Whew!  That means we are all safe.  We are up to the 1400s.  I pitty the second commenter.

Because we are descendants of the lucky ones who survived everything that our dear earth has thrown at us.

I hope so. Maybe if we do our best and help nature a hand if it's required, then who knows

@Raiddinn,

Our planet has seen extremes of both heat and cold different from what is current and has gone through extinction events but, yes, life marches on. When you say "the environment has developed responses..." you're talking about homeostasis. Homeostasis is something that evolution selects in living things as a desirable trait and there are tons of examples of mechanisms in our bodies but the planet isn't a living entity subject to evolution in the same way. You're kind of talking about the Gaia hypothesis, which is a nice sounding idea but as far as I know there aren't any specific "homeostatic thermostat" mechanisms in place so in theory we could "fuck things up". How quickly that could happen based on the present day situation is debatable of course.

How do you think nature "combats" warming or cooling trends?

How are our activities separate from "nature" in the first place? (meaning, if there are homeostatic climate mechanisms, then we would also be either working for or against them - and homeostatic mechanisms are not invincible - as anyone with diabetes knows...)

Personally I don't think there is any evidence the planet has a kind of sentience or agency to "make adjustments as needed". Humans are the big new variable in what has been "normal cycles" of the past. There's plenty of evidence we are having an impact on the climate - it's just more a question of how much and how quickly and what if anything can and should be done about it. If, for argument's sake, we are creating a dangerous warming trend, the planet doesn't have any magic way of changing that on its own.

There's an interesting paper on this topic here:

http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003050

I think the earth is a whole lot more resilient than we give it credit for.

If we had ice ages and we thawed out there must be some sort of nature based cold defeating thing out there and vice versa for if it gets too hot.

Whatever kind of vicious cycles exist it is obvious that they can be put to rest.

The earth is a whole lot more resilient than we are.  If we do enough damage to her, she will wipe us out and get on with the healing process.

Seriously, though, I think we will see her developing ways to fight against what we are doing to her.

I've a few things to say about this:

1. Visual artifact.

A lag can also be simulated by 2 processes: first a small jump by another process (loss of albedo or something). This gives a small jump in temperature, but not yet in CO2.

If after this event the temperature rise would be controlled further by CO2 alone, you would see temperature and CO2 increases at the same time. But it would look like CO2 lags temperature, because of the initial jump due to another process.

You can easily see this in a diagram of T/CO2 versus temperature. Take a piece of paper and draw a diagonal line for CO2 vs Time. Now draw another diagonal line on top of the first one for Temperature versus Time: perfect correlation (if CO2 and T were related 1:1). Now we add a small inital effect, so draw another diagonal line for Temperature versus Time a little above the first: it looks like there's a lag.

But this is only a thought experiment mind you!

2. Correlation of absolute values.

Also note how the Temperature and CO2 both rise and fall, they are ALWAYS very closely correlated, in absolute levels.

If temperature would be controled by other things than CO2, then you would not see a close correlation between temperature and absolute levels of CO2.

Low levels of CO2 (about 200 ppm) are always associated with very cold climates, throughout the ages.

High levels of CO2 (1000 ppm and higher) are always associated with very hot climates, throughout the ages.

This correlation of absolute values of CO2 concentrations cannot be explained by your theory.

3. Influence of independent mechanisms.

You should know that CO2 levels are also controlled by other things than just temperature. CO2 is stored in sediments for example. And sometimes more CO2 is released by volcanoes. And sometimes life helps a hand, like in the Azolla event.

This causes very long-term variations in the total CO2 content of the atmosphere and oceans.

These long-term variations are also closely correlated with temperature.

I don't think your theory can explain this kind of correlation. On long terms, with other processes dominating changes in the carbon cycle, I wouldn't expect much long-term correlation if your theory were correct.

4. Dependence of solubility on temperature and partial pressure.

I kind of agree that oceanic storage is important. If oceans are warm, they'll have less capacity to store CO2, so they'll release some CO2.

