Climate Change skeptics? [ot]

The carbon dioxide (CO2) content of the atmosphere has varied cyclically between ~180 and ~280 parts per million by volume over the past 800,000 years, closely coupled with temperature and sea level. For earlier periods in Earth’s history, the partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) is much less certain, and the relation between pCO2 and climate remains poorly constrained. We use boron/calcium ratios in foraminifera to estimate pCO2 during major climate transitions of the past 20 million years. During the Middle Miocene, when temperatures were ~3° to 6°C warmer and sea level was 25 to 40 meters higher than at present, pCO2 appears to have been similar to modern levels. Decreases in pCO2 were apparently synchronous with major episodes of glacial expansion during the Middle Miocene (~14 to 10 million years ago) and Late Pliocene (~3.3 to 2.4 million years ago).

This type of modeling is incapable of delimiting shorter term CO2 fluctuations (Paleocene-Eocene boundary, late Ordovician glaciation) because of the nature of the input data which is added to the model as 10 my or longer averages. Thus, exact values of CO2, as shown by the standard curve, should not be taken literally and are always susceptible to modification. Nevertheless, the overall trend remains. This means that over the long term there is indeed a correlation between CO2 and paleotemperature, as manifested by the atmospheric greenhouse effect.

In 1991 a new model for the evolution of the carbon cycle and of atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic time was presented based on inputs of geological, geochemical, biological, and climatological data (Berner, 1991). This model was later revised in 1994 and given the name GEOCARB, whereupon the revised model was labelled as GEOCARB II (Berner, 1994). The purpose of the present paper is to amend the model to include findings in the earth, biological, and climatological sciences that have occurred over the past seven years. Most of the findings are related to chemical weathering on the continents.

Putting the Keeling Curve in longer context, we get more of those darn hockey sticks.

Is this a legitimate temperature series?

Fig. 9.
a) Temperature anomaly (°C) reconstructed from different ice core records: DML (light green), Taldice (yellow), Siple (red), Law Dome (magenta), B25 (violet), EDC (black), Taylor (dark green). b) Mean of the temperatures reconstructed from all the ice core records (AIT composite, light blue), a previous reconstruction based on ice core data (dark blue, Schneider et al., 2006) and the mean temperature anomaly southward of 70°S in the simulation with data assimilation (green). Additionally, the 7 estimates obtained by performing the mean over only 6 of the 7 records are also displayed in grey to illustrate the uncertainty of the reconstruction. A 101 year running mean and a 21-year running mean have been applied for panel a and b, respectively. Reference period is 1850–1980. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

with ZERO benefit to any tax payer in the country..

The plants in Indianapolis continue to make batteries.

the power plant the loan built has a long-term agreement to sell electricity, and its investment will be protected no matter what happens to the parent company.

the factories were sold to Johnson Controls (JCI, Fortune 500), which is expected to keep them open.

various Chinese entities who took them jobs back to their homeland

The plants in Indianapolis continue to make batteries.

the power plant the loan built has a long-term agreement to sell electricity, and its investment will be protected no matter what happens to the parent company.

President Barack Obama is sticking to a fossil-fuel dependent energy policy

All the more reason campaign reform is THE ONLY WAY....But then, you never signed my official petition..