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To: Always Right
The sad part about your Antarctic Ice Core Data Chart is that it doesn't even support global warming.

Maybe that's not why I posted it.

There are a whole lot of things that I could try to explain. Whether or not you know it, I've been over this ground before. So what I'll do is provide a brief summary, and you can ask all the questions you want.

Over the past 420,000 years, the primary cause of glacial-interglacial cycles is orbital and rotational (astronomical) forcing -- Milankovitch cycles. Because climate is complex, there are numerous feedbacks that complicate a simple cause-and-effect response. I recently posted -- it may have been to you -- a number of links that provided detailed information about this. (Do you remember if I posted them to you? Since I'm not sure, I'll check after finishing this and provide a link to that thread and the post number.)

When the world warms, there is a response in the climate system, notably in the atmosphere and ocean. Warming oceans release CO2 -- there's a lot of complexity as to why, but they do. That's why CO2 increase/decrease responds to insolation changes driven by Milankovitch cycles. All paleoclimate models indicate that CO2 is a major factor in maintaining warm or cold climate conditions, requiring a substantial "push" to change them.

The reason I posted the ice core graph is that it shows that CO2 has not varied appreciably since the end of the last glacial period -- UNTIL the last 150 years. That means that the Earth has been in a remarkably stable climate period over that time. The perturbation that is occurring now is a marked increase in CO2 without any other notable climate forcing factors. Because there are feedbacks both positive and negative in the climate system, there is very likely a "damped" response in the climate system to rising CO2. Also, other factors come into play: natural (volcanic eruptions) and anthropogenic (SO2 aerosols).

That's the brief summary. Now ask whatever you feel like asking, but you may want to wait until I get that link and post it.

109 posted on 12/20/2004 11:38:57 AM PST by cogitator
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To: cogitator
The perturbation that is occurring now is a marked increase in CO2 without any other notable climate forcing factors. Because there are feedbacks both positive and negative in the climate system, there is very likely a "damped" response in the climate system to rising CO2.

The perturbation is still not outside of what we have been seeing for the last 10,000 years. There are several spikes that are nearly identical to what we are seeing today. And I never see global warmers talking about posible negative feedback systems that is possibly damping the temperature response. If this is true, it is silly to talk about the exponential growth in temperature that global alarmists keep warning us about.

111 posted on 12/20/2004 12:00:47 PM PST by Always Right
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