CO2 - how much

It's the place to go if you seek a quick way to garb yourself with appearances of academia to those too ignorant to know better, without being subjected to meaningful peer-review. It's become a policy rag. Not that others who might have known better haven't been fooled -- as the wiki you cite points out, Roger Pielke Jr said, "...had we known then how that outlet would evolve beyond 1999 we certainly wouldn't have published there..."

Jon

ote:

It is and there are a bunch of other sites around the world doing it too. Keelings record is the longest continuous set of CO2 observations. Bush tried more than once to remove his funding.

Keeling's son has gone on to perfect a modern commercial paramagnetic O2 measurement system for continuous monitoring of the roughly 20% atmospheric O2 component with an accuracy approching 0.2ppm (a 6 sig fig measurement). This is a stunning acheivement reported in AGU in

One of the very earliest papers showing both CO2 and O2 traces over a few years at La Jolla during the method development is online and free access at:

Their O2 measurments are more than good enough to show that just as CO2 is rising systematically O2 is falling due to burning fossil fuels. A couple of graphs from an AMS seminar are also online:

on

ere

Worth pointing out here that what little interference there is from water vapour in commercial CO2 instruments doesn't really affect measurments made on top of Mauna Loa because it is one of the driest places on the planet. It is a site of choice for ground based microwave telescopes because most of the atmospheric water content is trapped well below the peak height.

Regards, Martin Brown

However Mauna Loa is an active volcano.

/quote

A volcanic component can be estimated by taking the difference in concentration between periods when the plume is present and periods immediately before and after that exhibit baseline conditions.

Right after the 1984 eruption, Mauna Loa emitted as much CO2 as an American city of 40,000 people. By 2005, these emissions had fallen by a factor of about 100.

/end quote

These guys must be good estimators, the published curve is so smooth.

Yes, that is also reasonably probable.

John

John doesn't spell out the reasoning that lead him to conclude that any of these propositions were "reasonably" probable, and a sceptical observer might imagine that his assessments had more to do with what he'd like to be true than any extended ratiocination.

His enthusiastic acceptance of a rather dubious paper, reprinted from a dubious publication

doesn't inspire any great confidence.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

If you want to know something about how it does what it does try this: