I've yet to see a climate model whose inputs are
actual climate data from say the 1950s-1970s
that actually predicted our current circumstances
They weren't doing modeling in the 50's.
Revelle was instrumental in creating the International Geophysical Year in 1958 and was founding chairman of the first Committee on Climate Change and the Ocean (CCCO) under the Scientific Committee on Ocean Research (SCOR) and the International Oceanic Commission (IOC). During planning for the IGY, under Revelle's directorship, SIO participated in and later became the principal center for the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Program. In July 1956, Charles David Keeling joined the SIO staff to head the program, and began measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, and Antarctica.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Revellemsgid=22501134&srchtxt=revelle
The data collection started by Dr. Keeling and continued at Mauna Loa is the longest continuous record of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the world and are considered as reliable indicators of the regional trend in the mid-level troposhere. Dr Keeling's research shows that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has grown from 315 parts per million (ppm) in 1958 to 380 (ppm) in 2005 with increases correlated to fossil fuel emissions. There has also been an increase in seasonal variation in samples from the late 20th century and early 21st century.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_David_Keeling
Early work
The next major scientist to consider the question was another man with broad interests, Svante Arrhenius in Stockholm. He too was attracted by the great riddle of the prehistoric ice ages. In 1896 Arrhenius completed a laborious numerical computation which suggested that cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by half could lower the temperature in Europe some 4-5°C (roughly 7-9°F) — that is, to an ice age level. But this idea could only answer the riddle of the ice ages if such large changes in atmospheric composition really were possible. For that question Arrhenius turned to a colleague, Arvid Högbom. It happened that Högbom had compiled estimates for how carbon dioxide cycles through natural geochemical processes, including emission from volcanoes, uptake by the oceans, and so forth. Along the way he had come up with a strange, almost incredible new idea.
<=Simple models
S. Arrhenius
It had occurred to Högbom to calculate the amounts of CO2 emitted by factories and other industrial sources. Surprisingly, he found that human activities were adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a rate roughly comparable to the natural geochemical processes that emitted or absorbed the gas. The added gas was not much compared with the volume of CO2 already in the atmosphere — the CO2 released from the burning of coal in the year 1896 would raise the level by scarcely a thousandth part. But the additions might matter if they continued long enough.(2) (By recent calculations, the total amount of carbon laid up in coal and other fossil deposits that humanity can readily get at and burn is some ten times greater than the total amount in the atmosphere.) So the next CO2 change might not be a cooling decrease, but an increase. Arrhenius made a calculation for doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere, and estimated it would raise the Earth's temperature some 5-6°C.(3)
Arrhenius did not see that as a problem. He figured that if industry continued to burn fuel at the current (1896) rate, it would take perhaps three thousand years for the CO2 level to rise so high.
aip.org
A simple calculation shows that the temperature in the Arctic regions would rise about 8-9 degrees C if the carbonic acid increases 2.5-3 times its present value...The world's present production of coal reaches in round numbers 500 millions of tons per annum, or one ton/sq. km of the earth's surface.
Högbom |
