Guest post by Steven Goddard
There are still people who insist that changes in CO2 can explain the pattern of glacial and interglacial periods. This article will present several arguments demonstrating that is incorrect, based on the ice core data below.
Click for larger image
The most obvious reason is that CO2 lags temperature. Changes in ocean temperature have driven the changes in atmospheric CO2, as explained here. CO2 is not the driver.
Now consider the earth 20,000 years ago. Temperatures were low – about 8C cooler than the present. Due to the cold ocean temperatures, levels of atmospheric H20 (the primary greenhouse gas) were low. CO2 levels were also low, at about one half current levels. The earth’s albedo was very high due to extensive ice cover which had much of North America and Europe buried in ice. Using the popular “CO2 and feedbacks explain everything” theory, all of these negative feedbacks should have driven earth further and further into an irrecoverable ice age. Cold ocean water should have continued to absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere.
Atmospheric H2O should have continued to decline due to lower vapor pressures over the cooling oceans. Albedo should have continued to increase due to expanding glaciers further from the poles. All of these negative feedbacks should have caused temperatures to decrease further, and the death spiral should have continued. But none of these things happened. Instead, the earth warmed very quickly. CO2 was absolutely not the driver, and positive/negative feedbacks had to be in balance.
Consider the earth 14,000 years ago. CO2 levels were around 200 ppm and temperatures, at 6C below present values, were rising fast. Now consider 30,000 years ago. CO2 levels were also around 200 ppm and temperatures were also about 6C below current levels, yet at that time the earth was cooling. Exactly the same CO2 and temperature levels as 14,000 years ago, but the opposite direction of temperature change. CO2 was not the driver.
Now consider 120,000 years ago. Temperatures were higher than today and CO2 levels were relatively high at 290 ppm. Atmospheric H20 was high, and albedo was low. According to the theorists, earth should have been warming quickly. But it wasn’t – quite the opposite with temperatures cooling very quickly at that time. CO2 was not the driver.
If CO2 levels and the claimed lockstep feedbacks controlled the climate, the climate would be unstable. We would either move to a permanent ice age or turn into Venus. Warmer temperatures generate more CO2. Increased CO2 raises temperatures. Warmer temperatures generate more CO2 …… etc. It would be impossible to reverse a warming or cooling trend without a major external event. Obviously this has not happened.
An exercise to get people thinking for themselves. If the temperature at some point in the past was 4C cooler than now and CO2 levels were 240 ppm, was the temperature going up or down? There are ten points on the graph that match those conditions. Half of them have rapidly rising temperatures and half have rapidly falling temperatures. It becomes abundantly clear that there has to be another degree of freedom which is dominant in controlling the glacial cycles.
In the ice core record, temperature drives CO2 – not the other way around. Sometimes the earth warms quickly at 180 ppm CO2. Other times it cools quickly at 280 ppm CO2. Again, CO2 is not the driver of glacial cycles – there has to be a different cause.
UPDATE:
The use of the term “negative feedback” in this article is the commonly understood meaning – i.e. feedbacks that drive temperature down. Technically speaking, this usage is incorrect. From a viewpoint of semantics, a negative feedback would be one that works against the current trend. This semantic difference has no relevance to the logic being presented in the article.
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Smokey wrote:
“You’re confusing an anomaly with the trend.”
If you start your line at 1999 instead, you will get a positive slope to your green line. Or at 1997. All you’re doing is cherry-picking the years that give you the result that you want.
The “Oxbridge Harvard consensus” has said for decades, that while CO2 does not make the ice ages start to end, it presently kicks in to amplify the warming. “Popular consensus” says “Science shows that CO2 amplifies”, a mantra without a shred of proof. RealClimate gives the mantra, without a shred of proof; popular consensus quotes RealClimate.
