What do you think of this new study?

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All the CO2 produced by mankind can and is being absorbed primarily in the oceans. The oceans cover 85% of the earth. They are taking CO2 instantly into the huge sink for CO2. The basic building block of ALL foods on this planet. It is working day and night year round. As soon as it hits the water, it goes to carbonic acid. Now HOLD ON. It stays an acid for a microsecond as it is instantly buffered to a bicarb state. From this state it enters the food chain. algae, plankton, seaweed, etc. After moving up through the food chain it goes into fish. A food for mankind. It is not easily emitted from the ocean. The obvious question, after so many years of burning fuels, where has all the CO2 been going? Answer: the oceans primarily.

Land plants take up CO2 also but only when the sun is shining and the temp is above ~60F. But the land is only 15% of the Earths surface, but deserts, mountains, the poles etc do not grow any plants. So say 12% of the land can grow plants. But only in the summer, so half the time no growing. So 6% of the land can grow plants at a given time. But plants only grow when the sun shines. The sun shines 8 hrs/day. So plants can grow only 2% of any given time. 2% of the earhs surface only at any given time can be growing plants ie taking up CO2.

So, the Earth is easily handling the CO2 from burning and has no limit in the amount that it can handle. Experiments at UCD Cal, greenhouses where CO2 was pumped into the greenhouse to determine the effect, yielded a more rapid growth and more lush growth of the plants. The higher CO2 levels just would not stay elevated. The plants used it instantly ..

You can see where CO2 goes in stage productions where ground fog is desired. The CO2 stays on the ground. Since it is heavier than air it has a tendency to get down to the surface. I know, gasses mix in a column but the lower CO2 is being continuously removed. A natural cleansing effect. which is in reality more of an 'essential for life' effect.

IMO the AGW movement is a SCAM. Designed to fleece more taxes out of peoples pocket books. And for the big government types to gain more power over the people. Also to create billions+ for the likes of GE to sell 'CO2 scrubbers'. and dictators to grab more money from advanced countries. It may be a way for enviros to figure out how to thin the people down by 4-5 billion also....Show more

This is a very fine point, one that doesn't really make a major change. Right now the environment is absorbing about 55% of the CO2 we emit. We've known that for many years.

Some scientists have speculated that, as CO2 levels rise, that percentage is likely to decrease a bit, like going to 50%. Others are speculating that, no it will actually increase a bit, maybe to 60%. This study says that we have basically seen no change in the percentage absorbed so far.

In any of the three outcomes, the difference in the impact of global warming is not large. It could maybe get very serious a year earlier or a year later, depending on who's right. Or, if the study cited in Sciencedaily continues to be right, no change at all.

Global warming ain't going away, regardless of who's right.

EDIT - from an answer below:

"The only thing new about this article is that some scientist did not find a trend of increasing atmospheric CO2"

Completely absurd misinterpretation by a denier, once again. The trend he was looking at was what FRACTION of emitted CO2 stays in the atmosphere. He found it to be about 45%, the value that's been known for years. The 45% that is not removed by nature. IS building up the total amount.

That interpretation is not simply against the consensus here, it's against pretty much EVERY scientist, including the skeptical ones.

EDIT 2 - And again: "So, the Earth is easily handling the CO2 from burning and has no limit in the amount that it can handle." No, it can handle about half. The rest builds up. It's shown in the science, it's confirmed by the data. Not even the most extreme skeptical scientist disagrees with that.

I can't believe the deniers here have managed to come up with an even sillier argument than "we're not really warming"....Show more

FELLAS:

It was a short article. You should have been able to read to the last paragraph:

"In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades."

PAUL B:

Why do you think that the CO2 in the atmosphere is about to saturate the KHCO3 buffer in the ocean? For that matter, would not the CaCO3 buffer be more significant in this case?

Given the tiny current concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, it seems unlikely that even tripling the atmospheric CO2 concentration would have much effect on the ocean's CO3 buffers.

CO2 + H2O ↔ H2CO3 keq = 10-1.43

H2CO3 ↔ H+ + HCO3- keq = 10-6.40

HCO3- ↔ H+ + CO3-- keq = 10-10.33

Ca2+ + CO3-- ↔ CaCO3 keq = 10-8.33 for aragonite and 10-8.48 for calcite

Surely, you forgot to check the equilibrium constants before making that assertion.

http://74.6.146.127/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=Keq+++CaCO3&fr=mcsaoffblock&u=www.geol.umd.edu/%7Ekaufman/ppt/G436/8Nov05_lecture_notes.doc&w=keq+caco3&d=TMW1I929T1z0&icp=1&.intl=us&sig=UudaHMFq5r3CTvJS0OkYuA--

MY TAKE:

Gosh, it is really hard for the believers to accept any publication could possibly have data questioning their basic assumptions. Given that they have trouble with some guy using old and possibly contaminated samples like the publishers of pro AGW papers on this subject, I wonder how they would respond to actual data taken from the 19th century by scientists back then measuring atmospheric CO2. Those measured the (then) current CO2 fraction of the atmosphere to within a 2% tolerance:

1878: CO2 = 344 ppm = 0.0344% by volume
1880: CO2 = 271 ppm = 0.0271% by volume
You can get the rest of the data from:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/t7h40g8355613013/fulltext.pdf

2009: CO2 = 382 ppm = 0.0382% by volume
You can get the rest of modern data (by warmists) at:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/

That is really our best data. The warmists have always preferred some possibly accurate samples of old atmospheres to analyze with newer instruments, because the old data did not support their pet theory. The only thing new about this article is that some scientist did not find a trend of increasing atmospheric CO2 even when he used warmist methods.

EDIT:

It did not escape my attention that my opinion is contrary to the vast concensus of the other answerers.

PEGMINER:

Thank you for the clarification. I stand corrected.

I also agree with your assesment that it is hardly earth shattering news. I still stand on my objection that this is not based on bicarbonate equilibrium, but rather on CaCO3, and that I can see no reason to suspect that these numbers will change catastropically anytime soon....Show more

I think it is worthy of noting that many of the self-proclaimed skeptics have read the abstract of the study or this article and completely misunderstood the study.

The study is referring to the fraction of newly emitted CO2 that is being absorbed by the atmosphere. The study is not referring to the percentage of the atmosphere made up of CO2. Big difference. The study is not inconsistent with other studies that show the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing....Show more

No rise in airborne fraction

This is being deliberately misdescribed as "no rise in amount of airborne CO2". It means nothing of the kind.

Roughly half the excess carbon dioxide pumped into the air has been ending up in the oceans. The other half (the fraction referred to) stays in the atmosphere.

At some point, because of the nature of the equilibrium between calcium carbonate, dissolved bicarbonate, and dissolved CO2, the fraction absorbed by the ocean will start going down. this is called "saturating the buffer" and will be very bad news if we ever allow it to happen.

Ocean acidification is a real problem already; see the site maintained by the European Project on Ocean Acidification, at

http://www.epoca-project.eu/

but the studies shows that it is not yet severe enough to change the effective partition ratio between ocean and atmosphere.

What do YOU think, kaisergirl?...Show more