how much carbon released?


http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,509617,00.html


Undersea Volcano Erupts Off Tonga Coast

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

AP
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NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga
An undersea volcano erupted off the coast of Tonga shooting clouds of smoke, steam and ash thousands of feet into the sky above the South Pacific ocean, officials said Wednesday.

Spectacular columns spewed out of the sea about 6 miles from the southwest coast off the main island of Tongatapu an area where up to 36 undersea volcanoes are clustered, said Tonga's geological service head, Keleti Mafi.

"It's a very significant eruption, on quite a large scale," he told The Associated Press.

There was no sign the offshore eruption posed any danger to residents, he said, with trade winds blowing gas and steam away from the island.

Residents said the steam and ash column first appeared on Monday morning, after a series of sharp earthquakes were felt in the capital, Nuku'alofa.

"This is not unusual for this area and we expect this to happen here at any time," Mafi said, adding that a similar eruption took place there in 2002.

A Defense Force boat was expected to travel to the region soon to check the area.

It was likely the underwater eruption was taking place to the west of the low-lying twin volcanic islands of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha'apai, within sight of Nuku'alofa.

Large amounts of pumice thrown up by the erupting volcano would likely clog beaches on the southern coast of nearby Fiji islands within a short time, he said.

Tonga, a 170-island archipelago about halfway between Australia and Tahiti, is part of the Pacific "ring of fire" an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching from Chile in South America through Alaska and down through Vanuatu to Tonga.

So what's your point, Gillis? That because there are natural carbon sources, we ought to ignore the huge input of carbon from human activity?

huge input of carbon from human activity?


HUGE....COMPARED TO WHAT CARBON OUTPUT?

MAN.....UNNATURAL....EVIL MAN IS NOT NATURAL ...EVERYTHING MAN DOES IS BAD?

HUGE....COMPARED TO WHAT CARBON OUTPUT?

Isotopic analysis proves definitively that almost 100% of the increase of atmospheric CO2 in the last century came from fossil fuels.

Watts up with that? The bottom line of this essay is: If the C13/C12 relationship during NATURAL inter-annual variability is the same as that found for the trends, how can people claim that the trend signal is MANMADE?

 

More CO2 Peculiarities: The C13/C12 Isotope Ratio

Roy W. Spencer

January 28, 2008

In my previous post, I showed evidence for the possibility that there is a natural component to the rise in concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.  Briefly, the inter-annual co-variability in Southern Hemisphere SST and Mauna Loa CO2 was more than large enough to explain the long-term trend in CO2.  Of course, some portion of the Mauna Loa increase must be anthropogenic, but it is not clear that it is entirely so.

Well, now Ifm going to provide what appears to be further evidence that there could be a substantial natural source of the long-term increase in CO2.

One of the purported signatures of anthropogenic CO2 is the carbon isotope ratio, C13/C12.   The gnaturalh C13 content of CO2 is just over 1.1%.  In contrast, the C13 content of the CO2 produced by burning of fossil fuels is claimed to be slightly smaller - just under 1.1%.

The concentration of C13 isnft reported directly, it is given as gdC13, which is computed as:

gdC13 = 1000* {([C13/C12]sample / [C13/C12]std ) - 1

The plot of the monthly averages of this index from Mauna Loa is shown in Fig. 1.

Now, as we burn fossil fuels, the ratio of C13 to C12 is going down.  From what I can find digging around on the Internet, some people think this is the signature of anthropogenic emissions.  But if you examine the above equation, you will see that the C13 index that is reported can go down not only from decreasing C13 content, but also from an increasing C12 content (the other 98.9% of the CO2).

If we convert the data in Fig. 1 into C13 content, we find that the C13 content of the atmosphere is increasing (Fig. 2).

So, as the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased, so has the C13 contentcwhich, of course, makes sense when one realizes that fossil-fuel CO2 has only very slightly less C13 than gnaturalh CO2 (about 2.6% less in relative terms).  If you add more CO2, whether from a natural or anthropogenic source, you are going to add more C13.

The question is: how does the rate of increase in C13 compare to the CO2 increase from natural versus anthropogenic sources?

First, lets look at the C13 versus C12 for the linear trend portion of these data (Fig. 3).

The slope of this line (1.0952%) represents the ratio of C13 variability to C12 variability associated with the trend signals.  When we compare this to what is to be expected from pure fossil CO2 (1.0945%), it is very close indeed: 97.5% of the way from gnaturalh C13 content (1.12372%) to the fossil content.

