Timothy Birdnow

This from Richard Cronin:

Charles Keeling published his seminal paper in 1979, "The Suess effect: 13Carbon-14Carb on interrelations” pointing to man’s combustion of fossil fuels as altering the ratio of heavy isotopes (C-14 & C-13) to Carbon 12 — the so called Seuss Effect.

C-12 and C-13 are stable isotopes. C- 14 is produced by cosmic ray bombardment of nitrogen in the upper atmosphere. C-14 is also produced by nuclear fission. C-14 has a half-life of 5730 years +/- 40 and it was thought by Keeling et al that C-14 should not be present in fossil fuels laid down millions of years ago.

From Keeling’s Abstract:

"The Suess Effect is a term which has come to signify the decrease in 14C in atmospheric CO2 owing to admixture of CO2 produced by the combustion of fossil fuels. This term is here extended, as a concept, to the shifts in isotopic ratio of both 13C and 14C in any reservoir of the carbon cycle owing to anthropogenic activities.”

......and the final paragraph in his Abstract:

"Although the emphasis is on formulating models rather than surveying and interpreting data, observational data are summarized and compared with model predictions. The oceanic data are seen to be too meager as yet to help settle the question of biospheric response to man's activities.”

Yikes ! We don’t know enough about the oceans — the greatest reservoir of CO2 on the planet, greater than all land-based green stuff by orders of magnitude !

Well, now we have new learnings. Holdaway, Kennedy & Duffy 2018:

"We re-analysed data from other major eruptions, including at Rabaul in Papua New Guinea and Baitoushan on the North Korean border with China and found similar patterns. The anomalous chemistry mimics but exceeds the Suess effect, which reversed the carbon isotopic evolution of post-industrial wood.”

But nooooo, ..... Keeling’s paper guides "Climate Change” and is taken as the Received Wisdom from the Great Man.

Those pesky volcanoes, always causing trouble — just like CFCs blasting out of Mt. Erebus & Mt. Calbuco into the stratosphere over Antarctica. No, I’m afraid to tell you but CFCs are not just man-made.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 04:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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