Thank you Steve - nice to see you acknowledge Henry's _Law_ as opposed to the AGW _hypothesis_
Perhaps you should try to understand that what Henry's Law actually means when it comes to absorption or 'outgassing' of CO2. glc does not yet understand it as he is still of the 'nature only has so much capacity for CO2 absorption' school of thought - a Henry's Law denier perhaps Nautonnier
I understand Henry's Law perfectly well. I do not necessarily think that there is a limited capacity - just that there is a limited capacity within a given timescale. If we (humans) stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow then much (~63%) of the excess (~100 ppm) would be absorbed by earth/oceans within ~50 years.
However you need to decide exactly what is happening here. Are the oceans absorbing or are they 'outgassing'? There are a number of posters , e.g. icefisher, who believe that the rise in CO2 is due to 'outgassing' from warmer oceans. This is, of course, garbage because the oceans are absorbing more CO2 now than they were 50 years ago.
You do not understand how the law works - the system tends toward a balance that is driven by the CO
2 vapor pressure and the solute temperature.
There is bound to be a lag in reaching this balance at the same time if emissions are increasing then so too will the CO
2 vapor pressure increasing solubility. The solubility in colder waters toward the poles and at depth will be greater than solubility in the warmer surface waters of the equator.
Multiple papers have shown that the lifetime of a CO
2 molecule in the atmosphere is ~ 5 years. So you (and steve) are postulating that a CO
2 molecule is absorbed in the oceans or lakes and then outgasses from them TEN TIMES before eventually deciding to stay dissolved? This is not logical.
What is more logical is that the equilibrium between disoved and CO
2 vapor pressure is being continually chased. In cold sea temperatures and cloud droplets CO
2 will rapidly dissolve wheras in warmer seas it will outgas.
The unanswered question is what is the capacity of the ocean and hydrologic circulation for CO
2.
After each glacial period -
about 8 centuries after warming - CO
2 levels begin to rise. Some of this may be due to plant respiration but plants also take in CO
2 - the majority of the CO
2 rise after glacial periods is likely to be outgassing due to ocean temperature increase reducing the solubility of CO
2 to a level that overcomes any CO
2 vapor pressure. The same is happening as the oceans warm from the little ice age - the warming of the SSTs is now slowing or stopping - and there will be a little inertia in the system while it catches up - this could be centuries - but it is a very simple physical mechanism.
I can understand why you and steve need to postulate otherwise - but whereas Henry's Law is an 'immutable law of physics' (to quote SoCold) which can be easily tested and calibrated, your postulations are just that -
postulations in support of your argument with no
validatable observations to back them up.