> In reply to Mitch. You’ve ignored my post regarding the “faint young sun” paradox (do a web search)
> and the fact that the feedback in the past has been NEGATIVE.

I don’t think this is much of a paradox — remember we have a twin planet Venus and likely our atmosphere initially was much like Venus’s. So when the sun was young we would expect the earths atmosphere to be about 2,500 times as much CO2. It certainly seems this greenhouse effect would be large enough to keep the earth warm enough for liquid oceans, and these liquid oceans are required for converting the CO2 into limestone.

I’ll find a good example of a carbon isotope ratio article that was used to calibrate oceanic CO2 cycling, volumes and rates.

I wasn’t trying to make any point. It’s just a comparison of magnitudes, for people who have difficulty grasping the scale of numbers.

The absorption of CO2 by polar oceans not being mentioned isn’t out of convenience. You can do the comparison with either – I don’t mind. If I had mentioned only the scale of absorption of CO2 by the polar oceans, would that have been ‘convenient’ too?

I presume the point is that one shouldn’t ever post scientific facts and comparisons that only tell one side of the story – that lean entirely in one direction. You are swift to correct the perceived inclination of my question with some counterbalancing observations. Would you say this is a general principle? Does it apply to all sides of the debate?

It will take a while to find both the total CO2 moles cycling, rate of cycling, and variance in cycling, which is what is need to estimate the oceanic capacity to sequester impulses.

But we can do a quick observational reality check: it is certainly plausible that the oceanic cycling has capacity to sequester one extra Mt. Pinatubo a century over background, and probably 10, and even remotely one extra every year. But +100 extra a year for a quarter millennium? That is stretching the range of plausibility, and is far, far above the statistical background. Furthermore if the oceans were far enough out of equilibrium to rapidly sequester that CO2 impulse, they would have done so before the CO2 stores were released, and the planet would have never left the last ice age. Besides would you really want to see the oceanic acidity raised that much?

Look, the some odd ~30000 equivalent Mt. Pinatubos that have been released would have taken around 3 million years to add the CO2 to the atmosphere, and some 3 million years to sequester through biological sedimentation. We have cut the whole thing down to a quarter of a millennium.

If you really believe that oceans can buffer the CO2 impulse then can you explain how deep current turn over will increase, and surface temperatures will decrease, so as to dissolve more CO2?

A good calculation!

Can you calculate for me, on the same basis, how much CO2 the tropical oceans have emitted in total since 1751? And what the ratio of that to man’s contribution is? Thanks.

http://bit.ly/hzeY59
http://bit.ly/crUpsa

If you grind through the numbers you reach this startling conclusion:

Since the dawn of industrialization, in 1751, our accumulated to present day industrial CO2 production is equivalent to 1 Mt. Pinatubo eruption in every nation in every year since 1751, and accelerating.

This number is statistically far and beyond the background geological CO2 production rate, and likely beyond the rapid sequestering capacity of the planet, though obviously within the millions of years sequestering time scale. I think this is on the same order of magnitude as the volcanic activity during the Permian–Triassic extinction but without the cooling aerosols and SO2, that provided a short term, and catastrophic to life, buffer against CO2 greenhouse warming.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I see valid evidence that I’m wrong to believe AGW is an impending disaster I’ll scratch it off my list of problems quicker than you can say chronosynclastic enfundibulum.

And, therein, lies the fundamental asymmetry of this “debate.”