At this point, one might say, gThere it is!  The anthropogenic signal!h.  But, alas, the story doesnft end there.

If we remove the trend from the data to look at the inter-annual signals in CO2 and C13, we get the curves shown in Figures 4 and 5.

Note the strong similarity - the C13 variations very closely follow the C12 variations, which again (as in my previous post) are related to SST variations (e.g. the strong signal during the 1997-98 El Nino event).

Now, when we look at the ratio of these inter-annual signals like we did from the trends in Fig. 3, we get the relationship seen in Fig. 6.

Significantly, note that the ratio of C13 variability to CO2 variability is EXACTLY THE SAME as that seen in the trends!

BOTTOM LINE: If the C13/C12 relationship during NATURAL inter-annual variability is the same as that found for the trends, how can people claim that the trend signal is MANMADE?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/28/spencer-pt2-more-co2-peculiarities-the-c13c12-isotope-ratio/

*****
You can borrow from the Devil
You can borrow from a friend
But the Devil will give you twenty
When your friend only got ten
- Ramblin Jack Elliot

What you've got there is someone seriously unclear on the concept, Moniker. There's nothing at all unexpected about this result. Al he's doing is losing the marginal increase in total CO2 in the large carbon cycle exchange.

This result is a simple consequence of the fact that the absorption of C12 and C13 in the various sinks is basically the same.

The denier's argument is that since the bear shits in the woods, they should not have to pay for human sewage disposal. The religious puff piece by spencer, I'm sure I've seen discredited in discussion by scientists who don't let being a fundamentalist jerkwad get in the way of their pursuit of truth.

As has often been pointed out Spencer says a lot in blog posts and printed puff pieces that he never ever puts in any of his peer reviewed papers.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan

I believe that every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity an obligation; every possession, a duty. - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

Prosody Logo
H1 Where is that extra Carbon Dioxode coming from?

There was a recent video which downplayed global warming and claimed (among other things) that most of the rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was from volcanos. That statement is quite false. Here's a semi-technical argument that explains why. (Note that I'm not a real expert in this field, though a lot of the statements are basic physics, and I was a real expert in that not too long ago.)

It depends on several assumptions which I believe to be true, and can probably be verified:

* Fossil fuel CO2 production is reasonably well known. (Governments tax it, so they must count it.)
* Most non-fossil fuel combustion is from relatively small wood, dung, grass or other material that has grown recently (in the last decade or two). In other words, the CO2 from any leaves you burn was recently removed from the atmosphere, so the net effect of growing leaves and then burning them is zero.
* CO2 isotope ratios have been/can be measured in the atmosphere and ice cores or corals, or foramnifera, or somewhere for the last century or two.

Now, there are three isotopes of carbon (carbon-12, -13, and -14) which differ in the number of neutrons they have in their nuclei. They have the same number of electrons, though, so they make identical bonds to other atoms. All physical and chemical processes we care about will treat C14, C13, and C12 essentially equally. Specifically the ocean will absorb all varieties of CO2 at the same rate.

The interesting isotope here is carbon-14. C14 is produced in the upper atmosphere as cosmic rays collide with Nitrogen atoms. It is radioactive, with a half-life of 5000 years or so. That means, in 5000 years half of it will have radioactively decayed into something else; in about 20,000 years almost all of a sample of C14 will be gone.

Now, CO2 from fossil fuel (and from volcanoes) will have essentially no C14. That is because C14 is radioactive and any C14 that has been held underground for a million years will have long since decayed away. So, as we burn oil and coal (and as volcanoes produce CO2), the atmosphere isotope ratios will shift. All varieties of CO2 will dissolve in the ocean or be taken up by plants, but no C14 is being added due to humans. The atmosphere will thus have a smaller fraction of C14 as we burn fossil fuels.

Consequently, unless the sun is producing a much smaller solar wind than previously (which would allow more cosmic rays in, which would make more C14 in the upper atmosphere), there ought to be a nice relationship between the rise in the total atmospheric CO2 and a decrease in the C14 fraction in the atmosphere.

The technology exists to measure these isotope ratios precisely. I suspect that they have been measured.

Now, what about the ocean? Waves, foam, and other ocean surface effects are not intrinsically dependent on CO2 concentration (except to the extent that CO2 changes the ecology which then produces surfactant molecules). Thus, *whatever*the*details* of the CO2 transport into the ocean, it should follow a first order linear differential equation:

Rate_into_ocean = alpha(t,T) * (P_CO2_air - P_CO2_ocean).

