Where is the proof that CO2 causes tempuature increase?

Question

Mad made global warming is supposed to be caused by CO2 increases. But I have yet to see any proof that CO2 causes increase in temperatures.

Answer 1

CO2 does not cause heat!  CO2 is the result of heat over about 800 years.  Gore's own graph indicated that.  If you look close enough, you will see that CO2 responds to a rise in temperature to help the Earth cool itself after about 800 years.  HIS OWN GRAPH CLEARLY SHOWED HIM THAT.  It was the distortion that he was spewing out that distorted that fact to where you didn't look at the graph as nothing more than a wall ornament.

This is another one of those, "Since so many people believe, it must be true."

Hog wash!

Answer 2

There is no proof, just hypothesis and speculation.

Take for instance Ken's link that refutes co2 lagging temperature theory.  Read that link carefully.  Do you see any proof? All I see is speculation.  While there is proof that Milankovitch cycles cause the earth to come out of an ice age, did that natural effect end after 800 years, and then co2 took over as they claim?  If it did not and we have the natural effect and co2 working together we should have even more rapid acceleration of temperatures.  But we do not.  Look at the graph as temperatures cool, we had intermittent periods of warming.  Did Milankovitch cycles cause those as well?  Until they answer all of these questions it is just a theory.  

Now take a look at their rebuttal on tropeshere warming.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/satellit...

You would think that after reading that the scientific community is in agreement.  That is also not the case.

This is what NASA has to say:

"In theory, one could argue that the computer models are accurate, and that the real measurements have some problem. However this is not the case. An incredible amount of work has been done to make sure that the satellite data are the best quality possible. Recent claims to the contrary by Hurrell and Trenberth have been shown to be false for a number of reasons, and are laid to rest in the September 25th edition of Nature (page 342). The temperature measurements from space are verified by two direct and independent methods. The first involves actual in-situ measurements of the lower atmosphere made by balloon-borne observations around the world. The second uses intercalibration and comparison among identical experiments on different orbiting platforms. The result is that the satellite temperature measurements are accurate to within three one-hundredths of a degree Centigrade (0.03 C) when compared to ground-launched balloons taking measurements of the same region of the atmosphere at the same time."

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headline...

Balloon data that measures tropeshere warming confirms less warming.

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index....

Yet another example if the data does not fit the argument the believers  change the data.

When skeptics put up these two arguments we are accused of misleading the public.  The real question is who is misleading whom?

Answer 3

gcnp58,

You are going to have a hard time gaining any ground by comparing Venus to Earth--you have probably been reading the most recent realclimate.org blog, and not understanding the implications of Venus' atmosphere to Earth's climate, of which there are very few. The differences are pointed out in simplistic fashion by jazzfan.

What is well understood in the climate community is that a doubling of CO2 would cause a 0.6 C raise in the temperature if all else stays the same--that is not controversial (don't give too much credence to such a figure, as it is essentially an educated guess.). But Earth's climate is a non-linear system, and little stays the same. What is controversial is the feedback related to that rise in temperatures. To tell you the truth, little is really known about exactly how the climate will respond, but models are based upon the assumption that the positive feedback will overwhelm any negative--leading to an amplified CO2 warming effect (again, essentially an educated guess). A new study, by Spencer, et al,  show an increased negative feedback related to cirrus clouds in the tropics, meaning a reduced climate sensitivity. That means much, emphasis on much, less warming than projected.

Answer 4

the proof is all around you, milder winters, dying polar bears  

loss of polar land, glaciers melting you must wake up and smell the smoke not just decline it as some idiot waving his p***s in your face!

Answer 5

There is no correlation between co2 and temps.  Co2 levels could double, and the temperatures would still decrease.

Co2 lags temperatures.  When temps go up, co2 goes up.  When temperatures go down, then co2 will follow.

Answer 6

there is proof all over the place. CO2 is a gas that pollutes the planet. How? well it has toxins that go up into the atmosphere

Answer 7

You might try reading Tyndall, 1859 "Note on the Transmission of Radiant Heat through Gaseous Bodies."

