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Another 150,000 Years of CO2 Data
An anonymous reader writes, "We've known since 2004 that the past 440,000 years have shown atmospheric carbon dioxide levels varying between about 200 and 300 ppmv, the difference in extremes being the difference between advancing ice sheets and our current clime. In 2005 the data were analyzed back to 650,000 years and were found to be much the same — Al Gore was proud to be able to show that then-new analysis in his 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth. Now all 800,000 years of the ice column have been analyzed, and the data show much the same pattern, according to the researcher: 'When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change. Over the last 200 years human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range' — to 380 ppmv."
Our daily dose of Climate Porn. Oooooooooo.....
Look, the ONLY point of articles like this is to bring the libertarians out of the woodwork so they can dance around in a circle chanting their magic chant that makes oil last forever and the Earth be inhabitable forever. Which is great, you know, I've always been a big fan of that whole Kachina thing. But it does make for slightly dull viewing after a while, especially given that everyone else will duly be trolled and write long fact-filled refutations of the libertarian's chant, which is futile, because you can't refute faith. And so the circle of chanting Libertarians droning on about the 'global warming controversy' and oil sands will be surrounded by a much larger circle of other people dancing round in the other direction and quoting numbers.
It's like a great revolving pinwheel of futility.
*sigh*
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Actually what it proves is that for the last 800,000 years the solubility of CO2 in water hasn't changed, so when the water freezes and the dissolved gasses bubble out, the CO2 level is the same.
that fucking liberal bias.
reality is biased and it need to be made more fair minded.
so what reality wants there to be a correlation, what of us, what if we don't WANT global climate to be linked to CO2 levels?
btw, it occurs to me that hurricanes are the WMD of the so called "global climate" (is there really even a global climate?)... and we must attack the global climate before it attacks us, we must not relent until the global climate is a flourishing democracy. I suspect that the climate will throw flowers at our feet, as well as cars, cows and our neighbor's roofs, as well a drive a piece of straw through a telephone pole.
-pyrrho
Look, very few people are saying that Humans cannot contribute or produce very minor fluctuations in global tempature. Sure we can, just fire off all our nukes at once and you'll see our temprature change. the big point is, is that after all that is said and done, the 1 and only major contributor to the average global temprature is the amount of energry radiated by the sun, by about 99.999999%. Any minor change in its output level greatly affects output. Hell even changing the angle at which we are exposed to the sun turns the northeast into a hot box during the summer and freezer in the winter. This carbon dioxide "greenhouse" theory is a just a bunch of scare mongering to fundraise for greenpeace and the rest of those kooky green corps.
... this is Slash Dot!
We're expected to understand the science, not behave like a set of frightened morons. And the science says, quite firmly, not proven.
The climate scare is just that. It's one set of fanatics fighting their favourite enemy, the oil companies. Real science in this field is very thin on the ground, though there is loads of money available if you want to work on climate modelling. You can prove anyting if you incorporate feedback into a model.
All the ice core research shows is that atmospheric CO2 varies. Hardly suprising. I would expect it to go up if the planet warms up, since life forms will be more active. That doesn't prove that CO2 CAUSES warming. We really don't know enough about the atmosphere to make that kind of prediction, and we should stop pretending that we do. Otherwise we end up like Mann, puting out lies like the 'hockey stick' graph and undermining real science.
A few things I do know -
We're still coming out of the 'Little Ice Age' so it's not suprising we're warming up
Of the total warming measured since records began, at least half occurred before 1950, that is, before any major human CO2 generation. I can show you a greater increase in temperature than any we have now, in the 1700s.
Atmospheric heating from CO2 (which is a very minor greenhouse gas - the most important one by far is water vapour) is self limiting. It only absorbs solar radiation in a limited frequency range, and that range is fairly close to capacity. More CO2 will produce LESS warming, not more.
It's still true that we don't know what is happening to the world's climate in any detail - the solar constant figures coming through are quite interesting, but it will be years before we really do know. I would hope slash-dotters will fight for real science, instead of implying that science is to do with political democratic consensus, or that the plural of anecdote is data.
The result of The Threat of Global Warming(TM) is that it will be used as an excuse to implement everyone's pet project, no matter what it is. No matter how inapplicable.
Just you wait. Bush will declare that we must invade Iran to stem The Threat of Global Warming. It will just be another excuse to create and enforce draconian changes, but the actual handling of the problem will never happen...
