This is a continuation of a remarkable thread that has now received 10,000 comments running to well over a million words. Unfortunately its size has become a problem and this is the reason for the move.
The history of the New Statesman thread goes back to December 2007 when Dr David Whitehouse wrote a very influential article for that publication posing the question Has Global Warming Stopped? Later, Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environment correspondent, wrote a furious reply, Has Global Warming Really Stopped?
By the time the New Statesman closed the blogs associated with these articles they had received just over 3000 comments, many from people who had become regular contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, its implications for public policy and the economy. At that stage I provided a new home for the discussion at Harmless Sky.
Comments are now closed on the old thread. If you want to refer to comments there then it is easy to do so by left-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the normal way.
Here’s to the next 10,000 comments.
Useful links:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
The original Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs thread is here with 10,000 comments.
Max, and James P:
I see that your friend Peter Martin (aka under the incredibly ingenious anagram of Tempterrain), is still banging on in his 2425 about (a) Cerberus’ 35,800 molecules of air compared with (b) the apparently more popular number of 85,800 molecules. Out of curiosity, I Googled (b) and found a large number of on-topic hits, whereas for (a) there appears to be only one on-topic source, but a surprising number on medical/biology topics. {suggesting that (a) might be a mistake?}
The following example of (b) is rather interesting in that it is concerned with the education of children that being another topic that has been recently discussed elsewhere on Harmless Sky:.
http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2010/07/throughout-my-school-life-we-have-had.html
Several other hits reference the IPCC and Al Gore to the 1 molecule per 85,800 thingy, but I can’t be bothered to check them out. The boring beat-up by Anagram Pete is just too monotonously trivial, and is typically unconsidered assumptiveness from him. A waste of page space.
Furthermore, I don’t see anything sinister in Cerberus’ comment, because he appears to have quoted it from somewhere else, and a plausible explanation for his 35,800 versus 85,800 is a one-finger-stroke error on his keyboard, or possibly a reading transcription error. (any statisticians or dyslexia experts around to help out here?)
PeterM
Yes, Peter (2425). The calculated increase from 1850 to today equals around 8 molecules CO2 for 85,800 molecules of air.
It is 100 molecules of CO2 for 1,000,000 molecules of air (+100 ppmv)
And it is 1 molecule of CO2 for 10,000 molecules of air (not 35,800 molecules of air, as Cerberus wrote).
So in absolute terms it remains a “teeny weeny difference between itsy bitsy numbers” (I will refrain from analogies to make my point here).
The question is: Has this increase been caused:
a) exclusively by human emissions,
b) largely by human emissions,
c) partly by human emissions or
d) is there no correlation at all, in view of the many unknowns in the much larger natural CO2 cycle of our planet?
Please choose one of the above, with a brief explanation of the supporting logic (and then I’ll give you my pick).
Then we can move on to the “climate impact” of this “teeny weeny difference between itsy bitsy numbers” (2423), followed by a discussion of the possible climate impact of an additional “little bitty” increase of today’s “itsy bitsy” concentration.
OK?
Max
Bob_FJ
The link you cited includes a quotation, which Cerberus may have misquoted (assuming that was the source of his information):
Splitting hairs here, Schreuder’s first sentence was correct when there were 385 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere and he wrote this. Today there are 390 ppmv and this equals 33 molecules in 84,620 molecules of air.
His second sentence is a bit more vague, since he does not mention a time period over which humans produce the 1 molecule out of 85,800.
Over the past 10 years human have produced 30 billion tons (Gt) CO2 per year on average, which would theoretically have increased the atmospheric concentration by 3.8 ppmv per year.
But the concentration only increased by 2.1 ppmv per year (or 0.18 molecules of CO2 per year out of 85,800), with the other 45% “missing” (absorbed by ocean and biosphere, converted to carbonates, lost to space, etc.?).
So it would take 5.5 years for the concentration to increase by 1 molecule out of 85,800.
