A study: The temperature rise has caused the CO2 Increase, not the other way around

Along similar lines is The Acquittal of CO2, by Jeffrey A. Glassman, http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html.
The Abstract:

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the product of oceanic respiration due to the well‑known but under‑appreciated solubility pump. Carbon dioxide rises out of warm ocean waters where it is added to the atmosphere. There it is mixed with residual and accidental CO2, and circulated, to be absorbed into the sink of the cold ocean waters. Next the thermohaline circulation carries the CO2‑rich sea water deep into the ocean. A millennium later it appears at the surface in warm waters, saturated by lower pressure and higher temperature, to be exhausted back into the atmosphere.
Throughout the past 420 millennia, comprising four interglacial periods, the Vostok record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is imprinted with, and fully characterized by, the physics of the solubility of CO2 in water, along with the lag in the deep ocean circulation. Notwithstanding that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide has neither caused nor amplified global temperature increases. Increased carbon dioxide has been an effect of global warming, not a cause. Technically, carbon dioxide is a lagging proxy for ocean temperatures. When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises, the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase. If increases in carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, could have in turn raised global temperatures, the positive feedback would have been catastrophic. While the conditions for such a catastrophe were present in the Vostok record from natural causes, the runaway event did not occur. Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere.

The first rule of regression analysis, or any other correlation method, is to beware of implied cause and effect. Many dependent variables can be correlated to many independent variables but cause and effect should not be implied. The stock market’s swings with the length of women’s skirts was a classic used many years ago. Another rule is to beware of exogenous variables. The hypothesis that increase in co2 is caused by temperature increase is just as viable as the AGW hypothesis but also just as subject to potential effects of other variables. I love this site for its lack of “lemming instinct” and challenge of the conventional wisdoms of the day. However, I think we many times are picking at flycrap in trying to disprove what has never been scientifically proven in the first place.

This is one of the first things an undergraduate geology student learns (a warmer ocean has lower CO2 solubility.) That is why limestone reefs form in the tropics.
Some climate “scientists” could avoid embarrassing themselves by learning some basic science – before getting their PhD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limestone

Calcite can be either dissolved by groundwater or precipitated by groundwater, depending on several factors including the water temperature, pH, and dissolved ion concentrations. Calcite exhibits an unusual characteristic called retrograde solubility in which it becomes less soluble in water as the temperature increases.

For this to be true, the proxy CO2 records that show it almost perfectly flat for the last 1000 years have to be wrong.
Obviously possible, but without addressing it, you have a pretty weak presentation.

Wow. Someone tell Willis.

Regarding ocean acidification, if the rising temperature is providing less CO2 for the same “amount” of ocean water, should the ocean pH not be rising?

Dear Lon Hocker,
A confirmation of your argument in this article is evidenced by the paleobiological register. In this graph I eliminated the temperature line for the correlation between the mass fraction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the area of continents flooded is seen clearer. You can see the expansion of the oceans happens many years before any increase of the mass fraction of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere:
http://www.biocab.org/SL_and_CO2.jpg

Do you mean ‘nowhere near the factor of three rise of CO2 concentration’ in the second to last paragraph before the Conclusion?
=============

If this was true how do we explain that the CO2 levels in ice core data are almost totally flat before 1850. (you’d think same process would have applier during e.g. MWP)
1) global temperature variation has been very small (and current warmins IS unprecedented) – not likely
2) ice core CO2 data can not be trusted – not likely
3) this mode breaks down prior to 1850

At first glance this would appear to be a brilliant discussion. I can’t get over Figure 2. And he plays in a band. Nice work.

The guys who believe that CO2 causes Global Warming do not use to drink gasified beverages but just one, in these original 6 flavors which do not contain any CO2 whatsoever:
Cherry, Grape, Lemon-Lime, Orange, Berry, Strawberry.
Same flavors found in their ideology too.
That’s the problem!

Olli: The problem with ice core data is that the resolution is very low – the CO2 values one gets are like a several hundred year long moving average. But if you look closely at the graph presented here recently, you may at least see a very faint trace of the LIA.

stevengoddard says:
Interesting point, as any carbonate increases its solubility in its “mother liquor” H2CO3, carbonic acid. The warmer the water the lesser CO2 content, the higher the pH, the lesser calcite solubility.

Not as elegant as E=MC^2 perhaps, but if confirmed, just as great a breakthrough for humankind.

Kagiso, have a look at Glassman’s article. He did, in 2006, the analysis on the Vostok records that you recommend, with the conclusion stated in the abstract above.

Greg Said: “For this to be true, the proxy CO2 records that show it almost perfectly flat for the last 1000 years have to be wrong.
Obviously possible, but without addressing it, you have a pretty weak presentation.”
What makes you think the proxies are as accurate as measured values? What makes you think proxies are accurate at all? A physical relationship can be demonstrated, but when the comparisons are run against actual measurements, they diverge from measured values and no one has provided a reasonable explanation, just arm waving to this point.

That’s nonsense, with due respect. Laws apply everywhere. You can check what this post presents by just buying a carbonated beverage and holding it in your hand before opening it, the warmer the bottle the more CO2 gas will go out when opened. The other way is simply impossible: to increase the temperature of the solution while increasing at the same time CO2 solubility, unless you increase pressure.

Nick Stokes:
As an oriental philosopher would say: “You can’t fart unless you eat first”

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/20/basic-geology-part-2-co2-in-the-atmosphere-and-ocean/

Meantime the warmist gravy train & call to penal action keeps going, with no apparent regard for new thought such as the above. See the new UN climate chief’s remarks just reported:
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10276225.stm
here in UK, it lokks as if the “climate change” budget/action plan is to be spared even the desparate deep budget cuts the Govt have promised to cut the deficit.
So: keep blogging etc – perhaps there is just a political decadal oscillation…..

Andrew W @ June 9, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Henry’s law assumes constant temperature.

glacierman says:
“Looking at the graph – Modeled CO2 vs. Time – comparing measured CO2 to Model predictions – any reasonable, scientificly trained person would have to believe that CO2 controls the temperature of the seasons to believe CO2 controls global temperature rises.
Use some common sense Warmers.”
Any reasonable, scientifically trained person would have done some thinking before saying such a thing.
The seasonal variation of CO2 levels result in a forcing in the order of tens of mW/m². The difference in average solar radiation between summer and winter runs in the hundreds of W/m² (depending on the latitude). That is a difference of four orders of magnitude. Methinks someone else than the warmers must use some common sense.

There’s a basic flaw in this argument. Taking the differential and then subtracting out the constant term basically leaves you with fluctuations around a linear trend. The trend itself has been removed, and it’s far larger than the fluctuations. What you’ve shown is that the fluctuations around the rate of linear increase of CO2 correlate with the fluctuations in the temperature anomaly. That is interesting, but it doesn’t justify your conclusion.