On the other hand, Frank Lansner and friends here at WUWT recently showed many things we can see in the shape of the graphs alone that DO amount to evidence that gives the lie to the mantra. Lansner used a composite of the last 4 Ice Ages, an excellent way to bring out the shared patterns, cut out the noise, and make the basics easy to grasp. Ah, but this lacks the comfort value of “Science Shows…”
Check my Climate Science primer on this
Jeff
You cite the year 1999 — and then you accuse me of cherry picking??
OK then, take your pick of whatever time series you want. Any time series from 6 years ago, to 4.6 billion years ago:
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Face it, the planet is cooling. And FYI, global cooling does not mean global warming. It means global cooling.
Frankly, as a slightly literate layman, the whole business of CO2, AGW, tipping points, et al strikes me as nothing more than simple primitive tribal superstition dressed up in fancy modern verbiage. The incessant barrage of media presentations on global warming seem to create the impression that all the changes that are occurring can be attributed to mankind’s evil industrial activities. Repent all ye sinners for ye have unleashed the evil CO2 god and he is wrecking havoc on the beneficent Gaia.
CO2 does not drive ice-out conditions on our lakes either…
Here is a link for ice-out data on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, dating all the way back to 1887.
http://www.winnipesaukee.com/index.php?pageid=iceout
Some cherry picking here, but if you look at the actual data, there is absolutley no reason [whatsoever] to be concerned of an impending climate catastrophy:
Ice-out for 1921 was March 28.
Ice-out for 1998 was April 7.
Ice-out for 1889 was April 14.
Ice-out for 2001 was May 2.
http://me.water.usgs.gov/iceout_data/Data.Winnipesaukee.txt
The only thing that stands out here was cooling during the 60s and 70s, which some people claim was a “lie”. Everyting else seems normal.
My conclusion. Man-made global warming is a grossly exagerated hoax.
A few questions for you, Steven:
1. Does increasing CO2 increase IR absorption or not (regardless of by how much, to what effect, etc. – I just want to know whether it does, yes or no)?
2. Are changes in ice albedo positive feedbacks to temperature change (by “positive feedback” I mean what anyone who understands feedbacks would mean)?
3. If so, do such changes in albedo lag the initial change in temperature in the record of the glacial cycles?
4. If they do, and if you recognise that albedo changes are positive feedbacks, and that thus they amplify changes in temperature, why do you seek to reject the positive feedback of CO2 changes because it lags the initial temperature change (as any feedback is bound to do, of course)?
5. Have areas of ice extent been at a given level when the albedo change has been amplifying cooling and at the same given level when albedo change has been amplifying warming? The direction of change is what is important, is it not, rather than the absolute level?
I will be interested, as always, to see whether you can give me straight answers to these straight questions.
REPLY: Simon I don’t like your tone, suggesting the respondent won’t give “straight answers” while asking the questions is disingenuous. I grow tired of your attitude toward other participants. [self snip] – Anthony
Simon, you said:
2. Are changes in ice albedo positive feedbacks to temperature change (by “positive feedback” I mean what anyone who understands feedbacks would mean)?
4. If they do, and if you recognise that albedo changes are positive feedbacks, and that thus they amplify changes in temperature, why do you seek to reject the positive feedback of CO2 changes because it lags the initial temperature change (as any feedback is bound to do, of course)?
Anyone that truly understands the concept of feedback also understands that the terms positive or negative have nothing to do with amplification or attenuation. I suggest you take a course on control theory if you want to understand why this is.
Mark
Anyone that truly understands the concept of feedback also understands that the terms positive or negative have nothing to do with amplification or attenuation.
That’s absurd. Amplification is exactly what feedback (and its sign) is about. From Wiki:
Negative feedback feeds part of a system’s output, inverted, into the system’s input; generally with the result that fluctuations are attenuated.
In contrast, positive feedback is a feedback in which the system responds in the same direction as the perturbation, resulting in amplification of the original signal instead of stabilizing the signal.
“Jeff (11:51:54) :
Smokey wrote:
“You’re confusing an anomaly with the trend.”
If you start your line at 1999 instead, you will get a positive slope to your green line. Or at 1997. All you’re doing is cherry-picking the years that give you the result that you want.”
