I think this article is very short but it's packed with interesting information I didn't know. I had no idea how closely the carbon dioxide level goes with the Antarctic temperature. And that it also begins to grow a few thousand years before some big warming events in Greenland. I also found out that when you crush the bubbles found in ice, they give off high levels of carbon dioxide gases. I am glad I found this article because now I know a little more about other causes of global warming, and somewhat of how it happens.

While this is interesting, it hardly proves anything IMO. What other trace gases were tested for and how did they differ from the temperature extrapolations? Do they have any idea what caused the rises in CO2 and whether other factors were going on at the same time which might have influenced the process? Like I said, interesting but merely a correlation, not a causation.

...it begins to increase a few thousand years prior to large abrupt warming events in Greenland,"

mmm...
this was one of the corner stone of many who don't think that CO2 has an affect on temperature (even though this is High School Science!) - That CO2 increase because of a rise in temperature.

Well there you go folks..

Direct Climate Change Action Now!

The first thing you learn in freshman geology is that warmer seawater can hold less CO2. Thus rising temperatures lead to more CO2 in the atmosphere.

The authors could have saved taxpayer money by attending a freshman geology class, rather than engaging in the usual AGW nonsense of confusing cause and effect.

Interesting..., how does this jive with Vostok then?

MaCains Record on Climate Change is a bit shaky to say the least!

You should read this and if possible comment on it:

New Detailed Analysis of Global Temperature Data Does Not Support Significant Role for Carbon Dioxide

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/10/new-detailed-analysis-of-global-temperature-data-does-not-support-significant-role-for-carbon-dioxide/

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that: Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, mainly carbon dioxide. This conclusion is based on output from global climate computer models known as General Circulation Models (GCM).

David Douglass and John Christy, in a paper recently accepted for publication and already available on the internet, have come to a different conclusion.

Brett: The news is that this is old news. Would any skeptic please prove why this postulate is false; anyone please? Every one speaks of this effect as a lie, yet no one can prove it false.
Why, because it is fact. No one here can disprove these facts, or the correlation between temperatures and the rise of CO2. All of the comments I read are diversions of simple truth.
"James Tyndall (Courtesy: NASA)
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas � it traps heat radiation that is attempting to escape from Earth. The physics of this process was established by the Irish physicist John Tyndall (1820 � 1891) and the effect was calculated by Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius (1859 � 1927).
KIPP
The basic argument (that is, that greenhouse gases keep the Earth comfortably warm) has never been challenged, and it follows that an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere undoubtedly produces a rise in temperature at ground level".
Can any one prove this to be false. Now they have proved this again in greenland. It is the truth,
which no skeptic can deny!
KIPP

There are many studies out there that claim a warming trend almost always preceeds higher CO2 levels. (Reply: Do you have links to those studies?)

Also, some months back I heard a verbal debate on CNBC where one of the participants stated that in our past planetary history CO2 levels were 15 times what they are now and these levels occurred during both cooling and warming periods. He gave the name of the study which I don`t recall. Did anybody here listen to that debate and remember the name of the study and the the researchers who authored it?

"might release carbon dioxide from the deep ocean."
"The pattern of carbon dioxide variations fits a conceptual framework"(read "model")
"consistent with what models predict"
"could affect"
"Mechanisms could include"
"if future climate change causes"
"there may be an extra release of carbon dioxide"
"But this is speculative because conditions during the glacial period were different,"

Eight conditional phrases from a 7 paragraph article. I think they found exactly what they wanted to find.

I see that parts of Alaska had their coldest opening five days in October since 1992.

“The study also revealed many abrupt shifts between wet and dry climate states during the past 60,000 years, some occurring within just a few hundred years. "This implies..”
WHAT????
Abrupt climate change has happened before WITHOUT Human causation?
I am shocked that nature could be behind all of this when clearly the consensus says it must be our fault.
What’s next for us to feel guilty about? I know, how about our complicity in causing a 24 hour day?
Maybe we should understand that because we are observing weather doesn’t mean we are causing it.
Guild by observation! How unique a concept! However, what an asinine reason to make stupid decisions.
Folks, Read, think for yourself, learn, and ask questions.

Well, I take two things from this...

1. If CO2 rises are the precursor for abrupt warmings in Greenland but that there is a several thousand year lag as indicated, it would seem then that our (great x 15) grandchildren should construct 20 foot seawalls in about 1,900 years.

2. A vastly more importantly item to consider, how do the CO2 readings correlate with sun activity?

The only question they didn't answer was who was driving all the cars & burning all the coal to boast the CO2 levels 100000 years ago??
Couldn't be a natural phenomena could it? Climate changing naturally ... what a strange concept.

Kipp,
The vast majority of the participants on this forum already understand the basic AGW position on CO2. Some agree. Some are skeptical. Some totally reject it. Constantly repeating the basic AGW argument doesn't change anyone's mind.

However, if your goal is simply to be annoying, your constant rehashing of the basics is a good strategy.

Until I read this post, I thought the consensus was that CO2 increases 800 years on average after warming starts

You can read it in RealClimate

How does the new research reconcile itself with previous studies?

Interesting result. Unfortunately, ScienceDaily seems to present watered down summaries that are almost devoid of real science.

