Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Well, it seems like climate alarmists have noticed that all their hysterical screeching about carbon dioxide (CO2) isn’t having the desired effect. So they’re turning to a new villain, methane (CH4). Here’s Nature, which used to be a serious scientific journal, moaning that methane is “soaring” to new heights.
Figure 1. Page from Nature magazine, original here.
Now, anyone who knows me knows what I did after seeing that—I went and got the data to see what’s going on. We have data from a couple of sources—modern measurements, and ice cores. The Nature article only showed the change since 1984, but I always start with a long overview to give context to the data. Here’s the change in atmospheric methane since 1750.
Figure 2. Changes in airborne methane since 1750. Ice core data to 1980, modern measurements from 1984 onwards
Now, there are a couple of puzzles in this data. First, nobody knows the cause for the slowdown in methane rise that started about 1985 and ended around 2005.
Next, nobody knows why the rise started again. From the Nature article:
The growth of methane emissions slowed around the turn of the millennium, but began a rapid and mysterious uptick around 2007. The spike has caused many researchers to worry that global warming is creating a feedback mechanism that will cause ever more methane to be released, making it even harder to rein in rising temperatures.
“Methane levels are growing dangerously fast,” says Euan Nisbet, an Earth scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London, in Egham, UK. The emissions, which seem to have accelerated in the past few years, are a major threat to the world’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5–2 °C over pre-industrial temperatures, he says.
YIKES!! WORRIED RESEARCHERS! LEVELS GROWING DANGEROUSLY FAST! FEEDBACK MECHANISM!
(In passing, can I say how bored I am by scientists and researchers who are “worried”? Near as I can tell, these guys sit up nights looking for things to be worried about, and when they seize on something, they try to convince us that we all should be worried about it too … but I digress.)
In any case, just how fast are the methane levels rising? To investigate that, here’s a graph of the five-year “trailing trend”. This is the trend of the change over the five years previous to each year of record.
Figure 3. Changes in the five-year trailing trends of the rise in atmospheric methane.
Call me crazy, but I’m not seeing what the “worried researcher” described as methane levels “growing dangerously fast” … they’re only growing a third as fast as they were in 1985.
My conclusion?
I’m not going to be concerned until such time as the trend starts getting up somewhere around the 1985 levels.
My best to everyone, whether you’re worried or not …
w.
MY USUAL: When you comment PLEASE quote the exact words you are discussing. I can defend my own words and I’m happy to do so. But I can’t defend your interpretation of my words.
DATA:
One third of our methane comes from growing rice and another third from domestic animals, mostly in poor countries.
https://www.cfact.org/2021/11/04/cop-26-methane-madness/
When does the great slaughtering of western-grown animals begin….for the cause and the children?
Canada is doing our part, we slaughtered 600,000 chickens in the fraser valley during the november flood.
In attention to flood control caused this, so “we” did this, yes.
Let us start with the dogs that bark constantly, especially at night. Of course, it is the dog’s owners that are really responsible, so maybe they should go together.
Watch out for the dog that doesn’t bark, a tell tale sign, as Sherlock Holmes noted
Reminds me of the old tale:-
Man and wife trying to sleep whilst dog next door barks and barks.
“Ruddy dog will drive me mad. Every night, bark , bark, bark”.
“Don’t moan at me, do something about it.”
Next day, talking to neighbour “That’s a fine dog! I wish I had a dog like that.
Would you think of selling me that dog for £500?”
Money changes hands and dog goes next door to new home.”
That night “Bark, bark, bark”.
Old fellow starts laughing.
Wife:- “What the hell are you laughing at?”
“Ha ha ha. Now we’ll see how he likes it!”
That tale has as much to do with the terrors of Methane, as the genius psyentists’s modelling has to do with reality.
Imagine the squeals if we told them to go sort out some termites to compensate.
Been tried. Didn’t work well for the Xhosa. I don’t expect much different results with the CO2 pandemic.
https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-cattle-massacre-that-haunts-south-africa/88717/
https://www.siyabona.com/eastern-cape-xhosa-cattle-killing.html
Just get rid of the cattle in India and Brazil and you will halve the number of cattle in the world, although I think the Indians would have something to say about that as the cow is sacred to Hindus.
In the US about 60 million buffalo were killed off in the 1800s and mostly replaced by cattle, so no overall change there.
Let’s nuke ’em, that will fix the problem.
There’s no CO 2 in nuclear fallout.
But there is in the fires caused from heat during the initial blast
Heat precedes the blast wave.
Nukes are much overrated.
Methane’s estimated mean half-life in Earth’s atmosphere is 9.1 years, according to IPCC in 2013. How that figure was estimated, I don’t know. Nowadays higher linger times are bandied about.
CO2’s half-life is usually given as over a century, but I’m dubious.
CO2 is mostly gone in 6 years or so. About 25% of the total atmospheric CO2 content is replaced every year by the great flux. Those long times are actually the speculative estimate of how total CO2 would reduce if our emissions stopped. Nothing to do with residence time, but often confused with it.
Yes, IPCC is confused about a lot of things.
I disagree! The UNIPCC isn’t at all confused, it has an agenda & is determined to see it through, a One-World globul guvment, un-elected, un-democratic, un-accountable, & un-sackable!!! We had a cracker of a slimy Socialist politician called Peter Mandelson who tried to convince us that we are/were living in a “post-democratic” World. Being a true Socialist he only consorted with millionaires & enjoyed the trappings of their wealth & life-styles!!! We’ve heard all the slimy claims before up to & including the “temporary” suspension of democracy to fight Climate Change!!! However, being a cynical old git I view the word “temporary” with deep suspicion. I note that when the Earth’s climate changed in the past, early Humans didn’t bother “fighting” change, they adapted to it & amazingly, we’re still here, go figure!!!
Methane molecules continually bumping into Oxygen molecules.
Yielding CO2, H20 and loads of energy.
Yet it takes 6 years for this to happen?
Call me skeptical….
CO2 half-life is around 10 years, judging from the bomb spike data.
Thanks, Mike. You need to distinguish between atmospheric residence time and pulse decay time.
Residence time is how long a given CO2 molecule stays aloft in the atmosphere. As you show above, that has a half-life on the order of 8-10 years.
Pulse decay time, on the other hand, is how long it takes for a pulse of CO2 added to the atmosphere to decay back to the previous atmospheric CO2 level. That has a half-life on the order of 30-40 years or so.
Regards,
w.
Pulse decay time. 5400 Mt is in the atmosphere. 600 Mt is added in a year, but on the same date next year, the atmosphere has only 5420 Mt before new 600 Mt next year are added – Out of 6000 Mt at a given moment only 5420 will be in the atmosphere next year on the same date, if nothing more is added. Decay per year is 9.7 percent. Half life is then appox 7 years
Bjarne, the extra uptake of CO2 doesn’t depend of the yearly addition of CO2, but of the extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere compared to the equilibrium CO2 level for the current average ocean surface temperature, which is about 295 ppmv.
