There may be local changes to natural CO2 production, but huge year to year global variation? It seems very unlikely to me. You'd be talking of years with 30% less global plant activity - I think the whole global ecosytem would collapse under that sudden strain.

No melts high up on the Antarctican ice cap surely?

Andre, an "ad honimen" comes from honni=rogue in french? 

I agree I have no conclusive explanation for the results I just know that their interpretation as Beck presents it is false.

Nice misrepresentation Andre. You got both the accusation of scientific wrongdoing and the cry of 'alarmist' in one sentence

Peter asked: No melts high up on the Antarctican ice cap surely?

Possible warming during LGM, and problems for the ice core record either way...

http://mypage.iu.edu/~mlprenti/docs/mpw_antarc_LTVSumB_070415.pdf

Michael Prentice is investigating:

http://mypage.iu.edu/~mlprenti/

Martin North - 3/5/2007 00:27

Peter H - 2/5/2007 22:37

andre - 2/5/2007 22:05 Well, I skipped the fallacies and the ad honimens of Georgs post and all that remained was virually nothing, well the it-can't-be-therefore,-it-isn't-fallacy. That's why Callender et al simply skipped all results with bigger deviation than 10% from the assumed range because it couldn'be and it would work against his assessment since indeed Callendar was one of the first climate alarmists...

Nice misrepresentation Andre. You got both the accusation of scientific wrongdoing and the cry of 'alarmist' in one sentence

One couldn't accuse Andre of 'beating around the bush'... Come on, lets progress this...

In what way? By treating what Enrst Beck writes seriously? By actually reading what Callender wrote in the 30's to see how Andre misrepresents him? By actually understanding that there is no way, no way at all, CO2 fluctuated like Beck claims - it's just not possible.

What is there to progress here Martin?

That was in reply to Dave. Dave was talking about the last fifty years, or, at most, the time period of Beck's paper... Certainly that's what it read as. I replied accordingly.

Peter, effective isn't it?

We know exactly what Callendar wrote:

http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/callendar/callendar1958.doc

See the introduction about the "expirement" and "rejection of inaccurate values"

" period mean values 10% or more different from general average of time and region"

Hence Callendar rejected these figures of the forties without even raising an eye brow how it was possible that ALL those result showed a higher than expected result.:

Now it is a little far fetched to assume that all those samples were all wrong simultaneously, whereas before and after that period it appeared possible to measure values concurrent with expectations.

So the higher levels of the early forties should have become the standard instead of the preconceptual values of Callendar with the intention to proof that experiment.

If everybody measures the same oddity using different techniques at different places, isn't it even remotely possible that not all are wrong?

Right! 

Btw, I'm a realist-warmer and an eco-realist.

here is a dogmatist:

http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/callendar/callendar1958.doc

(callendar1.JPG)

(callendar2.JPG)

callendar1.JPG (73KB - 59 downloads)

callendar2.JPG (19KB - 67 downloads)

In other words: "I know what I to want to find and if I find something else I simply reject or ignore it."

Peter H - 3/5/2007 09:20

One couldn't accuse Andre of 'beating around the bush'... Come on, lets progress this...

In what way? By treating what Enrst Beck writes seriously? By actually reading what Callender wrote in the 30's to see how Andre misrepresents him? By actually understanding that there is no way, no way at all, CO2 fluctuated like Beck claims - it's just not possible.

What is there to progress here Martin?

hey peter I am on your side (on this subject).

So, you want to find that Callendar is biased and you'll reject everything I (from one side of the debate) and Hans (from your side) say? 

Andy Mayhew - 3/5/2007 12:40 If those figures from the 1940s are accurate representations of globally average CO2 concentrations at the time, how do we explain how a huge increase in CO2 emissions since then has resulted in CO2 levels dropping? All other things being equal, CO2 levels should have been rising steadily over the past hundred or so years as a result in increased amounts of fossil fuel and rainforest burning. This is exactly what, for example, the Mauna Loa data shows: ie it matches what we would logically expect it to. The 1940s data does not match and can only be explained as local concentrations which do not reflect global, dispersed, averages.

As I said before, if we have no easy explanation for something, that does make it go away. That's the ignorance fallacy. Now of course there are many haphazard erratic measurements. But we have 4-5 near simultaneous results from all over the world (Germany/Austria, Ireland, India, Alaska) with different methods that had proved to dovetail with expected results earlier and no consistent structural measurement around the expected values.

