neither is yours.

So far it cannot. The experiment that Bill Nye did was a failure so they fixed the results.

That has all been explained. I'll just repeat it again.

In addition to CO2, China also releases enormous quantities of aerosols, which mitigate the temperature rise. When China would emit "cleaner" energy and the aerosols make way to clear skies, the full effect of CO2 comes into play. So far, the aerosols masked part of the potential warming of the CO2.

The sun was slightly cooler than expected. This is not much, but it adds to the other effect.

The El Nino transported heat down into the deeper ocean and brought colder waters up. This was a very large emount of energy that went down. This cools the atmosphere. This is the mitigation effect of the ocean, which takes more time to heat up than the ocean. Climatologists cannot help it that this is not a nice and straightforward effect... it may not be much on a global scale, but it adds up to the other effect. Unfortunately we'll have to wait for a long time before the heating effect of the deeper ocean will be noticed - it'll be noticed by less cooling from the El Nino, in other words, the following "depressed levels" like the one we're discussing right now will be warmer than the current.

I'll just ignore the small contribution of a few volcanoes that erupted since nobody believes it. But even a 0.1 degree lower temperature by a few volcanoes will help depress temperature even more, and add to the current "depressed" levels.

And the atmosphere accounts for just 2% of the total heat capacity of the earth's climate system - why do you "deny" the extra evidence that comes from the heating of the ocean and the ice caps ? The ocean warms slower than the atmosphere... it just slows everything down by a fwe decades.

I wish it were a simpler relation, like we inject 20% more CO2 into the atmopshere and that then the oceans would also heat up instantly and that then we would reach a new equilibrium for global temperatures right away. Then maybe we wouldn't have this discussion.

Show me where the IPCC report states that CO2 is a driving factor.  Don't get snarky while demonstrating you didn't actually research the topic. 

Go ahead. We'll still be here I'm sure.

Here's a link to the IPCC report to get you started.

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml 

here is some analysis of the latest draft from the 2013 report: http://reason.com/archives/2013/12/18/ugly-climate-models 

Perhaps while you're at it you can show a single time in history where CO2 levels climbed before a temperature increase or fell before a temperature decrease. Seems like thst would be easy to find.

Heck, since you're being such an ass, perhaps you could explain what non political sources you used to derive your opinion. I don't have a problem with scientists. I have a problem with left wing ideologues misrepresenting science to justify policies that grant them more power and enrich their cronies.

Look, you keep making claims that are either unsupported or unrelated to our discussion (volcanic eruptions, btw, lower global temperatures, this isn't even a disputed fact).

You can take ice core samples from Greenland or Norway or the Antarctic and you'll see the same pattern.

Hell, I even gave you the link to the IPCC report. How hard would it be, if you are so certain, to find a finding in the report that states that the consensus of the climatology community is that human generated CO2 production is the primary cause of warming temperatures?

The only consensus is that humans are probably having an impact on global temperatures. That is a belief I subscribe to. It's leftists that cling to the CO2 thing and here in 66 pages we have yet to see where that belief even originated. It didn't originate from the IPCC. It comes from left wing advocacy groups.

Are you serious, Geo? Maybe it's because people can read numbers, letters and even friendly graphs derived from them?  

You seem like a really nice person. I mean that. But you have a level of cognitive dissonance that makes discussions on topics where you've made up your mind pointless. 

But let me try one last time: EVEN the climatologists, even the hard core sites like RealClimate.orgundersatnd that CO2 rising comes AFTER temperatures go up and starts to decline AFTER temperatures start to decline. This isn't a disputed fact (other than you and others that are really invested in CO2 being the cause of our woes).

CO2, because it is a green house gas, does have some unknown affect on the temperature but it isn't the driving force.  But since you won't believe data from the IPCC or NASA or climatology sites, here is the relevant part from RealClimate.org which is a site dedicated to warning people about climate change:

In other words, CO₂ does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway. From model estimates, CO₂ (along with other greenhouse gases CH₄ and N₂O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming.