Schreuder could have written
He could also have written
Either sentence would have been more specific (although there are still the questions of other possible net sources of CO2 plus the “disappearing” CO2 mentioned above).
But I think this topic has truly been beaten to death by Peter and myself, and we should move on to something more interesting, as I have suggested to him.
Max
PeterM
Pardon me for intruding into your exchange with Axel, but I could not help noticing your statement to him:
If you read Axels 2424 more closely, you will see that he has not referred to the “GH effect conjecture” (as you have apparently erroneously understood) but to the
The difference here is enormous. As they say in French: “vive la difference”.
There may well be a GH effect, but there is no empirical scientific evidence to support what Axel refers to as the “dangerous AGW conjecture”.
And I have to agree with him fully on that.
Since you have been unable to cite such empirical scientific evidence, you apparently agree, as well (unless we are back to discussing “dogma”, as Axel calls it).
Max
Yes that is right, manacker.
What I am now saying is that there is practically no “science” involved in this “AGW” at all. The logical fallacies abound, and the arguments are mostly fatuous. They are risible, and it is sad that so many “scientists” are deluded.
No-one disagrees that there are GHGs, and that indeed one of them is CO2, and that in fact increases in GHGs may cause a warming effect.
However there is some credibility gap between the so called “evidence” that this will be the cause of the effect which Peter calls, “Dangerous AGW”.
I am now calling this “The Hokum Dogma behind the Bogus AGW Conjecture”.
GHG Theory and AGW Theory are not actually related at all.
One is a proven fact, they other is a phantasmagorical allgory, a kind of extended metaphor, which has become more convoluted and perverted as time has passed, and criminals have cashed in on the public confusion.
That should have been phantasmagorical allegory, surely ?
Perhaps you were thinking of Al Gore, eh?
:D
Axel Morris
What you have written (2430), with the exception of your “Freudian spelling slip” (as corrected by Chung Hing Koi-Carp) is actually the crux of the debate here.
Although there are conflicting theories, almost everyone would agree
a) that CO2 is a GH gas,
b) that GHGs slow down the radiation of outgoing LW energy thereby warming the atmosphere and the planet,
c) that atmospheric CO2 levels have risen (at least since measurements were installed in 1958, and quite probably even before this, based on less conclusive ice core reconstructions), and
d) that human emissions of CO2 from various sources, including principally fossil fuel combustion, have contributed to this net increase.
That is the GH theory as it applies to CO2.
There are, however, other hypotheses. Link to a conflicting hypothesis is here, but let’s accept the greenhouse hypothesis “as is” for now:
http://www.physorg.com/news11710.html
In addition to water, there are other natural + human-caused GHGs, notably methane, but IPCC has told us that the net effect of all other anthropogenic GHGs plus aerosols, etc. cancel one another out, so these can be ignored for now.
So the dispute essentially involves the degree of global warming we might expect from human GHG emissions, principally CO2.
Some doomsayers (James E. Hansen, for example) tell us we are already at the “dangerous” level, of atmospheric CO2, where “tipping points” can occur to cause “irreversible deleterious effects” to our climate, resulting in sea level increase, which can be measured “in meters” in this century, “extinction of species” and serious consequences for human society plus our environment. He has conjured up a “Venus-like” runaway warming effect.
Other climate scientists, such as Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen, tell us that there may well be a slight GH warming from a doubling of pre-industrial CO2, but that this will be less than 1°C and therefore nothing to worry about.
The IPCC reports point to an alarming degree of GH warming (although their forecasts are considerably less hysterical than those of Hansen). They tell us we can expect GH warming of between 1.1 to 6.4°C from the end of the 20th century to the end of the 21st century (“best estimate” from the model simulations is 1.8 to 4.0°C), with expected warming of 0.2°C per decade for the first decades of the 21st century.
So far, these model projections have been way off. Over the first 9 years of the 21st century atmospheric temperatures at both the surface and in the troposphere have cooled by 0.07°C per decade (rather than warming at three times this rate), despite record increase in atmospheric CO2.