The real CO2 pressure is 415 μatm (~ppmv), that is 120 μatm above equilibrium. The uptake has a linear relationship with the pressure difference between atmosphere and oceans (and water in the plant leaves). For a linear decay rate the decay rate to 1/e (37%) of the initial pulse is easy to calculate:
tau = cause / effect
In 1959: 25 ppmv extra CO2 in the atmosphere, sink rate 0.5 ppmv/year, tau = 50 years, half life time 34.7 years
In 1988: 60 ppmv extra, 1.13 ppmv/year, tau = 53 years, half life time 36.8 years
In 2012: 110 ppmv / 2.15 ppmv/year, tau = 51.2 years or a half life time of 35.5 years.
Looks very linear to me, widely within the borders of accuracy of the emission inventories and natural sink capacity variability…
The amount present in the atmosphere plays no role at all for the decay rate, only the CO2 partial pressure does, but it does for the residence time.
The residence time in the case of huge bidirectional seasonal flows is quite small (around 4 years), but that doesn’t change the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, it is all exchange, not change and near all caused by temperature changes.
I should have mentioned that the gas is methane, not CO2 which does not decay
This is simply not true. It does have a reasonably short half-life largely due to biological processes and ocean solubility.
Both CO2 and methane “decay” with a ~5-year half-life, which means that they are both rather short-lived in the real world.
Mass of 1 ppm CH4 is 2800 Mt
Concentration: 1.9 ppm (approx 5400 Mt)
emission, one year: 0.24 ppm (600 Mt)
Increas, one year: 0.007 ppm (20 Mt)
What is wrong?
Charles, both the biosphere and the oceans don’t increase their uptake instantly at the same rate as a CO2 increase in the atmosphere…
Most natural processes are temperature controlled: diurnal, seasonal, multi-year and multi-millennia… The largest CO2 fluxes are seasonal and bidirectional: from the oceans to the biosphere in spring/summer and reverse in fall/winter. That are huge flows which give the short residence time of 4-5 years.
That says nothing about how an extra shot CO2 into the atmosphere behaves.
For the biosphere an increase of 10% CO2 in the atmosphere may give 5% more growth over many years and for the ocean surface waters that is only 1% more uptake with a half life of less than a year, due to the limited buffer capacity of the oceans for CO2 (still 10 times than for fresh water).
The main sink is in the deep oceans, but that has a limited exchange rate with the atmosphere via the sinks near the poles and the upwellings near the equator…
The average decay rate of the current CO2 level above equilibrium is measured and is around 50 years.
If you mean the chemical decay, of course that is right…
Anyhow, interestig read
FE
Added Co2 to the atmosphere is in a way “forced” because of the anthropogenic component, however many of the sinks are also “forced” as in plant and algae’s sequestration, so I am not so sure your comments are as cut and dry as you make them out to be.
bob, the net sink rate of every year can be calculated from two known variables: how much is emitted by humans (from sales taxes) and how much the increase in the atmosphere is. The net difference is what nature has absorbed or added.
In the past 60+ years it was near always more absorption than addition, with only a few El Niño years borderline.
The net absorption is all natural (there are not much human made sinks), that gives the sink rate for the extra CO2 pressure of any given year in the past and if that is a linear process (which is the case, at least for the ocean waters), the e-fold decay rate is an easy formula…
FE
Can you and/or Willis explain something to me? each year there is a rise and fall in the Mauna Loa readings (10 to 15 PPM), I believe they correspond with the the norther winter/summer cycle. One thing that puzzles me why is the transition so abrupt? the slopes in both direction seem to be pretty steady and the transition from rise to fall is very sharp and from fall to rise appears to go dead stop for a short time and then launch off at a steep rise. .
Not sure if I’d call the transitions “abrupt” …
In any case, it’s the transition from carbon source to carbon sink, seems like that would be fairly fast.
w.
Just seems to me that since the transition in the north is from is 2 to 3 months in both the spring and fall that the transition would be longer. the graph you posted has source transition as remarkably quick looks like maybe 3 weeks at the most. Was just curious.
Bob, de transitions over the seasons are huge, according to the IPCC:
In spring/summer:
60 PgC absorbed by new leaves and further growth of plants.
50 PgC released by the warming ocean surface.
In fall/winterL
60 PgC released by fallen leaves and all year round rotting/eaten plants
50 PgC absorbed by the cooling ocean surface.
The difference of 10 PgC is the amplitude of the net seasonal change you can see in the MLO (and other NH) data. That is about 5 ppmv amplitude.
The NH is mainly land and the extra tropical forests are largely deciduous wood, which has a strong uptake in spring, that gives the fast drop. Release of CO2 has a peak in fall from fallen leaves, but is more widespread over a year, even mid-winter under a snow deck…
For the oceans the release/uptake is directly proportional to the water temperature.
In the SH, oceans and land are more or less in equilibrium for releases/uptake and there is hardly any seasonal amplitude.
That vegetation is the main cause of the amplitude can be seen in the δ13C variation over the seasons: if the main cause is vegetation then CO2 and δ13C are changing in opposite directions, if the oceans are the main cause, the changes are in parallel…
Bob,
I agree with you about the ‘abruptness’ of the switch between the spring/summer reduction in atmospheric CO2 and the increase during autumn/winter (and vice versa). Generally, at Mauna Loa the drop is about 6 ppmv each year and the increase is about 8 ppmv (with variations largely due to ENSO/Pinatubo), hence the long term increase of about 2 ppmv per year. However, to get a better understanding of what is happening at Mauna Loa, which is at a latitude of close to 20degN, I recommend focussing initially further north as the evidence points to the Boreal forests (approx 50degN to 70degN) being a key driver of the seasonal cycle in the Northern Hemisphere. I don’t have time to go into further detail right now, but would strongly recommend you take a look at the video available here:
https://gml.noaa.gov/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=MLO&program=ccgg&type=lg
Watch how the CO2 levels increase/decrease first at these higher latitudes which then ‘pull up’ and ‘pull down’ the values further south, with only a minor affect into the Southern Hemisphere.
If a pulse decay takes 30-40 years – does that mean any effort to “stop the rise” will have no real effect on temperatures for a generation even if the CAGW panic mongers are right?
I think the point that both WE and FE are making is that the pulse decay is irrelevant to CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, its simply source vs sinks. Is some how the sinks are larger than the source then concertation will decrease, right now its the opposite. There is a temperature component but its minor.
Does it really matter? We aren’t concerned which CO2 molecules are in the atmosphere. As long as the ocean outgasses to make up for the ones that decay, we will be even.
I dare say that the half-life will be adjusted to produce the worst possible outcomes for the planet. Curious how throughout Human history fear has been used to create conditions for manipulation & control, & still used today in a Human society that’s never been better educated & enlightened in said Human history, so I take such claims with a pinch of salt!!! However, I’m just a cynical 64 year old grumpy old man, & enjoying it!!!
This was a mistake of honesty on the part of the IPCC because they had not realized that they could demonize methane for their purposes. I bet they claim longer times now.
Study averages place methane at about 5 years for half-life. The IPCC was claiming 100–500 years for CO2, but NASA did not want to be outdone and claimed 1000 years for CO2. This is so political that it turns a scientists’s stomach.
Burning methane to make electricity is why the US met Kyoto enission reduction goals, unlike those industrial nations that signed the accords.
If methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, and of course burning CH4 converts it to CO2, then gas-fired power might be by far the best for the climate!
