From a University of Copenhagen News Release
First, read a primer on the Faint Sun Paradox here Normally, I wouldn’t use Wiki, but the article does include a reference to Nir Shaviv.
Lot’s of “mays and ifs” in this one. Our understanding is by proxy. In this article, unfortunately, life is made to be the culprit of the ice ages. Note the standard caveat at the end. Here is another primer, on Carbonyl Sulphide. Interestingly that primer says that:
This compound is found to catalyze the formation of peptides from amino acids. This finding is an extension of the Miller-Urey experiment and it is suggested that carbonyl sulfide played a significant role in the origin of life.
On the plus side, CO2 isn’t vilified here. – Anthony
The greenhouse gas that saved the world
Chemistry researchers uncover why the archean world was not frozen solid
When Planet Earth was just cooling down from its fiery creation, the sun was faint and young. So faint that it should not have been able to keep the oceans of earth from freezing. But fortunately for the creation of life, water was kept liquid on our young planet. For years scientists have debated what could have kept earth warm enough to prevent the oceans from freezing solid. Now a team of researchers from Tokyo Institute of Technology and University of Copenhagen’s Department of Chemistry have coaxed an explanation out of ancient rocks, as reported in this week’s issue of PNAS
A perfect greenhouse gas
– “The young sun was approximately 30 percent weaker than it is now, and the only way to prevent earth from turning into a massive snowball was a healthy helping of greenhouse gas,” Associate Professor Matthew S. Johnson of the Department of Chemistry explains. And he has found the most likely candidate for an archean atmospheric blanket. Carbonyl Sulphide: A product of the sulphur disgorged during millennia of volcanic activity.
– “Carbonyl Sulphide is and was the perfect greenhouse gas. Much better than Carbon Dioxide. We estimate that a blanket of Carbonyl Sulphide would have provided about 30 percent extra energy to the surface of the planet. And that would have compensated for what was lacking from the sun”, says Professor Johnson.
Strange distribution
To discover what could have helped the faint young sun warm early earth, Professor Johnson and his colleagues in Tokyo examined the ratio of sulphur isotopes in ancient rocks. And what they saw was a strange signal; A mix of isotopes that couldn’t very well have come from geological processes.
– “There is really no process in the rocky mantle of earth that would explain this distribution of isotopes. You would need something happening in the atmosphere,” says Johnson. The question was what. Painstaking experimentation helped them find a likely atmospheric process. By irradiating sulphur dioxide with different wavelengths of sunlight, they observed that sunlight passing through Carbonyl Sulphide gave them the wavelengths that produced the weird isotope mix.
– “Shielding by Carbonyl Sulphide is really a pretty obvious candidate once you think about it, but until we looked, everyone had missed it,” says Professor Johnson, and he continues.
– “What we found is really an archaic analogue to the current ozone layer. A layer that protects us from ultraviolet radiation. But unlike ozone, Carbonyl Sulphide would also have kept the planet warm. The only problem is: It didn’t stay warm”.
Life caused ice-age
As life emerged on earth it produced increasing amounts of oxygen. With an increasingly oxidizing atmosphere, the sulphur emitted by volcanoes was no longer converted to Carbonyl Sulphide. Instead it got converted to sulphate aerosols: A powerful climate coolant. Johnson and his co-workers created a Computer model of the ancient atmosphere. And the models in conjunction with laboratory experiments suggest that the fall in levels of Carbonyl Sulphide and rise of sulphate aerosols taken together would have been responsible for creating snowball earth, the planetwide ice-age hypothesised to have taken place near the end of the Archean eon 2500 million years ago. And the implications to Johnson are alarming:
– “Our research indicates that the distribution and composition of atmospheric gasses swung the planet from a state of life supporting warmth to a planet-wide ice-age spanning millions of years. I can think of no better reason to be extremely cautious about the amounts of greenhouse gasses we are currently emitting to the atmosphere”.
From a University of Copenhagen News Release
h/t to Leif Svalgaard
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here and I thought the early Earth had a totally different atmosphere from that of modern Earth – one with substantial methane, probably lots of co2, and no oxygen. Over time the methane broke up, the co2 was mostly captured by biological and nonbiological processes and the bugs started churning out o2 bigtime.
We are now seeing how bad science can infect other disciplines. We now have greenhouse gasses being used to explain every climate fluctuation in all of geological history.
I find it difficult to connect all the icehouse planet stuff using the very few outcrops of rocks that are found with suitable lithologies (diamictites). It makes far more sense to me that proterozoic cratons would from time to time be rafted over the poles and then formed glaciers.
Explaining Archean planetary processes using extremely altered or metamorphosed rocks is just a bit too dodgey. I have seen 700 Ma old diamictites in the Canadian Rockies and they are much less altered than Archean ones. That being the case, it still takes a pretty good eye and an even better imagination to go from the outcrops I mapped to a glacier, let alone an icesheet or an iceworld.
