New evidence suggests increased CO2 follows, not causes, global warming.

Nature ^ | 3/14/03 | Tom Clarke

[beavus]

Carbon dioxide certainly warms our planet, but it might not turn on the heat, reveals a new analysis of ancient Antarctic ice.

[need_a_screen_name]

Thanks, but why didn't you post the full article here so it would archived for further use? :)

[staytrue]

Nor does it mean that carbon dioxide is any less important as a greenhouse gas. Like many researchers before, Jouzel's team argues that a subtle shift in the Earth's orbit around the Sun triggered a minute amount of warming. "But you need carbon dioxide to amplify the effect," Jouzel says

This article supports the eco nazis. If true, it is incredibly bad news and means that co2 levels need to be reduced now. What it means is that when the earth begins to warm, co2 rises, which causes more warming, which causes even more co2 and so on.

Of course, the article does not claim this is true, it only says there is some evidence supporting this possiblity. However, it is important for the conservative community to keep an open mind on this issue and not disagree with the eco nazis just to disagree with them. Even a blind squirrel will occassionally find an acorn.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Bubbles prompt climate-change rethink

Argon traces hint that carbon dioxide did not lead life out of the freezer, but followed.

14 March 2003
TOM CLARKE

Carbon dioxide certainly warms our planet, but it might not turn on the heat, reveals a new analysis of ancient Antarctic ice.

"Our data suggest that the warming came first, then carbon dioxide increased," says Jean Jouzel of the Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute in Gif-sur-Yvette, France1. Something else — probably extraterrestrial — got the warming going, his team concludes.

Aside from water vapour, carbon dioxide is the major warming influence on our planet. But it's hard to work out which comes first: a rise in carbon dioxide levels or a slight warming. Why? Because even a slight temperature hike increases atmospheric carbon dioxide, through its effects on forests and oceans.

Pioneering a new technique, Jouzel's team has probed air bubbles trapped in 240,000- year-old ice laid down as snow when the Earth was warming up at the end of a massive ice age.

They compared the ratio of two forms of the atmospheric gas argon in the bubbles, and looked at their carbon dioxide content. The argon ratio changes relative to the temperature of the air at the time it was trapped, the team argues.

They saw a temperature rise, followed by greater warming caused by rising carbon dioxide levels, that tallied well with evidence from the surrounding ice and other climate records. "We were surprised to find that these indicators agreed," says Jouzel.

Other researchers are also surprised. Other ice records had already pointed to warming as a trigger for further warming. However, vagaries in the rate at which ice is deposited in different parts of the Antarctic makes firm conclusions about the actual age of bubbles difficult to draw, says glaciologist Martin Siegert of the University of Bristol, UK.

"Making sense of individual ice records is hard enough, let alone getting them to agree with others," he says. If they are right, however, Jouzel's team has found good evidence for heat, not gas, beginning the end of an ice age.

It doesn't change our understanding of today's global warming, Siegert says — carbon dioxide levels are already increasing, so what got it started is somewhat irrelevant.

Nor does it mean that carbon dioxide is any less important as a greenhouse gas. Like many researchers before, Jouzel's team argues that a subtle shift in the Earth's orbit around the Sun triggered a minute amount of warming. "But you need carbon dioxide to amplify the effect," Jouzel says.

It could, however, be important for the future. Climate models, such as those used to forecast change, are based on past events, so pinning down what went on improves their predictive power. Jouzel's team is now checking more recent records to see what preceded other ice ages.


References
Caillon, N. et al. Timing of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature changes across termination III. Science, 299, 1728 - 1731, (2002). |

[wayoverontheright]

This article supports the eco nazis. If true, it is incredibly bad news and means that co2 levels need to be reduced now. What it means is that when the earth begins to warm, co2 rises, which causes more warming, which causes even more co2 and so on.

I agree with your post, but doesn't warming create more plant life, therefore increasing the demand for CO2? This planet balances everything else perfectly, why not that?

[StACase]

To claim that the increase in CO2 concentration over the last century is somehow NOT associated with human activity is silly.

Of course we humans contribute to it. It's our hall mark. In the general scheme of things, we burn things. It's what we do! That there are several billion of us doing it has an effect on the things.

The question is, can we or should we, do anything about it. Banning SUVs is just as silly as claiming humans are not responsible for the increase.

If science actually and reliably predicts that sea level is going to rise, then we should start constructing dykes. Attempting to reduce the habit of burning things enjoyed by several billion people is ridiculous!

[beavus]

This article supports the eco nazis.

Hardly. The current eco-nazi conventional wisdom is that increasing atmospheric CO2 heats up the globe AND man caused increasing atmospheric CO2. This new data, though not contradicting the view that incr CO2 heats up the globe, does suggest that mankind had no part in causing it.

It leaves open the "we should do something about it" argument, but may remove mankind's culpability in causing it.

The findings also are more consistent with the older view that changes in earth's orbit or solar cycles are the likely culprit.

[07055]

The findings also are more consistent with the older view that changes in earth's orbit or solar cycles are the likely culprit.

What radical theories---that the sun causes the Earth to become warmer. Who'd a thunk it?

[beavus]

To claim that the increase in CO2 concentration over the last century is somehow NOT associated with human activity is silly.

"Silly" is a an exaggeration in light of all the natural sources of CO2 increase, the fact that we are currently near the peak of a temperature cycle, and the argon data described in this study. It's relevence drops further when looking at the unconvincing temperature data.