The methane comes from decomposing grass.. Be it on the field or in the cow’s stomach makes no difference. The ICCP has been misrepresenting methane vs. livestock data since the beginning. Right now there’s another “natural phenomenon” coming up: Gates, Vanguard, Blackrock and co. want to sell us lab meat, so meat from livestock must go…
Actual studies of methane release by the biomass of melting permafrost has shown that, when the life wakes up, it quickly becomes a carbon sink as it craves carbon for growth and does NOT just sit there and rot.
Another thing not often mentioned is that the half-life of methane and CO2 in the atmosphere is only about 5 years. NASA would like to claim the it’s 1000 years for CO2, trying to pretend that most of the CO2 from the last 1000 years is still in the atmosphere (and it’s then all our fault). There are quite a number of studies on CO2 half-life, with an average around 5 years. Methane data indicates the same thing.
A 5-year half-life means that these gases turnover quite quickly and do NOT accumulate in the atmosphere. That makes the warmist arguments very weak and thus meaningless.
Charles, turnover or residence time indeed is 4-5 years, but that has nothing to do with the removal time of an extra injection of CO2, whatever the source, that needs some 50 years (far below the 1000 years of the IPCC).
Compare it to the difference between turnover time of goods (thus capital) through a factory and the financial gain (or loss…) the same factory makes…
Thanks, Ferdinand. I get tired of repeating this.
w.
How would we know? With 2/3 of the surface area being oceans and all? Permafrost dew?
Once again, a doom laden load of crap from ‘scientists’ who are ‘seeing’ things that aren’t there. It’s a good job there are scientists like Willis who can provide the actual truth.
When methane is no longer the bad boy, what other gases should we expect to hit the headlines?
Water vapor?
Let’s see them ban that.
no more hot steamy showers!
No more hydrogen powered cars !
No more laughing gas!
Well, be honest it is a deadly substance, apparently if you breath enough of it in its solid form, it can be fatal!!! 😉
PS I recommend to those you may not have seen it, go on You Tube & hunt down Penn & Teller’s petition for banning Dihydrogen-Monoxide, it’s staggering how many young people (mostly) were only too willing to sign it!!!
O2.
Very dangerous oxidant – should be banned immediately 🙂
Anything synthetic, i.e. man-made.
Oxygen.
A carbon-based life-form decrying the existence of carbon beggars belief.
All living things are pollution.
And then they came for my carbon …..
The worshipers of death are a large cult.
with the equivalent of Jesuits
I’ll be honest, as I’ve gotten older my methane contribution has definitely increased.
Ditto
Tritto
Quadritto
and Quintitto
Eating lots of cabbage sprouts beans and ognions will cause a methane global climate catastrphe! 🙂
The vegans did it.
Methane madness?
Pythagoras died because of an aversion to beans. He was being pursued by a crazed mob of democrats [that’s little d not big D] and was caught on the edge of a field of beans. Apart from geometry Pythagoras and his followers came up with theories about why people should have nothing to do with beans. Adhering to his principles he would not cross the bean field and was beaten to death by the democrats [little d not big D].
Once you are 60, never assume it’s just methane.
With the benefit of practising control, I reckon I have become marginally more tuneful as well.
They can switch the claimed cause all they want but it won’t help them sell their scam any more effectively.
You underestimate politicians and other group thinkers.
and the sheeple
Too much methane? Excuse me . . . .
Did you hear about the teacher who would not toot (pass gas) in public? He was strictly a private tutor.
Solution: Butt plugs and crack pipes for all!
That’s in the Brandon Health Care initiative, at least the crack pipes are.
Its been noted here before that scientology alarmism states methane is 85x more greenhousy than CO2.
But 1.9ppm x 85 is only 161.5ppm vs CO2 current 420ppm which means its still 2.6X less greenhousy than CO2?
So if CO2 is nothing what is CH4?
Am i a denier?
It is not just the concentration and the absorption properties, but how the absorption curves overlap with the other gasses already in the atmosphere.
Methane overlaps nearly completely with existing atmospheric components.
I think that 80x crap is just more made up warmista malarkey.
Their perfect record of being wrong about absolutely everything is intact.
So, it would appear that a bit of extra methane just might have some measurable impact on a planet like Mars, with essentially no suspended water vapor to cover the same IR absorption as you have for methane? On planet Earth, however, where we *do* have plenty of water vapor, the expectation should be *zero* impact from adding a bit of methane!
The challenge to alarmists then should be “show us where you’ve actually measured the impact of methane on the Earth’s atmosphere (say, I, plaintively, not expecting a reasonable answer from educated idiots).
Were they being objective, they would report methane in the same units as CO2. The fact that they move the decimal point to make the CH4 number look bigger means they are more interested in stampeding the sheep.
Of course! Methane is 1,900,000 parts per trillion!! And everybody knows that nearly 2 million of anything is scary!
Yes
But I mean by just taking them at their word, it’s still nothing.
Methane is 85 times more powerful than a similar MASS of CO2. By 2100 methane is on course to increase about 0.5 ppm. A similar mass of CO2 would be about 0.2 ppm. So if CO2 increases from 420 to 420.2 ppm, how much would that run up temperature? Then multiply that by 85. It comes to less than 0.1 degrees Celsius.
Willis, I am worried that global warming is going to change the smell of the methane I produce.
Any chance you could write a paper to allay my concerns?
The increased smell of snow is going to overwhelm the increased smell of whatever is in your intestinal gas, at least according to the other post by WaPo here this morning
The methane part doesn’t smell at all, of course. It’s all that hydrogen sulfide and various organic compounds released by bacteria in the human digestive system that smells, or stinks rather.
But snow is a thing of the past. Our children will not know what snow is. Hence smell of snow will not outsmell what comes from human orifices.
Blame the dog.
My heeler/border collie cross runs away when she pass gas. My Chihuahua doesn’t even twitch when he does it.
Your big dog has more brain mass.
Whoa! the current atmospheric methane content is 1,900 parts per billion? That’s about 2 parts per million. Two parts per million might be enough gold to make a gold mine, but that amount flying around in the atmosphere, mixing it up with water vapor, CO2, unicorn farts, etc, shirley can’t be significant? Willis reveals reality again!
There is an interesting jump in CH4 levels of around 200ppb between the 1980 (core) and 1984 measurements databases. I didn’t see in the metadata when the core samples were extracted. I wonder what the discrepancy between measurements would be if a new top portion core was gathered and compared with measurements?
Since snow became a thing of yesteryear circa 2000, there is no new top to core for a sample. Unfortunately, we must rely on the models for sole source of ‘data’ on this topic.
Climate Change causes everything else bad, so it must be causing CH4 levels to increase. And since Climate Change causes everything bad, it must also be causing CO2.
I wonder if people actually read these “findings” anymore or even care when a “guess what else AGW is doing now” article appears.
It takes one thousand parts per billion to equal 1 part per million.
That is why I am not and will not be worried about this, even if we do once again have 1985 levels of increase.
The data in figure 3 looks very much like there was a measurement artifact at some point.
Pull my finger
Maybe we should “flare” the problem at its source
LOL
“I’m not going to be concerned until such time as the trend starts getting up somewhere around the 1985 levels.”
Not me. I’m not concerned now and won’t be later. Warmer Is Better. Embrace Life.
This past Sunday I watched a PBS documentary on methane in the Arctic. The concern was that the permafrost seems to be melting allowing methane to escape from deep underground. Further, as the melting occurs the buried vegetation will rot and vast unknown amounts of methane will be produced.
