The NZ Herald reports a new study showing that since 1988 there has been a sudden increase in the absorption of CO2 over land. It’s in the order of a billion tons of CO2 a year and amounts to 10% of all human emissions. As usual, the spinmeisters frame it in terms of our guilt instead of their ignorance. “Look! Things would have been worse and even warmer if not for this new unknown factor.”
But globally plants already emit about 80Gt per year. Finding one extra Gt of absorption is both predictable and largely insignificant. What this episode really shows is just how far the alarmist PR departments will go to find any excuse to cover up for two decades of poor predictions.
Dr David Evans, formerly a carbon modeler for the Australian Greenhouse Office calls the new discovery “just noise”:
Sounds impressive, but it’s not significant. Rough numbers: there are currently 800GtC (gigatonnes, or billion tonnes) of CO2 carbon in the atmosphere, and each year: plants oceans absorb 80GtC and emit 80GtC, oceans plants absorb 120GtC and emit 120Gt, and human emissions are 8GtC. (Notice that the total turnover in CO2 carbon each year is about a quarter, which fits with the observed residence time in the atmosphere of an individual CO2 molecule of about 4 to 5 years — here are delays due to inadequate mixing). The atmospheric CO2 levels have been going up at about 2ppm (or 4GtC) per year for decades.
[Apologies for the mix up between C and CO2. Carbon accountants work in C but often report in CO2 because that is what many “clients” expect. Having seen umpteen sets of figures each way I have lost any sense of what is “normal”, and simply check context every time to see what is meant. The carbon accounting software I wrote, FullCAM, works in C internally, and converts to CO2 or CH4 or whatever as required. It is the C atoms that accountants track, because they combine and recombine with O (as CO2) and H (as CH4) and numerous organic compounds as they move from air to plants to soil to microbes and back to air, and so on. As for the ocean-plant mix up, it was late, oops. There is a good diagram in AR4 page 515, Figure 7.3, although for the 1990’s. The rough figures here are round numbers which will let you understand and check any of these global carbon flow discussions. – David]
Each year humans emit about 8Gt of CO2. Plants emit and absorb about 80Gt. (This is an old chart with out of date numbers that don’t quite match. Oddly NOAA or ? haven’t updated it?)
This study purports to find an extra 1Gt of CO2 absorbed by plants. That’s just noise, less than the uncertainty in the other figures, and makes no significant difference to anything. Their suggestion that the earth would have warmed faster without this absorption is true, but the extra warming is miniscule and unmeasurable. The unmistakable conclusion is this paper is transparently qualitative boasting to suck in those ignorant of carbon accounting (which is just about everyone), and simply distracts attention from the failure of their predictions that the world would warm quickly from 1990 on due to rising CO2 levels (awkward reminder: 0.30C per decade was the 1990 IPCC estimate).
On a side issue, there’s a bit of a red flag: one of the study’s authors, DrSara Mikaloff-Fletcher said “We applied some really exciting statistical techniques …”. Oh I hope you’re not overindulging in numerical wishful thinking like Dr Mann, of whose hockey stick Professor Wegman famously said: “It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community.”
Patrick Moore: (Greenpeace founder) says Long live plants and humans, increase CO2!
Climate Depot asked Patrick Moore to comment on the new results.
Ecologist Dr. Moore pulled no punches in commenting on the new study: “These people are either completely naive about the relationship between CO2 and plants or they are making this up as a way of deflecting attention from the lack of warming for the past 15 years.”
Moore told Climate Depot: “Plants grow much faster when CO2 is higher, the optimum concentration is between 1500-2000 ppm so there is a long way to go before plants are happy. CO2 levels in the atmosphere have continued to rise despite plants absorbing more CO2. So what is the ‘scientists’ point? It is to obfuscate, confuse, and otherwise muddy the waters with disinformation.
Moore continued: “We should challenge them to admit that CO2 is the most important nutrient for all life on earth and to admit that it is proven in lab and field experiments that plants would grow much faster if CO2 levels were 4-5 times higher in the atmosphere than they are today. This is why greenhouse growers pipe the exhaust from their gas and wood heaters back into the greenhouse to increase CO2 levels 3-5 times the level in the atmosphere, resulting in 50-100% increase in growth of their crops. And they should recognize that CO2 is lower today than it has been through most of the history of life on earth.
“There is no ‘abrupt’ increase in CO2 absorption, it is gradual as CO2 levels rise and plants become less stressed by low CO2 levels. At 150 ppm CO2 all plants would die, resulting in virtual end of life on earth.
“Thank goodness we came along and reversed the 150 million-year trend of reduced CO2 levels in the global atmosphere. Long live the humans,” Moore concluded.
Moore is the author of the book, “Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist,” where he explains why he left the organization.
Lubos Motl’s points out that it was obvious trees would use more CO2 as more CO2 became available:
I find it obvious that the absolute amount of carbon absorbed by the atmosphere inevitably increases if the CO2 concentration does. If a substance is easier to get, then the consumers will consume more of it. Is that shocking? It’s true for CO2 much like it’s true for water, marijuana, or anything else.
There is a lot more CO2 around now than there was 20 years ago:
These days, the average CO2 concentration is about 393 ppm. Twenty years ago, it could have been 357 ppm or so. That means an increase by 10 percent. However, it’s more interesting to compare the “excess CO2” in the atmosphere. The CO2 concentration that is in equilibrium with the current temperatures (and believe me, it makes no difference whether you mean “before global warming” or “after global warming” because this difference in tenths of a degree is negligible relatively to the difference between ice ages and interglacials which is almost a dozen of degrees) is about 280 ppm. So twenty years ago, it was 77 ppm above the equilibrium value; now it is 113 ppm above the equilibrium value. This “excess CO2” therefore rose by 47% in the recent 20 years.