Or Arrhenius, 1896 "On the influence of carbonic acid in the air on the temperature of the ground"

Or Callendar, 1938 "The artificial production of CO2 and its influence on temperature"

Or Plass, 1959 "Effect of Carbon Dioxide Variations on Climate"

Or any one of a hundred other studies done over the past century and a half which establish carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

Or, and this would probably save you a lot of time, think about the logic for a second. Radiative physics dictate that carbon dioxide is transparent to shortwave radiation, and opaque to long wave radiation. So CO2 necessarily acts as a greenhouse gas, and adding more of it to the atmosphere necessarily increases the planet's temperature.

Answer 8

CO2 is opaque to infra-red, but transparent to visible light, so sunlight comes down, gets changed to heat (by warming what it lands on) and the heat can't escape.  This is physics 101.

CO2 doesn't cause heat, it traps it.

Answer 9

Where is the proof that evolution happened?  Where is the proof that plate tectonics occurred?  Where is the proof that our planet is over 6000 years old?

The answer for all of these, along with your question, is the same.  It's in mountains of scientific literature.  Proof is actually a mathematic term, science is more a matter of collecting evidence and leaving only the best theory left standing at the end of the day.

Most of the uniformed "explanations" above (e.g. CO2 lags temperature rise) are debunked (by a former Physics professor that's not making any money off of Climate research) here:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument...

And Alan J's response above is excellent.  You can start reading the scientific literature from the 19th century if you really want to grasp the development and quantity of evidence that demonstrates CO2 causes a temperature increase.  Here's a complete history of the science behind AGW:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index...

Answer 10

where is the proof that CO2 doesn't cause temperature increase?

No other scientific theory has been offered that legitimately explains it.

Legitimately means it can pass peer review.

So that rules out all the skeptic arguments.

  Here's the kind of scientific conferences that the skeptics hold.

"Over the past days, many of us have received invitations to a conference called "The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change" in New York. At first sight this may look like a scientific conference - especially to those who are not familiar with the activities of the Heartland Institute, a front group for the fossil fuel industry that is sponsoring the conference. You may remember them. They were the promoters of the Avery and Singer "Unstoppable" tour and purveyors of disinformation about numerous topics such as the demise of Kilimanjaro's ice cap. "

"A number of things reveal that this is no ordinary scientific meeting:"

"Normal scientific conferences have the goal of discussing ideas and data in order to advance scientific understanding. Not this one. The organisers are suprisingly open about this in their invitation letter to prospective speakers, which states:"

"The purpose of the conference is to generate international media attention to the fact that many scientists believe forecasts of rapid warming and catastrophic events are not supported by sound science, and that expensive campaigns to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not necessary or cost-effective."

"So this conference is not aimed at understanding, it is a PR event aimed at generating media reports. (The "official" conference goals presented to the general public on their website sound rather different, though - evidently these are already part of the PR campaign.) "

"At the regular scientific conferences we attend in our field, like the AGU conferences or many smaller ones, we do not get any honorarium for speaking - if we are lucky, we get some travel expenses paid or the conference fee waived, but often not even this. We attend such conferences not for personal financial gains but because we like to discuss science with other scientists. The Heartland Institute must have realized that this is not what drives the kind of people they are trying to attract as speakers: they are offering $1,000 to those willing to give a talk. This reminds us of the American Enterprise Institute last year offering a honorarium of $10,000 for articles by scientists disputing anthropogenic climate change. So this appear to be the current market prices for calling global warming into question: $1000 for a lecture and $10,000 for a written paper."

" At regular scientific conferences, an independent scientific committee selects the talks. Here, the financial sponsors get to select their favorite speakers. The Heartland website is seeking sponsors and in return for the cash promises "input into the program regarding speakers and panel topics". Easier than predicting future climate is therefore to predict who some of those speakers will be. We will be surprised if they do not include the many of the usual suspects e.g. Fred Singer, Pat Michaels, Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, and other such luminaries. (For those interested in scientists' links to industry sponsors, use the search function on sites like sourcewatch.org or exxonsecrets.org.)

Heartland promises a free weekend at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan, including travel costs, to all elected officials wanting to attend.

This is very nice hotel indeed. Our recommendation to those elected officials tempted by the offer: enjoy a great weekend in Manhattan at Heartland's expense and don't waste your time on tobacco-science lectures - you are highly unlikely to hear any real science there."

by Amanda Lang

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...

Here is who these skeptics are accusing of just not getting it, having no clue, etc.

