We have cycled from glacials, several degrees cooler than now, and interglacials, with temperatures about what they are now. Nothing appreciably higher. Increased temps take us into new territory.
NOBODY is claiming that humans are the ONLY reason for warming. Where did that come from?
Many peopel are claiming that the 'evidence' (which is exraordinarily weak) that the solar system as a whole is warming, si proof that humans ARE NOT causing warming. I'll leave detection fo the logical flaw as an exercise to the reader.
Current estimates for the causes of the ~ 1C warming over the last century are somewhere between -30% to 50% (negative meaning cooling) from natural causes, and 50% - 130% from anthropogenic causes (greater than 100% meaining overcomming natural cooling). This is an important question, because the answer helps to refine the temperature sensitivity to carbon doubling, which is currently estimated in the range of 1.5C to 4C.
Why do people assume that moving toward efficiency and alternative will "destroy the world economy?"
BTW, you might also look at the latest work on carbonic acidification of the ocean; warming might not be the most serious consequence of dumping all this carbon from geological stores.
Our 650,000+ years of ice core data, and thousands of years of proxy data, and hundreds of years of measurement data, couled with growing physical understanding of the process involved, are not sufficient to determine if warming is happening on this planet.
But three years of poorly uunderstood changes in ice cap size on mars is definitive evidence of solar-system wide warming, which disproves anthropogenic warming on earth..
The residence time of water vapor in th atmopshere is on the order of weeks. It equilibrates very rapidly; this means taht it RESPONDS to other forcing drivers of global temperature as part of the feedback process.
CO2 has a residence time several ordrs of magnitude longer, its persistence makes it a forcing, a driver, not a feedback.
Raising CO2 slightly increases temps, which increases the water capacity fo the atmopshere, and (this is almost certain now) increases water in the atmosphere, which amplifies teh warming effect of the CO2. Th siprocess in included in every model of global climate dynamics; it is NOT ignored. But including it in the driving, forcing players i nclimate change is wrong, becasue it responds to temps in part of teh feedback loop, it does not drive changes.
1998 was an El Nino year, a new record high year, and at that time stood out as an anomalously hot year. We are now seeing years with temperatres near or at that anomaly as the standard.
In other words, we have seen a steady climb in temperatures, with an anomalous peak in 1998. If we pick that standout year as the starting point, and 2005 as the end point we get no trend. But this is ONLY true if we cherry pick that ONE single year, 1998, as the starting point.
Look at a long term trend, as in LOOK AT THE GRAPH, and we see a steady climb with variation. This dishonest attempt to hide the trend by picking extremes in the year-to-year variation as the ends of a selected time period, is just one example of the kinds of dishonesty too often thrown at this issue.
The mac itself has done everything I need, up until recently. Freeboat (Linux and Windows) is a recent desire; and I've been deciding which way I want to go. That's why I said (more or less) 'maybe.'
And Rhino only runs on Windows, there is no Linux version. So if I go with Rhino, I'm stuck with Windows.
I've played with Linux, but no mroe than that. I do run a number of apps in X ont eh Mac, so I suspect it woudlnt be much of a learning curve to go to Linux on the Mac, if I decide to go with FreeBoats.
I didnt claim ths was well thoguht out yet; I was just stretchgn to find a scenarionunder which I woudl dual boot Windows, mostly.
Open source 3-D modeling and boat design software. Or if I decide to pop for it, Rhino commercial modeling software with its boat design extensions.
I've been considering buying a second computer and runnign the Linux version of Freeboat. With BootCamp, I might just buy a new Mac, run windows from Bootcamp with as much isolation from the net as I can manage, and run the Windows version. And if I buy Rhino, I think its only a Windows version, at least for the extensions.
I'm stuck with windows at work, but I cant think of a singe other app that would cause me to consider using windows personally.
Yeah, I'm being hyperbolic, but jsut barely. Teh power of the governmetn to abuse this kind of thing, and to do it ietly so they get away with it, is huge. Putting into the government's hands the power ot monitor our everyday communications is way, way too dangerous to our fredoms.