To supplement my prior comment, interested observers can see the actual data here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/esrl-co2/mean:12/from:1979/normalise/plot/esrl-co2/from:1960/mean:12

Bart, the increased capacity of the oceans to dissolve CO2 as a result of the increased atmospheric CO2 partial pressure overwhelms the 4% (using Lon Hocker’s figure) reduction in solubility from the temperature rise.

Richard Telford points out several awkward problems with this idea. Here’s another: we can calculate how much CO2 human industry emits, and it’s rather more than is being accumulated in the atmosphere. There’s only one place the excess can be going, and that’s into the oceans.
Consider a model that says the CO2 level is the sum of anthropogenic emissions, following some relatively smooth monotically increasing curve, plus a variable delta driven by temperature. The second may be smaller in absolute value but exhibit significant year on year fluctuations. If you take the derivative you will see, wow, a really close fit to the year by year temperature changes.
Try a model that encompasses both directions of causality and then tune the parameters for best fit.

Has anyone actually checked these equations out. The whole thing looks like total drivel to me – but perhaps I’m not readin it right. Take this, for example:
Month(n) CO2 = Month(n-1) CO2 + 0.22*(Month(n) Anomaly + 0.58)
It seems to me that, providing the anomaly for month(n) is greater than -0.58, then the CO2 concentration will always be greater than in the previous month. Similarly if it’s below -0.58 the latest CO2 concentration will always nbe less than the previous month. You can see that if we re-arrange the equation, i.e.
Month(n) CO2 – Month(n-1) CO2 = 0.22*(Month(n) Anomaly + 0.58)
Take a hypothetical situation, i.e. Jan anomaly =+0.5; Feb anomaly= -0.5
After Jan CO2 goes up by 0.24 ppm (it doesn’t seem to matter what the Dec anomaly is)
After Feb CO2 goes up by 0.02 ppm (but temps have dropped by one degree)
I’ve just had my 3rd brandy so I’ll need to look at this again, but there appears to be a problem using differencing as a function of the anomaly. Basically a given anomaly will give the same CO2 rise regardless of the background CO2 levels.

Nice job of curve-fitting for the intermediate term, Lon. It beats the hell out of the IPCC models. But to rephrase an old saying: Curve-fitting does not establish causation. (Hat-tip to Jim G.) Moreover there’s room for improvement in the proposed mechanism, as pointed out by Andrew W.

BobN says:
June 9, 2010 at 2:58 pm
“I wish you would use a little more discretion or prescreening before posting guest posts with what are clearly flawed analyses. It really affects your credibility on the stuff you discuss which is good.”
I disagree Bob. This site is educational. The open peer review which this article has received by the very knowledgeable commenters here allows people like me to learn more about the basics and how to spot potential errors.
Thus I learn as much or more from the comments as from the articles here.
If this article had been published in a journal your comment would be more valid. And far more obviously questionable papers than this have indeed passed supposed peer
review and been published in supposed scientific journals – which is why so many of them, not to mention the peer review process, have lost so much credibility.

I recommend that you retake your last Thermodynamics course (if any).

Richard Telford:
The trend for CO2 is removed via the derivative. A trend for the temperature anomaly is *NOT* removed because Lon takes it as it is. In Figure 2, the derivative of the CO2 level (trend removed) and the anomaly (including its weak trend) look like they correlate very well.
For me, this results in the obvious conclusion that the trend in CO2 level is not having an effect on the temperature anomaly. Is there a flaw in my logic? If so, please point it out.

If I may add, no where in your observed relationship is there an anthropogenic factor. That’s two strikes on AGW.

BobN says “I wish you would use a little more discretion or prescreening before posting guest posts with what are clearly flawed analyses. It really affects your credibility on the stuff you discuss which is good.”
Steady on!
Even if it is wrong, how can it affect “your credibility” (meaning AW)?
If it is “clearly wrong” then by all means take it apart! But please….. no screening! That’s just censoring by another name and I find that approach quite tiresome. It is typical of certain other sites which shall remain nameless.
I found the propositions put by the author to be interesting. I do not necessarily require that they be correct. If the moderator were to ‘screen’ such an article, I would be deprived of something to think about.

Gerard Harbison says:
June 9, 2010 at 3:08 pm
There’s a basic flaw in this argument. Taking the differential and then subtracting out the constant term basically leaves you with fluctuations around a linear trend. The trend itself has been removed…What you’ve shown is that the fluctuations around the rate of linear increase of CO2 correlate with the fluctuations in the temperature anomaly.
I agree. Very interesting though.

Reconciliation with Ernst-Georg Beck (http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4302) would have us negate the LIA…

My thanks for you all for the lively discussion. The data is available at the references I cited, and the equations I use are shown, so all are invited, and indeed urged, to redo the calculations.
I won’t attempt to teach anyone algebra. There is no background slope to the CO2 record or temperature record that I have subtracted out.
I am not wed to the theory I present, but will strongly defend figure 2. You can see this same correlation using the smoothed (annual variation removed) data, also available from NOAA. I used the raw data, and the +6, -6 months to eliminate the annual variation so nobody would think I had messed with the raw data.
I do not claim that the curve fit determines causation. The correlation, however, is so strong, it’s hard to understand how they cannot be directly related. Also, it’s hard for me to imagine a mechanism where the CO2 rise could cause the El Nino events. This leaves temperature causing the rise in CO2. Other explanations would be welcome as long as they fit the data.
I agree that it is strange that we see the CO2 concentrations so flat in the ice records, when we know there have been relatively large temperature changes. This begs the question of how reliable we feel these ice records are. If my model is correct, the medieval warm period would have had much larger CO2 concentrations than are observed in the ice record.
One can’t help but imagine that indeed the CO2 concentration might have been larger, and that meant that crops would have benefited from both higher temperatures and more CO2. During that period the world population supposedly doubled, and after the warm period it actually dropped, perhaps dropping CO2 concentrations as well as lower temperatures lead to dramatically less successful crops.
In summary, I invite all to redo the calculations and come up with explanations for the unexpected results I found.
Thanks again for your responses.

Sorry, I didn’t do a good job of addressing Peter Hodges and other’s concerns that I seem to be subtracting a linear component. Please look at figure 3, and the equation directly above it. It models the CO2 concentration versus time by using the temperature anomaly (plus the offset to bring it back to about 1850 when temperatures appeared to be relatively constant. This equation is exactly the same one used for Figure 2, only inverted.
Thanks for looking at this carefully. Remember, the whole analysis is based on two very well accepted data sets.

I would have to agree with the sentiments of several others expressed here. I’m a luke warmer, but this analysis seems pretty poor, and probably acts to lower the credibility of the good stuff that is more often posted here.
Leaving the harder mathematical stuff for others more competant than myself to dissect, I’d like to revisit a point others have already made, that hasn’t been convincingly countered i.e.
If this analysis is correct, then there was almost certainly no MWP, and current warming is unprecedented.
The assertions that the ice cores are only averages at resolutions of several hundred years only applied well back in the record. The MWP is only a thousand years ago, so decadal resolution should be possible. Similarly, another answer is that you can see a faint sign of higher CO2 in the Vostok core. Why should it be faint? If the MWP was equal to or warmer than now, why would it not show similar levels of CO2 to now?
I think that the case for a MWP of similar or greater warmth to the present has been well made, and that the Hockey Stick is broken. Consequently, I think this analysis is bunk.

