CO2 is up, temperatures are down?
The Guardian tells us today that world CO2 levels have reached a record high. Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 ppm, the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.
CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than expected. The annual mean growth rate for 2007 was 2.14 ppm – the fourth year in the past six to see an annual rise greater than 2ppm. From 1970 to 2000, the concentration rose by about 1.5 ppm each year, but since 2000 the annual rise has leapt to an average 2.1ppm.
But now comes the big question. With the CO2 levels soaring, why won’t the temperatures rise? There is something rotten with this global warming…
8 comments
‘CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 ppm, the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.’
Umm wasn’t it at 7000 ppm 100,000 odd years ago? I may have the years wrong but it’s definitely been higher than today’s levels, which are practically starving plant-life.
The NOAA website linked in the Guardian article is interesting. They have data for Mauna Loa going back to 1959, and global data going back to 1980. For each set of data, the highest annual increase was 1998 (3 ppm and 2.94 ppm). 1998 is notorious for being an historically hot year. For me at least, this supports the argument that temperature drives CO2 increases, and not the other way around.
*sighs* The change per year isn’t large enough to be the sole determing factor of short term weather, and the system is quite complex so variations is to be expected. It’s the long term tendencies that is worrying and those are quite clear I’d say.
Besides, temperatures have hardly been down where I live, rather very up.
David, as far as I know it’s a feedback system. Increased temperature causes increased release of CO2 which in turn increases temperatures. If CO2 in the atmosphere wouldn’t have that effect it would be quite strange just looking at the basic physics, and no one has so far offered a plauseable explaination of why it wouldn’t happen. Not to mention that we would have to scrap all current climatological models because they rely on GHG to explain why the earth is as warm as it is.
Karl: http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html
Increase your knowledge.
Why should this misleading claim be worthy of my concern.When not a scrap of evidence can be found that such increases of an historical low level of CO2.Harms the ecosystem?
The plants and the animals absolutely love it!
Nature is being enriched by the slow atmospheric CO2 increase.When will you Gian morons embrace this fact?
The article’s headline is typical for it’ scaremongering overtones.
“World CO2 levels at record high”
It is a lie actually.
Mauna Loa CO2 measurements are at high altitude and irrelevant as far as IR absorption, since maximum absorption occurs within a few hundred meters of the surface. And surface measurements have been made since the early 1800s, being higher than today on several past occasions. In 1940, for example 400ppm was accurately measured by proper techniques, yet a cooling period followed which lasted until the 1970s.
To truly understand why the models aren’t working, you need to take a closer look at the so-called “greenhouse effect” from the standpoint of atomic absorption physics. I highly recommend a close read of John Nicols paper at http://www.middlebury.net/nicol-08.doc . This is John’s second draft of the paper, it still has a couple of typos but is essentially complete. He keeps promising me the “final” draft, but the math is sound in this draft, so I’m previewing it early so others can enjoy it.
This paper is the deeper view of the ultra-simplified discussion I used in our globe-trotting editorial at http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html which as been previously referenced by another in this thread.
Dan Pangburn has done a comparative look at 3 independent developments ( Nicol, Hug, and Barrett ) all of which begin with the Stefan-Boltzmann equation and continue to roughly the same conclusion. Heinz Hug differs somewhat from the other two due to fundamental differences in resolution considerations, but all are rock-solid physics which is not a subject for debate, since the laws of physics don’t yield to “consensus”.
If, after a careful read of John’s paper, you still believe the climate “models”, then your belief is based on religion, not science, and I would suggest another forum for discussion of religious matters. Models which deliberately omit any parameters which indicate compensatory negative feedback mechanism or ignore solar irradiance in the algorithms ( as all the widely-quoted models now do ) are pitiful examples of modeling at best. And of course, none of them to date has had the slightest success in predicting our current cooling trend in the face of ever-rising CO2 levels.
The truth of the matter is, the earth’s climate is a remarkably robust and self-balancing mechanism, which heats nicely to equilibrium, then cools as required to maintain a remarkably stable and small temperature variance over very long periods of time. It is not the fragile, earth-in-the-balance, here comes a fatal tipping-point creature portrayed in the crude climate models being used today to sway public opinion. Critical meltdown is an artifact of poor mathematics, not related in the slightest to the actual history of the climate of Mother Earth. It has been hotter and cooler than today, with more or less CO2 than present, and each time the natural and almost predictable swings between warming and glaciation have continued for thousands of years.
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