From the University of Utah
Size, duration were like modern climate shift, but in two pulses
SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 15, 2014 – The rate at which carbon emissions warmed Earth’s climate almost 56 million years ago resembles modern, human-caused global warming much more than previously believed, but involved two pulses of carbon to the atmosphere, University of Utah researchers and their colleagues found.
The findings mean the so-called Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM, can provide clues to the future of modern climate change. The good news: Earth and most species survived. The bad news: It took millennia to recover from the episode, when temperatures rose by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (9 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit).
“There is a positive note in that the world persisted, it did not go down in flames, it has a way of self-correcting and righting itself,” says University of Utah geochemist Gabe Bowen, lead author of the study published today in the journal Nature Geoscience. “However, in this event it took almost 200,000 years before things got back to normal.”
Bowen and colleagues report that carbonate or limestone nodules in Wyoming sediment cores show the global warming episode 55.5 million to 55.3 million years ago involved the average annual release of a minimum of 0.9 petagrams (1.98 trillion pounds) of carbon to the atmosphere, and probably much more over shorter periods.
That is “within an order of magnitude of, and may have approached, the 9.5 petagrams [20.9 trillion pounds] per year associated with modern anthropogenic carbon emissions,” the researchers wrote. Since 1900, human burning of fossil fuels emitted an average of 3 petagrams per year – even closer to the rate 55.5 million years ago.
Each pulse of carbon emissions lasted no more than 1,500 years. Previous conflicting evidence indicated the carbon release lasted anywhere from less than a year to tens of thousands of years. The new research shows atmospheric carbon levels returned to normal within a few thousand years after the first pulse, probably as carbon dissolved in the ocean. It took up to 200,000 years for conditions to normalize after the second pulse.
The new study also ruled as unlikely some theorized causes of the warming episode, including an asteroid impact, slow melting of permafrost, burning of organic-rich soil or drying out of a major seaway. Instead, the findings suggest, in terms of timing, that more likely causes included melting of seafloor methane ices known as clathrates, or volcanism heating organic-rich rocks and releasing methane.
“The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum has stood out as a striking, but contested, example of how 21st-century-style atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup can affect climate, environments and ecosystems worldwide,” says Bowen, an associate professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah.
“This new study tightens the link,” he adds. “Carbon release back then looked a lot like human fossil-fuel emissions today, so we might learn a lot about the future from changes in climate, plants, and animal communities 55.5 million years ago.”
Bowen cautioned, however, that global climate already was much warmer than today’s when the Paleocene-Eocene warming began, and there were no icecaps, “so this played out on a different playing field than what we have today.”
Sudy co-author Scott Wing, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, adds: “This study gives us the best idea yet of how quickly this vast amount of carbon was released at the beginning of the global warming event we call the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum. The answer is just a few thousands of years or less. That’s important because it means the ancient event happened at a rate more like human-caused global warming than we ever realized.”
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  IMAGE: This image shows University of Utah geochemist Gabe Bowen working on Wyoming sediment cores at a lab in Germany for a study that showed today’s global warming is more similar…
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Bowen and Wing conducted the study with University of Utah geology and geophysics master’s graduate Bianca Maibauer and technician Amy Steimke; Mary Kraus of University of Colorado, Boulder; Ursula Rohl and Thomas Westerhold of the University of Bremen, Germany; Philip Gingerich of the University of Michigan; and William Clyde of the University of New Hampshire. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation and the German Research Foundation.
Effects of the Paleocene-Eocene Warming
Bowen says previous research has shown that during the Paleocene-Eocene warm period, there was “enhanced storminess in some areas, increased aridity in other places. We see continent-scale migration of animals and plants, ranges are shifting. We see only a little bit of extinction – some groups of deep-sea foraminifera, one-cell organisms that go extinct at the start of this event. Not much else went extinct.”
“We see the first wave of modern mammals showing up,” including ancestral primates and hoofed animals,” he adds. Oceans became more acidic, as they are now.
“We look through time recorded in those rocks, and this warming event stands out, and everything happens together,” Bowen says. “We can look back in Earth’s history and say this is how this world works, and it’s totally consistent with the expectation that carbon dioxide change today will be associated with these other sorts of change.”
The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum also points to the possibility of runaway climate change enhanced by feedbacks. “The fact we have two releases may suggest that second one was driven by the first,” perhaps, for example, if the first warming raised sea temperatures enough to melt massive amounts of frozen methane, Bowen says.
Drilling into Earth’s Past
The new study is part of a major drilling project to understand the 56-milion-year-old warming episode, which Bowen says first was discovered in 1991. The researchers drilled long, core-shaped sediment samples from two boreholes at Polecat Bench in northern Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin, east of Cody and just north of Powell.
“This site has been excavated for well over 100 years by paleontologists studying fossil mammals,” Bowen says. “It documents that transition from the early mammals we see after the extinction of the dinosaurs to Eocene mammals, which are in groups that are familiar today. There is a great stratigraphic sequence of more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) of rocks, from 65 million years ago to 52 million years ago.”
The Paleocene-Eocene warming is recorded in the banded, flood-deposit tan and rusted red rock and soil layers of the Willwood formation, specifically within round, gray to brown-gray carbonate nodules in those rocks. They are 2 inches to 0.1 inches diameter.
By measuring carbon isotope ratios in the nodules, the researchers found that during each 1,500-year carbon release, the ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in the atmosphere declined, indicating two large releases of carbon dioxide or methane, both greenhouse gases from plant material. The decline was three parts per thousand for the first pulse, and 5.7 parts per thousand for the second.
Previous evidence from seafloor sediments elsewhere is consistent with two Paleocene-Eocene carbon pulses, which “means we don’t think this is something is unique to northern Wyoming,” Bowen says. “We think it reflects a global signal.”
What Caused the Prehistoric Warming?
The double-barreled carbon release at the Paleocene-Eocene time boundary pretty much rules out an asteroid or comet impact because such a catastrophe would have been “too quick” to explain the 1,500-year duration of each carbon pulse, Bowen says.
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 IMAGE: A rainbow appears over National Science Foundation-funded drilling site in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin. In a study led by University of Utah geochemist Gabe Bowen, sediment cores drilled at the site…
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Another theory: oxidation of organic matter – as permafrost thawed, as peaty soils burned or as a seaway dried up – may have caused the Paleocene-Eocene warming. But that would have taken tens of thousands of years, far slower than what the study found, he adds. Volcanoes releasing carbon gases also would have been too slow.