Somtimes we have to keep in mind that the words of Mark Twain, who said “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. “
So according to this paper the concentration of carbonyl sulfide must have gone up and down throughout ages since we went from warm to cold to warm to cold on and off and on and of… at nauseam!!! hmmmm, they don’t show this though!
deadwood (15:55:38) : Geologists have generally been the first to stand up and object to greenhouse “solutions” to the faint young sun paradox as not supported by the geological record-the concentrations of gases or the particular gases which would have particular effects, just don’t seem like they could have been present in the ancient atmosphere to the degree called for. I mean, bars and bars of CO2? That doesn’t make sense, but that was one of the proposed solutions to the paradox.
And speaking of Twain, I love that quote-here’s the whole context:
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b370/gatemaster99/twain.png
Hr. Dr. Urey was my lecturer in freshman chemistry at UChicago in 1965. He was out of touch with the student body at the time, though a Nobel Laureate… maybe something like Hr. Dr. Gore?; I was unqualified at the time to say whether he was out of touch with reality. Thanks for the new insights.
im a bit of a believer in the position of the continents and their effect on ocean circulation/hydrological systems and a negative albedo feedback being one of the main contributors to ice ages, snowball earth included… Not to say they are the only factors, but id consider this current ice age as kinda proof. With interglacials as proof of orbital influences. But end of the day, it is really a bit of a guessing game when its that far in the past…
Deadwood. Gotta love Mark Twain. I believe he also said ” I can quit smoking anytime i want. I have. A hundred times. “
That would be a perfect…venusian atmosphere, the perfect environment where to send all those who believe in green house gases.
That would be a solvent for all organics. Things were different in our earth.
I think Shaviv exaggerated his imagination this time. I believed his theory of the solar system diving in and out of the milky way like a dolphin…until it was recently discovered that we are the passengers of Scorpio nebula which is in angle with respect to the milky way.
This is the script of a next movie but nothing to do with our world possible chemistry. (we know what the results aren because we are one of them).
Sorry, but this concoction it is not “kosher”.
srchuck (16:42:27) : Gore doesn’t have a doctorate. He flunked out of Divinity School, but he doesn’t get to call himself Doctor.
MikeE (16:43:44) : “and a negative albedo feedback being one of the main contributors to ice ages, snowball earth included…”
WHAT??? You mean positive ice albedo feedback right?
Nogw (17:03:06) : You apparently have no clue what Shaviv’s idea was. There is no “diving in and out of the milky way like a dolphin” involved at all.
And “That would be a perfect…venusian atmosphere, the perfect environment where to send all those who believe in green house gases.”
That’s openly hostile, should be snipped, and also, you are painting with a rather broad brush that includes pretty much everybody.
timetochooseagain (17:37:51) :
Lol, yes i was! totally missed it in my proof read (embarrassed face 0-: )
MikeE (17:50:25) : No worries, I’d bet the total albedo feedback, including clouds, is negative anyway. 🙂
I’ve been looking for albedo changes in Earth’s history and I have not found a single estimate for Earth’s albedo during the last ice age or at any time in the past. Not one. I’m prepare to reconstruct it but I would like to have something in the literature to back that up.
The ice-albedo feedback is mentioned (something like 1 million times) but nobody has ever put a number to it that I can find.
Any links that you have run across? Don’t search for it unless you have a lot of free time – just pass on something you have seen before.
It doesn’t take much of a change in albedo to change the temperature by large amounts. Even a change from 0.298 today to 0.35 during the last glacial maximum would keep the CO2 sensitivity number at a low 1.5C per doubling.
This looks like a “publish or perish” paper to me. Nothing can be proved or disproved. Probably good for several more follow-ups.
Bill Illis (18:35:44) : “The ice-albedo feedback is mentioned (something like 1 million times) but nobody has ever put a number to it that I can find.”
Nice point, I too have often thought that the arguments for it are far too qualitative, and even though obvious, don’t answer the important question “how big is it”. Well, Jimmy has a start:
http://junkscience.com/Greenhouse/hansenFigure3.jpg
Notice a couple things though. 1. It’s odd to call ice sheets a “forcing” 2. There is no milankovitch effect-so what started the warming before any of Hansen’s variable changed??? He gets away with this by ignoring the fact that milankovitch forcings are spatially heterogeneous and small on average-but they act to alter equator to pole heat fluxes, a fact which he totally ignores, which leads to the erroneous conclusion that negative feedback can’t allow glaciations. But the very fact that milankovitch effects had to initiate the warm invalidates the assumption that they are negligible and average out!!! 3. Several other questionable assumptions…
“CO2 sensitivity number at a low 1.5C per doubling.” Closer, but it’s more like half that. 😉
Thanks timetochooseagain.
Hansen’s number (which is not explained anywhere that I have found) seems much too low to me. This is all generated by a climate model which is based on CO2 doubling at 3.0C.