How dare you suggest that Smokey is a climate Scientist.
“that is the multibillion euro(*) question. (*) because of the devaluation of the dollar some expressions need an economic upgrade…”
It’s the Euro that’s devaluing:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/120922-trouble-brewing-in-europe-could-send-eur-usd-to-2-yr-low
Anthony,
REPLY: Simon I don’t like your tone, suggesting the respondent won’t give “straight answers” while asking the questions is disingenuous. I grow tired of your attitude toward other participants. [self snip] – Anthony
In which case, I suggest you ban me from your site.
I note, again, that you are quick to object to the tone of a poster challenging the argument of one of the items on this site whilst you have not objected to the tone coming from ‘the other side’ (for example, SG’s response to a post above: “I’m sure you think you are being clever, but rest assured – you are not”, not to mention all the other scornful and defamatory remarks that are churned out on this site every day).
I have asked for a straight answer since I have asked the question before and not received one.
I do not know why you consider my questions ‘disingenuous’. Are you suggesting that I am engaging in Socratic irony? Well, that could only be the case if you presume the ignorance of the person I am questioning, so that’s a matter of your interpretation and not mine.
But as I say, if you don’t like my tone then do what you wish. If, however, you wish to maintain the sense of fair access to debate, then I suggest you should be looking at some other people’s tone in advance of mine.
REPLY: Thanks for illustrating my point. Your quest for a “straight answer” demonstrates your expectations of it. Thus any answer given that does not meet your expectations will be criticized by you, no matter if it is factually correct or not. That is what is disingenuous about your approach. As for others, the question is about you. And since you are not a moderator, you have no benefit of knowing what comments make it here or not. Again you draw only on your beliefs- Anthony
Anthony,
Thus any answer given that does not meet your expectations will be criticized by you, no matter if it is factually correct or not.
That is completely untrue. I will not criticise factual statements. I think you are drawing on your own beliefs there, if I may say so.
[removed – see most recent comment from Anthony]
Simon- I decided after looking further that the term had different meaning in Britain than in the US, (I thought of it as comical and about pretentiousness and a US reference agreed, but the meaning is different in Britain) so I withdraw it indicated by [self snip] and comments related to it, with my apology.
Thank you.
Chris V. (11:42:14) :
The DIRECTION the temperature is moving depends on the CHANGE in the CO2 forcing. As long as your starting temperature is near equilibrium, increasing CO2 will cause temperatures to rise, and decreasing CO2 will cause temperatures to fall.
The ABSOLUTE CO2 levels do not determine the temperature TREND. The CHANGE in the CO2 levels does.
The different feedback definitions used here makes this more complicated than necessary, but temperature change is the cause and CO2 is the feedback, not reverse over the ice ages, until recently. Thus indeed a fixed point of CO2 in the past doesn’t say anything about the influence of one on the other, as a feedback only can work after an initial change, not a steady state of the primary factor.
Thus the answer on the five questions of Simon Evans is yes, but as important is the answer to the question “is CO2 causing an important feedback” and there the answer, based on the same ice cores is no…
Regarding Simon’s post just above.
If the “direction of change is what is important… rather than the absolute level” then you haven’t properly identified the mechanism that is driving the effect. You need to ask the question “what is driving the direction of change”?
Perhaps you could plot the derivative of CO2 over time. If it turns out d(CO2)/dt correlates well with temperature without the lag, then there are two sensible conclusions: temperature causes change in CO2; or something else directly causes both temperature change and CO2 direction change simultaneously.
Ferdinand Engelbeen (15:25:43) :
Thus the answer on the five questions of Simon Evans is yes, but as important is the answer to the question “is CO2 causing an important feedback” and there the answer, based on the same ice cores is no…
How do the cores show that?
Everything shown in the graph in the OP is completely consistent with CO2 acting as a positive feedback to an initial warming (or cooling) caused by Milankovich cycle albedo changes.