Bowen says the two relatively rapid carbon releases (about 1,500 years each) are more consistent with warming oceans or an undersea landslide triggering the melting of frozen methane on the seafloor and large emissions to the atmosphere, where it became carbon dioxide within decades. Another possibility is a massive intrusion of molten rock that heated overlying organic-rich rocks and released a lot of methane, he says.
###
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the graphic at the top has nothing to do with the story… confusing.
It has more relevance than has been stated. The study says “it took almost 200,000 years before things got back to normal“. Now look at the graph, and tell me where “normal” is.
The issue is not normal for the planet in its past, but normal to our experience as a species and a civilization. If rapid cooling were the issue, the concern from our side of the fence would be the same just in the opposite direction, and burn baby would likely be the solution.
That graph of the last 400 Kyr has zero to do with the climate of the Paleogene-Eocene. The continents were in wildly different locations. Antarctica was not anywhere near the south pole. India had not yet slammed into Asia. There was a tiny Atlantic Ocean compared to the Pleistocene.
The climate of Paleogene-Eocene was driven by factors we can’t even begin to guess at, including any GHG effects. The methane clathrate release (just a hypothesis) may have been the effect, not the cause of the PETM. The timing has big error-uncertainty bars that far back.
The sun’s surface temperature has been gradually increasing over the millions of years, and will continue to do so. In less than 200 Myr, the Earth may become too hot on the surface for the biosphere and life as we know it. Homo sapien will not exist at that time though. No species exists in the fossil record more than a few million years. Whatever we become in 200 Myr, it will not be recognizable to us today. No more recognizable than a T-rex of the Cretaceous would see itself in a bird of today.
Exactly what I was wondering – which part of a cycle is normal? Why all of it of course!
Presumably this study is intended to remove the Inconvenient Truth that previous studies have shown that CO2 levels rise after temperatures do, with a lag of around 700 years ?
How very convenient at a time when global temperatures are not rising …….
Yes, I think you got it right, Bowen is omitting a very important part; the lag of temperatures behind C02.
Bass-ackwards. The lag of CO2 behind temperatures.
The “norm” post Antarctic Circumpolar Current is an ice age
This is good info but the authors seem to be hung up on the idea that CO2 caused the warming. The graph presented above is based on Vostok ice core data. Possibly the authors are unaware of the abstract which accompanies that data. It says:
Abstract:
Air trapped in bubbles in polar ice cores constitutes an archive for the reconstruction of the global carbon cycle and the relation between greenhouse gases and climate in the past. High-resolution records from Antarctic ice cores show that carbon dioxide concentrations increased by 80 to 100 parts per million by volume 600 +/- 400 years after the warming of the last three deglaciations. Despite strongly decreasing temperatures, high carbon dioxide concentrations can be sustained for thousands of years during glaciations; the size of this phase lag is probably connected to the duration of the preceding warm period, which controls the change in land ice coverage and the buildup of the terrestrial biosphere.
Source http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/vostokco2.html
In other words the temperature changes first and the CO2 changes later. Therefore CO2 cannot be the cause of the warming.
Here’s another link:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/23/new-research-in-antarctica-shows-co2-follows-temperature-by-a-few-hundred-years-at-most/
I don’t have time to read the Bowen paper right now. Do they address the fact that CO2 lags temperature?
it both leads and lags. The lag was actually predicted by Hansen before it was found in the record.
Steven Mosher is right. The thing is, there are plenty of observations showing that ∆CO2 follows ∆T, but none showing that CO2 causes ∆T. The effect is just too minuscule to measure at current CO2 concentrations.
Here is a study that shows CO2 leads T
..
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/full/nature10915.html
David Socrates links to what seems to be a legitimate study showing temperature lags CO2. However, the paper is paywalled. Is anybody familiar enough with the work to comment on it?
Mr. Layman here.
Then would it be fair to say then that CO2 and temperature’s link is much less than Hansen “et al” would have us believe?
And if Hansen predicted it then why all the “Coal Trains of Death” rhetoric?
The role and relative importance of CO2 in producing these climate changes remains unclear, however, in part because the ice-core deuterium record reflects local rather than global temperature. Here we construct a record of global surface temperature from 80 proxy records and show that temperature is correlated with and generally lags CO2 during the last (that is, the most recent) deglaciation. Differences between the respective temperature changes of the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere parallel variations in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation recorded in marine sediments. These observations, together with transient global climate model simulations, support the conclusion that an antiphased hemispheric temperature response to ocean circulation changes superimposed on globally in-phase warming driven by increasing CO2 concentrations is an explanation for much of the temperature change at the end of the most recent ice age.
Bad try, socrates, no cigar !
dbstealey,
Correction, none that you are willing to accept.
D. Socrates links to something that says:
…”suggests”… And: “…global climate model simulations, support the conclusion…”
And so on.
In other words, that link is nothing but speculation, conjectures, opinions and assertions, all based on computer models.
===================
Brandon says:
Correction, none that you are willing to accept.
We agree then. I do not accept your home-made fabrications unless they are backed up by a chart made by a credible database such as WoodForTrees’. Post one of their charts showing conclusibvely that ∆CO2 is the cause of ∆T, as I have repeatedly asked you, and you will begin to convince me.
As Prof Feynman said, you are the easiest person to fool. You can invent any old chart, and you may even believe that it reflects reality. But without neutral corroboration I am simply not willing to accept an invention like that. I think you’re fooling yourself.
++++++++++++++++++++
Willis, I’m convinced you have it right, because there are no posted objections that pass the smell test.
Gunga Din,
I’ll pretend for a moment to hold an agnostic position on the question. Please explain to me why that is the only logically possible conclusion.
dbstealey,
This is the reason peer-review exists. Your near constant rejection of expert opinion as delivered by peer-reviewed literature is the exact reason you don’t understand what Feynman’s actual message to you really is — don’t listen only to yourself.
“it both leads and lags.”
I suggest that at a practical level, atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
In the modern data record, the rate of change dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with temperature and CO2 lags temperature by about 9 months.
For verification, please see my 2008 paper at
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
CO2 also lags temperature by abut 800 years in the ice core record on a longer time scale.
Therefore, CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales. CO2 does not drive temperature; temperature (among other factors) drives CO2.
Best to all, Allan
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/02/introducing-the-wuwt-co2-reference-page/#comment-1703549
dbstealey says on August 6, 2014 at 8:23 pm
Hello db:
Thank you for your post and your graph of atmospheric CO2 lagging “global” temperature T by about 800 years over a time scale of several hundred thousand years of recent Earth history.
As you know, CO2 also lags T in the modern data record by about 9 months, on a shorter time cycle.
It appears that CO2 lags T at all measured time scales. This still allows for other significant drivers of atmospheric CO2, such as fossil fuel combustion, land-use changes such as deforestation, ocean outgassing, etc.
