Guest post by Frank Lansner, civil engineer, biotechnology.
(Note from Anthony – English is not Frank’s primary language, I have made some small adjustments for readability, however they may be a few passages that need clarification. Frank will be happy to clarify in comments)
It is generally accepted that CO2 is lagging temperature in Antarctic graphs. To dig further into this subject therefore might seem a waste of time. But the reality is, that these graphs are still widely used as an argument for the global warming hypothesis. But can the CO2-hypothesis be supported in any way using the data of Antarctic ice cores?
At first glance, the CO2 lagging temperature would mean that it’s the temperature that controls CO2 and not vice versa.
Click for larger image Fig 1. Source: http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400000yrfig.htm
But this is the climate debate, so massive rescue missions have been launched to save the CO2-hypothesis. So explanation for the unfortunate CO2 data is as follows:
First a solar or orbital change induces some minor warming/cooling and then CO2 raises/drops. After this, it’s the CO2 that drives the temperature up/down. Hansen has argued that: The big differences in temperature between ice ages and warm periods is not possible to explain without a CO2 driver.
Very unlike solar theory and all other theories, when it comes to CO2-theory one has to PROVE that it is wrong. So let’s do some digging. The 4-5 major temperature peaks seen on Fig 1. have common properties: First a big rapid temperature increase, and then an almost just as big, but a less rapid temperature fall. To avoid too much noise in data, I summed up all these major temperature peaks into one graph:
Fig 2. This graph of actual data from all major temperature peaks of the Antarctic vostokdata confirms the pattern we saw in fig 1, and now we have a very clear signal as random noise is reduced.
The well known Temperature-CO2 relation with temperature as a driver of CO2 is easily shown:
Fig 3.
Below is a graph where I aim to illustrate CO2 as the driver of temperature:
Fig 4. Except for the well known fact that temperature changes precede CO2 changes, the supposed CO2-driven raise of temperatures works ok before temperature reaches max peak. No, the real problems for the CO2-rescue hypothesis appears when temperature drops again. During almost the entire temperature fall, CO2 only drops slightly. In fact, CO2 stays in the area of maximum CO2 warming effect. So we have temperatures falling all the way down even though CO2 concentrations in these concentrations where supposed to be a very strong upwards driver of temperature.
I write “the area of maximum CO2 warming effect “…
The whole point with CO2 as the important main temperature driver was, that already at small levels of CO2 rise, this should efficiently force temperatures up, see for example around -6 thousand years before present. Already at 215-230 ppm, the CO2 should cause the warming. If no such CO2 effect already at 215-230 ppm, the CO2 cannot be considered the cause of these temperature rises.
So when CO2 concentration is in the area of 250-280 ppm, this should certainly be considered “the area of maximum CO2 warming effect”.
The problems can also be illustrated by comparing situations of equal CO2 concentrations:
Fig 5.
So, for the exact same levels of CO2, it seems we have very different level and trend of temperatures:
Fig 6.
How come a CO2 level of 253 ppm in the B-situation does not lead to rise in temperatures? Even from very low levels? When 253 ppm in the A situation manages to raise temperatures very fast even from a much higher level?
One thing is for sure:
“Other factors than CO2 easily overrules any forcing from CO2. Only this way can the B-situations with high CO2 lead to falling temperatures.”
This is essential, because, the whole idea of placing CO2 in a central role for driving temperatures was: “We cannot explain the big changes in temperature with anything else than CO2”.
But simple fact is: “No matter what rules temperature, CO2 is easily overruled by other effects, and this CO2-argument falls”. So we are left with graphs showing that CO2 follows temperatures, and no arguments that CO2 even so could be the main driver of temperatures.
– Another thing: When examining the graph fig 1, I have not found a single situation where a significant raise of CO2 is accompanied by significant temperature rise- WHEN NOT PRECEDED BY TEMPERATURE RISE. If the CO2 had any effect, I should certainly also work without a preceding temperature rise?! (To check out the graph on fig 1. it is very helpful to magnify)
Does this prove that CO2 does not have any temperature effect at all?
