[asa] The Acquittal of Carbon Dioxide

THE ACQUITTAL OF CARBON DIOXIDE
by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/

ABSTRACT

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the product of oceanic
respiration due to the well known but under appreciated solubility
pump. Carbon dioxide rises out of warm ocean waters where it is added
to the atmosphere. There it is mixed with residual and accidental
CO2, and circulated, to be absorbed into the sink of the cold ocean
waters. Next the thermohaline circulation carries the CO2 rich sea
water deep into the ocean. A millennium later it appears at the
surface in warm waters, saturated by lower pressure and higher
temperature, to be exhausted back into the atmosphere.

Throughout the past 420 millennia, comprising four interglacial
periods, the Vostok record of atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentration is imprinted with, and fully characterized by, the
physics of the solubility of CO2 in water, along with the lag in the
deep ocean circulation. Notwithstanding that carbon dioxide is a
greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide has neither caused nor
amplified global temperature increases.

Increased carbon dioxide has been an effect of global warming, not a
cause. Technically, carbon dioxide is a lagging proxy for ocean temperatures.

When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises,
the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase. If
increases in carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, could have
in turn raised global temperatures, the positive feedback would have
been catastrophic. While the conditions for such a catastrophe were
present in the Vostok record from natural causes, the runaway event
did not occur. Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere.

More at above link. ~ Janice :)

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Received on Mon Jan 22 20:29:26 2007