You simply cannot ignore that. I don't know what the explanation is nor does Ernst Beck but we do know that CO2 did strange things in the geologic past and if the oceans were to release 1% of its CO2 in the air by some pet idea mechanism then you'd be surprized not only at the final CO2 levels  but also at the transient levels before mixing. 

andre - 3/5/2007 13:11

Andy Mayhew - 3/5/2007 12:40 If those figures from the 1940s are accurate representations of globally average CO2 concentrations at the time, how do we explain how a huge increase in CO2 emissions since then has resulted in CO2 levels dropping? All other things being equal, CO2 levels should have been rising steadily over the past hundred or so years as a result in increased amounts of fossil fuel and rainforest burning. This is exactly what, for example, the Mauna Loa data shows: ie it matches what we would logically expect it to. The 1940s data does not match and can only be explained as local concentrations which do not reflect global, dispersed, averages.

As I said before, if we have no easy explanation for something, that does make it go away. That's the ignorance fallacy. Now of course there are many haphazard erratic measurements. But we have 4-5 near simultaneous results from all over the world (Germany/Austria, Ireland, India, Alaska) with different methods that had proved to dovetail with expected results earlier and no consistent structural measurement around the expected values.

You simply cannot ignore that. I don't know what the explanation is nor does Ernst Beck but we do know that CO2 did strange things in the geologic past and if the oceans were to release 1% of its CO2 in the air by some pet idea mechanism then you'd be surprized not only at the final CO2 levels but also at the transient levels before mixing.

 

Ahh, you do have something you want to find!

Look, everyone and his wife accepts, because it's been shown to be so, that the reason some reading are high is because they are wrong. You can blather on as much as you like but that's the reality. Not only where could such vast quantities of Co2 come from, wtf did they go?

So, you, Andre, have a 'pet theory' looking for evidence to back it up. Along come E.G. Beck, and we see what happens, you find what you want to find...

The problem is: there may be a mechanism that could spout a vast amount of CO2 in one go into the atmosphere, it takes at least 30 years to remove that spike by means of diffusion. To me there is no known mechanism that quickly removes CO2 spikes. Furthermore the icecores disagree with Beck.

Ah the 90 gigaton fallacy again. Andre that is a two way high frequency flux, it's comparable with my two guinea pigs eating 16 kilograms of food every year although they both are one kg and only gain 30 grams of weight every year. You have to look at change in biomass, not the quantity of the metabolism.

And besides that, you a dismissing the ice core CO2 measurements, which agree with the low values in the rest of the early 20th century.

Yup, you sound like you think your 'grandma doesn't know how to suck eggs'  

Seriously? After what you've said about Callendar?

Ahh, I hadn't fully picked up on the importance of altitude. I'd thought measuring sites were to do with isolation, but I can see that being high up is also vital. 

But then again there not that much difference between Mauna Loa and other stations at ground level:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/GermanCO2.GIF

which should also give a indication of the hypothetical difference between Kreutz and Duerst and Mauno Loa "back ground" level.

I haven't been here for some time, sorry about that...

 In this case, I am with Hans. I have seen Beck's original papers, where his story is based on. One of them is the paper of Kreuz, where measurements from Giessen are presented. If one looks at the data, one sees the following points:

 Excursions are found in Giessen of 300 ppmv between day and night around 1940. This is not possible for NH background, but it is possible for local variations. The more that the difference between ground level samples and 0.5, 2 and 14 m height samples can be 50 ppmv, where 0.5 and 2 m is constantly lower than ground level, while 14 m CO2 levels are again near ground level. The latter seems to be from local industries and town (according to the author, W. Kreutz). No matter the resolution of the CO2 analytic methods of that time, the daily variations are way to high to be from background NH levels, but may come from differences due to CO2 day/night use by the dense forests. The CO2 variations at 2 m level are correlated with solar energy measurement figures (r = -0.8)...

Compare that to the Mauna Loa data, where daily variations are within 1 ppmv, seasonal variations are within +/- 4 ppmv and local outliers are down to minimum -4 ppmv, the latter due to upgoing winds depleted by vegetation.

Stomata index (SI) data from oak samples in The Netherlands (St. Odiliënberg), near the German border (West of Aachen), don't show an abnormal behaviour around 1940, compared to the period before and after 1940. The SI has an error margin (95% interval) of +/- 10 ppmv within a subdecennial resolution (except for the subdecadal resolution, there is no smoothing in stomata data, but a positive bias, as the stomata index is directly related to spring CO2 levels). From the Ph.D. work of Thomas van Hoof, 2004. But even there, local/regional influence of temperature on decay of organics may influence the CO2 data for more local/regional variation.

I haven't looked at the raw ice core data yet, has anyone a link?

And last but not least, coralline sponges show no abonormalities around 1940, while the ocean's upper layer and the atmosphere are more or less in dynamic equilibrium for CO2. Measurement resolution is on subdecadal scale:

http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif 

The graph is for 13C deviations, which is seen from fossil fuel burning and/or land use changes. Even (relative) fast excursions like measured in Giessen should be visible, if they were more than local/regional, which is not the case.