Schwartz in the news again:
Stephen Schwartz of Brookhaven National Laboratory makes our weekly roundup again this week. This time, its for a comment/reply in the latest issue of Nature concerning a previously published Nature piece “Quantifying climate change — too rosy a picture?” by Schwartz et al. In the original piece, Schwartz and co-authors argue that the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) presents an overly confident assessment of climate sensitivity and potential future climate change. In the response by Forster et al, a number of IPCC lead authors point out that the Schwartz et al critique ignores or misinterprets several key IPCC findings.
update: if you don’t have a subscription, the original Schwartz et al Nature article is available here and the recent comment/reply is available here
update #2: It has been pointed out to us that the commentary by Stephen Schwartz and co-authors was published on the Nature Reports Climate Change website, rather than in the print journal Nature.
Dave Rado brings up an important point. We need to consider where growth in energy consumption is most likely to occur and where there is the most low-hanging fruit in terms of conservation measures. On both counts, developing countries provide a rich hunting ground for decreasing future ghg emissions, and for carbon offsets. Perhaps even more important, we are talking places where there is very little energy or transportation infrastructure. A leapfrog strategy that helps them adopt advanced, clean technology faces little of the opposition and cost we see in developed countries to changing infrastructure. Get them to adopt clean technology now and they will likely demand clean technology forever.
Jerry Toman, neat as the idea of the AVE is, I suspect you would have difficulties in realizing it. I grew up in Denver where I could watch tornados spawn over the great plains–the conditions have to be just right, so much so that if the light was just a certain way, you started to look for funnel clouds. Also keep in mind that much of Earth’s population lives in villages with a population well under 10000 people.
J.C.H. As my wife is an environmental scientist, I will take a stab at this. First, every tree has a “lifespan”. Oaks typically live less that 100 years. Tulip poplar can live up to 300 years. Some trees–redwoods in the western US, kauri in N. Zealand, etc. can live hundreds or even (a few) thousands of years. The thing is that as a tree matures, its rate of growth decreases, so the rate at which it sucks carbon out of the air also decreases. Moreover, as the canopy grows, there is less sunlight on the forest floor for undergrowth. Forests are most effective for sequestration in their rapid growth phase, when they are growing UP as well as OUT.
re 246 (Gareth), if there are 300 trees on the hectare (Forest Guardians say 350-400 or so) that’s about 0.4t or 800-900 lbs of carbon per tree, or 1600-2000 total lbs. per tree. Seems a little more than Forest Guardians estimate (especially over 100 years); plus they say pines sequester less carbon than other hardwood or some softwood. Interesting. They seem to have a low estimate, but you’d think it would be otherwise, being in the business of selling credits and all…
Ref. 247 What we have here in Canada, are what are called “climax forests”; forests where only the same type of tree can ever grow. The true climax tree here is the maple, but in some soil types, the white pine is also a climax tree. When the forest is “mature”, trees are dying and falling at the same rate as new trees are growing. The dead trees release carbon into the atmosphere as fungi cause the trees to decay. The nutrients released permit the growth of new trees. HTH.
Dave Rado #245
After a little web surfing I discovered that methane capture is sometimes used as a carbon offset. 17 to 1 makes money for the operation. But one capture site merely burns off the methane from an abandoned mine. I’d like to see that energy put to some worthwhile use: electricity generation or maybe pumping. Any gasoline powered generator could be modified to run on methane and power a home or neighborhood. With the soon forthcoming development of the far northern areas there are sure to be homes and neighborhoods. I’d hate to see naturally occurring methane in the far north burned as carbon offset rather than for energy. If we are trying to stabilize the climate, wasting energy is clearly a step in the wrong direction
carbonneutral.com
JCH, as I understand it 100 years is about the expected life of the average tree, with a few exceeding that but more than 10% of the planting dying much before 100. That’s what the Forest Guardians say; I don’t have firsthand knowledge.
a follow-on: I’m really trying to get an accurate handle on the tree sequestration stuff. If my source is correct it’s even much worse than Ike said. Makes sequestering, at least with trees a spit in the ocean at best. Plus I still can’t reconcile the corn comparison (which is a sniff test of the tree stuff). 10,000 stalks probably weigh a lot more than one would guess, but 800 to one is a very long credibility hill to climb… it seems.