No. For some reason the temperature falls are not as fast as the temperature rises. So although CO2 certainly does not dominate temperature trends then: Could it be that the higher CO2 concentrations actually is lowering the pace of the temperature falls?
This is of course rather hypothetical as many factors have not been considered.
Fig 7.
Well, if CO2 should be reason to such “temperature-fall-slowing-effect”, how big could this effect be? The temperatures falls 1 K / 1000 years slower than they rise.
However, this CO2 explanation of slow falling temperature seems is not supported by the differences in cooling periods, see fig 8.
When CO2 does not cause these big temperature changes, then what is then the reason for the big temperature changes seen in Vostok data? Or: “What is the mechanism behind ice ages???”
This is a question many alarmists asks, and if you can’t answer, then CO2 is the main temperature driver. End of discussion. There are obviously many factors not yet known, so I will just illustrate one hypothetical solution to the mechanism of ice ages among many:
First of all: When a few decades of low sunspot number is accompanied by Dalton minimum and 50 years of missing sunspots is accompanied by the Maunder minimum, what can for example thousands of years of missing sunspots accomplish? We don’t know.
What we saw in the Maunder minimum is NOT all that missing solar activity can achieve, even though some might think so. In a few decades of solar cooling, only the upper layers of the oceans will be affected. But if the cooling goes on for thousands of years, then the whole oceans will become colder and colder. It takes around 1000-1500 years to “mix” and cool the oceans. So for each 1000-1500 years the cooling will take place from a generally colder ocean. Therefore, what we saw in a few decades of maunder minimum is in no way representing the possible extend of ten thousands of years of solar low activity.
It seems that a longer warming period of the earth would result in a slower cooling period afterward due to accumulated heat in ocean and more:
Fig 8.
Again, this fits very well with Vostok data: Longer periods of warmth seems to be accompanied by longer time needed for cooling of earth. The differences in cooling periods does not support that it is CO2 that slows cooling phases. The dive after 230.000 ybp peak shows, that cooling CAN be rapid, and the overall picture is that the cooling rates are governed by the accumulated heat in oceans and more.
Note: In this writing I have used Vostok data as valid data. I believe that Vostok data can be used for qualitative studies of CO2 rising and falling. However, the levels and variability of CO2 in the Vostok data I find to be faulty as explained here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/17/the-co2-temperature-link/
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A couple or remarks.
For those who find this a nice piece of work, good. But in all this debate, the actions and attitudes of a few scientists (Hansen, Mann) may have convinced some that ALL scientists are ideologically biased, and utterly stupid. One problem, of course, is that most people do not have access to scientific journals (Open Access is stil an unrealized goal). So most people are not aware of the sheer size of the scientific literature on the subject. So if you think this post is good science, go read some of those papers, and you’ll see that there is a lot of good science being made by professional scientists as well. In fact, I found that the field of “ocean carbon cycle” studies is much less ideologically tainted than, say, paleoclimate, or modeling. Researchers are, for example, much more honest in acknowledging their ignorance.
Now, I’ll add that the “Goresque” view of the interaction between CO2 and temperature in glacial ages is far from being the mainstream view in the scientific literature. The mechanisms underlying the dynamics of temperature and CO2 in glacial and interglacial ages are still pretty much unresolved.
In particular, the real big riddle is not that CO2 rises with temperature, but how it can get so low when it’s cold. Models simply can’t explain it. There are subtle effects here. when the ice melts, it frees up space for forests to grow. So while the ocean and the melting ice may release CO2, the growing forest will take it up, and thus limit the growth of CO2. However, when the cold sets in again, the dying forest should, in principle, release all that stored CO2, keeping the concentration high. Maybe that’s what we’re seeing here, as CO2 stays high while temperature drops. But then other effects are at play. Cyanobacteria in the ocean are a major player in the CO2 game. Their ability to eat up CO2 and dump it at the bottom of the oceans is highly temperature dependent. What is unknown is how these bacteria expand and contract as the oceans freeze over and melt again.