Humans would increase global CO2 by 4ppm per year if it wasn’t for plants and trees pegging that back:
Our CO2 emissions these days, if they were just being added to the atmosphere, would increase the CO2 concentration by 4 ppm per year or so (i.e. by 1% a year, using the current concentration). The actual increase is something like 1.9 ppm (0.5%) so 2.1 ppm is absorbed by the oceans and the biosphere. This amount of 2.1 ppm is approximately proportional to the “excess CO2 in the atmosphere”…
Lubos estimates trees would take about a century to remove all the CO2 humans may have added (I think that sounds a bit slow):
…So if we stopped all CO2 emissions tonight, the CO2 concentration would continue to decrease by the rate of approximately 2.1 ppm per year; this number was derived above. The rate would be slowing down as the concentration would be returning back to those 280 ppm and the CO2 consumers’ boom would be fading away but it’s still true that within a period comparable to a century, the CO2 concentrations would be almost exactly back to the equilibrium value.
H/t Climate Depot
I’ve seen a number of publications recently where this global vulnerability (natural variation) is being highlighted. It seems to be a new direction for the harbingers of fear and a common theme is the “we dodged that bullet but barely” idea. The message is “it could be worse than it is” which of course keeps a small fan pointed at the fading flame of alarmism while not bringing attention to the clear fact that it’s not as bad as they predicted.
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Please help keep this question in the top 3 for the PM to answer on July 21. Every person gets eight votes.The question is not just about about a tax on Carbon – it is about the trade off between the trust placed in a Prime Minister by her constituents and her personal political gain. It is about having used up valued political capital and then ever more desperately (and expensively) trying to win it back from a community that is no longer listening.
Reading through some of the other threads, it becomes increasingly clear to me that if this government hadn’t wasted the billions of dollars on trying (and woefully failing) to win us round on this foetid folly – We could have implemented Gonski’s recommendations, Overhauled the Childcare system, Fixed many of our Manufacturing industries, Introduced a dental plan, Have our National Disability Scheme & spent more on addressing social policies like Teen Suicide. All the things we now can’t really afford. But guess what? We’ve got a shiny brand new Carbon Tax! We got the last laugh on the rest of the world! Didn’t we?
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Jules, Jules.
If they hadn’t spent all our taxes on the Big Advertising/ Information programme on the Media they would face this question.
Who could they turn to for support during the run up to the next election.
Advertising programmes are not there to inform but to buy Media Support later.
KK
🙂
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I’ve delivered you a whole pile of votes, dude. But hang on a minute. What is all this nonsense about what the government could have done with all that money. What the government could and should do is restrain itself to the legitimate role of government. That means get out of the picture and let the market place decide what should be purchased and what should not. What the government could and should do is allow individuals to determine the direction in which their funds are allocated. What the government could and should do is get out of our faces. Get out of the business of providing services such as learning and medicine to the individuals and the market. Sheesh! can I have my votes back?
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If this is what you feel about the appropriate role of government, how do you feel about the Coalition’s Direct Action climate policy which some groups think could end up costing something like $11 billion a year:
http://apo.org.au/commentary/direct-action-good-politics-bad-policy
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Hi Adam
Glad to hear you finally agree that The Man Made Anthropometric Global Warming Scam is actually a Scam.
Great to have you on our team.
KK 🙂
01
It’s pretty clear you have nothing to contribute when you have just started telling others what they think.
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Great stuff as usual Jo. But I think these figures are ever-so slightly off and may need to be revised. According to the IPCC’s figures in AR4 2007 vegetated land-mass (trees, plants, soil, etc) absorb about 120 gigatonnes of carbon which corresponds to 450 gigatonnes of CO2. Hence the extra 1 gigatonne of CO2 absorbed by plants amounts to a 0.22% difference – indeed, just noise. Also, sorry to nitpick, but the atmospheric mass contains 800 gigatonnes of carbon (not CO2) which in fact corresponds to 3000 gigatonnes of CO2. According to the IPCC the oceans absorb roughly 338 gigatonnes of CO2. The total emission of natural CO2 each year from all sources each year amounts to 771 gigatonnes and the total absorption amounts to 786 gigatonnes, leaving a surplus of about 15 gigatonnes (or 2ppmv). The figures above are from NASA and I think are out-dated and incorrect. But I could be wrong.
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Figure 7.3 lists the carbon fluxes on an annual basis.
In respect of these fluctuations Barry Moore notes:
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Hi Cohenite
I haven’t tried to follow all the gigatonnes but am sure that all values for the sources and sinks of CO2 would not be constant.
It is intuitively obvious that things fluctuate around the norm but on top of that because the human population is increasing, something else wonderful happens.
The extra CO2 created is responsible for increasing natural sinks and although it lags by a couple of years in dealing with extra human CO2 it is getting larger.
If the population stopped increasing , only then would nature cease creating the extra sink capacity and go to equilibrium.
KK
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Hello cohenite,
Previously in this forum I advanced a hypothesis of how the numbers of the interannual carbon cycle add up.
About two weeks after that comment I updated the diagram, keeping the main numbers the same but adding some extra detail in the flows. That diagram is my present belief about annual flows based on things I have read in various places. (Most information sources are tinyurls in the picture.)
Against that background you can probably understand why I think this statement by the Barry Moore character is false:
>> “if you assume a 400 GT carbon cycle per year the human contribution really becomes insignificant.”
Of course 9 << 400 but a single annual flux rate cannot explain why the absolute quantity is increasing over time.
For the purposes of attributing late 20th century [CO2] rise, not only is the human contribution significant, it is practically the only source worthy of mention. While I insist that the numbers must sum to zero, I am flexible on what those numbers are because some of them are rather tricky to actually measure. Do you know of any source of measurement that could possibly invalidate the numbers in my diagram to a significant degree? If so I would like to check that out so I can potentially update my diagram and my beliefs.
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Hi Keith and Andrew. I looked at Andrew’s graph and the mass balance argument which is the mainstay of Ferdinand’s argument that the entirety of CO2 increase is due to ACO2.
In nature the numbers never sum to zero and this is the fallacy of the mass balance argument since it assumes that CO2 is simply passed around the biosphere and any increase must have come from burning fossil fuels. If that was the case then CO2 would have remained constant throughout geological time. Yet as we know, CO2 can come from inorganic processes, such as volcanoes, calcium compounds in rocks, sea water etc.
