CO2 and warming went in lock-step

[Guest]

I tend to think that human caused CO2 in the atmosphere will drop off naturally, as oil prices rise with increasing difficulty getting it and as other energy sources come into play.

The big question is whether this will be enough. It is worrisome, and I very much wish we had technologies that in emergency could be used to pull CO2 and methane and whatever out of the atmosphere. I just do not see any sort of international control on their emissions being effective. and unilateral actions while they may help a little are not enough.

All the experimental work on carbon dioxide sequestering from clean coal is been abandoned as uneconomical. If we went to clean coal then all renewables would immediately become cost competitive and there would be no need for "clean coal". The economics of trying to deal with the pollution caused by coal burning just don't make any sense and ultimately - if we are serious about reducing carbon emissions - this will drive coal out of the system. You are largely correct about oil though - it will drive itself out of the system due to supply crunch.

Br Cornelius

[Frank Merton]

Yea probably we do; but I take it a lot of improvement is needed.

[Little Fish]

No need to attack anything other than the weakness of the argument. Basically ignore the trend - hide the increase

the paper shows empirically that co2 increases follow temperature increases, which rules out increasing co2 causing increasing temperature.

the author has 100 published papers under his belt and a huge bio, you can't dismiss this lightly.

if the paper is correct it destroys all your arguments. has there been a peer reviewed and published rebuttal and response in the literature, or is it just being swept under the rug?

[Guest]

the paper shows empirically that co2 increases follow temperature increases, which rules out increasing co2 causing increasing temperature.

the author has 100 published papers under his belt and a huge bio, you can't dismiss this lightly.

if the paper is correct it destroys all your arguments. has there been a peer reviewed and published rebuttal and response in the literature, or is it just being swept under the rug?

I have looked at the argument. It analyses (poorly) the residual after the major trend is stripped out. It claims that there is no major trend - because it removed it from the analysis - thats rather pathetic really. It demonstrates the fluctation in CO2 induced by SST changes which is well understood and uncontravercial. It tells us absolutely nothing new here.

It is targeted at a none scientific audience who have not got the skills to judge the weakness of its arguments. if you want to pin your "credibility" to this paper be my guest

Br Cornelius

Edited March 5, 2013 by Guest

[Guest]

Another detailed analysis of how they cooked the books to produce their conclusions;

http://troyca.wordpr...al-temperature/

"Clearly, the HSS12 “DIFF12” method is not able to diagnose the long-term cause vs. effect. Rather, it is quite easy for a small CO2 response to temperature, particularly one which will have no long-term impact, to create results in the DIFF12 graphs that make them appear (incorrectly) to provide great explanative power. In other words, the method chosen in the paper does not support its conclusions.

So, does anybody with an academic grant for page fees want to take lead author on the reply for some easy publication credit? "

Will there be a detailed academic rebuttal paper - I suppose it all depends on how much of a fuss this causes in the blogasphere. However I suspect that no serious acadmeic will waste his time on producing a rebuttal since there is such a weak argument to counter.

This falls into that gaping skeptics chasm of statistical abuse.

Br Cornelius

Edited March 5, 2013 by Guest

[Little Fish]

I have looked at the argument. It analyses (poorly) the residual after the major trend is stripped out."

it does exactly the opposite of what you sad - it doesn't "strip out the trend" - it removes the annual co2 cycle and looks at the changes from year to year on a monthly resolution.

"Before analyzing the monthly data, being interested in longer than annual variations, we first removed the annual cycle from the global atmospheric CO2 data series by calculating a 12-month running average. This implies that we here consider the annual variation as noise only, and instead are looking for the underlying longer signal, the overall CO2 increase"

http://tech-know-gro...umlum_et_al.pdf

"It claims that there is no major trend - because it removed it from the analysis"

are you for real?

Lol, no it doesn't make that claim whatsoever, nor does it remove the trend, did you actually read it?

[Guest]

it does exactly the opposite of what you sad - it doesn't "strip out the trend" - it removes the annual co2 cycle and looks at the changes from year to year on a monthly resolution.

"Before analyzing the monthly data, being interested in longer than annual variations, we first removed the annual cycle from the global atmospheric CO2 data series by calculating a 12-month running average. This implies that we here consider the annual variation as noise only, and instead are looking for the underlying longer signal, the overall CO2 increase"

http://tech-know-gro...umlum_et_al.pdf

"It claims that there is no major trend - because it removed it from the analysis"

are you for real?

