New paper coming out may discredit AGW

M

mop

2,500+ Posts
So there is quite a bit of buzz around a new paper coming out by a well-respected Climate Scientist named Professor Murry Salby. He is the chair of the Climate Science Department at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Evidently his basic argument is that mankind has had very little to do with the rise in CO2 we have observed. Of course some people are handwaving it already so who knows if it has any staying power.

Joanne Nova has an interesting discussion of it here:

Jo Nova

and here is the quick dismissal at Skeptical Science:

Skeptical Science dismissal
 
You get all of your stuff from Watts, neither you nor he understand much of what you are reading, you post Watts' invalid and deceptive headlines (way more than half the time Watts just doesn't understand what a report does and does not mean), when proven wrong repeatedly you just continue with a high volume of nonsense seeking to wear out or down legitimate science, and you both could care less about actual science or the truth.

Doesn't this get a bit old?

rinse, wash, repeat

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Here is a chart showing the ratio of carbon isotopes. Do you see a correlation? How could this occur if the increase was attributable to ocean degassing?

I am pretty sure that my 11 year old would understand this stuff if I explained it to her.

We know that the CO2 increase is attributable to man because (1) we have released way more CO2 than is in the atmosphere (some of which went into the ocean lowering its ph and making it more acidic and some of which goes into the biosphere) and (2) the ratio of carbon isotopes (which are different in current versus fossil fuel CO2) correlates.

This is really simple high school level physics and chemistry.


co2_vs_emissions.gif
 
The ratio of C13 to C12 (two isotopes of carbon) in our atmosphere has been declining, which is usually viewed as a signature of man-made CO2 emissions. C12 makes up 99% of carbon in the atmosphere (nearly all atmospheric carbon is in the form of CO2). C13 is much rarer — about 1%. Plants don’t like the rarer C13 type as much; photosynthesis works best on the C12 -type -of-CO2 and not the C13-type when absorbing CO2 from the air.

Prof Salby points out that while fossil fuels are richer in C12 than the atmosphere, so too is plant life on Earth, and there isn’t a lot of difference (just 2.6%) in the ratios of C13 to C12 in plants versus fossil fuels. (Fossil fuels are, after all, made in theory from plants, so it’s not surprising that it’s hard to tell their “signatures” apart). So if the C13 to C12 ratio is falling (as more C12 rich carbon is put into the air by burning fossil fuels) then we can’t know if it’s due to man-made CO2 or natural CO2 from plants.

Essentially we can measure man-made emissions reasonably well, but we can’t measure the natural emissions and sequestrations of CO2 at all precisely — the error bars are huge. Humans emits 5Gt or so per annum, but the oceans emit about 90Gt and the land-plants about 60Gt, for a total of maybe 150Gt. Many scientists have assumed that the net flows of carbon to and from natural sinks and sources of CO2 cancel each other out, but there is no real data to confirm this and it’s just a convenient assumption. The problem is that even small fractional changes in natural emissions or sequestrations swamp the human emissions.



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You post an excerpt from mop's link which was completely discredited by my stuff so yes "repeat". This is circular and comes up every few years from the "skeptics" even though the science is rock solid.

The amount of anthropomorphic CO2 released each year is significantly greater than the amount of the increase in atmospheric levels of CO2 each year. Where does the CO2 go then? Does it magically evaporate into space or does some of it get absorbed and the rest causes the rise in levels?

And then we can get into the Seuss effect (both with C13 and C14) and the reduction in oxygen if needed. This is laughable.
 
paso, i know you love to repeat things over and over and think it lends the claims more credibility. but i really don't just post from Watts. I constantly link to actual studies and there are about 30 different webites on this topic that i regularly read. watts does an amazing job of linking people to new studies constantly and this particular study first came to me by watts, but oftentimes i find studies through numerous other sites that watts sometimes picks up on and sometimes does not pick up on. sorry you are wrong, but you are!
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oh, and this particular study is coming out from the head of climate science from a university in Sydney. how do you manage to blame Watts for that? a bit paranoid are we?
 
Because either they are wrong or the summaries of what they are "claiming" are wrong.

This is obvious if you understand the science and physics.

And are you seriously claiming that you did not get this **** from Watts?

This is exactly where you got this nonsense from:

The Link

You even copied much of the verbiage.
 
paso, i most certainly DID get THIS from Watts, and I do read him daily. I am just letting you know that i read about 30 different websites on this subject and probably a dozen 5-7 times weekly. I oftentimes see stuff hit other pages a few days before Watts. regardless, what does it matter? Watts is great. he is a very good clearinghouse for most things notable that hit the climate world.