There is reluctance of most parties on both sides of the “mainstream” climate debate to discuss the “CO2 lags T” issue. The mainstream climate debate is essentially an argument about the magnitude of equilibrium climate sensitivity or ECS: Warmists say ECS>= 3C or more, which is nonsense; Skeptics say ECS,<= 1C, which is more reasonable but still questionable, in my opinion.
I suspect this general reluctance to discuss “CO2 lags T” is a fear of being ridiculed or marginalized. However I suggest it is at the very core of the “catastrophic humanmade global warming” (CAGW) issue.
For example, the concept of ECS must ASSUME that CO2 drives T, but does ECS really exist is any physical sense?
What are the alternatives:
A) Maybe ECS does not exist at all in physical reality, and we should be discussing the sensitivity of atmospheric CO2 to temperature (let’s call it ECO2S).
B) Maybe ECS co-exists along with ECO2S in physical reality:
B1) In this scenario can we conclude that ECO2S exceeds ECS since that is the only signal we can detect in the modern data record; or
B2) Is it possible that ECS exceeds ECO2S but exists on a fuzzy longer time scale that is difficult to detect in the modern data record?
C) Maybe, as was strongly suggested in 2008, ECO2S is a “spurious correlation”. I suggest this notion is no longer considered valid and the correlation is real and significant.
Comments anyone? [ADDENDUM: MY VOTE IS FOR SOMEWHERE BETWEEN A AND B1]
Regards to all, Allan
I further suggest that if climate science was on the right track, the majority of scientists would not be discussing catastrophic manmade global warming. Instead, they would be discussing how and when to deliberately CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING to prevent the next ice age.
Look at the posted graph above, good people:
“It’s frozen turtles, all the way down…”
One hint:
Climate is insufficiently sensitive to increasing atmospheric CO2 for that to be a viable solution…
@Brandon:
Peer review exists for lots of reasons, some of them very self-serving.
Have you ever read The Hockey Stick Illusion, or the Climategate I, II and III emails? Especially the first email dump. It completely falsifies the notion that climate peer review is anything other than climate pal review.
You also are ignoring my first paragraph. You can’t find any independent [peer reviewed, shall we say?] empirical measurements quantifying the fraction of AGW, out of total warming?
Didn’t think so.
=========================
Allan MacRae says:
…CO2 lags T at all measured time scales. This still allows for other significant drivers of atmospheric CO2, such as fossil fuel combustion, land-use changes such as deforestation, ocean outgassing, etc.
That is exactly my position, and what I’ve been saying all along. I do accept the conclusions of more knowledgeable folks like Prof. R. Lindzen and Anthony Watts regarding radiative physics. I think there must be some minuscule AGW effect. But it is surely nothing to be concerned about, and in fact it is probably a net benefit.
There is reluctance of most parties on both sides of the “mainstream” climate debate to discuss the “CO2 lags T” issue.
I agree, and I have been diligently doing my part to bring that question to a head by constantly pointing out that there are no empirical, testable measurements of AGW, showing the percentage of global warming putatively attributable to human activity.
Every physical process can be measured. The exception is, if the measured quantity is below the background noise level. I think that is the case with AGW. It is so tiny that is is unmeasurable. The proof? There are no measurements of AGW. None at all — while there are plenty of measurements showing that global T causes changing CO2 levels on all time scales, from months, out to more than a million years.
The fact that there are no measurements of AGW is astonishing, since AGW has been assumed to exist for more than thirty years [and really, since Arrhenius]. All the thousands of studies, and the expensive GCM runs, and the immense tax monies being spent ignore the fact that there are no measurements! Talk about the naked emperor…
dbstealey,
List a few of them.
I’ve read the leaked emails extensively. I’ve not read the book.
Indeed. Based on prior discussions with you, I don’t believe it’s a question you’re asking in good faith. It’s my opinion that you ask it in such simplistic form because you know it hasn’t been answered by literature in kind.
David Socrates December 15, 2014 at 11:47 am
Here is a study that shows CO2 leads T
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/full/nature10915.html
I notice that Shaun A. Marcott is a co-author.
Mike McMillan,
I was going to mention Marcott, but I thought that would be piling on. Marcott has been so thoroughly discredited that lots of folks reject anything with his name appended. To find out why, anyone can just do a search here or at Climate Audit for ‘Marcott’.
Next, @Gates, who says:
“List a few…” […of the reasons the climate peer review process is misused.]
Brother, if you don’t know, don’t come to me asking to be taught. That would take days at least. Climate peer review is thoroughly corrupt, to the point that people have been fired for the ‘crime’ of presenting both sides. You couldn’t be much more despicable than that, could you?
Next, if you have in fact ‘extensively’ read through the Climategate emails as you say, then either your confirmation bias is in high gear, or you have multiple blind spots. Climategate was a mortal wound in the alarmists’ case, because the public got to see what a bunch of reprehensible charlatans control the process. There have not been any major changes in the process since then, either, so we can reasonably assume that the shenanigans are still ongoing. My question to you is: why would you still put any credence in climate peer review? It is completely broken.
Finally, you’re just being a slippery eel by saying you know what’s in my mind, and for that reason you won’t answer questions. The fact is, you’re cornered, and any answers will just dig your hole deeper.
One of the hallmarks of the alarmist crowd is their refusal to answer questions, or discuss the links posted by skeptics. It seems that skeptics are always explaining, answering questions, and posting most of the links. The reason probably has something to do with the fact that alarmists never debate climate skeptics any more. I suppose I can’t blame them for that, given their abysmal debate record.
Will all the folks saying that ∆CO2 follows ∆T. explain why in the past 15/16/17 years, ∆T = zero and ∆CO2 is 30-34 ppm?
db says [excerpt, with my comments in CAPS for clarity]:
“… I think there must be some minuscule AGW effect. But it is surely nothing to be concerned about, and in fact it is probably a net benefit.” I SUGGEST THAT THIS IS MY CASE B1 ABOVE.
“Every physical process can be measured. The exception is, if the measured quantity is below the background noise level. I think that is the case with AGW. It is so tiny that it is unmeasurable.” AGREE – IF ECS EXISTS AT ALL, IT IS PROBABLY LESS THAN ABOUT 0.2C
“The proof? There are no measurements of AGW. None at all — while there are plenty of measurements showing that global T causes changing CO2 levels on all time scales, from months, out to more than a million years.” AYE, THERE’S THE RUB.
