What Do We Think About Climate Change

[Petros]

You make the assumption that there is a correlation between atmospheric CO2 and average temperature. Yet, during the last two ice ages atmospheric CO2 was 17 times higher (that is 1700 percent!) than it is today, and the earth had severe global cooling. the scientists that study the LONG TERM global temperature trends have not found any correlation to CO2 and average global temps.

look it up for yourselves at this site that just has graphs of temps and CO2:

www.goblalwarminggart.com

[ancient kayaker]

Originally Posted by Jimbo1490

It's not the second half of the model that's hard to get right; it's the first. If over half of all Anthropogenic CO2 was emitted after 1978, why was atmospheric CO2 rising in 1930? How about 1900? How about 1850? Yes atmospheric CO2 was rising then. You can go to the CDIAC site and look at the tabulated anthropogenic CO2 emissions yourself and see how puny our emissions were 100 years ago. Yet atmospheric CO2 levels were still rising...
Jimbo

Thank you! Some hard data I can use. I haven’t found usable data for atmospheric data other than that from the Muana Loa observatory which only go back 50 years. Dealing only with the change above the historical baseline about 200 years ago, which appears to be about 260 ppm, the atmospheric CO2 levels attributable to anthropomorphic origins have been rising at about 1.2 to 1.6% pa; the higher values are for more recent periods. From the CDIAC data the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere has been rising over the same period by 3.1%. The earlier analysis was based on data that does not agree with the CDIAC figures.

Originally Posted by Jimbo1490

...I put the question to you that I put to Boston and bntii(Thomas):

What is the 'threshold of significance' for anthropogenic CO2 emissions?

When you come up with a number, go back to the CDIAC site and see where it is on the chart. Then go look at a historical CO2 chart (the Ernst-Beck chart is especially telling) and see what was happening with CO2 concentrations at the time your selected threshold was just crossed.

I promise you, the numbers will not add up! ...

Jimbo

I am not sure I understand you, but I’ll try to respond. CO2 levels around 5,000 ppm cause breathing and other health problems. I will adopt typical practice for setting legally acceptable limits for poisons in general by taking 1/10 of that as the threshold of significance, i.e., 500 ppm. Based on the above revised analysis we should reach it, if current trends continue, around 2025; of course that’s a pseudo-legal level I have arbitrarily set. You might prefer to set it at 1/3 the problem level, say 1660, that will put off the onset of lawsuits until about 2075. Looking forward to when people will have actual difficulty, an average person will have problems around 3075 although sensitive individuals, the elderly, and persons with impaired cardiovascular systems would be troubled years earlier and would be dying by that time. That’s assuming we haven’t evolved by then, of course

Originally Posted by Jimbo1490

...If the earliest part of the CO2 rise was due to natural sources, why do you believe it is different now? Since the isotopic signature of 'fossil' carbon is not found at anywhere near the 'expected' levels, is that not proof enough for you that fossil fuels are not the source? ...Jimbo

I have found several data sets for atmospheric CO2 levels for periods of millions and billions of years but nothing with enough resolution over the same period as the CDIA data. Certainly CO2 levels varied long before the advent of humans, let alone the onset of civilization and the sharply upward trends of the lst few decades. I have assumed the upward trend over the last few hundred years is primarily due to human emmissions, which seems reasonable given that the increase of atmospheric CO2 levels and human emissions seem to correspond rather well if we calculate the total quantities. It seems an astonishing coincidence that the human emissions have just vanished and been replaced by natural sources of similar amounts.

Originally Posted by Jimbo1490

...So far, we have:

• Henry's law says we'd have to add a truly stupendous amount of CO2 to the atmosphere to have caused the observed rise, 25-50X all cumulative emissions so far, and more than all the fossil reserves known (clearly impossible)
  
  
• When we tabulate cumulative emissions and natural sources and try to forensically reconstruct the atmosphere using your assumed long residence time, the atmosphere is missing half it's CO2. (Substituting the provable short residence time yields a result in harmony with reality, corroborating the short residence time with all that implies.)
  
  
• The isotopic signature of fossil carbon is largely missing; it's not nearly what we should see if the rise we're due to fossil fuel burning.

In the end you'll believe whatever you want to believe. Just don't come back and claim your belief is based on the simple physics of the matter.

Jimbo

Regarding your refernce to Henry’s law, we have indeed added stupendous amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere. Please review my analysis of post #3550.

