CO2 linkage with climate was first noticed by French nuclear physicsts,and its climate role was simplistically linked to planetary temperatures by Carl Sagan.

So what we are truly seeing is a large pile of bad to totally incompetent scientists, who are easily manipulated in going along with the overtures of politicians.

If as, you say, “It is well known that in the past, CO2 has followed temperature by ~800 years …” then what’s up with the present CO2 level? I’m no climate scientist but the Vostok and EPICA plots clearly show CO2 oscillating in a consistent range between minimums of ~180 ppm and maximums of ~250 to 280 ppm. However, in the last 200 years CO2 has risen to ~380 ppm – an unprecedented breakout to more than 35% above the top of its well-established 800,000-year channel. When added to the ice core data, the recent CO2 trend looks like a flagpole shooting straight up. I’m not aware of any serious challenge to the validity of this data.

Isn’t that a red flag telling us to look out for a change in … something? I don’t see how either camp can point to that and say that they know what it means. AGW skeptics can’t explain it away as normal cycling because it’s an obvious breakout – and the so-called lagging series (CO2) is the one breaking out. But AGW proponents can’t say it’s a message of doom because the causality can’t be established from the historical data – only the correlation. I personally think that it’s the correlation that wins this round, regardless of anyone’s hypotheses about causality … or lack thereof.

I think the unprecedented CO2 breakout should be taken seriously as a possible indicator of “game-changing” circumstances. It’s worth studying and managing – even before it’s fully understood – because it’s such a departure from anything that modern globally-distributed humans have ever experienced. Moreover, most of the CO2 “management” options (efficiency, energy diversity, etc.) are a good idea anyhow for economic or geo-political reasons. So what’s the objection to taking steps to hedge our bets on whether AGW proponents are right or wrong?

I don’t “get” the focus on who’s right and who’s wrong in the science. What advances science is the continuous cycle of observation and interpretation. Let’s put our brain power and money to work supporting better & broader observations and wiser use of resources. If AGW is wrong there’s no loss, and if it’s right we’ll be further ahead than we’ll be if we wait for “proof.”

Peter

the graphs appeared in the mentioned Italian newspaper, page V in the “Tuttoscienze” supplement. There is no declared source for them, but given the rest of the page one can assume they come from somebody at EPICA. Hopefully there will soon be official results in print in scientific publications.

BTW: I do have a copy of the PDF for that page but I do not think I can distribute it

I’ve been trying to find the original of your .gif above that shows the correlation between *iron*, temp and CO2, but without success. Can you help? I’d really like to examine the large original version if possible. Thanks.

BTW, I see you and I have much the same opinion of Gavin over at RealClimate–he strikes me a complet jerk!

Cath

I have edited your comment and inserted the links you suggested. Please double-check, and let me know if I have done any mistake.

Regarding “climate is always changing”: common knowledge it might be, but its relevance does vary in time…

Please understand, though, that there is absolutely nothing new in the EPICA core that bears on the main aspects of climate variation through time.

Though EPICA adds much detail to parts of the record, the general “climate is always changing” background has been common knowledge in the earth science community for more than 100 years. And since 1968 many, many ocean and ice cores from all over the world have revealed the pattern of glacials and interglacials that EPICA manifests too, and that you now comment upon.

There are many good summaries of the importance of geological context to the current “debate” over global warming, which place the EPICA results in broader context. For instance, see review papers 55 and 92 on the list at the website of Australian geologist Bob Carter

Earths orbits change concentration of solar energy reaching places on earth and it potency due to the earths angle relative to the electromagnetism. The Oceans cool and absorb a lot of CO2 which enhances the cooling effect of milankovitch cycles as these cycles do not have as much energy distribution power as GHG and albedo change. This is well known scientifically.

Your how stupid is that phrase is simply incorrect.

I do not think that has been “proven” yet. It is well known that in the past, CO2 has followed temperature by ~800 years so we know which came first (the egg-the warming, and not the chicken-CO2). As for positive feedbacks, one would expect an increase in the rate of warming, say, 800 years after temperatures have started going up (that is, just as CO2 concentrations increase). I do not believe there is any evidence supporting that, at the moment.

Published graphs are in any case hard to tell, and temporal resolutions may not be good enough for such an analysis.

The problem is that without such evidence, we can make up all sort of “just-so” stories about past CO2, warming, iron dust, calcium dust and whatever else, according to the pre-ordained goal of our reasoning. That’s not science, I believe.

