Correlation does not equal causation.
What caused the warming 650,000 years ago, and what caudsed th e rise at approximately the same time? ( Perhaps a Neanderthal industrial revolution?
Could it be possible that some other factor is raising carbon dioxide levels
other than the burning of fossil fuels?
Did the mere raising of this question raise the reader's ire?
The Ph of the world oceans has been observed to be going down ie the oceans
have been getting more acidic. ( No they have not been becoming more
Hasidic!) Is it possible that this change of acidity is due to billions of
tons of sulpher burned with the fossil fuels? Is it possible that the
resulting acid is dissolving coral reefs, sea shells and underwater
linestone and ooze releasing carbon dioxide, and this is the real culprit?
Does the mere asking of these questions raise anger in the reader?
How accurate are the measurements of CO2 in the polar ice from 650,000
years ago. How repeatable are those measurements and are there any possible
confounding factors that may have changed the concentration of carbon
dioxide in the entrapped antartic ice micro bubbles over the 650000 years
they have been frozen?
Are the longterm arctic ice carbon dioxide measurements from the last 650,
000 years sensitive over short periods of time , like 100 year intervals?
Have there been many short term carbon dioxide spikes that have been averaged
out when reporting the results? The reported Co2 levels from the distant past are derived
from micro bubbles in the arctic ice cores or antartic cores. Carbon dating
of the cores has a significant margin of error for each sample. In
antartica, very little snow falls, so how wide is a hundred year slice, and
how easily would it be to detect historic spikes of Co2 that only lasted a
hundred years?
If the correlation is in fact very precisely mesured for short time
increments, can global temperature also be precisely pinpointed in less
than hundred year increments to even 25 year increments to demonstrate
that Co2 elevation preceeded temperature elevation, or was it the other way
around.?
Rising temperatures increase the solubility of sea shells, ooze and
limestone, resulting in the realease of Co2. Temperature rises thuss can
lead to rising Co2 levels.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
But the much more important point is this. In science there are only theories
and observations that tend to indicate the validity of those theories. Thus
in muy University, the theory of Evolution was almost always referred to as the Central Dogma of Modern Biology
This language was used to remind us that regardless of the overwhelming
evidence of the theory, a scientist must always maintain an open mind and
approach every question the theory raises without prejudice. If a theory is
ever accepted as proven to be the unquestioned truth, then it becomes a Dogma, and not susceptable to scientific
inquiry. This is why the arguement by authority, that global warming must
be correct because the majority of respected scientists say it is, should carry absolutely no weight in the scientific arena.
Before the twentieth century, the overwhelming majorityof scientists held that light
travelled in an unseen ether. Before Galileo, the overwhelming majority of Scientists
held that the sun revolved around the earth. Authority and majority are not
scientific arguements.
The ability of a theory to predict repeatable
observations is the test of a theory's validity. When the theory fails to
conform with a set of observations, it must be rejected. In the meantime it
is accepted as theory, and constantly barraged with alternative theories,
and tests of those theories with observations. Just as the overwhlming
majority of Scientists believe in the central dogma of modern biology, the
working hypothesis that evolution explains observations in the biological
world, so the Central Dogma of Climatology is that the theory of Fossil fuel
Carbon dioxide emissions will cause global warming and the dogma that the predicted warming
will cause cattastrophic climate change.
Anthropollogists and historians have observed the tendency of Humans to
adopt prophecies of doom as Dogma in many cultures over many centuries.
When I was going to college in the seventies, the well accepted dogma was that particulate pollution would cool the planet. Dire predictions of an imminent ice age were widely accepted by "experts" and "prominent" scientists.