On the specific topic of c14 and the broader topic of scientific background, I stumbled on this big but very readable historical account looking up Warfie's reference to Revelle and Keeling in Message 25762146 : aip.org
A little bit on c14 from a part of that site:
None of this work met the argument that the oceans would promptly absorb nearly all the CO2 humanity might emit. Plass had estimated that gas added to the atmosphere would stay there for a thousand years. Equally plausible estimates suggested that the surface waters of the oceans would absorb it in a matter of days.(29) Fortunately, scientists could now track the movements of carbon with a new tool — the radioactive isotope carbon-14. This isotope is created by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere and then decays over millennia. The carbon in ancient coal and oil is so old that it entirely lacks the radioactive isotope. In 1955, the chemist Hans Suess reported that he had detected this fossil carbon in the atmosphere.
The amount that Suess measured in the atmosphere was barely one percent, a fraction so low that he concluded that the oceans were indeed taking up most of the carbon that came from burning fossil fuels. A decade would pass before he reported more accurate studies, which showed a far higher fraction of fossil carbon. Yet already in 1955 it was evident that Suess's data were preliminary and insecure. The important thing he had demonstrated was that fossil carbon really was showing up in the atmosphere. More work on carbon-14 should tell just what was happening to the fossil carbon.(30)
Suess took up the problem in collaboration with Roger Revelle at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. (Some other carbon-14 experts attacked the topic independently, all reaching much the same conclusions.) From measurements of how much of the isotope was found in the air and how much in sea water, they calculated the movements of CO2 (link from below). It turned out that the ocean surface waters took up a typical molecule of CO2 from the atmosphere within a decade or so. Radiocarbon data also showed that the oceans turned over completely in several hundred years, an estimate soon confirmed by evidence from other studies.(31) At first sight that seemed fast enough to sweep any extra CO2 into the depths.
<=The oceans
But Revelle had been studying the chemistry of the oceans through his entire career, and he knew that the seas are not just salt water but a complex stew of chemicals. These chemicals create a peculiar buffering mechanism that stabilizes the acidity of sea water. The mechanism had been known for decades, but Revelle now realized that it would prevent the water from retaining all the extra CO2 it took up. A careful look showed that the surface layer could not really absorb much gas — barely one-tenth the amount a naïve calculation would have predicted. (from aip.org
An even more detailed account on that particular little topic is in aip.org . What I like about this site is that it gives a real feel for how science progresses in fits and starts, and how sometimes people don't quite figure out what the data mean till years later Plus, it's chock-a-block with citations to something other than random political screeds and paid propagandists. Huge number of guys, indeed. On the down side, it's a lot of stuff to digest at a sitting ( or 2 or 3 for that matter). I don't imagine this or anything else could possibly have an impact on our local emissaries from W world, but for the rest of us I think it's a nice reference. |
