Research claim: dropping CO2 caused formation of Antarctic ice cap

While I don’t believe (I’m Christian) in the geologic timescale of billions of years this does put a rather big dent in the idea that the world has never been warmer and CO2 levels are the highest they’ve ever been. Let the factories continue to output CO2 then, by the time we reach 760 PPM we will actually have green technology worthy of replacing coal and oil.
Seriously though, does that mean that man is to blame for the MWP and the Romans and early Chinese culture contributed enough CO2 to the Earth’s atmosphere to create the Roman Warm Period. Still based on an idea that CO2 is a more potent greenhouse gas at the current level then it actually is really.

I had to double check my calendar – no, it’s definitely not April 1st.

Interesting. 760ppm of c02 led to a freeze over tipping point. Not a global warming scenario exactly, given such a high level of potent heat trpping gas

Looks like we’re only half way there to getting CO2 levels back to their normal pre-Eocene levels. With the icecaps melted think of the vast expanses of land available for cultivation and settlement on Greenland and Antartica as well as the improvement in climate for northern Canada, Europe and Siberia.
Can anyone estimate with whether the addition of these lands will offset those that get flooded due to the sea level rise?
I’m not sure wiping out Wall Street and Washington DC would necessarily be a bad thing. We could make the capital of the USA Topeka, KS. It would make it easier for everyone in the USA to attend protest marches there and the politicians would save on Jet fuel getting to work.
Thanks
William

It will be interesting to study this paper to see which came first – the chicken or the egg.
In other words – did the drop in temperature cause the CO2 to drop or did the drop in CO2 cause the temperature to drop.

Can any geologists out there confirm that “geologists have long speculated that the formation of the Antarctic ice-cap was caused by a gradually diminishing natural greenhouse effect”.
It is comforting, however, to know that there is an upper tipping point for CO2 at 760ppm, after which global warming will be replaced by global cooling!

John G, your post is related to my question.
How good of resolution and accuracy do they have in the CO2 dates? How good of resolution and accuracy do they have in the dates of ice formation in Antarctica?
Do we really know that the CO2 drop caused the cooling rather than the other way around?

The tipping point was lack of sunspots but the researchers were unable to find proxy fossils to match the criteria so instead went for CO2.

This is completely off topic, so I apologise in advance. I am a 110% sceptic on the AGW and climate change stuff. I broadly understand the science and the nonsense that’s being put out and the truth that’s being suppressed. So for me, something has to be wrong with it all. But, a non-scientist asked ‘So who benefits from the lies?’ My answer seems so multi-headed; – green religion, scientists ensuring grants, politicians tuning into public opinion to get re-elected, capitalists devising trading schemes etc etc. And is not very convincing to the non-scientist. Has anyone put together a coherent history/framework of how this came about and just who benefits and to what end and extent? I’d appreciate a link or other pointer. Thanks.
Mike A UK

As Anthony commented in the opening paragraph, if the antarctic ice-cap is growing, does this mean that we can expect sea levels to drop globally?

This study “confirms” that formation of the ice cap was caused by declining CO2?
Really? Confirms?
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc?
Where have I heard that before?

Correlation is not causation…… [snip]:
“Our study is the first to provide a direct link between the establishment of an ice sheet on Antarctica and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and therefore confirms the relationship between carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and global climate.”
[Followed by statement of disapproval, but snipped. ~ Evan]

I can only assume that Nature now is in editorial denial over plate tectonics.
This article is absolute BS and should never have gotten past the gatekeeper. That it did says more about the standards of Nature that I wish to put in print.

The first reponse sort of sums it very well:
If the Antarctic land mass was migrating to the nether southern regions, and losing so much heat, would that not be at least a strong part of why the ice sheets formed?
The truly negative impact of CO2 seems to be its ability to lower reasoning skills in its believers.
These fossils, I am sure, do not show if the ancient land mass moved a great floating ice cap system, does it?

Mike A UK (14:19:54) : You asked for:
coherent history/framework of how this came about
Try this: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/EDBLICKRANT.pdf

“unique set of samples” … “a new analytical technique that I developed” … “we have, for the first time, been able to reconstruct” ….
déjà vu, isn’t it?
“The new findings will add to the debate around rising CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere”
there is a debate? science not settled?

I keep reading how complicated climate science is, but it seems quite simple, based on their own statements…greenhouse gases, especially CO2 is reponsible for every climate event, change, effect, disaster, etc. How complicated is that? /sar

All they are promoting is the infantile notion that low CO2 levels represent “cold” and high “CO2” levels represent heat. It’s childish AGW propaganda.
Unbelievable that this garbage is written by grown up scientists…!

“Our study is the first to provide a direct link between the establishment of an ice sheet on Antarctica and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and therefore confirms the relationship between carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and global climate.”
Repeat after me. Association is not causation. Relation is not causation.

As a professional exploration geologist, I can safely state that we have no idea what causes ice ages. They seem to be associated with mass species extinctions but this paper seems to good too be true, and it took a new analytic technique to verify the AGW thesis as well – this smacks of producing data to support the brief.
Try this in the mining business – paraphrasing it “we have shown deposit ABC to now be economic as the result of a new analytical technique”. Same old moose pasture but dressed up differently.
And who is going to get funding to replicate their work – and could take years to do, so it’s another timely announcement, too timely me thinks.

Smokey (15:50:27) :
There is no verifiable “direct link”, either. There is, however, a direct link between articles like this and financial grants.
Inflammation equals financialization? Good one.

Haven’t any of the authors or reviewers of this deluded paper looked at the relationship between CO2 and temperature in the Antarctic ice cores? As temperatures decrease, the CO2 stays high for centuries before dropping, a delay of about 2,000 years. There is no way that technique used in the rocks has anywhere near a 2,000 year resolution. One just can’t date old rocks to such a precise level. Based on the Pleistocene sequence of events the most likely scenario is that as it got colder, CO2 was absorbed by the cooling oceans.

The consensus pre-global warming hysteria was that the reason Antarctica got colder was primarily its growing isolation for other continents, which allowed ocean currents to circulate around it rather than up toward the tropics. Antarctica was initially connected to both Australia and South America, which meant that the currents were forced up around the equator. Australia broke away first. I don’t recall the exact timing, but it was after the die-off of the dinosaurs. Antarctica apparently got somewhat colder after Australia broke away, but the glaciers didn’t really start heading for continental scale until the connection to South America was broken around 20-25 million years ago. At that point the ocean currents could flow around Antarctica without heading to the tropics and collecting heat before coming back down.
Antarctica actually had a collection of land mammals for quite some time. Based on very limited fossils they were basically cold country versions of the old island South America mammals. Antarctic fossils have been found of Marsupials, the group that includes armadillos and sloths, and some now-extinct South American hoofed animals. They also apparently included very large flightless carnivorous birds.
I get the feeling that the Global Warming types are stomping in sciences they don’t understand enough that eventually there is going to be a backlash. Let’s see: stomp around in Paleontology. Yep, the chronology of Antarctic glaciers gets redone to fit the theory. Yep, the history of the Medieval period has to be revised to get rid of the warm period and the little ice age. Yep, economic predictions have to be reinvented so we can tell you how much CO2 the world will be emitting a hundred years from now. Yep, statistics has to be reinvented so that dirty, high uncertainty data can fuel a degree of certainty high enough to justify tossing away hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure.
If you look at the reactions of the fields these guys are tromping around in closely you’ll see quiet indirect, I don’t want to get attacked by a bunch of global warming nutballs, expressions of what is basically contempt from a lot of them, mixed with attempts to cut off a slice of the global warming grant pie for the fields involved.

Why did they make their research in Africa, they should have gone to antarctica!
Next time send them to the geographical south pole to dig for fossiles!

I am intrigued as to what is so special about the microfaunal samples across the Eoc-Oligo boundary in this particular well compared to those recovered from the many thousands of microfaunally sampled wells worldwide penetrating the same, let alone outcrop exposures. .

IIRC, Antarctic ice cores already document a correlation (with time lag) between temperature proxies and carbon dioxide. This work apparently extends the correlation to a time with no antarctic ice cap. So this would seem to be more of an expansion of current knowledge than a breakthrough.

