Laura,

So what? CO2 levels were at 180 ppm 20,000 years ago during the last Ice Age. They were steady at 280 ppm for at least the last 2,000 years where we experienced temperature fluctuations that would seem severe to the media. Please take a look at this link http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm Take your time to read it and the actual petition. We are wasting tons of money on nonsense.
Hey IPCC, 19,700 SCIENTISTS disagree with you!

Um, nice. Please explain now how carbon dioxide contribues to global warming and show proof.

The graph is misleading because the y-axis has neither label nor units.

As greater amounts of CO/2 enter the atmosphere, do not the plants on land and in the lakes and oceans respond with the added CO/2 and grow faster, producing more O/2?

How does the man's activities on earth compare to the effects of the sun's "spots" (storms) and its fluctuating in it's pulsating in activity (like increasing to permit farming on Iceland for a time, and decreasing to cause ice ages (more than one) and man's activities is so great to cause such catastropic gyrations? Lets go to Iceland and start farming again.

Chares Tucker

How much CO2 was scrubbed out of the atmosphere and converted back into oxygen by last weeks storm in the Northeast? Anyone? That's what I thought. All of you common sense, logical thinkers, check this out.

It is time that we stop bashing global warming. We must embrace it and accept it as a good, natural occurance. Have you ever heard anything good about global warming? Why not? The NEGATIVE effects of carbon dioxide based global warming are greatly exagerated. I think that global warming is a GOOD thing. It shows that the earth is alive and well and acting naturally.

What do I mean? Well doomsdayers make it sound like this increasing CO2 course that we are on, cannot change and that CO2 levels will continue to rise until the earth is uninhabitable. This is non-sense! Contrary to this belief, in fact, change and balance are already going on, and will continue to do so.

This carbon dioxide increase means that the greenhouse gas effect of "warming" is actually the cure of increased CO2 levels. The earth is countering this CO2 increase by warming itself, which in turn creates more carbon dioxide sinks and oxygen releasing elements(sinks are ocean/air currents and storms that churn our environment and scrub CO2 out of the atmosphere, releasing the oxygen and returning carbon back to the earth). Warming is a natural remedy for balancing the atmosphere and biosphere.

What happens in a true greenhouse? Life grows! Plants generate medicines and oxygen. Warmth generates rain, which in return has cooling properties. Water and oxygen are sustenance for the populous. Warmth is the key to life, not cold. Following me?

Your charts and graphs do not show the earth's correction in keeping things in balance by warming itself. Your charts and graphs just show a linear increase in CO2. Of course your projections for the future are so dire. You are greatly and mistakingly underestimating the growing role of carbon sinks. The earth is already in the correction phase and CO2 levels will stabilize over time. It's impossible for us to destroy the earth by simply emiting carbon dioxide. CO2 is a natural compound found on earth. It cannot destroy earth. The earth is it's own immune system. It will scrub that CO2 and produce oxygen, naturally by warming. Again, global warming is the cure for increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations. IF CO2 somehow created a cooling effect, then yes, we would all be in trouble. And as far as melting glaciers and rising ocean levels, the IPCC report stated that ocean levels may rise only 18 inches. This is quite acceptable.

The carbon based gas that you burn in your car gets mixed with oxygen, creates fuel, is burned and released as CO2. These fossil fuels that were converted to CO2 needed oxygen to begin with. Oxygen levels are stable because the earth is constantly producing oxygen by using its own natural compounds, CO2, H2O, etc. This is a cycle.

Now with that said, the earth has been warm before you drove your cars. How much warming are humans solely responsible for today? Numbers or percentages would be nice, especially if Gore wins and we are headed towards carbon taxes and credits. A factual baseline would be fair, not just some incorrect, inflated number. Peace and sleep well all. We'll be fine.

Is that true that cows release a considerable quantity of CO2 (by a natural way :p) due to what they eat???

it's has nothing to do with the subject but if you wanna hear a song about globalwarming, check this out: Globalwarming Awareness2007

What are the units on the vertical axis of your "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration" graph?

Laura,

Can you point me to ANY data that shows CO2 is the cause of the additional warming we have seen in the last 200 years? I understand it is warmer than it was in 1850, what I don't understand is why ALL of this warming is attributed to CO2.

It absolutely amazes me that it was this warm (within half a degree) during the Medieval Warm Period then we had the Little Ice Age and now it has warmed back up and all of this is attributed to CO2.

CO2 levels were about 180 ppm during the last Ice Age, Henry's Law explains this well. Over the last 2,000 years CO2 levels have remained steady at 280 ppm with wild fluctuations in temperature by IPCC standards and now it is the same temperature as it was 600 years ago with CO2 levels at 380 ppm. How does this make sense to you? We have real issues to tackle and great amounts of effort and money are being wasted on AGW.

