Friday 29 November 2013

Isotopes

In discussions and blogs, I have concluded that people do not understand Isotopes.   So they think Carbon 12, Carbon 13, Carbon14 are somehow different chemically.

Rule: Isotopes are identical chemically.

In the nucleus there are two near identical types of big particles, protons with a positive charge and neutrons which are neutral. (the modern count of subparticles is in the hundreds.)   In forming all the atoms on the planet you can have endless mixes of protons and neutrons from Hydrogen with a single proton to Uranium
with 92 protons and 146 neutrons (for U238).

Rule: the nucleus plays no part in chemistry and chemistry cannot touch the nucleus
The number of protons determines the chemistry as it exactly matches the number of electrons, 6 for carbon, 92 for Uranium.   The nucleus has nothing to do with chemistry otherwise.  It is simply not involved in any chemical reaction but provides 99.9% of the weight of an atom.

Rule: the only measurable difference between isotopes is weight
Isotopes cannot be separated chemically.   The only measurable difference is in the slight weight.   For example, to separate fissile Uranium 235 from the 99.5% of Uranium 238, Iran needs hundreds of very high speed centrifuges.   That does not mean you cannot in special circumstances find a difference, especially with light weight atoms like Carbon, but it is very slight and weight based, not chemical reaction based.

Note all isotopes of a given element have the same name, say Carbon or Uranium or Iodine.   Isotopes are variants of an element with different weight.

Rule: Atomic weight is made up of isotopes
If Carbon had 6 protons, 6 neutrons, a 'mole' of carbon atoms should weigh 12.000000 amu (Atomic mass units)  However it weighs 12.01 amu.  That is because it is 99% weight 12 and 1% weight 13.

Rule: Stable or unstable
Isotopes can be stable or unstable.   C14 is created by cosmic rays and it is unstable.   In 5740 years, half of the atoms will have reverted to N14, when a neutron changes to a proton, emitting an electron.  In another 5740 years, half of the balance will have exploded, leaving only 1/4 and so on.

Rule: Carbon 14 is incredibly rare
Carbon 12 is stable and 99% of all carbon.   C13 is stable and 1%.   C14 is 1 x 10-12%, so one millionth of a millionth of 1%.  If total CO2 is a massive 100,000 billion tons, C14O2 is only one ton.

Rule: Mixed as shown by the bomb graph, what happens to C14 happens to all CO2.

Notes:
1. C12/C13 ratios.  There are people trying to draw conclusions from the variability of the ratio of the 1% C13 atoms from the 99% C12 atoms.   The variation in this ratio is about 0.15%  or about one part in 600 from dead constant.   Clearly there are subtle differences in behavior of the heavier C13O2 (45) against the lighter C12O2(44) and conclusions can be drawn which are useful.   However they are not as conclusive as doubling C14 and watching it disappear.  For some reason, authors tend to dismiss C14 as good only for radiocarbon dating.  In this they are quite right.   We can radio carbon date the air itself.

2. Those people who try to argue that CO2 made from Carbon 14 is treated dramatically differently in the environment need to appreciate that chemically, this is not possible.   What happens in the bomb graph to C14 in the form of CO2 is that it vanishes somewhere, never to appear again.   This means the air with which it was associated also disappears, which gives a half life of 14 years for the total absorption of all CO2 into the huge oceans.   There is no debate on this.   IPCC predictions of 250 years, predictions which allow fossil fuel to hang around, are completely at odds with the observed fact.   The world's biggest nuclear experiment has proved them wrong.    Those who argue that the C14 laden CO2 is simply exchanged have to explain why this would happen, why the law which covers the exchange does not maintain the old CO2 ratio between air and sea.

3. You cannot increase CO2 in the air if temperature and pressure do not change.
No, man made CO2 disappears into the oceans because it is excess to the equilibrium value, so it just goes.
This was deduced by the early C14 radiocarbon dating people to explain the Suess effect, where C14 was very slightly diminished before the bombs, not the 30% people would have you believe but less than 1%.
The disappearance of the C14 shows the operation of a very fast equilibrium system.   This means it is maintaining a level of equilibrium.   The level of CO2 in the air is set by Henry's law across the planet and maintained by it.  The concept that man can fool Henry's law is absurd.



Monday 25 November 2013

Another look at C14 after the bomb

Making science simple so that people can judge for themselves is a challenge for any teacher scientist.  Many people cannot read a graph.   Formulae mean nothing.   They believe in science but want to know they are being told the truth.     I am amazed to hear lawyers and politicans talk about belief  in 'the science'.  It confirms my worst suspicions.

My approach logically is to separate the issues and keep away from complexities.  Professor Love of Melboure University in the 1970s had a wonderful style.   If someone did not understand one explanation, he would find another and then another.   A talented man.   Most just repeat the explanation which makes sense to them and get louder.   In fact people need to understand things in their own terms, based on what they know to be true or science just becomes religion.  Otherwise it is like shouting at someone just because they do not speak English.    You have to swap to their language, as much as you can.

Anyway, here is the now infamous Carbon 14 graph from Wikipedia.


So once again, we look at what this tells us and it tells so much.   For example, it shows that the atmospheric testing after 1965 doubled C14 in the Northern hemisphere.   By the time it crossed the equator, 2 years had passed and it dropped in intensity.    However they seem to meet around 1970 when the French started atmospheric testing in the Southern Hemisphere, an appalling action in which I and many other physicists signed a petition demanding the French government stop.   These French bombs brought the curves together which meant the Southern Hemisphere radiation, specfically C14 had gone up and now matched the northern hemisperhe and they follow each other.    I have to say here that the disappearing concentration is not decay.   That is 5740 years.    The only way for C14 to vanish is for it to leave the atmosphere and that means all CO2.

CO2 is used by plants, disappears into water, is used chemically and comes back, say when the plant rots or the wood burns or the seas return it.   This graph has settled what would have been a major debate on how long it takes for CO2 in the air cycle through the planet.   Half is gone in 14 years.  100 is the reference so half way is 150.   This is called the half life.  

To explain half life, every half life, another half is gone. So ½ is left after 14 years, ¼ left in 28 years, 1/8th left in 42 years, 1/16th left in 56 years.  What this means is that half of all CO2 is gone in 14 years, all man made CO2, all of it.   We could never have guessed this and it needs explanation.

What is more subtle is that the reference point is the 50,000 year old C14 level on both sides.    C14 is created only by cosmic rays and halves every 5740 years.    The system settles when the amount being created exactly matches the amount vanishing through decay.   This is the equilibrium values used by scientists since the 1950s to provide accurate dates for archeological finds.  If any fossil fuel CO2 was still around, this would not be true as fossil fuel CO2 has no C14.

Even without this, you can see that C14 is vanishing back to the old historic level shown as 100%.   So C14 is our radioactive tracer, the same idea used in medicine to see where things go, including Barium meals and radioactive Iodine.   This C14 graph shows us that all the CO2 disappears and it looks, permanently.   