In an unregulated market, successful players acquire sufficinet capital (and power) to manipulate the markets to their advantage, by things such as reducing transparency, and building extraneous barriers to entry. It is in their interest to do so, so they do.
Bingo, this market is no longer free; it is manipulated. Sure, those barriers eventually fall (usually as a result of someone else with great capital/power shifting into that market, and bringing their own inherent interest in manipulatin th emarkets, or due to technological shifts that render that market space irrelevant), but for the time they last, they cause damage to the markets.
The only way to avoid that is throug regulating the markets to ensure reasonable market transparency and to limit artificial barriers to entry. That is what the "anti-monopolists" seek to do, adn it is an essential task for the preservation of a broadly functional market economy, as oppsoed to a manipulated market economy tha theavily favors those with the power to manipulate it.
I often spend up to two weeks at a time on the road, doing customer-critical work that has to coordinate with work and people back in the office. If I can't access company email, and resources on our internal network via VPN, I'm screwed, and so are our customers.
IST recognizes this, and works with us to get us the resources and knowledge to minimize the risks.
Even more, they realize that when we are on the road with our only computer being our work computer, we ARE going to be doing personal work on that computer, accessing personal email, entertainment web sites, and so on. We have to; is is either that, carry a second computer, or have absolutely no personal life on our own time. Forbidding personal use while traveling would cause a riot (well, more realistically, a flood of outgoing resumes). Again, they recognize this, give us the resources (a good firewall, virus and adware scanners, an encrypted partition for sensitive data, and so on) some education, and some policies that DO allow reasonable personal use, to help us keep our computers and the network safe.
It's just common sense on their part; they know that if they forbid it, it is going to happen anyway, but without their involvement and therefore with greater risk.
"Right now the evacuated area except less than 1/4th of square mile has only 50% higher radiation than the normal background radiation"
True, but... It is paatchy, and unreliable. Every filed that might be returned to productive agriculuter must be indiidually and comphresensively tested, and then the crops monitored in case of missed concentrations. That, all by itself, is a huge economic cost. Road margins are also hotter than the avareae area,adn ther are other concentratign mechanisms operating, too, that create hot spots.
I wont dispute that coal and other fossil fuels come with huge costs; you didnt mention ocean acidification, which is anaother bad one getting ready to bite us in the ass. I just dont want to underplay the potential risks of nukes in making the decisions. ALL the options come with huge potential or inevitable costs.
and 1 smallish town. This is not within orders of magnitude of the abandonment at Chernobyl.
BTW, uranium mining also causes - has caused some noticeable devastation. As has coal; ask Mr. Peabody and his trains. Mining problems are managed (and at least potentially maneageable) in a qualitatively different manner from plant accidents.
From what I can see from this article, this may or may not be a mining incident. Anyone know if that exposed coal vein was exposed by mining, or naturally?
required the long-term abandonment of a good size city and of hundreds of square miles of high quality farmland?
The loss of life may have been moderate (is 4,000 dead people moderate?), but thelong-term economic and human cost is very, very large.
This is true whether or not you favor nuke, and whether or not you think Chernobyl-type major-release accidents are possible again. It may be true to say that the risks of a major-release accident are very low, but it is NOT true to say that the cost of such an accident is moderate.
YO made an indirect acusation of academic dishnonesty, in lieu of actually adressing the points. I posted direct quotes and links to a blind test of the models, and the best you can do is say, "well, they might have cheated, so I wont beleive it." Good on ya...
I have ever seen on slashdot, and that's pushing a long way.
You dint respond at all to the point. You indirectly called my motivatin into question, you indirectly called the hoensty of EIGHT INDEPENDENT TEAMS into question, you implied that none of this is worth paying attentin to, and you managed to do so without ever addressign teh actual data.
Congratulations.
BTW, my motivation is a desire to understand what we know about our planet, magnified a bit by the potential risks of this anthropogenic apparent perturbation in our planet's processes. What is YOUR motivation in vehemently denying the relevance of the models, to the point of dismissing them without addressing the actaul evidence?