Chris V. (16:32:28) :
If you look at the detailed graphs, one sees a lagged response of CO2 on temperature, but no response of temperature on CO2, with or without a lag. The moment that CO2 levels drop with 40 ppmv, ice sheets start to melt and temperature goes up at the end of the Eemian (the previous warmer interglacial), neither does temperature accelerate upward when CO2 increases during the LGM-Holocene warming. Thus the least one can say is that the feedback of CO2 is (far) less than the over 30% of the feedback (with 3 K/2xCO2) that current models “predict”.
See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html
and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/epica5.gif
“Everything shown in the graph…”
That’s the key because NOT everything is shown in the graph. I’ll give you a hint: it beings with ‘w’.
Regarding Simon’s post just above.
If the “direction of change is what is important… rather than the absolute level” then you haven’t properly identified the mechanism that is driving it.
Perhaps you could plot the derivative of CO2 over time. If it turns out d(CO2)/dt correlates well with temperature and without the lag, then there are two sensible conclusions: temperature causes change in CO2; or, something else directly causes both temperature change and CO2 direction change simultaneously.
Simon Evans (12:42:41) :
A few questions for you, Steven:
1. Does increasing CO2 increase IR absorption or not (regardless of by how much, to what effect, etc. – I just want to know whether it does, yes or no.
The answer to this question is both yes and no. Yes if there is more IR that has not been absorbed and no if there is none left to be absorbed.
The data that I have seen indicates that most IR in the frequencies available to CO2 is already being absorbed. Where there is some left is at the poles.
I question the reflectivity of ice. Ice is clear and transparent. It is snow and shatered ice that is reflective. (Think of an ice rink before anyone is on it. Once they rip it up it becomes white and reflective.)
We keep seeing life under meters of sea ice. Sunlight penetrates the ice with no problem, powering the food chain. This light is not reflected.
When sea ice melts it takes thermal energy out of the water below it. When open polar water warms it stays on the surface but when polar water cools it sinks out of site. We get to see the warm water because it stays on the surface but what happens to the water that cools and sinks?
If tomorrow, the Sun dropped it’s output and turned Red, it would be as if there were an eclipse or volcano every day. The Earth would cool rapidly, the oceans would start holding more CO2, and neither the Temperature or the CO2 levels would have an effect larger than zilch on the Sun. You could belch all the CO2 from all the coal plants you could feed, but it wouldn’t save the planet from having it’s photosynthesis asphyxiated, nor would it warm the planet 1/10th of a degree. In a billion years, the Earth would look like Mars.
Frozen desert.
Steven Goddard (09:46:19) :
The technical meaning of the word feedback is important especially when there is an adequate word “forcing” which could have been used. But I will let it rest here.
I was not trying to be clever nor was I trying to duck the information you posted. Below I give you some analysis of my own which SEEMS to show that entry and exit from ice ages is caused by GHGs. I offer no PROOF as I was not there at the time. But the data is not mine and has not been doctored.
The data for the following “analysis” is from:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/domec/domec_epica_data.html
EPICA Dome C Ice Core Data
I have been through entry and exit from most ice ages/cold periods and have noted the age that either CH4 or CO2 have significant changes. In most cases this occurs just before or at the same time that temperature change occurs and is acting as a green house gas.
There is one strange temperature dip at around 722000 ybp which is not explained by a GHG change.
Exit from ice age CH4 CO2 17500ybp
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/562/iceageco2ch450018500my5.jpg
Entry to ice age CH4 128500ybp
Exit from ice age CH4 CO2 136000ybp
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/4554/iceageco2ch4100150gt7.jpg
Entry to ice age CH4 CO2 242000ybp
Exit from ice age CH4 CO2 24900ybp –too early?
