Current Events — HabitableZone

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re: PT 2
gbaikie — (archived)

"As CO2 goes up so does temperature- we understand the principles of why this is the case, why do you find this hard to believe?"

Very simply it's a matter of degree. I don't regard 380 parts per million as very significant.

Mauna Loa has measured an increase of around 60 parts per million from 1960 to present.
During this time the average global temperature has gone up, but there is no reason to assume that human activity or one aspect of it: producing CO2, has caused the increase.
Can you quantify how much adding 60 parts per million of CO2 to Earth's atmosphere adds to Global temperature?
It could add a small amount, like .001 C or it could add a huge amount like say .08 C.
Now according to your graph which includes the Medieval warm period, it appears just by looking at that there there is difference of about say .06 C and today. Now, of course I think it's bogus, because if for no other reason, I don't think anyone can measure your planet 1000 year ago so you can say 1000 years ago it was .06 C colder. It's about like sawing down a tree, looking at the tree rings and declaring that on July 23 1967 the warmest period of the day was 21.54 C.
I mean come on, Wikipedia [your reference] says "is that the average global temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2 °C since the late 19th century"

In other words during a period which is far most recent, with actually having people taking air temperature daily and keeping a log, the precision is declared to be between .4 to .8 C increase. YET now through some weird magic we can look at a graph and "see" that 1000 years ago it was about .6 C cooler globally speaking. Now it's not cooler by .4 C ± 0.2. No, no you see the farther away in time the more precise you get- it's a matter of prospective, see?

I think it reasonable that the Medieval warm period was about the same temperature as we have today- ± 1 C.
Though I think there a fair amount of evidence that the region of Greenland was warmer than it is today.

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