Catman (249), but isn’t storing vaporous methane (for running your generating, e.g.) a major hurdle? I’m not sure, but isn’t that why gas producers burn off excess?
Re. #248, I agree that the carbon offsetting industry is badly regulated (actually almost completely unregulated), and that this leads to many questionable offsetting projects being undertaken. A worldwide attempt to seriously address this lack of regulation and to enforce best practice, should in my opinion be at the top of the agenda of all governments that are concerned about climate change, and I don’t understand why it isn’t. However, there is a voluntary regulation scheme in place called the “gold standard” (see http://www.cdmgoldstandard.org/). One can at least ensure that any offsetting one does personally goes only to “gold standard”-vetted projects.
Dave
Growing trees — As deforestation contributes about 20–25% of the antropogenic carbon load in the active carbon cycle, I’m certainly in favor of planting ‘off-setting’ trees. However, this is not and cannot be part of the long range solution which requires removal of about 500 Gt carbon by permanent sequestration in the ground.
By the way, the Wikipedia page on ice cores has a fine graphic of the Vostok C ice core data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
Look at the Eemian, about 125,000 years ago to note that the spike in carbon dioxide preceeds the spike in temperature. Use this graphic the next time you read somebody’s mis-information that “temperature always preceeds carbon dioxide in paleoclimate data.”
Jim Cripwell writes:
“The dead trees release carbon into the atmosphere as fungi cause the trees to decay.”
This is a very partial statement and could mislead people into thinking a “climax” forest isn’t continuing the process of accumulating carbon from the air. That omits the way a forest creates soil from fallen trees. A fallen tree soon has far more living material in it than it did when it was a standing living tree — most of the “live” tree is dead wood; most of the “dead” tree is living organisms turing the wood into more living things.
You can look this stuff up. http://www.forestry.ubc.ca/Default.aspx?tabid=1472
Re #238:
“But something doesn’t seem right. One acre of corn (~10,000 plants) will sequester about 2500kg of carbon in one year, which is ~8 times what the average tree will sequester in 100 years. Seems funny. Any comments or insights?”
One acre holds a large number of trees. One acre of natural corn (not irrigated, not fertilized) will not come anywhere close to 2.5 tonnes carbon/acre*year. Compare acres to acres and don’t apply fertilizer or tend the corn in any way. The numbers should be within an order of magnitude close assuming there isn’t so much residual herbicide as to kill off invasive grasses (in that case the quite possibly dying corn plot will be just barren and not taking up CO2).
Re 252: Rod B
Radiata for timber can be planted at as little as 200 stems per hectare, and up to 1,000, depending on the site and thinning regime. Most commercial forests would be at the higher end. Growth rate in some parts of NZ can be as high as 50m^3 timber per hectare per year.
Trees are very good at extracting carbon from the atmosphere during their growth phase, but a mature forest is more like a self-sustaining carbon store. From an offset point of view, trees (or other organic carbon stores) are regarded as “soft” – often difficult to measure, at risk of burning down/dying etc – whereas tech offsets (credits from windfarms etc) are easier to measure and manage. Tech offsets are therefore more expensive.
That said, we need to plant trees to replace the forest we’ve lost, and we need to stop cutting down trees (Amazon/Indonesia/Siberia etc). The latter is the quickest (and probably cheapest) way to reduce emissions. The former is an unalloyed environmental good.
Trees are an important part of the answer: but only a part.
re 253
“What we have here in Canada, are what are called “climax forests”; forests where only the same type of tree can ever grow.”
Actually, that is not quite correct, in the sense that “climax forest” is a term that denotes a forest where a specific tree species has won out over other tree species. From that perspective, climax forests are commonplace, particularly in old growth.
