Why don't "skeptics" understand that CO2 is both a cause AND an effect of global warming?

Question

"Skeptics" try to cite data showing that, in the past, rises in CO2 lagged temperature by hundreds of years, as proof that CO2 doesn't cause warming.

In previous warmings caused by the Sun, CO2 is released from warming ocean waters, but the process takes time.

However, CO2 can also cause global warming, because of the greenhouse effect. That it does both things is very basic and undisputed science.

In the present warming, THERE IS NO LAG. CO2 and temperature are going up together. That's NEVER happened before. It's because this time, CO2 is the primary cause of warming.

It's pretty funny. What "skeptics" say about previous lags in rise of CO2 is actually strong proof that this time, the warming is mostly man made.

Answer 1

Right...and excess weight CAUSES weight gain (caloric intake and exercise levels being held constant).

Answer 2

People generally do not like to hear bad news, and this is the worst news for the Human Race.

The other fact of the matter, is that a lot of corporate producers of greenhouse gases have paid "scientists" to create "research" to disprove the fact that global climate change, is made by humans.

IMNSHO, people do not like to change their ways, and a lot of them are simply Egyptians, living in De Nile. They believe that if they do nothing, or pray to a mythological character,  that it will go away  They need their huge gas guzzling SUVs because they lack certain parts of their anatomy.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has stated back in 2006, "The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. Accumulating data from across the globe reveal a wide array of effects: rapidly melting glaciers, destabilization of major ice sheets, increases in extreme weather, rising sea level, shifts in species ranges, and more. The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now."

As the world's largest general science organization, we should heed these words, or suffer the consequences.

Answer 3

CO2 has increased 100ppm over the last 100 years.

That's just 1ppm per year, or just one co2 molecule for every million molecules of air per year.

How can anyone believe one molecule of co2 can cause any change in climate?

Answer 4

CO2 is only a measurable cause if the IPCC's version of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation with massive water vapor feedback amplification is in fact the way that climate functions, there is however no proof of that hypothesis. Idso's climate sensitivity function is just as likely to be true, which would make doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels cause about a 0.2 C increase in global temperatures.

EDIT:

Thousands of climatologists eh, yes I am sure climatology 101 was the hot course to take ten years ago, a ridiculous statement.

EDIT: JS

A 100,000 is nothing, I would trust Exxon any day on any issue over the U.N., your straw man approach is very telling of your persona.

Answer 5

G.W. isn't all human done - A h**l of a lot comes from Volcanoes. The huge iruotions such as Tobar - which was avolcanic eruption such as it wiped out 95% of the human earth population. The CO2 produced must have been immence!!

Answer 6

Global 'warming' is only a power and money grab by Dux AlGore et.al.

According to reports from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal that almost all the allegedly “lost” ice has come back. A NOAA report shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost back to their original levels.

Moreover, a Feb. 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging the global warming crusaders and buttressing arguments of skeptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming.

Answer 7

Well there are actually several errors in the 'skeptic' claim that the 800 year lag proves that CO2 can't cause global warming.

1) As a greenhouse gas, by definition CO2 can cause warming.  That's why the planet isn't frozen!

2) After the ~800 year lag, once the ocean waters had released sufficient amounts of CO2, the CO2 amplified the existing warming.  That's why CO2 and temperatures follow so closely for thousands of years after the initial lag.  So while CO2 hasn't initiated past warmings, it's not accurate to say it hasn't caused global warming.

3) The argument that A hasn't caused B in the past so A cannot cause B is logically flawed.  By that logic humans can't cause forest fires, because they happened naturally in the past when humans weren't around!

4) As you note Bob, there is currently no lag (800 years or otherwise) between CO2 and temperature increases.  If anything global warming is lagging slightly behind CO2.

The argument is just grossly simplistic, and putting just a little bit of thought into it (like considering the basic fundamental physics of the greenhouse effect or basic simple logic) debunks the argument immediately.  Yet Tim Ball (geographer, self-proclaimed climatologist, and 'skeptical' scientist) starts of the Swindle making this argument.  It blows my mind.

Interesting point by Jello - how many molecules do you suppose there are in the Earth's atmosphere?  A few more than a million!

According to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, "The total mean mass of the atmosphere is 5.1480 × 10^18 kg"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air#Density...

That's a lot of molecules!

Addressing Tomcat's claim that the Idso estimate is just as likely right as any other, I find that a very revealing claim.  Even ignoring the Idsos' obvious bias (as discussed by J S), why would all climate sensitivity models have equal validity?  If most are clustered around 3°C warming for a doubling of CO2 and one says there will be a 0.4°C warming for CO2 doubling, the logical conclusion is that the outlyer is probably wrong, and to choose to believe the outlyer is a clear case of cherrypicking, especially when the outlyer has been funded by ExxonMobil, Western Fuels, and the George C Marshall Institute.

Gavin Schmidt discusses the Idso model briefly.

"As an aside, there have been a few claims (notably from Steve Milloy or Sherwood Idso) that you can estimate climate sensitivity by dividing the change in temperature due to the greenhouse effect by the downwelling longwave radiation. This is not even close, as you can see by working it through here..."

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

Answer 8

Bob, you make the false assumptions that "skeptics" are interested in discovering the truth and understand basic logic.  Just look at a few of the answers above, and both of those assumptions are clearly false.

