Thread: More CO2 Peculiarities: The C13/C12 Isotope Ratio

Spencer Part2: More CO2 Peculiarities - The C13/C12 Isotope Ratio « Watts Up With That?

BOTTOM LINE: If the C13/C12 relationship during NATURAL inter-annual variability is the same as that found for the trends, how can people claim that the trend signal is MANMADE??

No answers to his question yet. Another plank in the "Man did it" theory evaporating away.

There are a lot of Planks still left in the MMGW camp

Well that is the first time I have seen anyone look at isotopes. Thank goodness there are some real scientists still around. Actually I'm kicking myself that I didn't think of doing that myself. It's a pretty obvious thing to do once you know the deal with isotopes, and you should know about that if you do carbon dating. Excellent work and I'll have to say to the greens get out of that one if you can!

Can you answer his final question then John?

There is no valid scientific retort to his method as far as I can see. The isotopes in carbon are like date stamps and burning coal and oil is burning organic matter that is very old and carbon dating is one of the best tools scientists have in establishing the date of any previously organic material. It's pretty accurate as well; at the very least it is way beyond the accuracy needed to differentiate between something millions of years old and something produced in the current year.

Originally Posted by mkpdavies

Can you answer his final question then John?

Of course not it is based on a false hypothesis namely

some people think this is the signature of anthropogenic emissions

There is no proof that people believe this. Why does he not provide a link ?

Also if you wanted to prove that carbon dioxide is not from fossil fuels you would look at C14 as it has a short life.

He provides no references at all in this "paper".

Originally Posted by John Cooper

carbon dating does not use C13 but C14.

Also of course he does not prove that burning fossil fuels always give the same ratio of C13/C14 does gas from the North sea give the same as oil ?

Yes I know it uses C14 but as far as I'm aware the same principle applies, i.e. that of radioactive decay, which gives a different ratio as the exponential decay curve acts on it. Each kind of decay is defined wholly by its half-life since it is always an exact exponential. For reasons of accuracy it is preferred that the half-life is of the order of the time being measures or else your error is multiplied. So other than that the same principle applies and this is established fact. Now maybe he has not proved every detail in the path of reasoning in this piece of text but that's fair enough as he is just communicating this particular finding so other scientists reading it will be looking into it as well. It's not intended as political propaganda but as scientist-to-scientist and much like work in progress. It's the technique that is the key point and others can expand on it.