I’ve commented here before (and that’s after I got interested in the subject and read a lot of the papers), that though much is known about ocean circulation, and how this can affect CO2 through the thermohaline circulation, very little is known of the influence of the marine biota on CO2, but the researchers in the field have come to realize that this is a big (unknown) part of the equation. So our knowledge could radically change in coming years, as more and more is learned about this.
“Pushing on a spring” is a good analogy for rising CO2 because as you compress the spring more and more, it requires greater force to move the spring an equivalent distance ”
Except that is not true. A 300 lb/in spring requires 300 lbs to compress 1 inch, another 300 lbs to compress another inch, another 300 lbs to compress another inch, and so on until it is completely compressed.
Flanagan
You ask “Moreover: can you find a situation in the past where CO2 went up to 350 ppm and see what happens? This would be relevant…”
I can’t find the original source for this graph though I remember back checking it the first time I saw it. Here is a widely reproduced graph of CO2 vs temp going back 650 Myears. There are ice ages with CO2 levels several times greater than today and warm periods like the present with low CO2.
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-18/dioxide.htm
We seem to be looking so closely at the bark that we can’t see the forest.
Consider the first graph and notice the dramatic, periodic swings from lows to highs. This is the Pleistocene paleoclimate from deep ice ages to interglacials. The Vostok ice cores simply confirmed what we already knew from dozens of previous studies. It was my awareness of those previous studies that made me skeptical when the AGW folk began making noise back in the late 80s. Nothing Hansen, Gore, Mann, or the rest made any sense in the context of an interglacial period’s natural variation. Gore’s often-made statements of recent years being the “warmest in history” work only if history goes back no more than 750 years. The increases in CO2, indeed the increase in temperature, are miniscule in terms of the natural glacial-interglacial natural variation.
If AGW wonks want to suggest that CO2 drives the increase in temperature, then tell us the source of the CO2 that caused the the amount of CO2 to rise from 160 ppm in the depths of the glacials to the 350 ppm during the interglacials. I’ve searched the paleoanthropological record and could not find any autoparts associated with Homo erectus artifacts. In fact, there are no auto parts in any anthropological dig older than about 120 years.
To put a fine point on it, the worst case scenarios postulated by the IPCC, Hansen, Mann, and the rest are well within the natural variation of an interglacial. The worst case scenario will attain only the average in both temperature and sea levels during the past 6,000. Reducing CO2 emissions to some ridiculous percentage of 1990 levels (as the government is now seeking) will have no affect on world’s temperatures, locally or globally.
If you are afraid of CO2, stop deforestation and clean up the oceans.
“we see temperature peaking exactly the same time that CO2 peaks.”
That is a resolution problem. You probably saw similar low res graphs in AIT where Gore deliberately distorted this info, which is your first problem, believing Gore who thinks that he has to decieve you to save the planet. There is an 800 year lag in the data. You can believe it or don’t.
@TonyB (09:40:43) :
“I have posted here before about Ernst Beck. Frank has had his disagreement with him”
Beck is presently updating and adjusting for more and more inputs. The compilation of CO2 data Beck did was obviously a very relevant thing to do. Becks data are important although the precision is sometimes not perfect. I hope Beck will go on and on making the best of these data. Its very interesting what he´s up to, and I can only support him for his truth seeking project.
@jim Steele (09:54:25) :
“It is exactly this analysis that made me a skeptic when I was teaching Global Warming to my students. “
Yes, I can follow you on that one!!
@Flanagan (09:55:04) :
“ Nobody ever said that CO2 was the only climatologic driver. “
The illustrations above not only shows that CO2 is not the reason for the big temperature changes of ice ages. They show that CO2´s role is rather small, if any.
So who cares, is that what your saying? Just let the big companies fill up the underground with CO2 under pressure even though CO2 has little if any effect? In a time of crisis? Using endless dollars on CO2? – because as you say, there are probably other climatologic drivers? That’s not a convincing argument to focus on CO2, is it?
@Ellie in Belfast (10:10:55) :
“I can’t wait to try this on a few wavering friends.”