Also, while the species dominates, over the long run it is incorrect to suggest it is the only type of tree that can “ever grow” in that forest.
“The true climax tree here is the maple, but in some soil types, the white pine is also a climax tree. When the forest is “mature”, trees are dying and falling at the same rate as new trees are growing.”
Building on my comments above, if you are experiencing warming in your climax forests on the scale Alaska is, particularly in your white pine forests, those forests are becoming increasingly suseptible to bug kill (the infestation of bark beetles). Alaska’s forests are dying out, much like a lot of forests in the American southwest, due to the increased rate of bug kill, brought on by uncharacteristic warmth and the lengthing seasons that have allowed extra generations of bark beetles to be born in the same season.
The problem with this development is the increased rate of dying trees and a reduction of replacements. And as warming continues, the situation will likely not get any better.
Side note: one of the problems the U.S. will be facing in the not too distant future is an increase the ranges and amounts of fauna like poison oak and kudzu, as those plants thrive on increased CO2.
Wonderful world we are creating for ourselves…
re 263.
Oops. I wrote “fauna” when I meant “flora.”
Doh.
Rod B. #257 Yes, absolutely. So methane must be used at the source or piped somewhere else and used there, but usually not stored because it is inefficient. Instead of burning off unused methane for carbon offsets, I’m suggesting that it be used for small scale electrical power generation and used to power stationary engines that could pump water, for instance. Think small.
I’m not sure whether or not someone has previously posted a link to the pdf file of a recent paper by Hansen, et al. I have just finished reading it and recommend it for the reasoning which goes into the clearly expressed view that the climate is right at the edge of an important tipping point, massive ice sheet melting.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2007/Hansen_etal_2.html
Robert (261): In an old but definitive scientific analysis of corn and its energy [ https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/2294/1/V26N01_001.pdf ] the dry weight of 10,000 plants yielding 100 bushels on an acre contains, in fact, just about 2.6 tonnes of carbon. The corn was fertilized I presume. I don’t know about w/o fertilizer — seems to be an unhelpful distinction. If you don’t fertilize, water, or give it sun maybe you’d get a lucky kilogram or two. A hectare, about 2-1/2 acres is assumed to support 350-400 trees planted at 5 meter spacing.
Gareth (262): Good is a highly subjective term; trees might be good at absorbing carbon, just terribly slow and limited (if all the previous assertions and conjectures hold). A half-ton of sequestered carbon over 100 years (pick 50 if you wish) is just not a lot — maybe a year or two’s worth of driving one family car?
I agree we should plant more trees and quit the deforestation. Every little bit helps, and the deforestation is a significant contributor. But as an effective offset program it seems pretty piddly.
Ref. 247 Jim Cripwell: “What we have here in Canada, are what are called “climax forests”; forests where only the same type of tree can ever grow. The true climax tree here is the maple, but in some soil types, the white pine is also a climax tree.”
Canada has several different types of climax forest other than the predominantly maple-white pine forests in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence forest surrounding Ottawa, where I believe Jim lives. There is a region of Carolinian forest in southwest Ontario along the north shore of Lake Erie that harbours a much larger number of species, for instance, and the west coast spruce-cedar-fir temperate rain forest. By far the largest forest type, running clear across Canada is the spruce-jack pine boreal forest, and above that is the belt of stunted taiga forest. Each is a climax forest for its respective climate zone and soil type.
Good point, Ray (#250)and thanks for the comment,
Nature often has trouble creating vortices, except perhaps in tornado alley at certain times of the year. I too, happen to be living near Denver and have observed the convection developing from the morning hours, almost invariably resulting in cumulus cloud formation if there is no rotation, which I have yet to see. The rotation for larger tornado “swarms”, as I’m sure you know, develops from the wind shear arising from cold Candian air, clashing with warm air from the GOM along long frontal boundaries.
