Climate change accelerating fast.

[REASON]

I'm looking for explanations why 650,000 years of ice core formation have never shown even a single instance of [ce]CO2[/ce] levels as high or higher than contemporary levels.

 

Maybe it's for no other reason than there weren't any.

[TheBigDog]

Indeed. I get all these climate change threads confused. ;)

 

I was referring to this post: http://hypography.com/forums/285731-post98.html

 

 

 

Rate of change is important. I can't recall if the Vostok data will give us that much detail and if it's been analysed in such a way to measure temperature spikes like we are seeing these days, but I'll go on a hunt when I have some more time.

Somewhere in these threads I posted some details about Vostok data, charts and all, but I cannot find it anymore. Not even on my PC where I did the analysis! Soooo...

 

Here is the Wiki picture of a chart of Vostok data.

 

I have made a close up of the temp section and added reference lines from across the picture. The horizontal lines show one degree (Celsius) temperature increments. The vertical lines show 10,000 years with the orange line at the left being today. What is shows me is that the Vostok record indicates a full four degree swing over the past 11,500 or so years. During that time it appears to swing up and down 1.5 to 2 degrees frequently within any period of a couple centuries. This is why the current temperature trend seems unremarkable to me, and why I stated that temperature goes up and down frequently without the influence of man.

 

Aha! I found one of my charts of the Vostok data!

 

In the data they post the temperature every 100 years. I charted the change in temperature from one posted reading to the next to see historically in a given lifetime what the observed temperature change would be. Note how often the temperature swing in one century is more than 2 degrees C. Note that there are some out there in the 4 to 6 degree range, all before man made CO2. This is from the raw Vostok data.

 

Bill

[TheBigDog]

Here is another site that has temperature charts, here for the past 2000 years. The first chart is of CO2 levels, the second is of historic atmospheric temperature. Not the way the temperature swings up and down through history, far more than our current "unprecedented" temperature changes.

 

My argument is not that it is warming, the data clearly shows that. My argument is with the cause being primarily man, and with the argument that what we are seeing now is somehow worse than anything that nature has dished out without our help. Deniers are on both sides of the argument.

 

CO2 vs Temperature: Last 2000 years

 

Bill

[Michaelangelica]

. . .. My argument is with the cause being primarily man, and with the argument that what we are seeing now is somehow worse than anything that nature has dished out without our help. . . .

 

Bill

Does it matter what it is caused by?

[TheBigDog]

Yes. If you like smoking a pipe in your own home, you would not stop smoking it to prevent cancer in people in the next town over. Conservation makes sense for its own sake. *BUT* all the conservation in the world would not stop the temperature swings observed prior to the industrial revolution.

 

You believe that because we might be the cause, we must behave as though we are the cause, even when evidence shows that what we are observing is not different from what nature delivers all by itself.

 

Bill

[BrianG]

I wonder why the ice cores don't show [ce]CO2[/ce] levels over 300ppmv, could it be there is a process that stops bubbles of atmosphere forming at higher concentrations? I've proposed melting as that limiting process, on the other hand, it’s possible that [ce]CO2[/ce] levels have never spiked above 300ppmv during the 650,000 years of Vostok ice formation.