“The fact that there are no measurements of AGW is astonishing, since AGW has been assumed to exist for more than thirty years [and really, since Arrhenius]. All the thousands of studies, and the expensive GCM runs, and the immense tax monies being spent ignore the fact that there are no measurements! Talk about the naked emperor…”
AGREE – IN THE TERM “CAGW”, I SUGGEST THAT THE “C” STANDS FOR “CHURCH of” 🙂
[end of excerpt]
Addendum to my above post:
Best wishes for the Holidays to db, Anthony, mods and all, from Allan
David Socrates asks on December 16, 2014 at 7:57 am
“Will all the folks saying that ∆CO2 follows ∆T ([temperature]. explain why in the past 15/16/17 years, ∆T = zero and ∆CO2 is 30-34 ppm?”
Already answered in my posts on this page David:
“I suggest that at a practical level, atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
In the modern data record, the rate of change dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with temperature and CO2 lags temperature by about 9 months.
For verification, please see my 2008 paper at
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
CO2 also lags temperature by about 800 years in the ice core record on a longer time scale.
Therefore, CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales. CO2 does not drive temperature; temperature (among other factors) drives CO2.
….
It appears that CO2 lags T at all measured time scales. This still allows for other significant drivers of atmospheric CO2, such as fossil fuel combustion, land-use changes such as deforestation, ocean outgassing, etc.”
*************
The details of this issue have been ably argued on wattsup and other sites between Ferdinand Engelbeen and Richard S Courtney – one can search under “mass balance argument”.
The issue is one of magnitudes – how can we fully explain the current rise in atmospheric CO2 – your “∆CO2 is 30-34 ppm” – when the ∆CO2 magnitudes observed in both the modern data record and the ice core record in response to ∆T are allegedly too small to solely account for this 30-34 ppm CO2 – some parties allege that other drivers of this ∆CO2 such as fossil fuel combustion must also exist (and they may be right or wrong).
Many pages have been written and it is an interesting argument, which is of great scientific importance. However, for policy discussions I suggest all we really need to know is that global temperature T is clearly insensitive to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and the IPCC / alarmists’ fear of catastrophic humanmade global warming is without scientific merit, and is highly counterproductive, wasteful and foolish.
As we clearly stated in our 2002 icecap.us paper cited above:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
Furthermore, increased atmospheric CO2 from whatever cause is clearly beneficial to humanity and the environment. Earth’s atmosphere is clearly CO2 deficient and continues to decline over geological time. In fact, atmospheric CO2 at this time is too low, dangerously low for the longer term survival of carbon-based life on Earth.
More Ice Ages, which are inevitable unless geo-engineering can prevent them, will cause atmospheric CO2 concentrations on Earth to decline to the point where photosynthesis slows and ultimately ceases. This would devastate the descendants of most current life on Earth, which is carbon-based and to which, I suggest, we have a significant moral obligation.
Atmospheric and dissolved oceanic CO2 is the feedstock for all carbon-based life on Earth. More CO2 is better. Within reasonable limits, a lot more CO2 is a lot better.
As a devoted fan of carbon-based life on Earth, I feel it is my duty to advocate on our behalf. To be clear, I am not prejudiced against non-carbon-based life forms, but I really do not know any of them well enough to form an opinion. They could be very nice. 🙂
Best, Allan
Correction to above post (note to file – do not write before coffee)
As we clearly stated in our 2002 APEGA paper:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
http://www.apega.ca/members/publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
EXACTlY
David and BCBill, the paper you link to/ inquire about is Shakun’s statistical mash up (literally) of ocean sediment core proxies. Complete bollocks. One of several attempts to get rid of the clear ice core CO2 lag over temperature simply explained by Henry’s law and LeChatellier’s principle in physical chemistry. The mangled statistical details from behind paywall are exposed in essay Cause and Effect in Blowing Smoke.
As confirmation of his pseudoscience warmunist intent, Shakun is also second author of the Marcott hockey stick paper constituting clear academic misconduct. See essay A High Stick Foul.
Both contemporary graduates of OSU, itself a co-conspirator of the PMEL ocean acidification oyster con. See essay Shell Games.
One more paper by Nir Shaviv, The Spiral Structure of the Milky Way, Cosmic Rays, and Ice Age Epochs on Earth file:///C:/Users/Sysop/Downloads/0209252.pdf
Though I am just eyeballing the graphics from these papers, it seems to me there is more than a possibility that the cosmo-climatological theory could account for the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum.
Too early to be certain but readers should be prepared for astrophysics changing climatology in the next 50 years as much as plate tectonics changed geology 50 years ago.
Warming of the oceans cause out-gassing of CO2 (a corollary of Henry’s Law).
What I wonder is whether or not the cosmo-climatology theories of Svensmark and Nir Shaviv can account for the warming that caused the out-gassing.
Calder, N. and Svensmark, H. The Chilling Stars, A new theory of climate change.
http://thecloudmystery.com/The_Cloud_Mystery/Home.html
http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages
Sorry about the reference to Nir Shaviv’s paper. This is the URL.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/222828472_The_spiral_structure_of_the_Milky_Way_cosmic_rays_and_ice_age_epochs_on_Earth/file/504635245fc6fcc288.pdf
Hello Frederick,
I like Nir Shaviv’s work and that of Jan Veizer.
You cited Shaviv’s 2002 paper – here is a 2003 sequel:
Nir J. Shaviv and Ján Veizer, Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate? GSA Today July 2003*
http://cfa.atmos.washington.edu/2003Q4/211/articles_optional/CelestialDriver.pdf
Regards, Allan
* Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
*************************
Post Script:
I published the following article in E&E in early 2005, in defence of Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Nir Shaviv and Ján Veizer.
Regards to all, Allan
Drive-by shootings in Kyotoville
The global warming debate heats up
Energy & Environment 2005
Allan M.R. MacRae
Full article at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/28/the-team-trying-to-get-direct-action-on-soon-and-baliunas-at-harvard/#comment-811913
[Excerpt]
But such bullying is not unique, as other researchers who challenged the scientific basis of Kyoto have learned.
Of particular sensitivity to the pro-Kyoto gang is the “hockey stick” temperature curve of 1000 to 2000 AD, as proposed by Michael Mann of University of Virginia and co-authors in Nature.
Mann’s hockey stick indicates that temperatures fell only slightly from 1000 to 1900 AD, after which temperatures increased sharply as a result of humanmade increases in atmospheric CO2. Mann concluded: “Our results suggest that the latter 20th century is anomalous in the context of at least the past millennium. The 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, at moderately high levels of confidence.”
Mann’s conclusion is the cornerstone of the scientific case supporting Kyoto. However, Mann is incorrect.
