Sunday 20 July 2008

Will CO2 levels now start falling?

Here is an interesting test of how our climate works.

According to Algore, increases in CO2 concentrations drive up the temperature.

However, ice core data shows that CO2 seems to lag temperature by about 800 years.

Now, the global temp appears to have fallen rapidly in the last few years. Does that mean that CO2 levels might actually start to fall, regardless of how much we are pumping into the atmosphere? I guess the driver is that you can disolve more gas into a liquid at lower temperatures, so the oceans (which are truly massive) simply soak up more CO2 as they cool. Conversely, they give off CO2 as the temperature rises.

Although if there is an 800 year lag, we might not be around to see how things work out.

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