All the messy unknowns are in alpha, which might be temperature-dependent and perhaps time-dependent. More generally, alpha is climate dependent, because it depends on wind speeds and ocean currents. It's a trivial model. (Note that the same arguments apply if there are other mechanisms for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, and a similar equation results.)

From this, you can compute how the isotope ratios change in the atmosphere, given isotope ratios in the ocean and a specified amount of fossil CO2 added to the atmosphere. (Again, even if there are other mechanisms, they will behave similarly with respect to isotope ratios.)

Now, there is an an estimate for the human-generated fossil CO2 production, and an estimate for a constant average volcanic CO2 production. From these (and P_CO2 measurement for all isotopes) you can compute an effective alpha.

Now, suppose someone's done that (and I'm darn sure they have). Suppose that the effective value of alpha agrees more-or-less with detailed models. This is more-or-less the scientific consensus, and more-or-less consistent with global warming models. It states that most of the CO2 increase in the last century is human-generated from fossil fuels, that alpha = 1/(100 years), and that about half of the CO2 we have generated has gone into the ocean.

Now, what if you believe that human-generated CO2 is B not an important contribution to the observed increase in CO2? What could be done that's consistent with all the available data?

Well, you can't reduce the amount of human-generated CO2 from fossil fuels. That's pretty well known -- remember, governments tax it. What you have to believe is that the volcanic contribution is larger. Suppose we wanted human-generated fossil-fuel CO2 to be only 10% of the total change. That means we need to have volcanoes producing 10 times the human component.

OK. Perhaps that's not impossible. It is a little bit of a coincidence that those volcanoes turned on during the industrial revolution, but coincidences do happen. B BUT it means we then need to make alpha 10 times larger in order to get that extra CO2 out of the air. If we wanted the human effect to be only 1% of the volcanoes, we'd need to make alpha 100 times (!) larger.

I suspect our understanding of the ocean surface is good enough to exclude a 100 times increase in alpha. So, let's stick with making humans a 10% effect with a 10 times increase in alpha.

Now, with the larger alpha, the time constant for moving CO2 from the air into the ocean is only 10 years. With such a short time constant, we now need to assume that the volcanic CO2 output is roughly tracking the human-generated fossil CO2 output (and always stays about 10x bigger). So, not only did the volcanoes turn on at the start of the industrial revolution, but that they are increasing their output at about the same rate as we humans do. That's getting a bit implausible.

Here's where the isotope ratios come into the picture. With the larger alpha, and faster transfer of CO2 into the ocean, one finds that most of the C14 has moved out of the atmosphere into the ocean. So, the atmosphere would have much less C14 in it than we actually observe. This is the fatal problem.

To summarize, if humans aren't important CO2 producers, then we need to assume that volcanoes are. But, the human contribution is about the right amount, so we need to believe that the excess CO2 from volcanoes need to go into the ocean. Since CO2 goes into the ocean more rapidly, the C14 does also, so you have to make more of it to maintain the correct concentration in the atmosphere. So, we'd need to believe that somehow, the rate of C14 production in the upper atmosphere would somehow have to be 10x larger than reality. Right?

Now, as we mentioned before, C14 is produced in the upper atmosphere as the result of cosmic rays hitting nitrogen atoms. Unfortunately for the volcanic-CO2 theory, we know all about that stuff and we've known it for decades. The amount of nitrogen in the atmosphere has been known since probably 1820, the number of cosmic rays has been known since the 1950s (Dr. James van Allen), and so has the reaction rate. All the relevant scientists are dead or retired, so you can't possibly accuse them of fudging their results in order to get more publicity or research money out of global warming. So, you cannot ask for more C14 to balance the hypothetical increase in volcanic C12 and C13 production. Thus, the entire volcanic CO2 theory falls apart.

In short, you can look at the isotope ratios to figure out how much fossil CO2 is being produced, relative to the production rate of C14. C14 production is known by spacecraft and nuclear physics. Ergo, the rate of fossil CO2 production is known. Since the rate at which we burn fossil fuels is approximately known, whatever is left over is the volcanic contribution.

All that stuff is known, and known fairly accurately. Therefore there really isn't any way for the scientific consensus to be wrong on the subject of CO2 concentration. At least, not grossly wrong. Therefore, the volcanic option is a red herring. Vulcanism isn't dramatically increasing.

So, we humans are indeed the main cause of the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. This argument applies to volcanoes, methane clathrates, CO2 from carbonate rocks, anything where the carbon was locked away from the atmosphere. (It may not apply to CO2 from soils and bogs; that's a topic for another day.)

