This is one of those questions we might not really think about, and accept the usual IPCC meme that co2 accumulates in the atmosphere and remains there – providing heat in the pipeline. What is the reality?
At http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/strong-evidence-for-linear-law… … Tim Channon claims the IPCC chatter regarding 'warming in the pipeline' as a result of co2 relies on the 'Bern model' – which was cooked up many years ago by Bert Bolin and other atmospheric scientists of the warmist persuasion. Strong words – but he says there are a certain number of assumptions inbuilt into the Bern Model, and they are what cause the idea that co2 effects continue for hundreds of years. Channon seeks to demonstrate the basic untruth of it all by using, as an example, the co2 in the atmosphere during the 1960s when it was contaminated by nuclear testing. Apparently, the radiation soaked co2 of the time doesn't exist anymore – it has gone away. Washed out in less than 50 years. This also means the co2 emitted by those nasty Victorian factory bosses and their steam engines and steam trains powered by the really dreadful black stuff that was barrowed and shovelled has also gone with the fairies – long ago.
All this should have been realised by your climate scientists. Perhaps they did know but found it convenient to obfuscate. In addition, it also raises a question mark about all the supposed co2 in the atmosphere during the Dinosaur Age – which was responsible for the assumed higher temperatures of the time. It seems that co2 has been a rather convenient peg that geologists have used to explain away different temperatures in different parts of the world at different times in the past. In other words, in the Plate Tectonics model they are unable to explain the greater warmth enjoyed by Tricerotops and his buddies – and rely on co2 as a means of brushing the issue aside.
Basically, if co2 from fossil fuel emissions is dissipated fairly quickly from the atmosphere – what is all the fuss about? Of course, as far as the models are concerned, the co2 doesn't disappear. It's effects remain with us for a long time – hundreds, possibly thousands of years. Some climate scientists say the missing co2 has been absorbed by the oceans – joined hand in hand with the missing heat (which flew out of the top of the atmosphere but they would rather have it swimming around fathoms deep).