With regard to Jack Mclauglin's comment and your reply to him Brett, past stabs at this "settled science" have been made from two different points of view.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2007/04/the_800year_lag.html

The new work just provides a couple of more data points to argue about with regard to the time lags involved in the historical impact of CO2 on climate.

rick | October 6, 2008 4:39 PM --- At the peak of the Eemian, about 125,000 years ago, CO2 concentratons rose all the way up to 287 ppm. We passed that already in 1850 CE.

"The only question they didn't answer was who was driving all the cars & burning all the coal to boast the CO2 levels 100000 years ago??
Couldn't be a natural phenomena could it? Climate changing naturally ... what a strange concept."

So what you're saying is...we should feel free to anthropogenically increase the CO2 concentration on Earth because it has been higher in the past when there wasn't 6 billion people on the planet? And screw the possible consequences? That logic seems a little weak, and I hope you're not aspiring to lead anything in the near future.

Rick, probably all the skeptics here!

PaulM: A rise in CO2 in our atmosphere means a rise in temperatures.CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It causes Global Warming, not the opposite. Patrick got it right. The warmer the water is, the less CO2 is absorbed. The heat comes back via water vapor and makes the oceans warmer. This is called a positive feed-back loop. On land, and in this article they are looking for the sequence of events, but not the timeline. In 150 years, the earth has become warmer because the CO2 in the atmosphere reacts to heat and the heat cannot escape. So what comes first,the CO2. A thermodynamic anomaly. Please read the IPCC report.It's good for you! The reason that the Arctic is warming faster is the much larger amount of land in the northern hemisphere. Also The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is an ocean current that flows from west to east around Antarctica. This is a dominant circulation pattern around the Antarctic. It keeps the colder water in and doesn't take in the warmer water of the Southern Ocean. The SO kicks off the El Nino,
which is the largest oscillation in the world. That comes from the southern ocean to the Pacific, and then the Atlantic and Indian Ocean. There are so many oscillations and circulation patterns, that Brett might tear his hair out, even if it was the last one! KIPP

Rick : "The only question they didn't answer was who was driving all the cars & burning all the coal to boast the CO2 levels 100000 years ago??
Couldn't be a natural phenomena could it? Climate changing naturally ... what a strange concept."

Yes, Mother Nature has burned down forests all by itself, and Mother Nature destroyed land areas, and Mother Nature has increased levels of CO2 and methane in the world all by itself, and the climate changed as a result.

Yes all of these things have occurred in the past all by themselves without the need for man to initiate them. The difference is that changes in the increase in the number of forest fires, the changes in the landscapes and urbanization, and an increase in CO2 and other pollution levels have been initiated and enhanced by man's direct influences.

The problem is that these changes, both natural and man-made, end up with the result in each case, that being some form of climate change. The natural conditions leading up to and through these climate changes have only been given a head start by man.

The difference from the natural climatic change events of the past and how often they will return is that we can initiate and create situations where the events can occur more frequently then they would have otherwise.

When are we going to get past this childish argument about who was driving cars over 100,000 years ago? After all, based on your statement, you obviously seem to agree that there appears to be a connection to the increase in CO2 concentrations and climate change of the past.

Kipp,

Yet again, you misunderstand most skeptics point of view. It's the HUMAN affect on climate that is in contention. The total co2 in the atmosphere is .38%, of which humans are responsible for 5% (per the AGW friendly Wikipedia). Which means humans are responsible for .019% of the CO2 in the atmosphere.

I see that parts of Alaska had their coldest opening five days in October since 1992.

I think that that is kind of a tortured statistic.

From the news release- "The most interesting findings are firstly that atmospheric carbon dioxide is strongly correlated with Antarctic temperature and secondly that it begins to increase a few thousand years prior to large abrupt warming events in Greenland..."

This ice core's temperature record has previously demonstrated to rise 800-1000 years before CO2 measurements in the same core show an increase.
This little factoid is left out of the news release.

Using methane (as indicated by the news release) is a strange way to time-align the Greenland and Antarctic records. Why not use dating?

Finally- "The pattern of carbon dioxide variations fits a conceptual framework that explains abrupt climate changes as consequences of shifts in ocean circulation patterns that influence whether heat is transported northward or southward," said Ahn.

So, climate shifts result from shifts in ocean circulation patterns. Nothing new here. The antiphase behavior of arctic and antarctic temperatures over the past 50k+ years has been known for several decades. Whether CO2 is a cause of this is once again left unanswered.

Oh well. Still waiting for the smoking gun indictment of CO2 as the dominant driver of climate.

this type of political psuedoscience is humerous. That this is actually being presented as a real scientific experiment is beyond belief.This man made "global warming" political and idealogical stupidity is destroying science credablity.

Reply: So how do you classify a "real" scientific experiment?

On a colder note, for those cryophiles like me, at

www.weatherunderground.com

you can see

Month Absolute Max Avg Absolte Min

June -70 F -96 F -111 F
July -62 F -86 F -107 F
August -57 F -94 F -119 F
September -58 F -90 F -110 F

Of note is the 4 day period from August 20-23 when the temperature never got above -103 F.

Brrr

The logical conclusion from this study is that it must be very warm in Greenland now, given the fact that CO2 levels are so much higher now.

Averaging -42 this month, with a low of -59F and a high of -16F.