The other observation is the way the curve approaches its final horizontal destination to line up with the 100% level, the age old C14 level.     

The following diagram is a cut down Bern Diagram.   They can be very complex so I am using the simplest.



CO2 is used, stored and exchanged by all these boxed known as carbon sinks.    

Before studying the diagram, know that received opinion is that because the deep oceans take 1,000 years to mix with the roughly 75 metre thick Surface ocean, CO2 cannot be quickly stored there quickly.    So in the conventional model in working out where the CO2 went so quickly you have only 2 choices, the oceans or the land. (Terrestial biosphere)

Consider that the C14 was really absorbed as well as stored in these proportions the air (1.9%) and the Terrestial biosphere (1.3%) and dead leaves and trees(3.6%) and the Surface ocean (2.4%)  you would still have 1.9/(1.9+1.3+3.6+2.4) or around 20% of C14 still left, 120% of the old level     It is just not true.  The C14 is going straight to 100% not 120%.

This is shown as a diagram, with the historic average taken out because it is known.

You can see the computer model heads to equilibrium at 40%, sharing the C14 in proportion between the 3 sinks and ignoring the deep ocean.   It even drops faster at the start, showing how wrong the shape is.   As elsewhere, the real curve is a perfect straight line on log paper.   This means a perfect e-kt curve and one big sink which takes the lot.

This disproves another incidental idea, the idea just used that the rate at which CO2 goes into these things is determined by the amounts in them.   There is no reason to expect that.  

Also consider the plants.    Sure they absorb our C14 tagged CO2, but when they die, it is often returned quickly to the atmosphere, so there would always be some C14 coming back.   There is none of this.  

No, what is needed to explain the graph is a huge reservoir which can  absorb every last bit of CO2 and its tiny C14 tracer without blinking, a reservoir incredibly bigger than the air and the land and even the ocean surface.   Only the deep ocean qualifies.   Conventional wisdom is that it would take a thousand years for the deep sea to absorb anything, simply because we know the layers of water do not mix.   Clearly this does not apply to the gas CO2.    CO2 is dramatically more soluble at high pressure and low temperature, as in the deep oceans.   Remember 10 metres = 1 atmosphere, so even 100metres down is 10 atmospheres.   Plenty to compress CO2.     Unless someone can explain where all the CO2 goes, the obvious explanation is simple enough.   It disappears into the biggest hole there is. 

Now you could say that every CO2 molecule which enters the water should be replaced with another one coming out.  Sure,  there is exchange in both directions, but why exactly the same?   In fact our life experience is that this is not true.     When you breath air in, the CO2 is 0.04%.   When you breathe out, the CO2 is 5%, 100x as much.   You are a terrible polluter.   The exchange was 100:1.    It is how we survive.    We burn hydrocarbons with oxygen and have to get rid of the CO2.   We take in O2 and get rid of CO2 with every breath using the same process.  Our lives depend on high concentrations moving to areas of low concentrations, both to and from air to blood.

The last idea is that somehow we have to explain the modern increase in CO2 for our conclusions to have merit.   Not really.   That is a separate story.    What is clear is that the CO2 from burning fossil fuels is still in the air is as silly as the idea that man made C14 is still in the air.    You do not have to be a scientist to read that from the graph.


Sunday 24 November 2013

What sets the CO2 amount?

Having established that CO2 is in continual exchange with the oceans, so fast that half of all the world's aerial CO2 is gone every 14 years, the next question people  have is more difficult.   Why shouldn't the CO2 come back?    Maybe not as fossil fuel CO2, but still CO2.   That way the fossil fuel increase would be maintained.

Equilibrium is not intuitive.   What matters in equilibrium are ratios, in this case the ratio between the amount of CO2 in the air and the amount in the water.   This ratio is fixed for this physical process of gaseous exchange and the only significant other variables are temperature and air pressure.

It is generally agreed that 98% of all CO2 is in the oceans.   That's 50x as much as in the air.  It is this ratio which is maintained in any gaseous exchange.  We have no control over this.

Now apply this ratio.   Say we doubled aerial CO2 suddenly by burning a great deal of old fossil fuel, yes the total CO2 would go up, and there would be excessive CO2 in the air.   Very quickly the amounts in the air would disappear into the ocean until the old ratio was achieved.  It means that 98% of the new CO2 would be moved quickly to the oceans.   Yes, the concentrations would both go up slightly, but the ratio would be exactly the same.  Remember the concentration of CO2 in the air is very small, less than 1/25th of 1%.

Basically 98% of the fossil fuel CO2 would go into the oceans, something confirmed by the lack of any depression in the C14 ratio in the air.   This was noted by Dr Suess who gave this explanation, an explanation attacked recently by some bodies such as the American Institute of Physics.  At least they recognize it is a critical observation by a pre Global Warming top scientist.

If not from fossil fuel, why is CO2 going up?   To increase the amount of CO2 in the air is simple, heat the water by 1C.   Even this slight release of CO2 has a dramatic effect as you x50, increasing CO2 levels in the air by around 70%

PS Remember when we talk global temperatures and for that matter air pressures, this includes summer and winter, stormy and clear days, night and day, the arctic and the tropics.   We are talking average temperatures and average air pressures.   The chemistry changes across the planet, CO2 being absorbed in very cold areas and more released in hotter areas.   This should not change our conclusions.



Friday 22 November 2013

Our ABC - C-14 levels tell us nothing at all.


I wrote to Australia's ABC Science department and they corresponded well and anonymously and really attempted to be helpful, but it seemed the same old stuff laced with a few put downs.   Inter alia the following was said

They referred me to Wikipedia which contains this graph and I quote one email exactly


For the purposes of analysing the proportion of C02 being contributed from the burning of fossil fuels, C-14 levels tell us nothing at all.

We see from your blog that you don't appear to understand radioactive decay. If you understood that C-14 eventually decays into a stable form of Nitrogen, you would know that the entire premise of you blog entry is incorrect.

Yours in Science

ABC Science

Actually as a nuclear physicist, I do understand radioactive decay and equilibrium and this graph tell us nearly everything.   This is all school boy physics and mathematics.   C14 has a half life of 5740 years, so it does not change in one lifetime.  The fact that C14 eventually turns into Nitrogen is irrelevant.     Incidentally   C12 is 99% of all CO2C13 is a tiny 1%.   C14 is 1x10-12, or a thousand billionth of 1%.  So C14 is unbelievably small in concentration but easy to detect.    This is mixed evenly with all the other CO2.  The chance of a C14 meeting another C14 is ridiculously low.

The very hard thing for people to understand is that if all the C14O2 vanishes as shown so clearly in the graph, it is swept up in normal CO2, so all CO2 must vanish.  There is also no sign of any of this C14Oreturning to the atmosphere as it is going to precisely zero, the old C14 level of 100% which has been constant for thousands of years.