There is no possible way that they can extract statistics like that from 800,000 years worth of ice. Ice doesn't stay static - it melts, moves around, freezes again, etc. Besides, how can they accurately determine the age of the ice? Carbon dating? Pff. Carbon dating isn't accurate enought to extract accurate numbers. This is bullshit.
Many scientists believe that oil is produced as mineral and doesnt have anything to do with decayed plant matter.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
Consider that my sense of humor might not be identical to yours. I don't appreciate humor based on nothing but incorrectness. Perhaps that's why I couldn't stand more than five minutes of Dumb and Dumber.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What is there about the conservative beliefs and worldview that makes them automatically spend less money and shrink government? Nobody's been able to show that. On the other hand, there's a lot of evidence to indicate that conservatives will grow the parts of the government that they like (security and military apparatus) and shift all the spending over to the military rather than reduce budget. Everything they cut in social programs winds up being spent for guns and pork.
There just aren't any fiscal conservatives, and that is the truth. (As a sidenote, Libertarians sometimes get really confused because they think that the conservative ethos of masculine strength and self-reliance is the same as the libertarian ethos of independence. They are not the same, and libertarians should stop making that mistake. Libertarians who split themselves into half-Republicans and half-Democrats (socially liberal and fiscally conservative) are COMPLETELY missing the point.)
If you're going to describe what conservatives are, it helps to properly define them. Regurgitating the talking points isn't the same as an accurate description.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Actually, studies of just this have indicated that changes in the sun's output account for about 30% of the changes in global temperature. That's significant to be sure, but still leaves 60% to be accounted for from other sources.
I would say that if someone tried to tell me that a study said 60% + 30% = 100%, I would say they were pulling numbers out of their ass. Now if you are going to also tell me that "heat radiated" and "heat retained" are in fact direct functions of the out put of the sun, I would also say you were full of it. Not to be brutual, but let's face it, what other sources of heat are we talking about? Are you going to tell me that if the sun disappeared tomorrow that the earth would be at least 60% as warm as it is today when in fact during winter where I live in NYC the tempature fluctuates by 100 degrees in a normal year just by chainging the angle the sun's radiation hits my city? Even if we accepted your absurd assumption that the sun is only responsible for 30% of our temptures, how in the world would you ever be able to accuraretly model the influence of "greenhouse gasses" without an effective model that could predict the output of the sun? The simple answer is that you can't and this is junk science at best and easily dismissed.
I find that those advocating the "Greenhouse Gas Theory" overlook basic science. The first rule about when some half assed hypothesis becomes a theory or even accepeted is when you make predictions with 95% confidence within an acceptable range of error ussually somewhere around 5%. Sure they make predictions with 95% confidence, but their error margin is ussually around 10 - 20x the predicted change. Helll these "atmospheric scienctists" have yet to make thier models work backwards let alonee forwards wheras the results are already known. Given such creedence to such an unproven and tested and failed theory is abominable. Thirdly, because of all the gaps in predictions and leaveing admitted (at least) 30% unpredictable radiant effect of the sun, you would have to be able to prove that the earth's tempature was going to be outside the normal range of tempature of the planet, which has been historically both warmer and cooler by 10's of degrees.
Finnally lets put the final nail in this "theory" by making a simple comparison to venus, which is currently composed of 97% carbon dioxide, at an amospheric density 90x of our own but despite its atmosphere almost entirely compossed of greenhouse gases, its tempature varies from 775 Kelvins to 228 Kelvins. You wouldd think that if Venus's Greenhouse effect would be as pronouced if the applied the same math they applied to earth which only has an atmospheric concentration of CO2 of 0.038% and that even the coolest part of Venus would sweltering by earth's standards, but its actually freezing during the Venian nights. Of course you could object by saying venian nights are 246 days longer, but you would forget that it also has 213000x as much Carbon Dioxide. Thus you can discount heat retention as the other "60%" on earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus
I personally have had enough of this "theory" and want to see it stripped from our schools until it has some serious science to back it up instead of all this hogwash about it causing everything from "desertification" to a new ice age.
> all 800,000 years of the ice column have been analyzed
Congratulations. You've covered 0.017% of the Earth's age, and, more specifically, a period infested with almost constant, murderous ice ages.
But that doesn't sell governmental power grabs to control the economy that socialist arguments last century failed at, does it?
Note: The outrage you feel, the burning in your ears, does not mean this post is a "troll" or "flamebait".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.