Groundbreaking Study: Earth Absorbs Excessive CO2

[PocketProtector]

http://www.thefoxnation.com/business...-excessive-co2



New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.

The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.

The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.

This work is extremely important for climate change policy, because emission targets to be negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen early next month have been based on projections that have a carbon free sink of already factored in. Some researchers have cautioned against this approach, pointing at evidence that suggests the sink has already started to decrease.

[kunsunoke]

Fake science falls to earth, yet again, in the face of real science.

Nevertheless, Algore, Captain Blunderful, NASA-GISS and the IPCC will keep telling us to "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."

[mcmcallister]

climate change is like al gore, nothing but hot air

[Philbert]

This is excellent news. It exposes the incessant whining about contrary viewpoints being excluded from research and will advance our understanding of how the climate works.

There is a right way and a wrong way to respond to this news. The right way is to note that

The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket.

I'm sure that Dr Knorr discussed the previous research in his article and offered his reasoning for disagreeing with them. Time and future research will show whether this reasoning is sound. In the mean time, we should not jump to conclusions.

The wrong way to respond to this is to start citing this study in isolation, declaring it "real science" because it agrees with your preconceptions while dismissing contrary research as "fake science". It should also not be taken as license to continue throwing out CO2. As Dr Knorr puts it

"Like all studies of this kind, there are uncertainties in the data, so rather than relying on Nature to provide a free service, soaking up our waste carbon, we need to ascertain why the proportion being absorbed has not changed."

This of course wasn't quoted in the Fox link above, unsurprisingly since they who advocate that we should, in fact, rely upon nature to sort itself out and continue pumping CO2 into the air with abandon. Which, BTW, is not true even if Knorr's research is correct since he only talks about proportions of CO2 being absorbed.

[308man]

You mean......gulp........ the earth takes care of itself. I thought we were the only ones the could save it.

[mcmcallister]

dont worry obama will put a stop to this....... greedy lil earth trying to destroy cap and tax

[kunsunoke]

(SNIP)
The wrong way to respond to this is to start citing this study in isolation, declaring it "real science" because it agrees with your preconceptions while dismissing contrary research as "fake science".

Phil, we've been over this many times.

Fake science is fake because it was tampered with to get a preconceived result (that we are turning our planet into a molten ball of goo). As I've mentioned here over and over again, NASA-GISS was busted not only for cherry-picking the data to support said preconception but it also was guilty of writing a computer algorithm that gave a hockey stick result NO MATTER WHAT DATA IT WAS FED.

It should also not be taken as license to continue throwing out CO2.

Why not? Do you think we have an excess of CO2 in the atmosphere or something? We don't. CO2 levels are normally 2.5 to 3 times what they are now when the earth is not in an ice age (which we technically still are).

Try looking up the CO2 levels during the last ice age. They dropped to the 170 - 180 ppm level. Vegetation is adversely affected below 200 ppm, and cannot be sustained below around 100 - 120 or so.

Greenhouses pump their CO2 levels up to the 900 - 1000 ppm range. Works pretty well at accelerating the growth rates.

This of course wasn't quoted in the Fox link above, unsurprisingly since they who advocate that we should, in fact, rely upon nature to sort itself out and continue pumping CO2 into the air with abandon. Which, BTW, is not true even if Knorr's research is correct since he only talks about proportions of CO2 being absorbed.

Why can't we keep pumping it into the atmosphere? We contribute far less than one percent of greenhouse gases to this planet.

If you're that worried, maybe you ought to look at the actual relationship between temperature and CO2 levels (e.g. not the Al Gore / Laurie David "enhanced" version with the switched labeling of the data sets) - it shows that temperature leads CO2 levels. The opposite is never true.

So your premise (that humans can control CO2 content of the earth's atmosphere through their activities and that doing so will result in a global catastrophe) is both unscientific and false. And returning us to the stone age through punitive taxation just so some hippies can feel better about their pathetic existences accomplishes aught except worldwide poverty. We don't need that shit.