So what happens to C14O2  happens to all CO2.  including all man made CO2.  It all disappears quickly and permanently in the space of 50 years.

Where it all goes is not shown in this graph.    We can guess.  The carbon in trees, plants and wood are only comparable in size to the atmosphere.     No, it is all gone and the only candidate is a massive storehouse of CO2 and that means the oceans.   So C14 does tell us everything about all CO2 and specifically fossil fuel CO2

PS. The business of where CO2 goes is a separate thing, the next logical step. The only conclusion of this post is that most CO2 goes into the ocean within 50 years or less, mostly never to return in our lifetimes.    The Bern cycle, burning trees, Henry's law, CO2 measurements, bushfires, algae and so much are about what happens next, but you need none of them.    The conclusion is inescapable.   
PPS. Hans Suess, an Austrian scientist and one of the founders of UCSD noted the dilution of C14O2  by industrial gases after 1890.   The effect was under 2%, although people now try to dispute this.  As the fossil fuel CO2  has no  C14 the effect would be much larger if the fossil fuel gas stayed in the atmosphere.  The unavoidable conclusion was that it didn't.   Even now the ultimate level is still the historic level, which confirms all new gas vanishes.  The contention that 33% of the gas is fossil fuel gas is wrong or concentrations of  C14O   would head to 2/3 of the historic levels. 


Thursday 14 November 2013

It's all gone

It's all gone, all the man made CO.   All of it.   Fossil fuel and bomb CO.  The world is far bigger.  The seas are 400x bigger than the atmosphere, far bigger than all the trees, far, far bigger and heavier than everything man has ever done.   It is all gone.   The seas are immense and cover 2/3 of the planet to 4.25 km deep.  They have been ignored.

The conclusion from the bomb graph tells us all this unequivocally.   I will see if I can explain how.

The C14  created by the atom bomb blasts is a special radioactive Carbon, but chemically just ordinary carbon and it reacts with oxygen to form very chemically ordinary CO, but a radioactive CO which we can detect even in tiny quantities.  Sure it is very slightly heavier but otherwise absolutely identical to C12 and C13, the common isotopes.   So?  

Whatever happens to the trace gas C14O happens to all other CO2 (a mix of C12O2  and C13O).  Remember the rules. C14 cannot be destroyed.     What happens to C14 is happening to all CO2.  C14 just happens to be in the mix.

What the graph shows is astonishing.   It is the picture of what happens to all  CO2  .The extra C14O created by man vanishes quickly back to the historical average and it's not coming back.  So must all CO2, as  C14Ois nothing special.     It is not treated differently to other CO2.  What is special though is that it really does not come back at all.  It is gone.

How does it happen?  Why does it vanish completely?    C14 rich CO goes into the oceans and different CO comes out of the oceans continually like all the other CO.   However the mass of CO in the oceans has the old C14 ratios, so the C14 ratio drops quickly to that coming out of the oceans, which has the 10,000 year old equilibrium levels.    What happens to this CO happens to all CO.

Yes, if you are older than 50, your breath, the exhaust from your father's car, that Guy Fawkes bonfire, the output of all those cars and jets and WWI and WWII and all those people and animals and plants, all gone.   Adolph Hitler's CO is gone.  All the CO vanished, not just the  C14Ofrom the bomb but all the C12O2  and C13O2 .    All of it   All the fossil fuel CO2 .   That is what this graph tells us.   For those who are 35, half your CO2 is gone.  

Perhaps you are thinking this special CO disappears separately from other CO, because it is unusual and treated differently? No that is (almost) impossible.  Perhaps its equilibrium is a separate from that of CO?  No, there is no such law.  The only reason the  C14O2   vanishes is because all the other CO vanishes in the same way, continually into the huge ocean reservoirs which contain 93% of all CO on the planet.

Are you now amazed?    Are the questions now starting?   Where did it all go?   Why?   Why is total CO2 going up if all the CO2 is vanishing?    For the answers to the many questions, consider the other blog posts.

Postscript:  To demonstrate how big the oceans are, consider the population at 6 billion people.
The oceans are 1.3 billion cubic kilometers. So this is 230 million cubic metres of water for every human on the planet. In olympic swimming pools at 2,500 cubic metres each, this means 100,000 Olympic swimming pools for every human.  End to end you could swim from New York to Atlanta (2000km or 1200 miles) in your own 8 lane olympic pool.   The water controls our lives, our climate and our weather.  We do not control our world.   The planet decides how much CO2 is in the air, not us.


  

Saturday 9 November 2013

Why has CO2 gone up?

This is the best way to handle the insanity, a series of questions.

Q1. Why has CO2 gone up?

                 The stock answer is that man is responsible through the burning of fossil fuels.

This would only make sense if the CO2 in the air was totally independent of the land, the oceans, the plants, the plankton, the biosphere.   You could just increase it unilaterally and it would stay.   That is in fact the core assumption of the whole man made global warming story, the 50% increase is due to man alone.  It sounds possible if the air is totally disconnected from the  environment except over a very long time.

Q2. Then you can ask, where has the doubling of C14O2 gone after the bombs in the 1960s?

                 The stock answer is in rapid gaseous exchange into the biosphere, the water, the plants, soil.
and there you have it, the massive contradiction.     These things cannot both be true.

A system which exchanges CO2 is in equilibrium and in this state, you can only temporarily increase the concentration on one side but it quickly goes back to the centre.   Yes, the total amount goes up but the proportion from one side to the other does not change.   In this case, the ocean side of the equilibrium is 50x bigger, so neither side appears to change.   (That is 98% of the extra aerial CO2 vanishes into the ocean where it adds 0.5% to what is there already.)  

Each year we add 35 billion tons to a system with 100,000 billion tons.  No wonder we make no difference. The CO2 level before the industrial revolution and the rapid growth of the human population was set by the planet in equilibrium, not by man.   Real forces of equilibrium keep it at the one level unless there is a major change in temperature, volume, radiation or even volcanoes or crashing asteroids.

The graph of C14 after the bomb shows precisely the sort of behaviour you expect from a system in equilibrium which is disturbed.    The rate at which it goes back to the equilibrium position demonstrates the rate of exchange.   The rapid disappearance of the C14 rich CO2 shows dramatically that one huge reservoir of CO2 dominates all others in a single decay curve and the only candidate big enough to wipe out all the C14, the oceans.

Even worse, for a constant CO2 level to work, you would have to replace every C14O2 in the air with C12O2 and still maintain the concentration of CO2.    Now why should the planet precisely put back what man added, exactly replacing new for old?    Why shouldn't the CO2 concentration find its own old level?

So we have a proven, simple and clear model for CO2.   Equilibrium between the air and the deep oceans which cover most of the planet.    This obeys the chemistry equilibrium laws we know and understand.   For this not to happen would break the fundamental law of gas exchange which govern everything from air for fish in the ocean or even our own breathing where we eliminate CO2 and take in new O2 from the blood.

