It lists that the four major non-water vapor greenhouse gasses contributed a total of between +2.07 and +2.53 of the overall radiative forcing portion, of which carbon dioxide alone is +1.49 to +1.83 over the 250+ years. However, this does not take into account various other positive and negative forcings (such as both stratospheric and tropospheric ozone) nor water vapor feedbacks, nor clouds other than cloud aerosol albedo effects of -1.8 to -.3 (minus 1.1 to plus .3 from the reported -.7)

As far as adding carbon dioxide alone, look at 7.3 in the WGI report. Couplings Between Changes in the Climate System and Biogeochemistry – The Carbon Cycle and the Climate System http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch07.pdf

It appears from 2000-2005, the gigatons of carbon dioxide increased 4.1(+/- .1) per year (versus 3.2 (+/- .1) in the 1990s) This is broken down into

1990s to 2000-2005

Emissions
6.4 (+/- .4)to 7.2 (+/- .3)
Ocean to atmosphere flux
-1.7 (+/- .5) (TAR, revised in AR4 to -2.2 (+/- .4)) to -2.2 (+/- .4 )
Land to atmosphere flux from
-1.4 (+/- .7) (TAR, revised in AR4 to (-1 +/- .6)) to -1 (+/- .6)

They partitioned land to atmosphere into land use and residual and for the 1980′s in the TAR (original not revised TAR) and for the 1990s in AR4

Land use flux 1.7 (+.8 -1.1) to 1.6 (+/- 1.1)
Residual terrestrial sink -1.9 (+ 1.6 – .9) to -2.6 (+/- 1.7)

So based upon AR4 commenting on the 1990s, they get a net land to atmosphere of 1 +/-.6 from the partitioning of the two that are actually a range of -3.8 (both low) to +1.6 (both high). Of course, the partitioning can’t be separated based upon current observations only after the rfact.

See table 7.1

For the radiative forcings, see figure SPM.2 in, and the AR4 WGI SPM itself, for details. Be aware that the document mostly focuses on conclusions and interpretations gathered from various sources including models and scenarios, and is focused on policy and policy-makers, from a different perspective than the much larger WGI report does. It also focuses extensivly on carbon dioxide.

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf

I would put that as: Carbon dioxide is one of the gasses that absorbs IR, contributing to the greenhouse effect.

Swindle points out that the environment produces more CO2 than humans, I haven’t seen any studies that refute that

Well, it’s true and I am a serious skeptic. But it is not as simple as that.

According to DoE:

Yes, yes, Ocean and Vegitation/soils put out nearly alll of CO2. Industry only contributes c. 6 1/2 BMTC per year, or under 5%.

BUT

Ocean and Soils/Vegitation (including agriculture) suck up MORE carbon than they emit. They even suck up over half the atmospheric carbon that industry puts out. But Indusry doesn’t suck up ANY atmospheric carbon. over 3 BMTC accumultes in the atmosphere. There is c. 730 BMTC or so of atmospheric BMTC. So it is reasonable to conclude that industry (i.e., all fuels burning) contributes half-a-percent a year to atmospheric carbon.

I think the CO2 argument falls down on three levels:

First, once India/China et al. have developed to a reasonable level of affluence (probably in 2 to 3 decades), they will reduce output (including contributing to the Dirty Snow issue), therefore the accumulation models are fatally flawed.

Second, CO2 has a persistance of c. 100 years (or what?). Or however long. At that point, if CO2 input is merely equal to CO2 “decay”, CO2 will no longer accumulate at all. (Other homeostasis factors, perhaps some we are not even currently aware of may click in as well.)

Third, it seems as if CO2 does warm the atmosphere, but its effects may have been exaggerated, possibly greatly. If so, spending trillions or tens of trillions a year on the problem would be a very tragic waste and would come at considerable cost in human life. Every time wealth is squandered–or not created–lives are lost that would not have been lost otherwise.

Sam,

Only the magnetic pole will shift, not the rotational axis. Conservation of angular momentum would be massively violated by any shift in the rotational axis. There are small continuous shifts in the orientation of the rotational pole wrt the plane of the orbit, however. Polaris eventually won’t be the North Star. But that doesn’t change the physical location of the rotational axis. It’s more like the wobbling of a gyroscope. Also, there is magnetic polar drift and magnetic pole reversal. It was once thought that the decrease to zero of the Earth’s magnetic field during a pole reversal, something that has happened many times over geologic time would cause a significant and possibly deadly increase in the radiation dose at the equator, but IIRC, that has been discounted by new calculations. The 2012 date is, I think, for the Sun’s magnetic field to reverse. That is a normal part of the solar cycle and happens approximately every 11 years, but it varies. The current cycle seems to be longer than usual.

Anyway, I thought to myself, ‘what would happen if everything did melt’? and that’s when I remembered Venus. As I mentioned there, Venus has no magnetic field to speak of since it doesn’t have the capacity to have a dynamo for its core for a variety of reasons. So it doesn’t have a magnetic shift every 700,000 years or so.

As some of you may know, there are some people that believe we are due for another shift on (something around) 21 Dec 2012 Should that indeed happen, I’m sure you know what kind of result suddenly moving the poles to where the equator now is (and vice versa) to the crust of the Earth (even discounting the sudden shift; due to the bulge, the plates and so on. Bad news for the gravitational pull too.).

So if it happened, what would the result be? Earthquakes, volcanoes popping up, and the like. If just that didn’t kill everyone, we would now have all the ice in Antartica melting as well as all the water at the equator freezing.

I think you can see this happening really makes the idea of what’s going to happen after 5 years a moot point…. So the question is:

Are we due for another pole shift?

That’s just it, what’s your scientific evidence of the claim that “environment absorbs more than it produces”. We don’t know. We cannot measure it. All the C02 in the atmosphere is in flux, ie, part of the carbon cycle. Because of Henry’s law, it’s all headed for the ocean. The atmospheric lifetime is about 5 years. C02 cannot accumulate in the atmosphere, just as Water cannot accumulate in the atmosphere. Human C02 output amounts to a tiny fraction of the C02 flux. It merely make it look like there is a bit more animal life.

C_G_K, my apologies if I wasted your time reading the wrong link, I was drinking a bit that night. Right now for some reason I can’t seem to find the article, perhaps it’s already out of the open discussion phase, (I had read it a week or two prior to seeing this thread and going back to look for the link I posted) or perhaps my memory of the article’s implications was really faulty. (link was posted from a computer that can’t read pdf’s)

I’ll post the proper link if I come across it.

I don’t see much possibility that the CO2 increase is due to the previous high of the Milankovich cycle. The delay is just too long.

Also, the way the CO2 rises, stays relatively constant until 1000 years after the temperatures start falling again. Then staying constant until 1000 years after the temperatures start rising again. All this while insolation changes due to the Milankovich cycle are roughly sinusoidal.

What this relationship says to me is that there changes in insolation are the primary driver of temperature, with somekind of limiting feedback kicking in at both a high and a low temperature, and that CO2 changes are a lagging indicator of the current warming cycle, not the previous one.

And yes, I am a EE.