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/5796/iceageco2ch4220260yh6.jpg
Entry to ice age CH4 (CO2) 333000ybp
Exit from ice age CH4 34300ybp
http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/8106/iceageco2ch4300350nn4.jpg
Entry to ice age CH4 (CO2) 406000ybp
Exit from ice age CO2 432000ybp
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/4103/iceageco2ch4360450lh8.jpg
Entry to ice age CO2 CH4 489000ybp
Exit from ice age CO2 CH4 531000ybp
http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/9684/iceageco2ch4460550dz0.jpg
Entry to ice age CH4 566000ybp
Exit from ice age CO2 583000ybp
Entry to ice age CH4 CO2 611000ybp
Exit from ice age CO2 CH4 629000ybp
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/9392/iceageco2ch4540650om1.jpg
Entry to ice age CH4 695000ybp
Exit from ice age ———-
Entry to ice age ———
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/634/iceageco2ch4650740et7.jpg
Exit from ice age CO2 740500ybp
http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/4350/iceageco2ch4710750fx5.jpg
Entry to ice age CH4 (CO2)786000ybp
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/8453/iceageco2ch4750800kz4.jpg
Mike
Interesting that methane seems to lead the temperature falls. I didn’t see an example of leading temperature increases.
There are a couple of occasions (up to 500kybp) where ch4 could lead temperature rise –
343kybp occurs 2ky before rise so only a possibility
430kybp occurs 1ky after start of rise.
I’m not sure what the accuracy of the dating is will look it up later.
A thought (not a theory!) co2 causes temp rise. methane released from once frozen tundra. co2 released from sea. Temp rise amplified. methane exhausted. half life in atmosphere 7 – 10 years. methane levels fall. co2 insufficien forcing to maintain temp. temp drops.
Your position on this thread has been that CO2 does not trail temperature change but in fact leads it. I don’t know if this data you refer is typical, representative, or cherry picked. What I do know from digging through these graphs is it doesn’t seem to support your contention. Some are unclear but others clearly show the temperature change leading the so called greenhouse gas increases though there seems to be an attempt through scaling to hide this.
Perhaps there is some major change in dating methodology that may still turn this relation right side up for you, I certainly hope so, I am freezing my backside off. This data however doesn’t seem to do it.
kent (16:53:41) :
The CO2 absorption bands are only partially saturated in the lower atmosphere.
In the cold upper atmosphere there is CO2, but almost no water vapor, so there is still plenty of outgoing radiation at the wavelengths absorbed by CO2.
Chris V,
Your statement is partially incorrect. LW radiation is not trapped at any level of the atmosphere as your post implies.
The sum total of incoming and outgoing LW+SW radiation is essentially zero, minus changes in oceanic heat content. The effect of increased greenhouse gases is to increase the frequency of absorption/re-radiation events, as LW radiation works it’s way back out into space. But rest assured, all of the LW radiation finds its’ way out.
In order to maintain equilibrium of incoming and outgoing radiation, an increase in greenhouse gases requires that atmospheric temperatures increase, or a decrease in greenhouse gases requires that temperatures decrease. That is the greenhouse effect.
This image is a good one to explain how the equilibrium works. Note that outgoing is exactly equal to incoming. 30% of incoming SW radiation is reflected, and the other 70% is returned to space as LW.
http://www.aer.com/images/rc/heattrap_thumbb.gif
I understand the greenhouse effect, thank you. I didn’t imply that LW radiation is “trapped” at a certain level. My point is that all the LW leaving the earth has to go through the upper atmosphere to get out, but up there there is very little water vapor, so the CO2 absorption bands at high altitude are less saturated than they are at low altitudes.
“cold upper atmosphere there is CO2, but almost no water vapor”
I doubt this, CO2 is poorly mixed in AIRS data, heavier than air and freezes like H2O in the “cold upper atmosphere”.
“so there is still plenty of outgoing radiation at the wavelengths absorbed by CO2.”
This does not follow in any case. If only 1% of IR reaches the ground from the Sun why should the reverse direction be different?