So, in summary, the lag of CO₂ behind temperature doesn’t tell us much about global warming. [But it may give us a very interesting clue about why CO₂ rises at the ends of ice ages. The 800-year lag is about the amount of time required to flush out the deep ocean through natural ocean currents. So CO₂ might be stored in the deep ocean during ice ages, and then get released when the climate warms.]

-Guest Contributor: Jeff Severinghaus
Professor of Geosciences
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California, San Diego.

Via RealClimate.org 

In other words, CO2 is not what initiates climate change. Warmer temperatures free up carbon traps which release CO2 into the atmosphere. Since CO2 is a green house gas it has some N level of affect but given that global temperatures don't seem to care about CO2 concentrations very much that N level is apparently very small.

What I find baffling is the snark from people who don't even know the what the "scientific consensus" is. There's not only no scientific consensus that CO2 is what is causing our warmer temperatures over the past century, you'd be hard pressed to find even a significant minority of scientists who have that belief. 

If those who are predisposed to hand more power to government would get more of their data from science-related sites and less from left-wing political blogs, they'd be able to engage in more thoughtful discourse on it.  Instead, leftists seem to rely on shutting out opposing views because they get invested in their ideology without bothering to read the papers in question.

There's no excuse for an "alarmist" not to have at least read the IPCC report. It was written for lay people. Instead, too many people just parrot the opinions of left-wing blogs/sites.

You're just embarrassing yourself now...

http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGI_AR5_SPM_brochure.pdf

Page 11. Section C. Drivers of Climate Change:

"Total radiative forcing is positive, and has led to an uptake of energy by the climate system. The largest contribution to total radiative forcing is caused by the increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 since 1750."

The section you quoted is referring to THE ICE AGE. Not our current situation.

What I find baffling is how someone could possibly type this - it's like you inhabit an alternate universe. It's fine if you believe CO2 is not a significant driver. But your comments about the scientific consensus on the subject are ridiculous.

The reason I get snarky is because people go through these obstinate circular arguments ad nauseum while clearly making very little effort to do a proper reading on the topic AND claiming others are the ones not doing the reading.... Meanwhile, November smashed temperature records globally (land and ocean):http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/11/

Flip of a coin.

I'm trying my best to understand your point. And I like to think about these things

I've (partly) changed my mind about the influence of the ocean for example.

And I've also (partly) changed my mind about nuclear power as a possible solution to the problem of CO2.

So that's your logic.

But I think it's a bit limited in scope.

CO2 can result from a wealth of sources: volcanic, human, ocean, methane hydrates. And it can be removed by a wealth of sources: weathering, life.

And many of these have a relationship with temperature, of course.

A burp of CO2 or methane hydrate from the ocean (from disruption of an ocean current) can be a result of a temperature change.

Life depends on temperature.

Sea level depends on temperature.

The speed of weathering depends on temperature.

Solubility of CO2 in the ocean depends on temperature.

Vertical mixing of oceans also depends on temperature.

Now... in an unstable regime like we are in (flip-flopping between glaciations) anything can be a trigger. And an ice age is even more complicated, because you also have to deal with albedo and the uneven distribution of continents (Milankovitch cycles).

But there are also important sources/ sinks that are dependent on tectonics (and not on temperature):

Volcanism, its intensity depends on processes in the earth (Siberian traps).

Volcanism also gives us a continuous influx of CO2.

Tectonics can create isolated large bodies of anoxic water (good at trapping carbon) depend on tectonic settings (see the Azolla event).

It also creates regions that subside, forming swamps where life can bury CO2 permanently.

But how does this make CO2 insignificant as a driver in climate change?

It doesn't... even if the CO2 concentrations are influenced (partly) by temperature because of a multitude of feedback events that depend on temperature, CO2 can still be a driver behind all these things.

The only way you can claim that CO2 is not a driver, is if you can make plausible that CO2 cannot act on its own.

Much like the level H2O, which is a more potent Greenhouse gas, is almost entirely dependent on the temperature of the atmosphere and of the oceans. Because H2O forms rain and is removed very quickly from the atmosphere, we can safely say that H2O is not a driver of climate.

A similar argument goes for CH4. It's more potent as a greenhouse gas, but it reacts quickly with other molecules and it's removed from the atmosphere in a few decades, so that it's not really possible to have large quantities of methane in the atmosphere at any one time.

