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Originally Posted by onon
1) That co2 levels are rising. If co2 levels were not rising, they couldn't be a candidate for the recent warming.
2) That the co2 rise is anthropogenic.
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Over the span of ten years, which would mean absolutely nothing.
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Mainly temperature change. Ice cores show that co2 starts rising when temperature rises, and also show that during the little ice age co2 levels dropped about 10ppm. The basis of this is that the efficiency of processes like ocean absorption of co2 are dependant on temperature.
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Hmmm, well let me use some of your logic. Rising temperature causes CO2 concentrations to increase, the temperature has risen over the past 10 years, therefore, the rise in CO2 concentrations is entirely natural.
But back to the point, until you know all the natural causes for the fluctuation of CO2 concentrations, and have ruled them out as possible causes for the current rise in CO2 concentrations, you can't definitively claim the increase in CO2 concentrations is anthropogenic, nor can you claim that nature would take any particular course were man not around.
If you suspend reason and logic.
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I don't see how that can be seen as a logical fallacy. The equillibrium level of co2 in the atmosphere is largely a product of temperature.
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What? I thought the equilibrium level of CO2 in the atmosphere was entirely a product of human emissions. Which is it? Do CO2 concentrations increase because of temperature, or because of human emissions.
Your statement basically resolves to this: The atmosphere will absorb more CO2 than it emits if there is more CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb, therefore, the atmosphere will always have a contant level of CO2 concentrations. Which is not true.
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All things equal co2 should be filtering out of the atmosphere in current conditions.
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According to what? What "things" need to be equal? Are you arguing the atmosphere is an ordered system?
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[If humans never emitted any CO2,] co2 levels would most likely have remained near the preindustrial level of 280ppm to this day.
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Really? Why? What happened to all the other forcings that alter CO2 concentrations? Given that CO2 concentrations fluctuate naturally, why do you believe they simply stop when humans are around? Do they just not like to be watched? What about temperature? Since temperature has increased over the past 150 years (assuming we accept that premise), shouldn't CO2 concentrations have increased commensurately?
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I am talking about if humans stopped emitting today. In that case there is still an abundance of co2 in the atmosphere and levels will start falling.
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Then they would reach their pre-industrial levels and stop? Because the planet likes the 280ppm number?
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We know umbrellas don't cause rain, there's no mechanism for them to do so. But we know that co2 emissions can cause co2 rises. "correlation does not prove causation" is a popular phrase but in reality when it is also coupled with mechanism, correlation can have a statisitical fit beyond chance, so becomes excellent evidence.
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You first need to understand the mechanism. Do we?
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0ppm would be a shortage. There is a level of equilibrium which is largely determined by temperature (about 280ppm over the last few hundred years). If co2 levels are above this equillibrium level then absorption tends to outweigh emission, if they are below the level then the opposite is true.
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Really? Well, that makes sense. Temperature started increasing naturally, therefore CO2 concentrations rose naturally. Looks like my erroneous conclusion is getting stronger every minute. Yours, however, is suffering. Unless you're arguing that Man somehow increased the temperature of this planet?
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Quite the contrary. The fact is that natural causes of fluctuating co2 concentrations haven't stopped.
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Then there could be natural reasons why CO2 concentrations are increasing.
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At the moment nature is absorbing more co2 than it emits, so left alone nature would be pulling co2 from the atmosphere causing levels to drop.
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Until we got to zero.
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That's not the argument. It would be better phrased as:
co2 concentrations rise due to more co2 being emitted into the atmosphere than is absorbed.
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Which logically means: either the absorption rate decreased, or the emission rate increased. You can't state specifically which.
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Since man is here, extra co2 is being emitted into the atmosphere.
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Correct, in so far as "extra" means "non-natural".
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Because co2 levels are only rising about half the rate man is emitting co2, nature must be a net sink of co2. Ie man is emitting twice as much co2 as co2 levels are rising. Therefore man has caused co2 concentrations to rise.
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Your conclusion still does not follow. Assuming your numbers for how much CO2 Man is emitting and how much CO2 is added to the environment every year are correct, the most you could argue is that Man is
a cause of rising CO2 concentrations.
Furthermore, you would not be able to argue CO2 concentrations would decrease if Man stopped emitting CO2 because climate is not a linear, ordered system. You don't know what would happen, just as you don't know what's happening now. You can come up with very plausible theories, none of which will have the definite statements you keep wanting to make, but they will still be just theories.
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No, because nature is absorbing more co2 than it is emitting.
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When did it decide to do that? Did it decide after temperatures started rising? If so, how come CO2 levels have reached such extreme levels in the past and stayed there long after temperature began to decline?
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Take 2006 as an example - over that year nature took more co2 out of the atmosphere than it put in.
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Really? What do you have, some sort of little toll booth the CO2 molecules have to go through so you can count them? How do you know how much CO2 "nature" put into the system and how much it took out?
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Therefore without humans emissions you cannot have co2 levels rising in 2006. How could that possibly not be true?
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Who knows? Climate is a non-linear, chaotic system that we don't know near enough about in order to make claims like, "If A, then B."
Lest anyone be tricked into thinking these links show something they don't, the first is a link to measured CO2 concentrations from
one observatory. (One observatory to conclude that CO2 concentrations are rising globally. I'll let the more intelligent among us decide if that seems right.) If you graph this data you'll see a slight uptrend from about 320ppm in 1958, to about 380 in 2004. An increase of about 19%. Which, considering that increasing temperatures cause CO2 concentrations to rise, is wholly consistent with my erroneous conclusion that temperatures are currently causing CO2 concentrations to rise.
But let's look at onon's theory. Since the only numbers he likes to repeat are the 15 extra tons of CO2 Man is pumping into the air, 15 tons over 46 years (1958-2004) comes out to be 690 tons of CO2. 690 tons of CO2 caused an increase of 19% in CO2 concentrations. Do I have that right, onon? This relatively paltry amount (when compared to 750-830
gigatons already in the atmosphere) would cause an increase of 19%?
The second link takes you to a table of
estimates for anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Estimates that, as even the short blurb up top tells us, aren't even close to actual. Where did they get these estimates? How did they arrive at those numbers?
What neither of these links tell us are: 1) how much CO2 is being emitted naturally, or 2) how much CO2 is being absorbed naturally. Both of which we would need to know in order to make any assumptions about whether the net effect of nature is to absorb CO2.
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What do you think would happen to atmospheric co2 levels if human emissions stopped tommorow?
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I have no idea. Unlike you, I understand that climate has many, many, many, many dependent variables. And I also understand that if I change one of these variables today, I won't necessarily get the same results if I changed that variable tomorrow. You keep imagining that climate has only a few variables and you can make definitive predictions based upon changing some of those variables. That's simply not true. Climate is a non-linear, chaotic, vastly interconnected system that we don't know nearly enough about to claim changing A will result in B.
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The evidence is beyond doubt that co2 is rising, and the the rise is human caused.
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I have no interest in making you believe otherwise. However, your logic is flawed.