Global Warming Septics - Please Explain?

Question

Why do people think that current predictions of climate change is natural? Ice core data clearly shows temperature is linked to carbon dioxide concentrations:
http://www.noe21.org/dvd2/Global%20Warming%20FAQ%20-%A0%20temperature.htm

Ice age maximums occur with 170 part per million (ppm) CO2. Interglacial maximums (warm periods) occur with 270ppm. We have been coming out of an ice-age for the past 10,000 years and we would expect CO2 to be ~270ppm. We have increased the global carbon dioxide to 378ppm in the past 200years. So my questions are:
"How do you explain the extra CO2 if not due to humans?" and "How confident are you that temperature will not rise significantly in response to the largest CO2 concentration in the past 400,000 years?"

eek - yes I do mean sceptics! Should've spotted that...

Doug - Arrhenius first made calculations on CO2 and the global temperature, and it is well known that the C=O bond absorbs energy in the infra red (heat) region of the electromagnetic spectrum.
http://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_3_1.htm

Doug,
also, even if the sun's output is going up, then we're in a worse situation - as the greenhouse effect is an amplifier of incoming radiation.

The Fonz - which eruption? and how much CO2 did it put in the atmosphere?

Cheers for replies so far...
Dr T - Important point raised about the lag time between CO2 and T, who controls who? First of all, what's a few thousand years of resolution between 400,000 year old friends? Secondly, the physics & Chemistry - we KNOW CO2 causes the greenhouse effect, we also know (thanks for pointing it out) that the oceans absorb less CO2 as they warm up, so with increasing CO2 (or T from solar cycles), the sea will slow absorption of CO2 and as a consequence T will rise etc - a positive feedback.
Also, you confuse fossil fuel carbon with present day carbon- i.e. the net change of Carbon from present day (e.g. plants, animals, human breathing) is ~0 compared with the net increase from fossil fuel carbon is ~2ppm per year
It naive to suggest the scientists who produce ice core data don't think about gas/ice exchange, of course they do.

Carmenl_87 - thanks for the volcano data

Musonic - I'm happy to say it's a trace gas - doesn't mean it's not important.

Turning into a right essay this eh?
envirocowboy - thanks for the cooking analogy warning, phew that was close. However, this question IS about CO2 and it's role in the greenhouse effect. We can talk about the rest another day if you like.
Re the Nostradamus bit - I like to try and use science to predict the future and I'm certain there's a lot we are doing already to change the temperature, unless you manage to convince me otherwise...but I have to say, one article on the medieval warm period by a right-wing propaganda site isn’t going to do it. The article hardly enters into the debate on the MWP - which I think is most likely related to solar cycles (remember the greenhouse effect is an amplifier for that, it's not one or the other). Not seeing it in the sea floor climate record is probably a function of oceanic mixing timescale (it only lasted a few hundred years). Make sure you don't fall into "lazy science" now by quoting one event!

Answer 1

It's all about money. The fossil fuel companies will lose a lot of money if we actually decide to solve the problem of global warming so they're willing to give people money to say that it isn't happening or just anything to stop us from actually solving the problem.

EDIT: I should point out that the term sceptic shouldn't really be used to refer to the global warming denialists because they just don't fit the common definition of a sceptic, in fact they are every bit the enemy of sceptics as astrologers and psychics.

Answer 2

It's very difficult not to reserve a degree of scepticism when there are hysterical predictions in the air, in addition to CO2.

"Greenpeace" seem to think that the world will end in 20 years, whilst the "Stern Report" falsified information by choosing the "worst case scenario" which serious earth-scientists dismiss as almost an impossiblity.

Behind every sensible piece of research, (which is not quite in joined-up writing to date), there are at least, it would seem, a thousand who climb on the band-wagon, 5,000 who think it is a lot worse than it is, 10,000 who think that we are all doomed the day after tomorrow, and 100,000,000 who couldn't care less and don't understand anyway.

I'm afraid that the line "research shows," has absolutely no credibility unless very exact details are provided of the scientific method. Anything less is pure "Guru-ism," and faceless sound-bites are the stuff of politicians and popular journalism rather than serious fact-seekers.

Environmental studies include "computer models," and it seems that every Tom, Dick and Harry is free to create their own. For the moment, most of those models are theoretical, and whilst they may be full of good intention and even a number of proven facts, there remains much to do.

Quite what all the barn-storming is all about is anyone's guess, because the serious scientists are not predicting the end of the world or even a rapid decline just yet, yet to hear people talk, global-warming is the most dangerous thing imaginable.

It's rather like the amateur global-warming alarmists, who cite increased storms and hurricanes, and then cherry-pick from the data. If they choose a five year period, and stop after including Hurricane Katrina, they would get a very different result to that which included the past year, in which there have been almost no hurricanes at all.

Even worse are those who invent things, like the "fact" that they know the sea-level is rising due to ice-cap melt, because the Thames flood-barrier has had to be closed 55 times this year, when in point of fact, the figure has hardly changed year-on-year since it was built, and even the last year marked a downard trend rather the opposite.

With so much misinformation, hysterical over-reaction and false accounting, it's rather a good idea to remain sceptical, if only to achieve a sense of balance and a degree of common-sense.

Let it be known that over the next hundred-years, the seas will NOT boil, we will NOT be asphyxiated in our beds and they will NOT be growing wheat in Antarctica or tropical-plants in Siberia.

In spite of what people think, and a few dare to say, CO2 is still little more than a trace element in the atmosphere.

What we can do without is knee-jerk reaction by junk-politicians, supported by junk-science and even junkier-jourmalism.

The forces of nature are immense, and cannot really be tampered with, and if the volcano beneath Yosemite went up, we could wave bye-by to virtually the whole of North America.

Answer 3

Please, don't fall into what I call "Lazy Science". Don't get fixated on one aspect of the global warming phenomena. When looking at global warming as a cause and effect. It is important to remember scientifically not all effects have a single cause, many are from multiple causes.
I agree that an increase in CO2 may have an effect on global warming; I don't believe it should be looked at as an exclusive cause. Add to your mix: Solar radiation fluctuations (sunspots, solar flares), changes in global ocean currents, etc... They all have a part to play in global warming.

WARNING cooking analogy: saying that CO2 levels are the cause of global warming is like saying that a cake gets its taste from only sugar. We know that there are many spices that add flavor to a cake, as is the case with global warming; there is a mix of ingredients.

Extra CO2 caused by humans? It has been proven that the Earth has had warmer periods than the one we seem to be experiencing now. There was an article in 1998 by the Marshall Institute addressing this. I've listed the article below. For you to review. As it states in the article we weren't burning fossil fuels in the year 1000 AD. Yet the earth went through a warmer spell than know. Again there are many causes of CO2, not just from us humans.

In response to the second part of your question, temperature rise.
I just don't know, I've not reached Nostradamus status yet. What I do know, and can feel confident in stating is that whatever global temperature will do in the future, there are little we as humans can do to change it. That is not to say that I believe we should not do what we can to conserve our planet. But it would be foolish to believe that we could reverse what Mother Nature is doing.

In closing, we are human, whatever Mother Nature has done in the past ,the human species has adapted and moved on.
evolution, its a wonder thing.

Very thoughtful question by the way.

Answer 4

Now whilst i agreed that the current tread of fossil fuel gobbling and all that is not exactly a thing of beauty and should be capped there is also the argument that the world was here for a very very very long time before we dragged our butts out of the sea and that it will be here long after we have evolved into something else long in the future. Plus there is also the argument that these things are cyclical and that the world has gone through this sort of this before changing it's atmosphere from a nitrogen based one to the oxygen one we have now. Now I'm no expert and I do my bit for the environment but i think we are all getting a bit too caught up in ourselves. The world will still turn after we are gone.

Answer 5

The link you referenced appears broken, so here is an alternate url: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/77/Vostok_420ky_4curves_insolation.jpg.

Now, to your question...