The new findings will add to the debate around rising CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere as the world’s attention turns to the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen which opens later this year.
[1] The “debate” referred too, is only over how much CO2 emissions needs to be cut back…
[2] The primary reason for the paper is explicitly described above – the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen.
As Bill points out earlier – CO2 is all over the place while Antartica has ice.
However, whenever Antartica is over the south pole (by itself) it’s ice bound.

Someone once told me, that Occam’s razor was very good for these kinds of circumstances. I take continental drift for 1000.

William (13:59:06) :
Looks like we’re only half way there to getting CO2 levels back to their normal pre-Eocene levels. With the icecaps melted think of the vast expanses of land available for cultivation and settlement on Greenland and Antartica as well as the improvement in climate for northern Canada, Europe and Siberia.
Can anyone estimate with whether the addition of these lands will offset those that get flooded due to the sea level rise?

I did a very simpleminded calculation some months ago. Just from the thickness of the ice, area of the continents, and area of ocean, one gets 70 metres if I didn’t make a slip-up. It is safe to say that is an absoloute upper limit. I didn’t take into account the extra water needed to flood the land areas inundated (which would be significant and not available for sea level rise), nor more difficult effects like land area rebound or sinking of ocean floor etc. But it gives an ‘outer envelope’ estimate of the worst that could possibly happen. And of course, you get a continent and a huge island in return.

RickA (14:03:15) :
Go look at Mars polar caps.
It is there that you will find the answer.
Under the C02 snow of Mars Northern Polar Cap is predominately water ice (H20).
When Earth gets cold enough, we will have CO2 snow in Antarctica.
The people going to Copenhagen will never be satisifed with less than the latest gross exaggerations to prop up thier claim of saving the Planet. They have no such ambition other than to rule the world.
Some things do not change.

Let me squeeze in a little scientific method here, as gauche as that may be. Decreasing CO2 didn’t cause ice caps to form. It is a coincidence. Why? Because CO2 does not drive temp. Ice caps form not because of absence of CO2. They form because of cooler temperatures. Tectonics aside, whatever caused the temps to drop, CO2 dropped afterward, as it always does. And then the caps formed, more realistically, as causality from whatever caused the Earth to cool. CO2 does not drive cooling or heating. Never has, never will. We get momentary spikes in CO2 that coincide with cooling. They’re called volcanic eruptions. One decent blow-up puts as much CO2 in the air as all of man’s contribution to date. What happens? The earth cools, the “nuclear winter” effect, from aerosols in the atmosphere and CO2 is powerless to stop it. Anyone remember building volcano experiments in the 8th grade?

There have been good questions raised about the methodology of this paper here. Having seen many such challenges raised against papers from the pro-AGW side, I no longer take their research seriously. Its like when they say “this summer will be among the hottest on record,” “the polar bears will be extinct in 50 years,” “all the polar ice will be gone in 20 years,” I now just assume anything they say is not objective science but “fudged” in some way to support their agenda. Given their track record, it is imprudent to believe that any “science” produced by them is objective, truthful, or worth reading or spending any time thinking about.

Hows does declining co2 levels recorded in a bore in Africa prove the antartic ice mass formed due to falling co2 levels?!? Did I miss something???
There is no mention here of what global temperatures were doing whatsoever and no proof of causation!
If the earth was cooling (for whatever reason), then co2 levels would also be falling, as the colder sea would absorb it from the atmosphere, and with cooling comes ice. Sounds like they are putting the cart before the horse and ignoring inconvenient little things like global temperature, millankovitch cycles, continental drift etc…
It should never have been published with the assumptions about antarctic ice, what has happened to the peer review process???? Do we no longer need to provide evidence so long as a paper mentions ice melting or claims its “worse than we thought”!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090420121335.htm
1: The Earth’s orbit around the sun is not completely circular, but slightly elliptical. The orbit is ‘elastic’ and contracts and expands in a cycle of 100.000 years. And the closer we are to the Sun, the more solar radiation and the more heat we receive.
2: The Earth’s axis has a tilt in relation to the Sun and that is why we have summer and winter. But the tilt is not constant, it swings between 22 degrees and 24 degrees, and the greater the tilt, the greater the difference between summer and winter. This cycle takes 40.000 years.
3: The Earth rotates around on its axis like a top – this gives day and night. But due to the tilt of the Earth and the elliptical orbit the direction changes with a cycle of 20.000 years. This results in varation in to whether the Earth is nearest the Sun during the summer or during the winter.
Above is the understanding of climate forcings today. These forcings are some of the forcings working on the climate through millions of years.
http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2009/09/has_the_solar_minimum_countera.html
Right now its the artic that is the first serious symptom showing up. As goes the artic so goes the rest of the world to follow later for more serious symptoms.
The four drivers………
1. Volcanic aerosols- cooling influence
2. El Nino- warming influence
3. Greenhouse gases- warming influence
4. Solar cycle- variable influence.
The first 3 describe #4 above. These all apply to today and the atmosphere of the past.

Of course, it’s only coincidence that all this happened just after Antarctica separated from Australia and South America in the final stages of the breakup of Gondwana. The ice cap started forming just after Antarctica moved south of the Antarctic Circle, but it was the drop in CO2 that caused the ice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondwana#Cenozoic
Looks like somebody had better clean up the Wikipedia article.

we have, for the first time, been able to reconstruct the concentration of CO2 across the Eocene-Oligocene boundary – the time period about 33.5 million years ago when ice sheets first started to grow on Eastern Antarctica. “
Professor Paul Pearson from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, who led the mission to the remote East Africa village of Stakishari said: “About 34 million years ago the Earth experienced a mysterious cooling trend. Glaciers and small ice sheets developed in Antarctica, sea levels fell and temperate forests began to displace tropical-type vegetation in many areas.
“The period culminated in the rapid development of a continental-scale ice sheet on Antarctica, which has been there ever since. We therefore set out to establish whether there was a substantial decline in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels as the Antarctic ice sheet began to grow.”
Like much in the Earth’s climate, what is cause? and what is effect?, is not clear.
We know atmospheric CO2 levels decline as the climate cools due to greater soluability in water. Whether declining CO2 was a contributing cause of the formation of the Antarctic icecap is unclear. More likely, declining CO2 levels acted as a weak positive feedback as the climate cooled.
The most important feedback would have been the ice accumulation itself. Once the icesheet started to form, the Earth’s climate would have rapidly cooled.
In fact, it’s something of a mystery how we avoid runaway cooling and ending up with a snowball Earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_earth

Well, at least there is an admission here that Earth’s climate does change, even dramatically sometimes, without mankind’s doings – oops, I meant to say personkind’s doings. Or are they going to go drill another hole somewhere in Africa and thereby discover that there was a huge preindustrial population ‘way back then, and all the people froze during a severe tropical winter? Maybe they all stopped breathing, and then Antarctica froze over? Or are they confusing cause and effect once again?

grandpa boris (17:11:04) :
William, let’s ignore for the moment the unlikely outcome of the “global melt”. If the ice shields of Greenland and Antarctica melt, what will be exposed is not usable land, but the base rock scoured clean. It will take tens of thousands of years for that rock to become fertile soil
If we could collect, compost, and stockpile all the bovine excrement being put out by the climate alarmist propagandists, when the ice disappears from Greenland and Antarctica, we ought to to have sufficient quantities of nice organic topsoil to cover both places to a depth that matches preColonial Iowa.

As a process engineer, let me state that any comparison to any period when Antarctica was not located at the south pole is 100% irrelevant.

The problem I have with research of this type is in the summary or conclusion. Where is the link , the casaulity, between “declining” CO2 and the formation of the Antarctic?
Have our researchers really gotten to the point where they won’t conclusively state a position that isn’t linked to CAGW, or isn’t a predetermined outcome?

Adam from Kansas says:

While I don’t believe (I’m Christian) in the geologic timescale of billions of years this does put a rather big dent in the idea that the world has never been warmer and CO2 levels are the highest they’ve ever been.