Liquid CO2 droplets emitted by arc volcano at 1600 meters deep.
NOAA Research 2007 Outstanding Scientific Paper Awards
“Submarine venting of liquid carbon dioxide on a Mariana Arc volcano”
It’s worse than I thought. I never would have imagined that underwaters volcanoes could emit so much CO2 that it forms at the triple point. I guess you really do learn something new every day! Unless of course you’re a CAGW apologist and then you don’t learn a damn thing after your graduate school indoctrination into the dogmatics of the loony left is completed.

My interpretation. CO2 is pumped by man into the atmosphere at a fairly constant rate (constant compared to ocean temperature anomalies at least). As shown, in warm-ocean years, CO2 in the atmosphere increases more quickly than in cold-ocean years. Could this not just be explained by the fact that a warmer ocean has a reduced uptake rate of CO2?

If we assume the ocean is the primary source of the temperature induced CO2 variation, then, I believe, we need estimates global sea volume temperature anomalies over time in order to calculate the actual amount of CO2 that might be released as a result of a general temperature increase at the surface. Lacking this data, all we may have is a correlation open to several interpretations. I do not expect it to be easy to obtain this data unless such estimates are already being made as a matter of routine.

This has the same problem CO2 causing -> temp, has …. carbon build-up PER YEAR quintupled from the 1950s to 1988 — then in 1988, suddenly leveled out at around 2 ppm/ year:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CO2_increase_rate.png
At first Glance you may think this seems to keep increasing, BUT:
1. Your eyes are drawn to the 1998 peak — after 1988 the DISPERSION is much greater — up: yes, but DOWN, also.
2. The last couple years are missing: both are well below 2ppm/year
— just cover the right half of the graph with your hand, and then the Left:
— left is a consistant increase,
— Right is Grossly dispersed — like a Rorschach test.
Now I was reading an Alaskan News sheet talking of Squid increasing their Range from Mexico to Southern Alaskan fisheries when I realized: THIS COULD BE IT !
Squid have no bones.
Bony fish sequester Carbon (bones are Calcium CARBONATE) for 250 million years on average (the IPCC tells its researchers to ignore bones: the carbon in bones returns to the Air Very fast because fish bones dissolve in Water ! — sure: ask any Geologist: fish bones dissolve: in RAIN – – AFTER they accumulate into rock, and the Sea Bottom rises up into a Mountain Range, and then: erosion wears it down. In 250 million years. ).
More Squid, Jellyfish, etc. mean CO2 RETURNS TO THE AIR, rather than being BURIED. The BALANCE is distorted.
Further, the “top” of any food chain gets hit hard by LEAD. Most “Squishy Fishies” are smaller & more Tropical. The CO2 ACCELLERATION agrees with the high-lead period in Greenland Ice.
Plus, at the end of the Last Ice Age, more Trees grew, so CO2 went into the Trees & should have DROPPED, thus, something MORE IMPORTANT outeweighed THAT — I figure: the Sea got more BONELESS fish = MORE CO2 — which makes sense as the increased temperature EXPANDED the Tropics. But that is a dozen Degrees (F) in the Northern Hemisphere — not just TENTHS of a degree. Today’s CO2 rise is mainly Over-fishing and/or LEAD opening a “niche” & the Squishy Fishies filling it … e.g. ever hear of the recent Tropical Jellyfish “Plague” ? —
The Jellyfish trend was reversed in New Zealand by establishing No-fishing zones so young bony fish can grow up — I think we can REVERSE CO2 growth & ALSO restore lost fisheries with the Same method applied Globally. What ? – – you don’t think a Green Plan should HELP an Industry ?
>> “Bones” also explains the 100-year & 5.4 year “residence time” for CO2 — they are both MEASURED, how can Either be wrong ? — but IF fish patterns account for 94.6% of the CO2 rise, we can reconcile both Measures (ie, CO2 acts Like it had a 100-year residence, but the decline in added Radioactives in the Test ban era — a 19% decline per year = 5.4 years, has been Re-done in Recent times, leading to the same 5.4: So: … the Seas’ absorbtion of CO2 has not changed at all, despite the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increasing much. If CO2’s rise was 100% from Industry the CO2 Emissions increase of 50% since the mid 1980s, means it should exceed 3 ppm/year by now — but it never has even REACHED 3. The 5.4 rate is thus input, the 100 is input minus output. An increase in Industrial CO2 of 50% still increases CO2 — but just that part, ie.e a 2.5% increase in the CO2 increase rate — too small to notice.
Note “Bones” also explains the post-1500 DROP in CO2
— as caused by the 1500 A.D. Stewart Island Meteor’s tidal wave that reached 2200 feet at New Zealand & 850 at Australia = Kill the Fishermen, & Bony Fish recover, thus CO2 drops (the AGW idea that Columbus killed all the Indians is from a Legit Study: Dobyns’ idea that 95% of Indians perished in plagues over 285 years was not relevant : Primitive Agriculture limits population so, as Parish records proved in Peru, — plagues DID kill many people, many times, but no LOSS was permanent — population always recovered – – until people began starving again: population varying roughly a factor of 2, locally).
Here is a source for Particle accumulation rates in the Greenland Ice: http://www.pnas.org/content/105/34/12140.figures-only
Note the PARTICULATES peak pre-1920 from home-heat with Coal: this explains the 1922 Low Sea Ice (when the 60-year cycle would have PEAKed the ice around 1920) see VERY near the END of the fascinating Skeptical compilation of charts: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Arctic.htm

For those talking of ocean acidification.
What is the PH of concentrated carbonic acid like… I dunno, maybe sparkling mineral water?
DaveE.

This spreadsheet model sure puts predictive skills of two dozen super-expensive super-computer models to shame. WOW!
Andrew.

Sorry for being slow on the uptake for you folks that figured that there is a linear term missing in the analysis. In figure 3 there is a missing CONSTANT. That is the starting value of the CO2 concentration to make it fit the Mauna Loa Data. The theory, as you folks noted, deals with the derivative of the CO2 level, so that that constant is nowhere to be seen in figure 2, and is irrelevant to the analysis.
As others have noted, the interesting thing is that after the correlation between the rate of increase of CO2 and the temperature anomaly have been accounted for, there is absolutely no room for a linear relationship between the CO2 level and the temperature anomaly in the residual. The rate of increase of CO2 accounts for ALL of the temperature anomaly!
Now we need to figure what is really causing the temperature anomaly…
Thanks for your patience.