Mann eliminated from the climate record both the Medieval Warm Period, a period from about 900 to 1500 AD when global temperatures were generally warmer than today, and also the Little Ice Age from about 1500 to 1800 AD, when temperatures were colder. Mann’s conclusion contradicted hundreds of previous studies on this subject, but was adopted without question by Kyoto advocates.
In the April 2003 issue of Energy and Environment, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and co-authors wrote a review of over 250 research papers that concluded that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were true climatic anomalies with world-wide imprints – contradicting Mann’s hockey stick and undermining the basis of Kyoto. Soon et al were then attacked in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union.
In the July 2003 issue of GSA Today, University of Ottawa geology professor Jan Veizer and Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shaviv concluded that temperatures over the past 500 million years correlate with changes in cosmic ray intensity as Earth moves in and out of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. The geologic record showed no correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperatures, even though prehistoric CO2 levels were often many times today’s levels. Veizer and Shaviv also received “special attention” from EOS.
In both cases, the attacks were unprofessional – first, these critiques should have been launched in the journals that published the original papers, not in EOS. Also, the victims of these attacks were not given advanced notice, nor were they were given the opportunity to respond in the same issue. In both cases the victims had to wait months for their rebuttals to be published, while the specious attacks were circulated by the pro-Kyoto camp.
*************
I wonder how these guys would react if I was their boss, & said I would give them a pay rise of $600 per month, +/- $400 a month!
They must have had massive coal-fired power stations 150,000 / 225,000 / 300,000 years ago! Thank goodness we now have a system of financing “scientific” studies, even if the conclusions they draw are completely illogical as any school student would know!
” it took almost 200,000 years before things got back to normal.”
How do you define “normal”? Wouldn’t that be the most likely state? (i.e. the green oval below). Brrr.
http://i60.tinypic.com/34z156g.png
Also, the current thermal maximum depicted above looks “blunted” compared to past maxima? Hmm, what’s different about “today” compared to those ancient times? Could it be that human activity, contrary to popular belief, is actually preventing the temps from going even higher? (All those nasty aerosols that humans continuously spew.)
Using Conan-Doyle inferencing (like the CAGW believers do), we conclude the above hypothesis must be true. “What else could it be”?
Normal? Obviously there is no “normal” in that specific sense as the green circled area indicates, unless one defines it as constantly varying, which is what it does. The degree of variation has reduced over the past 3mm years or so, but vary it does.
The x-axis covers over 375,000 years of time. The total elapsed time outside the green oval accounts for less than 100,000 of those years.
So, pick a time on the x-axis. Any time. Most likely (i.e. > 70% of the time) you will pick a time in the green oval.
Yes, there is a lot of variance in the green oval. But it’s consistently (“normally”) cold most of the time there.
Such a notion of ‘normal’ seems well-defined to me.
Johanus
If one wishes to define “normal” with huge variations and be happy with it, so be it. Growing seasons change dramatically, however, as does life in general under such varying conditions. But then many are more concerned with their beach homes and the supposed ocean encroachment on their beach. Whatever floats your boat. For my way of thinking there is no normal climate and it is, and has always been, changing and predictions made by the models have proven inaccurate and of little use.
Anybody found those “normal” automobiles, skyscrapers, and nuclear reactors from the ‘old days’ yet?
> “Whatever floats your boat. “
I think you’re missing my point, which was: although it is possible to define “normal” temperatures mathematically (i.e. most likely), (I think we agree) these colder temperatures probably won’t seem “normal” to humans.
The press release says, “The bad news: It took millennia to recover from the episode, when temperatures rose by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (9 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit).” My bold. Their “normal,” which the pscientists call the return to temperatures 5C° to 8C° lower than current temperatures, would mean another ice age. And they consider the current “high” temperatures bad news? Facepalm.
Equally, it not abnormal to have periodic spikes as highlighted by the 4 yellow and the 1 blue circle.
It is normal to have a spike, then wavy cooling, followed by a spike then wavy cooling followed by spike etc.
There seems nothing unprecedented in the plot.
richard verney,
Clearly. One would think with all the paleo data being gathered and analyzed that somone might have an inkling of the mechanisms, plural, causing those spikes.
Left to its own devices, the planet does seem to like warming at a faster rate than it wants to cool. Almost as if it has its own natural insulators, plural.
One of the peculiarities of the entire climate discussion/debacle is that there is no time scale at which a “normal” can be defined which pertains over all time spans. There is no evidence of any ‘governor’ for instance over long time spans. And the longest spans for which data is available, the general trends for both atmospheric carbon and temperature are downward, though during the “snow-ball” earth episode, the planet was likely even colder than at present. That however is from a period for which we have very little evidence against which we can estimate climate. Atmospheric chemistry was different and life was as well. I find the use of the Vostok graph strange given that they discuss the Paloecene episode, especially since the Vostok ice core spans a time period whose nearest climatic analog dates literally to before dinosaurs existed more than 200-million years ago.
Indeed there is evidence of a governor over long time spans. Note the cyclical warming and cooling in very similar frequency and amplitude. It looks like an ECG you get at the doctor’s office! Convert the temperature scale to Kelvin and look at its governance. It oscillates about 2% or so either side of the average Kelvin temperature. I would guess that the ‘average’ is solar direct heating with no feedbacks.
Well they claim that if we give away individual/national Democracy and freedom to an undemocratic and unelected socialist UN global government this will stop further climate change?
I think probably not, but it has nothing to do with “socialism” and everything to do with economics. I believe we will set our collective efforts to mitigation when it becomes the more presently economically advantageous thing to do.
The blunting as you call it happened long before there was much in the way of human influence (12,000 bp). The holocene is a puzzle in both its shallower peak and it’s plateaued duration. I wondered whether the previous interglacials were indeed as “pointy” as graphs show or if there is some unrecognized effect causing the plateau of warmth we now have.
Christopher Hanley,
It was directed at you.
This being a discussion of CO2 reducing the rate of energy loss from the system, and thence on climate, surely you can understand my honest mistake. Please accept my apology.
Perhaps you could explain how temperature and climate are a conflation? I’ll grant climate is not only temperature, but still, temperature is part of climate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28rhetoric%29
In rhetoric, a tautology (from Greek το αυτο, “the same” and λόγος, “word/idea”) is a logical argument constructed in such a way, generally by repeating the same concept or assertion using different phrasing or terminology, that the proposition as stated is logically irrefutable, while obscuring the lack of evidence or valid reasoning supporting the stated conclusion. (A rhetorical tautology should not be confused with a tautology in propositional logic.)
The repetition is “no evidence”. The redundancy is “teleological and quasi-religious”. Pretty thin I admit, but teleologies and tautologies are so similar-sounding and so often accompanied by each other I couldn’t resist.