If I may reverse the onus of proof; Andrew, if it is the case, as you [and Ferdinand Engelbeen] say, on the basis of the mass balance, that all CO2 increase is due to ACO2 then what causes natural increases in CO2, as, for instance, happened about 15000 bya, of about 70 ppm in short order?
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Aside from everything else I could respond to, there is this:
>> “In nature the numbers never sum to zero and this is the fallacy of the mass balance argument”
Further dialogue with you on this topic will ultimately be useless (in the empirical sense) unless you first severely clarify or else entirely retract this unphysical and basically stupid statement. For a start you’re not even making an existential claim here, it is a universal one.
I am really hoping there is some other subtlety you intended but did not adequately communicate on the first go.
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Hi Andrew
I’ve just come in on the tail end of this and have not previously looked at your comments on the mass balance.
The comment above though “Of course 9 <> “In nature the numbers never sum to zero and this is the fallacy of the mass balance argument” all he is saying is
that you can’t do a mass balance because the location of much of the target being measured is actually hidden in the system and not
measurable.
If you can’t measure things it is not correct science to dismiss them and run on to the final assumption that man is
causing CO2 to increase.
Ferdind makes the mistake of over-eagerness or is there something worse, like a tenure or group approval to preserve?
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My ex-wife said something similar to me once.
You take this seriously don’t you?
One of the furphys of AGW is that there was an equilibrium before humanity came along and upset the whole kabang. My point about previous increases in CO2 before humanity, was to illustrate that point is nonsense. If you can accept that, and I don’t see how you cannot, then the mass balance argument does not prove ACO2 is the sole cause of the increase in CO2 now because what mechanism caused any previous increase in CO2.
The issue of whether ACO2 is the sole cause of CO2 increase has been done to death but not to anyone’s satisfaction at many sites and threads such as this. Start anywhere, but the discussion from 545 onwards is germane.
Could you elaborate on this interesting point:
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Hi Cohenite
I have absolutely no problems with anyone doing a mass balance for CO2.
My problem with this, is that it is not done.
No mass balance on CO2 has been done.
They have been half done and maybe even 60% done but not to completion.
If you don’t even understand ALL of the sources and sinks of CO2 you obviously cant quantify them.
My problem with Ferdinand Engelbeen is that he misses out on many factors and then blandly assumes, as you say, that the Earth was
in perfect equilibrium before modern man came along.
That is total junk science.
Cohenite, I take this seriously too because I don’t like being lied to by anybody but especially politicians.
Especially don’t like to see my taxes used by politicians to cement their future with some voters.
Some will give their vote to the pollie with the biggest social security package and that’s not working here or in Greece.
This Carbon Dioxide tax collection by fraud is just a modern form of slavery and that was supposed to have been outlawed 200 years ago.
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Whether human CO2 is the primary cause of the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 has been discussed to death on this forum and I think the majority of people would say, no, and because of one reason and one reason only, and that’s Henry’s law. It has been explained to Ferdinand on this forum before, although he didn’t like it. Ferdinand is ignoring Henry’s law of solubility which ordains that only about a 50th (at most!) of the CO2 that human society emits will end up as a permanent addition to the atmospheric greenhouse (Henry’s law sets a fixed partitioning ratio for CO2 of 1:50 between the atmosphere at and oceans at the current Earth surface temperature). The rest will be absorbed by the oceans and the other sinks on the planet. According to the IPCC, human CO2 emissions amount to about 30Gt (ie. 30 gigatonnes) per year at present, so the amount of that which gets added to the resident CO2 greenhouse is about 0.6Gt/year. This is equivalent to about 0.08ppmv/year. But the atmospheric CO2 greenhouse is growing at the rate of about 2ppmv/year. Now 0.08 is only 4% of 2, so where is the other 96% coming from? It has to be from natural emissions. So it appears that global human CO2 emissions are hardly adding anything to the CO2 greenhouse in fact and the amount of AGW that will be produced by such small annual increments will not even register on the thermometers that are being used for the temperature measurements. The only way that the atmospheric CO2 can currently increase significantly for an extended period of time (i.e. over a hundred years) is if the oceans warm, as that changes the partitioning ratio permanently since CO2’s solability is temperature dependent. Henry’s law is a basic and well-estsbilshed physical law of chemsity, if Ferdinand wants to deny it’s implications, he is very welcone do to so.
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Unadulterated pure spin; either that or crass ignorance, or perhaps a bit of both?
Here is an up-side and it is this: a small proportion of people may have their interest sufficiently piqued on reading the drivel to investigate sufficiently, revealing the mendacity of the hype.
The MSM media could actually be ‘thanked’ for their ignorance and disingenuousness. On the principle of: “…but you can not fool all of the people all of the time”….it’s potentially a few less Gaiaphiles?
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HA! Are you talking about the study in question, or Jo’s response to it? I don’t have a problem with spin, it’s what the commentators do and is often virtually unavoidable. But for arguments sake, (and a way for me to kill a bit of time) lets examine how Jo has spun this story.
NZ scientists (not the media who reported it) “stunned” and “shocked” = this is intended to portray the scientists as exaggerating the implications of the study. I may well be wrong about this, but I can’t actually find any reference to the researchers using either of those words.
Patrick Moore can as easily be described as Co-founder of a counsulting firm that lobbies for Mining and Forestry. It’s also disputed whether he was a co-founder of Greenpeace or simply an early member, but that’s probably not important.
The whole thing reads like a quasi-conspiracy, with PR agencies covering up for shoddy scientists. Instead of assuming the media will overhype everything or else no body will ever care.
David Evans pens a particularly egreious example when referring to the statistical analysis used by the researchers. Making a thinly veiled accusation of either incompetence or misconduct. Which is kind of odd given that in the same paragraph he tips his hat to an observation of Dr Wegman, who himself has been the subject of an investigation into misconduct, the findings of which were against him.