"Something that can't even be achieved for in comparison ""relatively simple"" systems like the financial markets they expect to achieve for a far more complex and unknown system. "
I can predict with a very high degree of acuracy that the current cyucle of clear and cool followed by extended periods of rain, here in the SF Bay area, will transition in 5 months to coool and foggy near the coast and hot as blazes inland, with no rain for about 6 months. That prediction, a CLIMATE prediction, is a no brainer. I can extend that precition to 17 months from now, and 29 months from now, and 41months from now, and 53 months from now, ad nauseum, with a very high expectatin that I will be correct.
For markets, I wont predict even somethign a simple as whether it will be higher or lower in 6 months.
So no, markets are NOT 'relatively simple' in terms of predictability, when compared to climate.
The modelers were presented with temeprature data for about 300,000 years of new data, with NO Co2 data accompanying. Teh CO2 data wer not yet determined. The modelers then prediected CO2. Note taht this was for glacial epochs with different timing, temp extremes, and dynamics than those that were previously known, and for which the models had been previously verified.
8 teams using 8 models, published their predictions. The predictions were very close to each other. Adn then when the CO2 data were later released (in subsequent publicatinos) the predictins were very close to the actual data.
This is not 'tweaking the models.' This is using a BLIND test to verify the models against brand new data. Adn the models passed.
"First of all, the results demonstrate clearly that the relationship between climate and CO2 that had been deduced from the Vostok core appears remarkably robust. This is despite a significant change in the patterns of glacial-interglacial changes prior to 400,000 years ago. The 'EPICA challenge' was laid down a few months ago for people working on carbon cycle models to predict whether this would be the case, and mostly the predictions were right on the mark. (Who says climate predictions can't be verified?). It should also go almost without saying that lingering doubts about the reproducibility of the ice core gas records should now be completely dispelled. That a number of different labs, looking at ice from different locations, extracted with different methods all give very similar answers, is a powerful indication that what they are measuring is real. Where there are problems (for instance in N2O in very dusty ice), those problems are clearly found and that data discarded."
We WERE at equilibrium. We have added a new substantial source of CO2, and we are now moving to a new higher equilibrium concentration. Tehjabsolute levels of BTW, your volcanic CO2 numbers are very, very wrong. Anthropogenic CO2 emissins are more than two orders of magnitde heigher than volcanic emissinons. Total natural emissions of CO2 are about a norderof magnitude higher than anthropogenic inputs. Adnanthropogenic inputs are changing the equilibrium.
>From its preindustrial level of about 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) around the year 1800, atmospheric carbon dioxide rose to 315 ppmv in 1958 and to about 358 ppmv in 1994 [Battle] [C.Keeling] [Schimel 94, p 43-44]. All the signs are that the CO2 rise is human-made:
* Ice cores show that during the past 1000 years until about the year
1800, atmospheric CO2 was fairly stable at levels between 270 and
290 ppmv. The 1994 value of 358 ppmv is higher than any CO2 level
observed over the past 220,000 years. In the Vostok and Byrd ice
cores, CO2 does not exceed 300 ppmv. A more detailed record from
peat suggests a temporary peak of ~315 ppmv about 4,700 years ago,
but this needs further confirmation. [Figge, figure 3] [Schimel 94,
p 44-45] [White]
* The rise of atmospheric CO2 closely parallels the emissions history
from fossil fuels and land use changes [Schimel 94, p 46-47].
* The rise of airborne CO2 falls short of the human-made CO2 emissions.
Taken together, the ocean and the terrestrial vegetation and soils
must currently be a net sink of CO2 rather than a source [Melillo,
p 454] [Schimel 94, p 47, 55] [Schimel 95, p 79] [Siegenthaler].
* Most "new" CO2 comes from the Northern Hemisphere. Measurements
in Antarctica show that Southern Hemisphere CO2 level lags behind
by 1 to 2 years, which reflects the interhemispheric mixing time.