Thankyou thankyou, you make my day!!
foinavon (10:29:42) : Of course the ice age cycles are driven by the slow, slow, slow variations in the orbital properties of the Earth (Milankovitch cycles). Deglaciation is likely driven by enhanced Spring insolation in the deep Southern hemisphere which results in very slow warming, and as the Southern Ocean ice melts and the oceans start to warm, CO2 is released (thus the lag represented in the Vostock cores).
Unfortunately, you have your hemispheres exactly backwards.
From “Ice Age” by John and Mary Gribbin (a wonderful read, gives the richness of the characters in the discovery of the ice ages, the history of the process, and a gentle introduction to some of the science involved.):
Pg.53: […]the single most important thing to emerge from these discussions was Koppen’s realization of the key season in the Ice Age saga. Adhemar and Croll had thought that the decisive factor in encouraging Ice to spread across the Northern Hemisphere must be the occurrence of extremely cold winters, resulting in increased snowfall. At first, Milankovitch had shared this view. But it was Koppen who pointed out that it is always cold enough for snow to fall in the Arctic winter, even today, and that the reason that the Northern Hemisphere is not in the grip of a full Ice Age is because the ‘extra’ snow melts away again in the summer.
[EMS: Note that the Southern Hemisphere is similarly irrelevant to the ice age cycle since it is always cold enough for snow to stay frozen. It just doesn’t change enough to matter.]
Pg 54: He reasoned that the way to encourage the ice to spread would be to have a reduction in summer warmth, because then less of the winter snowfall would melt. If less snow melted in summer than fell in winter, the ice sheets would grow – and once they had started to grow, the feedback effect of the way the ice and snow reflect away incoming solar energy would enhance the process.
Pg 57: It isn’t so much that Ice Ages occur when the astronomical influences conspire to produce particularly cool summers, rather what matters is that Interglacials only occur when the astronomical influences conspire to produce unusually warm summers, encouraging the ice to retreat. Without all three of the astronomical rhythms working in step this way, the Earth stays in a deep freeze.
End Quote.
So, to summarize:
1) The south pole doesn’t matter to the process, it’s always frozen.
2) We are normally in a long ice age and only pop out for short intervals when conditions are just right.
3) The ‘just right’ is Northern Hemisphere summers warm enough to melt the snow and ice.
4) Warm enough is when the N. hemisphere: must be pointed at the sun in summer when: at close approach to the sun with the right elliptical shape, with the pole tilted over far enough, with… or we freeze.
I would add a note that I think it is particularly illuminating that we are near the end of an Interglacial (next stop is an ice age), the only thing that keeps it away is the summer Arctic ice and snow melt. So what is the AGW crowd in histrionics about? That the Arctic ice and snow are not sticking through the summer… Think about it… As I asked my pooch once: “And just what will you do with that car once you catch it and bite the tire?”
Daniel Mayes (12:09:49) :
The changes in CO2 are due to warming of the Southern oceans initially. The sinusoidal variations of the properties of the Earth’s orbit result in enhanced Spring insolation in the early stages of glacial to interglacial transitions. The deep Southern oceans slowly, slowly warm, sea ice slowly melts and the oceans begin to release CO2 into the atmosphere.
Although the Antarctic ice cores indicate that the rise in atmospheric CO2 lags warming in Antarctica, the Greenland cores indicate that Greenland warming follows the rise in CO2. So the rise in atmospheric CO2 during ice age transitions (glacial –> interglacial) is both a consequence and a cause.
Remember that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. However it gets into the atmosphere it causes warming, completely independently of how it got there. If its rise in the atmosphere is the result of enhanced solar warming, then it amplifies the latter. Alternatively, the rise in CO2 can be the primary driver of warming. That has occurred in several (perhaps most or all) of the extinction events in the deep past.
