Climate Policy

[kandrathe]

If the temperature rise came first, and caused CO2 to start rising, it did so with remarkably close proximity in time to the start of the industrial revolution.

Here is a better explanation from Skeptical Science...

<blockquote>In fact, a study came out just a few weeks ago (Stott 2007) that confirms CO2 increases around 1000 years after temperature rise. This raises an important question - does temperature rise cause CO2 rise or the other way around? The answer is both.



The dominant signal in the temperature record (the white line in the above figure) is a 100,000 year cycle where long ice ages are broken by short warm periods called interglacials. This cycle coincides with a change in Earth's orbit as it evolves from a more circular orbit to a more elliptical orbit. When springtime insolation (incoming sunlight) increases in the southern hemisphere, this causes temperature to rise in the south. The warming is amplified as retreating Antarctic ice means less sunlight is reflected back into space.

As the southern oceans warm, they give up more CO2 to the atmosphere as the solubility of CO2 in water falls with rising temperature. The CO2 mixes through the atmosphere, amplifying and spreading the warming to the tropics and northern hemisphere. This is why warming in the southern hemisphere precedes warming in the northern hemisphere (Caillon 2003). This is confirmed by marine cores that show tropical temperatures lag southern warming by ~1000 years (Stott 2007). CO2 warming also explains how the relatively weak forcing from orbital cycles can bring the planet out of an ice age. </blockquote>So all this is not to say that anthropogenic CO2 is not an issue, but that there is a natural fluctuation of global temperature which results in increases of CO2 to which we've added more. The results of which, are as of yet uncertain, but may lead to increased warming (above natural cycle) by some measure. Geologically, the Earth is warming naturally as we are emerging from an ice age, but the human contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere is the risky science experiment to which we are all captive lab rats.