Examine that plot a little more closely. It definitely shows a relationship between temperature and carbon dioxide concentration. It shows more than that, however. It also shows that the temperature rises first...then the CO2 concentration rises. The temperature drops first, and then the CO2 concentration drops. It appears, then, that the CO2 concentration is varied by the temperature, and not vice versa.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/oceans/handbook.html, provides a very nice survey of the temperature dependence of carbon dioxide solubility in sea water. It shows that for every degree increase in temperature, there is an approximate 4% reduction in the solubility of carbon dioxide. Therefore, the data provided by your link (or the Wiki version) is well-explained by the variation of carbon dioxide solubility in the oceans due to the temperature change.

Next, the respiration of animals on the planet accounts for approximately 1,300,000 million metric tons of carbon dioxide production per year. The burning of fossil fuels only accounts for approximately 27,000 million metric tons of CO2 and human respiration for 241 million metric tons. So the total human production of CO2 is 27,241 million metric tons; or 2% that of the respiration of all animals.

Another oft-referenced chart is http://www.co2science.org/scripts/Template/0_CO2ScienceB2C/images/subject/other/figures/mannetal_nh1000.jpg which shows temperature variation over the last 1000 years. The standard deviation in these temperature measurements is about 0.2 degrees. Based on the temperature variation of CO2 solubility in sea water, this variation in temperature provides an uncertainty in mean atmospheric carbon dioxide emission from the oceans of about 30,000 metric tons. Therefore, the uncertainty in ocean release/absorption of CO2 equals the total fossil-fuel-use of humans annually, making any correlation between climate and the latter so prone to error as to be unusable.

As for the magnitude of Vostok and other historical CO2 atmospheric concentrations, the values obtained were from bubbles captured in the lake and ice cores for hundreds of thousands of years. The absorption and diffusion of CO2 from these bubbles into the surrounding ice and water is unknown, but to assume that it is zero is scientifically naive. It could easily be a factor of 2 which means these historical records are valuable only for self-comparison, but are useless in comparison with current atmospheric concentration. A factor of two CO2 diffusion from these samples over time would translate to interglacial maximums of 540ppm, well above the 378ppm causing you such alarm.

Answer 6

Oil companies pay billions in propaganda, that is why some people still say that CO2 doesn t cause global warming

About volcanoes:
Volcanic activity releases about 130 to 230 teragrams (145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year. (see link, wikipedia).

For example, Southern's Scherer coal plant in Georgia, emitted nearly 26 million tons of CO2 in 2005 (see link below). How many coal plants are in Georgia? more than 10 ? therefore, Georgia produces more CO2 than all volcanoes over the Earth.

Add other states and countries, and cars, and flights, etc...

Answer 7

The Romans grew grapes in the far North of England meaning the temp was higher 1500 - 2000 years ago and they did not have motor cars or fly in planes.

In any event: we have taken 125 years to use half the world's oil but it will take us just 25 years to use the remaining half. With the end of the Oil Age will come the end of CO2 emissions and the end of the global warming debate.......not ot mention the end of civilisation as we know it.

Answer 8

For openers, you haven't said a word about causality. Does the CO2 concentration cause warming? Or is it a result of warming? In fact, is there *any* causal relationship between the two? (Cite references ☺)

Secondly, have you had a look at the Suns radiant output? It's been going up for the last century (that we've neasured) Maybe that might have something to do with it?

Don't misunderstand me. I'm all for being a bit 'kinder' to the environment than we have been in the past. But let's don't run out and make a bunch of stupid decisions until we have -all- of the facts about the subject and we actually understand it (in the Scientific sense of the verb)


Doug

Answer 9

Listen....... A guy down the pub said...... As the earth has a tilted axis.... this causes us to have a "wobble" in our orbit around the sun!

Which means the earth goes through Warming/Cooling cycles. So global warming (although slightly accelerated by humans) is the most natural thing in the world.

Fretting about it is not going to do you any good until we can get a global policy in place!

Sceptics rule ok!!

Answer 10

i think you mean sceptics, but anyway i'm not sure which is true anymore there are good arguments for and against global warming caused by human pollution. I did beleive in global warming but now i'm sitting on the fence. But if no concrete evidence is presented then i might become sceptical, especially if the global warming ethusiasts don't explain and talk about the medievel warm periods and mini ice age properly.