[Senator_Blutarski]

Notwithstanding that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide has neither caused nor amplified global temperature increases. Increased carbon dioxide has been an effect of global warming, not a cause [historically -etl]. Technically, carbon dioxide is a lagging proxy for ocean temperatures. When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises, the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase.

I've been saying this for years. CO2 increases lag behind the temperature changes. Just like a soda can on a hot day, the oceans are losing their fizz. This is literally 8th grade science.

[ETL]

CO2 increases lag behind the temperature changes.

They lag behind by an average of 800 years. Furthermore, temps didn't rise further following the release of CO2 from the naturally warming oceans.

The graph above represents temperature and CO2 levels over the past 400,000 years. It is the same exact data Al Gore and the rest of the man-made global warmers refer to. The blue line is temps, the red, CO2 levels. The deep valleys represent 4 separate glaciation/ice-age periods, approximately 100,000 years apart. Look carefully at the historical relationship between temps and CO2 levels (the present is on the right hand side of the graph) and keep in mind that Gore claims this data is the 'proof' that CO2 has warmed the earth in the past. But does this data indeed show this? Nope. In fact, rising CO2 levels all throughout this 400,000-year period actually *followed* temperature increases, lagging behind by an average of 800 years! Furthermore, and importantly, the subsequent CO2 level increases (due to dissolved CO2 being released from warming oceans) never did lead to additional warming, the so-called "run-away greenhouse effect" that Al Gore and company continue warning us about. In short, there is little if any evidence that CO2 had ever led to any significant global warming when the levels were within 10-15 times of what they are today. -etl

[palmer]

CO2 does lag the warming, so as the ocean warms the CO2 rises over the next few centuries. But warming oceans (natural warming since the end of the Little Ice Age) only accounts for about 5-10 ppm of the rise in CO2. The rest of the current rise is manmade. To show just how far ahead we are, if we stopped producing CO2 today, the amounts in the atmosphere would immediately drop half way back to preindustrial levels within decades.