Reposted in its entirety from Climate Science
By Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. University of Colorado
There was an interesting news article in the Guardian on December 6 2008 by James Randerson titled Explainer: Coolest year since 2000
The article reads
“This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07.
The relatively chilly temperatures compared with recent years are not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists at the Met Office. “Absolutely not,” said Dr Peter Stott, the manager of understanding and attributing climate change at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre. “If we are going to understand climate change we need to look at long-term trends.”
Prof Myles Allen at Oxford University, who runs the climateprediction.net website, said he feared climate sceptics would overinterpret the figure: “You can bet your life there will be a lot of fuss about what a cold year it is. Actually no, it’s not been that cold a year, but the human memory is not very long. We are used to warm years.”
The Met Office had predicted 2008 would be cooler than recent years due to a La Niña event, characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean – the mirror image of the El Niño climate cycle.
Allen was presenting the data on this year’s global average temperature at the Appleton Space Conference at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Didcot, yesterday. The 14.3C figure is based on data from January to October. When the Met Office makes its formal announcement next week they will incorporate data from November. “[The figure] will differ from it, but it won’t differ massively,” said Stott.
Assuming the final figure is close to 14.3C then 2008 will be the 10th hottest year on record. Hottest was 1998, followed by 2005, 2003 and 2002.
In March a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade.”
Lets do a reality check.
The statement that “The relatively chilly temperatures compared with recent years are not evidence that global warming is slowing” mixes up regional and global temperatures changes. Also, there has been no global warming in the last 4 years (at least; e.g. see). Global warming has stopped for the last few years.
The statement that “In March a team of climate scientists at Kiel University predicted that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade” is scientifically incorrect. Heating cannot be ”masked”.
As given in the examples below, the news releases provided by the UK Met Office make for interesting reading and show the complexity and difficulty of skillful season climate prediction.
Thus why should there be any confidence in the forecasts regarding climate change in the longer term?
Examples of UK Met Office News releases
1. For example, on April 11 2007, they wrote in a news release “Met Office forecast for Summer 2007″ [to their credit, they do have a readily accessible archive]
“The Met Office forecast of global mean temperature for 2007, issued on 4 January 2007 in conjunction with the University of East Anglia, stated that 2007 is likely to be the warmest ever year on record going back to 1850, beating the current record set in 1998.”
This did not occur.
2. On April 3 2008 they wrote in a news release “A typical British summer”
“The coming summer is expected to be a ‘typical British summer’, according to long-range forecasts issued today. Summer temperatures across the UK are more likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or above average for the three months of summer.”
On August 29 2008 they published a news release titled “Wet summer could end with a bang” where they write
“The return to unsettled weather will mark the end of the meteorological summer which has been one of the wettest on record across the UK.”
I suppose that rainfall “near or above average” fits what actually occurred but this is hardly a particularly precise or useful forecast.
3. On September 25 2008 they wrote in a news release “Trend of mild winters continues”
“The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.”
They qualified this news release with the article on November 25 2008 titled “A cold start to winter” where they wrote
“The latest update to the Met Office winter forecast suggests that although the coming winter will have temperatures near or above average, it is very likely that December will be colder than normal.”
Now, in addition to a news release on December 9 2008 they published an article ”El Niño gives colder European winters”, which states
Sarah Ineson, climate research scientist at the Met Office says: “We have shown evidence of an active stratospheric role in the transition to cold conditions in northern Europe and mild conditions in southern Europe in late winter during El Niño years”.
The message in th UK Met Office press releases is that, since their is such poor skill with seasonal weather prediction, multi-decadal climate prediction must be a much less precise and accurate science than we have heard promoted by the IPCC and in the climate change press releases given out by the UK Met Office and others.
PeteM,
Please help soonest. I have cold feet. I hope you don’t!
Stevo and E M Smith
” A guy called Beck has been saying that for years, I think Tim Ball mentioned it recently. It’s extremely dubious.”
Repeat of my earlier post on this subject;
“This is a graph showing Hadley Cet back to 1660 and cumulative human co2 emissions since 1750 from Cdiac/IPCC (its the tiny blue line at the bottom)
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/beck_mencken_hadley.jpg
Human emissions are 5% of all natural enissions but it was impossible to produce a meaningful graph showing all co2 emissions against all green house gases as the line would be invisible.
The green dots are co2 records from 1820 onwards as recorded at the time-this was an exercise to check out Ernst Becks assertions that past co2 records show levels are as high as todays-which they do.”