Q3.  If not through man, why has CO2 has gone up 50%?

As most of the CO2 is in the oceans, a quick check of vapour pressure or solubility shows that it would only take an average 1C increase in the ocean temperature to increase CO2 by 70%.

Q4. Can you prove the extra 50% of CO2 in the air is not from fossil fuel?

Yes.  Fossil fuel has no C14.   The C14 level in aerial CO2 should have started to drop in the 1880s and now be around 2/3 of the long term average.   Firstly it did not drop at all before the bombs and after the bombs is clearly, quickly and simply returning to the same point as before the bombs.    This constant level of C14 is exactly what you would expect.    Man's additions with the C14 rich CO2 after the bombs or with the burning of C14 free fossil fuels simply vanish into the oceans.   The old equilbrium just returns.   We have had no impact on it at all even though we created a lot of C14 in the 1960s.

Q5. Do you have any other confirmation?

Yes. Firstly, according to climate scientist Dr. Murry Salby, the presumption that CO2 and CO2 alone is the predictor of global temperature is not at all true.   In the popular computer models, it is an absolute assumption and the predictions of temperature exactly match CO2.     There is no connection.  This fundamental idea behind every computer climate model is utterly broken.

At the same time he has also found that the graph of temperature over time is able to exactly predict CO2 growth precisely if you take the area under the graph.   This discovery likely exactly matches nett heat input in the ocean, which in turn indicates steady heating of the oceans which in turn would push up CO2 levels in precisely the way they have gone up.     In hindsight, this is exactly what you would have expected.

Overall conclusion.   To discuss CO2 levels in the air without discussing equilibrium is nonsense but equilibrium is not an obvious concept to a non scientist.   It has to be explained.   Once this essential concept is understood, it completely explains everything we have seen and we can even precisely predict CO2 from global temperature alone, something alarmists cannot do.   Unfortunately for the alarmists, only the sun is to blame for the warming and man needs a warmer, richer, wetter, higher CO2 planet.  The greatest growth in the history of man is associated with such warmer periods including the Roman period, the Renaissance and the 20th century.     The periods in between were terrible dark ages where even the Thames froze over and ice covered most of Europe.   We should be very glad the glaciers are gone.

Postscript:   What were CO2 concentrations over time?   Consider the original data from the Law ice dome in Antarctica.

The top one is CON2 and you can see, CO2 has been very stable over the last 2000 years.   However you can create drama by bolting on aerial values to ice core measurments as if this was a scientifically valid thing to do, which it is not.
This is the same data, but someone has graciously bolted air based measurements from the top of Mauna Loa Hawaii onto the end.   These are two different media with two completely different response was of measuring CO2.   One is instantaneous and the other is averaged over seasons.   While they purport to measure the same thing, they may not.   It makes for drama, especially if you do not plot from zero either.


This is an interesting graph of total CO2, again with the fanciful and perhaps invalid bolting on of non ice data measured in an even more fanciful way.   While at least the vertical scale shows the zero, that is only is to because of the right hand side showing projections with only the blue dot being real data.    The green and yellow dots are based presumably on the assumption that all CO2 increases are man made and growing rapidly, like the population.    If they are not man made, all this is nonsense.

Remember also the ice cores average values over years, perhaps decades or centuries.   Such a very narrow peak measured in air and up to the blue point only may have been quite common over the millenia, but would be lost in the averaging on a graph showing a million years.   

How cold were the 'ice ages'?
  
Utah geological survey

Beware these are GLOBAL temperatures including the tropics.


Now this is interesting.    At its coldest, the average planet GLOBAL temperature was 50F (10C) and at its hottest 74F (23C).  So it has been much hotter, but all these temperatures are survivable, except that there would be no ice and jungle in antarctica.   All the world's big coastal cities would be gone as people moved to higher ground.  Still few of the world's big cities are very old anyway, so we can build them again, in time or surround them with walls as the Egyptians did every year for the 35 metre Nile flood.

Another interesting concept is whether a drop in CO2 is a measure of the ice ages.  

This graph shows the variation from say 54F(12.2C) at the coldest part of the last ice age to today say 56F( 13.3) is only 2C.   On our rough calculations, this is enough to justify the 30% drop in CO2 which is observed.   In fact if the conclusions are right, CO2 concentrations could be taken as a direct and immediate measure of ocean temperatures.    This all fits the CO2 is determined by ocean temperatures model.

The graph shows however that the world could get a lot warmer!    I doubt there was much industrialization 100 million years ago but there was no ice.

From the same source, a shorter time scale and using local temperatures, not GLOBAL temperatures.
What is very interesting is the peak 140,000 years ago where the world at this latitude was much hotter than today, perhaps 10F (5C) hotter.



Friday 8 November 2013

Who sets the CO2 percentage?

The search for clearer explanations continues. Thus this late comment.

Even before man and factories and cars, there was CO2 in the air.   However 98% of all CO2 is in the huge oceans, oceans which weigh 400x as much as the air above.   The situation is exactly like a carbonated drink with the top off.  Why didn't all the CO2 in the oceans just bubble up into the air?   Why doesn't it all just leave the oceans today?   So why was the CO2 level in the air at 0.03% in 1960, as shown below?  

Answer that and you have the key to the whole situation, the key which scientists know and you are never told.   The key is a thing called gaseous equilibrium and the amount of CO2 is determined by well known indisputable science described by Henry's law.   This continually balances the amount of CO2 in the water against the air.  We cannot change this.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

So who decides how much CO2 is in the air?   Us?   Can you just add CO2 and see it go up, as people seem to think.   Like water in a bucket.    Should the CO2 from burning fossil fuels just add to that already there, as is suggested below?


File:Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Apr2013.svg

This is the steady rise of CO2 which is the subject, from 0.032% to 0.040% in fifty years.
and over a longer period




Going back even further


All showing the rapid increase in CO2 from around 0.028% to 0.040%, an increase of 0.012% in 0.028% which is around 40%.   Of course it looks much more because zero is not shown.

and the conclusive connection is made by graphs like these


which show that the rise above 0.03% is totally unprecedented, so it must be man.   It is obvious, so it is true.    Is it?

If the % CO2 in the air is set by temperature and pressure of the great reservoir, the oceans, you are getting a direct measure of temperature.   The point of the graph is its emphatic conclusion, so how can it be wrong? Quite easily.

Even the smallest peak on the graph is 1,000 years wide.   The CO2 increase which is the subject of this whole argument is less than 150 years old and the dramatic bit only 30 years.   If this had happened before, would we see it on this time scale?   No.   Everything would be averaged out over hundreds if not thousands of years.   If the world's oceans heat by one degree over a hundred years and cool down over a hundred years by one degree, the spike could be high and extremely narrow and it would not be visible, averaged over a thousand years and a thousand years is a very small distance on this graph.    We simply would not see it.   The graph based on ice core samples does not have the accuracy or resolution in time to say this does not happen all the time and the scaling is used to convey a sense of drama.  

