Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide temporarily topped the 400ppm mark for a few hours at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii precipitating a media frenzy. Typical of the hype is this story from the New York Times which begins: “The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.” There are two errors of fact in that sentence: 1) water vapor is the most important heat-trapping gas, and 2) CO₂ concentrations above 400ppm were reported from the 1820s and from the 1940s.

Here is the graph showing the “monumental” event from Mauna Loa:

And here is a graph showing analyses from previous research on atmospheric carbon dioxide:

Note that both the modern measurements at Mauna Loa and the older measurements are measuring point sources which may or may not reflect global concentrations. The older chemical methods reported by Beck used a chemical analysis of air captured in flasks. Lest you think that’s too old fashioned, note that NOAA still uses that method to check the Mauna Loa data. “NOAA’s Earth Science Research Laboratory program also measures CO₂ in weekly flask samples taken at over 60 remote locations around the world.” (See link below)

The Mauna Loa observatory sits on the flank of an active volcano which “emits variable amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and sulfur dioxide (SO₂) from fissures at the summit.” NASA explains how scientists attempt to distinguish between carbon dioxide from volcanic emissions and overall atmospheric concentration here.

There is another fly in the ointment reported by Scripps Institution of Oceanography:

“Starting around May 1, we began experiencing intermittent difficulties with the computer used to control the Scripps CO₂ analyzer at the Mauna Loa Observatory. This led to delays in providing daily values and also some data gaps. Although such difficulties are not uncommon and rarely lead to significant long-term data loss, we have decided to switch over to reporting daily values from second Scripps instrument, operated in parallel at Mauna Loa…”

Whether or not the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has topped a “long-feared milestone” is irrelevant. Carbon dioxide rises as a result of increasing temperature which causes carbon dioxide to exsolve from the oceans and also rises from our increasing use of fossil fuels. For most of Earth’s history carbon dioxide has been well above 1,000ppm and Earth not only survived but life was robust and verdant.

Instead of fearing this artificial milestone, we should celebrate it and try to increase the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. For the reason see: A Modest Proposal: Triple Your Carbon Footprint.

See also:

Which comes first, rise in global CO₂ or rise in global temperature?

The Eocene climatic optimum and paradise lost

This post is an opinion piece republished, with permission, from the Watts Up With That? blog. The list of authors/signers is at the bottom

The Supreme Court, in Mass. v. EPA, stated that the EPA must treat CO2 and other Greenhouse Gases (GHGs), as “pollutants” and then carry out an analysis to determine whether the increasing concentrations in atmospheric CO2 may reasonably be anticipated to endanger human health and welfare. The Court did not mandate regulation; rather it mandated that EPA go through an Endangerment Finding process.

EPA did so and on December 15, 2009 issued its ruling that CO2 and other GHGs must be regulated. This EPA finding and associated rulings were immediately challenged in the DC Circuit Court. The DC Circuit ruled in favor of EPA, but given the two dissents from the December 20, 2012 decision denying rehearing en banc, the matter will very likely go to the Supreme Court.

If allowed to stand, the very existence of EPA’s Endangerment Finding requires regulation that significantly increases U.S. fossil fuel and electricity prices–negatively impacting job creation as well as energy, economic and national security.

To many scientists this situation seems incredible given the ample evidence that EPA’s finding is grossly flawed. In its finding, EPA claimed with 90-99% certainty that observed warming in the latter half of the twentieth century resulted from human activity. EPA bases its finding upon Three Lines of Evidence (LoE.)

Using the most credible empirical data available, it is relatively straightforward to soundly reject each of EPA’s Three LoE.

1.) EPA claims that the Global Average Surface Temperature (GAST) has been rising in a dangerous fashion over the last fifty years, in large part due to human- caused increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. But “Global Warming” has not been global and has not set records in the regions where warming has occurred. For example, over this time period, while the Arctic has warmed, the Tropical oceans had a flat trend, and the Antarctic was slightly cooling. The most significant warming during this period occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, north of the Tropics. But, as the figure shows, over the last 130 years, the decade of the 1930’s still has the most U.S. State High Temperatures records. And, over the past 50 years, there were more new State Record Lows set than Record Highs. In fact, roughly 70% of the current State Record Highs were set prior to 1940.