The factor of 2 difference between the rates of increase of atmospheric CO2 vs the rates of emission from human sources certainly suggests that there are other factors involved than the simple accumulation I used for my illustration, and it is now clear that there is a significant CO2 sink effect involved. Nonetheless, the CO2 we are releasing is going somewhere, and a good deal of it is remaining in the atmosphere. If the residence time is short enough then there is some hope that we can rectify our dangerous behavior. Henry's law shows gas solubility in water increases with temperature. Given the rise in global temperatures over recent decades, it may be fortuitous, resulting in more CO2 being absorbed by the oceans. Hopefully global warming IS caused by adding CO2, if not, a reversal of temperature trend may result in all that CO2 being returned to the atmosphere.

Jimbo: I have to say I don't understand your continued obsession with religion. I take data, I analyse to the best of my ability, and I present it for review and comment. They are called conclusions, not beliefs. I have read your posts, checked out links to data, and adjusted my thinking. I haven't changed my conclusions enough to agree with you, not yet at least, although I have changed them in degree. We are performing an experiment, but it is not a scientific one, mostly we are just hoping it will all turn out well even though none of us understands what is going on sufficiently to make reliable predictions. I hope I am wrong in mine. I hope we can continue to have an exchange of views and information based on mutual respect even if we disagree.

Petros: I can't find that data: please post the link to your source. using the data I found we would have to go back to the paleozoic to get those kinds of levels; to merely get to the levels of just 100 years ago we have to go back 150,000 years.

[Marco1]

During the two last ice ages CO2 was 17 times higher...1700% higher.
Were there humans during the last two ice ages?
Only asking, my knowledge of the ice age is circumscribed to the movie Ice age 1 and Ice age 2. That's it.

If yes, did they all die from CO2 poisoning?
If no, where there mammals comparable to us at the time?
If so did they all die from CO2 'exposure'?

I know that we need CO2 in order to breath during the night as a trigger to automated breathing, so plese do not go "reducing" CO2. Think of all those millions with sleeping apnea you will kill them outright!

Which brings me to my replay to my friend the old kayaker Terry.
When I appreciate you want to keep this simple, the problem is that it is not simple at all.
I am told that (yet I am not friends with Mrs Tatcher so don't really have first knowledge of this).... this all started with the coal mining strike. Mrs Tatcher needed to discredit coal in favour of nuclear energy and PAID a group of scientist to MAKE UP some problems with coal. They came up with this fairy tail CO2 will kill as all.
Unemployed Al Gore saw the opportunity to create a religion who people pay tribute to and supported by his corniness run with it.
The extremist saw the opportunity and followed and the rest is history.

It is all a big hoax, a phenomenal and extremely lucrative hoax that has already made many millionaires and supported thousands of lying and cheating pseudo scientist who do not deserve to have that title in the first place.

This bold faced lie does not deserve an ounce of what I perceive to be a sincere effort from your side.
Or like Kart Graus use to say, your efforts deserve a better cause...or words to that effect.

Take it easy...if you want a good recipie for Chicken, pasta, or may be Malasian Laksa soup, or some nice dessert, just ask.

Kind Regards
Marc

Don't you love Detroit Diesel? RRRRoooooammmmmmmm. Love it just as I did when I was 15

[Knut Sand]

Originally Posted by Marco1

During the two last ice ages CO2 was 17 times higher...1700% higher.
Were there humans during the last two ice ages?

17 times higher? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vo...core-petit.png
Well those core samples have been scrutinized very thoroughly both here and by real scientists.... not 17 times... not near it...

Yes, no problem with that.... Norway is crowded by descendants of the tribe's lunies that followed the ice toward the north....

[Marco1]

Aah goold old Wikipedia. A good religious book if you have faith in it.

Considering you can not find almost anything at all that supports an alterntive view to so called "Global Warming", I think I reserve Wiki to look up old Detroit Diesel models to play with.

Now that I think of, I use to have a website pen pal who was a Scott but lived in Norway...huu what a character! last time we spoke he wanted instructions to build and to mount a wind mill on his roof. Supposedto be cold around there. You can buy old fishing boats with semi dieel engines thre....ooooh I wish I could sail one of those down under!

Chug Chug Chug. Plenty of CO2, but burns almost anything, including old frying oil. Now thre is a green thought for you!