You say you cannot see an alternative hypothesis. There are several logical problems with that question. Do we need one? Can’t we just state that CO2 follows temperature? And can the absence of an alternative explanation be used to demonstrate the “truth” in one’s hypothesis?

I do not think burning witches was justified by the fact that people at the time were unable to come up with alternative explanations for whatever the witches were accused of. The absence of an alternative can at most demonstrate that we do not know enough about a particular issue.

—–

Of course, Barbante’s work and all EPICA people’s will not be the final word on climatic changes. Of course, modellers will come back with their own side’s explanations. But I do hope that the title I have chosen for this blog shows what is truly important about the Venice conference’s result.

Look in fact at your own statement

“in the past…orbital changes have driven temperature changes”

That’s not exactly what the EPICA core says. Check the wild variations between 250k and 200k years ago. I don’t think anybody is suggesting that Earth’s orbit was changing that fast at the time. Because, of course, there is always more than one factor at work.

You cannot explain it all with orbits, or with CO2. The EPICA researchers have started investigating the role of iron, and that’s as interesting as not immediately intuitive.

But there’s no space for that in contemporary AGW scientific and political discourse. It’s all CO2 and nothing but CO2. The climate modellers have “scored” against the paleoclimatologists, sometimes at the end of the last decade if I am not mistaken. They have the open line with the politicians, and togethere they have come up with AGW catastrophism.

And they have made sure the past has been analyzed but only in an ancillary way to the models (see Mann). Why? Because if the world is going to the dogs you don’t stop asking how grandma coped when she was a teenager.

By impeding an appropriate analysis of the history of climate change and past “warm” phases, CO2-AGW catastrophists have made us blind about what may actually cause warming (and cooling). And about its possible effects. How stupid is that?

But what about causation?

The leading theory is that natural cycles are driven by fluctuations in the earth’s orbit of various types and that these cause local changes in temperature and these are amplified by various positive feedback processes.
The EPICA data shows a strong correlation between CO2 and Temperature and supports the hypothesis that CO2 causes temperature rises (the greenhouse effect) and temperature rises cause CO2 rises (positive carbon cycle feedback through various mechanisms).

I can’t see a leading alternative hypothesis for causation from the so called ‘climate sceptics’.

What is happening in the past is that orbital changes have driven temperature changes which have driven CO2 releases and so further temperature changes.
What is happening now is that CO2 releases are driving temperature changes, with a possible second order positive feedback.

The truth may be uncomfortable, but the logic is hard to fault I’m afraid.

Well worth a peek.

http://www.mos.org/soti/icecore/studies.html

They state that:
Calcium dust originates from continental shelves that are exposed to the atmosphere as sea level drops during an ice age.

Also iron dust as a biological stimulus to reduce CO2 is discussed in depth at Woods Hole Oceanogrpahic Inst:
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12457&tid=282&cid=35746

and has interesting quote from biogeochemist John Martin “Give me half a tanker of iron, and I’ll give you an ice age”

There is so much about the climate that we don’t know, it’s amazing.

I wonder what the “consensus” climate modellers will think……….

As I keep repeating this is kind of episode #15 in the scientific war between paleoclimatologists (MINUS Michael Mann) and climate modellers.

And the modellers will not be amused.

An oxymoron if ever there was one!

is yours a case of Wikipedia taking precedence over Science? And what happened after 2004?

Is it my “bias” or does that reconstruction look very “Miskolczi”.

I wonder what the “consensus” climate modellers will think……….

Anyway, every serious climatologist knows that todays variability is far from average.

BTW – a reader pointed to a typo, it’s obviously not 15C more that the world had in 118,000BC, but “just” 5C

1) I tend to agree with Luke, that we won’t see this reported on the BBC; or if they do report it, there will be some degree of spin involved. The last time the BBC news website appears to have mentioned Epica and Dome C was November 2005, when they managed to turn their report into a warning about “exceptional” warming and end up mentioning IPCC and sea level rises. I’d expect see a similar angle to their reporting this time around.

2) I’m also wondering about all the good research going on that is reported in languages other than English, and thus may not ever make it into the English-speaking mainstream media (especially if it is not seen as being on-message.)

Now I can help spread this at my blog.

Real climate science research papers should be known.

That’s where the “nakedness” and its “unbearability” come into play. Part of the title is in ALL CAPS for trivial reasons relating to the WordPress style I have chosen, but can’t remember those reasons any longer

I can’t see this being reported on the BBC anytime soon.

Keep up the good work and I love the blog name