Oh boo hoo...  I dont feel "caught out " at all...  I ask questions to get answers I put forward replies to get responses...  if I post something that is incorrect it is there to be corrected.

No skin off my nose.

I will now weigh up your claims Muso like I always do.

Just wondering how you are going to prove Ashworth's claim incorrect that the Table was not developed by the IPCC.

I thought Che was a brave warrior and brilliant subversive -- all the more reason why we should have exterminated him sooner.

Soren, I sincerely apologise. I gave voice to a baseless suspicion. I plead guilty as charged, a smacking pratt.

Btw Muso, outstanding work.

Grendel wrote on Apr 29^th, 2010 at 10:52pm:


Grendel,

I'll regret this later I'm sure, but I'm sorry if I was too hard on you. I really don't mind people asking questions if they are going to read the responses and not just ignore them.

As to how can I prove that the Table wasn't written by the IPCC, well the reference is all wrong. (Of course, for that matter I can't prove that it wasn't engraved on rock and brought down from Mt Sinai by Moses) The Heartland Institute quite often do this kind of thing so that people can't check the real references.

The fact that the figures are expressed as Carbon dioxide as opposed to carbon made me suspicious. I'm pretty sure that everything the IPCC put out in the 2001 Technical report was expressed as carbon.

Ashworth was flavour of the month at the Heartland Institute a couple of years ago. He's supposed to be a Chemical Engineer. I found some old accolades from the Heartland Institute. Let me see if I can dredge them up again. Apart from that, the link I gave you was from the Hearland Institute's own domain.

(edit)

Here you go:
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/25348/No_Evidence_to_Support_Carbon_D...

It's a fair call: he has a point.

I'd still like to dissect the figures on that table some time to see what they actually represent. The figure of 6.3 Gigatonnes per annum of anthropogenic carbon emissions (23.1 of CO2) would put that data around 1999. The total net natural flux of 210 GteC (770 GteCO2) is again about right for 1999. The balance of about 3.65GteC (13.4 Gteco2) that is not absorbed was also about right.

So he has taken the net emissions per annum and expressed it as a percentage of the total fluxes, regardless of the fact that the absorbed carbon flux is balance by that emitted..... and called that percentage  human made without specifying what it's a percentage of.  It's actually a percentage of all the emission fluxes. I have a strange feeling that I've discussed this once before on this forum.    

However, there are a few points worth considering.

1. Prior to industrialisation, the carbon balance was actually in balance. There was slight variation mainly caused by slow orbital changes and solar flux variations, plus the odd explosive stratospheric volcano which cooled things down slightly for a year or two. Two exceptions were Mount Toba, approximately 73,000 years ago which arguably caused a 1000 year "volcanic winter and the Younger Dryas cooling, which new studies reveal was caused by cometary impact.  On the whole, variations before industrialisation were slow and predictable. The carbon cycle was not far out of kilter.  


2. The crux of the problem is the fact that Greenhouse gas emissions
upset the natural balance to the tune of 3.65GteC per annum (1999 figures - probably more like 5 on today's figures). That excess in the carbon budget tends to be accumulative. The figures I provided originally of about 200 GteC since industrialisation is about right (erring on the conservative side). It amounts to an increase of 30% since 1930 and about 38% since the onset of industrialisation.  

The Heartland Institute paper concentrates too much on CO2 alone.  We all know that CO2 is part of the problem, albeit a fairly major part.

We also all know that water vapour is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, however if we could magically remove it from the atmosphere in an instant, it would return to it's original level in about 12 weeks.

Concede doesnt have to be hesitant nor with a grudge.

And no I'm not mixing them up.

I used concede in the ironic sense once I believe.

You do understand irony I take it Pooella?