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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (10070)	6/27/2009 12:59:56 PM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 86356

Yes, 150 years is a drop in the bucket. So when you compare the rate at which CO2 has climbed in the last 150 years in comparison to the typical fluctuations seen over the last 800,000, it strikes you that much harder as abnormal. It's the way multiple regression equations work. In equations with multiple variables that have varying degrees of impact on the dependent variable, in this case temperature, you do see some variables that work at cross purposes as they fluctuate in their own cycles. In this case, we have all the factors continuing to push up CO2 like decreasing phytoplankton and human activity. However, we also have another independent variable, # of sunspots, which was at a very low level recently. My guess is if you leave sunspots at a steady state and keep pushing up CO2, temperatures would resume their rise. Instead, we see increased variability because sunspots come and go. CO2 and sunspots both seem to be causal factors and have a positive correlation with temperature: Temperature = f(CO2 levels, # of sunspots, etc) Here's a graph for you to ponder. What does it tell you? As you said, though, it will be interesting to see what happens over the next 10 years as sunspots return. Maybe we start to find out the causal chain is increasing sunspots => increases temperature => decrease phytoplankton => increases CO2 upload.wikimedia.org