Not too long ago a post at WUWT examined the most often-used data set for atmospheric CO 2 concentration, from the Mauna Loa atmospheric observatory. The post itself is just a curve-fitting exercise, but the author doesn’t make outlandish claims about the significance of his conclusions. What’s disturbing is some of the reader comments, especially from those who don’t want to believe that the CO 2 increase has been caused by human beings.



For example:



Robert of Texas says:

June 2, 2012 at 6:02 pm What I fail to understand is how climate scientists attribute all the increasing CO2 to man … If

– man only contributes (less than) 5% of the total new atmospheric CO2 annually

– the amount of man-made CO2 is increasing faster than most models assumed

– CO2 is the primary cause of warming

– since 1992 (or there-abouts) most global warming is caused by humans

then shouldn’t we see a deviation of some sort from a nice curve? (starting around 1992) If on the other hand the ocean’s are degassing we would not see such a man-made deviation – it would be too small to measure. Hmm, and that’s what we see…



Like too many people, he doesn’t want to accept the fact that although human emissions are only 5% (actually maybe 3%) of the flux in and out of the atmosphere every year, they account for more than 100% of the net. The other inputs and outputs would balance — as they have very closely for 10,000 years — but our “tiny” contribution has upset that balance. And since our excess has accumulated, we’re responsible for all of the increase since pre-industrial times. Which amounts to about 40% more CO 2 than was there in pre-industrial times.

Another example:



Pamela Gray says:

June 2, 2012 at 6:08 pm Anything as regular as this data says one of two things. 1. Manmade CO2 pump sitting next to the sensor and never shuts off and is exquisitely tuned to a rythmic increasing beat. 2. Artifact of the “fudge” factor part of the CO2 calculation. Of these two scenarios, I think #2 has the greater chance of being the culprit. It is exceedingly rare for anything on Earth to be that regular (even if caused by human polution) unless someone fine tuned it to be that regular. It’s like finding a perfectly square rock in the mountains and finding out nature made it. Ain’t gonna happen. Chances are something that regular is wholly artifact. That a person can build a simple model to express the regularity of the signal is revealing, to say the least. Someone have the complete maths sequence for the CO2 calculation?



If you’d rather believe in fraud and conspiracy theories than in reality …

Another example:



Shyguy says:

June 3, 2012 at 12:26 am Looks to me like the co2 records got corrupted just like everything else the ipcc get it’s hands on. Dr. Tim Ball explaining:

http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-industrial-and-current-co2-levels-deliberately-corrupted/



Before you read the essay by Tim Ball, be sure to guard against your head exploding.

Yet another:



Bart says:

June 3, 2012 at 1:21 am This question has been solved. The derivative of CO2 tracks the variation in sea surface temperature remarkably well. Temperature drives CO2. Human inputs are rapidly sequestered and have no significant observable impact. … The prevailing paradigm simply does not make sense from a stochastic systems point of view – it is essentially self-refuting. A very low bandwidth system, such as it demands, would not be able to have maintained CO2 levels in a tight band during the pre-industrial era and then suddenly started accumulating our inputs. It would have been driven by random events into a random walk with dispersion increasing as the square root of time. I have been aware of this disconnect for some time. When I found the glaringly evident temperature to CO2 derivative relationship, I knew I had found proof. It just does not make any sense otherwise. Temperature drives atmospheric CO2, and human inputs are negligible. Case closed.



A “stochastic systems point of view” — where have I heard that kind of thing before?