At the same time the temperature of the upper ocean has also cooled since more reliable Argo measurements replaced the old, unreliable, expendable XBT devices in 2003.
Latent heat of melting ice and added net evaporation are too small to make a difference, so it is clear that our planet has lost energy.
This is an embarrassment for those who support the concept that AGW represents a serious potential threat. One scientist, Kevin Trenberth, has referred to it as a “travesty”, suggesting in an interview that “clouds” may be acting as a “natural thermostat” to radiate the “missing energy” into “space”.
The UK Met Office (also staunch supporters of the premise that AGW is a serious threat) has suggested that this cooling (despite record CO2 increase) may have been caused by “natural variability” in our climate system (i.e. “natural forcing factors”).
This, again, opens a “can of worms” for proponents of the IPCC view that natural forcing has played an insignificant climate forcing role since 1750 (i.e. “how can it have been “insignificant” for the past 250+ years and suddenly “overwhelming” for the past decade?”).
A dilemma.
At the same time, recent studies based on actual physical observations from CERES satellites (Spencer et al.) have shown that the net overall feedback from clouds with warming is strongly negative, rather than strongly positive, as previously assumed by all the IPCC model simulations (admittedly with the concession that “cloud feedbacks remain the largest source of uncertainty”). This recent study provides the empirical evidence based on actual physical observations that clouds do, indeed, act “as a natural thermostat”, as Trenberth suggested.
Then there was another recent study by Lindzen and Choi, based on ERBE satellite observations, which also confirms that the net overall feedback with surface warming is one of cooling. L+C arrive at a 2xCO2 climate sensitivity of 0.4 to 0.5°C, but details of the calculation method have been challenged, and it is likely that this is really between 0.6 and 0.8°C.
At any rate, it appears that the empirical scientific data that are being collected, based on actual physical observations, tell us that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will have a relatively minor effect on our planet’s climate, and that the expected GH warming to year 2100 will most likely be in the range of 0.3 to 0.5°C, rather than 1.1 to 6.4°C, as projected earlier by IPCC (or even higher, as conjured up by James E. Hansen).
This is the crux of the discussion, as far as I can see.
I had hoped to get PeterM to enter this debate of the science behind the “dangerous AGW premise” with me, but, so far, he has resisted discussing the real scientific issues, preferring instead to “appeal to authority” (“I must be right because the RS, NAS, IPCC, etc. agree with me”) or to enter peripheral political discussions.
I hope you can get him to enter a discussion of the “science” – because that is where it all begins:
As I have told Peter repeatedly, it’s all about the “science” (or lack thereof), in my opinion.
Max
Axel Smith,
“Dangerous” doesn’t necessarily mean that the worst possible outcome will occur. For many years in my youth I rode around on a motorcycle, quite dangerous looking back, but here I still am, and completely unharmed!
The range of warming which is thought will occur if GHG concentrations are allowed to increase in an uncontrolled manner is naturally the subject of some uncertainty. If we’re lucky they will be at the lower end of the scale and the Earth too will survive relatively unharmed. However, if not………
Allowing CO2 levels, and perhaps other GHG’s, to double is taking a step into the unknown. Despite what you might think, the warming effect will be determined by exactly the same physical principles which determine the 33 deg warming the Earth experiences from the natural greenhouse effect.
If you agree that it is a “proven fact” that there is a natural GH effect , and if it is “a proven fact” that CO2 is an important GH gas, without which the Earth would be many degrees colder, then it doesn’t make any sense at all to deny that it might just be more than a little dangerous to allow CO2 and other GHG concentrations to double.
Max, Reur 2415,
As a quick response to your comments on the IPCC claim of very long residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere, let me make an analogous comparison of legend that is famous in an ensemble of other popular religious sects. (aka collectively as those “of the Book“):
“Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other, Samson said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines!’ Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived” (Jgs 16:29–30). “Peerless” Edition of the Holy Bible (Erie PA: Lovell Manufacturing, 188)
Sorry; well actually, I don’t believe that legend….. But religion can be strange
Bob_FJ
Thanks for your 2434. I can only agree with you that the long residence time of CO2 in our atmosphere as assumed by the IPCC models is questionable. Segalstad’s study, which you cited, relies on several observations using three separate and totally different methods and concludes, on average, that this is 7.5 years.
