500 Million Years of Unrelatedness between Atmospheric CO2 and Temperature

by Davis W.J., 2017 in CO2Science


Davis, W.J. 2017. The relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and global temperature for the last 425 million years. Climate 5: 76; doi: 10.3390/cli5040076.

Writing by way of introduction to his work, Davis (2017) notes that “a central question for contemporary climate policy is how much of the observed global warming is attributable to the accumulation of atmospheric CO2 and other trace greenhouse gases emitted by human activities.” If you talk to a climate alarmist, the answer you receive from such an inquiry will likely be “almost all.” A climate skeptic, on the other hand, will likely respond that the answer is “likely none.”

Hoping to provide some crucial information on this topic, Davis analyzed the relationship between historic temperature and atmospheric CO2 using the most comprehensive assemblage of empirical databases of these two variables available for the Phanerozoic period (522 to 0 million years before present; Mybp). In all, 6680 proxy temperature and 831 proxy CO2 measurements were utilized, enabling what Davis described as “the most accurate quantitative empirical evaluation to date of the relationship between atmospheric CO2concentration and temperature.” Multiple statistical procedures and analyses were applied to the proxy records and the resultant relationship is depicted in the figure below.

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