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Sure. I can’t find the ‘stunned’ quote either but nevertheless they do seem to have made mountain out of a very small mole-hill to me. The article says that a report into the findings says the increase is a “big number” and that “climate change has been a lot slower than it would have been otherwise”. The number given is 1 gigatonne of carbon each year (corresponding to 3.68 gigatonnes of CO2) for the increase in land-mass absorption. However the IPCC’s carbon-cycle figures (which according to them end at 1994, which is very odd) shows that the land-mass is absorbing 450 gigatonnes of CO2 each year. Hence the extra-absorption only makes a 0.8% difference to the absorbed CO2 by all the land-mass sinks, which is very small, wouldn’t you agree? I would hardly consider it ‘abrupt’ or a ‘big-number’.
Nature emits just under 800 gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year (this figure would obviously fluctuate slightly from year-to-year), therefore an increase in absorption of 3.68 gigatonnes is really quite small in the grand-scale of things. It all seems a bit blown out of proportion to me. The claim that “climate change has been a lot slower than it would have been otherwise” seems absurd to me too. Even if 3.68 gigatonnes of extra CO2 had not been absorbed by the land-mass that corresponds to 4.79ppmv over 10 years which according to the IPCC’s logarithmic equation would amount to a radiative forcing of: Ln(384.79/380)x5.35 = 0.07W/sq.m. That is only enough to increase the average global surface temperature by a piddilingly insignificant 0.01C by the Stefan-Boltzmann law. Hardlly anything to get your green-knickers in a twist-over, is it?
*Hopefully this comment will get trhough unlike my last one*
00
Fair point Jon (#4.1). My earlier comment (#4) may be read ambiguously. To assuage any potential confusion I was alluding to the NZ Herald article. In the first instance, the dialogue is once again being controlled – that is, the article concerns itself with the unimportant – CO2. In the second instance it sensationalises a miniscule and meaningless amount of CO2. In the third instance, the article repetitively indicates that the study raises more questions – a red flag that more funding is required to do more research about the irrelevant. Fourth, I agree with Jo, whenever anyone starts talking about ‘exciting statistics’, an oxymoron to perhaps 99.99% of the population, it guarantees the method is a) excruciatingly dull; b) almost unintelligible; c) hitherto possibly previously unpublished and novel; d) possibly useful for this research only; Fifth, the article uses an unrelated photo with the caption “Global warming is tied to extreme weather, say scientists.” which has absolutely nothing to do with the subject under discussion and everything to do with subliminal coercion.
I suspect the study is a ‘Warholian’ moment for Dr Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher Atmospheric Modeller at NIWA is the third listed author in:
GLOBAL BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES, VOL. 26, GB1007, 14 PP., 2012
doi:10.1029/2010GB004024 ‘Identification and characterization of abrupt changes in the land uptake of carbon’.
Now here is a slice of the abstract:
Reading this, I see the development of a new methodology from estimates and models.
Lordy lordy, this gets worse and worse. More smoke and mirrors! It’s actually surprising that this study made it into the MSM in the first place! As I said: pure unadulterated spin.
00
hey,
I can’t find any reference in the article provided to the scientists involved being either “stunned” or “shocked” by their findings. Have I missed something?
00
Only the fact that an apostrophes used around a word implies that it is being deliberately used with some tongue in cheek. It would be a quotation if the entire title was in quotation marks.
(Please note the use of “apostrophes” in one case, and “quotation marks” in the other).
00
I’ve never seen quotation marks described as apostrophies before. My understanding is that apostrophies are used to indicate posession, that is Jon’s car, or to abbreviate words, that’s Jon’s car. And quotation marks are well, quotation marks.
00
Jo-here is a link to what a Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems Theory chart looks like. It is the working theory used in the education reforms in both Australia and New Zealand and soon to be US. It is not based on research but is merely a theory posited to get social programs and practices changed to what is politically desired. Not by the people. The politically connected who would like us to resume our assigned place.
http://virtual.yosemite.cc.ca.us/childdevelopment/Cheryl/Sp10/EcologicalHandout.pdf
If you look at the outer layers you see the physical envmt, climate, Earth, all interconnected so this is the perfect learning theory for using ed and climate change to gain desired political, economic, and social changes. Especially to make people volunteer.
Look how closely the nested systems fit with that kind of carbon cycle picture. You are priming people to behave as if all is connected when it wasn’t. At least until people change their behavior voluntarily in manipulated ways.
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Hi Robin,
Like your “expose” on how governments and power seeker benefit from “mass” indoctrination via education.
Going the “approved content” line rather than the old science system of observe , measure and report is just so much easier.
They make Goebbels look like an amateur.
KK 🙂
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What a lazy Nova article. You couldn’t even cite the reference and haven’t read the paper. Strange that sceptics so love breakpoint analysis.
So we’re presented with a something a high school student could have penned from Wikipedia. Cobbling together a few loose unconnected bits of waffle for some weekend blog filler.
Fancy quoting a generalist comment from a serial plagiarizer like Wegman as proof of anything. And as for David’s rocket science days with FULLCAM – well we’re still getting over it – what a crap piece of work full of nonsense Euro assumptions – local advice ignored. Hope he’s handed his salary back. It’s not like some of us weren’t there Jo.
(—–
And Mr or Mrs anony-Watcher reports exactly 0 reasons the blog article is wrong. Nor can he find any reason Wegman’s content on statistics/Mann/hockeysticks was wrong either. As for FullCAM – there is no better terrestrial carbon accounting software anywhere in the world, and if there are “crap assumptions” perhaps “watcher” doesn’t realize that orders come from above, and some “crap” was dictated, and can’t be removed without permission from the minister eh? – Jo)
00
Mirror, mirror……
00
No you don’t get to turn it around Jo – a lazy post from someone who hadn’t read the paper or even cited it. Simply unscholarly. It wasn’t simply about having terms dictated from above re FULLCAM – and happy to take the money in those days eh? and riding rough shod over many state scientists who had spent hours on improvements and data all to be ignored by arrogant Feds. Of which Davey boy was well a part of. So it’s just nauseous how he goes around now using it as a reference. Hypocritical.