Maybe closer to the front range of the Rockies a jet of air from a mountain range could provide the necessary rotation for smaller, individual tornadoes. Vortices in mountain areas are not unheard of as sometimes polluted air is cleared out of a valley by the process known as “mixed-layer venting” in which a vortex of a size sufficient to break through the inversion layer is created by wind flow in certain directions.
Contrary to nature, humans have found it rather easy to create predictable vortices by deflecting the flow of air in a preferred direction. Every time we fly in an airplane we depend on the downward deflection of air from the wing (airfoil) rotating it downward from its normal horizontal direction to support the weight of the aircraft.
Now imagine two flat plates enclosing a cylindrical section in which air is made to flow inward toward the center. Around the periphery, a “picket-fence” of vertically oriented airfoils causes the inflowing air to be deflected in a preferred tangential direction. In the center of the top plate, a hole is made for the inflowing air to escape. Obviously, due to conservation of angular momentum, the outflowing air will be rotating.
Angular momentum can be further increased if the air flows through a second “picket-fence” which deflects the air a second time in the same tangential direction. The velocity can be further increased if the top and bottom plates are curved, causing the flow area to decrease as it approaches the center.
The overall increase in velocity must be accompanied by a drop in pressure to satisfy the energy equation. To drive the process, the air must contain positive CAPE or enthalpy must be added at some point inside the cylinder (or both). Ideally, during the day, the CAPE would drive the process, while at night the added waste heat would provide most of the energy which would be enough such that the vortex leaving the center would be more buoyant than the surrounding air. The waste heat could be low-temperature geothermal, the residual from an urban “heat island” or waste heat from a power plant or other industrial process.
The advantage of a vortex vs. a chimney is that it is a lot cheaper, and could practically be several miles high; the vortex permits a rapid upflow of air and suppresses advection of colder surrounding air if the device is large enough. Breaking through an inversion layer for such a device should not be a problem.
AVE_fan
Re. 262:
In the case of Siberia, forests are important for biodiversity, but the jury is out regarding their effect on global warming. Conifers in tundra regions have a much lower albedo than the bare tundra does, and thus planting conifer forests in those regions increases the local temperature; and whether this temperature increase is greater than or smaller than the opposite effect on temperature of the CO2 they trap is not yet resolved in the literature, as I understand it.
The forests I refer to are just over the border from China, and being felled to feed growth there – often illegally. This is (IIRC) the southern edge of the boreal forest, not the tundra edge.
The Eemian: The paper by Hansen et al. linked in #259 provides an alternative dating for the previous interglacial (Termination II), the Eemian/Sangamon. The paper states it began about 134 kya, with strongest warming at 131 kya, and concluded about 129 kya.
This is in agreement, at least for me, with Alan Templeton’s generic work indicating that Homo sapiens sapiens most probably migrating from Africa to Southeast Asia about 135 kya, although the error bar certainly allows for the possiblity of dates as late as 95 kya or even later. Nonetheless, I am of the opinion that this event would occur in close conjunction with the Eemian (other disagree), so pleased to see some slight confirmation.
Perhaps of more interest to most here is that Figure 3a clearly shows the maximum sea stand in the Eemian as occurring well after the maximum temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations. I do’t know whether this is just an artifact or something worrisome regarding future climate for our descendants…
> Around the periphery, a “picket-fence” of vertically oriented
> airfoils causes the inflowing air to be deflected in a preferred
> tangential direction.
Now, plan your city layout: each skyscraper an airfoil cross section, each aligned around the perimeter of an open warm-water lake into which excess heat from the buildings is routed, so the air is always rising above the lake and the breeze is always blowing into the city center ….
#208 Ray Ladbury The fallacy here is assuming that you could do much of anything in the automotive sector with $20 million. Capital intensive industries such as this (and petroleum, by the way) have a built-in obstacle to competition. GM, Ford and Chrysler developed this infrastructure at a time when there was virtually no foreign competition and when resources and labor (and especially healthcare) were relatively cheaper.