[Knut Sand]

Originally Posted by Marco1

Now that I think of, I use to have a website pen pal who was a Scott but lived in Norway...huu what a character! last time we spoke he wanted instructions to build and to mount a wind mill on his roof. Supposedto be cold around there.

You can buy old fishing boats with semi dieel engines thre....ooooh I wish I could sail one of those down under!

Next time your'e in contact with that caracter, tell him not to fix the windmill on his roof, the humming will drive him mad(der).... Better on a freestanding pole/ rig away from the house... (or closer to the neighbour that he likes the least).

Older fishing boats often have deplacement hulls, hence the fuel consumption is normally not too high.. Also the CO2 outlet (even with a lousy energy output pr litre) . So; in my opinion; close to max time on the water for a reasonable cost/ environmental impact.

Fast, light boats are fun though....

[ancient kayaker]

Marco, you are very free with your opinions of people who commit the crime of disagreeing with you. You are much less free with your sources of information so I am unable to verify your "1700%" figure. So I went to the trouble of finding one for you http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Ca...s_climate.html

Professor Christopher Scotese is a geologist at the Uiversity of Texas. His primary field of study appears to be continental drift, and as far as I have been able to determine, he is neutral on the subject of global warming, but I haven't read everything he has published. He appears to be reputable, but I won't object if you provide alternative sources.

The current CO2 level is 380 ppm, a couple of hundred years ago it was around 260 so let's use that figure. 17 x 260 = 4420 ppm. In the cource I have provided that ocured 450 million years ago. That was long before the dinosaurs evolved let alone vanished. It was even before the devonian when early fish species were starting to evolve.

While it is true that there was far more atmospheric CO2 a long time ago, we were not around then and the forms of life that were thriving then were utterly different to our own.

I do not doubt that, if we humans succeed in forcing CO2 levels seriously higher, the planet will adjust to it. Life will not be extinguished, it will simply adjust and evolve to accommodate the new conditions. Evolution is a slow process so there will likely be a die-out for future intelligent species to contemplate, but I am sure there are species already existing that will revel in the new conditions. Unfortunately it is unlikely that the human species will be one of them.

[Jimbo1490]

Originally Posted by ancient kayaker

I am not sure I understand you, but I’ll try to respond. CO2 levels around 5,000 ppm cause breathing and other health problems. I will adopt typical practice for setting legally acceptable limits for poisons in general by taking 1/10 of that as the threshold of significance, i.e., 500 ppm.

This has to be one of the silliest quixotic jousts of all. CO2 is never going to reach those levels, no matter what human industry does. All the fossil fuel in existence would not even come close to causing this. It's just absolute silliness

Originally Posted by ancient kayaker

I have found several data sets for atmospheric CO2 levels for periods of millions and billions of years but nothing with enough resolution over the same period as the CDIA data. Certainly CO2 levels varied long before the advent of humans, let alone the onset of civilization and the sharply upward trends of the lst few decades. I have assumed the upward trend over the last few hundred years is primarily due to human emmissions, which seems reasonable given that the increase of atmospheric CO2 levels and human emissions seem to correspond rather well if we calculate the total quantities. It seems an astonishing coincidence that the human emissions have just vanished and been replaced by natural sources of similar amounts.

But there is not a 1:1 parity between CO2 emitted to the atmosphere and atmospheric CO2 concentration. We must divide by a factor to account for Henry's law describing the equilibrium concentration of CO2(atmosphere)/CO2(ocean).

Originally Posted by ancient kayaker

Regarding your refernce to Henry’s law, we have indeed added stupendous amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere. Please review my analysis of post #3550.

No, it's nowhere near enough, nor is it a stupendous amount. If you find a detail graph from Muana Loa, you'll see monthly and seasonal variations in atmospheric CO2 content of 5 to 7ppm. Each ppm represents 2 billion tons, so these variations represent 7-14 billion tons of CO2 added or subtracted. These variations are ignored whenever CO2 concentration is discussed as they are considered part of the 'noise' of the data. So the human emissions of 8 billion tons is 'in the noise' of the measurements. I do not count that as a 'stupendous amount of CO2' in this context. Please show me how you can justify this characterization, given that these emissions are smaller than the natural variations or 'noise' of the measurements?