And, whose idea is this exactly? It is certainly not the idea of scientists who know very well that CO2 levels have been higher and the earth’s temperature warmer in the past. However, CO2 levels are at the highest they’ve been in at least 750,000 years (as ice core data show) and likely the highest in millions of years which means, among other things, that homo sapiens were not around to experience those previous higher CO2 levels. (And, by the way, just for the record, being a Christian does not preclude accepting the modern science of geology and even biology…In fact, the Catholic Church accepts it.)
J.H. Folsom says:

Now assuming that’s causal, which the tone of the Nature article leans toward ( as for the research paper, I couldn’t comment ), it actually disproves the need for any climate change legislation to prevent the ice caps dissapearing, as we’d have to roughly double output to get the greenhouse effect to above Antarctic forming, and it certainly disproves the need to cut emissions to accomplish the same thing.

It does nothing of the sort. We certainly have more than enough coal to raise CO2 levels to 760ppm and beyond. Furthermore, what we are apparently talking about is the CO2 level when ice sheets first formed. If ice sheets across all of Antarctica were to completely melt then sea level rise would be something like 70 m, which needless to say, is a much larger sea level rise than anybody has been contemplating (because noone has been expecting the East Antarctic ice sheet to melt) and would be much more than a slight problem!
In fact, it seems rather frightening that 760ppm is the level at which this occurs…and one can only hope that there is hysteresis in the system (which is quite possible because of ice-albedo effects) so that it is not completely reversible and it will take a higher level than 760 ppm of CO2 to melt the entire Antarctic ice sheet. Otherwise, frankly, we are pretty much screwed!

Berry R
Best post I’ve ever seen on here …

“If the ice shields of Greenland and Antarctica melt, what will be exposed is not usable land, but the base rock scoured clean.”
And due to the rock of Greenland being lower in the center than the edges, there will be a very large lake. I don’t remember the current topography of Antarctica.

Scott Mandia (19:54:42) :

The 0.7 degree C warming since 1880 has already caused many problems, especially to ecosystems.

Already caused many problems? Like what?

A 2 degree warming would be quite catastrophic in many ways.

And beneficial in equally indeterminable ways.

And yes, I know about the CO2 saturation effect.

Yet choose to ignore it.

I did a little more digging on the date the Drake passage opened and when widespread, as opposed to mountain glaciers started in Antarctica. If there is consensus on the dates of either of those things it must be fairly recent. The slide-show/animation that someone linked to earlier shows the passage developing exactly at 33 million years ago. If true, that makes linking the glaciers to falling CO2 even more problematic than the date I had read earlier (26 million years ago).
There was also apparently a cluster of asteroid or cometary impacts at about this time, and apparently some geologists link the climate changes around the Eocene/Oligocene boundary (which is geologist-talk for this time period) at least partly to those impacts.

Peter Plail (14:08:41) :
Can any geologists out there confirm that “geologists have long speculated that the formation of the Antarctic ice-cap was caused by a gradually diminishing natural greenhouse effect”.
I can’t speak for all geologists but I can say that most geologists are skeptics. So much so that Real Climate has a thread devoted to geologists:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/08/are-geologists-different/
But I digress. It seems the simplest answer is that [CO2] follows its solubility equation, and so as Antarctica cooled, CO2 would be sequestered and the concentration would fall. No mystery here.
This study reminds me of the recent discoveries of ancient trees in glacial moraines. The news media has been reporting this as evidence of dangerous and unprecedented warming. My geologist and forestry colleagues instead ask: why was it so warm so long ago that forests grew where today there is only alpine tundra?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBC-4V2PSYN-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1011873521&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=c8cdbd7496416e73e46941bd4b3425b6
http://web.unbc.ca/~menounos/www/2008GL033172.pdf
If you follow the links you will see that thousands of years ago there were forests where today there is alpine tundra and/or alpine glaciers. The question for me is not why is so warm today, but rather why was it so warm so long ago that there were forests where today trees cannot grow? As for Antarctica, we know it cooled, but CO2 was not likely the cause. In fact there may have been a warm spell recently where CO2 would have been the same as today:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_v129/ai_4164401/
As to the causes of the warmings and coolings I can say I favour a solar cause, but Leif has convincing arguments that this may not be the case. Perhaps the Earth has major climate oscillations that we have not even begun to understand, or maybe the sun has some tricks up its sleeve that we have not yet seen. I won’t speculate, but I can say the science is never settled.

Quote “Can any geologists out there confirm that “geologists have long speculated that the formation of the Antarctic ice-cap was caused by a gradually diminishing natural greenhouse effect”.
There sure has been no such speculation, and I did my first geology degree in the 60’s. The article is sheer idiocy, not even a first year geology student would write that – not if he hoped to get a passing grade. Asfor the drilling in this “special place” – already noted above that there are many outcrops of the boundary exposed all over the world – why drill?.
Quote. “Who the heck wants to run seismic surveys in 70 below or worse.”
Plenty, and I mean plenty of geologists who would scramble over each other for the Antarctic Studies programmes run each Summer. I personally supervised one explosives training course run specifically to qualify a technician for a 1973 seismic survey in Antarctica. Full disclosure – I did not make the cut to get to Antarctica.

grandpa boris (17:11:04) :
“what will be exposed is not usable land, but the base rock scoured clean. It will take tens of thousands of years for that rock to become fertile soil. ”
I recommend you to visit e. g. the Canadian prairies, the Upper Midwest, New England, Ireland, Northern England, Northern Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Northern Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
Do those areas look like “base rock scoured clean”? They were all covered by ice 10-15,000 years ago. For your information vegetation colonize de-glaciated areas extremely quickly.
The deglaciated soils are very rich in minerals and much of the Worlds premier farmland is in such areas (the rest are mostly on loess soils, which are windblown glacial dust). It would be impossible to feed 6 billion people in a World that had not recently been through a glacial period.

Scott Mandia said
@ Smokey (15:44:54) :
” The greenhouse effect from natural greenhouse gas concentrations prior to the Industrial Revolution has kept the Earth’s surface about 33 degrees C warmer… Pre-Industrial Revolution CO2 levels ranged between 190 ppm and 300 ppm. Today they are rapidly approaching 400 ppm. Because levels of carbon dioxide are well above natural levels, it should not be hard to see how these increases could cause temperatures to rise at least a few degrees C in the future. The 0.7 degree C warming since 1880 has already caused many problems, especially to ecosystems. A 2 degree warming would be quite catastrophic in many ways…”
Scott, I much enjoy your contributions here as I do Joel Shore’s.
There has been much debate about this co2 level on other threads over the last few days, so my apologies to anyone who has read my similar comments elsewhere.
Firstly, the .7C warming since 1880 is reliant on James Hansens calculations which commence from a period immediately following the end of the LIA. This gives us the unsurprising news that temperatures have risen since the end of the LIA. You will have read Hansens paper and know the paucity of data points and the unreliabilty of many of them back to 1880, as observed by G S Callendar when he was looking at the same information prior to his thesis on co2 back in 1938.
Lets not even get into a debate on the value of a Global temperature in the first place 🙂
Of course, if the data line could be extrapolated back to the Roman optimum the current temperatures could be seen in their proper context as being nothing out of the ordinary.
However, my main point is to challenge the assumption that the ice cores are right and the pre 1957 co2 measurements are wrong.
Charles Keeling was a complete amateur at climate science when he formulated his readings in 1957, yet we blithely overturn and ignore the some 130 years of increasingly accurate co2 measurements prior to that date, many made by famous scientists, starting with Saussure in 1830.
Keeling had been greatly influenced by G S Callendar and his theory, and as a novice acepted at the time that the start point of 280ppm was correct. However, in later life he acknowedged that the old readings were more accurate than he had at first believed. (incidentally GS Callendar backpedalled on his beliefs late in life)
The following link from WUWT is worth reading for its own sake ( the comment from ‘Tony Edwards’; is particularly good) it links to a talk by Keeling in 1993, reproduced in small part here (the full link is at the bottom of Mr Edwards post). There is also reference elsewhere in the blog to a Victorian book in which CO2 measurements were recorded. (also below) They knew about the means to take measurements and specifically referred to such things as avoiding gas flames or lack of mixing.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/25/beck-on-co2-oceans-are-the-dominant-co2-store/
From Charles Keeling;
“In 1804, Theodore de Saussure showed that water was also an essential chemical in photosynthesis, combining with carbon to make actual living matter. He also demonstrated more clearly than Ingen-Housz that the carbon involved in plant growth came from the air. Curious about the carbon dioxide in the air, he made the first detailed measurements of its concentration there, measuring it near Geneva, Switzerland, under different wind conditions, different hours of the day and different months of the year. The mean value that he found was roughly 0.04% by volume,which I will put in modern units as 400 parts per million by volume (ppmv). This value was much less than von Humboldt had found, but still in considerable error.
De Saussure’s Memories, published in 1830, nevertheless ushered in a period of increasingly precise measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide culminating in some nearly correct measurements in the 1880s by a Belgian named Jules Reiset.”
Saussure used accurate equipment, correct methodology, was aware of the need for mixing and the effects of time, height and location, so why does Keeling illogically conclude that the measurements he took were inaccurate?
The answer is probably that by 1993 Keeling had invested a lot of time and effort at the Scripps institute and it is very difficult to recant a lifetimes belief. His autoibiography is interesting as the influences in his early life can be seen and his increasing respect for the pioneers in co2 measurement can also be followed.
You will be fully aware of Becks work in highlighting pre 1957 measurements.
tonyb