Lol, no it doesn't make that claim whatsoever, nor does it remove the trend, did you actually read it?

If it did what you claim - all the graphs would clearly show the steady rise in both CO2 and temperature - which they clearly don't - because they have been stripped out by the method chosen. You clearly didn't understand the paper even if you read it.

I ask you the simple question, where did the upward trend in CO2/temp disappear to from their Fig1 to all their other graphs ??

Br Cornelius

Edited March 5, 2013 by Guest

[Little Fish]

I ask you the simple question, where did the upward trend in CO2/temp disappear to from their Fig1 to all their other graphs ??

it deals with the changes

plot this series of yearly numbers and you get a near 45 degree straight line

1,2,3,4,5,6,5

the changes from year to year are

1,1,1,1,1, -1

which will essentially plot as a flat line

[Guest]

The treatment removes the main varient trend and tries to analysis the residual varients. The main correlation will have a high significance.The correlations which they claim to have found, have low significant (>0.4) and they draw strong conclusions from weak correlations whilst pointedly ignoring the only strong correlation in their data.

Its frankly pathetic.

Br Cornelius

[Guest]

More critical analysis of the more glaring errors underlying the Humlum paper;

"As usual, you do a very nice job of taking down the specific “analyses” and assumptions in Humlum´s “paper”, Rasmus.

However, as a terrestrial ecologist, the part I find most troubling about their main claim about non-anthropogenic CO2 rise is that nobody apparently challeged them on the isotopic data C13/C12 ratio and the decline in C14 (as briefly mentioned by #11 and #27), or pointed them to e.g. Sabine et al. (1994) or just any research demonstrating that oceanic carbon content has increased steadily along with atmospheric CO2. Even ignoring all problems with their short timescale and the ENSO link, this alone should dispel with the old idea of oceans being a source for atmospheric CO2.

Humlum & co. even have the audacity to quote a 1997 JGR paper by Nakazawa et al. (http://www.agu.org/p...96JD02720.shtml) which makes the ENSO link, the C13 decline in atmospheric CO2 and the necessary link to fossil fuel combustion unambiguously clear in the abstract:

“Values of δ13C decreased secularly at a rate of about −0.03‰/year, owing mainly to increased amounts of isotopically light CO2 produced in fossil fuel combustion and deforestation. Interannual variations of the long-term trend of δ13C in association with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event and other factors were clearly observed, which were almost opposite in phase with those of the CO2 concentration”.

- which is, of course, simply ignored by Humlum et al., who just quote this as a useful “continuous in situ measurement” of SH CO2.

Thus, it sure seems like these authors have gone through quite some trouble to remain “unaware” of the wide body of decade-old research already having debunked their hypothesis. And as you well know, it has been pointed out to Humlum several times that his oceanic CO2 idea is ridiculous, but he just simply keeps repeating the old points.

Humlum is also well known for fiddling with nonphysical curve-fitting:

http://uppsalainitia...t=1323850074427

– and we had a healthy debate on Ole Humlum´s contradicting himself several times on the page klimadebat.dk (in Danish) recently. http://www.klimadeba...-e2045-s160.php

I would like to hear the opinion from Rasmus or anyone else taking a look at Humlum´s record: Does anybody seriously think that Humlum honestly believes all this internally contradictory stuff himself? Or that he, being a geology professor, really is legitimately unaware of the basics of the last 3-5 decades of carbon cycle research – which is something that most biology/geology undergraduates would readily know?

Personally, I think it is time for competent scientists in the field to publicly call Humlum by his appropriate name: a liar.

"

http://www.realclima...#comment-249060

How strong is the confidence interval on the CO2 anthropogenic cause ;

"

The Humlun paper came up at Taminos, and I commented there re “…changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.” I downloaded Mauna Loa CO2 from http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/esrl-co2/mean:12/from:1959.7/every:12 and anthropogenic CO2 emissions from http://co2now.org/images/stories/graphics/carbon-budget/global-carbon-budget-2009-data-co2now.pdf, and found that the correlation between Mauna Loa CO2 and 315 + 0.21 * CO2E is 0.99948496, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.9991 to 0.9997 – whadda they want, 6 nines?"

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/09/el-ninos-effect-onco2-causes-confusion/comment-page-1/#comment-249382

Rather put a correlation of 0.40 into perspective.