What you can see is that we are at the very warmest part of a known set of cycles with maximum CO2 as the oceans are warmer than ever.   The pattern shows it will get colder from here, the oceans will take more CO2 and we are on a downhill slope.  Modern man left warm Africa some 70,000 to 50,000 years ago, at the middle of the ice age.   We are now in a boom warm time, especially in the Northern Latitudes.   Early man was confronted with ice across Europe and we bemoan the lack of ski fields, but it will soon be cold again, very cold.   Our complaints about Global Warming may soon appear very silly.

You also have to wonder if people are picking their samples carefully.  Here is another source without the peak bolted on.


This sample of temperature, CO2 and dust over the same period (CO2 in Green) does not show the dramatic rise.   Is it possible that the previous graph used to prove man made CO2 rise has been welded on to the ice core graph, adding the modern graph of CO2 in the air to the one from the samples in the ice cores?   If this has been done, is it valid?   The measuring techniques are quite different although they in principle measure the same thing.

Looking at the sampling too.  Yes fine details like individual years are sometimes visible as thin stripes in the cores.   However gas is not ice.  Is it possible the gas can migrate in the ice through adjacent layers, reducing the accuracy of large variations?  Probably.    So while the ice core CO2 is interesting, the first graph and its loud conclusion about industrialization are suspect, not only with what looks like glued on data measured in a different way and a misleading origin on the Y vertical axis which makes it all look far more dramatic, but also because the problems of resolution and leaching have not been mentioned.   It is possible the CO2 in ice cores has a resolution of hundreds of years at best, an averaging.   That is not good enough to see spikes over 50 years.    The 20th century climb may not be unusual at all.

So none of this defeats the simple idea that the 50% aerial CO2 increase in the last 150 years is natural and a result of slight but rapid warming over a short term and outgassing from the oceans.    It could be reversed as quickly and this may have happened many times before.   There is a clear indication though that CO2 levels are set by temperature, which again indicates it is all controlled, as it is must be, through equilibrium with the large amount of CO2 in the  oceans.    Only the arrogance of man would conclude that we can somehow override these natural mechanisms and change CO2 vapour pressure or increase CO2 levels against the world wide processes which dictate it.

The reality of the CO2 is that it is the gas at the top of the lemonade bottle, a tiny part of what is in the ocean.   How much is in the atmosphere is not set by accident, but the result of equilibrium between the huge reserves in the ocean and the air pressure above.   It is puzzling that people can use the massive exchanges between the air and ocean to attempt to explain where the C14 went, but cannot apply the rules which govern all such exchanges.    The amount of CO2 is not random, arbitrary and able to be topped up by man.   It is all part of a system of equilibrium.   As was seen after the atomic bombs, if you add CO2, it quickly vanishes into the huge pool.   Does it really matter where?   What matters is that the equilibrium is not changed.   Otherwise we would have chaos and the amount of CO2 in the air would be completely arbitrary.  Scientists cannot have it both ways with their Bern cycle but also with arbitrary levels of CO2.

Postscript:   For those who like to think man has an impact on the oceans.

The oceans are 1.3 billion cubic kilometers.   So per person with 6 billion humans, this is 230 million cubic metres of water for each human.    In olympic swimming pools at 2,500 cubic metres, this is 100,000 Olympic swimming pools for every human.





The missing step

What is unexplained and unjustified in the whole business of man made global warming is the absolutely essential presumption that since CO2 has increased 50% since industrialization, industrialization must have caused the CO2 increase.   It stands to reason.    Few question it because it seems obvious.    Heavy things fall faster because they are heavier.    Common sense.   Consensus.    The science is in.    Everyone knows, etc.  

This foundation piece of logic is an implicit assumption in everything which follows in the argument and you are considered slightly mad to question it as it is so obvious.   If two things happen at once, of course one caused the other and of course industry is the polluter and CO2 the pollutant.   This is the instinctive logic of most people, so obvious it is hardly questioned.   However if it is not true, the rest of man made Global Warming is rubbish.

So which caused which?  Is it coincidence?   Consider the next argument that CO2 and CO2 alone caused the late 20th century warming  If substantial warming and cooling happened prior to industry, it  raises serious doubts.  So all mention of the Roman warming and the medieval Period are just rubbed out.

My contention is that before we get to Global warming being caused by CO2 increases, the core question, the core assumption is whether the CO2 increase is caused by the industrial revolution and the use of coal, oil and gas.  Can it be verified, that that the extra CO2 in the atmosphere was caused by us, humans?

The other posts use C14 as the measure of whether it is true and it is not.  The conclusion of these posts is that the CO2 increase cannot be from fossil fuel or C14 levels would be much lower.   Another core belief, which comes from an understandable ignorance of what for most is obscure science, is that you cannot just tip a huge amount of fossil CO2 into the air and it will stay there and even that it will be maintained at this level while undergoing active exchange with the world below.    That is simply not true.  Really it doesn't even make sense.    To understand this, people need to understand the science of equilibrium, the idea that the air and the world are one.   The way in which gases are exchanged is critical.

In this the air and the water are not two different, alien things as they appear.  Each is part of the other.   Air is dissolved in the ocean.   In fact most of all CO2 is in the ocean.   Conversely, when you see clouds and rain and feel humidity across the planet, that is sea water.    The O2 generated by plants and plankton through photosynthesis feeds the trees and grasses but also the fish.   When the fish swim, they breathe O2 filtering it out of the water, while we have lungs.   In all this the exchange of gases is the essential process, whether in your lungs or at the water/air boundary.   This is all based on the principles of equilibrium.  Once this is understood, the idea that you can increase CO2 50% by putting a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere alone just seems nonsense.   It is nonsense.   At constant temperature and pressure, it is not possible to change the ratio of CO2 in the air and CO2 in the ocean.  

So the point of these posts is that CO2 increases simply because ocean temperatures increase, not the other way around. Man cannot increase in fact change the proportion of CO2 in the air.  This is established and well known physical chemical.   If that presumption that the increase in CO2 is man made is busted, the whole AGW story is busted.   Man is not causing the warming, assuming warming is even happening.



Sunday 3 November 2013

Can we increase the amount of CO2 in the air?

The quick answer?  No.    We cannot increase the proportion of CO2 in the air.  This is proportion of CO2 is controlled by well known physical chemistry.     In an equilibrium, the ratio of concentrations on both sides of a gas/liquid boundary is fixed at a given temperature and pressure.    This is well known.   Make a change on one side only and the system quickly reacts to restore the status quo.