What if the ice sheets formed due to the fact that the earth began to cool – maybe due the to the fact that Antarctica drifted over the pole ??
And the CO2 dropped becasue the earth got colder. Exactly as might be preidcted by Al Gores famous graph.
The perversion of causation and correlation s sickening …..

So there you have it folks. CO2 causes both thermageddon and freezergeddon. And for our next trick we are going to disappear an entire polar bear population up the IPCC’s (fill in the blank).

TonyB
“Firstly, the .7C warming since 1880 is reliant on James Hansens calculations which commence from a period immediately following the end of the LIA.”
No it isn’t. There are plenty of datasets to look at here. For example both the instrument record and the glacier-derived temperature profile:
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/1994/glaciervsinstrumental.png
“[W]e blithely overturn and ignore the some 130 years of increasingly accurate co2 measurements prior to that date.”
Though accurate, these records are extremely local measurements with little mixing. For instance “From the Haymarket Theatre, dress circle at 11.30 pm.” At the time there were never intended to be globally representative.
But rather than ignore these measurements, I’d say they establish a floor for the global measurements, and are indeed consistent with both ice-core and later infrared determinations:
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/bayreuth/bayreuth1e.htm

Well, this geologist (somewhat younger, BSc in 1993, PhD in 1999) was never told that CO2 was an important driver in the development of the Antarctic ice sheet. Indeed, the only work I ever did that related CO2 to possible climate impacts related to the mid-Cretaceous and the development of plateau basalts from super-plumes, and even that was speculative.
The Antarctic got cold primarily because it became isolated by the circum-polar current. This was coincident with several interesting plate tectonic events, most especially the growth of the Himalayan range as India collided with Asia. This had two interesting effects – 1) Direct take up of CO2 as the newly exposed granitic rocks weathered and 2) Increased nutrient content of the adjacent oceans, leading to increased biological productivity and hecne CO2 draw-down

Scott Mandia (19:54:42) :
As mentioned previously, the natural greenhouse effect (from gas concentrations before the Industrial Revolution) has kept the Earth’s surface about 33 degrees C warmer than with an atmosphere with no greenhouse gases.
33K number is wrong and the whole GHE concept is probably wrong as well.
33K is calculated as a difference between Earth without ATMOSPHERE (including “GH” gases) and present temperature. But the calculation of hypothetical -18C temperature is done with Earth albedo 0.3 – which is made mostly by clouds – which should NOT be present on Earth without GHG/atmosphere. So with cloud-free Earth with albedo of 0.1 albedo the difference is some -15K.
Second, nobody explained how much of those +13K (or +33K) is made by atmosphere itself, which works as a truly heating blanket, keeping the absorbed heat from the daytime during the night. As Wood experiment documented 100 years ago, all reflected (or backradiated) IR has no significant effect on the system temperature, and in his experiment, 100% of IR had been back-radiated by glass, not only chip here and there of not occupied wavelength, as occurs in real atmosphere.
http://neighbors.denverpost.com/blog.php/2009/02/04/greenhouse-theory-disproved-a-century-ago/

Scott Mandia,
“There is a common misconception that the concentration levels of carbon dioxide are so small that they could not possibly be causing global warming.”
This is a straw man argument: no serious skeptic is making this claim. On the contrary, most of the warming due to CO2 occurs at even lower concentrations -the first 20 ppm causes 1.5C warming, and thereafter the sensitivity drops off rapidly.
“Because levels of carbon dioxide are well above natural levels, it should not be hard to see how these increases could cause temperatures to rise at least a few degrees C in the future.”
What is the natural level of CO2? Is it the 200 ppm averaged during the Pleistocene? What about 280 ppm in the Holocene? Oh wait, a new research paper has shown that neolithic humans raised CO2 levels, so we can’t use that.
Never mind, lets ignore this tiny sliver of time we have come to know as the quarternary period. As we travel back in time the “natural level” (I do love that term, it sounds so healthy) rises to 2,000 ppm approx, during the Mesozoic era.
There is no reason to assume temperature will rise a few degrees as a result of our current CO2 levels. Radiation physics give a temperature sensitivity Tk to CO2x2 as approximately 1C. All the rest is made up from unproven assumptions about water vapour feedbacks – and that is not evidence.

To Scott Mandia
I guess we’re all thankful that at least someone on here is representing the AGW perspective. However, the properties of c02 are logarithmic regarding heat absorption. It is true that it is a heat intercepting gas. The problem arises that it is a very weak one and not enough of one to change the climate.
To put the logarithmic equation into layman’s terms. If there were 150ppm in the atmosphere it will absorb, in its spectroscopic wavelength band, a certain amount of heat, after which point its saturation window closes. Then it can’t absorb or intercept any more heat. In other words, 300, 600, and 800ppm will absorb the same amount of heat as 150ppm, and effectively this means that it cannot force a temperature change. There are one or two analogies. The first is that a painter using pale green paint to decorate his wall will not be able to use thrice the amount of the same colour in order to achieve a dark green.
To put it to an even closer analogy, a factor 10 sunblock doesn’t increase its effectiveness according to how much you put on, as a small amount of factor 60 will yield a greater effectiveness than any amount of factor 10. If c02 were sunblock, it would be at around factor 3.
Also, another of the properties of c02 works in the opposite direction as a logarithmic gas. Biomass, plants oceans, absorb it exponentially

As a geoscientist, I strongly agree with Bill Illis here.
I will also put another spanner in the works.
I will speculate that CO2 levels dropped AFTER global temperatures began tumbling at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary.
In this Nature study they found a correlation, but did not identify which is the cause and which is the effect (a common mistake made by Climate Scientists – Correlation Does Not Imply Causality). It was their biased preconvictions that extrapolated a correlation into the conclusion that CO2 was the cause. There is no way they can determine that from the type of data they studied.

There was a sting cordon which read “No Lions or Hyenas beyond this point”

P Wilson (05:42:26) :
To Scott Mandia
I guess we’re all thankful that at least someone on here is representing the AGW perspective. However, the properties of c02 are logarithmic regarding heat absorption. It is true that it is a heat intercepting gas. The problem arises that it is a very weak one and not enough of one to change the climate.
To put the logarithmic equation into layman’s terms. If there were 150ppm in the atmosphere it will absorb, in its spectroscopic wavelength band, a certain amount of heat, after which point its saturation window closes. Then it can’t absorb or intercept any more heat
I’ve been waiting to answer a statement like yours for awhile. Unfortuanately there is plenty of room left for temperature change due to co2 increases. Realclimate does a good job of explaining in layman terms in this article to understand saturation of co2 in the atmosphere.
(a) You’d still get an increase in greenhouse warming even if the atmosphere were saturated, because it’s the absorption in the thin upper atmosphere (which is unsaturated) that counts
(b) It’s not even true that the atmosphere is actually saturated with respect to absorption by CO2,
(c) Water vapor doesn’t overwhelm the effects of CO2 because there’s little water vapor in the high, cold regions from which infrared escapes, and at the low pressures there water vapor absorption is like a leaky sieve, which would let a lot more radiation through were it not for CO2, and
(d) These issues were satisfactorily addressed by physicists 50 years ago, and the necessary physics is included in all climate models.