Are you still happy to defend this rubbish

Br Cornelius

Edited March 5, 2013 by Guest

[Little Fish]

The treatment removes the main varient trend and tries to analysis the residual varients.

the co2 annual cycle goes up and down every year with an overall upwards trend, they remove this annual cycle in order to look closely at the changes in trend, they do not remove the trend, then they look at the change in trend from year to year on a monthly basis. I've already pointed this out to you, I don't know why you don't get this.

i'll ask again - has anyone published a peer reviewed response? as is standard procedure in scientific publishing. one of the points of publishing a response to a publication is to give the authors an opportunity to respond to criticism, do you think blog comments (from a website that censors its comments) trumps published science?

Edited March 5, 2013 by Little Fish

[Guest]

the co2 annual cycle goes up and down every year with an overall upwards trend, they remove this annual cycle in order to look closely at the changes in trend, they do not remove the trend, then they look at the change in trend from year to year on a monthly basis. I've already pointed this out to you, I don't know why you don't get this.

i'll ask again - has anyone published a peer reviewed response? as is standard procedure in scientific publishing. one of the points of publishing a response to a publication is to give the authors an opportunity to respond to criticism, do you think blog comments (from a website that censors its comments) trumps published science?

Its pointless to attempt to do analysis down to month level in such a noisy dataset - no clear trend can be revealed this way.

And all of the graphs are over the full period with the main trend stripped out. Its visually obvious that they stripped out the main trend but don't take my word for it, a trained statistician and climate scientist clearly states it in his analysis of the paper;

Choosing a method discarding the trends may get one into trouble, however, one would also expect a consistent picture in terms of physics. Here is another glitch, and the weak-on-physics aspect is due to the failure to appreciate what implications their claims would have for the climate sensitivity.

See my earlier post for the quote in context.

This is nothing surprising for Humlum since he has used his Climate4you website to present carefully selected data to misrepresent historic data trend in both temperature and CO2 concentration. He is past master at presenting local data as if it is global and concluding that no significant change in either CO2 or temperature has been recorded (serial abuse of Vostok and Greenland ice cores). The sad fact is that you are indeed right in stating that he was a respected expert in his chosen field (geology) and only started abusing the data when he strayed out of his discipline of the politically charged field of climate science.

No one will be producing a rebuttal to this since no serious scientist will consider it worth while. I am not a statistician but even I saw the obvious gross flaws in the attempted analysis on a first read through. You may put faith in it but thats your loss.

This is another paper by a politically motivated skeptic who has produced a number of similar pattern matching exercises in the past.

Ultimately this paper will die through indifference.

Br Cornelius

Edited March 5, 2013 by Guest

[lightly]

CO2 @ about 30% what was normal for over 100,000 years + Oceans, correspondingly, about 30% more acidic = bad combination.

[Little Fish]

"Its pointless to attempt to do analysis down to month level in such a noisy dataset"

the co2 data is not noisy, the only obvious fluctuation is the yearly cycle.

"no clear trend can be revealed this way"

the purpose of the study is not to reveal trend, it is a phase relation study between temp and co2

"And all of the graphs are over the full period with the main trend stripped out."

it is not intended to show trend, it is an attribution study, i'm sure you'll get this point eventually.

"Its visually obvious that they stripped out the main trend"

the graphs are not intended to show trend. the graphs show changes in levels, not absolute levels. the graphs being flat just means they are not accelerating.

"a trained statistician and climate scientist clearly states it in his analysis of the paper"

he is a physicist by training and you misunderstand what he said.

"See my earlier post for the quote in context."

your context is quite clear - you said falsely "It claims that there is no major trend - because it removed it from the analysis"

you own it now until you admit your mistake.

"This is nothing surprising for Humlum since he has used..."

this is all ad hominem and accusatory, yet another scientist you have accused of sceintific fraud to add to your list.

"No one will be producing a rebuttal to this since no serious scientist will consider it worth while"

so you don't consider yourself to be a serious scientist given you seem to think it worthwhile to rebut.

"I am not a statistician but even I saw the obvious gross flaws in the attempted analysis on a first read through"

your assumption that the paper had "stripped out the trend" and "it claims there is no trend" were obvious gross flaws in your understanding of the paper.

if you are not qualified to understand it, then you are not qualified to critique it.

Edited March 5, 2013 by Little Fish

[Guest]

"Its pointless to attempt to do analysis down to month level in such a noisy dataset"

the co2 data is not noisy, the only obvious fluctuation is the yearly cycle.

"no clear trend can be revealed this way"

the purpose of the study is not to reveal trend, it is a phase relation study between temp and co2

"And all of the graphs are over the full period with the main trend stripped out."

it is not intended to show trend, it is an attribution study, i'm sure you'll get this point eventually.