The ppmv-amount of the lag at a given time has increased according
to increasing anthropogenic CO2 emissions. [Schimel 94, p 43]
[Siegenthaler]
* Fossil fuels contain practically no carbon 14 (14C) and less carbon
13 (13C) than air. CO2 coming from fossil fuels should show up in
the trends of 13C and 14C. Indeed, the observed isotopic trends
fit CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. The trends are not compatible
with a dominant CO2 source in the terrestrial biosphere or in the
ocean. If you shun details, please skip the next two paragraphs.
* The unstable carbon isotope 14C or radiocarbon makes up for roughly
1 in 10**12 carbon atoms in earth's atmosphere. 14C has a half-life
of about 5700 years. The stock is replenished in the upper atmosphere
by a nuclear reaction involving cosmic rays and 14N [Butcher,
p 240-241]. Fossil fuels contain no 14C, as it decayed long ago.
Burning fossil fuels should lower the atmospheric 14C fraction (the
`Suess effect'). Indeed, atmospheric 14C, measured on tree rings,
dropped by 2 to 2.5 % from about 1850 to 1954, when nuclear bomb
tests started to inject 14C into the atmosphere [Butcher, p 256-257]
We have trouble predicting WEATHER more than a few days out.
But I can guarantee you that when I fly to connecticut tomorrow, I will need a winter coat and not summer clothes. And I can guarantee you that when I fly there in July, that I will NOT need a cold-weather coat but I will need warm weather clothes clothes.
THAT is climate, and we routinely predict climate for months, years, decades, and even centuries into the future. We do this every time we plan a trip to florida for december, and we do the planning in july, for just one of literally countless exmaples.
Slashdot Mirror
good insulating gloves and boots, in which case the fireworks show might make it even MORE fun.
You recall incorrectly.
We have cycled from glacials, several degrees cooler than now, and interglacials, with temperatures about what they are now. Nothing appreciably higher. Increased temps take us into new territory.
NOBODY is claiming that humans are the ONLY reason for warming. Where did that come from?
Many peopel are claiming that the 'evidence' (which is exraordinarily weak) that the solar system as a whole is warming, si proof that humans ARE NOT causing warming. I'll leave detection fo the logical flaw as an exercise to the reader.
Current estimates for the causes of the ~ 1C warming over the last century are somewhere between -30% to 50% (negative meaning cooling) from natural causes, and 50% - 130% from anthropogenic causes (greater than 100% meaining overcomming natural cooling). This is an important question, because the answer helps to refine the temperature sensitivity to carbon doubling, which is currently estimated in the range of 1.5C to 4C.
Why do people assume that moving toward efficiency and alternative will "destroy the world economy?"
BTW, you might also look at the latest work on carbonic acidification of the ocean; warming might not be the most serious consequence of dumping all this carbon from geological stores.
Our 650,000+ years of ice core data, and thousands of years of proxy data, and hundreds of years of measurement data, couled with growing physical understanding of the process involved, are not sufficient to determine if warming is happening on this planet.
But three years of poorly uunderstood changes in ice cap size on mars is definitive evidence of solar-system wide warming, which disproves anthropogenic warming on earth..
Sheesh, people. Think!!!!
The residence time of water vapor in th atmopshere is on the order of weeks. It equilibrates very rapidly; this means taht it RESPONDS to other forcing drivers of global temperature as part of the feedback process.
CO2 has a residence time several ordrs of magnitude longer, its persistence makes it a forcing, a driver, not a feedback.
Raising CO2 slightly increases temps, which increases the water capacity fo the atmopshere, and (this is almost certain now) increases water in the atmosphere, which amplifies teh warming effect of the CO2. Th siprocess in included in every model of global climate dynamics; it is NOT ignored. But including it in the driving, forcing players i nclimate change is wrong, becasue it responds to temps in part of teh feedback loop, it does not drive changes.
1998 was an El Nino year, a new record high year, and at that time stood out as an anomalously hot year.
We are now seeing years with temperatres near or at that anomaly as the standard.
In other words, we have seen a steady climb in temperatures, with an anomalous peak in 1998. If we pick that standout year as the starting point, and 2005 as the end point we get no trend. But this is ONLY true if we cherry pick that ONE single year, 1998, as the starting point.