What? Tesla Motors will bring a brand new car to market for a fraction of what you think it will take. They JUST received $45M series D financing. They do it by putting all their secret sauce into an existing car (Lotus). It’s a very sane way to solve a very expensive problem.
I’m afraid I don’t have much doubt that the big 3 would squash any idea that challenged their hemhorraging business model.
Existance proof? If what you think in your head is a successful business model, then why don’t big 3 (or any of the worlds car makers) adopt it? Or why don’t you make it a reality? This is kind of like the “secret 200 MPG carburetor” where anyone that denies it exists is “one of them”??? How could the big 3 squash Tesla? They can’t. Tesla will live and die on its merits.
There’s nothing stopping you from working a license with Kia to put batteries and motors in their crash-tested car and taking it to market for under $100M. The risk, of course, is that you won’t find enough folks that want to buy the car. But that is your problem, not GMs problem. GM tried it, found not enough folks wanted to buy it. They decided to wait a few years till the technology made more sense. Seems reasonable and sane. GM are fast followers, not leaders.
The upshot, is that if you want to bring ANY product to market today and get folks attention it will cost you $15M. Even if you just find a little electronics “thingy” in China and bring it to the US already working it will cost you $10M to ensure enough folks know about it.
Launching a product–any product– is expensive. That Tesla is bring a new car to market for $100M is amazing.
#199 Tamino: The correct formula is dE = P * dV. Under operation, we can expect that the expansion of the air in the tank will be isothermal rather than adiabatic; in fact the website for the car mentions that they have heat exchangers specifically in order to make the expansion as near isothermal as possible.
Yes, good catch! Here’s a great paper that talks about compressed air cars in great detail: http://www.efcf.com/reports/E14.pdf
Summary: overall efficiency using multi-state expansion and compression is around 40%, which is quite a bit less than electric cars.
My original comment had to do with compressing air using animals, and to use the compressed air to power farm machinery.
Horses or mules, for instance, could easily compress air to a far greater pressure than 300 bar. Compressed air could be manufactured 24 and 7, and stored for prolonged periods of time using the simplest of technologies. The tractors could run at all times of the year, in all types of weather, and be large enough to handle modern farming requirements – something horse and mules cannot do.
On a large farm, vehicle range would not be a problem. Horses and mules do not have the methane consequence of ruminants. They actually enjoy work. Gomer Pyle could do this.
So what would be the problems?
Look up “air tools” — lots of people carry tanks of compressed air now to power tools.
This is not something a horse or mule would enjoy doing all day:
http://www.old-picture.com/united-states-1930s-1940s/Grinding-Horse-Grain.htm
Re 274. Matt, the proof is that GM, Ford and Chrysler have clung to the model where they produce SUVs and trucks even when oil is selling for $80/barrel rather than $50/barrel. They have done so, because that is what they are tooled to do. They cannot take a plant that makes SUVs and turn around and make hybrids. The problem is that in such a capital intensive industry, there is a lot of inertia, and the larger a company gets, and the more committed to a particular business model/product line a company becomes, the less likely they will be to respond in an agile manner to changing markets, new technology or new imperatives. It’s economics, not conspiracy that fuels the resistance to innovation we see from the big 3.
They do enjoy working. And as the get older, they get to take really cool drugs like cocaine. The horses that pull carriages around Central Park are working. Same for the Budwieser Clydesdales, or the horses used by mounted policemen.
Compressed air is used for tools for many of the same reasons diesel is preferred for tractors. It chugs and lugs.
Ray Ladbury (#278) wrote:
High rates of taxation on smaller businesses help, too.
A large company doesn’t need a high rate of profit in order to remain large – and they will typically be in a better position to lobby for tax breaks that smaller businesses can’t get. However, for an innovative small company to grow into something that can compete with larger companies, it needs the profits. Tax those at too high a rate and it can’t grow. But lower taxes will mean a higher, quicker rate of return on investment and attract investors – and this is more likely to encourage the creation of new technology even when there is a considerable lag between development and production.
