Model for atmospheric carbon dioxide - Abstract (Ed Berry)

Link: http://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/model-atmosphericcarbon-dioxide-abstract/ Please see link above for original document, embedded hotlinks and to read and make comments.

A Model for Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide: Abstract

by Edwin Berry, PhD, CCM (Certified Consulting Meteorologist) August 9, 2017 Below is the Abstract for my forthcoming professional paper.

Yesterday, I submitted this Abstract to the American Meteorological Society for presentation at its “31st Conference on Climate Variability and Change.”

I hope to have my complete paper ready for publication in a few more weeks. My thanks to all who have helped me in this endeavor by reviewing my drafts.

After debating climate alarmists for many years, I have concluded the only way to win a climate debate (note I did not say “convert the believer”) is to clearly negate the alarmist hypothesis.

Otherwise, a climate debate can go on for years and accomplish nothing.

I think the focus of this Abstract on its point #1, may be the simplest and best way to negate the alarmist hypothesis. While this Abstract is necessarily in scientific language, this argument can easily be put into layman’s language.

ABSTRACT The critical questions about climate change are not about whether climate has changed or the impacts of climate change. The critical questions about climate change are about cause-andeffect: 1. How much does human-emitted carbon dioxide increase atmospheric carbon dioxide?

2. How much does increased atmospheric carbon dioxide change climate?

This paper focuses on the first question.

This paper derives, possibly for the first time from fundamental principles, a simple model, with a rate equation and its analytic solution, which accurately describes the flow of carbon dioxide Page 1

into, and out of, the atmosphere. The two universally-accepted, fundamental principles are the continuity equation and the gas version of Torricelli’s Law. This paper will call the model described in this paper, “the Model.”

The Model follows the proper design for such models as described by Forrester of MIT. Models should include defined levels (of carbon dioxide in this instance) and rate equations that describe the flow of carbon dioxide or carbon between the levels.

The Model’s conclusions support the conclusions of other papers regarding carbon dioxide residence time and the effect of human emissions on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

The Model shows how the flow of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere sets the equilibrium level of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This equilibrium level equals the total inflow multiplied by the residence time. The Model shows the level will always move toward its equilibrium level.

Because of Raoult’s Law and Dalton’s Law, the Model applies to the total atmospheric carbon dioxide as well as to its individual parts, such as 14CO2, natural 12CO2, and human-produced CO2.

The Model shows that human-produced carbon dioxide and nature-produced carbon dioxide independently set their equilibrium levels based upon their respective inflows, and the sum of these independent equilibrium levels equals the total equilibrium level of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The Model is meant to replace the Bern model used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) because the Bern model is not based on fundamental physics.

The Model shows that nature treats human-produced carbon dioxide exactly like natureproduced carbon dioxide because, once in the atmosphere, nature cannot tell the difference between human-produced and nature-produced carbon dioxide.

IPCC’s Bern model treats human-produced and nature-produced carbon dioxide differently, which defies physical laws and is therefore impossible. The emissions term in the Bern equation is for human emissions and not for natural emissions. If natural emissions were inserted into the Bern-model emissions term, the Model would compute an ever-increasing, irreversible, unstoppable level of atmospheric carbon dioxide – even with no human emissions and even if nature’s emissions continued constant as they were in 1750.

The Bern model is a seven-parameter curve-fit to the output of IPCC’s climate models, which include the same assumptions as the Bern model. By contrast, the Model is derived from fundamental physics and it requires data to fit only one parameter, the residence time.

In sharp contrast to the Bern model, the Model accurately reproduces how the level of atmospheric 14CO2 decreased after the end of the above-ground atomic-bomb tests in 1963. The

Page 2

creators of the original Bern model, Siegenthaler and Joos (1992), understood that their model should reproduce the 14CO2 data and were disappointed that it did not do so.

Siegenthaler and Joos designed their original Bern model with separate levels for the atmosphere and different parts of the ocean. However, the IPCC’s version of the Bern model omits the separate levels and incorrectly attaches the slow time-constant between the upper ocean and the deep ocean, directly to the atmosphere. This unrealistic connection causes IPCC’s Bern model to vastly over-estimate the residence time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The proper way to include the deep ocean is to expand the Model to include explicit levels for the upper ocean and the deep ocean, as originally planned by the creators of the Bern model.

Then one would add to the expanded Model, rate equations that describe the slow flows between the upper ocean and the deep ocean. It is incorrect to connect the rate equations for the deep ocean directly to the atmosphere level, as the present Bern model does.

The IPCC is the only group that claims carbon dioxide residence time is hundreds of years to infinity. Siegenthaler (1989), and more than thirty other scientific papers, conclude carbon dioxide residence time is between 3 and 15 years.

This present paper uses 14CO2 data to conclude that the residence time of 14CO2 is 14.4 years.

The Model shows that residence time equals the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide at equilibrium divided by the total inflow; this computes the 12CO2 residence time to be ~4 years.

Some authors have tried to defend the IPCC’s extremely long, unrealistic, and irreversible residence time by claiming the Bern model uses a “different kind” of residence time than that which the 14CO2 data describes. The present paper concludes the Bern model, the 14CO2 data, and all other definitions of 1/e residence time are the same – because they all use the same parameter to measure residence time, i.e., the level (or concentration) of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The Model shows that the ratio of human to natural carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at equilibrium, equals the ratio of their inflows; this ratio equality is independent of residence time.

The Model computes the human-caused equilibrium level to be ~18 ppm and the nature-caused equilibrium level to be ~382 ppm. The total of each part adds up to the ~400 ppm of today.

The Model shows if ALL human carbon dioxide emissions were terminated today and nature stayed constant, the total carbon dioxide level would fall to ~390 ppm in 4 years, to ~387 ppm in 8 years, and would never fall below 382 ppm because the constant inflow of natural carbon dioxide would always maintain that level.

To answer the first question above: human emissions are insignificant to climate change.

Page 3

Note to authors of other websites: You are welcome to copy and cross-post my post above on your website, provided you include a link to this original post. Please encourage those who wish to comment to do so on this site. Otherwise, I will never be able to read and reply to their comments. Thanks. – Ed August 9, 2017 By Dr. Ed 3 Comments Filed Under: AGW Hypothesis, Author Dr. Ed, Edwin Berry

QUOTE from edberry.com Home Page

“Ishi looked upon us as sophisticated children – smart, but not wise.”

“We knew many things, and much that was false.

He knew nature, which is always true.”

For information about Ishi, click here.

Page 4