Now the logic behind man made global warming has two parts

  1. The CO2 increase is created by man through the burning of fossil fuels
  2. The CO2 increase and the CO2 increase alone causes (catastrophic) global warming

These blog posts address the first argument, one which seems self evident to the layman.   It is self evident simply because most people do not understand equilibrium.

The primary and essential argument behind Man made Global Warming is that CO2 generated from fossil fuel has increased our CO2 in the air, like tipping water into a bucket.   Has anyone actually proved this? Can it be established?    The answer is that it can be utterly disproven by examining C14 levels.

If the CO2 increase is not due to the burning of coal, oil and wood, there is no man made global warming, regardless of any computer models and climate scientists.   The whole chain of logic collapses.  I must say any suggestion that this is not true meets with stiff opposition.

With this as a premise, people then start to work out where the CO2 goes including the plant absorption, plant decay and burning and breathing ocean exchanges and perhaps more.

However they are wrong.   CO2 is in balance, in chemical equilibrium.    In equilibrium, you can add a great deal to the air and the proprition of CO2 will not change.   This is simple chemical physics, the science of equilibrium which is rarely mentioned.   In the real world of physical chemistry, if you add CO2 to the air, a lot of it goes into the water.    The question is, how much?



The simple fact is that there is 50x as much CO2 dissolved in the oceans as exists in the air above.   This is very odd.    Why does the CO2 in the ocean stay there?    Why doesn’t it just bubble into the air, like CO2 from lemonade when you take the top off?    Is there some policeman controlling all this with the name of Henry?   Is there some reason that gases in solution under pressure do not obey the long established simple rules for gases in solutoin under pressure?

Actually CO2 bubbles freely out of the water the whole time.   CO2 also enters the water from the air. This process of bubbling, outgassing and reabsorption depends on the air pressure and the temperature of the air and water but over time these processes eventually settle down to a balance where the number leaving exactly match the number going.     All systems where the rate of decay is proportional to amount act in the same way, decaying rapidly to the equilibrium balance after a perturbation.

This process of gaseous exchange does vary dramatically with temperature so in the arctic, more CO2 goes into the water than at the tropics and v.v.   This continual process has observable rules and Henry observed the simple rule.  You can measure and absolute predict the vapour pressure of any dissolved gas with the air above.  Everything is in equilibrium although the ratios will vary with temperature across the planet.

For example if we consider surface sea water a 10C, we know exactly what the vapour pressure of CO2 should be.   Then if CO2 is added to the air, increasing the vapour pressure, more CO2 dissolves in the water until the balance is restored.

On a world scale, even if CO2 is captured in wood or other plants, calcium carbonate, caught in the rain, or released by burning, the partial pressure of CO2 is maintained by the huge reservoir in the oceans.   It can respond in a very short time to all these rather longer time frame exchanges.   This huge and ongoing worldwide exchange involves the entire surface of water across the entire planet, every drop, stream, river, sea and ocean.    Even inside our lungs as we exchange old CO2 for new O2.   It is the core exchange which allow us and all life and fish to breathe and live.   It does not stop and the balances always have to be observed.  Everyone of these exchanges obey's Henry's law which dictates the concentrations on both sides to a strict and known ratio.

So man cannot just tip CO2 into the air and expect it to stay there as an excess.   This excess CO2 normally goes into the huge oceans over time.     Every cm2 of the ocean surface is in active interaction with the air above it with CO2 going both ways.   Attempts to perform a carbon balance without recognition of this essential equilibrium are utterly flawed.   The unspoken question here is how fast the CO2 goes into the sea in practice.

If CO2 cannot be changed, why is CO2 increasing?   The answer is simple and nothing to do with fossil fuel.
As said, the amount of CO2 dissolved at any given temperature and under a given pressure is sensitive to both.     If the average temperature of the oceans, the vast storehouse of CO2 has increased about 1C, the fact that it contains so much more CO2 than the air will dramatically amplify even the tiniest release of CO2 as with increasing temperature.  

People have created quite complex models the fate of carbon.   These Carbon cycles attempt to reconcile CO2 like an accountant, dependent on numerous observations and calculations like an accounting system.  However  models which ignore the fundamental rule of gaseous exchange and equilibrium are doomed to failure.   

This known fact of equilibrium means that man made CO2, whether C14 free CO2 like the result of burning really old fossil fuel or the C14 rich CO2 from the atom bombs will quickly find its way into the vast ocean resevoirs.   The perturbation of the C14 by the atom bombs even shows how quickly this process occurs.   There is no other explanation which fits the facts.

What is quite contradictory in the whole idea that the extra CO2 comes from fossil fuel, is that scientists acknowledge the exchanges between the air and the biosphere and the water, but who determines how much CO2 stays in the air?    Why should the extra CO2 not vanish in the oceans or at least a large part of it?   Why should our addition of CO2 just stay there even while they are being swapped out for other CO2 molecules?  How can anyone say that man has caused the 50% increase and accept massive CO2 exchanges which have no reason or logic to maintain this increase.    Why shouldn't the extra CO2 just vanish and the old level remain?   What sets the level of CO2, a trace gas in the atmosphere?    For some reason the increase is assumed to be preserved, by rules and forces and for reasons no one has explained.    All the existing body of physical chemistry controlling these exchanges tell us the proportion of CO2 in the air should be set by temperature and pressure and nothing else.    Could it be that scientists are deliberately ignoring the science because the public does not understand the principles of equilibrium?

Equilibrium.
I did find this good diagram with a graphical illustration of equilibrium.    In this model, if you were dump a bucket of water into the stable system on the RHS, it would quickly return to the equilibrium level where the amount coming in equalled the amount going out.    Yes, the total amount of water in the system would increase, but the ultimate level would stay the same.






C14 after the bomb





The problem with this graph of reality from the doubling of C14O2 in the air suddenly, is that it decays so quickly and to the old 100% figure.   Consider where the Climate industry thinks Carbon goes.


Simplified Bern model
This shows 1.9% of the carbon in the air.   4.9% in plants, alive and dead and in respiration.   93.2% is in the oceans, most in what is labelled the deep ocean.     The idea is that the deep ocean takes 1,000 years to exchange water and presumably gases with the top surface.

So where did all the C14  go?   Remember it cannot be destroyed, but it is all gone!  Where?

If we consider only the top level candidates, the Biosphere on the left and the 'surface' ocean, they are not much bigger than the atmosphere.   So the C14  might drop quickly, but not to zero level.

Then consider the biosphere itself.    This has a rapid cycle time, except for big trees.   Breathing is near instantaneous, whether animal or plant.   Leaves and grasses last a year or so.    Even dead organic matter is returned to the air in a short time.    So even if this took the C14 , it would do less than halve it and this would come roaring back.   The problem is the half life of 14 years from  the graph.    Nothing much except tall trees lasts 14 years, even most life on earth except man, whales and elephants and tortoises.  So the biosphere cannot be the final destination of the C14 , simply because it is not final.