The bogs might just do it to us:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7003668.stm
Good find, David. This answers one of the puzzles, because people had been looking for (and not finding) evidence of abrupt release of methane from seafloor clathrates, like the Storegga slide work.
The BBC reports evidence now of a PETM longterm, many thousand year warming release from bogs.
Permit me a small quote from the BBC page you linked:
—— excerpt follows—–
… Scientists looked for hopanoids, chemicals made by bacteria which survive remarkably well over time.
At the Palaeocene-Eocene transition, they found the ratio of two carbon isotopes changed in the hopanoids – a change which is very probably down to an increase in methane in the atmosphere.
But this could not have been the initial burst of methane released by the oceans, if indeed that theory is correct. Methane degrades rapidly in the atmosphere; yet the methane enrichment recorded in the hopanoids endured for tens of thousands of years.
Instead, the scientists believe, the chemicals are documenting a long-term release of methane from the bog itself which was stimulated by the temperature rise.
“We think what we were seeing was a response to the warming, a positive feedback mechanism which could amplify climate change,” explained Dr Pancost….
——- end excerpt
Hank, with all of the scary news of the day, draught in SE US, Iraq war, housing bubble, economy failure, shrinking ice caps, rising sea levels etc, this is probably the scariest for the long term. We need to start harvesting this natural methane now and use it as an energy source to power the sequestration of carbon from fossil fuels. Making lemonade out of lemons is one way to avoid the approaching catastrophe. But it probably won’t happen unless someone can figure out how to make money from saving the future.
Here is an important part of the carbon cycle which is completely new to me, methane consuming Archaebacteria in marine sediments:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v398/n6730/abs/398802a0.html
It is possible that within a few decades, the open oceans will have enough carbon dioxide to violate current EPA standards:
http://biopact.com/2007/09/co2-emissions-could-violate-epa-ocean.html
David (285), does EPA really have jurisdiction of oceanic absorption of CO2 as Biopact claims? News to me, but maybe I’m behind. I know EPA has (had) no explicit authority to regulate CO2 in any fashion until a court decided that that would have been a better law.
The recent National Geographic issue contains two articles on climate change, plus a great looking colorful insert with maps and graphs. Unfortunately I found that some the content was not as good as the presentation.
There is a map of the world showing the change in temperature between 1976 and 2006. To give them credit, these are usually shown with Mercator projection, which greatly exaggerates the polar regions, but they (being professional geographers) use a much better projection. But a chart like this should use a 10 year average for the starting and ending temperatures, while they are using data for a single year. It so happens that 1976 was an unusually cold year, about 0.3 degrees C below normal, so the warming shown is about twice what has really happened.
The question is was this done to make the map as scary as possible, or did they simply not understand what they were doing? Looking at the rainfall map below, for the same dates, leads me to suspect the latter. It appears that the greatest changes of rainfall occurred around the province of Quebec. I happen to live in the “drought” zone, and I must say I have not noticed any change. Clearly, comparing two single years is only showing us random changes in weather, obscuring any effects of global warming. This map is useless.
The point is, how could National Geographic publish something so flawed that an amateur like myself can spot in a matter of minutes? This magazine reaches some of the very people who might change their minds on this issue, and a lack of credibility undermines this. I have already seen this happen to people I have shown it to.
On the other side of the insert is a graph of temperature, carbon dioxide level, and sea level for the past 400,000 years. The first two I recognize from ice core data, but I had no idea that there was so much information on paleo sea level for that period. I understand that ancient sea levels are not that easy to determine. Given what I noted above, I wonder where this data came from. And of course, no references are given. Can someone tell me where I can find this kind of paleo sea level data? If it really exists?
Re post 259: “Look at the Eemian, about 125,000 years ago to note that the spike in carbon dioxide preceeds the spike in temperature. Use this graphic the next time you read somebody’s mis-information that “temperature always preceeds carbon dioxide in paleoclimate data.””