“” Tamara (11:59:33) :
Much has been said about the difference in the slope of CO2, i.e. a sharp rise versus a delayed fall. I am no expert, but we might intuitively expect this due to biological activity. CO2 rise would be caused by off-gassing as temperature increased, which is a fairly fast process. This increased CO2 also stimulates the biosphere, which stores CO2 through primary production. This stored CO2 would release more slowly through decomposition, and uptake of CO2 by plants would slow gradually due to the changing climate. I wonder if anyone can confirm this mechanism? “”
Well Tamara I can’t confirm your hypothesis; but I believe you are on the right track.
There’s another effect as well relating the the exchange with the ocean.
The entire ocean surface is in direct contact with the atmosphere (ok get pedantic and say the bottom surface of the ocean is in contact with the land). So when the ocean warms up, the CO2 outgassing goes straight into the atmosphere, so it’s a fairly prompt process.
However the converse is not true. The entire atmosphere surface (bottom) is NOT in contact with the ocean. Therefore if the ocean cools down and starts taking up CO2, some of that excess atmospheric CO2 now has to diffuse from over the land to over the ocean before it can dissolve i9n the ocean, so that would slow down the CO2 uptake in the ocean. But I couldn’t say that the time scales involved in such delays are commensurate with the 800 year offset.
But I tend to believe your thesis that biologic processes are heavily involved.
There is also a notion that since the ocean surface is warm, it does not contain a whole lot of CO2 anyway. The lower layers are cooler, so they have a greater CO2 capacity, and there should be a sort of segregation coefficient that is constantly depleting the warm surface waters of CO2 and driving it deeper into the colder depths; and this process keeps the warm surface waters depleted of CO2.
So when the ocean surface warms up, there isn’t a whole lot of surface CO2 to outgas, so the prompt outgassing would be somewhat limited, and to get at the deeper stores of CO2 the ocean basically has to turn over and bring those cold deep waters to the surface. I’ve been told by floks who should know, that this oceanic turnover is the main source of the 800 year delay on the rising edge.
I tend to go along with your idea that biological growth processes tend to rule the CO2 decline process; but I can’t prove that either.
Have ever noticed that their famous temperature curve suddently changes slope around the 60s and 70s. This can also be correlated to the bulk of atomic tests that were done during that time. According to some new gravity/magnetic theory, the blasts sent and magnetic pulse to the core of the earth, this pulse and changes in magnetic flow lines are also the reason for the well known shape of nuclear explosions. The theory does not say by how much the core of the planet has heated up but if you think about it, if the core heats up, it would in return heat up the ocean, thus also driving more release of CO2.
What is even more interesting is that magnetic/gravity theory could help explain sunspots and solar flares and apparently there is correlation with the perturbations in magnetic fields around the sun, caused by the planets, and solar activity, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.
see: http://www.allanstime.com/UnifiedFieldTheory/Planets_Alignment/UFT_excerpt.htm
foinavon (14:06:49),
I would think that once we hit the minimum temperature, of the maximum in glaciation, as the earth tilt;s back and things are slowly starting to heat up, the north ice cores will show CO2 rising first because the south is heating up more first.
Another plausible explanation of course is once the earth starts warming up, the polar bears take out their snowmobiles and spew tons of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Frank, I only have one word for you and everyone else “Bravo”
david elder (13:24:52) :
We’ve had a round 0.8 oC of warming since the start of the industrial age.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/
it’s easy to calculate that a rise of atmospheric CO2 from 280-385 ppm should give around 1.2-1.3 oC of warming at equilibrium within a simple model of a climate sensitivity of 3 oC of warming per doubling of atmospheric CO2.
The warming during the glacial to interglacial transition was very, very, very slow (around 5 oC of warming during 5000 years, for example during the last glacial interglacial transition 15000-10000 years ago). So we’re warming around 15-20 times faster than that now. Since the climate system has very significant inertias to temperature change (largely due to the massive heat capacity of the oceans) and the atmospheric CO2 levels are rising now around 100 times or more faster than during the ice age transition, the climate system hasn’t quite “caught up” with the forcing from the current levels of atmospheric CO2. So we still have quite a bit of warming “in the pipeline”. Within a climate sensitivity of 3 oC of warming per doubling of atmospheric CO2, the extraordinarily slow rise in CO2 from 180-280 ppm gives almost 2 oC of amplification of the Milankovitch-driven total warming in the glacial to interglacial transition (around 35-40% of the total warming).