Peter Miller says:
June 9, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Anthony
This is one of the few times I disagree with you.
Your hypothesis is dependent on the oceans being saturated with carbon dioxide – the current level is circa 90ppm, a very long way from saturation level at current global temperatures
Peter – it is not a hypothesis – it is Henry’s Law – one of the accepted laws of physical chemistry. A ‘Gas Law’
Andrew W says:
June 9, 2010 at 1:50 pm
From Wiki: “Henry’s law is used to quantify the solubility of gases in solvents. The solubility of a gas in a solvent is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas above the solvent. ”
Over the last 150 years the partial pressure of CO2 has risen by about 35%, so CO2 is moving into the oceans, not out of them.
.
Andrew, you appear to have misquoted the law from Wikipedia (note my bold highlights):
“In chemistry, Henry’s law is one of the gas laws, formulated by William Henry in 1803. It states that:
At a constant temperature, the amount of a given gas dissolved in a given type and volume of liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in equilibrium with that liquid.
An equivalent way of stating the law is that the solubility of a gas in a liquid at a particular temperature is proportional to the pressure of that gas above the liquid. Henry’s law has since been shown to apply for a wide range of dilute solutions, not merely those of gases.
Henry’s law means that there will be a standard ratio of atmospheric CO2 to dissolved CO2 in the oceans dependent on vapor pressure and temperature.
It should be remembered that it is not only the ocean surface that absorb CO2 it is also the water droplets in clouds. The surface area of these droplets is huge possibly more than the oceans, they are pure water and are very cold so these droplets will ‘scrub’ CO2 out of the atmosphere very rapidly. Then they fall as rain to the surface with the dissolved CO2.
Finally
John Finn says:…….
That’s it. Gerald has phrased his post better than I did earlier but it amounts to pretty much the same thing. I think Zeke (above) has also made a similar point. This ‘study’ simply shows what we already knew, i.e. CO2 levels rise a bit more in warmer years and a bit less in colder years.
The only reason the ‘model’ appears to work is due to the fact that both CO2 and temperatures have been rising in the last few decades. If temperatures started to fall the model would break down.
But there is a large drop in atmospheric CO2 after the El Nino peaks and in the La Ninas- so cold temperatures show reduction in CO2. Hardly the time when there would be less fossil fuel usage.

Nick Stokes says:
June 9, 2010 at 4:54 pm
No, my question stands. The “reasons” given there are…
No, the reason given is that the CO2 tracks the El Nino events, and El Nino is NOT caused by CO2.
As Zeke and others have pointed out, the real flaw is that this all relates to fluctuations only, not the main trend.
Not so. FTA:

Applying this model to the Mauna Loa data not only shows the overall trend, but also matches the many El Niño events that have occurred while satellite data has been available. The Figure 2, shows the derivative model along with the observed Ocean Temperature Anomaly.

See Figure 2 for reference.

WAY OFF TOPIC
Forgive me I know this is way off topic, but I am compelled to past this on.
So if this does not post, so be it. Please past it on.
YES, THEY WALK AMONG US
Why our country is in trouble????
A DC airport ticket agent offers some examples of why our country is in trouble!
1. I had a New Hampshire Congresswoman (Carol Shea-Porter) ask for an aisle seat so that her hair wouldn’t get messed up by being near the window. (On an airplane!)
2. I got a call from a Kansas Congressman’s (Moore) staffer (Howard Bauleke), who wanted to go to Capetown. I started to explain the length of the flight and the passport information, and then he interrupted me with, ‘’I’m not trying to make you look stupid, but Capetown is in Massachusetts.’’
Without trying to make him look stupid, I calmly explained, ‘’Cape Cod is in Massachusetts, Capetown is in Africa.’’
His response — click.
3. A senior Vermont Congressman (Bernie Sanders) called, furious about a Florida package we did. I asked what was wrong with the vacation in Orlando. He said he was expecting an ocean-view room. I tried to explain that’s not possible, since Orlando is in the middle of the state.
He replied, ‘Don’t lie to me, I looked on the map and Florida is a very thin state!’’ (OMG)
4. I got a call from a lawmaker’s wife (Landra Reid) who asked, ‘’Is it possible to see England from Canada?’’
I said, ‘’No.’’
She said, ‘’But they look so close on the map.’’ (OMG, again!)
5. An aide for a cabinet member (Janet Napolitano) once called and asked if he could rent a car in Dallas. I pulled up the reservation and noticed he had only a 1-hour layover in Dallas. When I asked him why he wanted to rent a car, he said, ‘’I heard Dallas was a big airport, and we will need a car to drive between gates to save time.’’ (Aghhhh)
6. An Illinois Congresswoman (Jan Schakowsky) called last week. She needed to know how it was possible that her flight from Detroit left at 8:30 a.m., and got to Chicago at 8:33 a.m.
I explained that Michigan was an hour ahead of Illinois, but she couldn’t understand the concept of time zones. Finally, I told her the plane went fast, and she bought that.
7. A New York lawmaker, (Jerrold Nadler) called and asked, ‘’Do airlines put your physical description on your bag so they know whose luggage belongs to whom?’’ I said, ‘No, why do you ask?’
He replied, ‘’Well, when I checked in with the airline, they put a tag on my luggage that said ‘FAT’, and I’m overweight. I think that’s very rude!’’
After putting him on hold for a minute, I looked into it. (I was dying laughing.) I came back and explained the city code for Fresno, Ca. Is (FAT – Fresno Air Terminal), and the airline was just putting a destination tag on his luggage.
8. An aide for Senator John Kerry (Lindsay Ross) called to inquire about a trip package to Hawaii. After going over all the cost info, she asked, ‘’Would it be cheaper to fly to California and then take the train to Hawaii?’’
9. I just got off the phone with a freshman Congressman, Bobby Bright (D) from AL who asked, ‘’How do I know which plane to get on?’’
I asked him what exactly he meant, to which he replied, ‘’I was told my flight number is 823, but none of these planes have numbers on them.’’
10. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D) called and said, ‘’I need to fly to Pepsi-Cola, Florida. Do I have to get on one of those little computer planes?’’
I asked if she meant fly to Pensacola, FL on a commuter plane.
She said, ‘’Yeah, whatever, smarty!’’
11. Mary Landrieu (D) LA Senator called and had a question about the documents she needed in order to fly to China . After a lengthy discussion about passports, I reminded her that she needed a visa. ‘Oh, no I don’t. I’ve been to China many times and never had to have one of those.’’
I double checked and sure enough, her stay required a visa. When I told her this she said, ‘’Look, I’ve been to China four times and every time they have accepted my American Express!’’
12. A New Jersey Congressman (John Adler) called to make reservations, ‘’I want to go from Chicago to Rhino, New York .’’
I was at a loss for words. Finally, I said, ‘’Are you sure that’s the name of the town?’’
‘Yes, what flights do you have?’’ replied the man.
After some searching, I came back with, ‘’I’m sorry, sir, I’ve looked up every airport code in the country and can’t find a ‘Rhino’ anywhere.”
‘’The man retorted, ‘’Oh, don’t be silly! Everyone knows where it is. Check your map!’’
So I scoured a map of the State of New York and finally offered, ‘’You don’t mean Buffalo , do you?’’
The reply? ‘’Whatever! I knew it was a big animal.’’
Now you know why the Government is in the shape that it’s in!
Could anyone be this DUMB?