"Its visually obvious that they stripped out the main trend"

the graphs are not intended to show trend. the graphs show changes in levels, not absolute levels. the graphs being flat just means they are not accelerating.

"a trained statistician and climate scientist clearly states it in his analysis of the paper"

he is a physicist by training and you misunderstand what he said.

"See my earlier post for the quote in context."

your context is quite clear - you said falsely "It claims that there is no major trend - because it removed it from the analysis"

you own it now until you admit your mistake.

"This is nothing surprising for Humlum since he has used..."

this is all ad hominem and accusatory, yet another scientist you have accused of sceintific fraud to add to your list.

"No one will be producing a rebuttal to this since no serious scientist will consider it worth while"

so you don't consider yourself to be a serious scientist given you seem to think it worthwhile to rebut.

"I am not a statistician but even I saw the obvious gross flaws in the attempted analysis on a first read through"

your assumption that the paper had "stripped out the trend" and "it claims there is no trend" were obvious gross flaws in your understanding of the paper.

if you are not qualified to understand it, then you are not qualified to critique it.

Little Fish - the last highlighted statement clearly shows that you have no understanding of what the analysis they performed did and so further discussion is again pointless. You are mistaken in believing that the main trend was left in the analysis and common sense (if you had any) would show that if you compared Fig1. to Fig2 and all of their other graphs. Don't take my word for it - it is clearly stated in the quote I supplied and to deny that it happened is simply more denial on your part. I can only assume that you do not understand that it was an undiscussed consequence of the calculus they applied and so you cannot see it. You are Mistaken and so your statements are also mistaken.

If in a years time this "ground breaking"/"game changing" paper is still in any way been discussed we can return to it and see what effect it has actually had - until then you are wasting my time again.

Br Cornelius

Edited March 6, 2013 by Guest

[Frank Merton]

I read this week's New Scientist UK where they had an article in their News section titled, "The Climate Domino Effect," where some researchers propose that we have already tipped over one domino, something about temperature layers in the Arctic sea and are on the verge in about ten years of toppling a second, the thawing of the perma-frost in Siberia, releasing a lot of methane.

I thought that this sounds scary. They had several more such dominoes lined up due to fall over the next century, including the loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet and a good chunk of Antarctica's. Although both their method and their conclusions are controversial, it seems a likely scenario, and a scary one.

However, the conclusions of what would happen even worst-case didn't in the end sound so bad; in fact it sounded desirable.

One bad thing is that the Russians are going to have a lot of rebuilding to do as the perma-frost melts. It is the foundation of several towns and a lot of infrastructure. In the end though the Russians will prosper from ice free ports and a lot more agricultural land.

I have been worrying about all that methane causing a runaway Venus effect. It seems that was just me and that nobody else thinks so -- its a lot of methane but it won't do nearly as much warming as the CO2 we have already put out there has done -- and it has a short life in the atmosphere.

Of course the big baddie here is rising sea levels. They show levels going up as much as six meters. That is a lot, but then they say that will take about 500 years. The next century will see gradually increasing levels. It seems to me that with planning this can be handled without major disruption. Structures only have a life of a couple of centuries anyway, and we can walk away from the rest.

Netting out, I think there are pluses and minuses, and it may be that massive worldwide action now would be hugely wasteful and pointless.

[Guest]

Your assessment of the increase in Russian agriculture misses the essential point that no matter what the temperature does in the high latituded it is not the primary rate limiting factor for agriculture - it is light intensity which is the fundamental limiter. It is unlikely that there will be any net increase in overall agricultural productivity and there is a reasonable probability that extreme weather events will reduce overall productivity.

What is really scary is the short time scales involved and the need to constantly re-jig systems to cope with the ongoing changes. Our whole civilization has grown out of one of the most stable climate periods and any time where we have had climate shocks (such as in the late bronze age) it has had devastating consequences for cultural continuity. This will be massively expensive in terms of resources and time and will put increasing pressure on dwindling natural resources over a time when we should be cutting down on overall consumption.

Br Cornelius

[Frank Merton]

I'm inclined to think that reduced sun at high latitudes is not a limiting factor for a lot of crops.

The disruptions of the past happened to societies who had no idea what was happening.

I think continued study is called for, especially for technologies to capture CO2 from the atmosphere.

[Guest]

I'm inclined to think that reduced sun at high latitudes is not a limiting factor for a lot of crops.