—————————-
Ha ha Watcher. You think you’re convincing anyone with a lazy comment from an anonymous boy-girl-it without any specific detail? You don’t seem to have to read the paper yourself. As for FullCam, David has said he thought he was working on something useful while he was there. Can you name a better carbon accounting model? No. Didn’t think so. So if Australia has the most advanced comprehensive terrestrial carbon software, thank David. — Jo
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Ha ha – quality sledging “boy-girl-it” – pay that – yes Jo it’s true that we fellow chicks with dicks need to stick together as you’d appreciate. Still a lazy off-topic post – who could be bothered wasting time on it when you made an off-topic discursive rave. But back to FULLCAM – no I can’t beat an error filled piece of crap like FULLCAM. Now given the involvement of such technology in carbon taxation shouldn’t Davey be handing himself into the authorities?
00
I would like to start a Green movement that aims to get 800-1000ppm CO2 in the atmosphere.
because PLANTS LUV CO2 !!!
00
Gee, that’s pretty ambitious…I reckon if we try really hard we could reach 550ppm. Maybe a tax on people that do not produce enough CO2 is in order?
00
Death duties?
00
You know full well that introducing Death Duties is an official policy of the Australian Greens party, though they prefer to call it an Estate Tax for propaganda purposes.
Seems the Greens are already happy to punish the families of those who don’t emit their share of carbon dioxide!
Put the pedal to the metal, guys, it’s your duty! I can imagine the new government TV campaign…
Are YOU driving too fast for the unexpected greens policy?
00
Maybe just make sure we are using the most efficient form of energy that we know of.. the long buried supply of coal !!
Sure try to minimise the polluting side-products, but let the CO2 loose to feed nature.
Don’t listen to those Greenies and psuedo-environmentalists who hate nature so much that they want to starve plant life.
00
A great idea.
My wife loves growing flowers so this would help.
00
“back to the equilibrium value” where plants are struggling to breath !!!
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Thank goodness we came along and reversed the 150 million-year trend of reduced CO2 levels in the global atmosphere. Long live the humans,” Moore concluded.
This is how a real environmentalist thinks !!
Let’s bring that long buried carbon back into the atmosphere where it belongs !!
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Just love this new “greener” environmentalism!
Say yes to more plants!
CO2 Liberation Organisation, COLO, needs new members.
KK 🙂
00
COLO.. CO2 Liberation Organisation.
I Like it !!
How do we get this rolling?
00
I prefer COLON – CO2 Liberation for Organisms Network.
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Having realised that the acronym COLO can easily stink, I tried to find another abbreviation for this new climate skeptic club.
ANECDOTE!
Australians
Necessarily
Emitting
Carbon
Dioxide
Our
Trees
Enjoy!
😀 😀
Oh sure, it may not be trim and trendy, but if I may say so myself, this is a work of genius.
It is the only English word in frequent use with C and D appearing contiguously.
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Well if you are sensitive to the smell you probably would like my first idea either:
to call it the “Liberation Organisation for Carbon Dioxide”.
The acronym would then have been LOCO.
🙂
00
Maybe “Towards 700ppm” just to annoy 350.org.
00
That is because it is Latin, from the Greek anek dota – things unpublished.
00
Since the truth about natural climate change and the benefits of higher CO2 are rarely published in today’s climate, the abbreviation just gets even more appropriate.
00
700.org, 700ppm, the carbon liberators sounds good!
targets 100 % more biosphere 🙂
00
On a side issue, there’s a bit of a red flag: one of the study’s authors, DrSara Mikaloff-Fletcher. said “We applied some really exciting statistical techniques …”.
Red flag and alarm bells. Most climate scientists seem to have skipped the basic stats courses that other science undergrads take.
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Statistics get me soooo hot! C’mere big boy.
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Sorry Winsten.. I used to call them “sadistics” .. still do.
been there, done that.. while I can do them.. they leave me cold !!
give the bends, actually ;-)) .. oh wait, that’s nitrogen , not CO2
No thanks.
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Funny Phillip
Wonder.
Did they apply any basic science techniques?
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The other thing for Australians to realise that New Zealand newspapers do not have the the large news desks that Australia does. From the media’s point of view, New Zealand is a branch office, and a small one at that.
This means that a significant percentage of the New Zealand Press Hacks are currently winging their way to Europe to cover the Olympics, and the lead up thereto. All we have left are the juniors and the wannabe’s who will run with any trash they happen to find on the wire. It is all about filling the column inches around the adverts.
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There is a 50 to 1 CO2 ratio between sea and atmosphere
So I guess also the sea is absorbing CO2?
00
The carbon cycle cartoon is incomplete – not one acknowledgement of the contribution of volcanic activity and emission of CO2. It beggars belief that no one has roundly criticised this core assumption of the carbon freaks.
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🙂 Core stuff Louis.
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But they just know that volcanos cannot emit CO2 because when one erupts, they can measure cooling. If there was CO2 emitted then that would overwhelm the effect of aerosols.
Just as wet lands NEVER emit methane, trees never die and rot. A minor change must be due to evil humans. (sarc off?)
It is very easy to think like an AGW convert; in fact any fool can do so.
Off topic, but this whole report made me think, for some reason, about Monty Python’s fish slapping dance.
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Hi Graeme3
Funny: “But they just know that volcanos cannot emit CO2 because when one erupts, they can measure cooling”
You may also be interested to know that since I became aware of the damaging effects of CO2 on the climate that I have managed to totally and completely refrain from farting and emitting CH4 which could quite easily be converted , by nature, to CO2.
Yours Sustainably
KK
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I think you missed my point; their belief is that CO2 causes warming, and they approach everything from that. Cooling after a volcano erupts? can’t possibly have released any CO2 as that would have cancelled the cooling.
CO2 going up? temperatures MUST go up too. If records don’t agree, change the records to fit the theory.
Regarding your sacrifice – I hope that you are well downwind when the inevitable eruption occurs.
P.S. Humans (like all animals) breath out CO2. Look out for greenies wanting to ban breathing.