One more for good measure:



Lucy Skywalker says:

June 3, 2012 at 1:52 am I agree with Tim Ball here, that Jaworowski is crucial, and has been brutally trashed by CAGW rednecks for his temerity in challenging the corruption of the science. I personally tend to leave Beck aside as though I regard his evidence as very important, it involves too many distracting issues. I did a whole page on the CO2 issue way back in 2009 and it is still relevant as ever. People simply forget Henry’s Law, the titanic outgassing ability of the oceans in the tropics, and the ability of plants to suck in any spare CO2 – as the recent greening of the Sahel shows. These factors are what I believe the good Ferdinand Engelbeen fails to appreciate. And many others. The above “fit” is indeed seductive. But push the boundaries and the fit breaks down. Now think. CO2 lags temperature by 800 years, according to Caillon et al. What happened 800 years ago?? Anyone?? And what cycle takes 800 years to happen?? Anyone??



Now think. We emit 30 Gtonne CO2 each year, and the atmospheric quantity increases by about half that. Anyone? Anyone??

Ferdinand Engelbeen showed up and tried to inject some sanity into the discussion. But by the time he got there the crazy was out in full force.

One of the objections from those who don’t want to believe that CO 2 was stable until the industrial revolution is that the Mauna Loa data are too “smooth.” This contradicts the claims of those like Beck and Jaworowski, echoed by Tim Ball, that the CO 2 level was extremely variable in the not-too-distant past (i.e., before the industrial revolution). Therefore some have promoted the ridiculous idea that the Mauna Loa data set has been “fudged” to give a false impression of steady increase of CO 2 with little natural variation.

Mauna Loa isn’t the only place that CO 2 concentration is monitored. It’s one of the best spots to do so, and has the longest continuous record of which I’m aware, but if you search the World Data Center for Greenhouse Gases (WDCGG) you’ll find 185 data sets for monthly average CO 2 concentration from locations around the globe. Some are only brief, but at least 150 of them are long enough to identify the rising CO 2 trend with confidence. In fact, 17 of the data sets have more than 360 monthly observations.

Four of the locations in that set of at-least-360-months have more than one record. In those cases I took the longer of the two choices, leaving records with at least 360 months’ data for 13 locations worldwide. They are: Ascension Island, Baring Head, Barrow, Monte Cimone, Guam, Key Biscayne, Cape Kumukahi, Mauna Loa, Niwot Ridge, Palmer Station, Tutuila (Cape Matatula), South Pole, and Schauinsland. By the way, the Mauna Loa record in the WDCGG archive isn’t the full record all the way back to 1958, it only starts in 1974. But for comparing with other locations, that’s plenty.

Here’s the data for all 13 locations superimposed on each other:

Clearly they’re all showing about the same trend. And that trend is remarkably smooth, although different locations tend to exhibit a different annual cycle of changing CO 2 concentration.

To get the best comparison of the trends, we should remove the annual cycle and align the records. That gives this:

The red line is the smoothed average of all 13 locations. Does any of them show signs of the outlandish fluctuations claimed by Beck and Jaworowski, echoed by Tim Ball? No.

In fact we can subtract the smoothed average from each data record to show its deviations over time. If Beck/Jaworowski/Ball are correct about how much CO 2 fluctuates, at least some of the deviations should be at least several 10s of ppmv or larger. But they’re not:

Either the smoothness of the Mauna Loa CO 2 data is real, or somehow the world’s scientists have organized a massive, coordinated conspiracy to fudge all these other records too. In just the right way to make them agree. For the purpose of taking away our freedom and instituting world government based on socialism, no doubt. If you’d rather believe in fraud and conspiracy theories than in reality …

I’ve said before that a litmus test for real skeptics vs. fake skeptics is the loss of Arctic sea ice. If you don’t admit that it’s powerful evidence of global warming, you’re not “keepin’ it real.” Here’s another litmus test. If you seriously entertain the idea that the increase in atmospheric CO 2 isn’t due to mankind burning fossil fuels, you’re not a real skeptic. You’re of the fake variety.

Unfortunately, fake skepticism is the defining characteristic of the movement to deny man-made global warming. Many of their “arguments” are a lot more subtle and sophisticated than the dumber-than-a-bag-of-rocks idea that CO 2 increase isn’t due to mankind. But they’re just as wrong.