This doesn't mean that the global warming scenario is nailed down solidly. The magnitude of the temperature rise is somewhat uncertain, and the economic and political effects are very uncertain. However, anyone who tells you that we're not doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is, plain and simple, wrong. They are either ignorant, misinformed, unwilling to believe reality, or have such a strong axe to grind that they are lying. Any one of those reasons means that they are probably not to be trusted as a source of information on global warming.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan

I believe that every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity an obligation; every possession, a duty. - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

OK ... here's a rigorous mathematical analysis that supports what I said qualitatively:

The argument is a logical fallacy. But its nowhere near as embarrassing as the mathematical fallacy. Let be the rate of change of CO₂:

.

Let be the rate of change of ¹³CO₂:

.

Spencers figure 3 is a scatterplot of against . Now detrend the CO₂ data; this will produce a new data set (call it ) which is the original data, minus a straight line:

,

where is the time, and and are constants. Likewise detrend the ¹³CO₂ data; this will produce a new data set (call it ) which is the original data, minus a straight line:

where and are constants. Now compute the time derivatives of the new data sets:

,

.

We see that the new time series of time derivatives are equal to the old time series of time derivatives, offset by constants. Spencers figure 6 is a scatter plot of against .

If we take any two time series and regress one against the other, well get a slope. If we take the same two time series offset by constants and regress one against the other, well get exactly the same slope. Necessarily. For Sure. Every time.

So Spencers Significantly, EXACTLY THE SAME as that seen in the trends! is nothing more than an obvious consequence of the way he analyzed the data. Its not significant and it means absolutely nothing except that Spencer really doesnt understand what hes doing.

Isotopic analysis proves definitively that almost 100% of the increase of atmospheric CO2 in the last century came from fossil fuels.



**********
let's read that again...


proves definitively that almost 100%

proves...... definitively


almost .................100%


definitively............almost


hahahahahahahahaha

definitively............almost
hahahahahahahahaha

Would it have made you happier if I wrote "at least 95%" instead of "almost 100%?"

No it would not make him happier, because he is one of those people referred to above as so warped by ideology as to be worthless.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan

I believe that every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity an obligation; every possession, a duty. - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

Would it have made you happier if I wrote "at least 95%" instead of "almost 100%?"



wouldn't matter .....don't believe it

wouldn't matter .....don't believe it

Well, I can't force you to open your eyes if you insist on keeping them shut.

wouldn't matter .....don't believe it

Well, I can't force you to open your eyes if you insist on keeping them shut.


*******************

nor can I get you to open yours.

but my philosophy promotes freedom...individual liberty and private property rights
yours seeks to enslave the masses in a vain attempt to "save the world from imminent destruction" by forcing compliance to strict /expensive guidelines that turn free nations into socialist ones ...thereby reversing your own original intent...because only wealthy nations can afford expensive "green " laws and restrictions

if this is not true....then test your "green theories " on haiti/somalia/bangladesh.....and when you succeed there...then we should consider their legitimacy...otherwise we (those with common sense and a penchant for freedom) will consider your attempts to scare everyone with chicken little sky is falling rhetoric ....as just another attempt to gain power for your political side (socialism) , using the environment as leverage.

Welcome to Green Hell, Where Youre All a Bunch of Slaves
Doug Giles
Saturday, March 21, 2009

If you thought the global warming climate clowns were bad before Obama ascended to the throne, you aint seen nothing yet with our new chartreuse Commander in Chief. Of course Barack, personally or professionally, wont go green because its too inconvenient and way too expensive for his gig, but for us serfs schlepping in Obamaland we will have to worship the turf because, you see, were murdering the earth. Quit laughing. This is serious. I said quit laughing. The earth is dying, and it aint funny.

In PoMo America where bullcrap is alive and well, were going to be forced to exchange the worship of God for grass. In Bermuda We Trust. And if we dont bow and kiss Pelosi and her tribes jade ring we could be used as human tiki torches to light her garden. Be afraid, plebeians. Be afraid.

After Obama was ACORNed into the White House, several black hip hop artists said that with the election of Barack the White House would soon morph into the Black House. I hate to break it to you, Ludacris, but youre a day late and a few special interest groups short, as the off-their-frickin-rocker global warming Gestapo are in line way ahead of you to paint 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue green, dawg. Fo shizzle, my nizzle.