Regarding the IPCC report on climate change.

"The conclusions reached in this document have been explicitly endorsed by ..."

Academia Brasiliera de Ciências (Bazil)

Royal Society of Canada

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Academié des Sciences (France)

Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany)

Indian National Science Academy

Accademia dei Lincei (Italy)

Science Council of Japan

Russian Academy of Sciences

Royal Society (United Kingdom)

National Academy of Sciences (United States of America)

Australian Academy of Sciences

Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts

Caribbean Academy of Sciences

Indonesian Academy of Sciences

Royal Irish Academy

Academy of Sciences Malaysia

Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

"In addition to these national academies, the following institutions specializing in climate, atmosphere, ocean, and/or earth sciences have endorsed or published the same conclusions as presented in the TAR report:

NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

National Academy of Sciences (NAS)

State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC)

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Royal Society of the United Kingdom (RS)

American Geophysical Union (AGU)

American Institute of Physics (AIP)

National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

American Meteorological Society (AMS)

Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)

I suppose you expect us to believe that all these scientists are somehow part of a hoax or conspiracy or some other delusional conspiracy theory.  The AGU alone has about 14,000 members.

"This consensus is represented in the IPCC Third Assessment Report, Working Group 1 (TAR WG1), the most comprehensive compilation and summary of current climate research ever attempted, and arguably the most thoroughly peer reviewed scientific document in history. While this review was sponsored by the UN, the research it compiled and reviewed was not, and the scientists involved were independent and came from all over the world."

Skeptic argument:

"CO2 lags higher temperatures in previoius warmings"

Answer

http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-doe...

Skeptic argument:   It's the sun

Answer:

http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...

" Most studies suggest that before the industrial age, there was a good correlation between natural “forcings" – solar fluctuations and other factors such as the dust ejected by volcanoes – and average global temperatures. Solar forcing may have been largely responsible for warming in the late 19th and early 20th century, levelling off during the mid-century cooling (see Global temperatures fell between 1940 and 1980).

The 2007 IPCC report halved the maximum likely influence of solar forcing on warming over the past 250 years from 40% to 20%. This was based on a reanalysis of the likely changes in solar forcing since the 17th century.

But even if solar forcing in the past was more important than this estimate suggests, as some scientists think, there is no correlation between solar activity and the strong warming during the past 40 years. Claims that this is the case have not stood up to scrutiny (pdf document).

Direct measurements of solar output since 1978 show a steady rise and fall over the 11-year sunspot cycle, but no upwards or downward trend .

Similarly, there is no trend in direct measurements of the Sun's ultraviolet output and in cosmic rays. So for the period for which we have direct, reliable records, the Earth has warmed dramatically even though there has been no corresponding rise in any kind of solar activity."

water vapor and not CO2  ?  Here you go

http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...

"A simplified summary is that about 50% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapour, 25% due to clouds, 20% to CO2, with other gases accounting for the remainder.

So why aren't climate scientists a lot more worried about water vapour than about CO2? The answer has to do with how long greenhouse gases persist in the atmosphere. For water, the average is just a few days.

This rapid turnover means that even if human activity was directly adding or removing significant amounts of water vapour (it isn't), there would be no slow build-up of water vapour as is happening with CO2 (see Climate myths: Human CO2 emissions are tiny compared with natural sources).

The level of water vapour in the atmosphere is determined mainly by temperature, and any excess is rapidly lost. The level of CO2 is determined by the balance between sources and sinks, and it would take hundreds of years for it to return to pre-industrials levels even if all emissions ceased tomorrow. Put another way, there is no limit to how much rain can fall, but there is a limit to how much extra CO2 the oceans and other sinks can soak up."

Speakeas -  cites a source that we are supposed to believe has proof against the findings of tens of thousands of scientists and thousands of scientific studies.  His source?  The ususal,  The Heartland Institute, a propaganda maching funded by Exxon.

Only two well known skeptics are mentioned, Avery and Singer, who the supposed 100 others are I don't know.  Is it similar to the list by Sen Inhofe of 400 supposed experts which turned out to be phony list made up of non experts and some that weren't even scientists?

Answer 11

Such hostility! There is incontrovertible proof that CO2 will reflect radiated heat back to the Earth instead of letting it escape. The fact that CO2 levels have been far higher than they are today during an ice age illustrates that CO2 isn't the main driver of climate, it's not even close to being the main greenhouse gas.

