Global warming skeptics, please answer?

Question

CO2 levels are currently 380 ppm and have been rising exponentially since 1945, on pace to double every 100 years. What I'd like to know is:
(1) What will stop this trend?
(2) When will this trend stop?
(3) How high will CO2 levels be then?
(4) When was the last time in geologic history CO2 was that high?
(5) What was the climate like when CO2 was that high?

Please avoid ad hominem attacks and support your answer with citations or links to peer-reviewed scientific literature.

Answer 1

> (1) What will stop this trend?
It will stop when we stop burning fossil fuels.

> (2) When will this trend stop?
About 60 years from now, fossil fuels will be harder to extract, and our use of fossil fuels will level off.

> (3) How high will CO2 levels be then?
I don't know. I suspect that it will be too late, and that the methane trapped in permafrost will have been released, leading to long term consequences.

> (4) When was the last time in geologic history CO2 was that high?
Don't know.

> (5) What was the climate like when CO2 was that high?
Nice and warm!

Answer 2

(1)Nothing will stop the trend. Even if we quit burning fossil fuels, I believe the cyclic nature of earth will continue.
(2) whenever the earth's cycle is complete
(3) That would be purely speculative don't you think?
(4) These questions are purely speculative since techniques used to determining CO2 levels thousands of years ago are suspect at best. But, if you trust what those who claim to know what the CO2 levels were, you would trust that earth was on a warming trend. This warming trend would have occurred without the abundant burning of fossil fuels.
According to these 'scientist', the earth has gone through several cycles of warming and cooling, so why should it be any different this time? If you consider that the last ice age ended some 10,000 years ago, one could assume that earth has been on a warming trend since that time. Take note of the theoretical historical sea levels in the link below, keeping in mind that sea levels theoretically correspond with the theoretical temperature of earth.

Answer 3

1) Don't know.
2) Don't know that either.
3) Don't know that one either.
4) Not completely sure, but many millions of years ago at least. The very early atmosphere, when life first appeared on Earth, was believed to have no oxygen and lots of CO2. Stellar evolution models say the Sun was 30% cooler then, with that high CO2 concentration being the only thing that kept Earth from freezing.
5) The Gaia hypothesis says it was pretty much the same as it is now.

Answer 4

(4) The inverse relationship between stomatal frequency in angiosperm leaves and ambient atmospheric CO2 concentration makes it possible to determine ancient CO2 levels from fossil leaves. More recent levels can be read from leaves retrieved from peat bogs with excellent resolution. This technique shows how atmospheric CO2 concentrations quickly rose from 260 ppm at the end of the latest Ice Age to 335 ppm in Preboreal times, declined again to some 300 ppm and reached 365 ppm 9,300 years ago.

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1.shtml

Answer 5

the rise has not been exponential.

1)natural balance
2)before it hits 600ppm
3) see 2
4) dunno
5) dunno

CO2 Emissions?
PARIS - The Eiffel Tower's 20,000 flashing lights will go dark for five minutes Thursday evening, hours before scientists and officials unveil a long-awaited report on global warming.
Five minutes! And the rest of the time it’ll burn untold kilowatts produced by clean nuclear energy.
If man is the cause of global warming, how does one explain concurrent warming on Mars as exhibited by a recession of the Martian polar ice caps? Are CO2 emissions responsible?
Secondly, historic evidence does not support a correlation between greenhouse gasses and global temperature.
Finally, There appears to be a clear correlation between sun spot activity and the Earth’s (and Mars’s) average temperature;
Sunspot activity has risen in recent years.
Before I ever looked at any information, I felt blaming “Global Warming” on man was arrogant BS. How can anyone conclude any cause for trend of a few decades of a system that fluctuates over centuries and millenia? If you don’t take steps to educate yourself, then you fall prey to propaganda fueled by arrogance and ignorance. Are we trying to reduce our guilt for excessive consumption by blaming Exxon?
Don’t believe me – check out the facts.
Ride a bike.
I challenge anyone who believes man is more than a minor player in global warming to research the information. You can start with a 52 minute lecture available from Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (http://www.oism.org/oism/s32p686.htm).


…As researchers struggle to figure out how Mars could be so dramatically warmer in just over a decade, they invariably smash up against the wall that argues for a steady state model of energy output. In this conventional model, the sun is the source of all energy in the solar system, and there simply isn't a way for them to conceive that Mars could be mysteriously warming "itself." Of course, it isn't actually warming "itself" ... it is receiving energy from "outside forces" that are acting on the entire planet…
The first significant increase in temperatures took place from 1900 to the 1940’s. However, there was very little increase in greenhouse gasses from 1900 to the 1940’s. This period was followed by nearly thirty years of declining temperatures during which green house gas emissions increased substantially (with about 4 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere in 1975 as in 1940). From 1900 to 1975 there was little correlation between temperature and green house gasses.