Posted on 12/02/2007 5:53:04 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
By Helen Briggs
It is a scientific icon, which belongs, some claim, alongside E=mc2 and the double helix. Its name - the Keeling Curve - may be scarcely known outside scientific circles, but the jagged upward slope showing rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere has become one of the most famous graphs in science, and a potent symbol of our times. It was 50 years ago that a young American scientist, Charles David Keeling, began tracking CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere at two of the world's last wildernesses - the South Pole and the summit of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii.
His very precise measurements produced a remarkable data set, which first sounded alarm bells over the build-up of the gas in the atmosphere, and eventually led to the tracking of greenhouse gases worldwide. The curve set the scene for the debate over climate change, and policies, sometimes controversial, that address the human contribution to the greenhouse effect.
Without this curve, and Professor Keeling's tireless work, there is no question that our understanding and acceptance of human-induced global warming would be 10-20 years less advanced than it is today
"It wasn't until Keeling came along and started measuring CO2 that we got the evidence that CO2 was increasing from human activities," says Professor Andrew Watkinson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK. "The graph is iconic from a climate perspective." Dr Alistair Manning of the UK Met Office agrees. "It was the first real indication that CO2 levels were rising," he says. "That therefore started scientists thinking about the impact such a change would have on the climate."
'Tireless work' Back in the 1950s, when Keeling began his experiments, no-one knew whether the CO2 released from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil/petroleum and natural gas) would end up in the atmosphere or be fully absorbed by oceans and forests.
"The goal behind starting the measurements was to see if it was possible to track what at that time was only a suspicion: that atmospheric CO2 levels might be increasing owing to the burning of fossil fuels," explains biogeochemist Dr Andrew Manning, also from the UEA, who worked with Professor Keeling in the 1990s. "To do this, a location was needed very far removed from the contamination and pollution of local emissions from cities; therefore Mauna Loa, high on a volcano in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was chosen. "Without this curve, and Professor Keeling's tireless work, there is no question that our understanding and acceptance of human-induced global warming would be 10-20 years less advanced than it is today," adds Dr Manning. Sleepless nights
Professor Keeling discovered that carbon dioxide was rising continuously and that there were annual fluctuations in carbon in the atmosphere (the little squiggles on the line), caused by seasonal variations in plant growth and decay. When he started his measurements in 1958, CO2 levels were around 315 ppmv (parts per million by volume - that is 315 molecules of CO2 for every one million molecules in the air); by the year 2005 they had risen to about 378 ppmv. Yet despite the importance we place on climate change research today, Professor Keeling, known as Dave to friends and colleagues, struggled to secure funding for his monitoring efforts.
"Dave Keeling suffered many sleepless nights, even as late as in the 1990s, being forced again and again to justify continued funding of his programme," recalls Dr Manning. "The fact that we are celebrating 50 years now is due purely to his incredible perseverance, courage and optimism." He says the technical, analytical and logistical challenges of the work are enormous. "To measure such tiny changes in the composition of the air, high on a remote mountain top in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is extremely challenging even today in the 21st Century," he explains.
"That Dave Keeling was able to successfully begin and continue such highly demanding measurements in the 1950s is a tribute to his brilliance." Detailed monitoring Today, carbon dioxide levels are sampled weekly at about 100 sites around the world. Flasks filled with air are taken to a laboratory, where they are analysed for carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases and pollutants. Aircraft collect similar samples at higher altitude, while space-borne sensors detect some gases remotely throughout the atmosphere.
"Without the fifty-year carbon dioxide record, we wouldn't understand the cause of the climate change we are observing today," says James Butler, deputy director of The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) Earth System Research Laboratory. "The carbon dioxide record has allowed us to connect the dots between increasing fossil fuel emissions and a warmer world."
Charles Keeling died in 2005, aged 77. He continued his research into carbon dioxide at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, US, until his final day. By then he had authored nearly 100 research articles and had received the National Medal of Science - the US's highest award for lifetime achievement in scientific research. His son, Professor Ralph Keeling, also a geochemist at Scripps, continues his work. TIMELINE: carbon monitoring 1957: Charles David Keeling starts work monitoring CO2 at the South Pole and Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii 1958: Keeling starts first direct continuous atmospheric measurements of CO2 Early 1970s: Noaa, the US federal agency, starts monitoring CO2 worldwide
1995-2003: Noaa's Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) at Boulder, Colorado, develops and maintains the world's standard references for CO2 and other greenhouse gases
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ALL The while ignoring the fact that all mammals exhale CO2 when they breathe. How clever Ethyl! Way to go!
