A debate!

The Institute of Art and Ideas recently held a debate which was a bit of a shocker in that it included people who are less than convinced that we are about to fry. Bob Carter needs little introduction of course, but alongside him were atmospheric physicist Michael McIntyre and science writer and climatologist Richard Corfield, none of whom would fall into the eco-catastrophe camp. The debate was chaired by Gabrielle Walker, familiar to readers here as co-author of David King's dodgy book on climate. This is really very good stuff. (The embedding doesn't seem to work for me - direct link here).

A wrinkle in the carbon budget

Since I read about it a few years back, I've been intrigued by Ian Plimer's suggestion that subsea volcanoes may be emitting very large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thus being responsible for a (presumably) significant proportion of the rise in atmospheric concentrations. This idea has been broadly poo-poohed by mainstream scientivists because of lack of evidence, although the idea that one should assume a figure close to zero because we didn't know what was going on at the bottom of the oceans was never one that gave me a warm feeling.

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A new look at the carbon dioxide budget - Part 3

In Part 1 of his paper, David Coe set out the failures of the IPCC model of carbon dioxide control to predict key observables in the ocean-atmosphere system. In Part 2 he outlined a new ocean control model that might better explain the observations. In Part 3 of his paper he looks at how this new model performs in practice.

The paper is attached below. Once again, the data for the figures is available too.

Coe Paper - Part 3

A new look at the carbon dioxide budget - Part 2

David Coe's post on problems with the official carbon dioxide budget generated a lot of interest and more than 100 comments. David and I have therefore decided to bring forward publication of the second part of the paper, in which he sets out a new approach to these questions. 

The paper itself is attached below. For those who are interested, David is also making available the data behind the key figures:  Figs 2.4 and 2.5 and Figs 2.6 and 2.7

Coe paper - Part 2

A new look at the carbon dioxide budget

As readers are probably aware, I don't spend a lot of time on new hypotheses about global warming. Apart from intermittent looks at Svensmark's cosmoclimatology work, I've tended to concentrate on mainstream science and its relationship with policy, as well as a lot of "meta" stuff like peer review. 

However, I was recently sent a paper by reader David Coe that piqued my interest. It seemed to me to be put together pretty well, and was about an area of the science that I knew nothing about. Being somewhat wary about this kind of thing though, I've sought expert opinion, and this suggests that at least some of what is said is good and new and interesting. So I am going to post the paper up, with the caveat that it is only a discussion paper and parts of it may be wrong. Readers are cordially invited to throw stones at it.

The paper is written in four parts, which I will post at a rate of one every 3-4 days.

Here is the first part, which sets out the problem.

Coe Part 1