Now look at the right hand side.   If we are to believe that the deep oceans only do things on a 1,000 year time scale, they are out of the question.   The problem is that the surface ocean has only a comparable amount of CO2, so it would halve the concentration.   Now look at the graph on log paper.
The extraordinary thing here is that it is a straight line.  That means there is one place everything is going, one reaction, one equilibrium and all the C14  is going into a huge black hole at a steady pace.

So after exhaustive research  we see results like this (Pettersen) for applying the Bern model of mixing of C14 rich CO2 with these places.   Of course, they cannot get rid of the C14 completely, as happens in the real world.
You will see that the scientists have tried to match the absorption amounts and rates of CO2 into the sinks, but eventually come to a compound curve where 40% will not be absorbed.   This is no surprise.    It is little more than the mixing of 1.9/(1,3+2.4).   You cannot eliminate C14 completely by mixing with areas which are not much bigger.

So what we need is a single huge place to absorb all the C14  rapidly without a trace.   Do we have one one sink as it is called, a single place where all the CO2 can go?   Somewhere the C14O2 does go and remember, there is no chemical difference between C14Oand C12O or C13O2.    Generally the world cannot tell them apart, except for the very slight difference in weights (44,45,46 amu)

Look at the entire ocean, including the deep oceans.  According to the Bern model, they store 93.2% of all free CO2 and if the CO2 goes principally and quickly into the deep oceans, the graph makes sense.    You get one decay curve, not a complex curve, one huge reservoir and if CO2 is shared between the air and oceans alone, the C14Olevel will be reduced to 0.07, but how long would it take?    According to scientists, thousands of years for the gases in the top surface to mix with the gases in the deep ocean.   Is this true?   Is it possible that the exchange of gases in the oceans is not as much in layers as the water itself?   The evidence is that the speed of exchange of gases from the bottom of the oceans is comparable to that from the top, that gases rise rapidly and sink rapidly, even in the deepest oceans where water does not.    This seems to fit our experience with carbonated drinks.  Bubbles of CO2 will rise from the bottom even when the liquid is not moving.

So if all the CO2 is in constant and fast equilibrium with the entire ocean, how can you prove it?

Really there is no other explanation for the behaviour of C14 before and immediately after the atmospheric bomb testing.

Look at C14 over time, before and long after the bomb
(C14 was discovered in 1942, so the pre-bomb period needs explanation)

Firstly you can see that C14 was the long term level for 50,000 years as used by scientists for radio carbon dating.   It remained constant (despite the massive burning of C14 free fossil fuels) all the way through WWI and WWII and the 1950s.    This does not make sense as ancient fossil fuels have no C14.    C14 should have decreased.

Then C14 jumps with the bombs after 1955, climbs rapidly to twice the historic level and settles quickly to the old level.   Not lower because of fossil fuels and not higher because of slow mixing.   It means the C14 of the bombs, the C14O2 of the bombs, all vanished rapidly and quickly in the oceans.   It also means that the virgin CO2 from the fossil fuels did not dilute the aerial CO2 and continues to have no effect.    As was said, if the 50% increase in CO2 was man made, C14 should be 2/3 of the historic level, but is that the case prior to 1950?    

So the case is proven by simple observation of C14 levels.      This proves that all the man made CO2 goes into the oceans.   It has always done so.    Man is insignificant, even with his hydrogen bombs.    

However CO2 has gone up with industrialization.    If the increase is not due to industrialization, why?   In fact the increase in CO2 over the last 150 years has precisely the same explanation, that the largest source of CO2 is the ocean itself, that warming of the oceans by a single degree totally explains the increase in CO2 we have observed.   

When two things go up at the same time, either one causes the other or it is a coincidence.   The Global Warming argument is that mankind's burning of fossil fuel causes Global Warming.    Not only is this clearly not true by plotting temperature and CO2,  it is not indicated by the dilution of C14 levels.

However CO2 levels have gone up and this needs explanation.    Coincidence does not explain the increase.
However Global Warming of the oceans does.    This can easily explain the CO2 increase.   The man made global warming, the pretentiously named Anthropogenic Global Warming is ridiculous and does not fit the facts.   We have a simple explanation of CO2 increases, but it is ignored.   Why?

Postscript:
It is interesting to travel the internet.  Once again the tree ring specialists are there, for example.


This is a study of C14 in tree rings.  Each ring is a year and you can measure C14 in each year.  Simple.

This graph purports to show the expected dilution of aerial CO2 by virgin CO2 from fossil fuel, prior to 1950.   This dilution matches what scientists would expect from burning fossil fuels and is one of the few examples where this is discussed, as it needs to be confirmed.   

In fact it is one of the few times where C14 has been used to prove that the CO2 increase is entirely from fossil fuel.   Otherwise the failure for C14 to indicate fossil fuel input is studiously ignored.

It looks quite conclusive and seems to prove industrial CO2 stays in the air for a very long time.  The expected dilution is shown, but you have to wonder about tree rings.   They were infamously used to kick off this whole story with Michael Mann's Global Warming from one tree and the fingering of industrial CO2 as the culprit.    So could there be another and simple explanation for the drop in C14 in adjagent tree ring?.    For example, if the tree was watered from bore water from deep underground sources, say an artesian bore, very old water containing little or no C14.   That would fully explain the graph.    Many samples from many areas would have to be taken for this to be given credit as it does not fit with other measures of C14 and the subject is not mentioned.   I include it because when the evidence is there for the argument of fossil fuel in the air, it is made public.  When the evidence is missing or contradictory, nothing is said.

PS, What is interesting is that Dr Suess, the man who alerted the world to the drop in C14 after industrialization in the 1890s and after whom it was named, concluded that the drop in C14 was less than 1% and that this completely disproved the idea that fossil fuel hung around.    However even the American Institute of Physics is now arguing there must be a special surface effect in the oceans which overrides the results simple calculations' would give and therefore that most of the fossil fuel CO2 stays in the air.   This read like self justification.    However the bomb graph a decade after Dr. Seuss showed him to be absolutely right.  If the fossil fuel CO2 was still in the air, C14 would drop.  If the bomb spike C14 was still in the air, C14 would be much higher for a long time.

PPS. The CO2 in the air is 99% C12, 1% C13 and a tiny 10-12% C14.   This is why the doubling of C14 has no health risks but acted as the same sort of tracer as used by doctors, like a Barium Meal or Radioactive Iodine.   You can see where everything goes and how fast.






Saturday 2 November 2013

An amazing result and conclusion

An amazing result and conclusion

Dr. Murry Salby is a well known climate scientist.      He was a Professor of Climate Science at Macquarie University in Australia.    He was sacked brutally while overseas and likely for preaching his conclusion, that man did not create global warming, that the computer models are now obviously and utterly wrong.

