Evidence that Man's CO2 Increase is Not Unusual?

Question

Here's our rate of CO2 and Methane (CH4) releases (slide 13):

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/illwesleyan_20080219.pdf

The climate change in the Cenozoic Era was due to CO2 forcing, and the rate of change was an increase of CO2 of .0001 ppm/year. Man's rate of change is 2ppm/year (same presentation, slide 18):

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/illwesleyan_20080219.pdf

The chief mechanisms of Pleistocene climate change are greenhouse gases & ice sheet area, as feedbacks (slide 14), with a weak instigator of orbital change.

So climate on long time scales appears to be very sensitive to even small forcings, and current human-made forcings dwarf natural forcings that caused glacial-interglacial climate change (man's current CO2 change is 20,000X faster than the natural Cenozoic one for example).

Is there any contrary science that points to this rate of change in the past, or are we making ourselves the subjects of an extreme and highly unusual global experiment?

Answer 1

J.S

  Have you taken into account the damage done in the oceans for example the Atlantic and Pacific Gyres? After seeing them first hand and the lack of algae and seaweed, it is enough to tear your soul out. The gyre areas where once some of our best CO2 filtration sites, along with the deforestation of the rain forests to produce bio fuel and the CO2 production related, Man has had a larger impact on the CO2 cycle by filling the gyres with plastic.

   I have always wondered why the Eco crowd has neglected these areas?  Just because they are out of sight and out of mind to most of them, does not mean that they should be forgotten.

  Don’t forget that most of the CO2 absorbed in the Ocean is precipitated into the precursor of limestone at depths greater than 5K FM. Most of the gyres are located in these areas.

  Please help and get the word out.

Joe

  Shapeshi

  If you have not seen the Almost complete lack of life in these areas then you better wake up! Plankton cannot be supported in the same density in the gyre area when that area  is filled with plastic to depth of 300ft. this is not a lot of big chunks. most of the material is about the size of the chads that kept Global Gore out of office!

  CO2 emmissions in my view are still a issue that is out. With the discovery of the the fact that Keeling was in charge of the calibration gas and possible contamination that skewed data as well as some other things I Am researching I am just looking at my Big two "Rain forests and the Bio Fuel  craze" and the Gyre Problem right now. More later after I get back from CA

Answer 2

In a previous question I asked a similar thing.  It seems that our current CO2 increase is at least 20-times as fast as any time in the past 20,000 years.  So clearly it's not even close to the realm of a natural increase rate.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Answer 3

By definition our impact on the atmospheric CO2 concentration is unusual.  This is the first time there's been a long-term temperature-independent source of CO2 which is throwing the natural carbon cycle out of balance.  

We are indeed performing an experiment on the global climate, and one which scientists are predicting will eventually cause catastrophic climate change.

Answer 4

It goes in cycles. It is very normal.

http://seoblackhat.com/images/co2-vs-tem...

People don't seem to get that we only have concrete evidence from the past 200 years or so.  THE EARTH IS BILLIONS OF YEARS OLD. You cannot make conclusions based on a few hundred years.

Answer 5

Um, JS those events happened an on uninterrupted basis for tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of years.   We've been using coal and oil for 200 years and market forces will force us to switch to alternatives for most uses within 75 years.

And it's not an "experiment" - there's been far more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is today.    The molecules don't know why they're there!    The properties of a material don't change as a function of who put them in the mix that they're in!

Edit: Ken, when you move the debate from timeframes of hundreds of millions of years to the last 20,000 you go back to the issue of it having been warmer for other multi-century periods within those 20,000 years despite CO2 levels having been lower.

Besides - I'm sure CO2 levels are not increasing faster than they did at the end of the last Ice Age.

Answer 6

You cant compare the climate of 50 million years ago to now.  The continent placement can play a huge roll in the global climate.  Ocean currents and weather pattens are not able to be determined, and there is no way to accurately tell the weather from that time.

That pdf file was very misleading in many ways, and like most global warming supporting papers, it started off with an agenda.  They didnt start with an objective view, its not science.  It claims we are making a new planet because we are changing the atmosphere, do they not realize how much the placement of the continents influences the climate?  There is no way to compare the two because of this.  

The graph shows we are .6*C above normal, within the margin of error.

And I hate how people claim " the last ice age was 20k years ago", that is SO misleading.  Even the graphs in this PDF show the ice ages are long periods, lasting anywhere from 60,000 years to 120,000 years.  The last one PEAKED 20,000 years ago, but the long decline in temperatures lasted 80,000 years!  The interglacials are very short periods of optimal temperatures (for us atleast).  The Vostok charts are actually quite frightening, they show we are about to plunge deep into an ice age.  I dont know where people get " we have 20,000 years until the next one", because the charts make it clear, it could be any century now that we begin the plunge, just look at the chart on SLIDE 9.  Its great how jim hansen points out the last ice age for everyone, even though everyone can see its clear it lasted a lot longer than just the area he points at with the arrow.

Slide 11 is interesting, it doesnt even acknowledge the existence of the milankovitch cycles, and their effect on the climate during ice ages.  It looks like he just assumes there is a constant level of output from the sun, but everyone knows what the milankovitch cycles do, we get 23% less output from the sun when the earth is at its farthest points from the sun, does jim hansen know about this, and have a way to add it into his calculations?

Slide 14 claims that variability in orbit is a very weak forcing, HAHAHHAHAHAHA.  That is FAR from what other scientists think.  As I stated already, the difference in solar irradiance between the point of lowest eccentricity and highest eccentricity is 23%, a large difference in irradience.

Also on slide 14, it states the chief mechanisms during the pleistocene are GHG, and ice sheets, a feedback.  What about cloud cover at the equator?  More clouds at the equator are probably responsible for reflecting more solar energy than ice sheets at high latitudes where the suns rays arent focused.  What about dust in the atmosphere as a feedback?  They leave so many things out, its ridiculous!  What about the formation of the panama land bridge 4.5 million years ago(during the pliocene) as a chief climate mechanism during the pleistocene?  A large disruption of the ocean currents didnt do anything?  Because to me, it seems to be what started the regular cycles of ice ages.  Before that time, there was only ice in antarctica according to the charts on slide 15.

Apparently climate isnt that sensitive because we are 150 ppm "above normal co2 levels" and things dont seem very different.  The climate doesnt seem to resemble the climate of millions of years ago that your PDF claims we have made our world into.

I'll bet you some money that co2 will continue to rise above 400ppm, and the ice will remain in place.

joesisbo... co2 is filtered from the air in the oceans by plankton and other small organisms that die and sink to the bottom, not sea weed and algae.  We havent disrupted the process of limestone deposition.