The scientists interviewed said that this issue is not covered in climate models.
I guess the science isn’t settled.
A few studies have reported that the growth in methane eating bacteria is so fast with warming that thawing tundra appears to be a more a methane sink than source.
and those scientists don’t bother to think about how much CO2 will be sequestered by the new forests that will develop up there- along with the nice increase in wildlife populations
The permafrost line has moved from the US-Canada border to the Arctic circle in the last 80 centuries….seems beneficial so far….
They downplayed it, but CO2 is produced along with CH4.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aac4971
Some observations drawn from a methane post here about 8 years ago, provided also in the commentary to the previous methane post by Homewood: ‘Methane: the irrelevant greenhouse gas’, post by Dr Tom Sheahan 4/11/2014.
In the lab, methane has 84x the GHE of CO2. But in the lab, the data is from a long tube of dry air plus only the one test gas.
In fact, the methane absorption bands almost perfectly overlap water vapor, while CO2 does not. That means that in the real world atmosphere, methane has almost NO GHE because it is almost completely ‘blocked’ by water vapor. So however much is in the atmosphere matters not at all until it exceeds water vapor, which averages about 2%. Never gonna happen. Ever.
Methane concern (in forms including this, melting permafrost, and leaky wells) is just more scientific illiteracy, which the warmunists have in abundance. Other examples include AR4 ocean acidification (ignored buffering), coral bleaching (expelling then repopulating with other symbionts within about a year NOT a problem), and disappearing summer Arctic sea ice threatening polar bears (Polly’s do about 85% of their annual caloric intake on spring ice during the seal whelping season).
Double methane in Modtran to 3.8 ppm from 1.9 ppm, which means twice as many rice paddies, termites, cow pastures, leaky pipelines…etc..and you only get 0.17 C increase…
True.
But on the other hand, using MODTRAN if you double the CO2 you only get a 1°C temperature rise.
According to the prevailing theory, in both cases, these results jacked way up by subsequent feedbacks.
For CO2, it’s supposed to be cloud and water vapor feedback … yeah, right.
For methane, it has to do with the fact that methane decomposes into CO2 and H20:
CH4 + 2 O2 –> CO2 + 2 H20
Both CO2 and H2O are greenhouse gases, so their effect is then added to the original effect of the methane as calculated by MODTRAN.
w.
Which means that each methane molecule would produce one molecule of CO2 and 2 of H2O, therefore never more than 2 and 4 ppm respectively. Hardly relevant, it seems to me.
Anything we can measure nowadays can be a candidate for source of worry. Life was easier when witches were the obvious problem.
easier for whom?
Not for the so called witches.
But the warlocks had fun.
Now look here, the English justice system of yore was a very fair & balanced legal system! The ladies concerned were given ample time to confess their obvious mortal links with beelzebub when tethered to the ducking stool, but if they refused to confess, they were dried out on a very nice bonfire, so were clearly treated with courtesy & respect!!! Sarc off!!!
This confirms the Earth and it’s atmosphere are in constant change as are worry warts.
Well, if it was not the CO2 gas that is warming the earth, then it won’t be the CH4 either….
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2021/11/25/an-inconvenient-truth/
They are trying to justify a ban on fracking when some global wormers are starting to consider methane a transition energy source. The rise in emission rates is natural as there is more anaerobic decomposition of all kinds of biological material both on land and in the sea.
CH is Pure Cane Sugar, and the brown stuff is PERFECT for chocolate chip cookies.
Seriously, this is like Food Network 101 stuff here…
California-Hawaii cane sugar and Utah-Idaho beet sugar. Those were the days!
It may be best to allow all of the charlatans to jump on board the CH4 bus before debunking it. It is useful to have incontrovertible evidence of someones incompetence and dishonesty during less obvious debates.
Even the 1985 rate of change of 23 ppd/yr is meaningless. Ch 4 is approximately 0.0002% of the atmosphere and it is impossible for that small amount gas to impact the climate especially if you consider it readily interacts with O2 to create water vapour.
I would assess the impact of the fall of USSR for decline, and NG displacing coal in US for increase starting around 2005 (EIA).
While at Shell Oil I recall hearing how both Shell and Chevron discovered considerable NG leaks in USSR infrastructure as they went in after the fall of the Soviets. 5-10% losses compared to .05% in much of the developed world??
Only one question needs to be asked:
Business as usual, how much is methane on track to increase global temperature by 2100?
If any one says that it’s more a few one hundredths of a degree Celsius they need to show their work.
More data to take on the unicorn balloons and echo-chamber voices.
Attached is a slide for SURFRAD data at Table Mountain, Boulder, CO 6/18/21. There are 1,440 1-minute data points.
Column 13 is downwelling solar insolation, “dw_solar real” or the 160 on the K-T diagram.
Column 14 is upwelling insolation, “uw_solar real” or the 63 on the K-T diagram.
Column 25 is the difference between the two or what I have demonstrated is the non-radiation, kinetic energy, heat transfer processes and NOT “back” radiation.
Column 17 is the downwelling IR, dw_ir or the 333 on the K-T diagram.
It’s not real.
Column 20 is the upwelling IR, uw_ir, or the 396 in the K-T diagram. This is the theoretical, S-B BB result for the GROUND temperature not the 10 m “surface” air temperature. In this case, Column 14/column 20 is the emissivity. Just as with the K-T et. al. balances applying this emissivity to the raw uw_ir measurement makes the uw/dw_ir loop disappear while the balance remains.
It, too, is not real.
A plot of the ground versus 10 m air temps is revealing.
During the night the 10 m temp is slightly higher than the actual ground temperature.
As day breaks the ground temperature rises much faster than the 10 m temp and during much of the day is much higher than the 10 m temp.
The ground is a heat sink that absorbs energy during the day and releases it during the night.
When the correct emissivity is applied there is no GHG energy loop.
Correct. If there was a GHE that had any impact on the surface temperature then it would be possible to get open ocean surface temperature higher than 30C and lower than -1.8C. Those limits are controlled by ice on ocean surface and the persistence of ice in the atmosphere.
What ever people choose to believe about a “Greenhouse Effect” it has no influence on Earth’s energy balance.
If “back” radiation were real there would be refrigerators w/o power cords.
I have not seen any.
You?
Nick Schroeder February 9, 2022 12:00 pm
I fear you are misrepresenting both the Table Mountain data and the K-T diagram.
The K/T diagram is a global 24/7 average.
The Table Mountain data you’ve shown is for one location for a few minutes in one late summer afternoon around 5 PM.
There is NO reason to think those would be even remotely similar.
Next, here’s the K-T diagram:
As you will note, upwelling solar on the K-T diagram is 23 W/m2, NOT 63 W/m2 as you claim.
Next, column 25 is the net solar absorbed (incident solar from col. 13 minus reflected solar from column 14). It has nothing to do with downwelling thermal radiation (aka “back radiation”).
Finally, column 17 is the downwelling thermal radiation (aka “back radiation”). Of course, like the others, it is different from the amount given in the K-T diagram, for the reason given above.
w.
161 makes it to the surface, per LoT 1 161 is ALL that can leave. 1 is left behind. 160-17-80=63
Really, real reality.