Peter Miller,
You ask a profound question. Maybe it would direct you to read the papers of Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, a noted ice core specialist whose constant criticism is about misuses of Vostok ice core proxies, without pressure corrections. His critiques are frequently ignored, since they do not provide support to AGW.
Under comparatively very modest pressures, as occurs in compressed ice, CO2 in ice cores forms hydrates that reduce the CO2 in ice core bubbles to a uniform low figure.
This low figure is then mistakenly assumed tobe the “pre-industrial” and “natural” level of CO2 in the atmosphere, before Man destroyed his environment. In comparison, we have been measuring atmospheric constituents since scientists started studing gases about the time of Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Priestly.
Georg Beck has retrieved quite extensive laboratory experiments conducted by impressive teams of scientists over long periods of the 18th and 19th century. One thing is glaringly obvious. Their laboratory measurements do NOT agree with the imputed ice core proxies dated to those eras when the pressure of overbearing ice has forced the CO2 into hydrates, even as they correlate atmospheric CO2 changes cotermiminus to the Tambora and Krakatoa massive volcanic eruptions.
What are you going to believe? Lab measurements, or ice core proxies, or perhaps chicken entrails?

A study: The carrying of umbrellas has caused H2O Falling, not the other way around
Guest post by Lloyd Christmas
http://tinyurl.com/346y7jx

Jim D says:
June 9, 2010 at 5:26 pm
“Could this not just be explained by the fact that a warmer ocean has a reduced uptake rate of CO2?”
Since nature is always generating CO2 at 24X the rate of anthropogenic input, any reduction in uptake means an immediate increase in airborne concentration, with the extra build-up from natural far outpacing that from anthropogenic.

Nick Stokes says:
I cannot see the logic of this. It claims there is a close correlation of temperature with rate of CO2 increase. Then it jumps to saying that the CO2 increase must be caused by the temperature. Why? Why not temp rise caused by rate of CO2 increase? You don’t change the causality by just rearranging the terms in the correlation equation.

Fair enough. You propose a mechanism – any mechanism! – by which the rate of change of CO2 can cause the instantaneous temperature value. Not saying you can’t do it, just that it sounds as non-physical as anything could be. But whatever, if that is the case, you are saying (along with climate realists) that the IPCC’s claimed physical mechanisms are totally wrong, since they depend on amount, not derivative.

Jim D @June 9, 2010 at 5:26 pm:
Yes, exactly. That is the differential relation whether there is staturation or not. You are seeing through fog. There are an infinite number of related curves to the one above of saturated water, not sea water, but the same laws apply. That is why Lon points out the differential nature of his analysis. Lon might have to have his parameters adjusted slightly by more exact measurements of staturation but it doesn’t take away from what he is presenting above.

Ron House says:

But whatever, if that is the case, you are saying (along with climate realists) that the IPCC’s claimed physical mechanisms are totally wrong, since they depend on amount, not derivative.

Really? Interesting since this interannual variability is discussed in Section 7.3.2.4.1 of the IPCC AR4 WG1 report http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm :

7.3.2.4.1 Interannual changes in global fluxes
The atmospheric CO2 growth rate exhibits large interannual variations (see Figure 3.3, the TAR and http://lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk/lequere/co2/carbon_budget). The variability of fossil fuel emissions and the estimated variability in net ocean uptake
are too small to account for this signal, which must be caused by year-to-year fluctuations in land-atmosphere fluxes. Over the past two decades, higher than decadal-mean CO2 growth rates occurred in 1983, 1987, 1994 to 1995, 1997 to 1998 and 2002 to 2003. During such episodes, the net uptake of anthropogenic CO2 (sum of land and ocean sinks) is temporarily weakened. Conversely, small growth rates occurred in 1981, 1992 to 1993 and 1996 to 1997, associated with enhanced uptake. Generally, high CO2 growth rates correspond to El Niño climate conditions, and low growth rates to La Niña (Bacastow and Keeling, 1981; Lintner, 2002). However, two episodes of CO2 growth rate variations during the past two decades did not refl ect such an El Niño forcing. In 1992 to 1993, a marked reduction in growth rate occurred, coincident with the cooling and radiation anomaly caused by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in June 1991. In 2002 to 2003, an increase in growth rate occurred, larger
than expected based on the very weak El Niño event (Jones and Cox, 2005). It coincided with droughts in Europe (Ciais et al., 2005b), in North America (Breshears et al., 2005) and in Asian Russia (IFFN, 2003)…

The Lintner reference, by the way, is available here: http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~ben/PUBLICATIONS/Lintner_CO2_2002.pdf . In the introduction, it notes:

The interannual variability that is present in atmospheric CO2 is largely attributed to the El Nin˜o/Southern Oscillation. Correlations between CO2 growth rates and the
Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) were first investigated over twenty years ago [Bacastow, 1976]. Since that time, the ENSO phenomenon has been studied extensively, both theoretically and experimentally. It is now understood that, as a component of the climate system, atmospheric CO2 responds to ENSO forcings. Analyses of CO2 growth rates show anomalously positive accumulation of CO2 following the initiation of ENSO warm events, as various components of the terrestrial biosphere respond to ENSO-induced temperature, precipitation, and insolation perturbations [Keeling et al., 1995].

The Keeling et al. paper is available here: http://hydrology.lsu.edu/courses/papers/Keeling_etal_Nature1995.pdf See, particularly, Figure 2.
Wheel, meet your latest re-inventor.

kim says:
June 9, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Do you mean ‘nowhere near the factor of three rise of CO2 concentration’ in the second to last paragraph before the Conclusion?
=============
You are exactly right. Thanks for catching that! Sorry for being so late responding.

John Finn says:
June 9, 2010 at 3:59 pm
“The only reason the ‘model’ appears to work is due to the fact that both CO2 and temperatures have been rising in the last few decades. If temperatures started to fall the model would break down.”
That could definitely be said of some reconstructions which share no fine details except for a superficial trend, e.g., comparisons of absolute CO2 with temperature anomaly. However, the level of fine correlation here is compelling.
Almost all of the objections I have read here rely on the ice core reconstructions for refutation. This is putting an awful lot of faith in an artifact which, by its very nature, cannot be validated against actual measurements in the distant past. I saw one citation of the isotopic ratio – but this, again, is based on a hypothesis which cannot be directly verified.
Some people seem to think the 0.58 degree offset is significant. But, in fact, this is merely an artifact of the baseline chosen for the temperature anomaly. All it means is that, with a proper baseline chosen, CO2 level is well represented as a scaled and low pass filtered version of temperature. The inverse of this relationship, temperature sensitivity to CO2 being represented by a high pass response, is a type of dynamic rarely observed in nature.