Please tell me on what basis this information that Beck produces is dubious?
Tony B
Good to see a reasoned debate, with little in the way of insults, be they allegations of either a communist plot to reduce the West to penuary or it’s all “Big Oil” driving the entite world to destruction.
The hard facts?
The increased human population in the world has increased its output of Carbon Dioxide and reduced the amount of forested areas greatly.
Carbon Dioxide is a “greenhouse” gas
There are other “greenhouse” gases in the atmosphere.
The soft facts.
Carbon Dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased over the past few centuries. (I believe that there is debate as to the accuracy of measurements relying on ice-core data.)
Global mean temperatures appear to have risen over a similar period (I say appear, because the methods used to measure them, at certain periods in the past, are open to, err, shall we say “debate”)
There is a time-lag between temperature rise and Carbon Dioxide rising.
The debate.
Are the alledgedly rising temperatures due to human activities, to what degree is this the case, is it “harmful” to life on Earth, if it is harmful, what can we do about it and what is the cost of doing nothing/doing something effective.
The answer?
David Ball,
(And apologies to everyone else for going off-topic. I’m not going to pursue this one any further after this comment.)
“Stevo, can you show what the C02 concentration was then?”
No. My suspicion would be that nobody can, because the evidence doesn’t exist. It’s the same argument as with tree ring temperature reconstructions, where pointing out flaws leads them to ask the sceptics to provide one better.
“Back up what you say. It has been claimed “dubious” by those with an agenda.”
Everybody has an agenda. It is because I know I have a bias towards contra-AGW results that I take especial care to apply even more scepticism to results I happen to like. Science is about putting every effort into pulling apart your own ideas, considering every way you might be fooling yourself. And then enlisting others (especially those whose biases go the other way) to help you.
And besides the scientific purity, there is a strategic reason too. Investing credibility in results that later turn out to be wrong gives the other side a handy weapon to hit you with. Like the IPCC being repeatedly beaten with the Hockeystick.
“There is a lot of evidence that clearly shows Co2 levels throughout history, which, at times, was far higher than today. Evidence without smear, please and thank you.”
OK. First, the default position should always assume experimental error; the burden of proof is to show it has been eliminated. Any physicist knows that it is very difficult to do precision experiments without systematic errors creeping in. Ways to do that include consistency, repeatability, observing predicted changes in the outputs, and publishing a list of the possible/likely biases you’ve eliminated. Explanations for any discrepancies with known physics ought to be offered. There are plenty more.
My main reasons are the difficulty in performing the experiment without contamination by the experimenter’s breath or local industry, the broad random-looking scatter in the Early results, the absence of any seasonal signal, the difficulty of explaining where the CO2 is going to or coming from, and the fact that CO2 is nowadays measured at more places and by more people than just the Mauna Loa facility, including some nifty satellite maps of how it varies globally.
I just think systematic experimental error is still the most plausible explanation. I haven’t seen sufficient evidence to show it isn’t plausible.
Here’s another sceptic scientist who looked at the question.
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html
I’d like to make it clear – I don’t dismiss Beck’s claims absolutely. I don’t know exactly how the measurements are taken, I do know it’s a lot more complicated to do than is commonly portrayed, and this sort of systematic problem has happened before. I’m not saying all Beck’s claims have been proved wrong.
But I think it is an unsafe set of results to be using in the debate. There are far too many questions that still need answering. By all means, pursue the question amongst ourselves and see if there’s anything in it. Certainly, the consensus version of the Carbon budget has some unexplained quirks left in it, too. But it’s not ready for primetime yet.
And anyway, we don’t need it. There are plenty of far less assailable reasons to doubt AGW without it.
The Hadley Centre predictions for the yearly global T anomaly have been always over in recent years. Is it only a chance? This should suggest them that some predictors could be a little bit wrong.
Perry Debell says:
PeteM,
Please help soonest. I have cold feet. I hope you don’t!
TonyB (03:50:34) :
The graph you post shows CO2 levels varying by over 100 ppm over a couple of years. Nothing remotely close to this variability has been observed during the time (since the 1950’s) that we have regular systematic measurements of CO2 levels.
What physical mechanism caused CO2 levels to vary so much in the recent past, and why did that mechanism suddenly stop just when we started the Mauna Loa CO2 measurements?
The graph you posted is garbage.
Completely off topic. “Green IT Reaches Tipping Point”
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/emea/corporate/pressoffice/2008/uk/en/2008_11_20_brk_000?c=uk&l=en&s=corp
Kinda rings true with Terry Wards quote:
Terry Ward (01:47:07) : Climate crisis/green energy is being pushed as the saviour of western economics. The next bubble.