396 – (40+23) = 333 is 100% imaginary.
Don’t know which version K-T this is.
The 374/22 should be 333/40/23.
The numbers are different because the K-T model divides all by 4 to average the discular over the spherical TOA. A rather dumb thang to.
SURFRAD uses actual measurements.
Both use the same general and erroneous concept.
That is only part of the reason for the difference. The other one, which it seems you still haven’t grasped, is that one is a measurement at a single time at a single location, and the other is a long-term global average.
And your claim that there is no downwelling longwave radiation is falsified by the very dataset you have posted up. It gives the ACTUAL MEASURED DOWNWELLING LONGWAVE RADIATION.
You know the radiation in question. It’s the radiation you foolishly but persistently, in the face of a mountain of evidence including YOUR OWN TABLE MOUNTAIN DATASET, claim doesn’t exist. It’s shown right there in column 17.
But sure, go ahead and ignore scientists all over the world measuring downwelling longwave radiation every day.
And then ignore dozens and dozens of automated measurements like those of Table Mountain and all the other SURFRAD stations, along with instruments on things like the TAO moored buoy arrays. Every day, all of them are MEASURING the downwelling radiation you claim is imaginary …
And of course, ignore the Stefan-Boltzmann equation that allows us to determine how much radiation something at a certain temperature gives off.
And while you’re at it, ignore the long-accepted fact that with the exception of monatomic gases, all substances can both absorb and radiate longwave thermal energy … and that AS MEASURED IN LABS ALL OVER THE PLANET, the so-called “greenhouse gases” are excellent absorbers and radiators of longwave energy.
I gotta say, though … that level of denial of obvious easily verifiable reality is actually impressive. I know I couldn’t pull it off.
w.
“…is that one is a measurement at a single time at a single location, and the other is a long-term global average.”
No, one is a model and the other actual data.
If the upwelling is imaginary (It is.) then the downwelling must also be imaginary. I can tweak an IR instrument w emissivity to display anything I want.
“…ignore the Stefan-Boltzmann equation…”
While you ignore the evidence for emissivity which is part of that equation.
BTW do you have a link for that graphic?
I give up, Nick. As the old saying has it, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him learn the backstroke” …
You’ll have to take this up with someone else. I can’t deal with your level of blind denial.
Best regards, and don’t go away mad.
Just go away. Not interested.
w.
I know, it is to no avail to the adepts of the no-back-radiation-theory, but back-radiation is really measured at a lot of places and is around 300 W/m2, as good as ground radiation is measured and higher than the back-radiation:
https://scienceofdoom.com/2010/07/17/the-amazing-case-of-back-radiation/
If you think that they all used some imaginary equipment, then I think you should change your opinion…
Moreover, two stations have measured back radiation in extreme fine detail with spectral analyses, which did give them even the small changes of CO2 back radiation over the seasons in the period 2000-2010:
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/02/25/co2-greenhouse-effect-increase/
Or in detail:
https://escholarship.org/content/qt3428v1r6/qt3428v1r6.pdf
You can’t tweak spectral analyses that easy…
Every time I see these graphs I wonder how the near surface temperature can ever be lower then the actual surface temperature.
There is the1.5 m (USCRN) or 10 m (SURFRAD) surface temperature and the real actual ground temperature (some USCRN sites).
They are all different because the sun heats the ground during the day above the air temperature and at night cold air settles in and the air temp can be higher than the ground.
aka weather.
The methane is due to the increase in the number of people eating vegan and vegetarian diets. It is all those beans and pulses wot dun it.
Meat eaters rise up
No idea what it’s like elsewhere in the World, but here in the UK, my experience of vegetarians & vegans is that they are constantly telling me how bad meat eating is, & alleging how bad it is for the planet. However, I never try to impose my views upon them, ever, & I defend their right to their views, right or wrong!!! I seem to recall reading an article online some years back about how if everyone on the planet went vegetarian & or vegan, say goodbye to the worlds rain-forests & jungles, as the land would have to be turned over for agricultural production to feed 7 billion Human beings!!!
“In passing, can I say how bored I am by scientists and researchers who are “worried…”
I see this in marine biological papers quite often, some from those educated over two generations ago. I don’t collect words like “Unfortunately” and others that give away their advocacy, and a “need to increase funding” is not rare as in one I just read this AM. It’s a good education in linguistics, hard to hide motivations. Part of it is including management solutions with the science– It’s bad but we can fix it sort of thing. It always seems to be associated with a slant (bias) in their research which unfortunately can cover their valuable part, if any, but does occur.
Amazing what you can do when graphing “data” to provide “concern.”
When a Long period is used for “smoothing” data . not only is the “Data” smoothed the inflection points of the data being graphed are shifted so that it is no longer in phase with the actual event. If you then take another set of “data” and shift it by a different time period you can create the false impression that Data “A” is Leading, Lagging or even Synchronized with Data “B.” Basically you have taken the data and put it through a “Filter” to achieve your desired result to sell your rotten tomatoes. Especially dangerous when one of these datasets has an inherent, dominant, bias increasing (or decreasing) the values in the dataset over a long period. Like the inherent increase in Global Temperature of the Earth upon exiting an Ice Age.
I’m just being silly here 🙂
Has anyone performed a global analysis of the total leakage of Methane in mines and Volcano emissions, including underwater, and the relationship to the fluctuation due to gravitational pull on the Earth from the planets in our solar system? Wasn’t there an “Alignment” of the planets back around 2000?
Democrats better devise some method of keeping the economy alive when several million Truckers go on a general strike and park their rigs on the DC Beltway and all around town…with a few hundred thousand pick-up trucks (with provisions for a few months) in the mix.
Why would Truckers do that? I suspect $6 to $7 diesel fuel might suffice… and that’s a certainty if investment funds for developing domestic oil reserves don’t materialize pretty soon.
gee, 1,900 parts per billion? same as 19,000 parts per trillion- sound scarier
Actually, thats 1,900,000 parts per trillion …
w.
Holy shit!!!
Methane has a lower explosive limit of 5% in air. Until any location gets to that level, methane is zero risk.
It would make sense to collect it from productive sources and burn it in a controlled manner. That happens in old tips around Australia and gas drainage systems in coal mines.
Every sewage treatment plant in world produces methane in their digesters. They usually flare it off, with some losses.
In the UK they collect it and use it to power sewage plant and water pumping.
In fact they generate it from sewage.
https://www.powersystemsuk.co.uk/anaerobic-digestion/thames-water-has-gone-out-to-tender-for-lots-covering-biogas-and-biomethane
Speaking of methane produces……..
Yes, that’s what I said.
It could also be used to create distilled water to be sold as a by-product, or added to the outflow to dilute undesirable leftover contaminants.
The Nature article was based on NOAA data. What Nature did not say is that in that NOAA date the composition of CH₄ is expressed on a dry air basis. Without the presence of water (usually expressed in percentages—parts per hundred) changes in CH₄ (expressed in parts per billion) might look significant. When the presence of water is included any changes in methane are lost in the noise of the measurements!
Ice is an unstable, plastic rock. The graph from 1750 to 1980 may show that methane in ice deteriorates at a steady rate and not the methane level at the time the ice formed.
Brian, that doesn’t seem to be the case … the ice core methane level from 0 AD to 1750 AD is basically flat.
w.