Originally Posted by ancient kayaker

The factor of 2 difference between the rates of increase of atmospheric CO2 vs the rates of emission from human sources certainly suggests that there are other factors involved than the simple accumulation I used for my illustration, and it is now clear that there is a significant CO2 sink effect involved. Nonetheless, the CO2 we are releasing is going somewhere, and a good deal of it is remaining in the atmosphere. If the residence time is short enough then there is some hope that we can rectify our dangerous behavior. Henry's law shows gas solubility in water increases with temperature. Given the rise in global temperatures over recent decades, it may be fortuitous, resulting in more CO2 being absorbed by the oceans. Hopefully global warming IS caused by adding CO2, if not, a reversal of temperature trend may result in all that CO2 being returned to the atmosphere.

Jimbo: I have to say I don't understand your continued obsession with religion. I take data, I analyse to the best of my ability, and I present it for review and comment. They are called conclusions, not beliefs. I have read your posts, checked out links to data, and adjusted my thinking. I haven't changed my conclusions enough to agree with you, not yet at least, although I have changed them in degree. We are performing an experiment, but it is not a scientific one, mostly we are just hoping it will all turn out well even though none of us understands what is going on sufficiently to make reliable predictions. I hope I am wrong in mine. I hope we can continue to have an exchange of views and information based on mutual respect even if we disagree.

I call it religion when you CHOOSE to believe something that is demonstrably false (in this case, the long atmospheric residence time for CO2) because it supports you belief system. There is no evidence whatsoever of a long residence time. Computer model output based on the assumption that human industry has caused all the observed CO2 rise do not constitute evidence. Measurement studies constitute evidence, and every single one that was ever done, all 35 of them, say the residence time is short. Without a long residence time, CO2 simply cannot accumulate as a result of tiny (in the noise) atmospheric emissions.

Instead of admitting this, even in the face of other corroborative evidence such as the isotopic signature or the failure of forensic reconstructions based on the long residence time, you choose to believe in the 'mystery sink' for the 'missing' CO2. The mystery sink has become a near perfect analog for a 'Holy Grail' or 'lost ark"

Originally Posted by ancient kayaker

Petros: I can't find that data: please post the link to your source. using the data I found we would have to go back to the paleozoic to get those kinds of levels; to merely get to the levels of just 100 years ago we have to go back 150,000 years.

Again this is about the 12th time I've posted this to this thread but here goes anyway:

CO2 levels were at about 440ppm mid 19th century for ~25 years or so. The idea that CO2 levels were only ~280 ppm for many centuries is false. It comes from data presented by Callendar to the first IPCC conference. But he had already presented a paper on historical CO2 levels several years earlier. His data then showed the ~440ppm spike. When he RE-presented the SAME DATA (as a 'new' paper) to the first IPCC conference, he simply omitted the 440ppm spike. He later freely admitted discarding the data because it "deviated more than 10% from the expected results." Thus was born the idea of a steady 280ppm pre-industrial baseline.

Other reconstructions also consistently show the mid 19th century spike in CO2 concentration. The Ernst-Beck chart is especially telling in this regard as it is based on actual measurements.

You (and the rest of the world) are being sold a big steaming heap of ********, yet you choose to believe it, therefore it has become your religion.

Jimbo

"CO2 levels around 5,000 ppm cause breathing...problems" - That should take care of the CO2 "problem" in itself, no? Fewer humans?

"This has to be one of the silliest quixotic jousts of all..." -Speaking of windmills, those shaped like a drill bit supposedly make much less noise.

[Petros]

This is the link to the site where the owner catalogs all of the atmosphere charts, lots of interesting graphs here;http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki...ioxide_Gallery

Here is the chart I find most interesting, it lists various researchers findings, all show much higher CO2 during last two ice ages. Notice how much CO2 changes, having nothing to do with human activity, and how it makes current levels look totally irrelevant. Taking a small 100 year, or even 500 year, slice of time appearance means nothing relative to the the long term trends. This one charge right here means we are just ignorant of the forces that control our climate.

[Marco1]

Wow! Knut, look at that graph! Your ancestors must have had tough lungs to survive all that poison!
Only kidding, they were our ancestors as well. By the way my parents were from Germany and Italy. I don't know how "Nordic" my German relatives were though.

Here is a question for Knut who lives closer to the North Pole than me. Now I know you are sort of bent towards believing all to do with global warming, yet it seems you can shoot straight.

All this business about the ice cap melting and the polar bear in trouble, seems to be disparagingly different according to who tells the story. The greens of course are telling us that the ice cap is gone for good and that the pacific islanders will have to walk on stilts on their flooded islands, however some Russians and Canadians are of a different view and have seen this come and go for centuries. So what's the story? Do you go boating close to the ice at all? Do you do any hunting? Any first hand experience?