Chris V. (06:20:42) :
TonyB (03:50:34) :
The graph you post shows CO2 levels varying by over 100 ppm over a couple of years. Nothing remotely close to this variability has been observed during the time (since the 1950’s) that we have regular systematic measurements of CO2levels.
Have you noticed that all the systematic measurements of CO2 that you, and everybody, are relying on, depend on two people ( and a son)? Did you notice the cherry picking of the early data to make a base for low CO2?
I remind everybody of the GISS saga. CO2 has been much less scrutinized and really the sources much less under examination than temperatures, and we are willing to ignore many measurements by eminent scientists of their time just like that?:
What physical mechanism caused CO2 levels to vary so much in the recent past, and why did that mechanism suddenly stop just when we started the Mauna Loa CO2 measurements?
Have you looked at the AIRS plots? http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/
CO2 is not constant over the world.
In addition. I have seen claims of enormous production of CO2 from volcanoes that I would like checked and documented instead of being swept under the rug.
The graph you posted is garbage.
I think that this is not an acceptable statement. The plot shows measurements, accurate for their time. It may be that they are too close to sources of CO2, but many of them are not if you read the Beck paper. It may be true that one has to be critical of the content, that error bars are large, etc. after reading up , but garbage it is not.
This is an interesting article from the results of Poznan:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7781022.stm
The UN climate summit has ended with delegates taking very different views on how much it has achieved.
Western delegates said progress here had been encouraging, but environment groups said rich countries had not shown enough ambition.
Developing nations were angry that more money was not put forward to protect against climate impacts.
The developed nations fluffed through it, and hopefully the gods will take pity on us and keep on the cooling phase before the politicians destroy whatever is left of the economy in the name of nonexistent threats. I hear that bookmakers in London are taking bets that the Thames will freeze over?
Stevo, well stated response !! Might I suggest you examine something from the geologic record called stomata. It is an indicator of Co2 levels of the past and is thoroughly documented. Check it out. It is something that many AGW proponents don’t want people knowing. Same as MWP, LIA, etc. BTW, keep posting as debate is probably the best exercise for the brain. Good for all !! -Chris V, could it be because the guy who has a monopoly on the C02 data is one of the authors of the IPCC report? Agenda? Funding? Just saying there is motive and opportunity, ……
Paul Shanahan said:
The article you linked to said something very interesting: some two thirds of organizations with Green IT Initiatives do not see any payback in a year or more.
If that is true, I suggest that it will become just another passing fad, since in this next twelve months industries worldwide will have more pressing issues, and governments will see large reductions in revenues as well.
Stevo
and the fact that CO2 is nowadays measured at more places and by more people than just the Mauna Loa facility, including some nifty satellite maps of how it varies globally.
I tried to see the papers of CO2 from other places than Mauna Loa. Those are on an arc starting from there anyway, and the papers all have the same author with a second author different for each location, which I assume is the graduate student doing the measurements.
Auditing is a necessity in such a case.
Maybe Anthony should sell a CO2 measuring gimmick in his offers. It seems there are small portable ones now. Then we could all go out and start measuring, the way we measure temperatures.
Somebody said that the Mauna Loa measurements are taken on a specific hour of the day. That by itself is funny if true ( and implies a much faster assimilation of CO2 from sinks than is being assumed).
TonyB,
The graph doesn’t say anything at all about the reliability of the measurements. I’m not sure if temperature is plotted to demonstrate a correlation, but one isn’t obvious (or expected), and it wouldn’t prove anything if it was.
And I’m pretty sure the cumulative emissions line is wrong – have you maybe mixed up MtC and GtC? Cumulative anthropogenic Carbon is about 270 GtC since 1800, which on its own would have increased the concentration from 280ppm to 415ppm. Only 160 GtC has accumulated in the atmosphere, and 110 GtC of the excess appears to have been absorbed by the environment. That doesn’t mean the natural emissions haven’t changed as well, and there is some freedom in balancing the equation. Man could have added 270, Nature another 100 to its usual emissions, and Nature could have increased the absorption rate to remove another 210. Or the other way round. (Although quite what could double the rate of natural emission/absorption without anyone noticing would be a mystery. I’d expect the true number to be somewhat smaller.)
The natural emissions are large, but so is the natural absorption. It’s the difference between the two, and in particular how it changes as atmospheric CO2 concentration and other factors change, that you have to compare with human emissions.
That older measurements have given high readings compared to today is noted, but it is at least possible this has something to do with the sample being taken next to a scientist breathing out 3000ppm CO2, amongst other things. You have to say why this is less likely than whatever the alternative hypothesis you’re proposing is.
You’re graph seems to show a sudden drop of about 100ppm at about 1950. Why don’t you go through that event slowly for me. How fast do you think the actual CO2 level changed, what could cause it, and why it is a better explanation.
David Ball (19:56:47) :
Petem, if you have the time, could you do a little experiment for me? Go over to RealClimate and post a skeptical point of view under a different name (so you can still visit the site afterwards, if you choose). Let us know what happens to your post. I think the result will be very telling.
David, an additional test for PeteM: Post a contrarian view on the website http://blog.rkpachauri.org/ where nefarious skeptics are shunned.
anna v,
“Have you noticed that all the systematic measurements of CO2 that you, and everybody, are relying on, depend on two people ( and a son)?”
There are others. Everybody uses Mauna Loa because it’s the longest running and they’re all roughly the same, but it’s not the only one.
“Have you looked at the AIRS plots? http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/
CO2 is not constant over the world.”
Yes, I’ve seen it. If you look at the scale, you’ll see it’s within about 5ppm of the same value, roughly 1%. It’s not quite constant, but it’s close enough for most calculations.
It doesn’t show the same magnitude of variations appearing in Beck’s graphs.
anna v (08:15:28) and David Ball (08:34:00) :
Mauna Loa has the longest continuous CO2 record, but there are several other long-term CO2 monitoring stations. One at the south pole actually started before Mauna Loa, but there are some years when it wasn’t operated, so it’s record is not continuous. Other monitoring stations where set up in the 70’s. All show the same CO2 levels and trends.
Do you think that people at multiple monitoring stations around the world have been systematically fudging the data since the early 1950’s? That’s a very patient and far-reaching conspiracy.
Do you even know who performed the CO2 measurements in Beck’s graph, how, and where? The data from Mauna Loa and the other CO2 monitoring stations are much better documented than any of the earlier data, yet you accept the earlier data without question, and accuse Mauna Loa and the others of fudging!
Why don’t we see that level of variability in the 50 years of continuous CO2 measurements we have? (The AIRs data shows CO2 levels around the world varying by only a few percent).
Could it be that the methods used to measure CO2 in the 1800’s and early 1900’s were less accurate and reliable than the modern methods?
That graph is worthless.
Anna v,
“Auditing is a necessity in such a case.”
Agreed. It’s a topic I suspect is worth looking into.
“Somebody said that the Mauna Loa measurements are taken on a specific hour of the day. That by itself is funny if true ( and implies a much faster assimilation of CO2 from sinks than is being assumed).”
I guess its an attempt to standardise on things like temperature and air currents. Is the air headed up the mountain or down it, that sort of thing. But it would be interesting to know if they do get different readings depending on the time of day.
For those interested in Beck’s paper: click
Beck deconstructs the NOAA’s Arctic temperature record: click
There may be some problems with Beck’s analysis because many of the CO2 measurements were taken in cities. But many other measurements were taken in sparsely populated areas and on ships in mid-ocean, as can be seen here.
It is interesting to note that the record collated by Beck, et. al., shows higher CO2 levels even in isolated areas.
I am an admirer of Ferdinand Englebeen’s posts. He acknowledges that the CO2 readings taken were accurate, IIRC, to +/- 3%. But his critique of Beck doesn’t take into account the isolated rural and mid-ocean readings.
Even if the highest 90% of Beck’s CO2 record are thrown out, it appears that atmospheric CO2 concentrations beginning around 1800 were significantly higher than the UN/IPCC admits.
Chris V
Sorry, you obviously didn’t see my original post which would have explained the background much better. I took a complete data set as a first pass and inserted them on the graph. I then looked at each record individually from within the group.
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/beck_mencken_hadley.xls contains
the information in an active excel spread sheet-hover your mouse pointer over a figure to read its values.
The measurements come from a variety of sources and a number were discounted at the time and are a matter of historical record only (for example only one measurement taken, equipment uncalibrated, taken over the water etc.)
Also a number of measurements were deliberately taken in known ‘co2 hot spots’-hospitals, mines and factories, for monitoring purposes and would be expected to be higher than those in free atmosphere.
I examined in considerable depth some 12 free atmosphere measurements with regards to the scientist, methodology, weather conditions at the time etc, and have no reason to believe they weren’t accurate.