Dire Wolf,
It isn’t cut and dried as I understand it, but the shallower peak and longer plateau are because of where we are in the various wobbles of the Milankovic cycles.
The pointy peaks likely are real as shown because of how the ice “smears” things together. It’s got to be retarded difficult to get that sorted, I’m amazed every time I look at those data how much sense they make.
The idea that there is a ‘normal’ climate and since ~1950 the climate has been ‘abnormal’ due to the assumed overwhelming influence of human CO2 emissions (for which there is absolutely no evidence) is teleological and quasi-religious; although they won’t admit it, it’s largely what’s behind the hysteria.
There is a normal climate, the one you’re used to. Until you understand that simple concept, the abundant, but complex, evidence for the non-assumed but observed effects of CO2 on temperature past and present will likely defy your understanding as well. You err mistaking your own ignorance and tautologies for others.
Brandon
Then everything is normal.
i doubt that anyone alive on planet Earth considers that they have been able to detect climate change on your definition; some years hot, some years mild, some years cold, some years wet, some years dry, some years with no or little snow, some years with snow or a lot of snow. Seen it all before. There has been no climate change in my life time, and that is why no single country has changed its Koppen (etc) climate classification these pasrt 150 years.
if there has been any warming, i have been unable to detect that on the skin of my body.
Richard,
Count me as someone who has not been able to detect the change by the skin of my body. In addition to the intra-annual variations you speak of, I have lived in many different regions of the US with very different climates. Even if I’d been the same place my entire life, I wouldn’t be able to detect it using my natural senses. Our bodies are notoriously unreliable scientific instruments, and our minds prone to mistaking personal anecdote for systemically representative observation.
Most countries of any significant size have multiple climate regions which can be classified by the Koppen criteria, which have been changing over time: http://hanschen.org/koppen/
“… evidence for the non-assumed but observed effects of CO2 on temperature past and present …” (Brandon Gates).
====================
If that comment was directed at me, I didn’t mention the “effects of CO2 on temperature”.
I did mention “the assumed overwhelming influence of human CO2 emissions” on the post 1950 climate — you’re conflating them.
And where are the “tautologies” in my comment? For pity’s sake look it up.
“Perhaps you could explain how temperature and climate are a conflation?” Brandon Gates 7:57 pm
====================================================
What’s there to explain? Self-evidently the “effects of CO2 on temperature’’ is not the same thing as the assumed overwhelming influence of human CO2 emissions on the post-1950 climate.
Human CO2 emissions are blamed for heatwaves, blizzards, tornados, hurricanes, polar vortexes, droughts, Antarctic sea ice boom, coral bleaching, forest fires, snowfall in Bagdad, tsunamis ……
Why am I telling you? You probably have have a much longer list.
B. Gates says:
…evidence for the non-assumed but observed effects of CO2 on temperature…
There is no such evidence. If you believe there is, then you don’t know the definition of scientific evidence.
Produce your “observed effects” of CO2, by quantifying AGW in a testable measurement.
I’ll wait…
Christopher Hanley,
Well it wasn’t self-evident to me, I can’t read minds and sometimes I misinterpret just like everyone. Is not climate a function of a number of things including temperature?
Regardless, I get it I misunderstood your original meaning and that “overwhelming influence” was shorthand for weather disasters, etc.
Not really, and I talk about those things with contrarians very rarely except to say that I think those effects are plausible but far from certain since that’s how they’re typically presented in literature. I don’t subscribe to how those things are usually covered in popular press, which is sensationalistic by nature on pretty much any topic … global warming being no exception.
I detected climate change, mostly because at one time my job included setting climate parameters for engineers (I didn’t do the climatology, but I had to review it and approve the numbers). When we looked at regional data trends spanning decades we could see changes. Sometimes I had suggestions to extrapolate trends, but the usual approach was to lump the data and use the 100 year return event. But we definitely saw trends in wind speed, ice thickness, precipitation, and so on.
Johanus December 15, 2014 at 9:34 am
Could it be that human activity, contrary to popular belief, is actually preventing the temps from going even higher?
___________________________________
I think you mean:
“Could it be that human activity is preventing the temperatures from plummeting back into another Ice Age?”
Ralph
No, he meant what he said and in this case he is correct. Some human-emitted aerosols reflect incoming sunlight that would otherwise be absorbed by the system. Others “dim” the stratosphere and prevent some solar energy from reaching the surface. This somewhat offsets the effects of increased radiative forcings due to rising levels of GHG concentration. NASA GISS provides nicely summarized quantified estimates of these offsetting factors here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/
Yep. There is no “now”. “Now” is simply the word we use to describe the boundary between past and future. Similarly, in a non-stable system, there is no “normal”. Depending on the scale you are using, “normal” can be the current moment, or based on the graphic, “normal” is the entire range from +2C to -5.5C compared to the current temp. By any examination of the scale, our current temperature is the most transitory and the least “normal”.
As Joel correctly pointed out in the first thread comment, the Vostok figure (up to 400k year before present) has absolutely nothing to do with the article which has to do with events from over 50 million years earlier. One wonders if the author of the post bungled spectacularly or if he is trolling to see how much BS the denizens will accept without question.
As the caption says, the figure on top is just provided for reference. And regardless of time period, it clearly provides context for the 5C° to 8C° difference above “normal” that’s mentioned in the study.
I beg to differ, “normal” during that time period has very little relation to “normal” over the past million years. Here’s context: http://www.mnh.si.edu/ete/_LooyVersion/_img_ete/Exported%20pics/Photo%201.jpg
Normal = 5 Billion dead.
That’s just a statistic [to paraphrase Stalin].
Ehrlich says that’s a good start.
Instead of turtles, it’s hockeysticks all the way down….(sorry)…
When there’s a grant or a paycheck at the other end, there’s not the slightest hint of honesty or integrity with these so-called scientists and their main-scream-media syncophants.
Just saw a “photo of the day” shot with “delegates” to the “climate convention” in Peru sleeping on beanbags (wonder how much CO² was let out there). Not sure if they were sleeping from tiredness or boredom….all that pencil-shifting must be tiring, or?
“Normal” is wherever you set the goal post. As a geologist it has always struck me that growth and diversity of species has always happened at these higher temps, with loss of both as it got cooler. We are too cold for optimum and much too low in CO2 presently
Does this mean I’m not going to get my Redistributed Wealth Royalty Distribution next month?
AKA: your EBT card?
Then how do they explain the Ordovician ice age with carbon dioxide levels at 8000ppm?
For starters, the world 0.4 million years ago (graph above) and 55 million years ago (paper) are pretty different from Ordovician (450 million years ago).