So when CO2 is an amplifier of a primary driver of warming (solar insolation changes due to Milankovitch cycles), CO2 is a secondary driver of warming (it’s an amplifier). When CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere directly it’s a primary forcing. Its properties can be understood uniformly by our understanding that the Earth has a warming response to enhanced CO2 equivalent to something near 3 oC of warming per doubling of CO2, however it gets into the atmosphere.
“” deepslope (11:48:29) :
George E Smith:
I have been enjoying your well-reasoned, detailed and wise contributions. Suspect that behind that is more than book learning and lab practice – an apogee perspective? “”
Well deepslope, I appreciate the sentiment; but don’t be fooled. I really don’t know didley about what I regard as climate; which is how what we coloquially think of as climate, varies over the globe. Why is Australia so dry ? How did the Sahara becoem desertified? How the hell does the PDO work. I know nowt about such stuff; but I’m sure there are people who do.
so I pretty much have to constrain myself to the bigger picture question:- “Is planet earth radiating the right amount of thermal electromagnetic radiation to keep the surface temperatures in a comfortable range.”
That’s pretty much pure Physics, and mostly thermodynamics; and that stuff I do know.
In addition, I have no axe to grind; I am Teflon coated. I don’t work for any energy, or other resource industry company; I don’t invest in their stocks, unless my totally blind IRA mutual funds do so without my knowledge or direction. And I don’t get so much as a brass Razoo in grant money to do any research on any of this, from either government or other institutional money bags.
So all I care about, is that we get the science correct; and that we do that before a bunch of damned fools do some actual real damage to this planet; its environment, and its economic ability to support at least the population we have on earth today, at a reasonable level. Naturally, I would wish we had fewer people, and I wish we had much fewer really poor people; and for sure it is going to get a heck of a lot worse than it is, if we don’t put the CO2 genii back in the bottle.
My bottom line belief, which I am not presently able to prove beyond doubt, is that so long as the earth has its oceans, we cannot change the temperature either up or down, even if we wanted to. And if we could; where would we set it ? The hydrologic cycle of evaporation, cloud formation, and precipitation is in total feedback control of the average global temperatures. Things like CO2 and Svensmark’s Cosmic rays, are not drivers of the climate, but they do contribute, in that CO2 can augment water vapor absorption of thermal radiation, and Svensmark’s cosmic rays, can affect the ease of cloud formation, and more importantly where clouds form, and so modify the cloud regulation process.
I think the mistake people are making with regard to Svensmark, is that they are either trying to prove that this is what drives the climate; or that this has nothing to do with the climate, and I don’t think he ever said anything like that. But I think it is an important cause of variation in climate, that is linked to the sun behavior, and gives the sun more effect than just the 0.1% P-P change in the solar constant. Leif seems to say the sun is not a big driver; but it’s offspring are having bigger effects than it has directly. The total energy linkages between sun and earth are somewhat more than a simple EM radiation beam.
George
Antony,
My apologies. I still think having the arrow tails at the same level for figure 3 and figure 4 would be more information rich.
Remember that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
I also remember that water vapor is a 20X more effective greenhouse gas and no one is trying to do a darn thing about it.
foinavon
You Said: “Alternatively, the rise in CO2 can be the primary driver of warming. That has occurred in several (perhaps most or all) of the extinction events in the deep past”
Is it really your position that most or all of the deep past extinction events are a result of CO2 driven global warming? I have not seen that in the literature. Please provide a few links to this assertion and how explain the mechanism on how CO2 warmed the planet enough to kill the dinosaurs after the meteor induced “nuclear” winter.
thanks
Ed
Roger Sowell (11:15:18) : I find it very interesting that the CO2 rises around 5500 to 7500 years after temperature peak. Is there any explanation for this?
