Well Danb
Volvo says it better than me
"I respect you a lot, I even idolize you sometimes. But I ain't afraid to argue ideas in public to see who has the best idea."
I followed your directions above and read a lot of stuff on the site you pointed to http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/index/#Global
in order to see what your good science is based on.
I have come away perplexed that you can consider this science.
So I won't be accused of taking it out of context, here is an example you have directed me to in full from a learned professor :
What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?
Filed under:
* FAQ
* Greenhouse gases
* Paleoclimate
-- group @ 9:42 AM - (Français)
This is an issue that is often misunderstood in the public sphere and media, so it is worth spending some time to explain it and clarify it. At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so.
Does this prove that CO2 doesn't cause global warming? The answer is no.
The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.
The 4200 years of warming make up about 5/6 of the total warming. So CO2 could have caused the last 5/6 of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming.
It comes as no surprise that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount of summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun that happen every 21,000 years, have long been known to affect the comings and goings of ice ages. Atlantic ocean circulation slowdowns are thought to warm Antarctica, also.
From studying all the available data (not just ice cores), the probable sequence of events at a termination goes something like this. Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties. This leads to even further CO2 release. So CO2 during ice ages should be thought of as a "feedback", much like the feedback that results from putting a microphone too near to a loudspeaker.
In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway. From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming.
So, in summary, the lag of CO2 behind temperature doesn't tell us much about global warming. [But it may give us a very interesting clue about why CO2 rises at the ends of ice ages. The 800-year lag is about the amount of time required to flush out the deep ocean through natural ocean currents. So CO2 might be stored in the deep ocean during ice ages, and then get released when the climate warms.]
To read more about CO2 and ice cores, see Caillon et al., 2003, Science magazine
Guest Contributor: Jeff Severinghaus
Professor of Geosciences
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California, San Diego.
Now read it carefully. read the summary..this is scientific???..... get some facts, talk at length, draw a conclusion,...... keep a straight face, and no one will notice you drew the very questionable (at best) conclusion from the facts.
So we see he has shown that CO2 increases after the warming starts. Whatever started it gets promptly forgotten, now CO2 theory takes over.... and when it gets to it's peak, it has already started getting colder as the next glaciation starts.
He attempts to explain that although CO2 was irrelavant in the initial warming (if you go to his reference for this " see Caillon et al., 2003, Science magazine") the resultant increase of .006% increase of atmospheric CO2 did the rest for the next 4600 years.
Probably best said by a respondent to his article here:
"# David Holland Says:
13 December 2004 at 11:23 AM
Wow! Are you really saying that we have no idea what starts to warm up our world from an ice age but know with near certainty what has caused the warming of the last three decades?
From my now somewhat distant scientific education I recall that it takes some 80 times more heat to turn the ice to water than to raise its temperature by a single centigrade degree. With sea levels 125m or so lower a significant proportion of the planets water must have been in the form of ice. The â??unknown processâ?? you refer to would have had to supply far more extra heat than the CO2 feedback, which was able to take over some 800 years later."
but the good professor seems to miss these salient features, as they may detract from his thrust..... good science I don't think.
Now if Al Gore would show us photo's of Mt Fuji and Mt Kilimanjaro when the Vikings were farming wheat in Greenland, then a good bit of his visual science may go the same way.
Sorry, I must be in denial. If CO2 conc. was driving global warming, then global cooling would be an impossibility by definition.... warmer it gets, more CO2 from oceans... more warming more co2.... the professors positive feedback in action.....never going to cool is it? ....However thats a bit silly too as there must be other more powerful forces at work, so that statement would be unfair and unsupportable.
However.. we seem to have overlooked that:
CO2 concentrations are at their zenith when the next cooling begins, but the good professor does not address this conundrum.
It just might be a case of making the facts fit the theory, even if they stare you in the face, just soldier on regardless.
So as he says"Some (currently unknown) process" appears to be the problem, (of massive magnitude to be sure), but it gets no credit other than a passing reference, the 4 to 6 thousandths of a % rise in CO2 gets all the credit.. 5/6ths in fact.
However, if we look at his graphs (Caillon et al., 2003, Science magazine....fig4) from the ice cores, even with the massaging of the figures by 800 years, what they do show is that there is NO correlation that CO2 has anything at all to do with the warming events....its 800 years behind when it does match the gradients, and there are periods of thousands of years where the temp heads up and the CO2 heads down, and where the CO2 spikes sharply up but the temp spikes down for a few more thousand years (were not talking decades here). There are times where they are in sync (out of step by 800 years ) but this is the bit that looks impressive if you ignore all the anomonies.
Some of this may be the ocean events driven by the unknown heating factor releasing the CO2 as it warms, but to claim that fully half of the warming is due to CO2 is a bit of a could, maybe, might, claim. (or might not would be just as reasonable)
The positive feedback he espouses is a non starter, other wise the temp would not have reversed direction while the CO2 was at it's peak in fact peaking 800 years after the temp had been plummiting. it would have continued the positive feedback. Oh...OK.... try this.the positive feedback only works sometimes (like when I'm trying to make a point, and the graph lines are in sync or when the thing that is really driving the temp is off in the mens room changing hats or something.).... rubbery science?
So his claim that "In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway. From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming." does not match the scientific data he presents. Their correlation (good sometimes, abysmal others) and the 800 year lag, more likely represents the fact that climatic change effects the levels of greenhouse gases sometimes. sometimes up..... and sometimes down. Until you can adequately explain the thousands of years where they are at odds, and at 800 years lag, and where periodically they are diametrically opposite, the "more CO2 = more warming" is a very sad science to hang your hat on... But sometimes it's good..... just forget when it's bad.
This has to be a professor who has his eyes fixed on the outcome... regardless of the data. Talk until the listners eyes glaze over, throw in some figures, parts of a graph that match your theory... focus on the matching parts, ignore the rest and presto..... scientific evidence......
??
It seems to always go like this:
1. draw a tenuous link like this: eg "The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data"
2 Suck the listener in and then twist the arm a bit :"So CO2 could have caused the last 5/6 of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming.".... (add in some negativity to make it look balanced).
3 Make the big statement... but put in a soft proviso first like might, or could, and from models etc. and we get this: "From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming."
4 We walk away happy that we have learnt that CO2 although not the initiator, somehow drives 5/6ths of the interglacial warming, whilst only changing it's tiny tiny tiny 40 thousandths of a percent concentration (40 ppm.) and file it away as scientific FACT!
Isn't that what you thought......
What was really said is "we don't know, we have some figures that don't entirely make us look good ( and you should see what we had to do to create these figures..lots of interesting assumptions and models there too) but...we'll explain them away by not addressing them directly, and....we'll make a model up, and blame that if it's wrong."
egad. Good solid facts indeed.
When some sensible science comes along, I will gladly be swayed, but until some does, it's just another popular religion.... big money, big science grants, big news.
Something causes the interglacial warming, but apparently NOT the co2, it seems to be mostly a victim of the warming and if these graphs are to be believed not always related directly or indirectly either. (seems to increase a whole 4 thousandths of a percent for his central spike(40 PPM), It only represents less than 3 hundredths of a percent of the global gases at it's peak(<300ppm actually), yet he propounds that it supposedly drove fully half of the temperature increase...sometimes.....bit of a long shot methinks) The graph seems only impressive if you glance at it.... not look at it.
Water vapor is a great greenhouse gas (try and sleep on a humid night) check the variations in those percentages to see a real greenhouse gas..... but it's not sexy to talk about it and man doesn't make much of it... no news here.
I thinking shouldn't really post this..
............oztules
