“I am only using the model to fit the thermal time response.”

Yes but this is precisely the response to a massive pulse of CO2 so it is primarily the result of the CO2 (that is the point of this test).

Now if CO2 is reckoned to have half-life of 15 years a lot of it will still be active in the atmosphere after 15 years. That the model has a thermal time constant very close to this (and not longer) suggests that the CO2 residency is dominating the thermal response time of the system.

99% is 5 time constants so it will take decades to reach a new equilibrium even just on grounds of CO2 absorption at the official rate.

Arguments about deep ocean turnover must involve at least 3 different time constants and volumes. The deep water may extent the tail and the last couple of % but the surface response time must be notably shorter that the 15y CO2 constant since the response is the same.

It’s unfortunate that this does not give the clear cut test I had thought it would.

It would still be good to have a idea how 6 years CO2 time would affect your calculation.

I agree that GISS over-exaggerates warming and its results are unreliable. I am only using the model to fit the thermal time response.

That is of course the temperature response of the model not the earth’s climate. And that model does not fit post 2000 temps so there is a good reason to reject it’s temperature response. Since the key factor determining residence time is the Revelle model it would be a good place to start, replacing the residence time with one based on experimental data.

since it would presumably be trivial for you to plug a different value into your model it would be interesting to see the result. I hope you will find that worth trying.

However, I have just been looking at how rate of change of atmospheric CO2 relates to temperature. This is the basic physics of out-gassing as water temperature rises.

http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=233
The short term variation shows no lag and this is in accord with the fact that it only takes about an hour for water/gas samples to reach equilibrium when agitated. (About 3h is still).

Here is the same data with a 4 year filter
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=254

Here a somewhat variable lag of between 0.5 and 1.5 years is seen. Since the reaction is almost instantaneous this is likely due to delays in mixing with deeper water.

Now both those plots suggest that the GISS model’s response time is way too long.

All physical evidence (such as absorption of bomb test C14) is that atmospheric CO2 has a residency time of about 5-7 years.

Climate models all seem to base their CO2 turnover on Revelle’s rewriting of science on this that is theoretical and contrary to experimental evidence.

What does your method give if you use a value of say 6 years instead of 15 years ?

Germany are actually building new coal power stations . Bloomberg writes.

New coal plants with about 5,300 megawatts of capacity will start generating power this year, the Muenster-based IWR renewable energy institute said in an e-mailed statement today, citing data from the German regulator. About 1,000 megawatts of coal-fired capacity are expected to come offline, it said.

UKs problem is that the 2008 climate change act rules out any new coal stations in UK. It was written in the heady days before the financial crash ! Unless the act gets repealed Gas fired stations are the only road left for UK. That is if the green lobby don’t kill off fracking as well.

I would not advise investing in nuclear either, since EDF are in a mess building plants in France. The UK doesn’t have the engineering capacity any more.

I just checked the national grid WIND power is currently generating just 0.25Gw which is just 0.7% of current demand at 33 GW. This is negligible. Coal (12GW) Gas are(11.5GW) and Nuclear(5.5GW) are keeping the lights on ! Still the subsidies for WIND are running are 2 billion/year so it is still a good investment in the short term at least until the first power cut.

This post has been up for over two months now and not a single person has come out to contradict you, so I can only conclude that you must be right on this one.
Having accepted that you are right I am left struggling with a few more problems:
- If I sell the few shares I own in the local wind farm cooperative how do I go about re-investing the proceeds in nuclear power ?
- As nuclear projects seem to end up going a factor of two over time and over budget, wouldn’t it be a rather dodgy investment ?
- If an advanced country like Germany, which has very sound reliable engineers, has given up on nuclear, is there really any future for it ?

Yours, somewhat cynically
Bob P.