However I agree that atmospheric CO2 data from multiple ice core samples consistently showing the highest level in 400,000 years is suspiciously correlated with the explosion of industrial growth. It may be that human activity has added significantly to naturally elevated CO2 levels.

[staytrue]

You are arguing for the equilibrium model which is how most things (thank god) works. This article is pointing to a chaotic model, where a small warming caused by changes in the earth's orbit, triggers an even greater warming caused by increased co2.

Equilibrium model says as the price of something goes up, people will buy less of it. The chaotic model suggests, that as the price goes up, people buy more of it. Most of the time, equilibrium rules, but in stock market bubbles, chaos rules. In equilibrium, if a stock goes up, people stop buying and start selling (buy low and sell high). In chaos, people buy because it is going up and sell because it is going down. Buying begets more buying and selling begets more selling.

In this case, a chaotic theory might work like this. A slight warming causes ocean temps to rise, forcing the disolved co2 out, which causes more warming, which forces more disolved co2 out of the water, and so on.

[Free the USA]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[Fractal Trader]

Chaotic models do not at all differ in their long-term equilibrium properties. It is how you get to the equilibrium that differs.

For example, the three body problem in gravity is non-determnistic. Newton was quite frustrated by this discovery. However, three bodies in motion do follow predictable paths. These have always been predictable going back to the time of the ancients. Otherwise, we could never predict, say, solar eclipses.

[staytrue]

I like your screen name, we must chat sometime about trading.

Anyway, in physical processes that do not involve free will of humans, I suspect you are correct that in the long run, equilibrium process prevails. For example, an avalanche is a chaotic process, while slowly sliding down the mountain is equilibrium. In both cases, the snow gets to the bottom.

But rapid climate change could be devastating to the humans as opposed to gradual change. A gradual warming can be handled, a quick global warming could be catastrophic. In both cases, you get to the same place, but a chaotic change would be a difficult thing to handle.

In chaotic systems that involve human free will, chaos and equilibrium do not always get to the same end result. A financial panic can destroy a lot of basically sound companies and institutions which never come back to where they would have been under equilibrium conditions.

[TheDon]

Of course, statists have an uncanny knack for accepting as truth, the exact opposite of the truth.

[Fractal Trader]

Thanks for you interest. I don't really apply much other than a heuristic fractal model to my trading. I am very much a believer in Graham and Dodd value investing, with an added cowboy streak in terms of bets involving long term trends and indexes.

You have to realize that the Academy's prime mission in the post World War II era has been to gain funding for its labs. The easiest way to do this is to create scare tactics to bring in research dollars.

In the 70s and 80s, we were supposed to be on the verge of global cooling, and now global warming is the call. My favorite is new, post hoc theories which say that global warming theories predict exactly that we should have had such a long, cold, and snow -laden winter. Of course, it fits the facts!

I don't believe in financial panics. I believe that the market sometimes has major changes which can be explained by an understanding of the fractal nature of the world around us. I refer to these as the "Noah Effect," after the deluge. I also believe that long term trends, such as bull and bear markets that are part of the underlying speculative processes under what is known as "Fractional Brownian Motion," which is also labled as persistency, 1/f noise, and the "Joseph Effect", after biblical passages.

Please feel free to Freep Mail me if you would like a further discussion.

[snooker]

<<< What radical theories---that the sun causes the Earth to become warmer. Who'd a thunk it?

Hey those are old theories. You gotta move to the current thinking. Humans do it. So that must mean if it gets too warm humans just push the planet to a slightly further orbit from the sun. Problem solved.

But maybe not, it was really cold this winter, so maybe we want to go closer to the sun. or ... well whatever.

I prefer to belive man has little to do with cosmic forces like so called global warming.

snooker

[StopGlobalWhining]

If atmospheric CO2 increases follow warming periods, then what triggered the warming that followed the Little Ice Age?

The period from 1645 - 1715 is generally regarded as the peak of the global cold spell that gripped earth from around 1250 to 1850, and it was the time of what's known as the Maunder Minimum, a 70 year period where very few sunspots were observed. Clearly, something different was going on with the sun during that time.

Is it possible that after 80 years of relative inactivity, the sun began a renewed period of activity in which coronal ejections slammed into earth's atmosphere causing little understood atmospheric reactions, possibly resulting in increased CO2 production? Could a change in solar neutrino flux have contributed to reactions that enhanced this CO2 production?

Whether this is the case or not, we must presume it is. We must act now, before it's too late. We can't take the risk by waiting any longer.

Surely a nation that has the technological prowess to send a man to the moon can come up with a Manhattan project like effort to re-engineer solar output to maximize the benefits of all peoples of earth.

This is a perfect project to assign to the United Nations. Charge them to come up with the plan to fix the sun. Coax algore out of retirement and put him in charge. Let him hire Tim Wirth and Steve Schneider to add credibility to the project.

[beavus]

Uhhh...okay.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 3/16/2003.

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[steelyourfaith]

Thanx for the ping SunkenCiv !

From 2003, three years before Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" documentary with the famous segment where Albert graphs global temps vs CO₂ over time showing a direct relationship, but missing the essential fact that CO₂ follows, rather than leads, temperature. Poor Albert ... had he just seen this article he just might have gotten a clue.

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !