Eat that GW believers!

[djolds1]

[Skipjack]

Given increasing world population and increasing world average per-capita CO2 output, you need to explain why CO2 levels won't continue to increase, rather than the other way around.

Because, first of all world population is not increasing exponentially.
Second, at some point the increase will stop, one way or the other. Resources are limited, if it does not stop naturally, then there will be wars fought over them.

That's what makes your growth calculation from 1900 to 1978 misleading. To get a true picture you would have to model interrupted growth.

Yes, it would have been missleading had I looked only at the overal picture. BUT, I actually went through the hassle of looking at each year individually and checking the increase between that year and the past year. It was always around 1.0 ppm!
Some of the last years of the 70ies actually had below 1.0 ppm if I remember correctly. This is clearly a linear increase.
Yes, there are jump- like increases, I am sure. E.g. the big jump at the beginning of the 20st century. I am sure there will be more such jumps, but I am also sure that after these jumps the increase will always be roughly linear.
These jumps, I am pretty sure can be linked either to some natural event, or to an increased industrialisation in some part of the world.
Yes, humans will continue to produce CO2 and they will continue to produce more CO2, but only until the point when everyone is industrialized to a level that allows for some kind of ecologic conscience on one hand and that brings about the need for proper resource management on the other to maximize profits and reduce losses.
After all, fossile resources are not cheap anymore and while you can compensate for wasteful use of them somewhat by having very lax standards in pretty much every aspect (savety, environmental, worker health, worker payment, etc), you can not continue doing that to all eternity. The better the economy of a country gets, the more people will demand better conditions. This can be observed pretty much anywhere.
So once they have reached a certain level, the emission curves will flatten.

Also, as I mentioned before, we HAVE to come up with a replacement for fossile fuels at some point. I might disagree about the timeframe with some here (I mentioned earlier that I think we still have lots of hidden resources), it is clear that these resources are limited. So it is an economic necessity to have an alternative, that is at least as cheap and at least as convenient.
This is why I am reading this board. I am hoping that Polywell could be one of these.

[Luzr]

Alex, you are assuming that the increase in CO2 will continue at whatever rate. This is a false assumption. You always have to include the reasons why the increase was there. E.g. certain nations had an improvement of their economic situation, resulting in advanced industrialization and therefore more CO2 output by them. Now the lower the level of development the less these people care about CO2 output and environmental problems in general. However since they are still developing their output is still increasing. At some point their economic and social development will have cought up sufficiently that they will be able to implement measures to stabilize the problem. At this point their population growth will hopefully stop as well.
Until this point their CO2 output will increase, but their curve will actually flatten down. Right now we are still seeing the effect of their growth (and of others that are about to make progress). 100 years from now, their situation will be very different.

Given increasing world population and increasing world average per-capita CO2 output, you need to explain why CO2 levels won't continue to increase, rather than the other way around.

Sure they will continue to increase until fossil fuels are replaced by nuclear. Have we ever said they will not?

Anyway, exponential is not the only curve levels can follow. In fact, quadratic makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

[MSimon]

It's not proxy data. It's a direct measurement of CO2 levels in air trapped in bubbles in the ice.

Bubbles in ice have their problems. CO2 drifts in ice. That could lead to low and uniform CO2 levels in older ice.

Which makes the CO2 in the ice a proxy for the actual CO2 levels.

[seedload]

The physical explanation is simple: ever more humans burning increasing amounts of fossil fuels.

I meant a physical explanation why the trend before 1945 would continue after 1945. In case you missed it, a lot changed after 1945. The trend in the law dome data changes from before to after the war. The trend after conforms to the trend in mauna loa.

And yes it is proxy data.

This conversation is just stupid. The trend since 1945 shows linear acceleration. I do not and will never understand why anything that happened before 1945 says anything about what will happen after 2008. You can't explain it so don't even bother trying. It is idiotic.

[MSimon]

As you pointed out yourself, a technology change halted the rise of CO2 levels for a while (between 1936 and 1949).

Care to predict the next interruption so it can be factored into the equations?

[kcdodd]

My point is that pre ~1945 the CO2 was going as t^2 (constant acceleration), and since then its going as t^9 (t^7 acceleration).

Forgive me. I don't really understand what you are trying to say. It might be my poor understanding of your terminology or poor use of terminology by me.

Anyway, I get the following formula for CO2 from Mauna Loa

CO2f = CO2i + (Vi)(dT) + (Acc)(dT^2)
Where
CO2f = final CO2
CO2i = initial CO2
Vi = initial velocity
dT = delta T
Acc = Acceleration of 0.0143 ppm/year^2

...

So, I can't for the life of me figure out where you get t^7 acceleration from. I can't really figure out why any of what I am posting is in doubt.

t^2 or linear acceleration.

What you are doing is called a quadratic fit. You can *approximate* any curve with a quadratic equation, which is a better approximation than a linear fit. You can do higher powers to get a better fit.

What I was talking about was the log-log plot of the CO2 levels. The slope of the line in a log-log plot gives you the power of the equation being plotted. y = ax^b -> log(y) = b*log(x) + log(a). So if you plot log(y) versus log(x), you get a line with slope b, and offset log(a).

If you do a log-log plot of the Mauna Loa data, you get pretty much a straight line, which means its a power function, at least on this interval. If you do a linear fit to this line, you find that it has a slope of 9. Which means that there is an order of 9 in the exponent of whatever equation fits the data (log(t^9) = 9*log(t)). Before 1945 it has a slope of 2.

