New paper – “absence of correlation between temperature changes … and CO2″

Watts Up With That? ^ | January 1, 2011 | Anthony Watts

[palmer]

Ok, I figured I should read the paper, rather than one sentence. So I did and it can be easily disproven. Vegetation takes up lighter C12 in preference to the C13 isotope. The annual cycle of the C12/C13 ratio shows the same rise and fall as CO2 overall. That means vegetation in the northern hemisphere is absorbing CO2 in the spring and summer and releasing it in the winter.

The thesis of the paper is that warmer oceans are releasing CO2 in our winter (southern hemisphere summer, we will be closest to the sun on Jan 3rd). Unlike plants, the ocean takes up carbon irrespective of isotope. So the ocean is not involved to any great extent.

[SunkenCiv]

What's "CO2″" ? ;') Thanks Ernest!

[SunkenCiv]

Full Text (PDF, 1794KB)  PP.102-112 DOI: 10.4236/ijg.2010.13014

Thanks Ernest_at_the_Beach.

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[wendy1946]

At some point, you can’t just go on trying to base national policy on bullshit. I mean, you’d think there would have to come a point at which even the demoKKKrat congressmen would start to fear that their people were going to start to comprehend this stuff.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Big Hmmm...

[az_gila]

Ooops - there's a negative feedback mechanism.

But if I rewrite my AGW models I'll lose grant money...

Oh, what is a scientist to do? /S

[Eleutheria5]

It’s all because Al Gore, after being robbed of the presidency in 2000, found and killed Man-Bear-Pig. He’s been celebrating with the Munchkins ever since.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

Thanks Ernest.

[TigersEye]

Solar insolation has not increased during the period in question and temperature change in the oceans offers no long term answer either as that heat must ultimately come from an increase in solar insolation (or increased GH gas activity). R. Gates

I don't know whether it was intentional or just a careless use of language but R. Gates is making a patently false statement there. Heat cannot originate from a GH gas. The whole point of GH Theory is that atmospheric gasses act as an insulator trapping heat. The same way a down jacket traps heat. Goose down does not produce any heat either. To ascribe activity to GH gasses is false for the same reason. There is no activity in a GH gas except at the atomic level. The atoms in a goose feather are just as active.

The author may not have established where the heat comes from but everyone can stop examining the down jacket, er, I mean the GH gasses, as a source.

[TigersEye]

Second, he seems to be looking for monthly or seasonal warming signatures from the fluctuations in CO2, yet no GCM has ever indicated that such signatures would be found but rather, it is the long-term increase in CO2 since around 1750 (up 40% since that time) that would eventually become the dominant signal upon which other natural cycles would ride. His insistence that various shorter term CO2 fluctuations should be seen in the temperature data is unsupported by any climate model. - R. Gates

R. Gates may have a point there but it's not particularly compelling. In fact it's rather nit-picking. The GCMs may not show any indicators of a seasonal fluctuation in temps that correlate with seasonal CO2 fluctuations. (How could they even get an accurate measure, in ppm, of global CO2 fluctuations for a period of a few months?) But GH Theory stands on its own prediction that there must be an overall positive signature of warming that could only come from the insulating properties of atmospheric gasses. It is a signature that is extremely easy to gather data on which means that it is either there or it isn't. It isn't.

No Smoking Hot Spot (The Australian)

The missing hotspot (JoNova)

Those two articles take Greenhouse Theory at face value and by the criterion set up in the theory itself finds no evidence of warming on the basis of greenhouse effect.

That means that if the earth's average temperature rose 100 degrees, and all life roasted off of the face of the planet, but no "hot spot" in the upper atmosphere existed then one of two things must be true. 1.) The warming had nothing to do with GH gasses. or 2.) GH Theory is so flawed that its own criterion is a complete failure in establishing GH-produced warming even when it is actually happening.

The odds that a theory can be so bad that it can't prove itself correct even though the ultimate conclusion is true are staggering. That would mean that all the work ever done on GH Theory wasn't similar to but exactly the same as 100 monkeys with typewriters eventually writing the Bible. 100% random luck.

[BenLurkin]

[bill1952]

>Bottom line is there won't any trace of a seasonal CO2 signal in climate.
Seasonal analysis is a black hole for climate attribution studies.

Okay, how about decades? 50+ years?

If you extend back to 1958, the co-efficient of correlation between CO2 and HadCRUt global temperatures is 0.907.

How significant is that?

Well put it this way : The co-efficient of correlation between the number of Home Runs hit in MLB and HadCRUt global temperatures over the same time period is 0.885.

Make of that what you will!

[qam1]

The thesis of the paper is that warmer oceans are releasing CO2 in our winter (southern hemisphere summer, we will be closest to the sun on Jan 3rd). Unlike plants, the ocean takes up carbon irrespective of isotope. So the ocean is not involved to any great extent.

Wouldn't Henry's law mean that the oceans would dissolve (and hold) more of the heavier C13 while releasing more of the lighter C12?

[palmer]

Don't know, but the difference would be proportional to the molecular weight adding the two oxygen molecules. Englenbeen seems to know what he's talking about here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/28/spencer-pt2-more-co2-peculiarities-the-c13c12-isotope-ratio/ but I didn't see him mention Henry's Law.