Virtualy all the co2 ‘action’ seems to take place around 280ppm (very cold period ) to 380ppm (around as warm as today) and the difference is from 600gt to 800gt- Cdiac say that 1ppm equals 2.13 gt.
According to Endersbee, the following scale of outgassing is possible;
“Ocean area is 360,000,000 sq km = 360 x 10^12 sq metres
Mass: 1 gigatonne (Gt) = 10^9 tonnes = 10^12 kg = 10^12 m^3 water
Volume of oceans to 3m depth = 360 x 3 x 10^12 m^3 ie approx. 10^15 m^3
Mass of oceans to 3m depth = 10^15 / 10^9 Gt = 10^6 Gt
CO2 dissolved to 3m at 15ºC = 10^6 x 0.2/100 Gt = 2,000 Gt
CO2 outgassed for 0.1ºC temp rise = 2,000 x 0.3/100 Gt = 6 Gt ie one year’s emissions
CO2 outgassed from 30m depth for 1ºC global temp rise = 600 Gt ie near-total atmospheric content.”
So if temperatures fluctuate considerably from one year to the next-as happens frequently as can be seen in the chart-then a substantial movement in co2 levels appears possible.
Perfectly reliable figures were recorded in the warm 1940s of around 380ppm, Keeling took a first measurement of 315ppm in the relatively cooler 1950’s-see below;
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Did-global-warming-stop-in-1998.html
Since then the temperature has climbed steadily and we are (were!)as warm again as the 1930/40’s and the co2 levels have returned to the levels of that time-surely this is to be expected if the co2 levels are a reasonable
indicator of temperatures?
Now the main conundrum is we don’t know if the reliable free atmosphere records in the group are responding to contemporary temperatures, or those from many years ago -some people say temperatures rise first then co2 follows up to 800 years later.
Personally I think the cause and effect is much quicker than that, but whether that is a few months or a couple of decades I dont know. IF response time is quick and IF global temperatures are dropping notably, we should expect to see a stumble in the co2 figures from Mauna Loa as oceans take up co2 at levels far greater than humans emit them-but whether that will be next year or much later I don’t know.
I would also point out that mixing is not as comprehensive as many think; cdiacs and Noaa’s own maps show a differential of up to 20ppm at any time, so that could acount for a substantial proportion of any unexpectedly large co2 differential between one year and the next.
I think it is important also to recognise that co2 levels are an indicator of temperatures but are not a thermometer-so correlation is unlikely to be exact.
To see for yourself a very small part of the co2 science available over the last century and a half take a read of ‘Air and water’ by renowned chemist R Smith (who discovered acid rain). This book was written in 1872 and demonstrates the high quality of the science available at the time and the meticulous manner of the often world famous scientists who took readings.
http://www.archive.org/stream/airrainbeginning00smitiala
Numerous other documents by other famous scientists are available that illustrate they knew what they were doing. The report from Mr Giles Slocum of the US Weather bureau in 1955 is particularly interesting as it directly contradict GS Callendars 1938 assertions that 1900AD co2 levels were some 295ppm-from which pre industrial 280ppm was extrapolated and which Charles Keeling joined up to his own 315ppm in 1958 to demonstrate the ‘Keeling curve’.
Further reading on the reliability of records can be seen here -this refers to a British parliamentary report around 1890 on the monitoring of Cotton factories, who had been set emission levels of 900ppm in 1889
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7GHLv-rLifgC&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=prosecution+co2+cotton+factory+1889+factories+act&source=web&ots=rPD5OFQUIG&sig=3wPlj-HR9A-B2aEr0H1yk9xXJQM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA154,M1
Perhaps you can resolve one thing that is puzzling me. According to ice cores the pre industrial co2 levels were at a constant 280ppm-which obviously contradicts this data completely and supports GS Callendars selected data.
However, if that is so why did the temperatures vary so much in the past-surely if co2 if a good indicator the temperatures should also be fairly constant throughout the last tens of thousands of years?
TonyB
Indeed. On a broader theme, it is very commonplace that people take a position, point of view, and stick to it no matter what. For example, many people think that ALL religion is bad, and should preferably be abolished. Their view is very strong and they simply won’t accept any notion that in some ways it may be beneficial for some people. Now the point isn’t to debate this, it is just to point to these unequivocal views and how they simply won’t budge. If Aunt Mary has a wonderful time with her friends baking cakes for children at the local church on a Sunday, nope, that is irrelevant! It’s all evil and should be abolished right now! or so goes the thinking. (I’m not religious, I’m just saying).