Look at a long term trend, as in LOOK AT THE GRAPH, and we see a steady climb with variation. This dishonest attempt to hide the trend by picking extremes in the year-to-year variation as the ends of a selected time period, is just one example of the kinds of dishonesty too often thrown at this issue.
this is late, maybe you'll still read this.
The mac itself has done everything I need, up until recently. Freeboat (Linux and Windows) is a recent desire; and I've been deciding which way I want to go. That's why I said (more or less) 'maybe.'
And Rhino only runs on Windows, there is no Linux version. So if I go with Rhino, I'm stuck with Windows.
I've played with Linux, but no mroe than that. I do run a number of apps in X ont eh Mac, so I suspect it woudlnt be much of a learning curve to go to Linux on the Mac, if I decide to go with FreeBoats.
I didnt claim ths was well thoguht out yet; I was just stretchgn to find a scenarionunder which I woudl dual boot Windows, mostly.
Open source 3-D modeling and boat design software. Or if I decide to pop for it, Rhino commercial modeling software with its boat design extensions.
I've been considering buying a second computer and runnign the Linux version of Freeboat. With BootCamp, I might just buy a new Mac, run windows from Bootcamp with as much isolation from the net as I can manage, and run the Windows version. And if I buy Rhino, I think its only a Windows version, at least for the extensions.
I'm stuck with windows at work, but I cant think of a singe other app that would cause me to consider using windows personally.
The research article did not mention ID. An accompanying commentary, written by someone else entirely, did.
and put detonators in the hands of cops.
Potential for abuse? jsut punish abusive cops.
Yeah, I'm being hyperbolic, but jsut barely. Teh power of the governmetn to abuse this kind of thing, and to do it ietly so they get away with it, is huge. Putting into the government's hands the power ot monitor our everyday communications is way, way too dangerous to our fredoms.
by means of beating the current residents thereof in the next election?
And I dont want them to know what my plans are?
Th epower to monito citizens come with massive potential for abuse. And we all know how good our government is at avoiding temptation.
In an unregulated market, successful players acquire sufficinet capital (and power) to manipulate the markets to their advantage, by things such as reducing transparency, and building extraneous barriers to entry. It is in their interest to do so, so they do.
Bingo, this market is no longer free; it is manipulated. Sure, those barriers eventually fall (usually as a result of someone else with great capital/power shifting into that market, and bringing their own inherent interest in manipulatin th emarkets, or due to technological shifts that render that market space irrelevant), but for the time they last, they cause damage to the markets.
The only way to avoid that is throug regulating the markets to ensure reasonable market transparency and to limit artificial barriers to entry. That is what the "anti-monopolists" seek to do, adn it is an essential task for the preservation of a broadly functional market economy, as oppsoed to a manipulated market economy tha theavily favors those with the power to manipulate it.
I often spend up to two weeks at a time on the road, doing customer-critical work that has to coordinate with work and people back in the office. If I can't access company email, and resources on our internal network via VPN, I'm screwed, and so are our customers.
IST recognizes this, and works with us to get us the resources and knowledge to minimize the risks.
Even more, they realize that when we are on the road with our only computer being our work computer, we ARE going to be doing personal work on that computer, accessing personal email, entertainment web sites, and so on. We have to; is is either that, carry a second computer, or have absolutely no personal life on our own time. Forbidding personal use while traveling would cause a riot (well, more realistically, a flood of outgoing resumes). Again, they recognize this, give us the resources (a good firewall, virus and adware scanners, an encrypted partition for sensitive data, and so on) some education, and some policies that DO allow reasonable personal use, to help us keep our computers and the network safe.
It's just common sense on their part; they know that if they forbid it, it is going to happen anyway, but without their involvement and therefore with greater risk.
"Right now the evacuated area except less than 1/4th of square mile has only 50% higher radiation than the normal background radiation"
True, but... It is paatchy, and unreliable. Every filed that might be returned to productive agriculuter must be indiidually and comphresensively tested, and then the crops monitored in case of missed concentrations. That, all by itself, is a huge economic cost. Road margins are also hotter than the avareae area,adn ther are other concentratign mechanisms operating, too, that create hot spots.
