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Friday, November 7, 2014

Fizzy denier weirdness upwelling at WUWT

Sou | 11:57 PM Go to the first of 21 comments. Add a comment

This is just a little teaser, ahead of another article in the works, which I plan to finish sooner rather than later - but no promises.

This comment was seen today under a video which in part is about how upwelling waters are more acidic than surface waters in the ocean (which is true, they are). What I'll leave you to chew on is the magical thinking, the leaps of illogic that is so typical of WUWT. You don't need to know anything about ocean science or climate science to see how wrong it is. All you need is some high school chemistry and physics. Bart wrote:
November 6, 2014 at 7:01 pm
Very interesting. This increase in upwelling may be what is driving atmospheric CO2 increase, whose rate of change is manifestly a temperature modulated process, and not substantially affected by human release of latent CO2 locked away in fossil fuels.

If I'm reading him correctly (and there's no guarantee), Bart thinks that the CO2 from burning hydrocarbons disappears out of the air (and sea) by magic and is replaced by carbon brought up from the depths of the ocean, which is turned into carbon dioxide and expelled into the air.

21 comments:

  1. In the SalbyStorm the most prolific and dedicated supporter of Salby's ideas was non other than Bart.

    in PDF of the comments:PDF Search: {Bart}

    That gives 29 comments, but actually there were many more, because many threads tended to degenerate into endless duels between Bart writing that Salby was right vs somebody else (often Ferdinand Engelbeen) saying otherwise.

    Anyway, this is yet another version of Salby's "CO2 rise nothng to do with humans."

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  2. That Twitter exchange was hilarious. Chief Idiot Watts says, "Coward, unmask yourself" - what, are we in a 1950s swashbuckler? I think I'm going to follow and speak like this the rest of the day. The kids may find it amusing.

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    1. Swashbucklers were more like the 1930s Joe.

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  3. He doesn't seem to be saying that elemental carbon is being turned into CO2. It is rather CO2 already dissolved into deep layers that he is suggesting could be released in the upwelling zones. His main problem, as you note, is accounting for mass balance. Antropogenic emissions already account for about twice the rate of atmospheric CO2 concentration increase. Further, rates of oxygen depletion very much limit how much CO2 is taken up by the biosphere. Hence, indeed, if oceans were a net source, then a whole lot of CO2 would have to disappear from the Universe.

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  4. I suppose we should be grateful that they are now admitting the role of CO2 even if they are 'disappearing' all the carbon we are burning. Farce X must be spinning in its grave.

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    1. Today perhaps they accept the role of CO2, tomorrow will be something else in Watts's denier land.

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    2. Have we heard anything more of Farce X since.... whenever it was... August,maybe?

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    3. It's akin to a magnetic die with many different poles (north, south, east, west, counterclockwise, squirrel...) - when actual information approaches it the die spins to an opposing pole, which you can see in 'skeptic' arguments as they wildly go from one contradicting objection to another.

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  5. What part of manifest don't you understand, Sou? :)

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  6. Bart's claims might be rather hard for many in the AGW-hostile crowd to stomach since it involves accepting that deep oceanic water can upwell pushing surface water down to the depths. Such claims come dangerously close to the "warmist excuse" for the "pause" in Global Warming, namely heat transferred to the deeper ocean through overturning. The brilliant Tallbloke effortlessly demolishes this excuse as follows:

    We are all familiar with the tendency for temperature differences in air causing an “overturning” effect, where warm and cold air will spontaneously set up a circulation, mixing in the heat. It is this process which drives our weather systems.

    However, sea water does not behave that way.

    Warm water is less dense than cold water. This means that a “cell” of warm water in a cold water environment will behave as if it were like oil, or any other less dense liquid – it will float to the surface and stay there. Since only the surface region of the ocean is warmed by the sun or greenhouse effect, there is no physical reason for that warm surface water to sink and heat the depths. Indeed, the contrary effect happens -

    The warmer surface water gets, the more it resists sinking.
    Even if the greenhouse effect were to warm the surface oceans, we would be able to detect this very quickly, because the acquired heat would not disappear into the deep oceans as suggested by greenhouse promoters, but rather sit on the ocean surface like a warm oil slick


    (Warning: the first part of this post may contain traces of irony.)

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    1. Oh TB is a tool. Wind-driven circulation (Ekman pumping; gyres). The man truly does know nothing.

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    2. TB also is a special relativity "skeptic". To anyone who understands the structure of modern physical theory, this marks him as an uber-crank.

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    3. Yup, he believes in the aether

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    4. As I recall, TB is also a proponent of the luminiferous aether - little more need be said.

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    5. I dunno Bill hartree, as compelling as it may be to read some idea concocted by some random dude on the internet, I'd defer to the actual experts and the supporting observations.

      The convergence of surface currents in the subtropical ocean gyres is a response to the wind-forcing and the Coriolis force. The easterly trade winds result in the poleward near-surface transport of warm tropical water. Mid latitude westerlies drive a near-surface current equatorward. Where these two converge surface water has nowhere to go but down. See Ekman (1905). This convergence has been observed, and some of its pathway revealed by chemical tracers in the sea.

      Bouyancy is still conserved in these areas of ocean ventillation. The surface waters are indeed still warmer than the layers below. What we observe is the vertical displacement of isopycnals. The waxing and waning of the trade winds and midlatitude westerlies is what drives the Interdecdal Pacific Oscillation [IPO], although why they wax and wane is still the subject of genuine scientific debate.

      What I find interesting is that deniers haven't yet cottoned on to why the monthly sea surface temperature record has been broken three times this year - it likely heralds a change in the IPO. We'll find out in the next few years.....

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    6. Rob,I agree with you: Tallbloke is a seriously random dude. My point was to draw attention to the bundle of contradictions that is the denialosphere. Occasionally AGW-deniers attain some level of awareness of the fact and are moved to describe their confederates as, for instance, "transcendent ranters" before lapsing into their customary blissful oblivion.

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    7. Bill Hartree is a pusillanimous liar. The quote he attributes to me is actually from John Daly's website:

      http://www.john-daly.com/deepsea.htm

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    8. Hey Tallbloke, while you're here, can you tell us more about the aether? Have you proven its existence yet?

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    9. "Pusillanimous liar"? Why the OTT instant abuse?

      A simple correction of the mis-attribution would suffice. Or am I missing something?

      A Concerned Citizen

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    10. RT doesn't actually say he disagrees with the quote; just wanted to use "pusillanimous" (albeit incorrectly) in a sentence.

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  7. Sou - "....and is replaced by carbon brought up from the depths of the ocean, which is turned into carbon dioxide and expelled into the air."

    Steele is clearly deluded, but when organic detritus falls to the sea floor microbes break it down releasing carbon dioxide in the process - it's called remineralisation (organic converted back to inorganic form).

    Still, one has to laugh that he doesn't accept measurements of long-term declining ocean pH, but gleefully accepts measurements of short-term fluctuations in ocean pH. Contradiction much?

    And one other thing, we can extend our knowledge of ocean pH back in time so long as we have two parameters of the ocean carbonate system. The ice core record, which contains bubbles of ancient air, means we can extend ocean pH back hundreds of thousands of years.

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