Vincent (04:59:32) :
Joel Shore:
“If ice sheets across all of Antarctica were to completely melt then sea level rise would be something like 70 m, ”
Even Al Gore didn’t go that far. Great to hear the hysteria is alive and well.
You can find the numbers from wikipedia and calculate them yourself. I have already done that. Its a very simple eercise.

Wondering Aloud (14:05:36) :
One of the mechanisms is that cool oceans are net absorbers of c02 whilst warm oceans are net emitters. so yes, once tempratures drop, so does c02. However: It proves that there is warming, high c02, then cooling, with high c02, later falling in line with temperature. That 2500ppm of c02 cannot sustain the temperature, effectively meaning that warming and cooling are independent of c02. A highly marginal ghg it may be but not one to provide a forcing or even that much of a feedback.

Thanks for the reply Jeff.
In the upper level of the atmosphere the temperature is around -40C. The way we understand climate to work is that the greenhouse effect at this region has to be at least as warm at the surface to keep it heated enough at that temperature. -40C canot sustain warm temperatures at ground level. To say otherwise is tantamount to saying that cracking eggs on ice will cook them.

on you point c) Stratespheric water vapour does keep in some heat as it has some three times the bandwidth of heat absorption as c02. During warming phases, theres more of this stratospheric water vapour than low lying water vapour

TomP and Scott
Tom P (01:34:52) : said
TonyB
“Firstly, the .7C warming since 1880 is reliant on James Hansens calculations which commence from a period immediately following the end of the LIA.”
No it isn’t. There are plenty of datasets to look at here. For example both the instrument record and the glacier-derived temperature profile:
+++
Tom, Hadley relies on 20 plus stations to 1850 for their records which Hansen -to his credit- (how often is that phrase used here!!) thought was far too few, so based his on the 1880 records, which are still very sparse and constantly changing in numbers and location. Are you suggesting proxy glacier records are a substitute for actual temperature records, albeit only of their specific place and not an accurate global record however they may be portrayed.
The co2 measurements cited were carried out by Angus Smith and are originally given in his book ‘Air and Rain’ published in 1872. The above locations are in London apart from Ben Nevis (mountain in Scotland, tallest mountain in UK) and the values recorded in mines. Out of that data, the closest to a background level would be the Ben Nevis value. Beck’s historical instrumental CO2 curve seems to include the Ben Nevis data point. Rather than what the RealClimate bloggers and ‘Eli Rabbett’ would have you believe, these old CO2 measurers did fully understand that CO2 values varied with location.
Scott
Both you and Joel are very welcome here as far as I’m concerned and I’m pleased to hear you don’t have a closed mind 🙂
This extract from the Book ‘The Callendar effect’
“Callendar’s 1938 paper did not include a citation of Arrhenius’s 1896 paper, although there are many parallels between the two. Callendar analysed just one set of data on atmospheric CO2 content taken at Kew, near London, between 1898 and 1900. These data were taken near a source of CO2 and were analytically very uncertain. From this analysis, he concluded that at around 1900 the free atmosphere over the North Atlantic region contained 274 ± 5 parts per million (p.p.m.) of CO2. Then, after arguing that only a small fraction of the CO2 from combustion of fossil fuels would dissolve in the ocean, he calculated from an estimated global production rate of CO2 the amount that he thought would be there in 1936 (290 p.p.m.), 2000 (314–317), 2100 (346–358) and 2200 (373–396).
With a simple model of the absorption of infrared radiation, he worked out the amount of global warming to be expected from his predicted CO2 levels, concluding that temperature would then have been increasing at a rate of about 0.03 °C per decade. Callendar’s 1938 attribution of early twentieth-century warming to CO2 increase might have been believable if global cooling had not ensued in the 1960s and 1970s.”
Callendar was an amateur meteorologist and steam engineer. After reading Callendars papers-and corresponding with him-Keeling used his research as the basis for his own estimates of co2.
From Callendars biography;
“In 1944 climatologist Gordon Manley noted Callendar’s valuable contributions to the study of climatic change. A decade later, Gilbert Plass and Charles Keeling consulted with Callendar as they began their research programs. Just before the beginning of the International Geophysical Year in 1957, Hans Seuss and Roger Revelle referred to the “Callendar effect” — defined as climatic change brought about by anthropogenic increases in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, primarily through the processes of combustion.”
Callendar examined 19th and 20th century CO2 measurements, and rejected those he considered inaccurate for a variety of reasons, (he was a man who wanted to prove his theory) the ones he selected leading him to conclude that the pre-industrial CO2 level was about 290 ppm (G. S. Callendar, “The Composition of the Atmosphere through the Ages,” The Meteorological Magazine,vol. 74, No. 878, March 1939, pp. 33-39.). temperatures, and had written a paper to that effect in 1938, at a time when Europe had just experienced five warm years.
This lower 280/290 figure is important as it is the one that Charles Keeling accepted.
Among the criteria that Callendar used to reject measurements were any that deviated by 10% or more from the average of the region, and any taken for special purposes such as such as “biological, soil air, atmospheric pollution”. The first criteria is said to be a rather circular argument, while the second seems to ignore the accuracy of the results. Whatever the validity of these exclusions, it turned out that the mean of 19th century samples he chose to include was 292 ppm. The mean of the samples he had available to include was 335-350 ppm.
That Keeling later came to believe in the accuracy of the old measurements has already been cited here.
Bearing in mind the size of the natural co2 flux I find it surprising that the annual change shows only a tiny unnatural linerar increase when it would be expected to vary greatly up and down, as measurements apparently did prior to 1957.
tonyb

“Water vapor doesn’t overwhelm the effects of CO2 because there’s little water vapor in the high, cold regions from which infrared escapes, ”
And even less CO2 remember the molecular weight is nearly 2.5 times that of water. And while the physics may be ‘understood’ it seems the climate itself doesn’t agree and flatly refuses to do what the models say.

Final reply to the above, by Jeff: 4th power lapse of infrared radiative forcing is what counts for AGW theory. The 1st power of course, is the solar energy reaching the earth which c02 is invisible to. The 2ns is re-radiation to the tropopause (1-3% of the original energy budget) The 4th power is the re-radiation back to the earth from the tropopause downwards and upwards – absorbed radiation is re-emitted bi directionally – so we can assume that 50% of withheld radiation goes back into space – In other words, thermal re-emission beyond the tropopause – whilst the other 50% does in fact go back to the earth. From 1-4 there is a huge energy loss. No additional energy is re-introduced during this process, so it can be assumed that the coefficient of solar energy is the dominant factor. The IPCC assumes that the ratio isn’t 1:1 even but entirely downwards, which is the first fundamental mistake. So when warming projections looked exagerrated, they assumed that it was a cooling effect from aerosols. What they are also ignoring is the strong water vapour feedback – it also witholds heat at 15Mc’s and many other wavelengths – far more than c02, and given that from the tropopause to the earth is where water vapour resides, it effectively means that there is less radiation for c02 to absorb. Efectively, the water vapour feedback neutralises the c02 feedback, and climatically they are both feedbacks and not forcings, and are dependent on atmospheric temperatures. This is the case for all c02, and not just the 3% anthropogenic

“New carbon dioxide data confirm that formation of the Antarctic ice-cap some 33.5 million years ago was due to declining carbon dioxide in the atmosphere”
Again the presumption of “Cause and Effect”

“By using a rather unique set of samples from Tanzania and a new analytical technique that I developed,….
Why does that statement cause me to be much more skeptical than usual?
I don’t have time to read the paper. Do the authors speculate why CO2 was dropping?

very final response to Jeff:
here is a section from chater 2 IPCC
“the absolute growth rate of CO2 in the atmosphere increased
substantially: the first 50 ppm increase above the pre-industrial
value was reached in the 1970s after more than 200 years,
whereas the second 50 ppm was achieved in about 30 years. In
the 10 years from 1995 to 2005 atmospheric CO2 increased by
about 19 ppm; the highest average growth rate recorded for any
decade since direct atmospheric CO2 measurements began in
the 1950s.”
So we have the IPCC stating that increases of c02 in the 20th century are anthropogenic, then, directly from NASA’s information pages we have:
, “carbon dioxide exchange is largely controlled by sea surface temperatures, circulating currents, and by the biological processes of photosynthesis and respiration. carbon dioxide can dissolve easily into the ocean and the amount of carbon dioxide that the ocean can hold depends on ocean temperature and the amount of carbon dioxide already present. Cold ocean temperatures favor the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere whereas warm temperatures cause the ocean surface to release carbon dioxide.”
In other words, as the oceans have been warming during the 20thC, a 0.1C increase in temperature is enough to release 200GT of c02 ( a verified fact) in a year, which is 26 times that of man.
Now even a non scientist can see the contradiction between the two propositions
Incidentally, temperature didn’t follow c02 levels throughout the 20th century, or in this century. Disproving AGW (or climate change as it is now called, due to the fact that warming cannot be vouchsafed for) is really rather straightforward. C02 has been an intensively studied gas in the laboratory. In the field of photometric energy absorption and disippation its simply too weak to be a forcing or a heat retainer ( which is why the temerature plummets as soon as the sun goes down).

P Wilson wrote:
[Incidentally, temperature didn’t follow c02 levels throughout the 20th century, or in this century. Disproving AGW (or climate change as it is now called, due to the fact that warming cannot be vouchsafed for) is really rather straightforward. C02 has been an intensively studied gas in the laboratory. In the field of photometric energy absorption and disippation its simply too weak to be a forcing or a heat retainer ( which is why the temerature plummets as soon as the sun goes down).]
You are a very sharp person but saying all the ignorant science. [snip. No ad hominems, please ~ Evan]
The ocean is acidifying now, which means that it is absobing co2. That is very clear.
If the ocean and land did not reabsorb the dug up co2 from the earth we would be in the 500 ppm range now from all fossil fuels of the past history back to the early 1800’s.
The reson for increasing co2 concentrations in the atmosphere is that we are exceeding the earth’s capacity to reabsorb co2.

Bill Illis says:

Antarctica glaciated over when CO2 was 211 ppm, 1,400 ppm, 350 ppm and when it is was 4,700 ppm. Which level are you going to be frightened about?

And, you know these values how? A major point of the Nature paper was to provide a good estimate of CO2 at one particular time because otherwise such estimates are very difficult to come by when you go back further than the 750,000 years of ice core data.
Furthermore, what were the locations of the continents and mountain ranges and such at that time. You seem very concerned about the quite modest differences that existed between 35 My ago and now but rather unconcerned about the much larger differences that existed when you go back further in time.
P Wilson: You have written lots of posts arguing various issues concerning the radiative effect of CO2. This is settled science, probably for close to half a century. Even skeptical scientists like Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer accept that the radiative forcing due to doubling of CO2 levels is ~4 W/m^2.
By the way, all this argument about whether CO2 is saturated or not makes little sense. It is known that over the concentration ranges we are dealing with, the radiative forcing due to CO2 is approximately logarithmic in the concentration. A logarithm does not ever saturate. What it means is simply that the natural way to discuss the effect of CO2 concentration is in terms of fractional change since a given fractional change produces the same radiative forcintg (so, e.g., a doubling from 280ppm to 560ppm has the same effect as a doubling from 140ppm to 280ppm), whereas if the dependence were linear then the natural way to discuss it would be in terms of a given absolute change (e.g., an increase from 280ppm to 560ppm would have the same effect as an increase from 0ppm to 280ppm).
Juraj V. says:

33K number is wrong and the whole GHE concept is probably wrong as well.
33K is calculated as a difference between Earth without ATMOSPHERE (including “GH” gases) and present temperature. But the calculation of hypothetical -18C temperature is done with Earth albedo 0.3 – which is made mostly by clouds – which should NOT be present on Earth without GHG/atmosphere. So with cloud-free Earth with albedo of 0.1 albedo the difference is some -15K.

What you are saying is the net difference between a planet with no atmosphere and our current planet is ~15 K. (I’ll take your word on this number…I have worked it out before and that sounds approximately right.) However, the way that breaks down is that the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere provide 33 K of warming due to the greenhouse effect and than 18 K of cooling from the increase in albedo. So, I think it is correct to say that the amount of greenhouse effect is 33 K; it is just that the condensed water vapor in the form of clouds contributes not only to the greenhouse effect but also to an increase in albedo that causes a cooling effect.
masonmart says:

Joel, if the graphs that I have seen are correct then we have seen CO2 levels not of 760ppm max but 7000 ppm without runaway warming (please explain that).

And, (almost) noone is predicting runaway warming now either. They are just predicting a significant amount of warming. And, there are times in the past when the earth was indeed much warmer. Furthermore, when you go back hundreds of millions of years or more, you have to take into account such factors as the gradual brightening of the sun and the different locations of continents and mountain ranges.
TonyB: I am glad you and Tom P have now posted a link to Beck’s graph because one of the most amusing things about it is that his curve drawn through the data is so arbitary: http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/bayreuth/bayreuth1e.htm He essentially choose to believe some points and ignore others. And, as Tom P points out, the measurements shown are all at or above the curve from the ice core measurements (and, in fact, there is a pretty strong clustering down pretty close to the ice core values). This is entirely consistent with the idea that some measurements were taken on suitably clean air that they yielded a good estimate and others were taken on air that contained higher CO2 due to localized sources.

P Wilson says:

When converted into heat most of it disippates and re-emitted longwave heat is some 1% of the original heat budget.

I don’t understand how this statement is even close to consistent with the fact that the radiative emission from the Earth has to be at least nearly in balance with the amount of energy it receives from the Sun. (It is understood to be slightly out of balance now because the Earth has not yet warned enough to be in equilibrium given the current levels of greenhouse gases, but the difference is only a fraction of a percent.)

Jeff Green,
Glad that you (implicitly) agreed with my figure of temperature sensitivity to CO2x2 of approx 1C. BTW, Wikipedia is not a scientifc authority on anything (except maybe well estabished textbook theory, of which AGW certainly is not).
These so called feedbacks are not understood at all. How do we gauge the stablility of permafrost? Is the feedback due to water vapour positive or negative? Water vapour is an IR absorber, but when it forms clouds it has a negative feedback. This is not a trivial matter because water/cloud feedback is reckoned by IPCC to be the most significant feedback by far. And yet, they also state there is a low level of scientific understanding regarding cloud dynamics. Hardly well understood, is it?
“Carbon dioxide absorbs strongly in the 13-19 mm wavelength band and water vapour, another atmospheric gas, absorbs strongly in the 4-7 mm wavelength band. ”
“These gases prevent the normal escape of energy and potentially will lead to an increase in terrestrial temperature. Present evidence suggests “effective” CO2 levels will double by 2030, causing global warming of 1~4°C.”
Present evidence? You mean the output from climate models. Computer output does not constitute evidence.
Pardon, since when has IR been measured in millimetres? Your facts, are, well, not exactly factual. CO2 absorbs at 4.3 and 15 microns, and water vapour absorbs at not only 4 – 7 microns but also everything above 15 microns. If you take the curve of radiation emissivity from the earth and integrate for all wavelengths you find that the area of absorbtion for CO2 only amounts to a couple of percent, and the 15 micron band competes with water vapour.
It is a well documented fact that the first 20 ppm of CO2 has a temperature sensitivity of 1.5C, but the next 20 ppm has a temperature sensitivity of only 0.3C and when you go from 380 to 400 you only add another 0.02C.

Tony B
“Are you suggesting proxy glacier records are a substitute for actual temperature records, albeit only of their specific place and not an accurate global record however they may be portrayed.”
There are not any globally representative temperature records that go back 400 years as far as I know, so the derived glacier temperature history is not substituting for anything. It is however consistent with the known global temperature variation for the last 150 years.
Apart from its shape, what is your objection to the glacier temperature record as derived by Oerlemans?

TonyB – About the same time I was wading through the labyrinthine paper on ice core proxies that you provided through a working link (thanks) , I googled Ernst Beck and stumbled upon a reference to Callendar . Someone was mystified that he had rejected CO2 measurements taken during the 1940s , some of which exceeded 400 ppm . Your comment above has helped to clarify why . Unfortunately , I lacked the inclination to delve deeper at the time . Once again , thanks .