All those glaciers and all that sea ice and all that desert only changes the albedo by 3%? Glaciers down to Chicago and sea ice year-round down to New York versus no glaciers in North America and sea ice in the winter down to Newfoundland only changes the albedo by 3%? That cannot be right.
The Albedo of snow-covered glaciers and sea ice is 0.7 versus the current average albedo for these latitudes of about 0.4
You miss the paradox.As solar luminosity increases the earth temperature has fallen
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh133/mataraka/faintearthparadox.jpg
Sorry to be off topic, but does anyone have data files for Mauna Loa Atmospheric Transmission? I can find the dang.png everywhere, but not the actual data to play with.
Much appreciated!
Ed
So they have come up with a theory that might explain a hypothesis.
Juraj V. (10:37:53) : I have doubts about this whole GHE/33K alchemy. This paper shows, that Earth and other planets in Sun system enjoy surface temperatures equal to density of their atmosphere and amount of Sun energy reaching it, and it does not matter which gases are their atmospheres composed of…
Now here’s a new idea. Suppose there was lots more atmosphere originally. Would that not support giant life-forms a lot more easily? Would not the atmosphere condition be much more like the present oceans which can support the vast life-forms of whales? What could drive the atmosphere off, in this case? Moon ejection or similar (sudden)? Solar wind (gradual)?
Bill Illis (18:35:44) : I’ve been looking for albedo changes in Earth’s history
Have a look at this brilliant piece of work – maybe it can already help you, or maybe George White can answer questions. And BTW I think this piece deserves a post here, with its title “CO2 Forcing: Fact or Fiction” and its stunning (IMHO) use of ice core evidence.
Carbon Monoxide is another greenhouse gas to add to the mix!
This could also explain why Venus went into runaway warming: a bit too hot for life at the start, then as the sun’s output increased…
Bill Illis (18:35:44) :
I’ve been looking for albedo changes in Earth’s history and I have not found a single estimate for Earth’s albedo during the last ice age or at any time in the past. Not one. I’m prepare to reconstruct it but I would like to have something in the literature to back that up.
The ice-albedo feedback is mentioned (something like 1 million times) but nobody has ever put a number to it that I can find.
—
Further, Bill, the ice-albedo “positive feedback” with increasing temperature is falsified by the years 2006 (medium-to-average sea ice loss per AMSRE), to 2007 (significant area reduction, lowest recorded) to 2008 (recovering – despite temperatures being the same) to 2009 (highest ever graphed in April and May, now sea ice extents back to 2005, 2004 levels.)
If albedo feedback were true, we would not see the recovery.
Also, the relationship between temperature and sea ice is shown to be false: temp’s have NOT changed significantly from 2004-2005, but each summer we see very large sea ice movement (due to winds changing) and every year, a sea ice re-freezing.
The notion that we can reconstruct the earth’s climate and other environmental issues, including a detailed composition of a several billion year old atmosphere; sufficiently accurately to explain why the planet then evolved as it (presumably) did; is pretty naive; when you consider, that we have a greatly detailed composition of our present atmosphere; yet we are quite unable to explain the present day climate or what will happen next.
But it is one way to consume research grant money.
“Now here’s a new idea. Suppose there was lots more atmosphere originally.”
During the Hadean and early Archaean ages, there quite possibly was. I’ve seen estimates of Hadean atmospheric pressure around 1-12 bar. But by the mid-Archaean all the estimates seem to have dropped to close to present atmospheric pressure. And it certainly seems to be by the time life and free oxygen came along. But I don’t know how they know. I think it could be one of those “controversial” areas of knowledge.
“This could also explain why Venus went into runaway warming…”
Venus isn’t in runaway warming. It simply has a larger atmosphere.
So, I’ve reconstructed the Earth’s albedo during the last glacial maximum and it comes out to 0.321 versus 0.298 today (Hansen would have used something like 0.307).
This estimate is based on the maps of glaciers and sea ice at the last glacial max. versus the latitudal contribution of these areas to global albedo – 80N for example is 0.8% of the Earth’s surface and receives less than half of the solar energy of areas at the equator so 80N only contributes 0.4% to global albedo and so on.
That change in albedo would be enough to drop temperatures at the last glacial maximum by -3.6C from today with the drop in CO2 to 180 ppm contributing another -1.1C (assuming 1.5C per doubling) (and using the stefan boltzmann equations properly which Hansen clearly has not done).
Surprising the impacts are not far off of Hansen’s net numbers but he is using 0.75C per watt which means he is just making up the forcing numbers to balance off to the temp C response per watt he wants to use – he used these forcing to say he “nailed” the 0.75C per watt when it is clear he started with that assumption and just made up the other numbers – interesting).
So let’s say my 0.321 albedo is right = 1366*(1-0.321)/4 = 231 watts/metre^2 or -9.0 watts * 0.75C per watt = -6.75C (in other words at some point in time, Hansen locked himself into the 0.75C and he can’t get out now).
Any comments?