IPCC believes that it is 100+ years.
The record shows that only around half of the CO2 emitted by humans ends up in the atmosphere. One study has well over half being absorbed by land vegetation and the ocean biosphere.
http://www.nature.com/climate/2007/0708/full/climate.2007.35.html
The assumption is also made by IPCC that the portion of the CO2, which is absorbed by the ocean, remains dissolved there to cause an “itsy bitsy” (but disastrous) decrease in the alkaline pH of the ocean. [IPCC erroneously refers to this (unmeasured but assumed) miniscule reduction of ocean alkalinity as “increasing acidification of the ocean”.]
Furthermore [and this is the weirdest assumption], it is postulated that this dissolved CO2 will eventually be miraculously expelled from the ocean to the atmosphere (in a hypothetical process dubbed “climate-carbon cycle coupling”) to fry us even more!
In the real world, studies have shown that phytoplankton gobble the added CO2 up vigorously and that, through the natural food chain, a good portion of this is eventually converted to calcium carbonate, which ends up on the ocean bottom.
In summary, the whole carbon cycle is much more complex than the climatologists and computer jockeys who feed IPCC can imagine in their overly simplistic and myopic fixation on AGW from human CO2 emissions.
But these are not issues, which Peter likes to discuss. They are a bit too “scientific” for his taste.
Max
Max,
I’m sure that we’ve discussed residence times before and you are determined to believe, despite all the evidence, that excess CO2 half life is about 6 months!
If that’s really the case, then CO2 mitigation costs are going to be much lower than anyone now expects and therefore all the more reason for doing it :-)
Max, Reur 2415 part 2
Particularly your citation: http://brneurosci.org/co2.html
I think that the author of the article, T.J. Nelson, a biophysicist, tries to make it a lot simpler than it really is. Apart from a bunch of very important unmentioned interacting dynamics, his application of “saturation absorption” or “extinction of EMR” concepts, is a tad controversial. The purely radiative aspects of the GHE can be very differently described in radiative power terms, as the net effect between up-welling EMR and back-radiation. (See for example the IPCC/ Travesty Trenberth’s famous cartoon, as a crude conceptual illustration of it). In other words, the back-radiation SLOWS the rate of HEAT loss from below.
1) The concept Nelson appears to describe can be illustrated with sunlight penetrating water. The blue part of its spectrum penetrates to around 100m, whilst the near-infrared, stops in the surface skin. These are true extinctions; the sunlight can go no further. However, the situation is somewhat different with IR radiation leaving the surface into normally cooler air above.
According to my slight understanding of Quantum Theory; Those photons fitting the absorption band frequencies of the GHG molecules will be absorbed by them at some point.# However, that does not extinguish the photon/EMR flux. The very same GHG molecules may re-emit, or others will newly emit countless times, with some EMR progressively ascending upwards to eventually escape to space, (as is necessary towards achieving planetary equilibrium), and some downwards, thus creating the radiative aspect in GHE.
2) According to reference [21], the chart of absorption spectra data is as old as 1955, and I guess it is theoretical using QM calculation data, and/or lab data. I seem to recall criticism of something like it somewhere implying that care is needed in using it. It would also have better perspective if the Planck curves for the Sun and the Earth were superimposed, as seen in some similar stuff.
