"This is ridiculous. Pardon my persistence, but the carbon content IS reduced exactly by the percentage of non-carbon additives. By definition."
Sigh. Since you are into pedantic hair splitting mode, you are correct. But reducing by 20% isn't going to make a huge difference. It is going to make, at most, a 20% difference.
"My contention was not about zero effect, but that the natural fluxes substantially exceed human contributions"
But those fluxes tend to ebb and flow. Over time, they tend towards no net change.
"and that the whole growth of CO2 could be a result of other, much more powerful natural processes. "
Sure it could. But, even if the bulk of the increase has a natural origin, it doesn't mean that our contributions are zero. And it hasn't been proven that the CO2 would have gone up without human input. Until the Industrial Revolution, human contributions were carbon neutral. Since that changed, CO2 content has been going up. That is irrefutable. Now, true. It could be just some massive coincidence. But Occam's forces you to at least consider a linkage.
"You nave been inattentive. I mentioned 10x and 20x concentrations in one of my previous posts."
Yes you did. Since it didn't have linkage with surrounding material, it got ignored. Sure, CO2 content was higher. Makes sense, it was warmer too. So many of the existing carbon sinks didn't hold the CO2 that they do now. There was no notable permafrost, deep ocean water held less CO2. Now shallow water was a different story, the PCO2 in surface oceanic waters help support great numbers of calcareous forams and such. More and bigger forests were a sink, but bogs and chlathrates held less.
"My contention is that all estimates of global flux could be in big error because an average of a product of oscillating components is not equal to product of their averages."
True. But what makes you so sure that none of these estimates take that into account?
"Equilibrium in what sense?"
Equilibrium in the simplest of senses. While the various oceanic parameters(El Nino, La Nina, etc.) means that the oceans might be a net sink or a net source, it tends to average out over time. Dr. Takahashi's data does not indicate that the oceans have been a net carbon source over the past few decades, although in any given year they might. Just like they might be a sink in any given year. |