I wont dispute that coal and other fossil fuels come with huge costs; you didnt mention ocean acidification, which is anaother bad one getting ready to bite us in the ass. I just dont want to underplay the potential risks of nukes in making the decisions. ALL the options come with huge potential or inevitable costs.
and 1 smallish town. This is not within orders of magnitude of the abandonment at Chernobyl.
BTW, uranium mining also causes - has caused some noticeable devastation. As has coal; ask Mr. Peabody and his trains. Mining problems are managed (and at least potentially maneageable) in a qualitatively different manner from plant accidents.
From what I can see from this article, this may or may not be a mining incident. Anyone know if that exposed coal vein was exposed by mining, or naturally?
required the long-term abandonment of a good size city and of hundreds of square miles of high quality farmland?
The loss of life may have been moderate (is 4,000 dead people moderate?), but thelong-term economic and human cost is very, very large.
This is true whether or not you favor nuke, and whether or not you think Chernobyl-type major-release accidents are possible again. It may be true to say that the risks of a major-release accident are very low, but it is NOT true to say that the cost of such an accident is moderate.
to restrict this naming convention to use on twin girls.
Fraternal, not identical.
YO made an indirect acusation of academic dishnonesty, in lieu of actually adressing the points. I posted direct quotes and links to a blind test of the models, and the best you can do is say, "well, they might have cheated, so I wont beleive it." Good on ya...
BTW, it isnt anger. More like disgust.
I have ever seen on slashdot, and that's pushing a long way.
You dint respond at all to the point. You indirectly called my motivatin into question, you indirectly called the hoensty of EIGHT INDEPENDENT TEAMS into question, you implied that none of this is worth paying attentin to, and you managed to do so without ever addressign teh actual data.
Congratulations.
BTW, my motivation is a desire to understand what we know about our planet, magnified a bit by the potential risks of this anthropogenic apparent perturbation in our planet's processes. What is YOUR motivation in vehemently denying the relevance of the models, to the point of dismissing them without addressing the actaul evidence?
"Something that can't even be achieved for in comparison ""relatively simple"" systems like the financial markets they expect to achieve for a far more complex and unknown system. "
I can predict with a very high degree of acuracy that the current cyucle of clear and cool followed by extended periods of rain, here in the SF Bay area, will transition in 5 months to coool and foggy near the coast and hot as blazes inland, with no rain for about 6 months. That prediction, a CLIMATE prediction, is a no brainer. I can extend that precition to 17 months from now, and 29 months from now, and 41months from now, and 53 months from now, ad nauseum, with a very high expectatin that I will be correct.
For markets, I wont predict even somethign a simple as whether it will be higher or lower in 6 months.
So no, markets are NOT 'relatively simple' in terms of predictability, when compared to climate.
Tweaking the model?
The modelers were presented with temeprature data for about 300,000 years of new data, with NO Co2 data accompanying. Teh CO2 data wer not yet determined. The modelers then prediected CO2. Note taht this was for glacial epochs with different timing, temp extremes, and dynamics than those that were previously known, and for which the models had been previously verified.
8 teams using 8 models, published their predictions. The predictions were very close to each other. Adn then when the CO2 data were later released (in subsequent publicatinos) the predictins were very close to the actual data.
This is not 'tweaking the models.' This is using a BLIND test to verify the models against brand new data. Adn the models passed.
"the alarmest models invariably can't get history right"
f /EPICA-challenge.pdf
Really?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=221
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~meteo/MUDELSEE/publ/pd
"First of all, the results demonstrate clearly that the relationship between climate and CO2 that had been deduced from the Vostok core appears remarkably robust. This is despite a significant change in the patterns of glacial-interglacial changes prior to 400,000 years ago. The 'EPICA challenge' was laid down a few months ago for people working on carbon cycle models to predict whether this would be the case, and mostly the predictions were right on the mark. (Who says climate predictions can't be verified?). It should also go almost without saying that lingering doubts about the reproducibility of the ice core gas records should now be completely dispelled. That a number of different labs, looking at ice from different locations, extracted with different methods all give very similar answers, is a powerful indication that what they are measuring is real. Where there are problems (for instance in N2O in very dusty ice), those problems are clearly found and that data discarded."