[ajax]

We contribute far less than one percent of greenhouse gases to this planet.

Yep. Actually besides being one of the weaker greenhouse gases, many people don't seem realize that ppm is quite small. Very interesting, considering that all plant life, and subsequently all life on the planet can manage to survive with so little CO2.

Pre Industrial rev:280ppm = 0.028% atmosphere (roughly)
As of this past Oct: 384ppm = 0.038%

[GunLawyer001]

Yep, CO2 is plant food, that's why talking to your plants every day seems to help them (plus it means that you remember to water them.)

The Man-caused Global Climate Change crowd argues in almost the exact same manner as the End of the World religious cults. They have their conclusion, and all facts must be spun to support it. And when they lose the argument, they claim that their opponent is an evil witch, a non-believer, an infidel, or "outside the mainstream".

Old crazy religious nuts used to burn the non-believers, now they just remove your funding and try to cancel your TV show.

It's never been "science" to argue that "we already discussed it before you got here and we all agree". "Science" is about repeatable experiments and observations which, collectively, lead inescapably to one conclusion.

This is based on faulty computer models that can't predict the weather next month to within a degree or two, but we're supposed to believe their predictions of a couple degrees half a century down the road. The same models can't account for the weather 50 years ago; if you feed in the known data for 1950, it will predict 1960 incorrectly, and it has no chance at guessing at 2009. The models are wrong. You're a fool to rely on the predictions of someone with a record of getting it wrong, just as we are a nation of idiots to trust Obama with the economy after he said that "without the Stimulus Package, unemployment will hit 8.5%". We gave him 900 billion dollars, and WITH the Stimulus package it's over 10%.

I predict this: before I rely on anyone's predictions, I want to see what happened with their previous predictions. I want proof that they can see 1 year ahead before I change my life around based on 50-year predictions.

[ungawa]

...I want proof that they can see 1 year ahead before I change my life around based on 50-year predictions.

In all honesty, if our climate future can be estimated out 50 years, it does not mean it can be predicted next year. Whenever you model the physical world there are fluctuations that can't be predicted, and in some cases can't be explained. So I don't like that particular argument.

That being stated, I agree with you. Not just with your conclusion, I agree with the methodology of your evaluation (sans the 1 year thing). The period of interest seems to be about 100 years and they have never predicted anything properly over any timeframe. And they keep backtracking. The predictions become less and less ominous with every revision to fit observed data. And they keep adding parameters to make the models take into account the unpredicted observations while keeping the prediction eye on the prize - funding.

When I speak of "parameters," I am using the term in a very specific sense. I know it is a mathematical term and also used in other ways. I am using the term in the classical sense of process dynamics and modeling. It generally means one of two things:

- We have physical evidence that the process is following a mathematical model but it is deviating from the model. We have a second mathematical model, also from a well-understood and properly mathematically characterized physical phenomena, which we believe is happening at the same time. If we introduce a parameter that couples the two, the response is predictable.

- We have know idea what is going on but we have reduced response transfer functions to a lower order with this parameter that seems to not only match prior observations but also predict future response.

We use models with parameters at work. If anybody uses more than one, there is a serious review. If anybody uses more than two, they are curve-fitting and the model is not based in the physical reality of the situation. The biggest difference is that our predictions have to be correct. Every time.

One simple example of many available. Six years ago scientists were claiming that global warming is linked to solar cycles. They predicted that the earth was about to fall into a cooling phase. Global warming scientists said that the minor effect of the sun could never override the output of the powerful disturbance of global warming. Now, not only is the world cooling, but in retrospect was cooling before even the public predictions. Global warming scientists now say it is true that solar disturbances have changed the situation in the short term but cannot overcome certain disaster in the long term. They still don't understand the complex relationship between solar activity, the atmosphere, and Earth surface temperatures. They are furiously trying to figure it out. Meanwhile, they've added another series of parameters to get the funding predictions back on track.