On Mar 4, 5:25 pm, Mark & Juanita wrote:
On Sun, 4 Mar 2007 07:19:55 -0700, Bruce wrote:

...

These accurate measurements then needed to be correlated with the actual year
of entrapment in the ice as well as calibrated to the currently understood
conditions at the time (i.e. temperature, ice formation rates, etc.). The
accuracy of the CO2 measurements are fine, the accuracy of the information
derived from those measurements is very dependent on preconceived notions and
assumptions.

That is the part that I am more concerned about. Various assumptions
have to be made that may be totally incorrect since it is not possible to
experimentally verify how stable CO2 in ice remains for 10's of thousands
of years.

And yet those concerns don't seem to matter to you
when you want to use the data to 'disprove' the relationship
between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature that is
predicted by spectroscopy and the law of conservation of
energy.


However, it seems that the CO2 data is easier to believe than the
estimates of global temperature. There are just too many confounding
factors for the various methodologies (tree rings, ice depth, etc) to be
able to arrive at an average temperature measurement that can be accurate
to degrees, let alone tenths of a degree.


Agreed.

Note that the highest CO2 concentration over the last half
million years is a bit over 300 ppm. The current concentration
is 380 ppm.

Note that the present rate of rise of the concentration of
CO2, from 1960 to present is about 1.5 ppm/year. The
scale of the plot for the Vostock data on that page makes
it a bit hard to estimate slope but it looks like in the past
the highest rate of rise was 0.01ppm.year.

Now it would be silly to mindlessly extrapolate the current
rate on indefinitely into the future. But we DO know that
burning fossil fuels removes oxygen and puts CO2 into the
atmosphere. Making cement and a few other processes
also put CO2 into the atmosphere (albeit without removing
oxygen). We can readily estimate how much that is, and
it is more than enough to account for the observed rate of
increase.

In short, we can be confident that the present rate of increase
will not change if we continue to produce CO2 at the present
rate.

The CO2 concentration in the Earth's atmosphere is already
nearly 30% higher than in the last half million years AND the
current rate of rise is 1500 times greater than any time in that
same record. We cannot forecast the future from the geological
record because the present conditions are wildly different from
past conditions. Now that astronomically high rate of rise of CO2
concentration is an artifact of the very short time span of the
data. Obviously we will not sustain that rate. But what will
we do differently to change it? Will we do it voluntarily to
preserve the habitability of the Earth, or will that change be
forced on us?

The relationship between atmospheric gases and the equilibrium
temperature of the Earth is well-understood (Greenhouse effect).
There is no doubt that adding any gas to the atmosphere, or
replacing oxygen with CO2 INCREASES the greenhouse effect.

We know that the sun is not cooling, and may even be heating
up slightly slightly contributing to the rise.

We know that jet aircraft have been putting particulates and ice
crystals into the stratosphere increasing the Earth's albedo by
nearly 2% over the last 50 years (Global Dimming). Such a
dramatic change SHOULD have resulted in noticeable cooling.
Yet global temperatures have not dropped and may even have
increased.

I want to thank Mark or Juanita, and you others for this discussion.
I never quite realized how extreme the situation is, until I looked
at these numbers.

--

FF