His excellent clear and unequivocal speech on the subject (in Hamburg) is available at

Dr Selby in Hamburg (In English) 

I would specially commend the graph at 58:40 and onto a startling conclusion, that CO2 and Temperature are not related as predicted, but that CO2 behaves like the integral of temperature!  (1:04)

Murry does not try to explain this clear phenomenon, that CO2 in the air is directly related to temperature and predictable by the integral of temperature over time.

So while utterly destroying the ridiculous single cause CO2 computer models of warming, he has discovered something both startling and requiring explanation.

The explanation could be very simple and fits the heating scenario.

Temperature drives heating and cooling heat transfers.   They are proportional for Henry's law.  The air and the top levels of water heat and cool quickly, sunshine to night time, summer to winter.   You could consider the temperature the driver of heat exhange, which it is.   So in plotting temperature, you are plotting what is driving heat from one medium to another, ocean to air and air to ocean.  There conduction (not much), convection (quite a lot) and radiation.

However underneath the top layer of water is 4km of cold water, water that does not move much, that has little convection and slow conduction.    Remember you are heating it from the top down, not bottom up.   All the turbulence is that the top.    For transfer of heat, the total amount of heat transferred over time is the integral of this driving force.   The sum of the area under the temperature curve.   This exactly matches the graph of CO2.

So the integral of temperature over time gives the total heat transferred into the oceans when heating does not exactly match cooling.

In a simple way, if Temperature measures the force behind heat exchange in the oceans or in the whole system of air, water surface and deep oceans

The energy transferred H = k*T*dt.   And if  the change in temperature of the oceans is directly proportional to the energy transferred and the CO2 amount proportional to that you get

                                   d[CO2}=kTdt
or
                                    [CO2] = k∑Tdt
the observered and precise result.

So Dr.Salby's extraordinary conclusion is almost obvious with the wisdom of hindsight.

Heating the water releases CO2.   Global warming of the globe, largely the oceans, releases CO2.  Man cannot change CO2 in the air much no matter how much fossil fuel he burns.   35Billion tons per year is no match for the 100,000 billion tons of CO2 in the ocean and the forces of equilibrium.

The next time a warmist tries to suggest man made CO2 is all still in the atmosphere, the key argument behind AGW, ask him to explain why C14 concentrations are not 2/3.   Explain why C14 is vanishing.  Explain why CO2 is related to the sum of all the temperatures, not the temperature itself.


The worlds biggest carbon experiment

The worlds biggest carbon 14 experiment

In the previous post, the idea that C14 concentrations in air (or at least C14/CO2) have not changed is put forward.   This has been true for tens of thousands of years and likely for tens of thousands more, but it is not actually true for the 20th century.   Consider the graph below of C14 in the second half of the 20th century.

How could you test whether fossil fuel CO2 stays in the air?    This is used as a primary premise of those who argue the increase in CO2 from fossil fuel since industrialization is the whole cause of near simultaneous global warming.

Also consider how a scientist would test my hypothesis that man made fossil fuel CO2 disappears into the huge reserve of CO2, 98% (50x) dissolved in the world oceans.    How could you see whether the 50% increase in aerial CO2 was man made?

First, make some CO2 radioactive and release it into the air and measure its concentration over time.   According to warmists, it should stay in the air forever.

Big things happened after WWII, a big blip on the horizontal line of C14 vs time.  The experiment has already been done on a massive world scale.    The results are indisputable.    Mankind doubled the amount of C14O2 in the atmosphere in 1963.    Consider the graph of C14O2 against time.


Note1: C14 was only discovered in 1942
Note2: The 100% on the Y axis refers to the constant percentage of Modern Carbon (pMC).   It is proven to be very nearly constant for tens of thousands of years.

This graph teaches us many things.
1. C14 remained constant up to and including WWII, so all the fossil fuels release in the first half of the 20th century did nothing to dilute C14.
2. C14 climbed very rapidly with the bomb explosions, especially H bombs.
3. You can see an interesting lag and drop even between the Northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere.
4. The C14 amount in 1963 is double the 100% long term pMC
5. C14 rapidly vanishes (on an exponential curve) with a half life of around 17 years. (from 1963 to 1970 when the concentration is 150%).
6. C14 mass in the air it is heading back to the old 100% figure, as if the 20th century CO2 did not exist.
(for the buffs, you can prove this as the log of this curve is a straight line, showing the decay is exponential to a horizontal asymptote)
7. there is a 2 1/2 year delay between CO2 released in the Northern Hemisphere and when it appears in the Southern Hemisphere.   The drop in % between North and South in this time confirms the behaviour.

So the unanswerable questions
Q1. Why was C14 constant up to 1955 in the face of WWI, WWII and industrialization? (there are better graphs showing this, back to 1920)
Q2. Why is it heading straight back to the age old level and not a lower level, reflecting the fact that fossil fuel has no C14?
Q3. How can radioactive CO2 vanish in only say 50 years when the half life is 5700 years?
Q4. Why does the fossil fuel CO2 not dilute the aerial CO2 to 67% for at least a few times 5700 years?
Q4. Where exactly has all the radioactive C14 gone?  

Remember, this is CO2 albeit with C14, chemically almost identical to standard CO2.    It is not just C14 which has vanished, but all the other CO2 of which it was a tiny part.   This indicates that all CO2 of this age has vanished, all of it, the entire amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in 1955 is now gone!

I have to point out, as a Nuclear Physicist, that you cannot unmake C14.   No power on earth can do this.   A nuclear accelerator can change the occasional nucleus, but not every one.    We can turn lead into gold, maybe, but only one atom at a time.    That is why we cannot dispose of radioactive waste.

The only place we are certain the C14 has gone is out of the atmosphere.

Q5. If this massive quantity of man made tagged CO2 vanishes quickly somewhere, why not all the man made CO2?

It has taken a number of atom bombs, but we know conclusively, unequivocally that man made CO2 released into the atmosphere vanishes.     We also know the fossil fuel, lacking any C14 has also vanished.
They are in the same place.   98% of all CO2 is in the oceans, so 98% of the fossils fuels are in the oceans and 98% of the C14 is in the oceans.

Of course you could say, just measure the C14 in the oceans.   However remember that the ocean CO2 is 50x that of the air.   So is the C14.     CO2 concentrations vary dramatically with temperature from the arctic to the equator, so looking for a 2% variation is near impossible.   We just know it is all gone or nearly gone.

One last comment.  The reason man made C14 free CO2 (virgin CO2 if you like) vanishes it that CO2 levels are set and maintained by the laws of physical chemistry.   The CO2 in the air is maintained in a very strict ratio of the vastly greater CO2 in the water.   So if new CO2 turns up, it is nearly all absorbed without trace, at least 98% of it.  Just like the C14O2.
A real problem for all proponents of man made CO2 increases, is to explain why this would not happen, why CO2 would not just vanish into the oceans, why the normal laws of equilibrium of gases in solution would not operate in the oceans?