Correction to the above: what is reported by the IEA <i>may</i> be related to emissions reductions in China and other countries.
Comment on Week in review – politics and policy edition by cgs
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Comment on Tackling human biases in science by richardswarthout
David
Thank you for the answer. It is a subject of interest to me also, not academically, and not framed in your approach; mine starts with a question, gained in old age. Why is it that smart people often think irrationally. I think you nailed our diagreement, and I anticipated your answer: the strength of evidence and the measure of rationality depends on who or what is doing the measuring, and the observer will always measure favorably on him or her self. I do believe there is a measure of the strength of evidence that is independent of the observer; the justice system rules of evidence.
From my perch in the non-academic branch of learning it appears that this discourse, the observer based measure of evidence vs an external standard of evidence is related to relativism. And AFAIK, that discourse is far from settled.
Thanks again (interesting),
Richard
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Comment on Week in review – politics and policy edition by Willard
> a seismologist
More precisely Oklahoma’s state seismologist.
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Comment on Week in review – politics and policy edition by cerescokid
I share your pain. As I think of each one, there are all sorts of problems, politically, as well as questions of leadership. I saw Romney in a face off with a boxer for a faux match. Would Eisenhower have ever lowered himself for such a stunt? I think not.
Even the ones I like seem to have their own particular weaknesses. With nearly 20 potential candidates, the field is still thin.
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Comment on What would it take to convince you about global warming? by Ragnaar
Jim D:
I was going for opposing thoughts. Certainty is opposite Doubt. I could tweak my choice of words.
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by PA
Well… pretty obvious the prime user of these (once they switch to LEDs so you can’t track them with infrared), is a crop that has rope as a potential byproduct.
Which is an interesting point. The switch to LED lighting is going to complicate drug enforcement.
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by PA
If you like Tyndall we could experiment
We could shutdown all nuclear and go to coal fired for 5 years to see if we can break the pause. The goal should be to hit 20 GT/Y (double current emissions).
I would be in favor of this. There is nothing like fresh data from the field.
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Comment on What would it take to convince you about global warming? by Don Monfort
Ron, Gary gets to define the pigeonholes and decide who goes in which:
“First, there is no real ‘libertarian’ philosophy.”
That’s Gary’s rules. If you ain’t a solid triple rock died in the wool purebred congenital true conservative, then you are a progressive, which is the same thing as a totalitarian socialist. There are a total of 9 real reliable true conservatives in the U.S. The gang of 9 are Gary M., Ted Cruz, Sara Palin and a half dozen others whose names Gary can’t remember off the top of his head. The rest of the folks in the country are progressives, no matter what they think they are. It’s simplistic and surreal, but it works for Gary in Gaaary’s world. Of course he has zero influence in the real political war, because he doesn’t understand what’s going on and his type is so easy for the progs to marginalize and demonize. Right, Gaaaary?
He is using the turtle defense. Let’s see if he is smart enough to stay in his shell.
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by fizzymagic
In short, many of the critical experiments you would like to do cannot be done. You might find certain “natural” experiments, but repeating them might be difficult or impossible.
Then you’re not doing the science right.
There are lots of experiments in physics we’d like to do but can’t be done. Not much different for direct experimental science than for observational science.
What you do in an observational science is to build a model that allows you to design an experiment that is sensitive to the effect you want to measure. Example from astronomy: you can’t directly observe black holes so you look for telltale indirect effects. Lots of modeling done there, with a long history of results that were wrong leading to better models.
Now let’s look at climate science: models are used to predict global temperatures and all fail in the same direction.
Normal scientific response: what’s wrong with the models?
Climate science response: what’s wrong with the data?
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by Mike Flynn
PA,
I’m not sure what the point of your proposed experiment would be.
CO2 levels have risen. Temperature hasn’t. Are you saying that burning a lot more coal will produce enough heat to be measured?
I can demonstrate that by lighting a match. More CO2, more heat. Or vice versa.
I guess that’s not what you are trying to say. I’m happy with Tyndall’s experiments, but there seem to be a lot of people who claim that model results trump observed reality.
What are your views?
Thanks.