Could that be caused by bacteria?
There are some extremophiles in ice which (hardly) survive the cold temperatures (-20 to -40 C) of Antarctica, but that mainly is restricted to dust inclusions and restricted to DNA repair to survive for hundred thousands of years…
See: https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/101/13/4631.full.pdf
Chapter K is about the Vostok ice core at -40 C.
For CO2 that gives less than 1 ppmv difference.
How much that influences CH4 is unknown.
For glacier ice, the temperatures are much higher and bacteria can produce a lot of CO2 and CH4, as in the same chapter is indicated…
From the article: “Here’s Nature, which used to be a serious scientific journal”
Used to be. Not any more. They have been totally corrupted by the Human-caused Climate Change scam.
My guess is that the decline in the amount of methane is about the time that natural gas became valuable as a commodity and started to be injected to support increased oil production or sold outright as its own commodity. Up until then (if the reservoir relied on solution gas as a drive mechanism) it was routinely flared at the wellhead. Just a thought.
Does it correlate with volcanlc activity?
Despite lots of folks looking, nobody to date has found a reason for either the flattening or the recent increase in methane.
w.
Rising tide of communism?
Willis,
“Despite lots of folks looking, nobody to date has found a reason for either the flattening or the recent increase in methane.”
As usual, you go straight to the key issue! The absence of a reasonable hypothesis for the major changes in growth rate of atmospheric methane is indeed a critical limitation of current scientific knowledge. There a couple of interesting (to me, at least) characteristics of atmospheric methane growth. Firstly, the data show that the level of atmospheric methane at any particular time increases globally from south to north. This has been known for a long time and it does not appear to be an issue of calibration errors between observatories (see, for example: https://gml.noaa.gov/publications/showpub.php?pubid=5226). Here are the NOAA data from Barrow, Alaska (BRW), Mauna Loa (MLO) and the South Pole (SPO):
The seasonal cycle is larger further north, as it is with CO2, but so are the mean values; in addition, the offsets are maintained as the growth rate changes. This latitudinal consistency in growth rate is even clearer on this other NOAA plot using a common baseline for methane content:
There is very little growth of atmospheric methane from the late 1990s until late-2006 at which time there is a major increase in rate of growth. This change appears to be virtually synchronous globally, despite the existence of the latitudinal offsets. The question is then: how does an increase in atmospheric methane occur at virtually the same time at the South Pole as it does in Alaska, unless the primary source of the increase is essentially global in nature and there is a different physical process controlling the latitudinal gradient in values?
The other point shown on the above figure is the change in the 13C/12C ratio (δ13C) of atmospheric methane. The incremental methane since 2007 clearly has a net δ13C that is lower (more negative) on average than the pre-2007 atmospheric methane content. This has long been an annoyance to those wishing to blame fossil fuels for the increase in atmospheric methane, since lower δ13C values are much more likely to arise from biogenic sources than from fossil fuels. Indeed, a recent NOAA study strongly supports this view:
https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2769/New-analysis-shows-microbial-sources-fueling-rise-of-atmospheric-methane
(h/t to “Scissor” who commented on Kip Hansen’s WUWT post on methane yesterday)
Whatever the source is for the recent (post 2007) increase in atmospheric methane, how could global warming be the cause when there was a slowdown in growth during the 1990s and essentially no growth from the late 1990s until 2007? There seems to be a logic flaw in there somewhere!
Jim, there doesn’t need to be global sources of methane, as there is about a 10% per year mix of air between NH and SH via the ITCZ.
Thus even if the main sources of CO2 and CH4 are for 90% in the NH, they are mixed all over the globe, with a 6 months delay between ground stations (like Barrow) and Mauna Loa and up to 2 years between Barrow and the South Pole.
CH4 during the warmer previous interglacial (the Eemian) was around 700 ppbv, including a lot of melted permafrost. The level over the Holocene also was around 650-700 ppbv up to about 1750 and increasing since then. The increase may be from coal mining, natural gas exploration and leaks, rice and cattle…
These are all increasing over time, but nobody knows the ratio between these sources…
Ferdinand,
Please show me the data that contradicts the NOAA plots that I showed above, and which supports your view that there is a 2 year delay between Barrow and South Pole methane data. Perhaps I need new glasses, but I see Barrow at 1900 ppb in 2012 whereas as the South Pole is still at 1800 ppb in 2017 (five years later).
Jim,
The lags are for CO2 and implicitly also for CH4, but CO2 is not destroyed in the atmosphere, while CH4 reacts with OH radicals, ozone and other oxidants and is slowly destroyed between the main sources in the NH at ground level and MLO at 3400 meter and the south pole at 2300 m and behind the ITCZ barrier…
The rise and fall of methane levels seems to follow a tight correlation with the dimensions of the over-stuffed bowels of climate bureaucrats. Who would have thought it.
“In passing, can I say how bored I am by scientists and researchers who are “worried”?”
That may be a little harsh. Worrying works. 97% of the stuff I worry about never happens.
And for the same reason that blowing a whistle keeps the pink elephants away.
There was a time, not so long ago, that the model for the ideal scientist was one who was a disinterested, or dispassionate observer. In other words, objective. I’m afraid that what now passes for a scientist is someone who has a concern and goes out looking for evidence to support their concern.
Lordy, we have temperatures not getting anywhere close to the forecast rises based on CO2 alone.
Now we have methane to contend with as well?!?!
Anyone checked the populations of methanogenic archaea? Or if there’s some factor impeding its oxidation, and so extending its half-life of 9.1 years?
In passing, can I say how bored I am by scientists and researchers who are “worried”?
Worry has been weaponized.
A nuanced from of weaponized victimhood.
Beware those furrowed foreheads!
The CH4 levels in the atmosphere could be reduced by 11% overnight be exterminating all termites which harbour methane excreting bacteria in their gut. Well, it makes as much sense as most climate science.
JF
BTW, global warming is partly caused by oil spills smoothing water surfaces – various mechanisms. Another part cause is nitrate/phosphate/silica pollution feeding oleaginous plankton which also contribute to smoothing. See also the Permian/Triassic extinction. Article sitting in CR’s in tray.
“The spike has caused many researchers to worry that global warming is creating a feedback mechanism that will cause ever more methane to be released!”
Yet again a non-scientific biased cause and effect “confusion”
First it was average global temperatures caused by CO2 increases.This was measurable and therefore verifiable. Historic records showed Increased temperatures before CO2 increases and temperature rises without CO2 changes. Data didn’t support this so they changed to Climate Change – something that is far less quantifiable and therefore challengeable and has always happened regardless of CO2 levels.
Now its methane, as CO2 hat let the alarmists down! What’s next!
CO2 is nothing to worry about, and methane is less than nothing to worry about. That trend graph is mystifying though. The spike upward from about 1950 to 1980 and then the crash from 1980 to about 2010 is weird.
But yeah, the Alarmunists need methane to help pad their anti-carbon anti-West and anti-democracy portfolio. Maybe they can keep the whole scam going for a few more years. The prisons will still be there.
Ice cores and modern data cannot be put together. They are two different data sets from very different sources.