Notes:
#The initial surface emission (EMR) is equally in all directions hemispherically, with a large proportion of it being lateral or near to horizontal. Thus, even with very long photon free path lengths, their first absorption event may be very close to the surface. Re-emissions then become spherical in all directions, and thus, back radiation (GHE) is most intense near the surface. Much of the lateral EMR flux has no HEAT transfer effect because in homogenous air parcels, each photon stream is met by equal and opposite photon streams. Some climate scientists do not seem to understand the difference between EMR and HEAT. They even sometimes call long-wave EMR ‘thermal radiation‘, and Nelson too slipped at one point calling it ’heat radiation’. It’s quite odd really, because sunlight which is obviously a lot more powerful than surface long-wave radiation is not ever referred to as thermal, as far as I’ve seen.
PeterM
You wrote (2436):
You are wrong yet once again! (How do you keep doing it? You have an amazing knack for getting it wrong every time!)
The Segalstad paper, which Bob_FJ cited, refers to several different studies.
I had seen an earlier summary by Segalstad, concluding:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm
Segalstad cites over 30 independent studies using 6 different methods to arrive at this estimate (when I averaged the times from each study, I got a bit more than 7 years, instead of 5 – try it yourself).
But no, Peter, it’s not “6 months’ half life” – it’s probably closer to 5 to 10 years lifetime.
Total “human CO2” (fossil fuels, deforestation, cement, etc.) was estimated to be around 30 Gt CO2 per year over the past 10 years.
The natural carbon cycle is enormous in comparison:
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/carboncycle.htm
Just as an example, photosynthesis absorbs 15 times more CO2 than humans produce, and the ocean absorbs and desorbs 10 times as much.
Then there is the worrisome “natural CO2” coming from volcanoes. We know that the known 1,500 or so (mostly above-ground) volcanoes emit only around 1% of that emitted by humans on average, but what about all the suspected but unknown submarine volcanoes and fissures in the Earth’s crust? In his book, “Heaven and Earth”, geologist Ian Plimer estimates that the total amount of CO2 released naturally from the Earth’s crust would actually exceed the amount emitted by humans.
As this report states:
http://www.iceagenow.com/Three_Million_Underwater_Volcanoes.htm
Whether Plimer’s estimate is correct or not is uncertain. Coby Beck at the Grist site does not believe so, but has no real data to back up his point, so it remains an open question.
http://www.grist.org/article/volcanoes-emit-more-co2-than-humans/
At any rate, it is clear that we are talking about very small differences between very large numbers, when we speak of the human impact on our planet’s CO2 cycle, and it appears that the question of the CO2 lifetime in our atmosphere is still very much an open question.
Is it 100+ years as IPCC models estimate? Is it 5-10 years as Segalstad indicates?
[At any rate, we can be fairly sure that it is not “a halftime of 6 months”, as you wrote.]
Max
Bob_FJ
Thanks for your 2437 regarding Nelson’s paper.
Let me study this a bit, and I’ll get back to you later.
Before getting into the “saturation absorption” aspects, I like Nelson’s “empirical extrapolation” concept.
Nelson states that this approach should give him an “upper limit” projection.
So he starts with observed change in CO2 and temperature over the 20th century and arrives at an “upper limit” estimate for temperature impact of 1.8C for a doubling of CO2.
He then uses this same logical extrapolation approach (rather than model simulations with all sorts of sociological, economic and population growth assumptions) to determine when atmospheric CO2 should double today’s value (369 ppmv, when Nelson wrote this). Using this approach, he arrives at year 2255 to reach 738 ppmv (and around 520 ppmv by year 2100, as compared to a figure 10% higher for the lowest IPCC “scenario B1”).
From all this he concludes that the “upper limit” warming from CO2 by 2100 is 0.9C,
1.8 * ln (520 / 369) / ln (2)
and there is therefore no reason for alarm about man-made global warming.
But I’ll get back to you on the “saturation absorption” stuff.
Max
Max,
Yes I don’t think anyone would be silly enough to claim 6 months, not even you, so I wasn’t being totally serious there.
You yourself have used the accepted figures of 100ppmv of anthropogenic induced CO2 in the atmosphere which has taken levels from 280ppmv, in pre-industrial times to about about 390 ppmv presently. The Earth has consumed approx half of excess CO2 generated, as you yourself have accepted.