In reply to:
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Do I think he is clueless?

If he is making the claims as summarized by Watts and others, yes.

In addition to completely overlooking the isotope evidence (particularly C14) and the reduction in atmospheric O2, his only analysis appears to be statistical. He claims that the 120 ppm was "caused" by a .8 degree C increase in temperature not the other way around. This is utterly contradicted by paleoclimatology over millions of years where ocean outgassing is more along the lines of 10 ppm/1 degree C.

Finally, the biggest analytical gap is with the CO2 added by humans. Where does it go? Do you not understand that for the theory purportedly put forth by Salby to work that the entirety of anthropomorphic CO2 would need to be absorbed by the environment and then all the extra CO2 would come from ocean outgassing? This doesn't even make any sense because only about 55% of the extra CO2 we create causes the increase each year.

I also question whether this is going to be published in a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Do you by any chance know where and when it will be published? It would also be neat to look at the real paper, but this is usually too much to request.
 
so you are willing to put your understanding of a paper that hasn't come out yet against Dr. Curry, Dr. Salby and Mr. Watts? Wow! I am impressed.

I guess we will wait and see if this paper has any staying power. It may not.
 
Mop, I usually don't even read your posts because the only thing you seem to ever post about is climate change denial. I'm a bit puzzled because I almost get the feeling that you are part of some organization that is meant to try to 'muddy' the waters by putting doubt in peoples head but that you genuinely don't believe that the majority of climate change is caused by humans.

Like anything, you can always find a few people within a particular field of expertise that go against the grain, but what I would like to know (and I don't have as much knowledge as you or others on here) is this:

Of the scientists who are considered experts in this field of study, how many take the same line as you and how many believe that man is having an influence and we are doing harm to our planet?

I suspect that the ones that agree with you are in the minority, but I genuinely do not know the numbers as a percentage. If anyone has that information, it would be interesting to see. For me, if you have an overwhelming majority of experts telling me the same thing, and a few who are at the other end of the spectrum, I would have to go with the majority because they as a whole know a damn site more than I do.

On a side note, I did read an article recently on Mitt Romney and how his thoughts on this might cause problems for his candidacy:
The Link
 
here is a hilarious expose of that crappy statistic that is so frequently tossed around. hopefully you will stop quoting it Paso, unless you have an independent source that says the same thing:

97% = 75 "climate scientists"

to answer your question LonghornOllie, I don't know. I don't think there has been any good studies done to answer that question (certainly not the one that Paso linked to which is so commonly referenced). My guess is something around 70 to 75%.

Even in that study that Paso linked to you can instantly see a problem. I would have EASILY answered Yes to question 1 and Possibly answered yes to question 2 depending on the day and how I was feeling about it. I put our upper bound of influence at something like 20 to 25% of the warming we have seen. Some days I think it is far less, so depending on the day, I might have answered yes to BOTH questions from that survey (which had TONS of other problems as you can see) and been included as a climate change believer by the VERY low standards set by that poll. For that matter, many of the "skeptics" and "deniers" i read would have certainly answered Yes to both questions and yet are some of the most vociferous people on the other side of the issue. in short, that study was pure crap.
 
In short, you have no way to contradict the survey so you use an opinion column to try to throw mud at the issue. He asked a very simple question and I gave a very simple answer.

There is more to the consensus, but you won't like the repeated answers. Why not just admit that your view is not shared by the overwhelming majority of scientists who study the issue?

How about this study showing a consensus?

The Link
 
no…in short, the poll was rubbish and the opinion column made it clear why. do you have any response to the actual facts posted by the opinion column paso?

In reply to:
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Don't have a dog in this hunt, but when scientists exclaim that we fully understand ANYTHING within this universe, I get a little nervous.

Luckily, Copernicus looked outside the box and disagreed with the affirmed science of the time.

Luckly, some guys named Einstein, Hubble, et al. continued to explore the cosmos even though scientists KNEW the universe had always been there. They were pretty good, weren't they?

If you find yourself so heavily engaged in defending KNOWN scientific dogma to the point you can't imagine your basis changing, you ought move on to some other arena of thought. And yes, it means you will have to listen to some crackpots. But then, once in a while, one of those crackpots is gonna blow the lid off of KNOWN science. That's what makes it exciting. Try not to miss it.
 
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