Xi Chin says:
June 9, 2010 at 3:37 pm
and
Les Johnson says:
June 9, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Thanks for your input. You are no doubt leading us in the right direction. There are a lot of folks posting here that understand parts of this vastly better than I do, and I am thrilled by the insights that have been shown. Feel free to work on this any way you like and carry concept forward! I just wanted to escape the apparently incorrect hypothesis that the temperature anomaly is linearly related to the CO2 concentration.

“Using two well accepted data sets, a simple model can be used to show that the rise in CO2 is a result of the temperature anomaly, not the other way around.”
——–
Sounds like a “chickens make eggs, but eggs don’t make chickens” argument.

Xi Chin says:
June 9, 2010 at 3:37 pm
“You need to use the backward differential only and make sure that you do not pollute the predictor with future information.”
He did it right to get a zero group delay, exp(j*w*T/2)-exp(-j*w*T/2) = 2*cos(w*T), i.e., the response is real. Do a backwards one, and the group delay is T/2.
BobN says:
June 9, 2010 at 2:58 pm
“Based on the amount of CO2 emitted from the burning of fossil fuels, the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations should actually greater than what has occurred. The oceans are absorbing CO2, not releasing it.”
What that proves is that we are dealing with a feedback system in which the sinks expand or contract with the sources after a particular lag time, regulating the overall level and decreasing the sensitivity, in the normal way feedback loops do. What changes the output level significantly in such a system is NOT increasing the input, because that is what the feedback reacts against, but changing the equilibrium position, which in this case is quite apparently directly sensitive to temperature.
“I wish you would use a little more discretion or prescreening before posting guest posts with what are clearly flawed analyses.”
Clearly, you are not familiar with feedback systems, which is about par for most AGW believers. It is so annoying when they are so smug in their ignorance.

>> BobN says:
>>June 9, 2010 at 2:58 pm
>>… The oceans are absorbing CO2, not releasing it.
This is incorrect. The oceans release about 20 times as much CO2 as man. They absorb a similar amount. Different areas of the ocean are absorbing and outgassing at different times of the year.

So I don’t understand why the derived anomaly only goes back to 1980. There are measured values much further back, and Beck has a graph going quite far back. It would be nice to see the derived anomaly for this.

While I’m fascinated with the discussion, and constantly learn more about analysing scientific reports just by watching you guys, I haven’t anywhere near the expertise to comment on the science or math.
But urban legends are a horse of a different kettle of fish. And I’m afraid Old Construction Worker has just passed along one of the classics. Snopes lists this one as going back at least to 1998 at which the foolish people were merely “a man,” “a woman,” “another man,” and so on (Trip Witless).
Snopes. It won’t help solve the debate on global warming, but it can sure help avoid spreading misinformation of other types.

Bart says:
“Leaving the harder mathematical stuff for others … If this analysis is correct, then there was almost certainly no MWP, and current warming is unprecedented.”
Translation: “I really don’t understand any of it, but I have absolute faith in the ice core extrapolations.”
1) No translation was needed, and your translation was pretty dumb. I said what I mean. I have a fairly good idea of what is being claimed, but recognise that there are others here more confident on what is actually being shown e.g. Zeke. But that wasn’t the core of what I was saying in any case.
2) What exactly are the ice cores allegedly “Extrapolating?”. They cover the entire period I am talking about (MWP till present). They may well be imperfect records of CO2, but I don’t see how they extrapolate anything.
3) Ice cores aside, I’m not aware of anything like studies of stomata etc. which put CO2 content at any period in the last 2000 years up around 350 – 400ppm (correct me if I’m wrong). Do you know of anyone indicating that CO2 levels were near current levels during the MWP?
4) If there is no good evidence that CO2 levels during the MWP were comparable to now, then one of two things is true. Either the MWP did not exist, or this model is wrong.
Faith doesn’t enter into it. My money is on there being a MWP. Obviously, if there is reasonable evidence that CO2 levels were comparably high during the MWP, then it would strengthen the case for this model.

Great article and one that restores my faith in the scientific community. There is also the factor of hysteresis to consider as the seasons change from warm to cold and vice versa. This would stymie attempts at an exact fit of temperature trend and anomaly trend.

[D. Cohen says:
June 9, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Your article makes a very good point, but in retrospect the same argument can be made based on the annual variation of the CO2 data. No one (that I know of) argues that the annual CO2 variation is due to anything but the annual temperature cycle, therefore we already know that — for the annual CO2 cycle — changes in temperature cause changes in CO2 concentration. From that data alone we should expect multiyear temperature changes (like El Nino events) also to cause changes in the CO2 concentration.]
The variation in co2 annualy is from the respiration of the plants on earth. During winter the plants do dormant and our co2 increases much faster. During summer plants are absorbing co2 bringing down the concentration temporarily.

I would think Lon would know that the 6 month variation is due to plant respiration and not temperature variation. The whole thing easily falls on its face. The temperatire lags co2 increases. We are a half a degree behind the co2 increase now.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-in_6_easy_steps/

Jeff Green says:
June 9, 2010 at 9:30 pm
“I would think Lon would know that the 6 month variation is due to plant respiration and not temperature variation.”
What does that have to do with anything? His differences are over 12 months.

Phil. says:
June 9, 2010 at 8:28 pm
“Total rubbish, the anthropogenic CO2 is added to the atmosphere at ~twice the rate of increase of the atmospheric CO2 so nature is a net sink of ~half the anthropogenic input!”
Complete garbage. Anthropogenic input is currently running at about 4% of natural input. The IPCC says so. Argue your “point”, whatever it is, with them.

….speaking of hockey sticks….
http://www.chicagotribune.com/

Willis Eschenbach says:
June 9, 2010 at 9:51 pm
But it’s much worse for this hypothesis. Why is the CO2 continuing to rise, if the temperature isn’t rising?
Willis,
Nice you see you here. : )
I think that the causation Lon appears to be showing is SST to the rate of change of atmospheric CO2 concentration in time. It is not with the levels of CO2 concentration.
John

Thanks, Willis for the comment. Don’t forget I was writing that the temperature anomaly is related to the rate of increase of CO2. No temperature anomaly increase means that the rate of increase is constant, which it seems to be.

And how does your model account for the changing carbon isotopic ratio (the Seuss effect); the decline atmospheric in O2 concentrations; that the ocean is undersaturated in CO2, so is absorbing not emitting CO2. Simple – it cannot.

The isotope ratio is not evidence for CO2 driving temperature and against temperature driving CO2. The isotope ratio reflects there are is some level of emission taking place from fossil fuels–not a disputed matter. That is completely independent of what determines the atmospheric concentration.
Saturation is irrelevant in this context. Read up on Henry’s law. There is a gas:dissolved-gas equilibrium based on the partial pressure and the dissolved concentration.