The world’s leading ice core scientist, Jaworowski (sp?), has indicated that the trauma and micro-fracturing of ice cores during extraction and decompression can loose up to 50% of the contained gases, ignoring any chemical processes that might consume methane while at depth. This means that the ice core values of 800 ppb methane would have been 1600 ppb, which is pretty much what it is today. The same is true for CO2 in ice cores. This is meaningless scientifically.
It is simply ingenuous to pretend that ice core data of gases are absolute values, they clearly are not and cannot be, and thus the data cannot be commingled with Mauna Loa gas measurements.
Charles,
Sorry, but Jaworowski was specialized in radio-isotopes fallout in ice cores, never performed any CO2 or methane measurements in ice cores. His ideas from 1992 were completely refuted already in 1996 by Etheridge e.a. who drilled three ice cores at Law Dome and measured CO2 top down from the surface to full depth.
One simple point: if one measures 800 ppbv in ice and in the laboratory atmosphere it is 1600 ppbv, one would expect that CH4 goes from the outside air to inside the ice, not reverse if there were cracks in the ice…
See further: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html
First, Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski is not “the world’s leading ice core scientist”. He’s the Chairman of the Polish Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection. His field of study is the influence of industry and nuclear explosions on pollution of the global environment and population. He is not an expert on ice cores.
Next, his claim that ice core CO2 data cannot be compared to modern CO2 measurements is based on his false idea that the air contained in the ice is exactly as old as the ice itself. However, numerous scientific studies have shown that it takes some years for the firn to close. The firn is the slowly compressing top layer of snow that will eventually be ice. Until the pores fully close, the air is still being exchanged with the atmosphere. So Jaworowski is simply wrong in his claim that ice age = air age. That idea is rejected by every researcher in the field.
Next, there is no evidence I know of that “trauma and micro-fracturing” and decompression affect ice core CO2. If that were the case, the results would be all over the map, because of variable amounts of fracturing … but they’re not. Here are the results from ten different ice cores, along with the modern data.
And here is a close-up of the same data since 1850, showing six ice core CO2 measurements plus modern CO2 measurements.
So I’m sorry, but your claims are not supported by the data.
w.
Charles,
In addition to what Willis said, here the graph of the firn and ice CO2 levels measured by Etheridge in de Law Dome drillings, where he used special equipment to measure the CO2 levels in the firn from near the surface to where the bubbles were closed at about 72 meters depth. At that depth the CO2 levels were about 10 years older that in the atmosphere, as the overlap with direct measurements at the south pole did show. At the same depth, the ice was already 40 years old (yearly layers at Law Dome are quite visible with 1.2 meter ice equivalent snow per years!), thus an age difference of 30 years between ice and included gas.
On the other side: CO2 levels in the firn of still open pores at closing depth and already closed pores in the ice were exactly the same.
Jaworowski published his objections in 1992, Etheridge his measurements in 1996, but Jaworowski still repeated his objections many years later.
When I confronted him with the age difference (for the Siple Dome ice core) in personal correspondence, he said that there were frequent melt layers in all ice cores, which is not true at all: none in Law Dome, one in the Siple Dome, for which the ice age – gas age difference was adjusted by Neftel…
Well, the alarmunists have been bleating about the various possible causes for whatever climate change of the moment they could possibly come up. None of ’em worked to their satisfaction to shut down the world, all the while further enriching the elite via guilt payments to save the planet…the children…humanity…endangered species…etc. Nothing stuck on the wall, so its back to that evil methane. I suggest that anyone who truly believes this crap stops eating, thereby curtailing methane output, all the while stop breathing, thereby reducing the dreaded CO2 levels. Its just the right thing to do for the cause they push on the rational thinking folks.
There is very little real science in the entire concept of “FEEDBACK” of thermal energy resulting from the thermal excitation of “greenhouse gases”. If that were true, people would be heating their homes with liquid crystal display thermometers. They respond to a wide range of thermal variations and must feedback enormous thermal energy. (RIGHT)
Jim, why do you think that undercooled victims are packed in alu foil? Because these reflect near all residues of heat the victim itself has left.
If you surround a heat source (even if that is the solar heated surface) with something that reflects some (even if it is only 1%) of the outgoing radiation, the surface will heat up, or you are destroying energy…
What does it take to obtain a
jobsinecure in which you can study something so narrow day in and day out for 40 years? These must rank among the lowest productivity employment of all time.By the way, that trend from 1850 to 1960 or so mirrors population growth pretty nicely — 5 grams of methane per person per day. Just sayin’ 🙂
On more serious note I have spent some time on gas well pads in western/southwestern Wyoming. The recent “worry” about methane, which is possibly about to become ludricrous regulation to make your home heating bill spike outta’ sight, has some of the gas producers putting expensive monitors around the perimeter of these large gathering and processing operations. These sensors are capable of sub ppb sensitivity to methane whilst the background air is nearly 2,000 ppb. Then the pneumatics on the pads are run by methane releases — permitted releases, which I can smell when the valves operate.
Lots of rent seekers running around proposing expensive technical, sciency sorts of solutions for a non-problem.
The post’s title almoist too clever/cute to be understood. CH? Swiss Confederation (Confoederatio Helvetica) ? Certified hypnotherapist? The U.S. vice president K(C)amala Harris? Yes methane is a potent greenhouse gas 25-30 times more than CO2 on a molecular / concentration basis. This is well known .. for a long time. Ban oil and gas fuels and send us back to literally the dark ages. Stupid is … as stupid does. Break out the cow bladder panties.
Stop Methane emissions…Eat Beef, daily if possible. I’m doing my part; are you?
In passing, I’m worried and quite certain that it’s worse than I thought. Much worse. Run away! It’s smellier than the smelliest smelly smell !!! I can’t breathe! We need to stop the passing now!
How do you refute Eschenbach’s logarithmic CO2 argument? Simply by pointing out that the anthropogenic increase of CO2 is exponential, not linear, as clearly proven by the measurements taken at the Scripps Institute on Mauna Loa from 1959 to present, and that it completely overcomes the diminishing effect of a logarithmic response. When you do the math you find that the anthropogenic CO2 increase is close to a remarkably steady 2.22% a year, and the slope of the logarithm for this can be calculated as d/dx(ln(1.0222^x)) = ln(1.0222), where x is the incremental year. Ln(1.0222) = 0.022, so 0.022x is a constant, positively sloped straight line. The slope of the log for the total atmospheric CO2 is currently less than 0.022 (it is currently about 0.0073) due to the effect of the 280 PPMv “always been there” part of the CO2, but as the exponentially increasing anthropogenic addition becomes a larger and more dominant part of the total atmospheric CO2 the slope will increase to approach 0.022. That means that the response to the actual CO2 increase is a line curving upwards, not slanting to the right and becoming flatter, the way a logarithmic response to a linearly increasing CO2 would. We are on track to have about 50% of the atmospheric CO2 attributable to human activity by 2053 +/-. Eschenbach and other deniers that cling to the logarithmic response as an argument against global warming simply do not understand the math.
First, I have no clue what you are calling “Eschenbach’s logarithmic argument”. This is why I ask, in every post, that you QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS THAT YOU ARE DISCUSSING!!!
Next, you say
But I find nothing of the sort. In the Mauna Loa data, the average increase is 0.44% per year, not 2.22%. And it is not “remarkably steady”. It has varied from 0.13% to 0.85%, with half of the data between 0.32% and 0.55%. Here’s a violin plot of the annual growth percentages.