Equilibrium processes?
We WERE at equilibrium. We have added a new substantial source of CO2, and we are now moving to a new higher equilibrium concentration. Tehjabsolute levels of
BTW, your volcanic CO2 numbers are very, very wrong. Anthropogenic CO2 emissins are more than two orders of magnitde heigher than volcanic emissinons. Total natural emissions of CO2 are about a norderof magnitude higher than anthropogenic inputs. Adnanthropogenic inputs are changing the equilibrium.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=160
http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/scq.CO2rise.html
This folloing info is from the second URL
>From its preindustrial level of about 280 ppmv (parts per million
by volume) around the year 1800, atmospheric carbon dioxide rose to
315 ppmv in 1958 and to about 358 ppmv in 1994 [Battle] [C.Keeling]
[Schimel 94, p 43-44]. All the signs are that the CO2 rise is
human-made:
* Ice cores show that during the past 1000 years until about the year
1800, atmospheric CO2 was fairly stable at levels between 270 and
290 ppmv. The 1994 value of 358 ppmv is higher than any CO2 level
observed over the past 220,000 years. In the Vostok and Byrd ice
cores, CO2 does not exceed 300 ppmv. A more detailed record from
peat suggests a temporary peak of ~315 ppmv about 4,700 years ago,
but this needs further confirmation. [Figge, figure 3] [Schimel 94,
p 44-45] [White]
* The rise of atmospheric CO2 closely parallels the emissions history
from fossil fuels and land use changes [Schimel 94, p 46-47].
* The rise of airborne CO2 falls short of the human-made CO2 emissions.
Taken together, the ocean and the terrestrial vegetation and soils
must currently be a net sink of CO2 rather than a source [Melillo,
p 454] [Schimel 94, p 47, 55] [Schimel 95, p 79] [Siegenthaler].
* Most "new" CO2 comes from the Northern Hemisphere. Measurements
in Antarctica show that Southern Hemisphere CO2 level lags behind
by 1 to 2 years, which reflects the interhemispheric mixing time.
The ppmv-amount of the lag at a given time has increased according
to increasing anthropogenic CO2 emissions. [Schimel 94, p 43]
[Siegenthaler]
* Fossil fuels contain practically no carbon 14 (14C) and less carbon
13 (13C) than air. CO2 coming from fossil fuels should show up in
the trends of 13C and 14C. Indeed, the observed isotopic trends
fit CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. The trends are not compatible
with a dominant CO2 source in the terrestrial biosphere or in the
ocean. If you shun details, please skip the next two paragraphs.
* The unstable carbon isotope 14C or radiocarbon makes up for roughly
1 in 10**12 carbon atoms in earth's atmosphere. 14C has a half-life
of about 5700 years. The stock is replenished in the upper atmosphere
by a nuclear reaction involving cosmic rays and 14N [Butcher,
p 240-241]. Fossil fuels contain no 14C, as it decayed long ago.
Burning fossil fuels should lower the atmospheric 14C fraction (the
`Suess effect'). Indeed, atmospheric 14C, measured on tree rings,
dropped by 2 to 2.5 % from about 1850 to 1954, when nuclear bomb
tests started to inject 14C into the atmosphere [Butcher, p 256-257]
All together now"
CLIMATE IS NOT WEATHER!!!!!!!
We have trouble predicting WEATHER more than a few days out.
But I can guarantee you that when I fly to connecticut tomorrow, I will need a winter coat and not summer clothes. And I can guarantee you that when I fly there in July, that I will NOT need a cold-weather coat but I will need warm weather clothes clothes.
THAT is climate, and we routinely predict climate for months, years, decades, and even centuries into the future. We do this every time we plan a trip to florida for december, and we do the planning in july, for just one of literally countless exmaples.