Venus is warm, not just because of high levels of CO2 (96% vs. .04%) but because (a) it is much closer to the sun that Earth is, (b) the atmosphere is 90 times thicker than our atmosphere so it's much harder for heat to escape, and (c) sulfuric acid clouds that the Earth lacks.

The Earth is not a greenhouse, it's far more complex and not very well understood even today, despite what many will claim. Water vapor is responsible for nearly all of the warming so next they'll want to regulate how much water you can use and how you use it. Methane and nitrous oxide are far more potent than CO2.

Air pollution has a dimming effect so it's actually beneficial in regard to global warming since it causes cooling.

**edit

Dana, saying Venus is hot because of the greenhouse effect of the CO2 in it's atmosphere ignores the fact it has far more atmosphere than Earth so it's far harder for any heat to escape, no oceans to absorb the CO2, enormous amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere (which is a far more potent source of greenhouse warming than CO2) and it happens to be 30% closer to the sun than we are. Any comparison to Earth's atmosphere is about as useful as comparing us to the moon.

As bob326 points out, we don't know how much heating will be done if CO2 levels double, but at the current rate it will be centuries before that happens. When it does, temp will likely only go up less than 1 degree C. If the climate was prone to tipping we'd swing back and forth from ice age to sauna every few years, that theory is inane. If it did tip why wouldn't it simply stay either very hot or very cold? CO2 is a minor input into warming and it's such an important gas for life on Earth maybe we should stop bashing it. Faster growing plants with less irrigation required doesn't sound terrible to me.

Answer 12

It's really just 3rd grade science.  AGW is something they've been tracking for over a hundred years.  It's hard to imagine what would constitute proof in you folk's eyes.   Flaming boxer shorts perhaps.

Answer 13

If CO2 doesn't lead to a greenhouse effect, explain the surface temperature of Venus without violating conservation of energy, known mechanisms of planetary physics, and solar dynamics.  My suggestion is you do some very detailed study of the background science so you don't ask questions like this anymore.  An equivalent question would be "Where is the proof mass causes gravity?"

Answer 14

It does not matter weather or not CO2  causes anything. The important issue is pollution. Pollution is bad and unnecessary and should be eliminated from numan activity. Excess CO2 in the atmosphere is just one form of polution-there are many worse forms of polution. All polution should be reduced to zero and that can be done without upsetting the ecconomy of the world.

Answer 15

It does not cause a rise in temperatures.  The proof of this is clear.

The theory is that more CO2 'traps' more heat, causing the temperature to rise.  Yet, during the 1960s and 1970s as industry pumped more and more CO2 into the atmosphere, the Earth underwent a frightening cooling spell, sparking fears of a new ice age.  How can this be possible if the CO2 is the cause of warming?

As another example:  The Sahara desert's temperature goes from over 100 degrees in the daytime to freezing at night.   In the Amazon, the temperature ranges from about 98 in the daytime to 96 at night.  Why can't all the CO2 in the atmosphere trap heat over the Sahara?  What is the difference between the Sahara and the Amazon?  The REAL greenhouse gas is water vapor - for which we should be thankful.

LIFE LOVES A GREENHOUSE!  (not a freakin' glacier)

In fact, the sun's varying output is the real cause of ice ages and warming spells, aside from the occasional volcano.

Answer 16

Yes.  By applying the Fundamental Theorem of Global Warming it is obvious.

Answer 17

Even so, plants use CO2 like we use oxygen to produce...oxygen.

Answer 18

It's called the greenhouse effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_...

CO2 is a greenhouse gas, meaning it's transparent to incoming solar radiation (mostly at UV and visible wavelengths), but absorbs heat (infrared wavelengths) which is re-radiated by the Earth's surface.  Nice graphic here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Atmos...

As several people have pointed out, Venus is a great example of the greenhouse effect in action.  Venus has a mean surface temperature of 735 K and a 96% CO2 atmosphere.  In comparison, Mercury has a mean temperature of about 340 K, less than  half the temperature of Venus despite being twice as close to the Sun, because it has much lower levels of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28...

That greenhouse gases like CO2 cause warming is an indisputable fact.