2.) EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Fingerprint Theory is that in the Tropics, the upper troposphere is warming faster than the lower troposphere, and the lower troposphere is warming faster than the surface, all due to rising CO2 concentrations. This is totally at odds with multiple robust, consistent, independently-derived empirical datasets, all showing no statistically significant positive (or negative) trend in temperature and thus, no difference in trend by altitude. Therefore, EPA’s theory as to how CO2 impacts GAST must be rejected.

3.) EPA relied upon Climate Models, all predicated on this Fingerprint Theory, that all fail standard model validation and forecast reliability tests. The models all forecast rising temperatures beyond 2000 although GAST has actually been flat. This is not surprising because EPA never carried out any published forecast reliability tests.

Bottom –Line: No scientist or team of scientists has come up with an empirically validated theory proving that higher Atmospheric CO2 Levels will lead to higher GAST–not EPA’s team and certainly not to the EPA’s 90-99% certainty. Moreover, if the causal link between higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations and higher GAST is broken by invalidating EPA’s Three LoE, then EPA’s claim that higher CO2 concentrations also cause sea level increases and more frequent and severe storms, floods and droughts is also disproved. Such causality claims require a validated theory that higher CO2 concentrations cause increases in GAST. Lacking such a validated theory, EPA’s entire house of cards collapses.

More generally, EPA violated both the scientific method and the Scientific Advisory Board statute intended to enforce the scientific method when it made its highly influential scientific assessment in the Endangerment Finding.

EPA’s own Inspector General stated as follows:

“EPA did not conduct a peer review of the TSD [Technical Support Document] that met all recommended steps in the Peer Review Handbook for peer reviews of influential scientific information or highly influential scientific assessments. The handbook provides examples of ‘independent experts from outside EPA,’ that include NAS, an established Federal Advisory Committee Act mechanism (e.g., Science Advisory Board), and an ad hoc panel of independent experts outside the Agency.”

EPA’s outsourcing of the science to international organizations beyond the reach of U.S. laws has also been challenged. Moreover, the ClimateGate saga is testimony to the dedication of some to subvert the science for their own agenda. And, a Hockey Stick is now famous as a symbol of temperature data manipulated to generate public alarm.

In summary, it is not incorrect to argue that further study of the role GHGs play in climate is in order. However, with what is known now, it certainly seems that a new Endangerment Finding analysis is required, using, for example, the far more rigorous Science Advisory Board process suggested by EPA’s Inspector General. A Remand of EPA’s Endangerment Finding by the U.S. Supreme Court would be appropriate.

Wryheat Note: That the endangerment finding is purely political is shown by the fact that the EPA is getting all worked up about carbon dioxide levels of around 400ppm. But submarine crews work efficiently in carbon dioxide levels over10,000ppm. See Does carbon dioxide make you dumb?

Opinion Piece Signer List (alphabetically)

Dr. Timothy Ball
Climatologist & Environmental Consultant
Ph.D. (Faculty of Science), University of London, England

Joseph S. D’Aleo
Chief Meteorologist
WeatherBell Analytics

Dr. Donald Easterbrook (Emeritus)
Professor of Geology
Western Washington University

Dr. Gordon J. Fulks
Astrophysicist
La Center, WA

Dr. Laurence I. Gould
Professor of Physics
University of Hartford

Dr. William M. Gray (Emeritus)
Professor of Atmospheric Science
Colorado State University

Dr. Anthony R. Lupo
Professor of Soil, Environmental, and Atmospheric Sciences
University of Missouri

Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen
Western Technology Inc.
Deer Park Maryland

Dr. S. Fred Singer (Emeritus)
Professor of Environmental Sciences
University of Virginia

George H. Taylor,
Certified Consultant Meteorologist
President, Applied Climate Services

Dr. James P. Wallace III
President, & CEO, Jim Wallace & Associates LLC
Ph.D., Economics, Minor in Engineering, Brown University
M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Brown University
B.S., Aeronautical Engineering, Brown University

Anthony Watts
Former TV Meteorologist and founder of

SurfaceStations.org, Intelliweather, WattsUpWithThat

It is the contention of some (AGW proponents) that human carbon dioxide emissions are the major cause of global warming. Alternatively, natural cycles control the temperature and hence solution and exsolution of carbon dioxide into and out of the ocean, thereby controlling the atmospheric CO₂ content.

To my knowledge, AGW proponents have yet to present any compelling physical evidence to support their contention. However, the alternative hypothesis has much supporting physical evidence. The latest is a new paper published in Global and Planetary Change:

The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature by Ole Humlum, Kjell Stordahl, Jan-Erik Solheim from several Norwegian Universities.