And here is the annual percentage increase in CO2 over time:
“Remarkably steady”? Don’t make me laugh.
And you have the albondigas to say that I “simply do not understand the math”?
Medice, cura te ipsum!
w.
Well, you did use my exact words but then revealed that you entirely missed the “anthropogenic” point. I did NOT say the Mauna Loa readings (which are for the total, the pre-industrial 280 ppmv PLUS the anthropogenic additions) showed the 2.22% increase. I stand by the “remarkably steady,” as the anthropogenic growth curve has an R-squared of 0.9979. Also I should not have conflated you with the armies of angry but innumerate denier trolls out there. But anyway, perhaps a picture is in order here, q.v., below. BTW I’d like to hear your response to my “Modtran” remarks.
Thanks, Dave. Seems you are calling “anthropogenic CO2” the Mauna Loa values minus 280 ppmv. Fair enough.
However, the changes in anthropogenic CO2 are not “remarkably steady. They’ve varied from 0.9 to 3.6% …
Next, it is totally meaningless to take the log of just anthropogenic CO2. The change in forcing is 3.7 times the log base two of the change in TOTAL CO2, not the change in some subset of that (anthropogenic CO2, volcanic CO2, ocean outgassing CO2, etc.)
And I still have no clue what you are calling “Eschenbach’s logarithmic argument”.
w.
Thanks, Willis. Since the total CO2 is a bastard mix of the constant “already there” 280 ppmv + the new anthropogenic CO2 being added and therefore is neither a linear nor a true exponential function (yet) amenable to my Excel trend line calculation, so, yes, I calculate the anthropogenic (Keeling minus 280 ppmv) which is demonstrably exponential, to get its trend line, then use that trend line equation to generate a CO2 curve that yields “total” CO2 levels, anthropogenic trend + 280 ppmv. That yields a 2020/2021 increase slope of 0.0073 (or 0.73%) as I stated in my original post. I don’t think that using an average of annual increases should be used in a situation where the annual percentage increases are, well, increasing. Even though the annual increases are not linearly increasing, to get close I plotted a linear trend line of the annual increases (which is very noisy data) and the least-squares regression has, as expected, a slope of 0.0073. But, as I said in my original post, that slope is increasing as the anthropogenic portion of CO2 becomes larger and more dominant, so that the “total” CO2 growth rate will get closer and closer to that of the exponentially increasing anthropogenic portion. God knows, we MUST do something about that.
Please note that in my image from the 2010 WUWT I used your equation, log base 2, for the total CO2 concentration, not the just anthropogenic CO2. I’m not sure where the “+233.6” in that equation came from, but using your equation with the actual Mauna Loa CO2 data, forcing is not only not “tapering off” but actually accelerating, as seen in the plot. Perhaps you can elucidate.
Thanks for taking the time!
Willis,
I know you are very busy attending to other posts in this forum, but I would really like to hear your defense of the WUWT post (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/) where your equation “Forcing = 2.94 x log2(CO2) + 233.6″ was shown to reveal an INCREASE in forcing, contradicting the “Modtran Results” artful insinuation that it is “tapering off.” My experience in online fora is that, when I challenge a contrary assertion whose author could not defend it, that author “leaves the building.” Have you left the building?
Many thanks,
Dave G.
Dave, reading your comment, I was all ready to answer it until you got all nasty and implied that I had left the building. Next time you want me to answer a question, keep a civil tongue in your head. Until then, piss off. You don’t get me to answer questions by insulting me.
w.
No, you were not “all ready to answer it,” because you don’t have an answer, and your followers here will see that your original post has been exposed for what it is, a fraud. I will not miss you.
Dave, don’t attempt to tell me what I was and wasn’t ready to do, you have no clue. I was indeed ready to answer you until you got all nasty.
Your pathetic attempt at mind reading is a total failure, so don’t quit your day job to take up as a prognosticator.
I tell the truth as best I know it. Sorry that you don’t like that.
w.
Willis, the best way for you to put me in my place is to demonstrate, in a calm, rigorous way, why my challenge to you is baseless and wrong. Why won’t you do that? I can take the heat. If you leave it the way is is, you will be seen as not credible in the subject area. I’ll honor your statement that you tell the truth as best you know it, but you must show how you got to know it. You haven’t done that. You can’t say that actual downward forcing is tapering off due to the logarithmic nature of CO2 just because you say so. It isn’t, as shown in my chart provided you.
I wish you no ill will.
Dave, there’re not enough hours in the day for me to deal with charming folks like you who accuse me of bad motives. You want to discuss matters with a man of honor, learn to keep a civil tongue in your head.
And your claim that you “wish me no ill will” is self-serving hogwash. People who wish me no ill will don’t accuse me of running from questions.
You don’t seem to get it. You’ve burned your bridges with me. And you think the way out of it is to threaten that in your imagination, people will think less of me because I won’t bow to your demand that I explain things to you despite your bad manners?
I “answer challenges” to my work all day every day. But I don’t give in to bullies like you. In my experience, people think more of me when I don’t cave in to threats …
So go away. Don’t go away mad. Just go away. Not interested.
w.
Wow. “[Y]our demand that I explain things” is what we should all expect as a professional obligation in any technical field. That’s what I did for 30 years as an electrical engineer. Evidently you don’t feel any obligation to defend your assertions, apparently expecting your readers to swallow them without question, examination or challenge, and getting angry if any of them doesn’t. Pretty arrogant, I’d say.
In future, if I drop in to WUWT on occasion, I will read your posts with close interest.
Dave Goodridge February 16, 2022 3:33 pm
Listen up, you lying slimebag. I have defended my assertions from the very first post I made on WUWT until today. I spend more time defending and explaining my claims than any other climate blogger that I know of.
Next, I publicly admit when I’m wrong. I have a whole post called “Wrong Again”, and another entitled “Wrong Again, Again”. Name me one other climate blogger who’s done that.
And I don’t want people to “swallow” my ideas, that’s another lie. From the beginning, I’ve asked people to investigate, do their own research and ask questions.
What I don’t do is knuckle under to scummy douches like you who open the bidding with an accusation that I’m a coward who won’t answer questions. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Finally, you threaten to “read my posts with close interest”? … gosh, now I’m terrified.
Piss off.
w.
Well, Willis, since you have lowered the bar to where you call me a “lying slimebag,” I can take off the gloves and say that you are a technically innumerate imposter who has little or no understanding of the mathematics or physics required to speak about the subject matter. Your credentials include that you were educated in massage therapy, carpentry and building construction and other areas that have nothing whatsoever to do with climate science. You do, in fact, prey upon similarly uninformed soldiers in the culture wars (they love you, and some call you “Dr. Eschenbach” – ha!). You are helpless to answer for your preposterous post insinuating a “tapering off” of downward forcing because you just don’t understand the CO2 response to an exponential CO2 increase, and you don’t have the balls to admit you don’t know.
Yes, I will be watching. Sorry your insecure ego considers that a “threat.”
Pass. You are now reduced to the refuge of impostors, attacking my credentials (I have absolutely none) rather than attacking my scientific claims. My invariable rule of thumb is, when a man starts slinging mud as you are doing, it’s because he’s out of real scientific ammunition.
Hilarious.
Bye …
w.