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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Ferdinand Engelbeen
Steven,
I tried to make it not too complicated, as Henry’s law is for a pCO2 equilibrium between concentrations vs. temperature, all other things remaining equal.
Indeed, bio-life in the oceans is an important factor in the CO2 concentrations and thus in ocean pCO2. The question is if bio-life changed that much over the past 55 years that it influenced the CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
The answer is yes, but opposite to the trend: with less bio-life in the oceans DIC would increase and pCO2 would go up, while pH goes down and less oxygen is produced (which comes out the ocean surface above the solubility of O2). The first items are observed, the last item not.
The oxygen balance shows that more oxygen is produced by the whole bio-sphere, including what is produced by the oceans. Thus the whole bio-sphere is a net sink for CO2 of currently ~1 GtC/year.
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by Chief Hydrologist
‘The bearing of this experiment upon the action of planetary atmospheres is obvious … the atmosphere admits of the entrance of the solar heat, but checks its exit; and the result is a tendency to accumulate heat at the surface of the planet (Tyndall, 1859a).’ Tyndall J. 1859. On the transmission of heat of different qualities through gases of different kinds – Proceedings of the Royal Institution 3: 155–158.
‘The differential radiative absorption properties of the gases and vapours revealed by Tyndall’s interrogation of nature 150 years ago this month – a suite of gases now expanded to include a group of artificial gases unknown to Tyndall, the halocarbons – remain central to the idea of anthropogenic climate change. Subsequent work has established the global warming potentials of each of these gases with some level of precision (Foster et al., 2007), calculations that are pivotal in efforts to quantify the extent of human influence on the world’s temperature and in efforts to reduce and manage those consequences. John Tyndall’s experimental work in 1859 in the basement of a renowned London scientific institution may not be remembered in the same way as is Darwin’s masterpiece On the Origin of Species. Yet in its own way the legacy of Tyndall’s work is just as significant for contemporary cultural and scientific debates.’ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.386/pdf
I noted yet more aggressively anti-scientific rhetoric above – such as critically undermines rational discussion of these things on this site. Tyndall provided the experimental basis for the atmospheric greenhouse effect 150 years ago. Science has moved on in the interim however. The following is from the US Academies of Science in 2002 – from doyens of climate science – and can be taken at face value.
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.’ Richard Alley, Jochem Marotzke, William Nordhaus, Jonathon Overpeck, Dorothy Peteet, Raymond Pierrehumbert, Roger Pielke Jr, Thomas Stocker, Lynne Talley, J. Michael Wallace.
It is how the terrestrial climate system actually works – small changes in control variables such as greenhouse gases push the globally resonant system past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation. Abrupt climate change – every 20 or 30 years and as much as 16 degrees C in a decade – provides serious added impetus to mitigation of destabilising pressures in an inherently unstable system.
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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Ferdinand Engelbeen
Salvatore:
For fresh water the CO2 curve is here:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gases-solubility-water-d_1148.html
Be aware that the solubility curve is for 100% (1 bar) CO2. At 0.0004 bar CO2 pressure the dissolved quantities are a lot lower…
Specific for seawater (see Fig. 2):
http://my.net-link.net/~malexan/Appendix%20B.htm
The solubility of CO2 in seawater is about a factor 10 higher than in fresh water, due to its buffer capacity.
When samples of seawater are measured for pCO2, the common method is taking a continuous stream of seawater from the motor inlet and spraying it in a continuous small air flow and measuring CO2 in the air flow. As the equilibrium is reached within seconds, that is a fast method which can be used in commercial vessels without maintenance over the full trajectory in open seas.
One need to compensate for the small change in temperature between seawater at the inlet and the measuring devise. That is done with the formula:
(pCO2)sw @ Tin situ = (pCO2)sw @ Teq x EXP[0.0423 x (Tin-situ – Teq)]
See for a full description of the equipment and procedures:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/CO2/carbondioxide/text/LMG06_8_data_report.doc
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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Ferdinand Engelbeen
Bart,
Quantities are not important, concentrations are important (and pH and temperature and salt content,…)
Shake a 0.5 or 1.0 or 1.5 l bottle of Coke from the same batch and you will measure (nearly) the same CO2 pressure under the screw cap. The only difference may be in the fact that the loss of CO2 from the liquid is somewhat higher in the smaller bottle.