The easy suspect would be plants. As the ice age sets in, lots of plants die. Decay leads to CO2 (until the plants remains are sequestered under glaciers)
The consequences are severe, as agriculture will receive far less water than normal, perhaps 15 percent of the usual amount.
Since cities account for about 5% of total water usage, they are completely irrelevant to any discussion of drought. (Despite all the nanny nags to stop flushing for #1..) This also means that substantially all the reduction in volume of consumption must come from Agriculture (EPA et. al. will require continued ‘natural’ flows to the ocean for wildlife… See Oregon as an existence proof.)
This is not what the state needs, a reduction in tax revenue from a significant part of the economy, at a time when the state’s budget deficit is $14 billion, and growing at a rate of nearly $1 billion per month. In addition, having to purchase the bio-fuel component from other states.
Financial flogging will continue until monetary moral improves…
I look for a reversal of the 1930’s dust-bowl induced migration, with out-of-work California farmers moving east back to Oklahoma or other wetter states! Perhaps the new book written on this event will be called The Wrath of Grapes. 😉
Oh! The imagery! I love it!! ( I can feel the hangover now as Califonians down their last saved Napa Reds on the long sorry trek to Texas… 100 miles at a time, asking folks along the way if they can borrow an outlet to charge there e-car… Brother, can you spare a Watt?)
Unfortunately, the last time we had a cycle like this it was The Dust Bowl in Oklahoma… So if you subscribe to “the sun did it” theory we have:
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunspot_Numbers.png
Notice that the dip at the Dalton has a similar though more shallow dip at 1/2 the Dalton ago from now? Our choices are basically: A Maunder, Dalton, or half Dalton low (in order of most comfort for us).
When you are rooting for The Dust Bowl as a relatively ‘good thing’ it’s time to stock up on Scotch, Napa Reds…
So I’m rooting for “the sun did it” to be proven wrong by events… Or a line connecting the minima of the Maunder, Dalton, Great Depression sunspot lows and temperature lows to continue the upward slope to define our modern lows… (i.e. we’re on a much longer up trend and these are dips on a faster frequency with ‘higher lows’)
Gore is pointing to Venus and Mercury to show how CO2 is warming Venus and not Mercury. Where the hell is he taking his science?
According to this guy ( http://www.whiteworld.com/non-fic/Venus-temp.htm ), and if we want to compare apples with apples, the 96% CO2 contained in Venus atmosphere is only responsible to about 20 C more than our pitty little 350 ppm here on Earth. Of course the guy corrected for the pressure and the distance from the sun (apparently Venus is getting almost 2 times more radiation from the sun than Earth, but according to Gore, the distance is not important).
So, one can ask if during glaciation, the atmosphere could get thinner enough (lower pressure) to even cool it more?
My first post and slight OT, but if this report is to be believed, could this explain how elevated CO2 does the dirty on the ecosystem?
@E.M.Smith (13:57:14)
Pg 57: It isn’t so much that Ice Ages occur when the astronomical influences conspire to produce particularly cool summers, rather what matters is that Interglacials only occur when the astronomical influences conspire to produce unusually warm summers
Two questions arose for me from the excerpt:
1) when the Earth switched over from the Hot to the Freeze epoch, and why?
2) how much closer to the Sun the Earth should be now to be in a state of climatic equilibrium favorable to us (with summer/winter cycles and w/o glacial/interglacial periods)?
Regards
E.M.Smith (13:57:14)
Gribbin and Gribbin is a very nice book. But it is a book by science populizers describing 10 year old and more science from a time before much of the polar ice core data was available or had been analyzed in detail.
Your comment:
Note that the Southern Hemisphere is similarly irrelevant to the ice age cycle since it is always cold enough for snow to stay frozen. It just doesn’t change enough to matter.
…is an erroneous conclusion based on a false premise. During the glacial period of the ice age cycles, sea surface ice obviously extends extensively from the Antarctic towards the lower latitudes of the Southern hemisphere. Enhanced insolation in the Spring/Summer, if this forcing is persistent over hundreds of years, will cause this sea ice to retreat. The reduction in albedo enhances sea surface warming. Eventually the Southern oceans will lose their ice cover, warm and begin to release CO2 into the atmosphere.