The disruptions of the past happened to societies who had no idea what was happening.

I think continued study is called for, especially for technologies to capture CO2 from the atmosphere.

Look at where crops currently grow - wheat only thrive in lower latitudes and is then replaced by barley and oats at higher latitudes. This is due to light availability predominently. The consequences are that the band of agricultural land available for out 8 staples is squashed into a smaller band.

We are a society which copes very badly with changes to our environment and the time scales involves and the way we manage ourselves on a societal level mean that we adapt slowly - not fast.

Look at the consequences of the relatively mild climate change we have already seen - global wheat and rice supplies are at an all time low. If the drought in America continues for another few years we will have direct wheat shortages and many third world countries will not be able to compete in the wheat market. There have already been food riots across the world as a consequence of the steady rise of food prices caused by recent crop failures.

This can only get more acute in the next few years. It takes decades/centuries for man to adapt to relatively incramental change.

Any technological method of capturing Carbon is relatively pointless because they require cheap fuel to work and that inevitably will make the CO2 gains marginal. We have a certain way of sequestering more atmospheric carbon - and that is planting trees and moving to no dig agriculture. Both of these are incompatible with the needs for increased agricultural productivity caused by a rising population. It maybe possible to change to a highly productive "forest agriculture" but that would represent a fundamental change to a culture based on wheat/rice cultivation. It would also be all but pointless unless we stopped releasing more fossil CO2.

Br Cornelius

Edited March 6, 2013 by Guest

[Frank Merton]

I understand that ways of capturing it in the atmosphere, and even making money from it, are in the works. Of course there is immense hype all the time about these technologies, so we will have to see.

My main takeaway was that the fear I had of a methane-caused runaway warming was me and not science. That means that humanity will make it, maybe relatively painlessly, maybe with a good more trouble, but things will work out.

[Guest]

I understand that ways of capturing it in the atmosphere, and even making money from it, are in the works. Of course there is immense hype all the time about these technologies, so we will have to see.

My main takeaway was that the fear I had of a methane-caused runaway warming was me and not science. That means that humanity will make it, maybe relatively painlessly, maybe with a good more trouble, but things will work out.

You are probably right about the overall impact of methane release, but I think your conclusion is largely a matter of faith rather than analysis. I certainly see millions of people been directly impacted by climate change in adverse ways and there is already significant migratory pressure within Africa due to climate change. Conflict and famine are somewhat inevitable on a local level, and it remain to be seen if the developed world will escape such outcomes.

Br Cornelius

[Guest]

Little Fish - if you can't admit that you have made a mistake about the trend stripping your credibility is shot and you might as well retire.

The grown up thing to do is admit you made a genuine mistake and move on.

Br Cornelius

Edited March 6, 2013 by Guest

[Little Fish]

you need to learn when you are beat.

watch the black knight monty python scene from the holy grail.

""Before analyzing the monthly data, being interested in longer than annual variations, we first removed the annual cycle from the global atmospheric CO2 data series by calculating a 12-month running average. This implies that we here consider the annual variation as noise only, and instead are looking for the underlying longer signal, the overall CO2 increase"

http://tech-know-group.com/papers/Carbon_dioxide_Humlum_et_al.pdf

here is what you said, and now seem to be seeking to obfuscate:

"It claims that there is no major trend - because it removed it from the analysis - thats rather pathetic really"

the paper does not claim "there is no major trend", it is not a trend study, it is an attribution study to determine if co2 increases lead temperature or the other way around. amongst many important findings, it finds good correlation that the co2 increases follow temperature increases and it find negative correlation between man made co2 emissions and increases in atmospheric co2.

"In all four cases there is a negative correlation from the time of release and 17-24 months later between DIFF12 changes in anthropogene CO2 and DIFF12 changes in atmospheric CO2, showing that changes in the emission of anthropogene CO2 are not causing changes in atmospheric CO2"

"As cause always must precede effect, this observation demonstrates that modern changes in temperatures are generally not induced by changes in atmospheric CO2. Indeed, the sequence of events is seen to be the opposite: temperature changes are taking place before the corresponding CO2 changes occur."

Edited March 6, 2013 by Little Fish

[Guest]

Little Fish - you are wrong. If their method did what you said it did it would clearly show an upward trend as in the raw data within the full set of graphs. All the graphs have no trend. The method deliberately sets out to conceal the dominant trend, which is implicit in the data analysis. Its not incorrect for them to do so, but it is highly deceptive when they claim to have found dominent trends over and above the main one which they removed. The tiny rates of change which they attempt to analysis (making some gross assumptions whilst doing so) is not as significant as the steady and inexorable rise in CO2 which they pointedly ignore. Their attributions are statistically weak and based on unsuportable assumptions (within a noisy natural system over short time scales).

