Originally posted by alex_J:
Lastly, I find the question you raised about the "past 10,000 years being inexplicably warm and consistant." interesting. First, you seem to be ignoring the fact that Earth has been (and will likely continue to be for the next 10,000+ years) in an interglacial period, so of course it's going to be relatively mild & stable. The warming trend is taking us beyond that. Secondly, you say the (relative) warmth over the past 10 millennia is "inexplicable", yet you seem awfully convinced that natural mechanisms are mostly responsible for global warming.
I wanted to address this point. This idea is from the Vostok ice core data. It shows the past 10,000 years has been consistantly warm. It does not show any other period that has not been increasing or decreasing for that long a period. Why has the earth's temperature suddenly been stable when it had never done this in the past 400,000 years? Since the industrial revolution is less than 500 years old, it did not cause it, so of course I conclude that it must be natural.
You also said, "Without CO2, temperatures would cool and more water vapor would precipitate out. Just look at the Milankovitch cycles: An initial orbital forcing, followed by cooling, and a reduction of CO2 and water vapor leading to more cooling." Again, the ice cores do not show that. There are long periods in the ice core data where the CO2 level increased while the temperature decreased. Like I explained in the
http://www.scienceagogo.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/1/1104/2.html#000022 post, this indicates that the greenhouse effect is bunk with respect to the world.
I would be grateful if you could explain the past 10,000 years temperature anomoly and the fact that temperature and CO2 levels are only loosely correlated.
John M Reynolds