I believe that you may be misled by the fact that the time axis is ‘thousands of years ago’, however if you look at ~340,000 yrs ago you’ll see a sharp dust spike and CO2 spike which precede the major T rise. There’s a secondary jump in CO2 which I (probably naively) interpret as a response to the rise in T.
By the way in response to an earlier poster it’s S. George Philander.
Rod B (286) — I dunno. I do know that EPA has the authority to regulate water quality, so maybe that is the source of the regulation.
Blair Dowden (287) — Start with the paper linked in #259 and consult the references. You will indeed notice considerable variation in the various attempts to measure paleo sea stand…
David, Rod, the notion about CO2 and oceans is from some opponents to ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty. It’s blogger opinion, false as far as I can tell. It always seems to come packaged with strong spin against any international treaty.
Here’s a bit about it:
__________________excerpt from a blog, cite below_____________
“Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Law of the Sea Debate Continues
The conversation that began with Doug Bandow’s article in the American Spectator on the law of the Sea Treaty, continued in the American Spectator’s letters column and then moved to this blog …”
“Nothing in the treaty requires parties to adhere to environmental norms to which they have not independently subscribed. (See Article 297.1(c), for instance.)”
_____________________________________________________
http://www.nationalcenter.org/2007/08/amy-ridenours-national-center-blog-more.html
Phil Felton (288) — No, I am certainly not misled by the time axis. However, looking at the actual data from the NOAA Paeloclimatology site, and using the data from the Petit et al. 1999 paper, it appears that the graph is not well drawn. The actual data suggests that the temperature followed the CO_2 by only about 200 years, hard to see in the graphic.
About 340,000 years ago was Termination IV, where the graph sugggests what you say, but one should check the actual data, since the graph on Wikipedia does not appear to be that accurate.
OK Dave fair enough, certainly from the graph cited it looks otherwise, do you have a link to the data at NOAA (my attempt in tracking it ended up with a 404 message!
Re Post 259. Gee David when I checked out that Vostok graphic you mentioned my first reaction was to try to print it to use the next time our neighborhood skeptic raised the issue —but lucky for me my wife pointed out I was reading it left to right (i.e. backwards) thus being saved considerable future embarrassment. So unless the time scale of this “fine graphic”(259) that “…is not well drawn [and]…does not appear to be that accurate”(291) actually turns out to also be labelled backwards the evidence presented here is not going to sway that neighborhood skeptic in his view that temperature really does precede CO2.
Ron, David, no chart drawn on a computer screen is going to display a hundred or even thousand year timespan usefully out of a half million year timespan scale.
You could go to the data sets and quote from the research papers on this issue.
http://gcmd.nasa.gov/records/GCMD_CDIAC_CO2_VOSTOK_ICECORE.html
Or to people who have already explained it fairly clearly:
http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptic_arguments/lags-not-leads.html
I obtained the data from
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok_data.html
and I am particularly interested in Termination II, the Eemian. The average peak CO_2 concentrations from three ice cores is 292 ppm. This is in association with a peak temperature about 1.5 degrees Celcius higher than now. This was enough to raise the sea stand about 5 meters. (That is the main point.)
In looking carefully at the Petit et al. data, it appears that right at the reak of CO_2 and temperature, the CO_2 peak preceeds the temperature peak by about 200 years. However, I should really take the time to look similarly at the other papers and other ice cores before attempting to say anything definitive.
With regard to leads and lags, Hank Roberts in #294 has provided a useful link.
Rising sea stand prediction:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070922/rising-seas/
1970s ice age redux:
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=275267681833290
A couple more interesting items re timing and tipping:
http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/32/1/53
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VF0-4G3D87B-1&_user=10&_coverDate=10%2F31%2F2005&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=2dcb7e0f1d898b532f7fe5562da30da0#
J.C.H. (297) — In the intervening 36 years a great deal has been learned about climate processes.