Since you’re quoting the very nice (but somewhat outdated) book by the Gribbins, I’ll quote from some more recent science:
L. Stott et al. (2007) Southern Hemisphere and Deep-Sea Warming Led Deglacial Atmospheric CO2 Rise and Tropical Warming. Science 318, 435-438.
The rise in Southern Ocean temperatures coincided with the retreat of Antarctic sea ice and high-elevation glaciers in the Southern Hemisphere (36, 37). The explanation for the early warming in the Southern Hemisphere could involve increasing springtime solar insolation, which is well correlated with the retreat of sea ice and with the history of sea-salt accumulation in the Antarctic Dome C ice core (fig. S5). We suggest that the trigger for the initial deglacial warming around Antarctica was the change in solar insolation over the Southern Ocean during the austral spring that influenced the retreat of the sea ice (38). Retreating sea ice would have led to enhanced Ekman transport in the Southern Ocean and decreased stratification due to stronger air-sea fluxes.
(n.b. “Ekman transport” is a phenomenon promoting mixing of ocean layers and enhances CO2 efflux from the deep oceans as a result of surface warming…)
It’s increasingly well established that deglaciation is driven by insolation changes in the deep Southern hemisphere, and that the resulting rise in CO2 due to warming-induced efflux from the Southern oceans, amplifies the Milankovitch warming and promotes Northern hemisphere warming. That accounts for the observation that the CO2 rise, which follows warming in Antarctic cores, precedes warming in the Greenland cores.
Frank,
Above Figure 4 you write: “Below is a graph where I aim to illustrate CO2 as the driver of temperature:” This is potentially confusing, since I think your aim is to show that CO2 can’t be the driver. I think you should reword that to make it clearer what you are doing. (eg “that CO2 is not”)
This is a brave attempt by Frank but is basically an intensely simplistic argument with no grasp of the complexities involved. Frank has been guilty of this previously with his very strong assertion that because the SOI was high back in September then a La Nina was inevitable. I did point out to him there were other factors involved and that these were indicating a la Nina was a low probability event. He was however still convinced that this one particular fact meant that a La Nina was inevitable. We now know he was wrong then and I’m afraid he is once again very wrong here.
He must learn that climate science is not the simplistic two dimensional process he thinks it is.
Moderator: Fixed italics…
Robert (11:43:11) : If it can be compared to the temperature peaks recorded in the other interglacials, then I conclude that one of two things is true:
1. The current interglacial is naturally cooler than prior interglacials and we will resume cooling soon (in geologic terms).
2. The current interglacial has not achieved its natural interglacial peak temperature and can be expected to warm another degree or so due to non-anthropogenic causes.
If you look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
You will notice that the ice ages often have a very brief peak, then as the drop begins, sometimes a ‘ledge’ of relative stability before the plunge into the next glacial. Notice that we are sitting on the edge. Notice that it has been one of the longest ledges…
We are sitting on the edge of a plunge into an ice age. (This is geologic time, so the plummet could be 5,000 years away…) The notion that we have anything to fear to the upside is falsified by all those peaks that hit a hard ceiling of “something” and halt dead in their warming tracks. Just as we did about 10,000 years ago…
It has always bothered me that I do not see a discussion on when the current interglacial warming (natural) starts to be dominated by anthropogenic warming.
Perhaps that is because it can not. At best, IMHO, any CO2 driven warming can keep us ‘on the ledge’. It is also clear from the above graph that at the +1C to +3C range something dramatic does a ‘slap down’ of temperatures. This leads to four conclusions:
1) AGW has a hard lid at a degree or two.
2) We are exiting the special conditions that lead to an Interglacial. The natural forces are moving toward an ice age. Slowly. Very Slowly.
3) Therefor AGW can at most partly offset #2 and has little risk (#1). To the extent the AGW thesis is right, it can at most explain the extraordinarly length and stability of our present “ledge”.
4) WARM is GOOD. COLD is BAD.