The paper abstract reads:

Using data series on atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperatures we investigate the phase relation (leads/lags) between these for the period January 1980 to December 2011. Ice cores show atmospheric CO₂ variations to lag behind atmospheric temperature changes on a century to millennium scale, but modern temperature is expected to lag changes in atmospheric CO₂, as the atmospheric temperature increase since about 1975 generally is assumed to be caused by the modern increase in CO₂. In our analysis we use eight well-known datasets; 1) globally averaged well-mixed marine boundary layer CO₂ data, 2) HadCRUT3 surface air temperature data, 3) GISS surface air temperature data, 4) NCDC surface air temperature data, 5) HadSST2 sea surface data, 6) UAH lower troposphere temperature data series, 7) CDIAC data on release of anthropogene CO₂, and 8) GWP data on volcanic eruptions.

Annual cycles are present in all datasets except 7) and 8), and to remove the influence of these we analyze 12-month averaged data. We find a high degree of co-variation between all data series except 7) and 8), but with changes in CO₂ always lagging changes in temperature. The maximum positive correlation between CO₂ and temperature is found for CO₂ lagging 11–12 months in relation to global sea surface temperature, 9.5-10 months to global surface air temperature, and about 9 months to global lower troposphere temperature. The correlation between changes in ocean temperatures and atmospheric CO₂ is high, but do not explain all observed changes.

The authors also say, “Changes in ocean temperatures appear to explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO₂ since January 1980. CO₂ released from use of fossil fuels have little influence on the observed changes in the amount of atmospheric CO₂, and changes in atmospheric CO₂ are not tracking changes in human emissions.”

Comment:

It seems that AGW (human caused warming) proponents have a cause and effect problem. The figure below is from the cited paper. In that figure, green represents changes in CO₂, blue represents change in sea surface temperature, and red is the change in global surface temperature (HADCRUT3).

Recently, Dr. S. Fred Singer wrote an editorial which said in part:

“The science of climate change is not just of academic interest, but has been leading to policies for large-scale changes in energy use and supply — with important economic consequences. The burden of proof for AGW therefore falls on those who call for such policies. They must demonstrate with reasonable certainty that human activities are causing global warming, that a future warming will produce significant economic and ecological damage, and that it would be more cost-effective to mitigate now rather than to adapt later. They must also be ready to respond to any critique of the underlying science.”

Dr. Singer also poses some questions for AGW supporters:

**Why did climate warm between 1910 and 1940?

**Why did climate cool from 1940-1975? If the cause is assumed to be aerosols, also please explain the separate trends observed in the northern and southern hemispheres and compare with climate models. This asymmetry has been a puzzle for some time.

**Why is there a step increase (temperature “jump”) in 1976-77 — and again in 2001-2002? Such jumps are not in accord with the slow, steady increase calculated by climate models.

**Why is there no pronounced warming trend since 2002?

**And finally, why no warming for night-time marine air temperatures, troposphere, and proxies in the last two decades of the 20th century — in conflict with reported land-surface temperatures? Could one admit the possibility that there might be something wrong with the land-surface data used by IPCC as “evidence” for AGW?

I have an additional question. If CO₂ is such a powerful greenhouse gas and the major driver of global temperature as alleged, why does it stop rising? According to AGW hypothesis, CO₂ should cause temperature to rise which would produce more water vapor (a strong greenhouse gas), and lead to an enhanced or runaway greenhouse effect which would cause even more carbon dioxide to exsolve from the ocean. But something seems to curtail each rise in carbon dioxide. The cited paper suggests that both temperature and atmospheric CO2 content is controlled by sun-driven decadal ocean cycle oscillations.  If there is some influence from human carbon dioxide emissions, it is too small to be detected in the study.

For some additional perspective, I show a table below, constructed by a geologist several years ago, which shows the relative contributions to the greenhouse effect.  That estimate concludes that total human contribution is just 0.28%.  If that estimate is anywhere near reality, it helps explain why the researchers in the first paper cited above found “changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.”

[Note to potential commenters: stick to the facts of physical evidence. Any other types of comments may be deleted.]

See also:

US Temperature trends show a spurious doubling says Anthony Watts

New study shows that 50% of warming claimed by IPCC is fake

NOAA temperature record “adjustments” could account for almost all “warming” since 1973

IPCC Admits Its Past Reports Were Junk

The Case Against the IPCC and Proponents of Dangerous Anthropological Global Warming