[Marco1]

I call it religion when you CHOOSE to believe something that is demonstrably false (in this case, the long atmospheric residence time for CO2) because it supports you belief system.

Jimbo

When I agree in the use of the term religion when it comes to Globabl Warming theory support, it must be said that religion or the religious person is not so for believing a lie.

Religion if you look up the dictionary has a whole heap of definitions none satisfactory.

In fact religion in itself is just a set of rules. It is "what we do", the external activity and is usually condemned by those who are more spiritual.

What drives the religious person or should anyway, is the faith he puts in something that can not be seen nor proven. It is that faith that is rewarded if you believe in such concept of delayed gratification, afterlife etc.
The fact that a person believes what can not be seen nor proven does not necessarily make him deluded and the belief is not automatically a lie.

The parallel to be traced with the Global Warming religion is that the faithfully must place their faith in what others tell them. For example, if the pope says the church is infallible, the believer accepts it no questions asked. If Al Gore says that the correlation between temperature and CO2 proves that CO2 drives the temperature, the faithful stand up and exclaim alleluia.

And such is perfectly understandable. We, all of us, believe what we want to believe based on our personal set of values usually acquired before age 10. So some of us are predisposed to believe Global Warming theories since they imply by elevation that a new generation of altruist will save the planet from the greedy and old conservatives who have made a mess of it. It is a very attractive proposition, a revolutionary theory that is bound to pluck the strings of those who are built like a harp.

The opposite is of course also true. The rest, tends to believe that new theories are a bunch of bull and that the old is solid and proven and there is nothing to fear.

Unless you dig further, both supporters are just as religious as a monk. Just different religion. Each one says to have the true God.

It is only when you uncover the motivation behind the creation of a religion that you can finally put your finger on the conspiracy. The drivers behind the Global Warming scaremonger, do not believe in it for a second. They made it up with the help of a bunch of bent scientist and are holding by the balls the rest of the scientist under threat of loosing their careers, credibility and funds. This movement is the biggest CON and the biggest HOAX in human history and has as ONLY MOTIVATION the creation of the largest centralised tax system in the world and will hand around trillions of dollars freely available to crooks and criminals galore.

What do you care if others believe that God is female or that they will reincarnate in a bird right? It is only when their belief threatens your way of life that you must stand up. The "emission trading scheme" to be debated in Copenhagen is a witch hunt equivalent to the Spanish inquisition and this sinod of religious ******** artist that will decide how much your electricity bill, fuel and food will go up to line their pockets and increase their power over you and your way of life that must be resisted at all cost.

What people believe is irrelevant. What people do and what they expect you to believe and how they curtail your freedom is what counts.

Delenda est "Carbon Trading"

[hoytedow]

Originally Posted by Knut Sand

17 times higher? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vo...core-petit.png
Well those core samples have been scrutinized very thoroughly both here and by real scientists.... not 17 times... not near it...

Yes, no problem with that.... Norway is crowded by descendants of the tribe's lunies that followed the ice toward the north....

Marco1,
You say you saw the Ice Age movies, yet you don't remember the baby human? You must pay closer attention to detail to be found in your reference materials.

[hoytedow]

Originally Posted by mark775

"CO2 levels around 5,000 ppm cause breathing...problems" - That should take care of the CO2 "problem" in itself, no? Fewer humans?

"This has to be one of the silliest quixotic jousts of all..." -Speaking of windmills, those shaped like a drill bit supposedly make much less noise.

Drill bit shapes are good because they will prepare for the screwing that we will be done.

[ancient kayaker]

Well, even if global warming is in hiatus, things are sure warming up around here.

Jimbo first (post 3565): you’re still having serious problems discussing matters with people who disagree: again I request you desist and adopt polite discourse.

The “quixotic joust was an attempt to answer your question regarding the 'threshold of significance' for anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The statement “CO2 is never going to reach those levels” is a statement of belief if ever I’ve heard one, no proof, no analysis or other numbers. The precarboniferous atmospheric CO2 levels were around 1,500 ppm http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Ca...s_climate.html and prior to that were as high as 7,000 ppm. That carbon did not go into space, it is still on the planet, tied up 1) in the oceans, 2) coal/oil deposits and 3) living plant matter. I need to correct my error regarding Henry’s law; CO2 solubility in water decreases with rising temperature. I don’t know which is biggest, but if CO2 leads to global warming that will tend to release #1 into the atmosphere, we humans are working hard to release #2 and destroy #3. Call me old-fashioned but I think I can see a pattern there.

