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Unexplained Leap In CO2 Levels
Cally writes "The Guardian is reporting that atmospheric CO2 concentrations have leapt by 4.5 ppm in the last two years. This raises the ugly possibility that the capacity of a large carbon sink (possibly the oceans) has been exceeded, and the worst-case scenario is that a tipping point has been reached and a runaway warming scenario is in progress. Quote from Dr. Piers Foster of Reading University: 'If this is a rate change, of course it will be very significant. It will be of enormous concern, because it will imply that all our global warming predictions for the next hundred years or so will have to be redone.'"
Buildup of atmospheric C02 is moderated by "sinks" on the earth's surface that use some C02 and store much of the carbon in living organisms, organic matter and carbonate minerals, says soil scientist H.H. Cheng. These carbon sinks include the oceans that cover more than 70 percent of the earth surface, forests and other vegetation covering the land, and organic matter in the soil.
Interestingly, this article talks about soil as a possible source of CO2 buildup in the atmosphere, making the El Nino effect not always a good indicator of how much a rise or fall in atmospheric CO2 should be. Finally, here is article that that argues that rises in atmospheric CO2 are not a cause for alarm: PortlandTribune.com | Rise in CO2 levels is no cause for alarm
http://www.busyweather.com/
We're in the run up to an election in the US. It's all the candidates hot air...
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
David J Hofmann of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration centre, which also studies CO2, was more cautious.
"I don't think an increase of 2 ppm for two years in a row is highly significant - there are climatic perturbations that can make this occur," he said. "But the absence of a known climatic event does make these years unusual.
"Based on those two years alone I would say it was too soon to say that a new trend has been established, but it warrants close scrutiny."
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Nothing to see here, run along.
General global warming need not mean that all places get warmer. Here in northern Europe, global warming could lead to a disruption of the north Atlantic drift/Gulf stream - which could lead to a much colder local environment.
You know what I miss? Leeches.
True we shouldnt panic, and we should always carefully look at the evidence. But the issue has been on and off the political agenda for the last 20 years and we are still all producing more co2 each year. So we can assume that since 78 nobody believes or acts upon warnings with any seriousness anymore, "because in 78 it turned out to be nonsense....".
"We should do what we can to maintain a clean and stable atmosphere." I agree, but must also note that we are not doing that at the moment.
Some atmospheric measurements don't show warming, or even show cooling.
However (see this Nasa page) Earth-surface and near-surface measurements do show warming. As we live on or very near the earth's surface, this is the imporant point to notice.
The graphs you point at is somewhat selective in its choice of data.
The earth's carbon sinks are not static in capacity. Everything is interlocked feedback cycles. As CO2 goes up, so too does the growth rate of all vegetation.
/ articles/ 2_global_warming.htm
It is the naive simplicity of the mathematics used by many lay-men(and sometimes experts) in their discussions of climate change that cause me to seriously doubt their prediction.
Check out this web page for example
http://www.hydrogen.co.uk/h2_now/journal
which tries to use *addition* to predict changes in CO2. We produce X billion tons, the amazon absorbs Y billion tons, net change is X-Y billion tons.
This approach is as hopelessly naive as trying to calculate the flight dynamics of the space shuttle with natural numbers.
That's just not how it works in a real dynamic system and alarmist crap like this only serves to push through ridiculous laws like Kyoto, the funding for which could bring food and water to a huge proportion of the third world instead of affecting some laughable 7% of the annual *human* CO2 output.
Get those people fed and industrialized, and they'll stop cutting down their own forests, start going to school, and add their share of brainpower to the world's thinktank.
Steven J. Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and a commentator on Fox News.
e n_J._Milloy
He has spent his life as a lobbyist for major corporations and trade organisations which have poisioning or polluting problems. He originally ran NEPI (National Environmental Policy Institute) which was founded by Republican Rep Don Ritter (who tried to get tobacco industry funding) using oil and gas industry funding. NEPI was dedicated to transforming both the EPA and the FDA, and challenging the cost of Superfund toxic cleanups by these large corporations.
NEPI was also associated with the AQSC (Air Quality Standards Coalition) which was devoted to emasculating Clean Air laws. This organisation took up the cry of "we need sound science" from the chemical industry as a way to counter claims of pollution -- and Milloy became involved in what became known as the "sound-science" movement. Its most effective ploy was to label science not beneficial to the large funding corporations as "junk" -- and Milloy was one of its most effective lobbyists because he wrote well, and used humour (PJ O'Rourke was another -- but better!)
He joined Philip Morris's specialist-science/PR company APCO & Associates in 1992, working behind the scenes on a business venture known as "Issues Watch". By this time, APCO had been taken over and become a part of the world-wide Grey Marketing organisation, and so Milloy was able to use the international organisation as a feed source for services to corporations who had international problems.
Issues Watch bulletins were only given out to paying customers, so Milloy started for APCO the "Junkscience.com" web site, which gave him an outlet to attack health and environmental activists, and scientists who published findings not supportive of his client's businesses. Like most good PR it mixes some good, general criticism of science and science-reporting, with some outright distorted and manipulative pieces.
The Junkscience web site was supposedly run by a pseudo-grassroots organisation called TASSC (The Advancement for Sound Science Coalition), which initially paid ex-Governor Curruthers of New Mexico as a front. Milloy actually ran it from the back-room, and issued the press releases. Then when Curruthers resigned, Milloy started to call himself "Director" (Bonner Cohen - another of the same ilk also working for APCO - became "President")
Initially all of this was funded by Philip Morris, as part of their contributions to the distortion of tobacco science, but later they widened out the focus and introduced even more funding by establishing a coalition -- with energy, pharmaceutical, chemical companies. TASSC's funders include 3M, Amoco, Chevron, Dow Chemical, Exxon, General Motors, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lorillard Tobacco, Louisiana Chemical Association,National Pest Control Association, Occidental Petroleum, Philip Morris Companies, Procter & Gamble, Santa Fe Pacific Gold, and W.R. Grace, the asbestos and pesticide manufacturers.
TASSC was then exposed publicly as a fraud. And so Milloy established the "Citizens for the Integrity of Science" to take over the running of the Junkscience.com web site.
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Stev
amazing what you find on the internets
The typical example is that you've got a water wheel where each bucket has a hole that leaks water at a fixed rate. Now you allow water to flow into the system - the more water, the faster the wheel goes... up to a point. when the "tipping point" is reached, the system goes haywire, speeding up, slowing down, even reversing direction. Here's a little demo
I'm not saying that this is what is happening here, just that "but we had a mild summer this year" is missing the point.
I imported the data from the table that you linked into a spreadsheet and calculated each of the absolute month to month differences.
There were no month to month variations greater than 2.53 ppm, let alone 4!
Where did you come up with the data that "4 ppm would be a normal monthly swing?"
Summary:
Over 500 months of valid data.
Only 35 months >= 2.0 ppm month to month variation.
Only 2 months > 2.5 ppm month to month variation.
Top ten greatest month to month variations (in ppm):
aug-sep 1983 2.53
jul-aug 2002 2.53
jul-aug 1995 2.44
jul-aug 1965 2.34
jul-aug 1999 2.33
aug-sep 1997 2.32
aug-sep 1999 2.31
jul-aug 1960 2.27
jul-aug 1982 2.24
jul-aug 1989 2.23
jul-aug 2003 2.12
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
There have been attempts to reconcile the two sets of data, mostly having to do with the difficulty of maintaining calibration of the satellites. These tend to produce corrected satellite records that agree with the larger warming measured on the surface, but the jury is still out.