It's pretty clear it is not Acc*t^2, but (C*t^7)*t^2, at least currently. However, I don't have any speculation as to why outside of this.

[Josh Cryer]

Brian H, the Earth is not at radiative equilibrium, ergo, the whole paper is instantly debunked. This reminds me of Nordell's attempt to correlate waste heat to global warming.

Luzr, should we have thrown out Newtons equations when they couldn't predict the orbit of Mercury? All empirical data is useful, even if it doesn't cover the full spectrum of observations. OK so throw it out if it really bothers you. There are still many other proxy sets that do not have this divergence. The scientists include it because they consider it a good proxy. Past temperature measurements do not rely on it across the board and if you wanted to you could throw the measurements out. Just, please, don't be fooled by the implications that are made that the divergence reflects reality, it doesn't, all the other data would have to be faked, and that is extremely unlikely.

On another note: I still think there's something going on with regards to OCO crashing. I'm finding that engineers tend to be more of the skeptic side. One of the faults for the crash is thought to be a pyro failure, I'm thinking a skeptical engineer forgot to take off the safety unconsciously. The likelihood of a pyro failing and separation failure is extraordinarily small. The debate is often emotionally charged so it could have happened. But I shouldn't spread rumors, I don't think it was malicious in any event.

[AcesHigh]

It's not proxy data. It's a direct measurement of CO2 levels in air trapped in bubbles in the ice.

Bubbles in ice have their problems. CO2 drifts in ice. That could lead to low and uniform CO2 levels in older ice.

Which makes the CO2 in the ice a proxy for the actual CO2 levels.

you assume thousands of scientists that work with this never took that into account?

sounds like the creationists who question dating methods with lots of arguments that scientists who WORK in the field have known about (and considered, when dating things) for such a long time.

global warming denialism is quickly becoming a new religion... you start doubting what thousands of scientists study based on your own perception and interpretations of 2nd handed reports.

[KitemanSA]

If the IPCC mavins hadn't started the Grand Catholic Church of AGW, with Pope Gore and "take the data on faith, TRUST me; then folks like MSimon wouldn't have to start the Universalist congragation of "not proven yet".

By the way, can you name more than 10 of the "thousands" of scientists that you say have studied this that have seen even MOST of the pure, unadulterated data? Let's make it easier. Name 3. One? And I mean one who WASN'T involved in cooking the data the rest of the thousands saw.

[Brian H]

Here's some interesting info on how the principals conspired to shape the debate via RealClimate.org:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17635

Michael Mann:

We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you’d like us to include. You’re also welcome to do a followup guest post, etc. think of RC as a resource that is at your disposal to combat any disinformation put forward by the McIntyres of the world. Just let us know. We’ll use our best discretion to make sure the skeptics don’t get to use the RC comments as a megaphone…”

[Josh Cryer]

*shrug* I'd hope we'd all respect the principles of private property, and respect people running their own site in their own spare time and their decision to delete or censor comments at will.

Indeed, I ban general political discussion and crack pottery (UFOs, aliens, moon landing hoaxes, etc) over at my site, I have absolutely no problem with it.

I did say on DU E&E forums that I think the RC guys are too close to the politics, and would be better served if they weren't on the forefront of the issues. Most scientists wouldn't give crackpots the time of day, much less devote a whole website to them. Really, look at Bad Astronomer, he came about due to the Hoagland times of the early 2000s, when Hoagland and C2C guys would spam sites all over the net with crazy UFO theories and whatnot.

But if they don't do it, who will. The arm of science doesn't have PR campaigns unless the scientists do it, so someone will always have to be on the firing line.

Really, spend some time debunking alien-artifact crazies. It's the same thing. :/

Meanwhile, India is planning to build almost 80GW of coal. Even if you do think that the multipliers are at the low end, if you accept CO2 is a greenhouse gas, this should still be disconcerting. China builds two a week or thereabouts, it's ridiculous. Indeed, according to the EIA the *only* country projected to reduce its emissions is the USA.

[Brian H]

That's OK, Josh, go right on insisting that they're all Men of Good Will, with no axes to grind or huge vested interests and financial stakes to protect. We'll understand.

[Josh Cryer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P70SlEqX7oY

http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610

Watch this guys YouTube channel, you really are misled a lot of the time. I'd be more concerned about the oil, gas, and coal lobbies than the... windmill lobby.

[Luzr]

Luzr, should we have thrown out Newtons equations when they couldn't predict the orbit of Mercury? All empirical data is useful, even if it doesn't cover the full spectrum of observations. OK so throw it out if it really bothers you. There are still many other proxy sets that do not have this divergence. The scientists include it because they consider it a good proxy. Past temperature measurements do not rely on it across the board and if you wanted to you could throw the measurements out. Just, please, don't be fooled by the implications that are made that the divergence reflects reality, it doesn't, all the other data would have to be faked, and that is extremely unlikely.

Josh, the divergence problem is not that we suspect recent instrumental record is faked.

The problem is MWP. Until Mann's stick, MWP was generally considered 1-2 degrees warmer than current period. That is definitely a little bit inconvinient if you want to flag the current warming "unprecedented", do you agree?

Now you have divergence problem that clearly shows that when temperatures rises in current warming period, tree rings point downwards.

The reason is UNKNOWN. Why is it so wrong to assume that perhaps the same thing could have affected any other period of time, including MWP?

As for Mercury and Newtonian equations, it is like claiming:

We cannot explain current differences in the orbit, but we are confident they have happened only once, for some unknown reason and for the rest of time, Mercury always followed Newtonian orbit.