Thank you for your time,

Steve

My apologies on the graph - I honestly didn't notice the lack of units on the vertical axis. Try this one:

http://planetforlife.com/images/monthlyCO2.jpg

Carbon dioxide concentrations at Mauna Loa Observatory from 1958-2002, in parts per million.

Globalwarming aware - Cows produce methane CH4, which is sometimes expressed in climate science in CO2 equivalent - it's a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, but doesn't stay in the atmosphere for as long.

Oh, and - no offense - that may have been the worst song I have ever heard.

In the article it says fossil fuel burning creates around 6 billion tons of CO2 per year.
Each person on this planet exhales about 3/4 of a ton of CO2 per year. Multiply that by 6.5 billion people and you come up with a nearly equal amount of 5 billion tons per year. So it appears fossil fuel burning and humans exhaling produce similar amounts of CO2 every year.
Another interesting fact, when CO2 absorbs IR radiation and re-emites thermal radiation it sends that radiation in all directions, not just down to the surface. The CO2 molecule only absorbs 8% of the IR radiation, therefore only 4% of the thermal radiation goes earth bound.
CO2 is a very poor heat trapping gas. I'm not denying it's a heat trapping gas, I'm just saying it is very inefficient.
CO2 is a far superior nutrient. It is heavier than the surrounding air molecules and falls to earth to be absorbed by vegetation. It does not stay in the atmosphere for 100 years as claimed.
I'm also not saying that human induced CO2 production does not have any effect on temperatures, just not to the degree claimed by some.
Let's continue to reduce all emissions, but not get caught up in these dooms day predictions.

Steve - I'm not trying to make the argument that CO2 is responsible for all the warming in the last 150 years. In fact, I'm not trying to make any argument at all. Most climate scientists believe greenhouse gases are responsible for at least some of the warming. Scientists have a very good understanding of the radiative forcing of carbon dioxide and a good understanding of the forcing from other greenhouse gases.
http://units.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/2001/october/a2oct01.cfm

Rich,

I think you should make it clear that your manifesto expresses your personal theories, and have little scientific backing whatsoever. In fact, your claim that the Earth heals itself no matter what we do is just like Gaia theory, making you sound religious.

What about the positive feedbacks, Rich? There are many positive feedbacks which easily negate or overwhelm the negative feedbacks you focus on. For example, there is a huge amount of methane stored in the permafrost near the North Pole. If that somehow got released, warming would signifigantly accelerate from the pace we're on now.

If a warming world produces more carbon sinks, then why has CO2 risen every single year since the Industrial Age, Rich? Having more carbon sinks means that CO2 levels should stabilize or even start to fall. This hasn't happened, and right now there are no indications that it will happen. Your claim sounds even more ridiculous when you consider the fact that we're eliminating more and more carbon sinks every day with deforestation and development.

The Earth is a chaotic, highly non-linear system, and yet, carbon dioxide has been rising linearly. How can we have such a perfectly linear growth in CO2 in such a chaotic, erratic system such as Earth? It's because of an external forcing mechanism that has never occured on Earth before -- anthropogenic forcing caused by burning of fossil fuels.

The AGW deniers need to drop their right-wing ideologies and corporate apologist mantras before they think about these things.

Anon:

Please try to get away from name calling. Even if some "deniers" are right-wingers. It really does no help.

I can tell you why CO2 goes up every year, we are better at measuring it. Seems simple and it is, but in order for your statement to be correct, you must assume that CO2 was as well-measured in the past as it is now. I highly doubt that.

I can tell you why CO2 goes up every year, we are better at measuring it. Seems simple and it is, but in order for your statement to be correct, you must assume that CO2 was as well-measured in the past as it is now. I highly doubt that.

Wrong. Totally wrong. I thought you were an engineer!

The measurements we derive from various proxy sources for past CO2 concentrations have higher noise bars. Current measurements have lower noise bars. The mathematical techniques for teasing the signal out of the noise are well-understood, are part of the engineering and science vocabulary of every journeyman practitioner, and have been widely documented.

The recent increase in CO2 concentration is well outside the noise bars. I think you'll find that the good Professor Lindzen disputes the MEANING, not the validity, of that observation.

So Darren, what you're saying is that our true CO2 levels are really 500 ppm, but with our crude technology, we're only able to measure 383 ppm right now. As our technology gets better -- linearly, I might add -- we'll be able to measure more CO2 in the atmosphere and come closer to the true reading of 500 ppm. Once our technology becomes perfect, we'll measure 500 ppm; after that, our readings will never increase anymore, because hey, the whole linear increase in CO2 was due to linear improvements in technology.