Lon Hocker says:
June 9, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Thanks, Willis for the comment. Don’t forget I was writing that the temperature anomaly is related to the rate of increase of CO2. No temperature anomaly increase means that the rate of increase is constant, which it seems to be.
Can we just look at that last statement and think about what it implies
No temperature anomaly increase means that the rate of increase is constant, which it seems to be.
Lon seems to be saying that if there was a plateau in temperatures for 5, 10, 15 years, say, we would still have a CONSTANT CO2 INCREASE each month. In fact even if we had negative anomlaies for 5,10, 15 years we would, according to the model, still have a monthly increase in CO2.
Lon
Can I ask you to use your model to calculate the CO2 level for month N where N= 240 (20 years) in the following case.
1. A Dalton-type minimum has occurred and temperatures have declined at the rate of 0.3 deg per decade (0.0025 deg per month)
2. Assume CO2 concentrations at month (N=0) are 390 ppm
3. Assume temp anomaly at Month(N=0) is +0.5 so that anomaly at Month(N=1) is 0.4975
Cheers

Espen says:
June 9, 2010 at 11:52 pm
Willis: Both of them run aground on the same reef – since 1959 the CO2 rise has been steady and monotonic, while the temperature has risen and fallen in fits and starts.
But if the idea presented in this article were right (personally I’m not convinced), this is not a valid argument, because, given the CO2->temperature formula presented above, CO2 will rise as long as the temperature anomaly is above -0.58. If the anomaly drops below that, the formula says that we should see CO2 levels dropping. I don’t think I want that to happen 😉
Quite. The model says that CO2 levels will continueto rise beyond their current level (390 ppm) even if tempratures drop by ~1 deg. According to the model, if temperature anomalies dropped to -0.58 for the next 20 years CO2 levels would stay at 390 ppm. It’s nonsense.
Lon’s used the difference (in CO2) as a function of the anomaly. If he’d also used the month to month anomaly difference then the model might have some merit.Unfortunately it wouldn’t have fitted the data because whe n the anomaly went down the calculated CO2 level would fall (e.g. 2007 to 2008).

The rise in atmospheric CO2 has been proven to be from fossil fuels due to increased amounts of the C12 isotope.

Lon, you seem to be contradicting yourself in the paragraph after Figure 3 when you say That it does not track the annual variations isn’t particularly surprising, since the ocean temperature anomaly is averaged over all the oceans, and the Mauna Loa observations are made at a single location.
Surely, the lack of annual variation in the model is because you are using -6 month and +6 months values which cancel out the annual variations of CO2 levels – or have I missed something?

I think I’d better clarify my position.
The model in Lon Hocker’s post may actually model observations reasonably well. However, it does not show that CO2 rise in temperature dependant. It simply shows that temperature can moderate (or amplify) the CO2 rise. This is something we knew anyway. The rate of rise is greater during El Nino than La Nina, for example. But the CO2 level never falls – it carries on rising.
The model tells us that CO2 will carry on rising as long as the temperature anomaly remains above -0.58 deg. If the model is correct, it implies that -0.58 is the point when temperature exactly balances the effect of human CO2 emissions, i.e. we will have some sort of equilibrium.
The model most certainly does not tell us that CO2 levels are dependant on temperature as it’s easy o show that even though temperatures fall (even by a lot) – CO2 levels continue to rise.
So , although I think the model is wrong anyway, it does demonstrate at least that there is a steady background increase in CO2 levels and that the short -term fluctuations (not the trend) around the underlying trend are driven by temperature.

Since I have been reading for some time, now seems like a good time to join the conversation. Lon Hocker has done an interesting piece of work.
But, as a retired research engineer, every statistian I ever worked with beat into me that “correlation does not imply causation.” Thus the headline is not really justified by the work. That said, you can’t have causation without correlation. So maybe he is on to something.
If I understand correctly, Lon Hocker is trying to say
delta(CO2)/delta(t) = f(SSTavg).
Where SSTavg is the average sea surface temp over the period delta(t)
and using Tn (the midpoint temp of the interval) as the average.
Therefore it is okay to use n-6 and n+6 for CO2. However using the midpoint temp for the average may not always be the best estimate for the average. Best to calculate it over delta(t).
However, those that advocate AGW are saying this:
T= f(CO2)
Which is not the same equation. Proving the former relationship does not disprove the latter.
It appears to me that Hocker has shown that short term changes in CO2 are probably caused by sea surface temperatures. I wonder if the ups and downs in CO2 from his eqation were summed over the last hundred years if it would give us the current CO2 level?

I have a question that the regulars her at WUWT certainly can answer.
Since the general opinion here is that the temperature rise is a byproduct of so-called “adjustments” to the instrumental record, how the CO2 level reacting to these adjustments? So am I to conclude from this article that the temperature is really rising?

How much confusion do we get by ignoring known facts–such as the rate of fossil fuel combustion and the direct relationship between CO2 and photosynthesis? If we don’t understand that the basic monotonous upward trend in atmospheric CO2 is due to fossil fuel consumption, it’s difficult to have a discussion about newer and more controversial topics related to climate. Perhaps small scale fluctuations in CO2 can be related to ENSO etc, but the overall trend is due to burning fossil fuels and the main annual signal is due to seasonal changes in photosynthesis.

90% of the battle in this type of analysis is getting the correct data in the correct format from the raw data files. I am struggling to acheive this from the data files linked to.
Could somebody please post a table with three columns of data:
column 1: Date
column 2: Temperature anomaly measured on Date
column 3: Co2 concentration measured on Date

ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS:
The word “vegetation” has only been used 4 times above. This thread is a disaster.

I note that most of the insightful comments in this thread are critical but, while I admit I have not thought this through in detail I wonder if we don’t dismiss it too quickly. Remember that what is being plotted is the first derivative of CO2 concentration. The fact that there is very little lag is in no way incompatible with a time constant of 600 to 800 years for ocean warming or with a 600 to 800 year lag between CO2 and temperature. If the lag is a single time constant then what it does is simply to change the gain of the first derivative which is the 0.22 factor in this article. I note that the 0.22 factor was calculated by assuming a long time constant for ocean heating.
With regard to the questionable temperature record, I note this uses the satellite record not the land based record and I thought the satellite record was generally accepted as reliable.
Willis’s comment that this theory is shot down by the fact that the temperature since 1998 has not risen while CO2 has is also not as damming as it seems. Remember the article plots the derivative of CO2 versus temperature, if the temperature remains static the apparent correlation implies the derivative should also remain static but that does not mean the derivative is zero. It simply means the rate of change of CO2 is constant so it could well be continuing to rise.
I must admit the implications of what is shown seem to be almost too simplistic to be true but then I have seen situations where a breakthough seems too obvious and simplistic to possibly be true, yet is. To me two things seem to be significant. Firstly that the tracking seems to hold for all but about 1 of the dozen or so peaks and troughs over a period of 50 years (back to 1958) (the one where the tracking does not hold could well be significant I admit). The number of peaks and troughs for which the correlation holds strikes me as more significant than the time period. Its easy to show correlation over a long period where both traces show a simple rising or falling trend but to track multiple complex rises and falls as well as this seems to strikes me as significant, it’s a lot for it to be just co-incidental. If its not coincidental then it is reasonable to ask what causes the correlation. I don’t find it acceptable to say its far fetched so it can be dismissed. Real world obervations require an explanation. If the correlation is not direct eg: due to plant growth rates, is this significant in itself? There are precendents where entire theories have been disproven from a single tiny observational anomaly. It may be irrelevant but I think it deserves a bit more thought before being dismissed.

