Once more about Climate Change..

[Stewy]

k I can't help myself.............

Both sides use the same data and it's amusing because there is a truism in science about numbers.  You can make statistics say anything you want depending on how you sort them or shake them out or present them.  For example you can see charts or graphs such as below which show how important man made CO2 is to the green house gases.

What it doesn't present to the viewer is exceedingly important....in the title is says "Man-Made and Natural CO2" but excludes Water Vapor.  Here is why that is important:

Note:  Man made contribution to total CO2 is less than 4%.  CO2 total contribution is 3-4% due to the importance of Water Vapor.

So while it is absolutely true that CO2 levels are high, it is also true that things like the Vostok Ice Cores do not measure CO2 from the past, but measures O18/O16 ratios which are a temperature indicator, the levels of past CO2 are estimates based upon those temperatures suggested by the O Isotope ratios.  So we must rely upon a foundation of Geology which is Uniformitarianism or "the Present is the key to the past" to make estimates of CO2 levels, but they are NOT direct measurements.  Hell even the O Isotope ratios aren't direct measures of temperature.  So one has to be very careful about comparing estimated temperatures and estimated CO2 levels from indirect measurements and comparing them to current day temperatures.  It's poor science to make that comparison and declare it conclusive.  Essentially, estimating CO2 levels from the Vostok Icecores is two steps removed from real temperature readings making them suggestive at best and inconclusive at worst.

What the Vostok Ice Cores do show is a natural cycle of heating a cooling over the last ~500k years associated with the Ice Ages.  They show a slow build up of rising temperatures through time, and a rapid near instantaneous (geologically) temperature drop into an Ice Age.  It has been estimated that the temperature drop can happen in likely less than a century and possibly as quickly as a decade.  This rapid temperature drop is likely assocaited with the shutdown of the Thermohaline Circulation.  It is a real effect, and the main reason why Rome is so warm at the same latitude as Boston (as an example).  The TC can be shutdown by global  warming leading to the melting of the Arctic leading to a flood of fresh water into the North Atlantic which can shut down the Gulf Stream leading to abrupt cooling across the Northern Hemisphere.
Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circulation

If one wants to worry about anything, I'd be worrying an impending abrupt global temperature collapse associated with the Shutdown of the Thermohaline Circulation.  Oh and the Vostok Ice Core suggests that we are on the verge of the next Ice Age as well....


Note:  These are reconstructed curves from the O18/O16 ratios....not direct measurements.  Note the rapid temperature drops of the blue peak maximums are associated with the last few Ice Ages.