I attribute much of it to binary thinking.  Some people can only consider 2 options, in this case: 1) Humans cause ALL climate change or 2) Humans cause NO climate change.  When you add to that limitation the ideological intensity promoted by dogmatists like Rush Limbaugh (who's probably heard by a significant % of the doubters), you get exactly the kind of irrational and uninformed denial we see.

Answer 9

Wow, great point!  

I don't why, but I thought that the warming caused the oceans to absorb CO2 and become acidic.  

Anyhow, when a person is in denial of an issue, or when a person has other personal issues with the acceptance of something in relation to that issue, how much sense it makes, or even, how much in their face it is doesn't matter.  For instance, I had a friend who called her father every month for financial support, but couldn't ever remember his phone number at all.  It wasn't until she came to terms with certain issues that she made the mental effort to learn his number.

Answer 10

The past warmings with an 800 year lag are the Milankovich sun-started ones.  The 800 year lag is in a context of 5000 years of warming, so carbon dioxide is implicated for the last 80%, most of the warming.  It has been calculated that the initial forcing mechanism is much too weak to account for the total warming.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=1...

"From studying all the available data (not just ice cores), the probable sequence of events at a termination goes something like this. Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties. This leads to even further CO2 release. So CO2 during ice ages should be thought of as a "feedback", much like the feedback that results from putting a microphone too near to a loudspeaker.

In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway. From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming."

Of course another possibility is that it is a global conspiracy (that started tens of thousands to millions of years ago?  1820?  1896?).  LOL!

Edit -

The three Idsos (Criag, Keith, Sherwood) are interesting characters.  Here's a summary of their Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide Change, which according to public ExxonMobil disclosures, has received $100,000 from them:

"The Center means of disseminating information, their magazine and website CO2 Science, includes articles both questioning the existence of climate change as well as touting the benefits to the biosphere from carbon dioxide enrichment. All aspects of climate change and its predicted effects - from melting ice caps to species extinction, to more severe weather - are criticized by the Center and either refuted or presented as beneficial. Fred Palmer, head of Western Fuels, said about the center: "The Center's viewpoint is a needed antidote to the misleading and usually erroneous scientific claims emanating from the Federal scientific establishment and adopted by leading politicians, such as Vice President Al Gore." The Center has since tried to distance itself from the Western Fuels Association, however, the Center is run by Keith and Craig Idso, along with their father, Sherwood. Both Idso brothers have been on the Western Fuels payroll at one time or another. Keith Idso, then a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona, was a paid expert witness for Western Fuels Association at a 1995 Minnesota Public Utilities commission hearing in St. Paul, MN, along with MIT's Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, and Robert Balling (The Heat is On). According to news from Basin Electr ic, a Western Fuels Association member, Craig Idso produced a report, "The Greening of Planet Earth." Its Progression from Hypothesis to Theory," in January 1998 for the Western Fuels Association (Basin Electric Latest News no date given). "

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfact...

Western Fuels has not disclosed how much additional funding they have provided to the Idsos.  

Other recipients of ExxonMobil funding are documented as receiving over $300k per year in funds, so clearly denying global warming can be a very, very lucrative business, much more lucrative then any scientific research position.  I'd say just about anything for $500k to $1M per year, wouldn't you?  To sleep at night I'd just reason that there's plenty of both science and denial out there... not my fault at all if news agencies want to distort the lack of balance and many people want to deny the science and embrace the "don't worry, be happy" denial noise.  Besides, it may be very important to have a lot of cash for the initial stages of the economic downturn, when money is still worth something, so it comes down to a matter of survival (and it would be highly ironic that the deniers would in effect create the job that would pay for my survival).  Survival of the fittest at its best.

Jello -

Do you realize that you are in effect saying, "How can anyone believe that the earth's atmosphere traps heat"?  Why is the earth not several hundred degrees below zero at night (or in the shade), like on the moon?  It is amazing that something we can't see, in small quantities, can have such a powerful effect on our lives, but that doesn't make it untrue or not backed by scientific theory and observation.  CO2 is not 100% of the story (other GHGs play a role and the solar influence is a small portion with debatable direction), but indications are that it's more than enough to be concerned about, enough that we should take a few prudent steps.

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To read more about CO2 and ice cores, see Caillon et al., 2003, Science journal:

Timing of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic Temperature Changes Across Termination III

http://icebubbles.ucsd.edu/Publications/...

"...at low accumulation sites such as Vostok, ice may be 6000 years old. The gas age–ice age difference ( age) may be uncertain by 1000 years or more (1) and thus obscures the phasing of gas variations with climate signals borne by the ice."

"First, the 800-year time lag is short in comparison with the total duration of the temperature and CO2 increases ( 5000 years). Second, the CO2 increase clearly precedes the Northern Hemisphere deglaciation (Fig. 3)."

"The sequence of events during this Termination is fully consistent with CO2 participating in the latter
4200 years of the warming.  The radiative forcing due to CO2 may serve as an amplifier of initial orbital forcing, which is then further amplified by fast atmospheric feedbacks (39) that are also at work for the present day and future climate."

Answer 11

It's -8 F in Omaha today.  I wish that CO2 would do it's job.

January was colder then most years I remember.

February has been the same.  Forecast says colder than normal for the next 4 out of 5 weeks.   I heard northern Minnesota hit a record low last week.  Last I heard plants love CO2.  

I do hate high oil prices though.  Lets buy electric cars to reduce oil consumption and lower the price of oil.  This would also help this guy feel better.