Scientists do believe that CO2 can be a driver of climate, because there is no quick way of removing it from the atmosphere. Therefore, even if it requires hundreds of billions of tons of the stuff to get a noticeable effect, this effects is there to stay for thousands of years, until it's removed again by weathering or burial of plant material.

Even the oceans are in equilibrium with CO2 and cannot remove hundreds of billions of tons of excess quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere just like that. It takes life a very long time to absorb hundreds of billions of CO2 and to sink those to the bottom of the ocean... and only a small part of the sunken material will be buried permanently, most of it will decompose and return to the surface (which is why it takes such a very long time).

The only thing that "proves" that is the ice-core data from the Antarctica and Greenland.

Every other shred of evidence (which have much better time-resolution) and our general knowledge of physical processes proves otherwise.

Anyways... there is a difference between being a "driver" and being the "medium".

We humans can be a driver, the CO2 can be the medium for higher temperatures (until it's removed by natural processes over the course of thousands of years).

A period of intense volcanism that releases copious amount of CO2 can be a driver, CO2 just sits there in the atmosphere for a long time and changes global temperatures.

If you say that temperature drives CO2, then that would imply that CO2 by itself cannot be sustained and is removed when temperatures drop. This implies that you need another mechanism than CO2 to explain a climate change and higher temperatures.

What mechanism is there?

Sometimes it also helps to think about extreme situations.

What do you think would happen if all volcanism on the earth would suddenly stop, and volcanism would not produce a "steady" influx of CO2 anymore? What do you think would happen to our world then, if this "driver" of sustained nice temperatures would suddenly disappear?

Sure but Frogboy bases his conclusions on this article:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/

Which is outdated, that's pretty clear to me.

The "lag" has already been reduced to 200 years. It's not nearly 800 years anymore.

What will the next revision bring?

When deriving temperature and CO2 data from ice cores, the scientists also use equations to correct for the burial process, what if those equations are wrong?

I mean... people here don't trust scientists, but somehow they DO trust that scientists did a good job on those measurements? I can play that game too.

And he continuously asks for "evidence".

I've already shown this:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/full/nature10915.html

But he ignores that.

He also ingnores the grander scheme of things, like that the earth was hotter during eras with high CO2 levels, and colder since CO2 levels have dropped - and why have they dropped: largely because of the Azolla event and that event was a freaky tectonic coincidence combined with a freaky algae that went on a rampage.

And he ignores my statement that if CO2 levels were temperature driven, we should've seen the reverse happening on a long time-scale, since the sun only got hotter during the past 400 millions years while CO2 dropped overall. I also present that as "evidence".

So what am I to do about that? I've just tried to give a comprehensive overview to let him see the bigger picture here.

There's nothing wrong with that, is there?

But ok something new.

http://www.ghgonline.org/predictions.htm

First figure on the page.

I think model A2 is how carbon emissions will develop this century.

You may wonder why we all need so much energy... but there's just so many of us!

The difference between this and religion is that in a religious thread, only half the people claim to know "science"....

That's fine. My opinion may change as new data is released. I'm not wedded to any view.

Just earlier this thread, you proposed we institute a worldwide ban on carbon related energy production all the while you admit that there is a CO2 lag (but it's down to 200 years!).

Before we destroy our worldwide economy I think we should, at the very least, wait until the evidence points to CO2 rising coming BEFORE the temperature changes, not 10 years, 50 years or two centuries.

Again, geo: provide a link to a source that shows long term temperature and CO2 levels where CO2 rises before temperatures. 

The fact that it works the opposite isn't even disputed in the scientific community.

That's not evidence, Geo.  

Evidence would be accepted records (like ice core samples from say Greenland, Norway, Antartica) that show CO2 rising BEFORE the temperature rises.  The reason you can't find any is that there isn't any.  By your own accounts, they've gotten the gap down to 200 years.

We have a lot of data for the past 20,000 years ago.  I'm not sure why you won't concede something that's already accepted by the rest of the scientific community. This isn't a religious argument.

Meanwhile...