The climate alarmist crowd never tires of insisting that anthropogenic additions to atmospheric carbon dioxide—up by 45 percent, from 280 to about 407 parts per million, since before the Industrial Revolution—are driving historically unprecedented and likely-to-become catastrophic global warming, and that they’re exacerbated by increases in atmospheric methane (CH4) driven by the rising temperature, making methane a positive feedback. The claim rests on the notion that carbon dioxide level drives temperature rather than vice versa.
Long-term geological data show a pretty consistent correlation between CO2 and temperature, giving the claim its initial attractiveness.
But there’s a problem. Detailed analysis of the data shows that the time sequence is opposite what the claim requires.
That’s been shown by a variety of studies in the past, including Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow David Legates’s review article “Carbon Dioxide and Air Temperature: Who Leads and Who Follows?” Two-and-a-half years ago geologist Euan Mearns contributed “The Vostok Ice Core: Temperature, CO2, and CH4.”
Now Mearns has followed up with “The Vostok Ice Core and the 14,000 Year CO2 Time Lag,” which makes the case more strongly than ever. Here’s his lead:
A detailed analysis of temperature, CO2 and methane variations from the Vostok ice core is presented for the time interval 137,383 to 102,052 years ago. This captures the termination of the glaciation that preceded the Eemian interglacial and the inception of the last great glaciation that succeeded the Eemian. At the termination, CO2 follows dT exactly, but at the inception CO2 does not follow temperature down for 14,218 years. Full glacial conditions came into being without falling CO2 providing any of the climate forcing. This falsifies the traditional narrative that dCO2 amplified weak orbital forcing effects. It is quite clear from the data that CO2 follows temperature with highly variable time lags depending upon whether the climate is warming or cooling.
Methane on the other hand lags temperature by about 2,000 years at the termination but follows temperature down exactly at the inception. It therefore follows that methane and CO2 are not coupled. Each responds in their own time to changing climate. The absence of coupling may be explained by the different bio-geochemical pathways these gasses have in the biosphere – ocean – atmosphere system.
Ken Haapala, President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, writing in SEPP’s latest newsletter, summarizes the lessons from Mearns’s lengthy piece:
CO2 and Ice Ages: Geologist Euan Mearns takes a close look at the data on temperatures, carbon dioxide (CO2), and methane (CH4) found in the Vostok Ice Core of Antarctica. Many in the climate establishment will not like what he sees. He focuses on the Eemian warm period between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago. This warm period was the last warm period before the current warm period, the Holocene. In her 2008 graphs showing the relationship between CO2 and temperatures from the Vostok Ice Core covering the entire record, Jo Nova stated the average lag was about 800 years, with temperatures rising (falling) about 800 years before CO2 rising (falling). This lag indicates that CO2 could not be the cause of rise or fall of temperatures. In the data, the largest lag was in the Eemian, particularly with falling temperatures.
Mears examines, in detail, the period of cooling from 128,300 years ago to 114,082 years ago, a period of over 14,000 years. During this period, CO2 concentrations varied around 270 ppm (parts per million), between 260 and 280 ppm. Yet, temperatures steadily dropped over 7 degrees K while CO2 concentrations remained roughly constant.
This analysis clearly showed that the earth cools independently of CO2 concentrations. The argument advanced by members of NASA-GISS, and others, that CO2 is the control knob of the earth’s temperatures is directly contradicted by the evidence. There is a loose relationship between rising temperatures and rising CO2, but not between falling temperatures and falling CO2. Ice Ages occur despite relatively high concentrations of CO2. (Note: laboratory experiments show the relationship between CO2 and temperatures are highly logarithmic, and increasing concentrations of CO2 from about 270 ppm to levels found today of about 400 ppm have a minor effect on increasing temperatures.)
Mearns performs a similar analysis on the relationship between temperature and methane (CH4). He found that as the temperatures rose into the Eemian interglacial, methane concentrations lagged behind, by a few thousand years. But, when temperatures fell, going into the next ice age, methane concentrations closely followed.
His findings for the Eemian can be summarized as follows: When temperatures rise, CO2 closely follows; when temperatures fall, CO2 separates. When temperatures rise, CH4 lags behind; when temperatures fall, CH4 closely follows.
Mearns speculates on the varying lags. When temperatures rise, oceans rapidly release CO2. When temperatures fall, plant growth produced by higher temperatures and CO2 release the CO2 slowly. The oceans slowly absorb this release of CO2. For CH4, when temperatures rise, bacteria producing the methane react slowly; but when temperatures fall, they freeze rapidly.
Then, what causes the fall (and increase) in temperatures if the Milankovitch cycles are too weak to explain them alone as the climate establishment claims? Mearns suggests it may be variation in the thermohaline circulation of the oceans. This has been suggested by others such as the late Bill Gray. Some scientists suggest it was the closing of Caribbean seaway about 5 million years ago that set up the thermohaline circulation resulting in current period of ice ages starting about 3.5 million years ago.
Another nail in the coffin of climate alarmism—and all the more reason for the demise of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its offspring, the Paris climate accord. The Trump Administration should be listening.
John B Gustavson says
I had 20 very senior geologists at my house for our monthly Geology Club meeting (GeollyBoys, founded in the 1960’s). My talk was on the Li-Co craze and its poor foundation on environmental fallacies.
At the end, I posed the question “Which leads: Temperature or CO2 Content?”
Result: 3 voted for CO2 (quoted triggering events), while at least a dozen voted for Temp leading CO2. Unanimous: now a subject of further Club talks. A 500-year lag was mentioned. Regards, John Gustavson, MSc Chem Eng and MSc Geology
Frank Steinle Jr says
I don’t have proof of my comment. Moisture tracks temperature change and plant growth tracks moisture and increased plant growth decreases CO2. Decreasing temperature means dryness increases which increases the probability of fires, which releases CO2 back into the atmosphere. I understand that oceanic plant growth lags CO2 in the atmosphere of the order of 20 years. In short, I vote for CO2 lagging temperature.
