co2 lagging temperatures.?

Question

Believers of global warming theory explain the lag something like this. Some event caused temperatures to start rising or falling for the first eight hundred years. CO2 levels start to rise or fall, effecting temperatures for the remaining 4 000 years. Is this a theory or is it scientifically proved? What scientific evidence exists to support this theory? How can one be sure that the event that caused the temperature change is not the factor for the remaining 4000 years as well with co2 levels playing a small or insignificant factor in the increase? Do you think it is misleading when Al Gore says in his film that the ice core samples are proof positive that co2 levels effect temperatures.

Bob. The links you provided provides theories that may or may not be plausible. But it provides no evidence to support their theory.

The reason I asked the Al Gore question is that it all goes to a matter of trust. If he is misleading us on this, what other issue is he misleading us?

Linlyons:

The financial incentive is clearly on the part of supporters.

Evans:
“And the political realm in turn fed money back into the scientific community. By the late 1990's, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn't believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; and there were international conferences full of such people. And we had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great.

Trevor, Keith. You are dancing around without answering my question. From real climate.org:

"The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.

The 4200 years of warming make up about 5/6 of the total warming. So CO2 could have caused the last 5/6 of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming."

So what proof is there that co2 caused the 5/6 of the warmig?

Answer 1

The interesting thing is not so much that CO2 lagged temperature *rises* by 800+ years, the interesting thing is that CO2 lagged temperature *falls* by 800+ years. Thus, for 800+ years, CO2 went up, while temperatures went down.

According to the Global Warming Alarmists (GWAs), this is not how it’s supposed to work. We are being lead to believe that if CO2 goes up, it will inevitably cause temperatures to go up, but the historical record suggests that this is not the case.

More recently, of course, we’ve had the 1940s to 1970s cooling at a time when CO2 levels suddenly started rising much faster than before during the Post War Economic Boom, and currently we’ve had no warming for the last 5 years at a time when CO2 is rising faster than ever.

All this is going on at a time when the world is warming naturally anyway as we emerge from the Little Ice Age.

Anyone looking at the above with a rational, unbiased mind can’t help but be sceptical of the whole AGW hypothesis.

The GWAs (some of them, anyway) will try and tell us that the fact that CO2 is currently rising *at the same time* as temperature is proof that the temperature rise is *caused* by the rise in CO2. This is, of course, completely illogical. The fact that CO2 is rising at the same time as temperatures only suggests that this rise in CO2 *is not natural* (which no one disputes). It does not, in any way, offer proof that the rise in CO2 is causing the rise in temperature. It is perfectly possible that it may be an irrelevant coincidence.

Don’t get me wrong, I accept that CO2 *is* a greenhouse gas and that, since the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased, we should therefore expect to see some rise in temperature. What I’m sceptical of is that…

a) The rise in temperature is correctly measured.

b) The current best guess of the effect of CO2 on temperature is accurate.

c) CO2 levels will continue to rise in the future as fast as the GWAs predict.

d) The world will warm anywhere near as much, or as fast, as the GWAs are suggesting.

e) A warming world will be as “catastrophic” as we are being lead to believe.

Thus, given all the uncertainties, I believe it is far too early to start taking drastic, economically damaging action in a misguided attempt to fix something that *might* be a problem, *sometime* in the future.

Answer 2

I'm not sure why you would listen to anything al gore says, unless you simply want global warming entertainment, if you really want to learn you listen to the scientists and get your info from .gov and .edu sites. Often times the .orgs have an agenda. Believers of global warming are not the only ones who explain the the lag like that: everyone does.

We know how CO2 absorbs IR light, we know how much energy this absorption traps, we know how much co2 is in the atmosphere.

It's also important to remember that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas, and is likely responsible for a little more than half of the "enhanced greenhouse effect" Other gases produced by human activity in smaller quantities absorb far more IR light than CO2, some of these gases have no natural sink and stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

Answer 3

Scientifically proven.

It's not "something" that starts the warming, it's the Sun. That warms the oceans which release CO2. The lag time is right, about what it takes for ocean waters to move up from the deep and mix.

Eventually the solar radiation decreases, the process reverses and we head for an ice age. It's happened pretty regularly every 100,000 years lately.

How do we know it's not solar radiation now? It's very simple. The 100,000 year cycle doesn't operate in a mysterious way. The positions of the Earth and Sun change, so as to increase solar radiation in an easily measurable way.

