaction of the tropical forests on increased temperatures and drought.

The oceans are not the main cause of the variability: during an El Niño, ocean temperatures are highest in the tropics, but there is far less upwelling, thus less release of CO2. Opposite for La Niña conditions. See the map of Ragnaar in next comment…

Take home message: the inter-annual variability has very little effect on the increase in the atmosphere: it is +/- 2 ppmv around the 110 ppmv trend and as it is caused by vegetation, the effect is negative: more sink than source over periods longer than 2-3 years, at least since 1990.

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by verytallguy

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Tony,

you are off topic. My comment wasn’t about the benefits of the industrial revolution, neither was the post.

An absurd analysis purporting to show that the CO2 rise is not anthropogenic merely makes the author and those who support it look ridiculous, and makes it less likely that their arguments on other subjects will be taken seriously.

The reaction of Judith and denizens to it is most instructive.

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Ferdinand Engelbeen

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Greg, the main THC sink is in the NE Atlantic, near the edge of the sea-ice, but that is hardly visible on the map. The ocean and vegetation variability is opposite to each other against temperature changes (so it is seasonal too). In both cases, vegetation is dominant: if the oceans were dominant, CO2 and δ13C changes in the atmosphere would parallel each other. If vegetation is dominant, CO2 and δ13C changes are opposite to each other.

Ocean flux variation of 1-2 PgC/year are variations of 0.5-1 ppmv/year compared to human emissions of ~9 PgC/year (4.5 ppmv/year) and an ocean uptake of ~3.5 PgC/year (1.6 ppmv/year). The variability zeroes in 1-3 years…

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Ferdinand Engelbeen

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Mike,

That the increase in CO2 is caused by human emissions is beyond reasonable doubt, but that says next to nothing about the influence of the extra CO2 on temperature.

What always wonders me is that many skeptics agree that there is no statistical connection between the increase in CO2 and the increase in temperature, but insist that temperature is the cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere…

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Ferdinand Engelbeen

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Paleo data indeed are scarce and mostly low resolution. Fortunately, we have overlapping ice cores going from high resolution (less than a decade) over the past 150 years to 560 years for the past 800,000 years and a repeatability of CO2 levels from the same part of the cores of +/- 1.2 ppmv (1 sigma).

That makes that the current increase of 110 ppmv in 160 years would be measurable in all ice cores, even with the lowest resolution in the past 800,000 years…

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Peter Davies

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Any links on this Ferdinand? If the current paleo data series can be matched with previous series, then we do indeed have something that would yield a trend line that we can work with.

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Ferdinand Engelbeen

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willb01

The ratio between human emissions and increase in the atmosphere is quite constant over the past 55 years, but there are 1-3 years large swings and even decadal ups and downs. If the increase rate is less in the past 1.5 decade, that means that the natural sinks increased, thus even less contribution of the natural cycle, if there was any.
If you take the average trends over the past 55 years, for emissions, increase rate and sink rate, it is all about a factor 4:

But that is not that relevant.

My question to you is: if a non-human source was contributing any appreciable amount of CO2 to the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere over the past 55 years, should it have been increasing in complete lockstep with human emissions, some 4-fold over that time period or not?


Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Ferdinand Engelbeen

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willb01

Sorry, used the wrong reply, here a repeat from above:

The ratio between human emissions and increase in the atmosphere is quite constant over the past 55 years, but there are 1-3 years large swings and even decadal ups and downs. If the increase rate is less in the past 1.5 decade, that means that the natural sinks increased, thus even less contribution of the natural cycle, if there was any.
If you take the average trends over the past 55 years, for emissions, increase rate and sink rate, it is all about a factor 4:

But that is not that relevant.

My question to you is: if a non-human source was contributing any appreciable amount of CO2 to the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere over the past 55 years, should it have been increasing in complete lockstep with human emissions, some 4-fold over that time period or not?

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Ferdinand Engelbeen

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willb01

Sorry third time, hopefully at the right place now… It gets hard to follow all loose ends…

The ratio between human emissions and increase in the atmosphere is quite constant over the past 55 years, but there are 1-3 years large swings and even decadal ups and downs. If the increase rate is less in the past 1.5 decade, that means that the natural sinks increased, thus even less contribution of the natural cycle, if there was any.
If you take the average trends over the past 55 years, for emissions, increase rate and sink rate, it is all about a factor 4:

But that is not that relevant.

My question to you is: if a non-human source was contributing any appreciable amount of CO2 to the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere over the past 55 years, should it have been increasing in complete lockstep with human emissions, some 4-fold over that time period or not?

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Ferdinand Engelbeen

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The graph wasn’t copied:

Anyway, if the net sink rate increased somewhat to give a 3.74 times increase i.s.o. 4.65 times for human emissions, the increase in net sink rate of the total of natural cycles would currently be less than 0.5 ppmv/year or ~1 GtC/year, which is the measured increase in sink capacity of the biosphere since ~1990. Far from overwhelming the human contribution…

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by climatereason

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by verytallguy

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Well, we learned that Judith thinks up to 50% of the Co2 rise may be natural.

Bit of an eye-opener, that.

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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by peter3172

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No, that’s neither what she said, nor what she thinks.


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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Mike Flynn

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You may well be right. However, if the scientists are to be believed, CO2 levels in the past have risen to well over 1000ppm before man was about.

So the present rise is by no means unprecedented. Correlation certainly. Causation, not beyond a reasonable doubt, in my mind.

In any case, there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason to worry about levels of CO2 rising to, say, 1000ppm. If somebody showed that consuming fossil fuel reduced the O2 level, more than would be compensated by increased O2 production due to increased CO2 levels, then I might be concerned.

Unfortunately, history is littered with settled science, absolutes, and uncontrovertible evidence that turned out to be wrong.

I suppose I’m skeptical about some of the assumptions made. That’s all.

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by dikranmarsupial

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It seems to me that Prof. Curry does not rule out the possibility of a natural contribution as high as 50% as she suggests that as a starting point for the investigation. However that is immediately falsified by conservation of mass and the observations. Sadly Prof. Curry appears not to understand the mass balance argument, if she is unconvinced by the mass balance analysis, perhaps she should have a dialogue with somebody who does find it convincing.

curryja | May 7, 2015 at 8:51 pm |

We don’t have data for any of this. So I am not convinced by simple mass balance attribution arguments based on current observations. I think it unlikely that 100% of the increase in atm CO2 is caused by humans. It is not unreasonable to start from a point of 50-50 (Fred’s conclusion) and see if you can falsify natural variability as large as 50%. It may not be 50%, but I don’t think it is 0%.

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