Begin here. Go through (1), (2) and then answer the question.

1. We were in a Little Ice Age until about the middle of the 1900s.
2. We are not in a Little Ice Age now.

Should temperatures have gone up, down, or stayed the same?

If you want to use a linear relationship to say that the .6C increase from 100ppm CO2 would only give about 1.8C for 280ppm CO2, that would be a reasonable argument. I’d still believe the guys with the PhDs in climatology, but I’d agree that they had some explaining to do.

Your diminishing curve seems to have been pulled purely from your imagination. The limited piece you give in this post seems unjustified. The larger graph you present in your skeptic’s guide shows an increase to 1500ppm CO2 is still about 1.5C of increase, and judging by the slope of the curve, it looks like it wouldn’t even reach 1.6C by 3000ppm.

I’d also like anyone reading this blog to think about your discussion of positive feedback. The simplest example of a positive feedback system that people will encounter in their everyday lives is a computer microphone too close to a set of speakers. An external noise can be picked up by the microphone and then played out of the speaker. If the microphone is too close to the speakers, the sound will be picked up by the microphone again and played out of the speaker, starting a feedback loop. According to your description of feedback, if the volume is set too high, a positive feedback loop will be formed, the sounds will increase in volume exponentially, there will be a “run away” in amplification, and the speakers will explode. This isn’t what happens. Positive feedback systems (coupled to negative feedback systems) can produce an amplification -the sound played is louder than the original sound- without leading to unbounded, exponential growth. In short, it is not an insult to scientific intuition to say a .5C temperature increase from CO2 alone could lead to an overall increase of 1C because of positive feedback systems.

1) The “pre-industrial” CO2 figure of 280 ppmv is suspect. It is suspect because the early CAGW people date back to the late 19th and early 20th Century and could essentially cherry pick a number. Why do you ask? Simple. Ice core data is subject to contamination. CO2, like H2O is a gas with a variable concentration. Using chemical methods, estimates varied from the 280 or so ppmv to 500 or so ppmv for the “pre-industrial” and/or “prehistoric” times. Even today’s Mauna Loa IR derived figures are suspect because the measurements are made on a volcano. Some current best estimates, based upon plant physiology (C4 pathways vs C3 pathways) support past CO2 levels at or above current ones.

2) There are a number of studies indicating an atmospheric residence time for CO2 of 5 years. This is because of Henry’s Law and the fact that oceanic CO2 concentrations are 50 times the atmospheric ones. Given this, anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 is a small fraction of the current concentrations, and any CO2 signal will be dominated by other natural sources (human activity is just as natural as any other activity on this rock).

3) Water is and will be for the forseeable future the main “greenhouse” gas in our atmosphere.

4) Never forget ol’ Sol and orbital mechanics.

5) There is evidence that air and ocean temperatures have been warmer than the current estimated values.

6) A major volcanic eruption can inject more CO2 in a day than human activity has for the last 50 years.

7) Global warming is a misnomer if defined as global average temperatures. Climate, being statistical weather, will only warm globally (meaning everywhere on Earth’s surface) if insolation increases. What is happening in the real world is areas of localized warming, areas of localized cooling, and areas of essentially no long term change.

B. Regarding McIntyre, I seriously recommend to take some skeptical looks. He has a delightful blog. But there are a lot of things wrong/skewed. You may get the wrong impression by reading things too much through a SM lense. I recommend reading the Huybers comment on Steve’s GRL article. Reading that really explained to me what was going on and cut through a lot of defensive Steve argument (where he messes up a full factorial, obscures confounding factors) wrt correlation/covariance and centering/decentering. Also note that Steve’s response to a correction on RE benchmarking by Huybers is to try to shift the argument to an all new benchmarking (like someone who can always adjust the DCF to give you an NPV even with changed inputs, corrected errors). Just do yourself the favor of reading Huybers FIRST, then read Steve’s 3! blog posts about Huybers.

I love the way the blog is tailored towards scientifically literate laymen. The post on the scale of the temperature fudge factors was also illuminating.

I don’t have anything to add to article above, but I’ve thought of a create way to illustrate the magnitude of NASA’s Y2K error. Over the next 50 years the consensus among Kyoto advocates is that it will reduce global temperature by 0.07 degrees Celsius. That number is probably overly optimistic, but for the sake of comparison let’s say it’s correct.

That means McIntyre has single-handedly reduced the effect of global warming on the United States by TWICE AS MUCH in one day as Kyoto will do in 50 years!

Here’s the chart:

GLOBAL WARMING REDUCTION IN THE US:

Kyoto (50 years, projection): *******
McIntyre (1 day, actual): ***************

Maybe the countries that got suckered into Kyoto should have spent more money on people like McIntyre who think independently and understand statistics.

-Mercy