The proof of whether this paper says anything meaningful is if it is referenced in reputable science papers over the next few years, and I very much doubt that it will be referenced in any peer reviewed paper.

This is exactly the sort of anlysis which you accuse Michael Mann of having done to conceal trends in his data - except these authors give no clue to the unwary layman of the fact that they have concealed the dominent upward trend. They attempt to dismiss this dominent trend as a response to natural SST rises - which is circular logic at its worst.

At this point I am going to call you an idiot because you cannot understand anything. This just confirms everything i have said about you and your ability to debate and assimilate new information which contradicts your prejudices - thanks.

Br Cornelius

Edited March 7, 2013 by Guest

[Little Fish]

If their method did what you said it did it would clearly show an upward trend

no it would not, you are just demonstrating you have not understood the paper. in what universe does differentiating a straight 45 degree upward line (like the co2 line) produce an "upward trend"?

y=2X (a 45 degree upward line similar to the co2 line) differentiates to Y=2 (a flat line).

the paper is an analysis of changes in the data, not a trend analysis of the absolute levels.

"All the graphs have no trend"

the graphs are not intended to show trend, this has been explained to you previously, why are you stuck?

"The method deliberately sets out to conceal the dominant trend"

the method and paper is not attempting to show the trend, it is looking at variations in the trend.

the paper even acknowledges the trend in co2. its your mistake if you thought the graphs were showing trend.

"which is implicit in the data analysis."

its only implicit in your incorrect perception.

"Its not incorrect for them to do so, but it is highly deceptive when they claim to have found dominent trends over and above the main one which they removed."

I don't see anywhere in the paper where they claim to have found "dominant trends". the "DIFF's" to calculate data points were applied likewise to both the co2 and temperature data in order to detect causal signals. maybe you thought it was only applied to the co2 data?

"The tiny rates of change which they attempt to analysis (making some gross assumptions whilst doing so) is not as significant as the steady and inexorable rise in CO2 which they pointedly ignore."

the "tiny rates of change" IS the "steady and inexorable rise" and yet you claim one is more significant.

"Their attributions are statistically weak"

the correlation are visually striking yet you claim they are weak. reading your previous posts I suspect you are confusing correlation coefficient with statistical significance, the correlations in this study are much stronger than correlations you use to support your beliefs.

"and based on unsuportable assumptions"

what assumptions is this paper based on, which you consider unsupportable?

"I am going to call you an idiot because you cannot understand anything. This just confirms everything i have said about you and your ability to debate and assimilate new information which contradicts your prejudices"

evidently you are describing yourself, projecting again? accusing others of your own crimes is what you consistently do. i'm not the only one to notice.

"thanks."

you're welcome

This is exactly the sort of anlysis which you accuse Michael Mann of having done to conceal trends in his data

no it is not. this study is an attribution of cause study. mann's study was a reconstruction of temperature in which he deleted the mwp and little ice age by overweighting contributions to trees known to be unresponsive to temperature.

"these authors give no clue to the unwary layman of the fact that they have concealed the dominent upward trend."

you need to read the paper, and not just assume falsely their graphs are intended to show trend.

"They attempt to dismiss this dominent trend as a response to natural SST rises - which is circular logic at its worst

it is a cause and effect attribution study. you are stuck because your belief is driving your thinking, rather than your thinking driving your belief.

the study does not "dismiss", it "finds" - read finding 2.

here is what the study finds.

1. The overall global temperature change sequence of events appears to be from 1) the ocean surface to 2) the land surface to 3) the lower troposphere.

2. Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 11-12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature.

3. Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5-10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature.

4. Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature.

5. Changes in ocean temperatures appear to explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January 1980.

6. CO2 released from anthropogene sources apparently have little influence on the observed changes in atmospheric CO2, and changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.

7. On the time scale investigated, the overriding effect of large volcanic eruptions appears to be a reduction of atmospheric CO2, presumably due to the dominance of associated cooling effects from clouds associated with volcanic gases/aerosols and volcanic debris.

8. Since at least 1980 changes in global temperature, and presumably especially southern ocean temperature, appears to represent a major control on changes in atmospheric CO2.

Edited March 7, 2013 by Little Fish