Brace yourself, boys and girls, as were about to have green shoved up our backsides like never before. Yep, going emerald will soon move from being an Ed Begley, Jr./Daryl Hannah option and will quickly become a government dictate because climate change is a fact, or as Ron Burgundy would say, Its science.

Never mind the little detail that a staggering 31,000 scientists refused to sign the UNs consensus on global warming hysteria, compared to the paltry 2,000 bought off wizards who John Hancocked it.

Or the other little ditty that Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com points out in his new book Green Hell that there is no scientific evidence indicating that carbon dioxide, much less man-made carbon dioxide emissions, control or even measurably impact global climate. This is true whether you look at data going back 650,000 years, data from the twentieth century, or even data from the past ten years. Alarmist predictions of climatic doom are based exclusively on hypothetical mathematical models that have never been validated against the real world.

But that shouldnt bother us because were little slaves. And garsh, Al Gore said were destroying the globe! We know that tub of lard would never lie to us, so we must march, march, march, march, march . . .

Not only is this insane, unproven and ridiculously expensive green lifestyle going to further wreck our crippled economy, but its also going to screw with our freedoms like never before. You remember your freedoms, dont you? If the green police have their way thats what your freedoms will be: namely, a memory in the corners of your mind of the way we were. (Thats the only time I will ever allude to Streisand.)

Check this out from Milloy and Green Hell, Its time you recognize that a great green tsunami is heading your way, threatening to wash away your standard of living and many of your liberties . . . your sense of the green movement may be that it simply advocates small lifestyle changes to benefit the environment. But the green agenda, in fact, is much more ambitious; it promotes countless new restrictions and regulations designed to reorder society from top to bottom . . . living on a smaller, more inconvenient, more uncomfortable, more expensive, less enjoyable, and less hopeful scale . . . Its about you living under the green thumb.

Yep, the green police want to control what you eat, what you grow, what you drive, how you play, how you party, what you smoke, how many times your cow can fart, where you travel, what kind of crapper you have, whether you use tap or bottled water, and the square footage of your home. Isnt that nice?

Welcome to green hell, you bastards. Get ready to have the rat cage strapped to your face. I dont know about the rest of you, but I absolutely hate being told what to do and where to do itespecially for bogus, hello, reasons.

For instance, if I buy a small car it will be because I want to buy a small car. I bought my wife a beautiful Mini CooperS, not because some green jackass shamed us into it but because it is a screaming little high-quality ride, a veritable street legal go cart that she can park in a mailbox, which is important in a place like Miami (not to mention she looks smoking hot in it, as well).

However, now that we, the slaves of Obamaland, are being humiliated by them to get a Thumbelina car that goes at a top speed of 20mph and runs on Balinese spider monkey urine, Ive decided to sell the Mini and get the Ford F-1150 Global Warmer with the Middle Finger Package that visibly melts the polar ice caps and turns the sky black when you crank it up. Matter of fact, I think Ill get two: one for her to drive and one just to start and let run in my driveway.

Lastly, do yourself a favorthose of you who can still think freelyand get Steve Milloys new book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them. As the founder and editor of JunkScience.com, Steve Milloy has been monitoring the greens for over 13 years. Now, as many Americans wake up under this green thumb for the first time, Milloy can tell us what the greens are targeting firstand what we as American citizens can do to stop them.

Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.


http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=2ac967cc-3cf7-4cf5-8115-83d27b9b9475&t=c

nor can I get you to open yours.

My eyes have been wide open on this topic for decades. I have read and considered every skeptic and contrarian argument and I continue to do so, even though the repetition of discredited arguments is tedious.

And I have often pointed out where AGW arguments are weak or unsupported - for instance when it comes to correlating hurricane frequency with warming.


but my philosophy promotes freedom...individual liberty and private property rights
yours seeks to enslave the masses in a vain attempt to "save the world from imminent destruction" by forcing compliance to strict /expensive guidelines that turn free nations into socialist ones ...thereby reversing your own original intent...because only wealthy nations can afford expensive "green " laws and restrictions

Now this is a very interesting and revealing comment. We were discussing the science here - facts. You seem to think this was a conversation about philosophy. And that's something I see all too much of - you guys cherry pick arguments which support your philosophy and ignore the facts which don't. In other words, you are subordinating science to philosophy. And then you turn around and accuse anyone who thinks this is a serious problem of doing exactly what you're doing.

I reject your claim that my philosophy "seeks to enslave the masses" - that's not only false but insulting. Furthermore, I don't agree that your libertarian approach actually leads to greater freedom and prosperity in the long term. It's inherently unstable.