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Hi G3
Yes, just a matter of moving the point of view a little,can see what you mean now
“But they just know that volcanos cannot emit CO2 because when one erupts, they can measure cooling”
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If you guys want to investigate further what you describe as the core assumption of the carbon freaks, try here. An excerpt:
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Spot on Louis. Maybe they much underestimate the volcanoes in their statistics:
http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
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Jo,
You write ~~
“Lubos estimates trees would take about a century to remove all the CO2 humans may have added (I think that sounds a bit slow): ~~”
Lubos has had several posts on this topic over a couple of years. I believe (without re-reading it all) that his analysis is that the decrease would follow a “log” function or perhaps better to say a negative exponential path. So, when you write “that sounds a bit slow” your are in a practical sense correct but in a mathematical sense missing the long tail of the process.
Oh – I think he does not limit the process to “trees” but simply implies all of the things that can and do remove the gas from the atmosphere. I’m being pedantic, I suppose.
Are you aware that when joannenova.com.au goes down there is panic among skeptics?
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I didn’t panic! Does that mean I am not a skeptic? Please say it isn’t true.
🙂
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Rereke, that depends on whether Mr Hultquist precisely meant this:
D(“joannenova.com.au”) ⇒ ∃S’ ⊂S ● ∀s ∈ S’ ● P(s)
…or else this:
D(“joannenova.com.au”) ⇒ ∀s ∈ S ● P(s)
May I put you at ease by suggesting the former interpretation is accurate.
That is not merely a guess, I have data to support it.
I panic when joannenova.com.au goes down and I am not like most skeptics. 😉
However I duly note the irony in your tone.
∃r ∈ S ● ¬P(r) ⇒ P(r)
Either my modelling is wrong or else calming influences are a threat to your existence! 😀
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Andrew,
thanks for that.
I was just looking at that third formula there.
I’m afraid I can only get that one to work if I rant and gran the phantastran, and then retrense the transaxlabiofrionic multiplexification unit.
(sorry, sarc off now)
Jeez, sometimes I feel just like Charlie Brown.
Clouds
Tony.
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Well, now you put it like that, … 🙂
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The aliens have come out to play…..
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Hi JohnF
As you say there are many more items that can provide natural sequestration. Trees are just the most obvious.
There are gigantic amounts of living (I was going to write breathing but ) organisms in the soil that would love to colonise the next clump of dirt if they had enough CO2 available.
I panicked when 403 appeared.
Thought that the Queensland Education Department had taken out a court order to have the site shut down but my faith in Australian Democracy was restored when it came back up!
KK
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“There are gigantic amounts of living (I was going to write breathing but ) organisms in the soil that would love to colonise the next clump of dirt ”
What have illegal boat travellers got to do with CO2 ??
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Andy
I was thinking of micro-orgasms.
You are looking at the macro level.
KK
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Can’t remember where I saw it, but apparently the algae that krill feed off is “LUVIN” the extra CO2. More food for all the ocean kritters, too !!
CO2 is wonderful stuff, isn’t it. A basic part of the carbon/oxygen cycle which we ALL require for life.
The fact that it was apparently at 280ppm for a very long time, shows that this is the bare subsistence level for plant life on Earth.
MORE CO2 PLEASE, says plant life !!!
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But Andy, All these Carbon sinks are a constant don’t ya know- they never vary or fluctuate or react to each other- just look at the pretty picture- that’s the facts, I tells ya! “Uncle Noaa” tells us so, so it must be true.
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So how long before the Left/Green druids decide that there are two kinds of CO2 — a good kind which comes from natural processes and a bad kind that comes from man-made sources?
I know, I know, they’ve probably already thought of that….
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Carbon Tax ????????????????????
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You imbecilic horde of illiterate unwashed jackanapes, I support this study of breath taking importance.
This study goes some ways to validation of my own research that Carbon Dioxide effects plant pigmentation auras.
In a study of three plants, one with normal atmosphere open to normal everyday airflows Study (a, one with an atmosphere of no CO2 or oxygen study (b and one of atmosphere created by running my Leyland p76 exhaust into hermetically system sealed for four days study )c, I established the following results.
Subject (a retained a green pigmentation in experiment, while studies (b and (c showed the pigmentation disappeared completely, evaporated out. Demonstrating that CO2 is dangerous stuff which also demonstrates that this research should be funded at maximum taxpayer levels to preserve the colour of grass and other plants.
My theory appears certain, that CO2 variations can change or decolorize plants and who wants to live in a world of runaway heating and decolorised plants, what will people give each other on Valentines Day and Funerals or sick Aunties in Hossie beds, think of the tragedy.
I am happy to save mankind from this catastrophe, all I ned is the odd grant or sixty.
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Are you sure it wasn’t Autumn?? 🙂
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“what will people give each other on Valentines Day and Funerals or sick Aunties in Hossie beds, think of the tragedy.”
Chocolates of couse… Not sure how that works at funerals.. but 2 out of 3 ain’t bad !!
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typo… I meant “of course”, of course.
signed
Mr Ed.
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aussie public will be “stunned” by this:
14 July: Herald Sun Editorial: Please, not another tax
As reported in today’s Herald Sun, a deposit on bottles and drink containers could cause another blowout in household budgets.
Families may find themselves hundreds of dollars a year out of pocket.
The green tax could put an additional 10c on plastic and glass bottles and cartons. Shoppers will have to take bottles and containers to a recycling centre for a refund.
***But setting up these centres will double the cost, the Australian Food and Grocery Council says. The council says this cost would be passed on to consumers in higher prices.
It bases this on a 10c refund price on bottles in the Northern Territory this year that saw prices increase by 20c a bottle…
More mystifying is why the Gillard Government is supporting the tax, which is being pushed by the Greens, when Labor MPs have spent the past week threatening to put them last on their how-to-vote cards.
Just when the Gillard Government appeared to be waking up to the Greens, with some calling them not so much a political party as a protest movement, it seems they cannot resist putting another tax on people’s shopping trolleys…
Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke wants the states to sign up to the plan.
But it is just another impost that families can do without.
Households are coming to realise that the GST on their bills is going to be calculated on top of the carbon tax.
This tax on a tax has already raised protests from consumer groups.
