Ipsa scientia potestas est

Something that has been pissing me off lately is using non-homogenous data sources to produce misleading information regarding CO2 in the atmosphere.  There is a basic correlation in which practically all scientists believe, that elevated CO2 levels in the atmosphere are related very closely to elevated temperatures.  Whether or not there is a causal effect is up to debate.

Regardless, the Department of Energy for the US government runs the Oak Ridge lab out of Roane County in Tennessee.  This lab happens to host a particular center called the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, or CDIAC.  From the CDIAC page:

The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) is the primary climate-change data and information analysis center of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). CDIAC is located at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and includes the World Data Center for Atmospheric Trace Gases.

CDIAC’s data holdings include records of the concentrations of carbon dioxide and other radiatively active gases in the atmosphere; the role of the terrestrial biosphere and the oceans in the biogeochemical cycles of greenhouse gases; emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere; long-term climate trends; the effects of elevated carbon dioxide on vegetation; and the vulnerability of coastal areas to rising sea level.

One of the particularly interesting graphs which the CDIAC holds is a graph of the 1999 Vostok Antarctica ice-core samples data.  One particular graph, showing the Age of Entrapped Air, and the levels of CO2 in parts per million.

This image is pulled right from the CDIAC, so I am not fudging data here.  As you can see there is a *very* clear trend here.  If you subscribe to the correlation between global elevated CO2 and global elevated temperatures, it isn’t too much of a stretch to relate this graph to global temperatures.

This next bit is what pisses me off.  One simply cannot take the values extrapolated from analyzing ice-cores, and directly compare those values to the values taken with real-time sampling.  While the graphed data pulled from the ice is incredibly useful for trending purposes, comparing it directly to values polled real-time is akin to comparing apples to oranges.

We know we’re on the tail end of an ice-age and the level of CO2 emissions in the post-industrial era is also growing at an impressive rate.  Let’s see how humans participate in mother natures dance.