Jeff Green (08:44:54) :
“As the energy hits earth it all has to leave the earth in the infrared band. ”
So you think the Earth’s surface is completely black in the visible band? I think I have rather strong empirical evidence against this. I can distinctly see the Earths surface, despite being blind in the infrared.

Dr Gavin Foster from the University of Bristol and a co-author on the paper said: “By using a rather unique set of samples from Tanzania and a new analytical technique that I developed…” Someone should tell Gavin Foster that something is either unique or it is not. “Rather unique” does not exist.

Jeff Green and Joel Shore:
Thanks for saving me much typing today! And you both presented my position far better than I could have. 🙂

Scroll down to page 344. The circumpolar current, which if allowed to circumvent, keeps Antarctica separate from warmer currents. But this current was not always engaged. It was blocked (more than once?) by uplift, subduction, and sea level changes. The research really should be looking at this area and taking core samples. But that research is far more expensive than drilling in a dry village. It is a stretch to connect CO2 in a hot, dry village with what happens to ice in Antarctica. This is the same type of argument one sees with “Gee the minutely changing Sun way up there is probably causing these changes, not the highly variable oceans next door to us.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=fRJtB2MNdJMC&pg=PA344&lpg=PA344&dq=CO2+in+antarctica&source=bl&ots=dkgRZtgJKp&sig=M61bkeU6TZDSjCbSkTjUuu9JgTY&hl=en&ei=QfGvSuuLOY2cMf-BqfIN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#v=onepage&q=CO2%20in%20antarctica&f=false

Jeff Green,
“If ice sheets across all of Antarctica were to completely melt then sea level rise would be something like 70 m, . . .You can find the numbers from wikipedia and calculate them yourself. I have already done that. Its a very simple eercise.”
It’s not your calculations I take issue with Jeff, it’s the assertion that the Antarctic is going to melt. Even IPCC models only indicate sea level rise of maximum 80cm by 2100. But then I guess they’ll have to be updated for AR5.

Roger Knights,
“There is an excellent long discussion of global temperatures that accepts the figures you are using, but derives a non-AGW conclusion.”
Here’s a quicker download of the most relevant plot:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
Akasofu is right that the data shows two important components, one cyclic and one increasing. But he has to ignore any data in this plot before 1880 in order not to contradict the linear trend which he attributes to recovery from the Little Ice Age. That is because before 1880 the temperature is seen to start flattening:
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/1994/glaciervsinstrumental.png
Rather than recovery from the LIA, there is another explanation with a much better correlated variation:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/lawdome.gif
“When I get up the energy, I want to write a long proposal on a satisfactory solution to the betting problem.”
The problem as far as I can see is that although many posters state with great certainty their beliefs as to how the climate will change, they are curiously reluctant to then wager that they are indeed correct.
But I’ll look out for your proposal.

evanmJones says:

Hmm. If you say so. But that is how they do it here on earth, you know.

No they don’t. If they did, we’d just need to measure the temperature at two places: the coldest and the warmest. (I am talking about spatial averages not daily temporal averages.)
TonyB says:

Why does it vary? You have been duelling with Richard Courtney on another thread and have partly covered this. The natural flux of co2 is huge and greatly exceeds that inputted by ourselves. This variable flux should show up in the record as a series of peaks and troughs. It doesn’t. Instead it shows a slow and steady small annual increase.

And yet, we know for a fact that since the 1950s when Keeling’s measurements began, the CO2 increase (besides a seasonal cycle that varies with location) is indeed slow and steady, indicating that the natural fluxes do maintain a good balance. Why do you believe that things were so different when Keeling wasn’t looking? Or do you doubt the modern CO2 measurements?
Vincent says:

It’s not your calculations I take issue with Jeff, it’s the assertion that the Antarctic is going to melt. Even IPCC models only indicate sea level rise of maximum 80cm by 2100. But then I guess they’ll have to be updated for AR5.

You are running around in circles, Vincent. My original post that triggered this whole line of discussion was responding to someone who was saying essentially, “Why should we care if CO2 levels of 760ppm cause the Antarctic to melt? We won’t ever get that high anyway.” In response, I pointed out that in fact we could get that high given our coal reserves and, furthermore, that melting of the whole Antarctic is a much more extreme scenario than anyone including Al Gore has ever talked about and would result in about 70m of sea level rise, so lower CO2 levels where only part of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets melts is already a big problem. I noted that if 760ppm of CO2 really causes the whole Antarctic ice cap to melt then in fact the climate sensitivity must be much larger than anyone has imagined. (At the same time, I noted that one reason why 760ppm might not cause the whole Antarctic ice sheet to melt even if dropping below it was sufficient to initiate the ice sheet is that the ice-albedo effect likely introduces hysteresis into the system.)
But just for the record, the IPCC didn’t quite say that the maximum possible sea level rise by 2100 is 80cm. Their estimates of sea level rise basically started with the assumption that there is no dynamic mechanism that leads to increasingly rapid breakup of the ice sheets because they felt the science on that was not advanced enough to make an estimate of how much sea level rise might occur in such a case.
Scott Mandia says:

Thanks for saving me much typing today! And you both presented my position far better than I could have. 🙂

No problem. There are so few of us to represent this point of view that I figure that we have to help each other out! And, I think you are too modest in your assessment of your presentations … I very much enjoy your posts here.

I am continually at a loss as to why people here and elsewhere insist on using “wikipedia” as a source for hard facts. How does a hearsay, ad hoc, opinion based encyclopedia qualify as a source of empirical data?
Or am I alone in this concern?

Joel: The earth is never in Equilibrium, which is why we have a changing climate and weather. The amount of sun reacing the earth is quite tiny, and even when it does, it becomes converted to one form or another. Its not like heat is a fixed isolated factor that can’t change. The earth received very little solar energy, but that what happens to it in the atmosphere is the salient characteristic. Solar waves carry very little heat. It is what happens to them when they hit the earth’s atmospheric matter that produces energy. Even then, it matters what angle solar waves hit the earth, how much is diffused, how much is impeded or blocked by clouds and ozone, and how much bounces back.
If we were to believe that heat was a constant isolated factor then the poker experiment would reveal different results. The poker would remain hot and the air around it would heat slightly, bu according the the climatologists theory of heat input, nothing would get cool from the radiation of the poker, and the poker would remain eternally hot. Now we all know that this heat disippates in even a closed system until thermal equilibrium is restored. It doesn’t radiate to other parts of the system waiting to strike at the nearest cool spot.

Joel
The amount of the natural co2 flux depends on a variety of factors in any one year, including volcanos and especially temperature, and so will vary substantially year to year -Richard Courtney says it centres around 200Gt I had thought it to be around 165GT.
I don’t think you will disagree that mans emission is around 3-5% of the natural total (give or take)
To maintain the average quoted, natural emissions may be 90% of its average in any one year, and in another year 110% (give or take)
You say co2 increases are ‘indeed slow and steady, indicating that the natural fluxes do maintain a good balance.’
So, even in a ‘110%’ year i.e. greater than ‘average’ all the ‘extra’ natural co2 is absorbed seamlessly without a hiccup on the graph, even though the ‘extra’ 10% is far greater than mans emissions, which you say aren’t absorbed but instead slowly increase the overall concentrations. That doesn’t appear very logical.
Surely it is more logical that these (considerable) natural variations (with mans tiny emissions on top) would show up as peaks and troughs?
As to why they’re not, I would be speculating if I gave an answer to that. It just seems reasonable to me that the pre 1957 figures are re-examined because they weren’t calculated by idiots, but by serious people who matter of factly took such measurements for a variety of purposes.
tonyb

P Wilson says:

Solar waves carry very little heat. It is what happens to them when they hit the earth’s atmospheric matter that produces energy.

Because who needs the First Law of Thermodynamics anyway?

In fact, Joel, i’m saying that re-radiated heat is quite a tiny fraction. Some 1-3% of the original incoming.

I’ve seen lots of unusual claims made on this website, but this one might take the cake.

P Wilson: Are you aware that there are people (including Roy Spencer) measuring the earth’s radiation budget by satellite ( http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/ceres_aqua.html ). I am sure that they will be fascinated by your theory that the heat radiated by the earth back out into space is only 1-3% of the incoming solar energy!