Wow.

Sorry, but let's go back to reality for a second. Official CO2 readings have been measured for nearly 50 years atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii. The location itself is almost perfect -- 11,000 feet above sea level, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from mass vegetation and human activity. This observatory is loaded with very advanced scientific equipment. In fact, the measurements are so good that they detect the seasonal decrease in CO2 during the northern hemisphere summers. (the northern hemisphere has much more land and vegetation than the southern hemisphere, so global CO2 levels drop off slightly during northern summers.) When they started measuring in 1958, we were at 315 ppm, now we are at about 383 ppm. The way they measure CO2 is VERY accurate.

But hey, this perfect, orderly rise in CO2 every year is perfectly "natural" right?

BT:

Relative to the noise, I agree with the generality of your statement. If you re-read my statement, you are essentially agreeing with me. The only difference is the idea that modeling makes up for the lack of accuracy we have with modern methods of measurement. I would however like to point out that very small inconsistencies in the mathematical modeling used to tease out the data could lead to large variations in the veracity of the results.

The fact that current measurements are outside of the noise kinda doesn't mean much considering that the noise is that is being measured in past concentrations is based upon measuring trace quantities of one product that tend to relate to CO2 concentration.

Which brings up a point, can you please enlighten me on just how much sampling of past CO2 concentrations has been completed? Please phrase the answer in terms of how many square miles of the earth has been sampled to yield the results that are held as being factually accurate. Further, how many geographic locations have been sampled? And yes, I do very well understand the concept of statistical sampling.

Lets see?

"When they started measuring in 1958, we were at 315 ppm, now we are at about 383 ppm. The way they measure CO2 is VERY accurate."

Question: the concentration has increased by 68 ppm over 50 years which means average annual increase of 1.36 ppm or .0001% ppm concentration increase. Is the measurement accuracy within +/-
.0001 percent? That is one ten thousandth of a percent. Somebody could cough or take a deep breath and change the reading!

So let's go back another 200 or 300 years and compare the C02 recorded measurements to today. Are we just getting back towards where we were then or are we really seeing an increase over the average. Oh--we don't have recorded measurements back that far-just 50 years. But our climate models postulate what it could have been even though the models ignore clouds. While this information is useful, lets gather 200 years of data before we start riding horses again.

If the winds from the Pacific can tear apart Hurricanes in the Leeward Islands, are they not measuring the higher concentration of C02 blow-off from China? Just wondering.

All of this hype and postulations reminds me of mosquitos. Only the male mosquitos buzz but does not draw blood. The female does not buzz but does draw blood (got to feed those babies). So when you are lying in bed at night and you hear a buzz, don't worry, it's a male and won't bit. It is when you are lying in bed at night and hear nothing...

Sorry, Darren, but I don't think this argument is worth my time. You seem to be claiming that the measured rise in atmospheric concentration is an artifact of increased measuring accuracy. Mark has, in his prior post, succinctly summarized your argument as I understand it. I think perhaps we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

There can be no doubt that the majority of the co2 in that graph is caused by human activity and that it's likely that plants and trees are not nearly enough towards absorption

A couple of questions in regard to Mark's comment above.
It seems to me taking measurements on Mauna Loa would give inaccurate measurements because of all the CO2 producing volcanos in that area. Why take readings near volcanoes?
I keep reading CO2 stays in the atmosphere for at least 100 years. If that is the case, how can CO2 levels drop during our summers? I mean the answer seems simple in one sense, but does not seem to make sense in another.
Thanks, Dennis

Dennis - According to the Mauna Loa Observatory's web site, http://www.mlo.noaa.gov/aboutus/faq.html the site is most kept free from the volcanic influences by a strong marine inversion. When the inversion is weak, there can be some contamination, but those events tend to be short-lived, not the month-long scale that is seen on graphs of CO2 concentration. That mlo site makes reference to "vog" which is volcanic smog:
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/1996/96_05_29.html

As for your second comment, that annual variation is due to northern hemisphere vegetation. The vast majority of the Earth's land surfaces are in the northern hemisphere, and as the vegetation grows, it removes CO2 from the atmosphere. As it dies and decays in the late autumn and winter months, CO2 is returned to the atmosphere.

"There can be no doubt that the majority of the co2 in that graph is caused by human activity and that it's likely that plants and trees are not nearly enough towards absorption"

Thor,
Based on what? Just because we say so? List specifics as to why it is caused by man.

I'm getting a good understanding of the greenhouse gases and their function.
So what process warms the nitrogen and oxygen?
I assume it's conduction and convection.
Does CO2 and water vapor warm nitrogen and
oxygen when they emit the thermal radiation or just the ground?
Thanks for your help.
Dennis