But we measure the Sun all the time now. And solar radiation isn't increasing. So it's not a solar cycle.

And, this time, there is no lag. CO2 and temperature are going up together because CO2 is causing the warming.

This is all well known scientific fact, which is why the vast majority of scientists say, this time, climate change is mostly caused by us.

More details here:

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11650

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13

Gore's film may or may not be accurate about this, but it doesn't matter to the scientists.

Answer 4

The climate is dynamic, there are numerous factors involved and many of them interact with each other. Events such as warming, cooling, CO2 levels rising or falling rarely have simple explanations, for purposes of brevity I'll mention only some key points...

CO2 is a greenhouse gas, as such it possesses a property that enables it to trap heat within Earth's atmosphere. As levels of this or any other GHG increase so too do the temperatures.

Temps and GHG levels are interlinked and part of a feedback mechanism, as such it doesn't matter which comes first, the other will follow.

Historically, climate has been governed by natural cycles that lead to warming and cooling. When the world is warming the seas and oceans also warm, their volume is so massive that it takes hundreds of years for atmospheric and hydrographic temps to reach equilibrium.

The oceans are the largest absorber and releaser of CO2 (approx 120 and 118 bn tons respectively per year). As ocean temps increase they release more CO2 than they absorb, the surplus enters the atmosphere thus accelerating warming which in turn causes further CO2 to be released from the oceans.

However, if CO2 were to come from a different source, in this case humans, then air temps would rise first leading to a subsequent rise in ocean temps (and further release of CO2).

The only relevance of 800 years is that this is the approx time it takes the oceans to sufficiently warm to such a point where they contribute a significant net increase to atmospheric levels of CO2. The process begins immediately, there's no 800 year lag, looking at a graph and incorrectly interpreting the data leads some to think there is an 800 year lag (it's an over simplified explanation but is inaccurate).

CO2 doesn't cause temps to warm for 4000 years, it has an atmospheric lifespan of 115 years during which time it's contribution to GW diminishes. The CO2 we release today will still be warming the planet in 100 years time (unless we were to reduce emissions to a point where natural processes removed more CO2 then we produced - not likely to happen).

The ice core record is one of several techniques used to calculate historical temps and CO2 levels, used in conjunction with other data sets it provides a wealth of info. However, none of these techniques are necessary to illustrate how CO2 levels affect global warming, this is something that can be worked out on paper and demonstrated using practical experiments in a science lab.

Answer 5

There are two hockey sticks that the IPCC survives on, one is temperature, and one is CO2.

The CO2 graph is 58 years of optically measured CO2 from the mouth of a volcanoe superimposed over proxy data from Ice Cores, I would not call any conclusions drawn from that as scientifically proven.

CO2 has been directly measured for 180 years by chemical methods, I think there is still much work to do as far CO2 and it's impact on our climate.

http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf

Answer 6

Yes - By some 800 years. However believers see the data, they see the evidence that clearly shows that first temps increase, then 800 years later co2 increases. CO2 does not cause temp increases, temp increases cause co2 increases.

Then temps start to decline, quite rapidly and co2 continues to increase for 800 years. No where does real life show that in increase of co2 causes temp increases.

The only way that their theory works is if the ignore the data.

Answer 7

The triggering event is orbital forcing, leading to positive feedback from ice-albedo forcing, leading to temperature change, leading to change in CO2 oceanic dissolution rates, leading to atmospheric CO2 change and more positive feedback.

The link between orbital forcing and ice-age events (both beginning and ending) is well documented and no longer controversial.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/207/4434/943

The ice-albedo feedback mechanism has been demonstrated experimentally.
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0442(1995)008%3C0240:SIACFM%3E2.0.CO%3B2

Oceanic feedbacks in CO2 uptake have been fairly well understood for decades, though work continues.
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0469(1981)038%3C0918:TROOAI%3E2.0.CO%3B2
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mksg/teb/1999/00000051/00000003/art00012

And finally, the entire hypothesis has been modelled and the results agree pretty well with ice core data:
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0442(1991)004%3C0785%3ATROACO%3E2.0.CO%3B2
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v394/n6696/abs/394847a0.html

Answer 8

And they rant and they rave,
Huddled in their caves:
The ones that want more, more, more;
The oil sucking dinosaurs.

Get ready, there is a change in lifestyle coming that is going to knock your socks off! And you aren't prepared for it.