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  Appreciate this

  Thanks for this response, Coby. It's nice to receive a thoughtful response - environmental forums too often seem hostile to the very idea of questioning climate science, as if it was all gospel. I'll look into your suggestions for further research. Best wishes.On 'Historically, CO2 never caused temperature change'--Not so posted 2 years, 8 months ago 19 Responses

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  No answer offered by article or response

  Thanks for your reply, Coby, even if it was slightly rude. The article itself does not answer my questions, otherwise I would not have written my original post. May I ask you, once again, to justify your claim that "CO2 starts after temperature but drives it thereafter"?

  Higher temperature leads to higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere (after a time lag). Following the hypothesis that CO2 drives climate temperature, would the resultant graph not show an EXPONENTIAL increase? Higher temperature levels causing higher levels of CO2 causing higher temperature levels causing higher levels of CO2, and so on ad infinitum? In other words, temperature and CO2 would spiral up together, each prompting the other to higher levels. This does not seem to happen. Doesn't this in itself suggest that CO2 did not drive climate in the past? Isn't it more plausible that they are correlates of some other driving factor (e.g. the sun?)?

  Coby, please respond to this specific query. I realise that no one denies there are many factors in play in the climate, but the central claim is that CO2 has the capacity to drive climate. If this is not reflected in the historical ice-core record, where can we turn for evidence of this claim?On 'Historically, CO2 never caused temperature change'--Not so posted 2 years, 8 months ago 19 Responses

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  CO2 increases FOLLOW temperature increases

  Hold on, doberman! Let's at least try to keep a cool head and stick to scientific data and evidence-supported theory. Your apocalyptic predictions sound like the ramblings of a madman. Cool heads are required. In the 1970s, people (including many scientists) were convinced that we were about to head into another Ice Age. Guess what? As you will concede, that paranoia was completely unjustified. But we are much smarter now, aren't we? Especially when an entire ideology and industry precariously rests on the belief that CO2 drives climate. They may be right. But let's stick to fact.

  Let's return to the evidence, not in order to go round in circles, but so that we can assess the theory with a cool head. The graph plotting CO2 against temperature is THE crucial piece of evidence when examining the lynch-pin claim that CO2 drives climate. All the policies condemning the Third World to low-level development derive from this claim, so nothing less than the future well-being of billions of people is at stake. As a left-leaning humanist-internationalist, this is a very important issue for me.

  The graph clearly shows that CO2 increases FOLLOW rises in temperature. Coby Beck writes: "CO2 starts after temperature but drives it thereafter." This is unsupported by the graph as far as I can see. The graph is here on Wikipedia:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Co2-temperature-plot.s ...

  A more detailed graph would be useful, but all the same... Take a look at the point around 25,000 years ago. The temperature rises drastically. About 1000 years later, CO2 rises drastically. This may be correlation. It may be causation (temperature leading to CO2 increase). But not even Doc Brown from Back to the Future could argue that a rise in CO2 could trigger a temperature rise which happened some 1000 years before! As industrialisation occurs, CO2 OVERTAKES temperature, and the correlation seems to end (the lines separate). How can this suggest that CO2 is driving temperatures?

  What caused the rise in temperatures between 1900 and 1940? The CO2 output was relatively low. What caused the fall in temperatures during the economic boom of 1940-1970? The CO2 output surged during this period. Correlation does not mean, but could imply, causation. But even the correlation seems out of synch here. In fact, a stronger correlation can be found between solar activity and climate: http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/lassen1.html
  This does not prove causation, but it demands that we take a step back and consider our founding assumptions.On 'Historically, CO2 never caused temperature change'--Not so posted 2 years, 8 months ago 19 Responses