LOL!!!
'zactly
The current average global temperature is around 17 degrees, C, right?
your link is bad. Can you fix it?
Seems dust leads both the temp and CO2.
The nore dust, the less CO2 and the lower the temp.
Should we add more dust in the wind
“Though Mauna Loa is an active volcano, Keeling and collaborators made measurements on the incoming ocean breeze and above the thermal inversion layer to prevent local contamination. In addition, measurements at many other isolated sites have confirmed the long-term trend, though no sites have a record as long as Mauna Loa.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve
There is little room for doubt about this fact. There are multiple types of data, and analyses of such data, that indicate it is an accurate statement.
Volcanoes don't product that much CO2, and degassing events that affect the ongoing monitoring are easily diagnosed based on meteorological factors and the actual record of the event.
I think there is a huge amount of doubt about that statement!
Proof that the rise is not due to man? No.
Reasonable doubt? You bet.
Good article: Marxism at the core of global warming movement:
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071202/COLUMNIST0130/712020382/1007/OPINION
The first one, from 1996, dates back to the heyday of Usenet, and contains an itemized list of various types of evidence. I have used some of these points in different FR discussions.
Why does atmospheric CO2 rise ?
How do we know that recent CO2 increases are due to human activities?
How Do We Know that the Atmospheric Build-up of Greenhouse Gases Is Due to Human Activity?
Ice Bubbles Reveal Biggest Rise in CO2 for 800,000 Years
Reasonable doubt? You bet.
Maybe O.J. didn't murder Nicole and Ronald Goldman, either.
Actually one of the biggest problems for the AGW proponents is the rise in CO2 is too linear
As you can see, The rise has been steady at about +1.5 ppmv per year (15 ppmv per decade)
However, if you look at the world's CO2 output
the emissions have of course been increasing
So the question is why is the rise in CO2 levels per year staying linear? As emissions increased you should see the rate of the increase (the Slope) in CO2 levels per year in the atmosphere also increase.
For example, if pumping out 4000 million tons of CO2 1970 caused the rise of 1.5 ppmv atmospheric CO2, then you would expect that in the year 2000 when we pumped out 7000 million tons of CO2, the atmospheric level should have rose about 26 ppmv that year. But they didn't, it's been holding steady at +1.5ppmv
Here are the actual numbers on the change per year
From Baring Head in New Zealand where the results are nearly the same as Manua Kea they have a nice plot
as you can see there just isn't any trend or correlation between human emissions and rise in CO2. If humans were responsible, the trend would be every year having a bigger rise than the previous one, but instead the rise goes up & down randomly with no tread at all
The reason is obvious, 4000 million tons or 7000 million tons put out by man are both insignificant compared to natural emissions and the rise in CO2 has to be coming from somewhere else. Even 7000 million tons is barely a blip on the seasonal differences.
What amazing is that the spring-summer and fall dips in CO2 from plant growth over the summer are so visible: Yes, CO2 is increasing.
Now, where have they actually showed that the 8 billion tons of carbon (25-odd billion tons of CO2) are accounting for the minor change in CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere each year?
And, in fact, the evidence gets less each year that increased CO2 is affecting temperate.
The summary of several different methods for accounting for natural and anthropogenic fluxes is shown below. (Methods differ for measuring fluxes on land and in the ocean, for example.) There are other versions of this type of diagram, from various sources and with minor alterations of the numbers. In essence, natural sources and sinks operating alone would add up to a net sink. So the reason for the increase is human activities. Evaluation of insignificance requires non-naive understanding of the interaction of dynamically-linked parameters.
The diagram below is half-size; if you really need to see it full-size, click on it.
"The research indicates that 2005 saw one of the largest increases on record - a rise of 2.6ppm."
7000/4000 x 1.5 = 2.6
You may have dropped a decimal point.
As you can see, The rise has been steady at about +1.5 ppmv per year.
Apparently this has changed recently.
"The chief carbon dioxide analyst for NOAA says the latest data confirms a worrying trend that recent years have, on average, recorded double the rate of increase from just 30 years ago."
I started to make a snide remark, but stopped. The WG1 IPCC report is all about that evidence. It is, to phrase it legally, a cumulative body of evidence.
What type of data or evidential argument would influence you to accept that significantly changing the radiative adsorption/transmission properties of the atmosphere would likely affect the temperature at the surface of the Earth? Because that in essence is what is occurring. Increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere must alter the radiative absorption/transmission properties of the atmosphere.
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