CO2, Model Estimates and Observed Temperatures

Only one in 2500 molecules in air is CO2.
 
The theory of catastrophic man-made global warming is actually a two part theory.  In part one, which is essentially greenhouse gas theory, a doubling of CO2 warms the Earth by a bit over 1 degree Celsius.  But there is a second part of the theory, a theory that is entirely unrelated to greenhouse gas theory.  That theory states that the Earth's climate systems are dominated by positive feedbacks which multiply the initial warming from CO2 by 3- 5 times or more.

These feedback systems are both positive and negative, are complex and, of course, difficult to analyze as controlled experiments on gigantic unwieldy subjects the size of the world are all the more unreliable when the elements are not completely known or understood. And science is an evolving beast. So medical science for years treated peptic ulcer disease as a neurologically mediated gastric secretion illness --often treated with massive surgical attacks--when it was actually an infection cured with five days of tetracycline. (I should note in passing that those erroneous scientists, who included Cushing himself, were not pulled from their homes or their graves and abused by indignant truth-seeking Peptic Ulcer Enthusiasts. People are simply too invested in results anymore and too little interested in process.)

And ice cores from Antarctica show that at the end of recent ice ages, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere usually started to rise only after temperatures had begun to climb. There is uncertainty about the timings, partly because the air trapped in the cores is younger than the ice, but it appears the lags might sometimes have been 800 years or more. That is hard to square with the warming lobby but there are speculations as to why that could be reasonable and not invalidate the CO2 thesis.

Both the satellite and surface temperature records show warming since 1980. For all that some skeptics may want to criticize the authors of the surface temperature databases, and there indeed some grounds for criticism, these issues should not distract us from the basic fact that in every temperature record we have (including other technologies like radiosonde balloons), we see recent warming.
In terms of magnitude, the two indices do not show the same amount of warming -- since 1980 the satellite temperature record shows about 30% less warming than does  the surface temperature record for the same period. 
  

The surface temperature record shows only about half the warming, and the satellite record shows only about a third the warming, that Hansen predicted.   There is no justification for saying that recent warming rates have been higher than expected or forecast -- in fact, the exact opposite has been true. And the notion that it is accelerating, essential to the warming thesis, has been absent in the last 17 years.

Remember that balloon and atmospheric readings are relatively new and have no long term correlations to compare. Remember also that many surface sites have been influenced by changes in local population densities, a difficult curve in the collection technique to evaluate. Most importantly, remember that disagreements in results and/or opinions are heretical only in religious disputes, in science they are only fuel for discussion aimed at long-term resolution by well meaning thinkers.

This is a graph of the IPCC's predicted temperature changes from different times over the last few years and, within it, the actual, observed temperature ranges:

  

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report (TAR) was published in 2001, following the First Assessment Report (FAR) in 1990, and the Second Assessment Report (SAR) in 1995. AR4 is the Fourth Assessment.

It may be that human beings are destroying their world. That question should be taken seriously. Using observations that create models to predict the future, when wrong, should be taken seriously too.