However, part of the flaw of the T-CO2 control theory is (I think) that it underestimates the effect of partial pressure. If temperature rises a little, and oceans release some of its CO2, the partial pressure in the atmosphere increases. This makes it a lot harder for the oceans to release CO2, because the dependency on partial pressure is pretty strong.

Suppose we have a situation like an ice age, when temperatures were low and levels of CO2 were at 200 ppm or so.

At the moment, we have higher temperature of 4 degrees and levels of CO2 of about 400 ppm.

So we have a temperature increase of 4 degrees, and a DOUBLING of the partial pressure.

I wonder which effect is more important for balancing the total CO2 content of the ocean...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry's_law

5. Different mechanisms the other way around.

Vice versa, by theory temperature of the atmosphere is not controlled purely and immediately by CO2. The ocean acts as a large heat sink which takes a while to heat up. For example an El Nino can occasionally exchange hotter surface waters with colder deep oceanic waters - as a result it can cool the upper ocean the atmosphere, while the deep ocean warms up slowly. Melting of large volumes of ice also requires enormous amounts of energy. Therefore to measure the warming effect of CO2, it is not sufficient to measure atmospheric temperature alone.

The poles heat faster than the equator. Such a pattern is typical of insulation, right ...

The thermosphere cools while the lower atmosphere warms. This is caused by absorption of radiation by the lower atmosphere.

Increasing heat content of the oceans point to a (more or less) continuous warming of the planet. Skeptics claim that atmospheric warming has halted, but the overall heat sink of ocean + atmosphere shows a more consistent rise in heat. This gradual rise is consistent with a gradual increase in insulation from CO2 and H2O.

The problem with your theory is, that there's no "cause". You just say: temperature rises, and therefore CO2 rises. But why would the temperature be rising for the past 100 years if it isn't CO2?

It would be nice if you could present a credible alternative.

It's statistical evidence.

If it isn't controlled by CO2, then you'll have to explain the correlations by another correlated (third) mechanism which controls temperature, CO2, and somehow also the other events that take place.

Try explaining something like the Azolla event, where algae buried trillions of tons of carbon over a period of about 1 million years. Due to this CO2 levels dropped 80% (although I think that might be exaggerated, it depends on the accuracy of measured CO2 levels) and sure, this was accompanied by a cooling of the climate. Researchers actually claim that this was such a huge event, that it initiated a more permanent cooling of the planet. How do you explain that, why would the temperatures on our planet suddenly drop and stay down despite millions of years of overall elevated temperature and elevated CO2 levels, what's your mechanism that caused this more or less permanent change?

Try explaining some of the extinction events in earth's history. Why do temperature and CO2 rises occur at the same time as large volcanic events? What's your mechanism to explain this correlation?

I've run the equation from Henrey's law because I was curious.

I thought, let's see what happens if a temperature change of 1 degree (20 ->21 degrees) would hypothetically change the CO2 content of the atmosphere from 400 ppm to about 453 ppm, if temperature alone would be responsible (I keep partial pressure at 400 ppm). You can calculate that from Henrey's law by calculating the differences in concentrations and than simply multiple the difference by a very large number to simulate a CO2 release from the decrease in CO2 concentration in the ocean.

Of course this particular value has no observational basis, it's just a numerical experiment and I though a 50 ppm increase would look nice.

At this point, skeptics usually stop and shout: hey look! A 50 ppm increase because of 1 degree rise in temperature, that explains everything!

Then I run the equation repeatedly again and again at these higher pressures. It turns out that partial pressure pushes a lot of CO2 back into the ocean and in subsequent iterations the partial pressure dropped, and reached a stable value at 409 ppm.

Similarly, a rise of 95 ppm by a 1 degree temperature rise alone, will result ultimately in a stable value of about 410 ppm: only slightly higher than the 9 ppm earlier. It seems to me that partial pressure places a firm limit to rises of CO2 in the atmosphere.

(Note that lower rises have relatively less compensation: an initial rise of 14 ppm would result in a stable rise of 3 ppm.)

