All:
An anonymous source (probably a group of people from WWF, Greenpeace or the like) asks me a set of questions that are clearly posted here to give the impression that I cannot answer them. The intended impression is possible because I have stated that I will not debate with he/she/it/them until he/she/it/they withdraw his/her/its/their libellous defamations of me in this forum.
This intention to cause an impression is clear because I have already answered the posed questions in this forum.
However, to prevent the intended impression, I now give brief answers to each of the questions but I will not be drawn into debate of my following answers with he/she/it/them. My following answers destroy his/her/its/ their blatant ploy.
Q.
Where is the CO2 from fossil fuels going?
A.
Into the carbon cycle.
In my first posting to this forum I cited a URL of an audio where this is fully explained (by me). To save those who wish to check this from needing to find that posting, I repeat the information here. The URL is
http://www.heartland.org/NewYork08/audio.cfm
At the above URL an audio recording of the pertinent presentation can be heard by scrolling down to Tuesday 4 March, Session 8.45 – 10.15 am, Track 2 then clicking on Audio below my name. The Audio of ‘Q&A’ at the end of that session is also pertinent.
Q.
And where is the exact amount we would expect from burning fossil fuels coming from?
A.
This question is ambiguous and I suspect it is added for rhetorical effect. However, if by “coming from” the questioner means ‘the origin of the carbon in fossil fuels’ then the answer is:
All the carbon in fossil fuels is from fossilized biota, and the biota obtained it from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The “exact amount” of this carbon is not known but NASA estimates it to be ~5,000 GtC. And IPCC and NASA say it is being returned to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels at a rate of 6.5 GtC per year.
Again, this is fully explained in the URL that he/she/it/they has chosen to ignore.
Q.
How is this replacement happening?
A.
Again, the question is ambiguous.
If it means ‘replacement’ of atmospheric carbon dioxide that was sequestered in fossil fuels, then – as my previous answer says – the ‘replacement’ is by the burning of fossil fuels.
If it means ‘replacement’ of fossil fuels in the ground, then it is by formation of peat, coalification and petrification.
Q.
Why are the isotope ratios exactly what we would expect from CO2?
A.
They are the ratios of C14, C13 and C12 isotopes in atmospheric CO2. They can only be “what we would expect from CO2” when it is CO2 that is being analysed.
Perhaps the question is intended to imply “what we would expect from anthropogenic emissions of CO2”. If that is the intention, then the implication is wrong because the magnitude of the isotope ratio changes do not agree with their being predominantly caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
Q.
Why are oxygen levels decreasing in the atmosphere?
A.
Nobody knows. (As the old hymn says; “Everything changes but God changes not”.) Ignorance is not evidence. And the balance of oxygen in the air depends on many things. For example, natural forest fires exist all the time and their magnitude changes with atmospheric oxygen concentration. Forest fires consume oxygen and the fires increase in extent and duration when there is more oxygen in the air.
Q.
Why does the atmospheric concentration track with the amount of FF burned?
A.
It does not “track”. The annual pulse of anthropogenic CO2 into the atmosphere should relate to the annual increase of CO2 in the atmosphere if one is causal of the other, but their variations greatly differ from year to year. Again, this is explained in the audio at the above URL.
However, both the emissions from fossil fuel burning and atmospheric CO2 concentration have both been increasing in recent decades. The number of bicycles in the world has also been increasing throughout those decades: does anybody think the bicycles are relevant, too?
But it is possible to model anything in the absence of knowledge of true causes. So, it is possible to model both that (a) the anthropogenic emission is responsible for the atmospheric rise and (b) that the atmospheric rise is completely natural. I with co-workers have published a set of six such models with 3 of the models assuming an anthropogenic cause and the other 3 each assuming a different purely natural cause. Please note that each of our models matches the available empirical data without use of any ‘fiddle-factor’ such as the ‘5-year smoothing’ the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses to get its model to agree with the empirical data. Again, this is explained in the Audio at the above URL.
Richard
