You wouldn’t normally look at a sink with the tap running and conclude that the water level must be rising because the drain is backing up. Nevertheless, a physically similar idea has been popular in climate skeptic circles lately.
You actually don’t need much more than a mass balance to conclude that anthropogenic emissions are the cause of rising atmospheric CO2, but with a model and some data you can really pound a lot of nails into the coffin of the idea that temperature is somehow responsible.
This notion has been adequately debunked already, but here goes:
This is another experimental video. As before, there’s a lot of fine detail, so you may want to head over to Vimeo to view in full screen HD. I find it somewhat astonishing that it takes 45 minutes to explore a first-order model.
Here’s the model: co2corr2.vpm (runs in Vensim PLE; requires DSS or Pro for calibration optimization)
Update: a new copy, replacing a GET DATA FIRST TIME call to permit running with simpler versions of Vensim. co2corr3.vpm