The Sun was considerably colder at Ordovician era, for example. But I don’t think ‘they’ explain this, because that was not the subject of this research.
Hugh, please provide the factual infomation regarding “The Sun was considerably colder at Ordovician era”.
Thank You
Cold sun… is like saying the “greater acidification” of the oceans, when they are not acidic to start with.
Hugh, those excuses really don’t hold water since it was warm before and after the Ordovician period.
Astronomists do claim that the Sun’s radiation increases with time. To quote you the exact numbers I should take my text book on astronomy, but you can probably google it up.
start with a lie and wrap it up in truths….”The rate at which carbon emissions warmed Earth’s climate almost 56 million years ago resembles modern, human-caused global warming ” the last part of this sentence being the lie…..
Or just pointing to the wrong cause.
When a continent breaks apart, as Greenland and Northwest Europe did 55 million years ago, it is sometimes accompanied by a massive outburst of volcanic activity due to a ‘hot spot’ in the mantle that lies beneath the 55 mile thick outer skin of the earth. When the North Atlantic broke open, it produced 1–2 million cubic miles (5–10 million cubic kilometres) of molten rock which extended across 300,000 square miles (one million square kilometres).
http://www.science20.com/news_releases/maps_of_molten_lava_under_the_atlantic_show_spots_8_miles_thick
So which do you think would have the most effect – A few CO2 molecules or 7 million KM^3 of 1500 degree rock spread under 300,000 miles of water (see any steam rising – H2O the other GHG).
So Dr. Bowen think that may have “causes included melting of seafloor methane ices”?
So just how does Prof. Bowen define ‘normal’? From the graphs I have seen in peer reviewed papers the climate has never been stable and at least ever the past million years or so the temperature has been on the cold side more than the warm side.
That’s exactly what I was wondering. What is normal?
“What is normal?” Perhaps i can extrapolate on that question with an analogy.
That is like asking “What is the normal price of the S & P Index”
There is no good answer. Pick a number, pick a timeframe then justify your answer by whatever murky logic you please.
Normal is exactly where it is right now.
Just ask anyone who says ‘the Earth has a fever’ what temperature it should be. I know when I have a fever because we all know what temperature the human body should generally be. But the Earth? Who knows?
As Canadian singer Bruce Cockburn wold have it, “The trouble with normal is it always gets worse”…
Total nonsense. Modern climate, complete with ice ages didn’t begin until about 2mya.
Garbage science all based on the lie that “carbon” drives climate.
It would be interesting to read the actual paper, and not a summery filtered by a warmist journalist type, that apparently cannot help but add a CAGW slant to it.
“To get back to normal”
Note the crazy idea that this era’s climate is “the norm.”
It’s kind of like 10,000 ants on a log going down stream and one ant looks over at another one and says “well we finally got it going in the right direction”
Excellent
Wow, the current warming trend looks exactly like all the previous warming trends! Well, except humans caused the current trend. And humans didn’t cause the previous trends because humans weren’t around. But now we’re around, so we must be the cause! The debate is over. /sarc off
Patrick, sorry to be pedantic, but just for the record, we were around during the last Ice Age. It’s debatable that ‘we’ were around for the one before that. There is conflicting evidence for what we would call ‘people like us’, but generally accepted that we have been here up to 200,000 years ago. Some experts will argue that it’s more like 100,000 years though. Even so, that still puts us on Earth during the last freeze. We managed to survive it because we had discovered fire by then.
Here is one advocating 350,000 years of fire control.
http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/upiUPI-20141215-133210-7524
Yes, but again, they wouldn’t be ‘us’. Anatomically, ‘we’ have only been here up to 200,000 years. I had to do a study on this a couple of years ago, and it’s very difficult to get people to stop saying ‘humans’ when they mean an animal like us – the sub-species. ‘Humans’ can be as old as 8 million years, but we wouldn’t say, from their appearance, that they were human at all, much more ape. It’s one of those subjects that scientists have managed to make a real hash of.
“We managed to survive it because we had discovered fire by then.”
And the massive amounts of CO2 from those cave fires caused the end of the Ice Age. So humans were responsible for that warming trend. The question is what caused the previous warming trends. Dinosaur farts, maybe?
“Since 1900, human burning of fossil fuels emitted an average of 3 petagrams per year – even closer to the rate 55.5 million years ago”
I realize that these studies can tell us things about the earth’s past and there are scientific methods to obtain useful information about the distant past.
However, very frequently, that information is abused and misleading, suggesting accuracy in measures of quantify, quality and time that are completely unrealistic with regards to events or environments that were present 55.5 million years ago.
This has been going on for so long, that’s it’s just accepted, especially since the evidence to challenge statements/facts from 55.5 million years ago, is also wild speculation too.
It’s what psychologists call “magical thinking”. Considered “normal” for 5 year olds and climate scientists.
This could also be a good field guide for misinterpreting otherwise good data.
The Antarctic ice sheets only started forming towards the end of the paleogene period and after the whole of the Eocene. The climate is now completely different with entirely different patterns. Comparing the modern era is ridiculous as it can have no bearing on present variations.
I too am puzzled about the opening graphic as it represents none of the period being discussed. Can someone explain its relevance
It seems to be challenging us to define :normal”.
I’m confused. From what I read, they surmise the warming was precipitated by a release of methane. Am I missing something? The C02 increase must have followed, then, right?
There is no point talking about 0.9 billion tons (0.9 petagrams) of Carbon released each year since natural processes are releasing 232 billion tons per year and absorbing 236 billion tons per year. 0.9 is a rounding error.
Now they could have talked about CO2 ppm in the atmosphere instead but the paywalled version of the paper does not show this.
I note they are using Pedogenic Carbonates or fossil soils or Paleosols in this research. This methodology should have been discontinued by climate science long ago because it produces random results and even estimates of 0 ppm CO2 occasionally which is impossible of course.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2316.html
Lets assume this was meant to be said, but sadly press releases often miss that kind of detail. So ‘increase in atmosphere’ becomes a ‘release’, which is of course not the same thing.
Paywalls, how lovely they are.
I just want to reinforce for everyone that the methodology used in this paper is simply completely unreliable.
The first time it was used to calculate CO2 in the ancient climate, Ekart 1999, this is a sample of some of the estimates that resulted:
Age (Mya) —> CO2 ppm
3 Mya —> 1,170 ppm (yes, a ridiculously high level for the time which was between 250 and 400)
13 —> -220 (yes a minus, as if; why did they even continue on after getting a negative)
55 —> -60 (yes, during the infamous PETM it produced -60)
55 —> -20 (another minus?)
