BBC: 50 years on: The Keeling Curve legacy - ( CO2 -- Global Warming?)

BBC ^ | Sunday, 2 December 2007, 20:13 GMT | Helen Briggs Science reporter, BBC News

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CO2 related...

[Diogenesis]

[Hot Tabasco]

"Dave Keeling suffered many sleepless nights, even as late as in the 1990s, being forced again and again to justify continued funding of his programme,"

What a slip of the tongue that was. In one sentence the writer inadvertantly put into perspective what the global warming hoax is all about..............

[mdittmar]

I need more warmth,it’s 39 degrees outside,brrrr.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Atmospheric CO₂ levels have been two orders of magnitude higher than today's levels with no catastrophic rise of global temperatures.

[Diogenesis]

[geopyg]

Thanks - I love your charts. Not sure I have seen the “amount of radiation absorbed” chart. I think it was in the paper where I just read that the amount of CO2 on Venus is the same as on Earth. I thought - THAT can’t be right?! A few paragraphs later it said that some huge amount of Earth’s CO2 (98%????) is locked up in limestone rock. (Venus’s CO2 is in the atmosphere).

[ClearCase_guy]

Excellent charts!

From the article:

"It wasn't until Keeling came along and started measuring CO2 that we got the evidence that CO2 was increasing from human activities," says Professor Andrew Watkinson

I think this summarizes bad science, unless I'm missing something. Yes, they're measuring an increase in CO2, but then they make two leaps:

1) Human activities are the cause.
2) More CO2 correlates with higher global temperatures.

From your charts, I would say that both of these assumptions are on shaky ground.

[Nathan Zachary]

What a bunch of nonsense. Human produced co’2 doesn’t even measure. (less than 1/10 of 1 percent of all atmospheric co2) Any rise in co2 levels are caused by natural earth and solar cycles which us puny humans can not and should not ever try tamper with.

[Nathan Zachary]

""To do this, a location was needed very far removed from the contamination and pollution of local emissions from cities; therefore Mauna Loa, high on a volcano in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was chosen."

Brilliant. Put a measuring station on top of a volcano that spews millions of tons of co2 into the air, then blame it on humans burning "fossil" fuels.

[BOBTHENAILER]

It was 50 years ago today, that a young American scientist, Charles David Keeling,

It was fifty years ago today

when David Keeling first began to play

He's been goin' in an out of style

While exaggerating by a mile

Now let me indoctrinate poor you

with the ACT we've known for all these years

Goron's Crazy Loony Tune's Club Band

[BohDaThone]

With respect to posts 10-11-12. There is NOTHING wrong with Keeling's measurements. They have been replicated many times over, all over the globe. They just started at Mauna Loa because it was not impacted by nearby industrial sites.

The EFFECT of the increse in CO2 is very shaky, but the fact of the increase is not. The CO2 level is, of course, very tiny as a part of all the atmosphere, going from maybe 280 parts per million to around 360-370, leaving 999,630 parts per million that are not.

Second, all of the recent historical evidence (cores, tree rings, etc) shows no changes in, say, the last 2000 years until recently (The big swings in geological time are very important for analysis, but they are much further back than that.) So, the sources of natural CO2 are very large, but have always (within last couple of millenia) balanced with the natural removal.

So, it's no good saying that man isn't causing the rise in the CO2 level in the atmosphere. It's the effect of that rise, if any, that is in serious dispute.

If you read the fine print of even the IPCC reports, they admit that, even by their arguments, there is some chance that no warming is happening, and an even greater chance that man isn't responsible for all, or even most, of it.

Some of the most prominient "skeptics", like Dr. Fred Singer, say that warming is clearly happening, but it isn't caused by man.

[chipengineer]

>So, it’s no good saying that man isn’t causing the rise in the CO2 level in the atmosphere. It’s the effect of that rise, if any, that is in serious dispute.

Good point. The CO2 level is the one measurement that no one knowledgeable disputes.

[G Larry]

Warming Bump!

[BOBTHENAILER]

With respect to posts 10-11-12.

I'm only responsible for #12. Since we're quoting posts...I like 4,6 & 7. Mine was merely a spoof, as you well know (I think) and was a play on the Beatles "Lonely Heart's Club Band".

[WOSG]

Nice charts on paleo-climate.
Global warming PING.

[rb22982]

pinging for later

[Enchante]

The graph in that article takes an increase from 320 to 360 ppm and manipulates the Y-axis coordinates so that it appears to be an extremely steep rise. The question is whether an increase of 40 ppm (and future increases) does or does not represent some enormous crisis for the climate as it impacts human life. The data in that graph do not begin to answer THAT question. So there is an increase of something approaching 15% in atmospheric CO2 measured in PPM — the question is what EFFECTs if any that has on the climate environment, GOOD and BAD, for human beings. The graph cannot begin to answer the real environmental and policy questions, but the Alborons pretend that it does.

That graph is MANIPULATED to make the change appear extremely steep, when it is also quite possible (making the Y-axis coordinates go from zero to 400 or even a lot higher) to make the rising plot line look almost flat.

That graph is a piece of political propaganda, not science.

[NDNBill]

CO2 continued to rise in the last 9 years even as the tempurature went down.

http://icecape.us/images/uploads/CO2MSU.jpg

....more good stuff can always be found at junkscience.com