Life on Earth has evolved and survived over a billion years of massively varying atmospheric CO2 concentrations. To think that a relatively minor fart of anthropogenic CO2 could cause CAGW is not just absurdity, it is stupidity.

Dung, the ocean itself is a perfect thermometer since water immediately expands when heated and in the very deep oceans, such expansion causes significant rise in sea level. The simple average of world tide gauges was published in the 2011 update of the standard sea level study by Church & White. Here is that yellow plot, extracted as black with a trend line added. It's utterly linear defiance of showing any CO2 signal upswing falsifies claims that the oceans are significantly warming, and since they dwarf the heat content of the thin atmosphere, basically, nothing is happening, and also the claim that extra heat is hiding in the deep oceans where no thermometer data exists is also falsified.

http://oi51.tinypic.com/28tkoix.jpg

Original reference: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10712-011-9119-1

Note how this newly introduced simple average has been completely obscured by being plotted in light yellow on top of various "adjusted" (AWAY from real sea level on the ground) plots. Scams can be quite banal as long as such plots are simply ignored by the IPCC and talking heads on TV.

There's an interesting and not entirely off topic posting at Chiefio's which discusses sealevels, ocean currents and climate. I read it late last night and will re-read along with some of the links sometime today.

Dung, if this isn't what you want let me know.

Chandra, my point was that the diurnal surface temperatures of deserts have remained constant during the instrumental record, while at the same time atmospheric CO2 concentrations have supposedly increased by 43% (from 280 ppmv to 400 ppmv). As CO2 is often stated to be a well mixed gas I would theorise that these empirical data falsify the CAGW hypothesis. I am sure that someone will tell me if I am wrong.

Roger, that interests me. Do you have a source for the information.

My main interest is actually in measurements of the variation in clear-sky cooling rates after sunset at varying concentrations of carbon dioxide. I have seen something close to this discussed by a poster once at Judith Curry's but forgot to ask about the data at the time.

Michael, I looked at this over a year ago and for several hours searched for records that showed changes in desert temperatures over the last 100 years or so - and I couldn't find any at all. I then posted this as a fact on BH and waited for somebody to challenge it, but nobody did.

The other potential flaw in the theory is the oft stated (by the IPCC) pre-industrial concentration of CO2 of 280 ppmv, which is derived from ice core measurements. This has been challenged by some on the basis that diffusion invalidates the methodology. Beck, et al, have also reported 19th century chemical measurements that show 350 ppmv concentrations, and stomata data also indicate much higher concentrations in the past. However, CAGW requires a CO2 hockey stick as well as one for temperature, so if this is wrong it is an alternative invalidation of the hypothesis.

That's not how I go about trying establish something factual, Roger.

Michael,

No time to do it all again, but this is the sort of data I was looking at:

http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?ca3603

go to average maximum, Death Valley, CA., for example for the last 100 years of records

Dung, you want your unproven theory discussed but reject other unproven theories as counter arguments. You want ‘real’ data discussed but use the rather dodgy starting point of the pause as 1997 as opposed to say 2002 when the rise could be more realistically be said to have levelled off. You say 7 interglacials had the same profile but actually they were only similar in that they were interglacials and each had a different profile, warming and cooling at different rates. Whether CO2 followed temperature throughout those periods or if sometimes it led is highly speculative and I doubt the proxies are really good enough to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Even while CO2 and the sun were doing their thing, there were many other factors going on at once including land appearing and disappearing under the waves or ice, volcanoes, solar rays and countless other natural events that would have thrown different variables into the climate mix. You want ice cores to be king but offer no justification why that data is any more reliable than the rest that warmists set store by. You see no evidence CO2 had had a hand in recent warming but then you don’t prove that. Personally I think the warming had multiple causes and can even see a role for CO2 in it. Lindzen etc do see a point where additional CO2 will stop making a difference but have they said that point has been reached?

Unless you want to become a fully qualified climate scientist you can’t solve the climate conundrum. Personally I don’t want to waste that much time on it. Sure, you can make guesses just like the rest of us but, (and I include climate scientists in this), they’ll still be guesses until there is a lot more data to base our knowledge on. I’d say the absolute minimum to untangle climate would be a full cycle of ocean phases under satellite observation. We may even have to reset the clock to the point where the Argo floats were launched as they’re probably a vital part of climate mapping.

However nobody is going to wait that long to declare the climate solved, so the best I can hope for is that everyone delays at least until a few more El Ninos and La Ninas have happened before dismissing CO2 as a problem or ending society as we know it in the pursuit of a CO2 free energy world. It’s easier to convince people that there is a need for caution that that CO2 has no effect at all. If we try for the latter we run the risk people reject all sceptic positions. It’s not about silencing different theories but choosing which battles you have a chance of winning.

Or is winning less important than standing up for your pet theories?

About two thirds of the total carbon dioxide is dissolved in the sea, which happens to cover about two thirds of our planet. The precise amount that is dissolved depends on the sea temperature, (and atmospheric pressure which we shall assume is constant) so this is a dynamic and complex system if you look too closely. Keeping it simple, the solubility of CO2 is higher in cold water and heating the water causes CO2 to transfer to the atmosphere. This, in my view is the dominant factor that governs atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Now, CO2 might just influence temperature a little bit, and as a consequence, atmospheric concentration, but for me, this is a lesser effect. Make up your own mind.

The GHG effect is well known. Photons of IR emitted from the warm surface of the earth as black body radiation are absorbed by GH gases in the atmosphere. This raises the molecules (their electrons move to an orbit further from the nucleus) to an excited state. After a while, they re-emit the photon and return to the "ground" state. It is actually far more likely that the molecules collide with other atoms of Nitrogen and Oxygen, the major constituents of the atmosphere. Such collisions will transfer energy to these atoms, causing them to travel about faster. This increase in speed is actually due to the higher energy of the CO2 being translated into kinetic energy of the atom in the collision. We measure kinetic energy of gases with a thermometer and call it temperature.

The GHG effect is logarithmic, so you get the biggest effect at the start and then it tails off. This might be what you were referring to earlier.

For me, the GHG effect is probably OK. However, I have reservations about how we determine the magnitude of the effect in degrees of warming, ie its calibration. I also question the assumptions about the earth as a black body and where the theoretical black body surface lies in a world with an atmosphere and lapse rate.

I also wonder about whether the alleged positive feedback of water vapour has a problem. Any increase in warming could potentially kick off a positive feedback involving water vapour, especially locally in the tropics. It just doesn't happen. Water, with its 3 phases, latent heat and ability to be transported all over the globe, is probably the key to our stable climate, not the route to disaster claimed by the warmists.

Or is winning less important than standing up for your pet theories?

It's not a binary choice of one or the other.

I would like to have someone take us through the GHG argument step by step, allowing challenge at each step. That would be very interesting. As a chemist, I don't have a problem with the IR absorbance of carbon dioxide molecules. I might have a problem with the rest of the assumptions in the climate science of global warming.

Rhoda, I'd rather do the right thing for the wrong reason, than the wrong thing for the right reason.

If I'm right, then we're wasting money on CO2 reduction schemes that don't work. If Dung is right, then we're wasting money on CO2 reduction schemes that don't work and aren't necessary. Surely the important thing is to stop wasting money?

Taking the temperature dependence of carbon dioxide solubility in water, it is well known that increasing temperature will cause gassing out. What is your problem with that?