So will the green tax.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/please-not-another-tax/story-e6frfhqo-1226425775760
altho this story has been up 11 hours, not a word on the matter from ABC or Fairfax.
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Councils pay for recycling bins and recycling collection already.
I guess they could now stop doing that??
This is just another redundant wasteful stupidity from the Lab/Greens.
And again, it will have NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER.. except pushing up prices.
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Just the Labor spin machine with another distraction. Get folks excited about this and it will take some of the heat away from teh tax whose name must not be mentioned. Also takes some of the sting out of the lashing out that Labor is doing to the
communistsGreens and making an ass of themselves doing it. It’s typical. It’s like the lashing out they did a few months ago to Komrad Krudd. BTW did you see how he has developed a counterclockwise spin?00
And while I’m at it, why , now that the carbon tax is in, are other tax-payer subsidies for feed-in, and other green agenda not being phased out.
These should now be being covered by the carbon tax. that’s what its for, isn’t it ??
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AndyG55, you mention here:
While some of those feed in tariffs have indeed been phased out, keep in mind that everyone who had rooftop solar installed prior to the cut off date will still be paid those astronomically exorbitant rates for up to another 25 years.
Queensland phased them out early last week, and in the seven days prior to that cut off date, those installing Companies say they had their best business ever, some almost a couple of years worth of signed installation contracts in a week. (In brackets here, I wonder if the pink batts fiasco is on anyone’s minds) Those Companies are saying that when those installations are all done, then layoffs will be a CERTAINTY, and I seriously wonder just how many of those Companies will fold, as early as October.
Those people who did sign up will be having their excess power fed back to the grid subsidised to the tune of 44 cents per KWH. The retail price of electricity is now around 24 to 25 cents per KWH, and those people will be getting that 44 cents for the next 20 or more years. Besides that feed in tariff, each installation is subsidsed as well.
This is not a case of the State Government paying that subsidy, because all of us pay with the further increased cost of the electricity we have to buy from the grid, the power retailers, who HAVE to buy the excess at that 44 cents per KWH, when they pay barely 5 cents per KWH for their wholesale power from coal fired power plants, now raised due to the Carbon Tax. (sic)
In every State with the roll back of those FIT, everyone who has rooftop solar power is still getting that original FIT, and some States were up close to 60 cents per KWH.
So here you have rabid ‘green’ policy, both the CO2 Tax, and FIT, both considerably raising the cost of electricity for all consumers, and Combet et al et al et al blame poles and wires, and pity help the entity that says our electricity costs have gone up, hence our prices will have to rise.
Tony.
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24 cents???
I’ve just got a notification of the latest price rise here in SA.
Winter rates (including GST) 33.25 for first 3.3 kWh per day, 33.8 for the next 7.7 kWh per day.
The next steps are 38.4 then 41.4. An increase of 20-22%. (the Supply Charge went up 5.2% also).
Summer rates are respectively 34.9, 37.8, 42.4 and 45.4. Off peak is up to 17.2!
A rough calculation shows that my electricity bill will be the same as it was a year ago when I decided to put in solar. Which, by the way from a nominal 2.9 kw installation, has averaged 4.4 kWh per day for the last month. It’s been a bit overcast with all the rain and hail.
Of course in SA we had the “benefit” of Mike Rann (a Premier of very little brain) who wanted lots of wind turbines as well as solar PV. He has gone, but we can’t get rid of his mates for 2 years, and the debts they’ve run up for 20 years or more. They’re trying to close country hospitals and ferry services to save a few millions, and slashing expenditure on wild life and botanic reserves, while selling off parks and ovals for development, and running the new desalination plant for 2 years, even if the water is just pumped to the sea. Meanwhile they want to spend $44 million on a pedestrian bridge between 2 bridges 400 metres apart. And that is the new, ‘cheaper’ plan.
No wonder Labor has turned on the “lunatic, destructive policies” of the Greens – people won’t be able tell to tell the difference from their own.
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Robin Williams says “Forget Green, go brown!” [0:40:16] 😀
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Hi G #3,
I currently pay about 24cents a KW from AGL but am yet to get a new bill si we shall see. I put my panels in back in June so have not gt a new bill to see what the difference is.
To Tony,
Here in Adelaide the new rate is only 16 cents from the government with 8 cents from AGL (7 from Origin) so i only get 24 cents back. The company i went with wont go broke for a while they have jobs booked up till xmas and they have two really big commercial projects on the go. In fact they are installing 4000 panels at one site out my way.
Interestly……..the other day it was overcast and cold as a witches tit and my system was producing about 800 watts then suddenly the clouds parted and my system then was producing 3.4KW then the sun disappeared again. Whats strange is that i only 16 panels at 190 watts each and an inverter rated to 3.3.
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it would be interesting if TA after next election, removed the mandate for electrical companies to pay the high feed-in tariffs.
See which companies still want to be “Greeeen” and which ones want to survive. 😉
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This is a science topic, so of course Adam Smith is missing …
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…like an MWP at a UN convention.
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🙂
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The Adam Smith “Resistance is Futile” Collective are on the other side of the Galaxy addressing a Black Hole convention.
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Its Saturday.. schools aren’t open on Saturday.
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My take on AS.
One of them “says” he has a doctorate, so I’m thinking PhD in a humanities or literature field (he understands double negatives by not colloquialisms).. certainly NOT anything to do with science, even remotely.
That being the case, the only job he can get is in a social studies or english faculty at an inner city high school, where his propaganda instincts are being played out through a bunch of ideolised year 10 students, who help him/her with forum postings.
Hence the total mish-mash of comments and the underlying scientific ignorance.
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I agree,
The addams family reminds me of some philosophy students who learnt how to manipulate an argument but never quite got around to really understanding either the argument or the subject matter.
All about winning an argument technically rather than contributing to a discussion.
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And doesn’t it half tweak the BS monitor !!! 😉
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Very much like the current Lab/green mob !!
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The smith family is so yesterday….