This tells us that if all CO2 emissions were to stop right now that concentrations would fall at the same rate that they’ve risen. That puts its half life at about 70-80 years. Say 75 years. So in 150 years it would be 1/4 of what it is now and in 300 years 1/8 of what it is now etc
Just a slight correction to what I wrote in the last post. I should have said that excess concentrations have a half life of about 75 years and that excess concentrations would fall gradually back towards 280 ppmv – halving every 75 years.
PeterM
Nice hypothesis on what would happen “if all CO2 emissions were to stop right now”.
But it ignores too many large unknowns (as I pointed out) to be very meaningful.
The Earth’s natural CO2 cycle is so much greater in magnitude than the human emissions, that it is pure guess work to estimate what would happen “if all CO2 emissions were to stop right now” (which they are not going to do, anyway).
Besides, the atmospheric CO2 content rose at a compounded annual growth rate of around 0.1% per year prior to 1950 or so and at a pretty steady CAGR of 0.4% per year since Mauna Loa started up in 1958 (also the same CAGR over the past 5 years).
And over that period, the “natural system” (ocean, biosphere, lithosphere, etc.) was absorbing roughly half of the human emissions.
So using your approach and assuming that the “natural system” keeps doing as it has, we have:
(1 – 100 / 390) = 0.74 = (1 – 0.004) ^75
So it would hypothetically take 75 years at the same negative CAGR to get back to the pre-industrial level, all other things being equal. [But “all other things are not equal”, so the calculation is meaningless.]
Rather than making such purely hypothetical guesses, I’d stick with the analytical methods used in the studies cited by Segalstad, who concluded a much shorter life for CO2 in the atmosphere.
So it may be somewhere between 5 and 100 years (but not a “half life of 6 months” for sure).
Max
I find all this talk of “CO2 Half life” all very mystifying, and notwithstanding that many scientists have analysed this “issue” and provided loads of data and tables and even predictions and so on.
You see, what I find is this…..
In my office, where CO2 levels are up to three times higher than outdoors, because of all the people breathing out, the houseplants grow very quickly.
In my greenhouse I have actually got a kerosene CO2 generator, so as to increase crop yields, and heat the greenhouse at the same time.
So then if the time which CO2 stays in the atmosphere were measured in terms of years,
how would that square with the known empirical facts, that CO2 stays in the enclosed atmosphere for only as long as it takes the vegetation to absorb it, and obviously for some molecules the absorbtion is practically instantaneous.
Why do you all suppose is the reason why CO2 concentrations are so low, in the first place?
Can it be because every green plant, and even micropscopic algae and phytoplankton are desperate to get CO2 and convert it to something else.
Even eco-loon, HRH Prince Charles, knows that when you talk to plants they grow bigger. No mystery really, as HRH talks to his Hosta he is breathing CO2 all over the leaves. The residence time of that Royal CO2 will be seconds, as the Hosta plant “gobbles it up”.
Meaningless measurements of CO2 concentration at some intantaneous point in time, on the slopes of Mauna Loa volcano, have absolutely nothing to do with any of the above scenarios.
Axel Morris
Your observations on CO2 residence time in a closed atmosphere system are correct.
There is no doubt, as you point out, that higher CO2 concentrations increase plant growth rates.
As far as the whole planet is concerned, the natural CO2 cycle is much larger than the human emissions. A 10% increase in terrestrial plant growth would gobble up the total human emissions right away, as would a similar increase in phytoplankton growth. Both rates would increase at higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere resp. upper ocean. The terrestrial portion should also increase with slightly warmer temperatures and slightly longer growing seasons.
And we aren’t even sure how much CO2 is leaving the Earth’s crust naturally through fissures, volcanoes etc., which is also currently being absorbed by the “system”, rather than showing up in the atmosphere.
That’s why I wrote Peter that such a “half life” calculation is meaningless. I just pointed out that the “upper limit” case for the lifetime of all the “human CO2” in the atmosphere is around 75 years if all human emissions stopped, using his method and the difference between human CO2 emissions and increased atmospheric concentration as an assumed natural absorption rate and assuming [and here’s the catch] that all other things are equal.