Likewise, there are people who have come to think that the one single most important thing in the whole world is the biosphere. It is simply beyond question–the biosphere is the one true ultimate concern. Why? Well because if the biosphere dies, we die. If we die, the biosphere survives–klaatu barada igonnathrowuppa!
Sure the biosphere is important, but the reasoning has to be a little more sophisticated! We are as much Nature as any other species. We are the smartest and most complex creatures–Nature dominates the planet as us.
As E.M.Smith rightly points out, our technical progress permits our numbers to increase and our health to increase, and the environment to become cleaner. Our Nature-given intellect affords us technological progress which permits us to grow in numbers and increase in health and prosperity. All this is natural! And the more we can progress, the more our species can acquire more energy and live more cleanly. The biosphere is important, but we are that biosphere and Nature is “trying” (as it were) desperately to progress as us, in the form of our desperate drive to survive and progress, as any species evolves and expands and tries to survive. If we have to cut back on our own progress, then Nature’s experiment in us will have failed. The reservation of Nature is the preservation of the dominance of humans, using any and all resources that we can to continue our progress, for that is Nature itself progressing.
This is probably OT, but I believe it is relevant (and besides, it’s bugging me).
There is a graph of temperature and atmospheric CO2 for our planet for the last 600 million years (http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html) that has been referenced several times in this thread (Stevo 16:04:42, Deb 19:18:16, E.M.Smith 22:20:40) that I find fascinating. It seems to display our planet’s temperature “topping out”, or reaching a plateau at 25C several times in geologic history. Is that our planets “maximum temperature”? Why would that be? Why, or how, could our planet even have a “maximum temperature”? Can anyone explain this?
I thought that perhaps this was just an artifact of the methodology that was used, except for one thing. There is one small, short spike above 25C that occurs at the Permian/Triassic boundary (and incidentally, in Scotese’s original temperature graph (http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm) there is a second spike in the early Eolian or so) which would seem to indicate (at least to me) that the “maximum temperature” plateaus are real. What could have caused those two small spikes in temperature above what appears to have been the maximum temperature over a very long period of time? Can anyone help me with this (it’s really bugging me)?
Chris V, how can you state a ” that graph is worthless” when you admit you don’t know how the measurements were done? Because it was done in an earlier century? Did I misinterpret what you said? Don’t we see that kind of variability in the data or has it been “smoothed”? Let us not hyper-focus. Let us re-examine our basic assumptions before we move further. I still need to know how Co2 drives climate before the Co2 measurement becomes an issue, especially when Co2 is much lower than it has been throughout the earth’s history. What other monitoring stations? You mention the South Pole, but it is not continuous. Please know that I respect your opinion and thoroughly enjoy the debate !! I have 2 little ones to look after, so it is sometimes a little while before I am able to respond. I am sorry for this, as it makes the discourse painfully slow. It is helpful that others follow and pipe in !! Hope you are enjoying this as much as I am.
Chris V
I would appreciate it if you gave me references/links to publications from the other stations you are stating. The ones I found all have Keeling as the first author.
The AIRS color scale has 20ppm width and all colors appear on the maps.
Also I have not found any maps that could differentiate with height in the atmosphere. [begin tongue in cheek]It is funny to say that CO2 is on top of the atmosphere, whereas we know plants who feed on CO2 are at the bottom . Maybe the legend of Jack and the beanstalk has some validity.[ end tongue in cheek]
I am not assuming that the measurements discussed by TonyB and given by Beck are a bible truth. I am saying that they should be examined and their error bars estimated and discussed, not swept under the rug and the 3 authors of all the IPCC CO2 measurement publications put on a pedestal. After the hockey stick I am suspicious. It is so easy to get calibrations wrong/fiddled.
Every body: I saw a plot recently that showed a very good correlation of the rate of CO2 change with temperatures, with five month delay, but cannot locate the link. I would be grateful if somebody has it handy.
Stevo
“…it would be interesting to know if they do get different readings depending on the time of day.”
I believe the CO2 venting by Kilauea and other vents on the Big Island of Hawaii vent on a 24-hour basis.
By the way, the Mauna Loa monitor is located at an elevation of approximately 11,000 above sea level and shows a concentration of 385 ppm of atmospheric CO2. A monitor near Mt. Etna is located 45 meters above sea level and shows an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 381 ppm.
No data on any difference between the sea levels at the two sites.