CO2 levels in the upper atmosphere are about 320 ppm up to 90 km:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1992/92JD01622.shtml
Water vapor decreases very rapidly with altitude. At 16 km, water vapor concentrations are only 1-2% of their surface concentrations. :
http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/summer2000/02.html
WRT to your second point, most of the energy hitting the earth from the sun is not in the infrared; most of the energy radiating from the earth is.
Chris V this is a reference to an abstract that just says it is a new method and doesn’t give us the actual method or data summary.
I would think a method that claimed uniform levels up to 90 km is a method I’d like to see in detail before bought that. Darn unlikely is the first thought that leaps to mind.
A good post. Thanks Stephen. The comments with links to longer term climate and CO2 data are also particularly interesting. We have far more to fear from an ice age than a repeat of the Eocene. Everything dies in an ice age.
I think that commentators’ well-intentioned fears of the politico-scientific indoctrination of our children may be a little overblown though. The children that I know seem to have very short attention spans, and an acute distaste for hectoring political agenda in adults. When I dutifully took my 13 year old son to see ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, when it first came out here, he sat through it with an expression of execrable boredom, and then when we came out from the movie and I asked him what he had thought of it, he turned to me and through gritted teeth said: “We did that at school three years ago!” It had about as much interest for him at thirteen as a party political broadcast by the Conservative party or an interminable, droning grammar school religious assembly had for me at the same age. So I apologised embarrasedly and we went and had something interesting to eat instead.
Larry,
I tend to agree with your assessment of kids’ attention. In the real world, it is adults who accept the more simplistic “everyone agrees” dogma and in the public policy arena, act on it. More often than not, these individuals do not have a technical background and shy away from independent conclusions.
climate is more stable during warm periods than during cold one’s. That has to do with albedo: the change of land from vegetation to ice sheets and back is a very strong feedback in both directions, which strengthens any small change in orbital caused insolation.
I agree that plant albedo together with water vapour levels from plant transpiration are probably the most important feedbacks.
Still dosn’t explain the warming and cooling cycle though.
I’m a developmental geneticist by trade, so I must admit I don’t understand many of the terms/data used in the more detailed posts. However, what I do understand is that there is no way in hell that CO2 can be anything but a minor player in the warming of the earth. CO2 levels have risen unabated for quite some time now, yet we have not seen a similar increase in temps. The past several years have all been flat. And don’t give me this garbage about needing to measure things over time or 5-10 years is much too short a period to use for predictions. Nonsense. Either it works or it doesn’t. If I increase the cellular level of a particular protein I will probably get a known, consistent response. If I decrease a proteins’ levels I will probably get a known, consistent response. If I get nothing then I can say, without a doubt, that increasing or decreasing the protein’s expression does not affect the cell. If CO2 continually absorbs IR and traps heat, and more CO2 will do the same, how can you explain the fact that temps have NOT gone up to keep pace with CO2? Is this not evidence that there is another, stronger player(s) in heating/cooling the earth?
Good point. And, another “theory” that these climate scientists perpetuate is the idea that there is this thing called the “seasonal cycle”! According to this theory, it should now be getting warmer in Rochester, NY as the Northern hemisphere is heading toward what the proponents of this unproven hypothesis call “summer”. However, a couple weeks ago in Rochester, we had some warm weather but now it is very cold again. In fact, there has been a clear downward trend over the last couple of weeks. The seasonal cycle proponents gives us some garbage about needing to measure things over a longer time period. But, I say, “Nonsense!” Either it works or it doesn’t!
Is this not evidence that there is another, stronger player than the seasonal cycle in heating/cooling the earth?
kent (16:53:41) :
I question the reflectivity of ice. Ice is clear and transparent. It is snow and shatered ice that is reflective. (Think of an ice rink before anyone is on it. Once they rip it up it becomes white and reflective.)
Ice sheets are always covered with snow, at least during cooling and cold(er) periods. Snow has a high reflectivity for visible light and is a very good emitter for IR waves. So it cools much faster and reflects far more sunlight than vegetation. Add to that the water vapor feedback in a warming or cooling climate and you have a strong feedback in both directions, with or without GHGs.