That plays no role in the oceans: quantities are far high enough to see no loss, thus concentration is what counts.
Still clinging to the now utterly discredited “mass balance” argument. Will you ever learn?
Will you ever learn that the mass balance must be obeyed at every moment of the day, thus that human emissions don’t disappear into space?
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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Ferdinand Engelbeen
AK,
One can know the difference between the causes:
If the pH is decreasing by some internal or external factor, CO2 will be expelled and the total inorganic carbon (DIC) level will go down.
If the pH is decreasing by pushing more CO2 into the oceans from higher levels in the atmosphere, then DIC will increase, together with the lower pH.
The latter is what is observed: at all areas of the ocean surface where repeated measurements were made, DIC increases and pH (very slightly) decreases.
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by AK
What they clearly show is that the 700-1700 changes were the result of changes in vegetation: the CO2 and δ13C changes are opposite to each other.
Take a closer look. The dip in δ13C is almost exactly at 1500CE, that corresponds to roughly the start of a curving plateau in ppm extending to ~1560CE, by which time the δ13C is halfway up to its peak at ~1600CE. And at that time, the ppm is about halfway down to its bottom at ~1670CE.
I also notice some interesting differences between the “Caribbean mixed layer” and δ13C. Looks like there’s a good deal of signal attenuation (damping) in the latter. (Compare especially from ~1750CE to ~1850CE.) I would expect it the other way around, given the huge buffering effect of the mixed layer. I would attribute such damping to diffusion in the ice, in the first few centuries after closing, reducing the gradient between nearby peaks and dips.
Also, the entire ice core signal looks as though it’s been progressively damped going back to 700. I wonder if the peaks at 1100CE and ~1170CE might have been as high as 300-310ppm while the dips at ~790CE and ~930CE might have been down around 250ppm. And similar, if not so pronounced, for ~1520CE and ~1680CE.
This would be roughly in line with Salby’s proposals.
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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by angech2014
Thanks Don,
the learning seems to be a bit on and off at times.
Hopefully everyone learns when corrected.
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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by verytallguy
I have learned much from both of them
Seeing an itemised list of this learning would be most instructive…
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by climatereason
AK
I don’t know if it has any relevance to your observations but the period between around 1490 and 1560 was mostly very warm according to my reconstructed CET. It included possibly the warmest three year period in the entire record at around 1540.
According to the archives at the Scott Polar Institute it appears there was a very substantial melting of the arctic at that time during which the Northern Sea route around Russia might have opened up.
Around 1560 we then had the first of the brutal LIA winters.
tonyb
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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by angech2014
Ferdinand Engelbeen | May 18, 2015 at 2:12 am |
“Indeed, bio-life in the oceans is an important factor in the CO2 concentrations and thus in ocean pCO2.”
It is important to the amount of CO2 produced each year
but it is an irrelevance [of minor interest] to the level of CO2 in the air and the ocean.
This depends on the amount of CO2 in the air, the amount in the sea and the temperature of the water.
Higher temp drives CO2 out giving higher atmospheric CO2
Higher atmosphere CO2 drives more CO2 into the sea
More CO2 production naturally increases the amount in and out and lessens the impact of human CO2 production
“Equilibration between deep oceans and ocean surface (and atmosphere) is a matter of centuries to millennia…”
But the CO2 is there all the way down and a quasi equilibrium always exists.It has already had its millenia to achieve this de facto equilibrium and it is not going to change much or take a long time to change
“Further the temperature of the deep oceans plays no role in the CO2 emissions of the oceans to the atmosphere, only the surface temperature at the upwelling places counts, the deep ocean waters need to warm up first before they can release a lot of CO2…”
So the temperature plays no part >… but if” it warms up” ie changes in temperature it is important?
Please say what you meant to say, not rubbish.
extra Human CO2 Don may match the the amount the CO2 has gone up but to say that without this human extra CO2 we would be “normal” is rubbish that looks good.
The amount extra may well be comprised of extra natural production which if it had not occurred the human contribution would be correspondingly less.
You are confusing the input and what happens to it with the output which is a matter of the natural mass balance and the amount of actual CO2 production
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