So from a physical (theoretical) standpoint, I think you need unrealistically high temperature changes in order to create significant changes in CO2 levels of the atmosphere. Because if 1 degree change in temperature can only create a 10 ppm change in CO2 level in the atmosphere... how high a temperature increase would you need to create a 100 ppm change...

It looks like a 10 degree increase (20 -> 30 degree celcius at 400 ppm with an initial rise to about 2300 ppm) results in a stable value of about 520 ppm. That's just not the kind of temperature / CO2 increases that we see in the paleo-records.

Has it?

Ours is not wonder why but just to do and die

 Tennyson

There is no evidence that CO2 is a significant driver of temperature.  Feel free to provide an example in earth's history where CO2 levels went up BEFORE temperatures went up.  

As for trolling, trolling would be to assume after 60 pages that we don't know what greenhouse gasses are.  Going from 0.3% to 0.4% of the earth's atmosphere over the past century requires quite a leap of faith to believe that it is a driving force in temperature changes.  

I'm not the one making claims and predictions. You are.

The fact that temperatures rises have not corresponded with CO2 rises doesn't speak well for the predictions of AGW proponents.  

I can think of lots of things that humans could do to affect temperature measurements including:

• Deforestation
• Urban Heat effect
• Mass agriculture
• Massive growth in the populations of domesticated animals (the billions of pigs/cows/chickens/etc.) which produce a lot of methane.
• The accumulative affect of the above

None of which have to do with CO2.

As for extinction events, they have nothing whatsoever with CO2.  We've had a number of different extinction events ranging from snowball earth to cosmic collisions to the mass production of O2 via Cyanobacteria.

The core problem with AGW is that there is zero evidence that CO2 was a driver of warming trends. Not just "little" evidence but zero as in none at all. You've yet to present a single example in all of history where CO2 drove increase trend.

CO2 vs. temperatures from ice core records.  Temperatures go up, CO2 goes up.  Temperatures go down, CO2 will go down.  But not the other way.  In fact, temperatures will sometimes go down long before CO2 starts to fall.

That's why AGW isn't that complicated of a hypothesis and is relatively easy to be skeptical about.  The historical temperatures clearly demonstrate that CO2 isn't what drives temperature increases.

Sure there are also a few extinction events that are not linked to a climate change. But most of them (especially minor but also a few major ones) seem to be very closely linked to climate.

Yes I just love those data, they're really nice, but take care when you take those data at face value. Your plot shows no error bars and those error bars are really pretty big. But before you make such bold conclusions, at least take a look at this more comprehensive study:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17611404

Ah yes, that must be the EPICA one with a better estimate of CO2 ages? I was trying to find it in my favorites but well...

Of course temperature/CO2 are correlated. We don't disagree on that... we only disagree on the cause of the correlation.

This plot is a bit funny though... at year 0 there's a big jump in CO2, but not a jump in Temperature.

It's just for fun... for the new year.

Did you even read the article you posted?

The reason the AGW hypothesis isn't that complicated is that it boils down to saying that CO2 is a significant driver of global temperatures.  Well, where is that major temperature increase?

http://co2now.org/

It's at 393.66 now.  It's gone up from 310 to almost 400 in just over 50 years. That's a huge increase.  And I can absolutely be convinced humans are a major reason for that.

However, where is the corresponding temperature change?  If CO2 was a major issue, then we'd be experiencing the warmest temperatures in the past 100,000 years.  Clearly, CO2 isn't a major temperature increaser.

I still think we should be trying to reduce our impact on our environment. That's why I (and I know it annoys some of the lefties here) unlike anyone else in this discussion, am the only one whose home/vehicle has a negative carbon footprint.  My house, powered by solar and my electric car, powered by solar, is doing its part.

But I presume those that are raising the alarm regarding CO2 affecting temperature changes expect us to do some radical stuff NOW since it's highly unlikely we'll be relying on fossil fuels in 50 years as our primary energy source.  

So you would think that they would have the CO2 as the major driving force down as an undeniable fact.  But it's far from it. 

And strangely, those that scream the loudest about CO2 seem to be willing to do the least personally about it. They want other people to do it for them.