Has atmospheric CO2 decreased? A different way to look at CO2 changes

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/2008/02/06/has-atmospheric-co2-decreased-a-different-way-to-look-at-co2-changes/ ^ | William M Briggs

[mattstat]

Joe Daleo, the number one guy over at Icecap.us, recently sent me CO2 data from Beck (2007) and asked me what I made of it. Now, this data has been poured over by the great and small, so should we expect any revelations along the lines of “Has CO2 actually decreased?” Well…see below. I don’t often see this data pictured in one particular way that I find instructive, so I wanted to show it to you.

You’re probably used to seeing CO2 through time in plots very much like this cartoon.

CO2 through time

The black line is the actual CO2 data, the two background colors representing, before 1958, estimates of CO2 based on ice cores, and after that on measurements from Mauna Loa. The green line is a suitably normalized estimate of the human population. Both increase at what looks like roughly the same rate. Right?...

[Always Right]

It’s the same lie that has been used for centuries for fear-mongering, exponential growth. Except the eco-whacko’s even took it a step further. In mathematical terms exponential growth means you have a constant growth rate. The eco-whaco’s were not happy with the constant growth for their scare tactics, so they came up with accelerated growth theory so they could really scare people. The truth is, CO2 growth is de-accelerating which makes all their models complete and utter bullshippy.

[mattstat]

Actually, Always Right, given the Mauna Loa data is perfectly accurate, it does show that CO2 growth rates have accelerated and have not decelerated though 2007. Of course this is not a prediction of what will happen into the future.

I have no idea how accurate the Mauna Loa data is, but it’s probably not terrible.

Human population growth has decelerated.

[steelyourfaith]

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[larryjohnson]

key word:uncertainty

[mattstat]

Amen to that, Larry.