Steve from Rockwood says:

Joel, I have a problem with the first Figure in Willis’ thread. CO2 levels stay constant for almost 1,000 years and then suddenly shoot up in 1850? No way. If you believe in a correlation between temperature and CO2 you have to agree that graph doesn’t make sense.

What Hocker’s fit shows is that a temperature change of 0.5 C in a year produces about a 1.3 ppm change in CO2 in the atmosphere. Such CO2 fluctuations are too small to see in the ice core records of CO2. Hocker wants to believe that such a temperature change would change the differential rate between CO2 absorption and outgassing forever. (So, if you initially have the CO2 at a constant rate and then raise it by 0.5 C and keep it constant at the new level, the CO2 levels just keep rising by 1.3 ppm per year.) However, there is no reason to believe that this is the case and every reason to believe that the temperature change just causes a short term effect. (In fact, the ice core data flatly contradicts his notion.)

Re: Basil
I think you’ll find that HadSST has simply fallen out-of-phase with interannual LOD, GLAAM, PWP, & SOI a few times during the bounces since the big El Nino (& bear in mind the leverage of big events in cross-correlation). It’s just some spatiotemporal turbulence. It might be fruitful to investigate the seasonality by geographic location. Also, bear in mind the lack of stratospheric eruptions in recent years.

Well I downloaded that data in the end.
Define:
Co2(n) = Co2 at month n
T(n) = Temperature anomaly at month n
x = Co2(n) – Co2(n-12) / Co2(n-12) = % annual change in Co2
y = T(n+1) = next month’s temperature anomaly
x is alway positive and lies between 0.1% to 1.1%. x generally increases as the years roll by, i.e. the distribution of x shifts with time. y increases as the years roll by too. Both variables are not stationary, their probability density shits gradually with time.
A simple x-y plot shows that the next month’s temperature anomaly was predictable (to some extent) by knowing the history of Co2. In general, when there was a large increase in Co2, the temperature anomaly in the next month would be higher. When the Co2 increase was smaller (closer to 0.1%), the temperature anomaly for the next month was generally smaller or negative.
If the data is split into two periods the results are qualitiatively similar apart from shifts along both axes because both variables have generally higher values in the later period. Additionally, the later period has a higher response.
Conclusion: If this month’s co2 is high relative to 12 months ago (i.e. closer to 1.1% than to 0.1%), then this is an indication that the temperature anomaly next month is more likely be higher than usual compared to lower than usual, and vice versa.
That does not mean that Co2 causes temperature changes though. It just means that co2 is an indicator which can indicate what next months temperature might be. For, coincident with when there was a large increase in co2, during the period n-12 to n, the mean temperature anomaly happened (in general) to be higher. And when there was a smaller increase in Co2, there had also been a lower temperature anomaly over that previous 12 months.
It so happens too that the planet is a heat capacitor, so when there has been a period of warmth for 12 months we can expect the next month to be warmer than usual. I.e. there is a high autocorrelation in the temperature.
I.e. an even better predictor of the temperature anomaly next month, is the temperature over the previous 12 months.
Causation is more difficult than correlation.
The thing is though, when we look at “temperature anomalies” and “temperature changes”, the numbers we are examaning are absolutely tiny. I mean, 1 degree here or there. Are you kidding me? I am supposed to worry about 1 degree celcius here or there? Compared to natural changes that we know occurred, the numbers are tiny. Compared to the diurnal changes, the numbers are tiny. Compared to the seasonal changes the numbers are tiny. Compared to the glacial cycles, the numbers are tiny. It is a red herring really, to worry about it.
Additionally, high Co2 is good for life on the planet. We need more Co2 to support our increasing population’s food needs. Milder winters would also be helpful here. So again, I don’t know why there would be any fuss about either a Co2 increase or a temperature increase. They are both positive things. Which is just as well since all of the whiners and whingers keep saying that both of them seem to be going up a bit! Good. I hope they both do. It is good for humanity. It is good for life.

Re: Basil
The lack of understanding of “interannual” in this thread is so far beyond a pure disgrace that I didn’t even bother commenting.
We agree on both counts. Indeed, my choice of the words “disaster” & “absolutely hilarious” stemmed from the abysmal “interannual” naivety.
IF regulars like you, I, & a few others did not speak up here and call a spade a spade, WUWT would suffer in reputation simply for running this hopeless article.

BQuartero
One of the reasons why reefs building organisms thrive in the tropics is because the chemistry of the tropics is suitable for building reefs – due to the lower CO2 solubility at higher temperatures. People are hysterical over the idea that pH might drop 0.01, when in fact temperature has a much stronger effect on solubility.

Dave Springer says:
June 9, 2010 at 4:48 pm
“We’re at the mercy of the rate of mixing between the warm surface layer (including the atmosphere) and the deep ocean. A little less mixing and we get warmer. A little more mixing and we get colder. Too much mixing and (I suspect) we exit our ~20,000 year interglacial period and the average atmospheric temperature becomes that of the deep ocean for the next 100,000 years or so. The deep ocean temp below the thermocline represents the average global temperature over timeframes long enough to ecompass a full glacial/interglacial cycle. There’s nothing else that can explain why the deep ocean is so cold.”
Agreed! This will also cause a big change to CO2 levels as the colder surface water has the capacity to absorb more CO2. It would be useful to understand more about what climatic conditions effect the ongoing mixing rate, or if change could be triggered by a black swan event, such as a deep ocean super-volcano erupting.

Re: Basil
and further to this
Also: CO2′ has been more tightly coupled with NAM (AO & NAO) since the big El Nino. (This dovetails with some of Bob Tisdale’s observations.)

Paul Vaughan says:
June 10, 2010 at 8:42 am
‘Also: CO2′ has been more tightly coupled with NAM (AO & NAO) since the big El Nino. (This dovetails with some of Bob Tisdale’s observations.)’
You guys are wearing blinders. What happens in the small also happens in the large. One of the most egregious errors introduced by the AGW crowd is when they arbitrarily decouple dynamic systems, creating discontinuous models of systems which must be continuously variable to have an internally consistent physical basis.

Niels A Nielsen says:
June 10, 2010 at 8:20 am
tallbloke says:
June 10, 2010 at 5:46 am
>>Since you believe the increase in airbourne co2 is due to human emissions, you have a similar question to answer.
>>Why is the CO2 continuing to rise, if the human emissions are falling?
That’s simple: Because human emissions cause airborne CO2 to rise.
I cannot understand… Why the concern on increases of CO2? It’s good for life. Take this assertion from a biologist who exhales ca. 88 g of carbon dioxide 11 times each minute.