Vincent wrote:
[It’s not your calculations I take issue with Jeff, it’s the assertion that the Antarctic is going to melt. Even IPCC models only indicate sea level rise of maximum 80cm by 2100. But then I guess they’ll have to be updated for AR5.]
I haven’t asserted that all of the anartic will melt. But then are you asserting that the temperature will not rise in the antartic futher increasing the melt rate.
The greatest increase in temperature on earth is at the artic now, increasing the melt rate there. Business as usual burning of fossil fuels takes us to about 6 degrees centigrade average increase by 2100. IPCC was quite conservative in their models for consensus reasons. 800 to 1000 ppm puts us in the disastrous zone for our climate.

Solomon Green (12:07:42) : wrote:
I meant to inquire why go to Tanzania to examine rocks that are only 33.5 million years old? The rocks at the bottom of the Maktesh Ramon (500 meters deep) are 200 million old. And, I believe, the wall of the North West face of the crater exposes a ontinuous history of rock starting well over 50 million years ago and ending with the present day. Since the crater is natural, is not volcanic (although the 50 square mile crater does contain an extinct volcano) and it was not formed as a result of a meteor strike, there were, and probably still are, a wealth of fossils from all ages to be found. Does Dr. Gavin Foster need a special type of fossil for his CO2 proxies? And if so, why?
I got the impression that this area had about the best sample to reach in Africa. This can be compared to other samples gaithered in the future to make comparisons and see if similar results come about or something different. That is part of the process of science in seeking what’s true.

Smokey,
“There are not any globally representative temperature records that go back 400 years as far as I know…”
Records, as in recorded temperature logs from enough sites around the world to construct a global average. The oldest individual record only goes back to the middle of the 17th century, as far as I’m aware, and no global average can be calculated for before the 19th century.
As for derived temperature series, of course these exist. Oerlemans’ glacier-derived temperature series going back to 1600 that I’ve linked to above is just one example. Please keep up.
“Your refusal to accept that there is a log response to CO2…”
Of course there a log response – that’s why all climate scientists measure climate sensitivity in terms of the temperature increase from a CO2 concentration doubling. Could you cite an example where Mann states otherwise?
The plot you link to is in serious error. It claims that the first 20 ppm of CO2 only contributes 1.5 degrees of warming. Strip all the CO2 out of our atmosphere and we would be very much colder.
Nevertheless, this plot demonstrates the important point that between 280 ppm and 380 ppm the 20 ppm increments are only slowly losing their warming contribution . The logarithmic response implies that the warming contribution drops by about 25% over this range. There is therefore not much saturation in the warming seen from CO2 increases over the last 150 years.
Can I take it that you accept there is a log response to CO2, and hence these increases have been warming the Earth?

One theme that I note with AGW is the obsession with the Antarctica melt. As the average temperature of Antarctica is in the range of minus 40 dgrees, any melt and consequent rise in sea level would be the least of our problems. If the temperature in Antarctica rises over 40 degrees, then what is the rise in the rest of the world ?

“Can I take it that you accept there is a log response to CO2, and hence these increases have been warming the Earth?”
As the Earth warms the ocean releases CO2 into the air.
If man had never used fossil fuel technologies then the amount of CO2 in the air at this global temperature would be precisely the same since the oceans would set it that way.

Sandy
Interesting post, which relates to the point I was making in my 16 30 20
The oceans over ride everything. The amount of co2 in the air is very dependent on the warmth of the oceans. The annual flux -without mans impact-is therefore considerable and should show up in peaks and troughs as was recorded pre 1957, not a nice smooth barely increasing line.
tonyb
. transfer

Jeff Green,
“Business as usual burning of fossil fuels takes us to about 6 degrees centigrade average increase by 2100. IPCC was quite conservative in their models for consensus reasons. 800 to 1000 ppm puts us in the disastrous zone for our climate.”
We’re arguing in circles. If you continue to use computer models as evidence that catastrophic warming will occur in the future then all I can say is that you are choosing to believe in what once people called prophecies. Unless you are prepared to open your mind, there is little I or anyone can say.

TomP said
“Are you really claiming that urban heat islands from recent cities built on glaciers is responsible for the temperature rise?”
Of course I’m not suggesting anything of the sort, but I am sure a computer model could easily make such a connection 🙂
I am asking you to examine the temperature record history in a more dispassionate manner, whilst querying the meaning of a global temperature whilst putting the current warmish period into a broader historical perspective. Our climate did not begin in 1850 nor indeed with satellites in 1979.
So let us ask ourselves a few questions-
* Has the temperature at a tiny number of specific measuring points increased since 1850? Possibly.
* Do we know the amount of any change of a notional global temperature with scientific accuracy to fractions of a degree? Certainly not.
*Is sufficient notice paid of distortions such as UHI, poor siting, changes of sites, numbers, equipment etc? No
* Is the current warm era unprecedented in human history? Certainly not.
* Should we change the world system because of short term and potentially inaccurate information based on incomplete temperature records, ignore past climatic trends and link everything to a tiny rise in human generated emissions overshadowed by natural emissions and water vapour? No
*Do we know anything like as much as we think we do about climate. No.
*Is that any excuse to be wateful and reckless in our use of resources? No.
*Is there a practical alternative to burning fossil fuels in order to maintain our own standard of living whilst using carbon as the means of dragging the third world out of poverty, sickness and hunger? Unfortunately not yet.
As regards your separate comments about glaciers, these are a proxy-they do not give us precise figures. For those interested, this is a draft of the report TomP refers to, I do not have access to the paid version.
http://home.badc.rl.ac.uk/mjuckes/mitrie_files/docs/mitrie_glaciers.pdf
The following link comments on the above data;
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V8/N11/EDIT.php
This is an extract from 1868 concerning a British expedition to Greenland, a land which was then an almost unknown quantity but whose coast Scoresby junior had found to be clear of ice in 1820, had subsequently iced up again, then found by Captain Graah in 1828 to be clear again. Apparently conditions had changed once more;
“We lived for the greater portion of a whole summer at Jakohshavn, a little Danish post, 69° 13′ n., close to which is the great Jakohshavn ice-fjord, which annually pours an immense quantity of icebergs into Disco Bay. In early times this inlet was quite open for boats ; and Nunatak (a word meaning a ” land surrounded by ice “) was once an Eskimo settlement. There is (or was in 1867 ) an old man (Manyus) living at Jakohshavn whose grandfather was born there. The Tessi-usak, an inlet of Jakohshavn ice-fjord, could then be entered by boats. Now-a-days Jakohshavn ice-fjord is so choked up by bergs that it is impossible to go up in boats, and such a thing is never thought of. The Tessiusak must be reached by a laborious journey
over land ; and Nunatak is now only an island surrounded by the in-land ice, at a distance — a place where no man lives, or has, in the memory of any one now living, reached.
Both along its shore and that of the main fjord are numerous remains of dwellings long unin-habitable, owing to it being now impossible to gain access to them by sea. The inland ice is now encroaching on the land. At one time it seems to have covered many portions of the country now bare. In a few places glaciers have disappeared.”
This link deals with glaciers in Roman Times.
http://archiv.ethlife.ethz.ch/e/articles/sciencelife/gruenealpen.html
The relative lack of glaciers enabled the Romans to traverse high level routes to quell rebellions in various parts of their empire.
So the glacier report may be broadly true-after all it covers the period we know as the LIA. However there were undoubtedly periods of warming in this period, and prior to that throughout our history. Glaciers retreat and advance accordingly.
You are taking a very short term view and relying on concepts (global temperatures) and an accuracy (global records to 1850) that are not as clear cut as you want to believe. Within my previous post I cited the changing number of weather stations and two reports from those who dispute the notion of a global temperature. No doubt you have read these and have already asked E M Smith for access to his work on GISS. Would you refute his findings?
Tonyb.

Co-author Dr Bridget Wade from Texas A&M University Department of Geology and Geophysics added: “This was the biggest climate switch since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
“Our study is the first to provide a direct link between the establishment of an ice sheet on Antarctica and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and therefore confirms the relationship between carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and global climate.”
NO, not at all: a teleconnection is NOT a causal relationship and from the abstract, there is nothing suggesting causality.