If we assume (as Ian Plimer does) that CO2 from Earth crust degassing (volcanoes, fissures, etc.) is equal to the human emissions, then this tells us that the “system” is currently absorbing 3 times as much CO2 as is being measured as atmospheric increase, so the theoretical residence time calculated above would be only 25 years.
This link gives a good summary of how the carbon cycle works in the real world and how CO2 acts as a natural climate buffer (as opposed to the model simulations of IPCC, with the silly “positive feedback” notion from a model-created hypothetical process IPCC has dubbed “climate-carbon cycle coupling”).
http://www.columbia.edu/~vjd1/carbon.htm
Max
Max, Reur 2435:
Quite, and there is nothing new happening today:
Have you ever marvelled at the “White Cliffs of Dover” or the greatly eroded “Isle of Wight Needles” etc? But apparently these calcium carbonate (limestone) sedimentary layers, (that are only partially visible), are up to around 500m deep. That is a lot of chalk; the purest form of marine sedimentary calcium carbonate, that was formed when the local seas were warmer and less turbid than today.
Here is a nice spot on the Dorset Coast, west of Lulworth Cove, with a fair bit of chalky stuff
Nearby are harder less pure versions of limestone in geologically different sedimentary layers, e.g. the famous Purbeck Stone; as used for building;
BTW, some of these sedimentary layers are rather old and go back through times of much higher CO2 levels than today
ALL:
I’ve just flicked through a long new article at WUWT. Lots of stuff in there, many links etc…. a couple of brief extracts follow:
INTRO:
According to the newspapers a ‘cabal of sceptics’ and ‘dinosaurs’ descended on London on Climate Fools Day. I actually attended the Climate Fools Day meeting in the House of Commons on 27th October 2010, unlike the mainstream media who stayed away.
In the UK, a few politicians are just realizing that in 5 years time (around the time of the next election) about one third of the UK power stations will be FORCED to close to meet strict new European Union Pollution (CO2 emissions) rules.
Tony B, Max, Axel:
Re: PETER GILL Physicist:
He described how CO2 has had a bad press, neither toxic nor a pollutant. He covered issues like different definitions of CO2 ‘residence time’, actual amounts of anthropogenic CO2 vs biomass and oceans. The fact that the IPCC have a preference for low ice core figures for the amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, against over 90,000 historic direct measurements of percentages of CO2 in the atmosphere.
One interesting point of discussion was if the IPCC’s definition of CO2 residence time was correct, where had all the anthropogenic CO2 gone. He argues that the “variability of emissions and absorption by natural processes exceeds current anthropogenic emissions.”
Bob said in 2446
“The fact that the IPCC have a preference for low ice core figures for the amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, against over 90,000 historic direct measurements of percentages of CO2 in the atmosphere.”
I wrote an article on that very subject
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/historic-variations-in-co2-measurements/
As well as the article there are numerous comments, plus links to other articles, so it is probably the most defintive resource available on this subject
tonyb
They still can’t let go..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8090325/Met-Office-data-suggests-mild-winter-but-dont-forget-last-year.html
Tony B, Reur 2447;
Thanks for the link to your big resource at:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/historic-variations-in-co2-measurements/
It is going to take me a good while to digest all the links and stuff, but I intend to get back to you later.
Meanwhile:
I Emailed Anthony Watts a while back with a couple of proposed lead articles, and although he expressed interest, even requesting different formatting to aid in his publication, which I did, it all went quiet, I know not why. I may Email you soon to see if we could cooperate on something, somehow, somewhere.
Max
Thought you would be interested in this latest information from NSF concerning clouds. As we both suspect, clouds are just as likely (more likely?) to have a negative feedback as a positive one.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/clouds/
AS IPCC can’t model clouds they point the blame at CO2 which they can model-however crudely.
tonyb