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[…] Keep reading → Share this:ShareDiggEmailRedditPrintStumbleUponTwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. […]
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[We’re not keen on this type of posting. There is always a chance some fool will send abusive emails which will then reflect on this blog. Remember the “death threats” saga. Mod oggi]
A bit OT but still global warming FRAUD related…….
MORE GLOBAL WARMING LIES AND PROPAGANDA ABOUT THE BARRIER REEF:-
FFS AUSTRALIANS HAVE HAD A GUTFULL OF THIS CRAP !
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/coral-wonderland-at-tipping-point-20120713-2210n.html
Here are the email addresses of the [snip],people mentioned in the story.
SEND THEM AN EMAIL AND TELL THEM WHAT YOU THINK OF THEIR BULLSHIT !
[email protected]
[email protected];
[email protected];
[email protected];
[email protected];
[email protected]
_____________________________________________________
Since the email addresses are readily available from faculties we have decided to publish these. Please keep any comments civil. Perhaps suggest the read articles such as this by Jennifer Marohasy to give some balance on their scare campaign – *Ed]
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For my long suffering readers, I have had a very productive 48 hours showing precisely why GHG warming is self-controlling to a constant level, and it’s a very subtle effect.
GHGs are thermal emitters so exhibit self-absorption making the emissivity level off at a critical concentration. For CO2 it’s ~200 ppmV at ambient temperature. Incoming IR reduces the number of unexcited molecules so the emissivity towards the Earth’s surface increases. Think of equal fluxes either way and the emissivity reaches the ‘linear level’. But that’s not the end of the story. That IR reaches the earth’s surface and fills up its CO2 band specific emitters, reducing its emissivity
[Those of you who know proper radiation physics will realise this is the way Prevost Exchange Energy controls net IR energy transfer. For the majority, including ALL climate scientists who are taught false propaganda physics, either accept what I say or get yourself an advanced textbook for the beach until you do understand.]
So, once GHGs become self-absorbing, a low concentration, the effective absorptivity for incoming IR in those bands first falls then tends to zero because it chokes off the supply. The higher the atmospheric temperature, the more powerful is this effect. The Earth’s non GHG band IR increases in the ‘atmospheric window’ so the GHE is self limiting.
Also because direct thermalisation cannot occur because of quantum exclusion, most thermalisation is by pseudo-scattering to clouds. This is why the IR spectrum from clouds shows the same effect, the band energy shifted to the atmospheric window making them appear as grey bodies. As the same happens at their top surface, the cloud filters out the GHG bands as the energy heads to space.
The bottom line; GHG warming is self regulating, probably to a constant level because the more IR you have, the more the regulation mechanism shifts energy to the atmospheric window. Because of its simple band structure, the self-absorption concentration for CO2 is at ice age level so there can be no CO2-AGW.
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TON,
Are you effectively saying :
* that you have figured out a probable sequence of radiative mechanisms that explains how the warming effect of CO2 becomes empirically logarithmic w.r.t. concentration, and
* that CO2 will have a minor GHG effect at ice age temperatures but virtually no incremental effect at today’s globally averaged temperature?
Also, if both your hypothetical mechanism and current convention were codified in radiative transfer computer models, what spatial and temporal resolution and extent would the model run have to have to show a difference in output between your physics and the “propaganda physics”? Is the difference subtle?
Is the difference large enough to make testable predictions measurable in the real world?
If you can explain it to someone who didn’t get any further than 1st year uni undergrad math, that would be quite helpful (though perhaps ambitious).
If you can explain and contrast Miskolski’s ideas and Harry Huffman’s ideas with yours then it might also help locate the idea on the intellectual landscape.
That all sounds very intriguing. Please continue!
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Hi Andrew
The incoming radiation from the Sun has a spread of frequencies defining the type of energy that is available for extraction.
There are two locations in this spread of frequencies where CO2 is able to absorb some of this energy and water competes with CO2 on one of them.
As water is in greater preponderance it is the big energy absorber but lets not get too complicated, lets ignore water for the moment.
If it was only CO2 absorbing at the most important frequency and at 350 ppm CO2 it is absorbing 80% of the available energy then we have a limiting situation developing.
By adding more CO2 we get closer to the point where 100% of the available energy is absorbed. Adding more CO2 will not result in more energy uptake because the incoming solar energy has been totally drained at that frequency.
I had a bucket analogy planned but hope the above explains something useful.
The bucket analogy.
You go to a 100 liter water tank with two 20 liter buckets (350 ppm CO2) and fill them.
There are still 60 liters left in the tank (incoming active frequency).
If you have 6 buckets (say 400 ppm CO2) you would come way with 5 full and one empty.
The empty one is like the excess capacity of CO2 in the atmosphere.
It is there but it can’t do anything.
There is no need for massive calculations as this is a scientific lock on further speculation about CO2 and radiation absorption.
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Looks like another episode of Gergiscide by some waterfowl minders. (Duck heeds)
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“[…] We should challenge them to admit that CO2 is the most important nutrient for all life on earth[…]”
I think pretty much all of those making mounds of cash out of the scam already know that.
Water + CO2 using energy from the Sun makes Food + Oxygen
Little wonder that the other (non CO2) aim of these folk (anyone talking “sustainability”) is to turn water into a scarce and expensive commodity. They can’t control the output of the Sun.
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“Plants grow much faster when CO2 is higher, the optimum concentration is between 1500-2000 ppm so there is a long way to go before plants are happy.”
But this works both ways. There is also a (CO2) level where life as we know it will end. Somewhere around 100ppm. A quick glance at GEOCARB tells me that there is no carbon “cycle” and that life would, without our wreckless CO2 antics, be due to come to an end in a what is a blink of the eye in geological terms.
Ironic that the “planet savers” are actually cutting a tens of millions of years
((back to) 350(ppm).org) from the life expectancy of everything on Earth. Then again I could have mis-interpreted the trend line – is 600 million years a long enough to see a
death spiraltrend?Talk about unintended consequences. That’s a big one.
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Whilst it’s not state law yet, this would have to be a good move.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/political-news/scientists-reject-lnp-school-move-20120713-221or.html
True to form, “the scientists” have expressed their displeasure at this outbreak of reality.
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