Forrest Frantz says
John & Frank – Congrats. You are correct.
I just did a study on modern industrial warming using highly respected and trusted real-time CO2 and Global Temperatures and mathematics that is beyond reproach. At odds of being wrong at less than one in a trillion (yes … that confident), CO2 is a neutral climate change feedback and T precedes CO2 in the past 60 years (accounting for up to 20% of the increase in CO2).
I’m looking for sharp minds to criticize the study. If you know of someone, let me know.
High Treason says
Hidden in plain sight.
At first glance, CO2 increases appear to precede temperature increases. However-look at the time scale. It is in years before the present- a reversal of how we normally look at graphs. Thus, it is the opposite of what the climate alarmists claim! CO2 rises about 800 years AFTER temperature rises. This is high school science-solubility of gases in water. Warmer water releases its dissolved gases.
High school science. Obviously, those that believe the fairy tales that CO2 is the driving force behind global temperatures need to go back to high school.
Jeffrey J. Carlson says
You don’t need to conduct a study to show that CO2 lags temperature. It has already been completed! The data (ice core) clearly indicates that CO2 lags temperature. A junior high school science student could even see that! Give up your biases and just interpret the data. If you prefer, I can provide you with an unbiased, detailed statistical analysis that will tell you the exact same thing.
Adrian Vance says
Please see “CO2 Is Innocent” at https://ScienceFrauds.blogspot.com clip copy the paper and do the $7 simple demo-experiment that shows CO2 increases reduce atmospheric heat per the Le Chatelier Principle which has been removed from the atmospheric textbooks in 1990’s! Or, ask for a PDF copy from Adrian.Vance@aol.com and you will get it in a day, or two.
Adrian Vance
David E. Cooper says
As a physicist, I believe in the law of conservation of energy. It has never been violated.
The main driver of the earth’s climate and the source of our warmth is energy from the sun. Since 1970, solar irradiance on the earth has been constant to slightly decreasing. During that same period the earth’s average temperature has been increasing. How can this be? If not the sun, what is the source of the energy that has resulted in the warming earth since 1970? It must be that the earth is retaining more of the energy received from the sun. That is exactly what greenhouse gases do – they prevent solar energy from re-radiating back into space.
The issue of whether or not carbon dioxide lags or leads temperature over the past 400,000 years is a bit of a red herring. One cannot conclude from the Vostok Ice core data that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has no effect on the earth’s temperature. Indeed there is a lag of about 800 years between the rise of temperature and the rise in CO2 concentrations. Thus one can say that for the first 800 years, CO2 had no effect on the temperature rise. After that it is erroneous to conclude that CO2 had no effect on the subsequent temperature rise. So what caused these periodic temperature increases in the first place? The sun. Due to long term (~100,000 years) cycles in the earth’s orbit around the sun (Milankovitch cycles), the earth comes closer to the sun about every 100,000 years and receives more energy which drives up the temperature. CO2 as well as other greenhouse gases amplify this effect through a positive feedback loop (the increased solar irradiance increases temperature, which increases CO2 levels from ocean outgassing, which further increases temperature etc.). This effect has been well discussed in the climatological literature and is not a mystery. Without CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the effect of the earth’s orbital cycles would be much less pronounced than observed in the Vostok ice cores.
John Doe says
But CO2 is not the control knob of the Earth’s temperature. That is the main point. Doubling CO2 from preindustrial levels gives about 1.2C or so increase in temperature and that is on pretty solid ground assuming NO feedbacks. Well ice age cycles have lots of feedbacks and in fact the Earth’s climate is full of feedbacks. If the CO2 is going to seriously affect our present climate you need positive or amplifying feedbacks. If these feedbacks exist, the climate would have spiraled out of control long ago. The fact that CO2 remains relatively high at glacial inception for thousands of years strongly suggests it doesn’t control our climate. It doesn’t make physical sense that CO2 concentration’s control on the climate system varies. During glacial inception something else kicks the process off, then CO2 takes over. Vice versa, something else kicks the warming process off and then CO2 takes over. Out gassing of CO2 from the oceans (Boyle’s Law) make the most sense. Warmer oceans more outgassing, cooler oceans suck CO2 in although it takes longer for this process to occur which makes sense. More energy is required for the oceans to absorb large quantities of CO2 so the lag is shorter.
There are so many holes in the CO2 global warming theory I don’t know where to stop. The water vapor feedback has to be significantly positive for a climate “crisis” which dominates research and the media hype machine. Upper level water vapor data from radiosondes and even AIRS shows water vapor declining at high altitudes and this is where is counts radiatively. The lower troposphere increase in water vapor has little effect on the greenhouse effect. Cloud fraction data from NASA between 1983-2009 almost perfectly correlated to the global temperatures. More cloud fraction cooler temperatures globally and vice versa. I can go on and on.
Unfortunately, climate science has been hi-jacked by alarmists so discussing this stuff gets you called names like “denier” which puts you in a category with holocaust deniers. Why are climate scientist doing this? Don’t they really want to understand what is going on?
One last thing, yes the sun has gotten a bit weaker and the Earth has been warming. You just assume it is all from the increasing GHGs. Your assumption is the climate was in near stasis before the Industrial revolution. This is a false assumption, we were coming out of a little ice age so an imbalance likely has been present since the 1800s and the warming we are seeing today is likely mostly natural with a small amount from CO2. That is where the debate should be how much is natural vs man made.