I have acknowledged that there is not a parity between the historical figures for CO2 release and atmospheric levels attributable to human sources. They are both going up, and while something is evidently soaking up the CO2, it is is not keeping up.

* You want me to justify my claim that stupendous amounts of CO2 have been released to the atmosphere by human agency. Please refer to my post # 3550. CO2 from oil alone totals 291 billion tonnes, equivalent to 50 ppm. From CDIAC data liquid fuels amounts to 42% of the total for the last year. 50/.42 = 119 ppm atmospheric CO2. Increase of atmospheric CO2 over the last 50 years 70 ppm. A CO2 sink has accounted for 42%, bit of luck that. But it’s more than enough, not “nowhere near enough” as you claim.

Now back to “my religion” of long atmospheric residence time for CO2: I have just demonstrated that CO2 has a relatively short residence time in the previous paragraph. What is this mystery sink of yours? If the increase in atmospheric CO2 is substantially less than the release of CO2 then the difference has gone someplace. That is what I call a sink. I don’t know for sure what/where it is, but oceans are a likely bet.

The Ernst-Beck site you linked shows, as you noted, shows levels of CO2 levels repeaking at 440 ppm around 1825, measured somewhere in the Northern hemisphere; my German is not up to the task of getting the details. The same site offers http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180C...eiden-CO2e.htm which shows a much smaller hump to about 285 ppm, based on ice core sampling. Whether the evidently slower response is due to the absorption rate into the water, the transfer rate to the Arctic, or the sharper peak of the previous chart us due to measurement at the CO2 source is something I do not know. Before I can give these results proper attention I need to know where the measurements took place, since the center of a busy industrial town is going to give entirely different short-term results to air monitoring at Muana Loa, and if you know of an English translation I would like to read it.

One point I would like to make: I try to use data from “neutral” sources, ones that do not argue for or against global warming from either side, and particularly avoid sources that appear to be “pro”. The above site is clearly on the “con” side.

Petros (post 3567): the relevance of a chart showing CO2 levels for the last 500+ million years to the variations over the last hundred or so escapes me. The site that your link goes to has some really good data, the sort of thing that worries me in fact. From the top, there’s the Mauna Loa data that I have previously used, a chart that seems to establish the excellent match between ice core data and direct air meaurements, supporting my reservations with the Ernst-Beck data addressed two paragraphs earlier, a comparison of carbon flux and fossil fuel burning closely replicating my analysis of two paragraphs before the Ernst-Beck references (tagged at *), then we have CO2 variations over hundreds of thousnds of years clearly showing a sharp rise of CO2 at the end of each ice age, including one spanning the last 10,000 years, which is followed by a clearly anomalous spike towering far above the previous peaks and attributed to human sources (the expanded data in that chart was the source of one of my earlier analyses), then we see the total CO2 emission which are about 2.5x those from oil alone replicating my analysis referred to at * above (this is getting complicated I fear), under which we find the 500+ million year chart I started this paragraph with. These are precisely the kinds of data, in some cases the very charts that convinced me we have a problem.

Marco (post 3562): I agree some of the data in Wikipedia is suspect, but it is largely self-correcting. Not all of it is bad but it is a source I do not quote if I have a better one. Nonetheless, a lot of the charts in Petros’ link are in Wikipedia. You have not given me credit for the fact that I also use the sources provided by my opposition.

Marco (post 3569): I thank you for your comments on the off-stated claim that my opinion is a religious one. It is perfectly possible and historically highly obvious that trained and specialist scientists can have opinions that are poles apart without necessarily taking a religious stand. Point of information: you make reference to Al Gore; I have never read anything of his. I did not take much of a stand either way on the global warming issue until I started to follow this thread, and actually it was the stuff I learned by following up the ‘anti” viewpoint rather than the “pro” crowd that convinced me there is reason for concern. There may well be a conspiracy as you claim, but I suspect there are at least two, one for each side of the matter. I have always opposed carbon trading and the Kyoto accord, which are utterly ridiculous.

A final note to all: You have provided me and other readers good sources data that have given me food for thought, and I respect you for that.