55 —> 1070 (now we are getting a big range for the same time)
65 —> -90 (finally some consistency, lots of negative CO2 values, an impossible result)
343 —> 2060 (pretty high for the period when the Carboniferous drawdown in CO2 was occuring).
etc. just a bunch of random numbers with no consistency to other methods and periods we are more confident about CO2 levels. There are several papers pointing out the problems with this method and the values even vary throughout the season. So if something happened in Spring that caused a soil layer to be buried, it would produce a completely different number than if the soil was buried in the Winter or Fall. Dry periods produce different numbers than wet periods. The values vary by latitude and proximity to the ocean. There is no formula that can be relied on. The list goes on and on.
So why does climate science keep using this Carbonate methodology? Because they get to cherry-pick out of random number generators and create headlines and cause further mayhem and protect their phony baloney jobs. There should be consequences for this. Something happened in the PETM and there is no reason to fake up results.
Thanks for this info, Bill.
When I saw that the proxy was paleosoil concretions I felt doubtful, and now we see that the authors are trying to hoodwink us. Remember this Bowen from the U of Utah.
It’s worse than we thought – science can be even sloppier that Mann’s hockey stick.
I have to ask. What was causing all that carbon to be released back then in the first place. Beyond the “clown comments” about having massive coal-burning powerplants back then (nope)– what exactly COULD do it? Could there be some other mechanism involved in climate change– perhaps one that scientists, in their fixation on CO2, refuse to look at?
I have not read the paper. Large releases of green house gases could potentially come from the sea floor or volcanic activity. Around that time we had Greenland slitting off from Europe followed by Australia splitting from Antartica. While it would seem likely that both the sea floor and volcanic activity could have contributed to greenhouse gases around this time, we should not discount the potentially large shift in ocean currents that would have resulted as well.
Oh for goodness sake, enough with the straw men. Of course there are other mechanisms involved in climate change. All climate scientists acknowledge that. But what do you think might be the impact of increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere by 40% instantaneously (or as near as makes no difference on a geological timecale?). Nothing at all?
There is no straw man argument here. There are many possibilities with a lot of unknowns that no amount of hand waving and critisizing will make less important to understanding these events. To answer your rehtorical question directly and honestly, I don’t know.
“Oh for goodness sake, enough with the strawmen”… As far as I can see, your argument about the effect of a a sudden 40% CO2 increase is akin to arguing about the increased fuel cost to a large vehicle on a cross- country journey, while carrying 400 micrograms of cargo vs only 280 micrograms.
The whole CAGW position is built on nothing but strawman arguments and every other klnd of logical fallacy.
You tell me first what the effect of reducing the CO2 content of the atmosphere by 40% instantaneously is.
Alan Robertson,
Why would someone build a strawman of their own argument? How does that even work?
That 40% increase was our old friend R Gates’ favorite line. The response is still the same though, 40% increase of very little is still very little.
Was 2.85 molecules of CO2 per 10,000 molecules of air
Now 4.0 molecules of CO2 per 10,000 molecules of air
Brandon Gates
December 15, 2014 at 5:37 pm
Alan Robertson,
The whole CAGW position is built on nothing but strawman arguments and every other klnd of logical fallacy.
Why would someone build a strawman of their own argument? How does that even work?
__________________
You just built a strawman. Fine demo…
Alan Robertson,
Too. Much. Irony.
Tom in Florida,
Why anyone would expect symmetric diatomic molecules like O2 and N2 to be radiatively active at IR frequencies truly boggles the mind.
Brandon Gates
December 15, 2014 at 7:43 pm
“Why anyone would expect symmetric diatomic molecules like O2 and N2 to be radiatively active at IR frequencies truly boggles the mind.”
————————————————————————————————————————–
Why anyone would not understand a simple relationship example truly boggles the mind. But then perhaps you have no other response so you must deflect the example into a completely different subject.
Tom in Florida,
Exactly.
We’re talking about atmospheric radiative effects in the atmosphere at IR frequencies, right? Seems to me that discussing the non-IR active molecules in the atmosphere is the deflection.
Brandon Gates December 15, 2014 at 11:39 pm
“We’re talking about atmospheric radiative effects in the atmosphere at IR frequencies, right? Seems to me that discussing the non-IR active molecules in the atmosphere is the deflection.”
Again it’s a simple comparison to show how small your 40% increase really is. Now take into consideration that the 1-2 additional molecules of CO2 per 10,000 molecules of air may be at already saturated IR frequencies reducing any additional radiative effects to the insignificant.
This is about your BS 40% increase statement.
Tom in Florida,
Let’s try it this way. Every N2 and O2 molecule that gets heated up by contact with the ground has to shed that heat somehow. At normal atmospheric temperatures it can’t do that effectively via radiative transfer, so it can only do it sensibly by bumping into something cooler. The vacuum of space does not count, not much to bump into. Leaving the system entirely does happen, but we’d be out of atmosphere pretty quickly if that were the main method. Not much water vapor makes it past the mid troposphere. Running out of options ….
Be it ever so humble, those 4 per 10k CO2 molecules do an awful lot of cooling in the stratosphere.
Psst. They just don’t want to mention that some plants and animals thrived.
>>>
Letter To Nature – 13 July 2009
“Carbon dioxide forcing alone insufficient to explain Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum warming”
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n8/abs/ngeo578.html
Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
This is news only in the sense that we haven’t heard it from the alarmists and the mainstream media.
“What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.”
It was only a little bit warmer than today. Today Greenland surface mass balance is up over the past 2 years. The Arctic death spiral has ground to a halt and it’s bloody freezing. Antarctic sea ice is at record extent. Now what did we have back in the PETM? CROCODILE!
Yes, crocodiles were near the North Pole around 55 million years ago. Average temperatures not far from the North Pole were about 74 degrees F:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-north-pole-once-was-tropical/
BUT: from other articles, CO2 was also about 2,000 ppm (vs. about 400 today), and as the article says, the world was far warmer at the time before the twin releases of CO2. Yes, CO2 does warm the climate, but other things do as well, especially when you go back 56 million years ago. The issue isn’t whether CO2 warms the climate, but rather, how much and with what effects, in today’s world (not that before the PETM)? That is what we should be discussing, instead of blasting each other with epithets.
http://beta.dmi.dk/uploads/tx_dmidatastore/webservice/b/m/s/d/e/accumulatedsmb.png
Sorry, what did you want to bring up with those graphs?
Sorry, Jimbo. You complained that I had not explained myself properly, in the previous post, but those graphs are the equivalent of a graphical offering from Vukcevic !!
Ralph
Oops!
http://faculty.fgcu.edu/twimberley/EnviroPol/EnviroPhilo/Zeebe.pdf