More evidence that global warming is bunk

[ollie]

Controversial New Climate Change Data: Is Earth's Capacity To Absorb CO2 Much Greater Than Expected?

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2009) — New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.

The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.

The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.

This work is extremely important for climate change policy, because emission targets to be negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen early in December have been based on projections that have a carbon free sink of already factored in. Some researchers have cautioned against this approach, pointing at evidence that suggests the sink has already started to decrease.

So is this good news for climate negotiations in Copenhagen? "Not necessarily," says Knorr. "Like all studies of this kind, there are uncertainties in the data, so rather than relying on Nature to provide a free service, soaking up our waste carbon, we need to ascertain why the proportion being absorbed has not changed."

Another result of the study is that emissions from deforestation might have been overestimated by between 18 and 75 per cent. This would agree with results published in early November in Nature Geoscience by a team led by Guido van der Werf from VU University Amsterdam. They re-visited deforestation data and concluded that emissions have been overestimated by at least a factor of two.

[Hal Johnson]

Thank god. I was worried that we'd all have to change the way we live.

[nibbler]

The only reason the false debate is being perpetuated- is to protect the west from lawsuits. Developing nations who will be hit hard by rising sea levels etc. would have a bulletproof liability case against the west if we didn't act dumb about the premeditated scientific origin of anthropogenic warming.

Svante Arrhenius? Who dat and why the fuck should I care?

Global warming isn't bunk- its a money making policy.

Its the policy that has shaped our world today- Its a pre-emptive strike against the threat of mother nature's evil empire of glaciers and ice ages. Its the elbow grease thawing out the permafrost for agriculture, mining, and settlement. Its the icebreaker opening up the Northwest passage for shipping. Wall street loves global warming. Oh- and its not happening- as far as those liability lawsuits are concerned.

[SaggyBalls]

The part about him supposing the greenhouse effect and it being based on 'fossil' fuels or all the other juicy bits?

[nibbler]

juicy from wiki:

Worlds in the Making (1908) directed at a general audience, where he suggested that the human emission of CO2 would be strong enough to prevent the world from entering a new ice age, and that a warmer earth would be needed to feed the rapidly increasing population. He was the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes would cause global warming. Arrhenius clearly believed that a warmer world would be a positive change

...1908 also being the year the first model T rolled off the line...

[nibbler]

You can find the entire book online here: Worlds in the Making Chapter 2 has the bulk of the CO2 warming references.