Another paper for the Copenhagen train. This is an estimate according to the abstract. Here’s the abstract and the supplemental information, of course the publicly funded paper is behind the AAAS paywall.
From UCLA News: Last time carbon dioxide levels were this high: 15 million years ago, scientists report
By Stuart Wolpert October 08, 2009 Category: Research
You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues report Oct. 8 in the online edition of the journal Science.
“The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland,” said the paper’s lead author, Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
“Carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas, and geological observations that we now have for the last 20 million years lend strong support to the idea that carbon dioxide is an important agent for driving climate change throughout Earth’s history,” she said.
By analyzing the chemistry of bubbles of ancient air trapped in Antarctic ice, scientists have been able to determine the composition of Earth’s atmosphere going back as far as 800,000 years, and they have developed a good understanding of how carbon dioxide levels have varied in the atmosphere since that time. But there has been little agreement before this study on how to reconstruct carbon dioxide levels prior to 800,000 years ago.
Tripati, before joining UCLA’s faculty, was part of a research team at England’s University of Cambridge that developed a new technique to assess carbon dioxide levels in the much more distant past — by studying the ratio of the chemical element boron to calcium in the shells of ancient single-celled marine algae. Tripati has now used this method to determine the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere as far back as 20 million years ago.
Aradhna Tripati
“We are able, for the first time, to accurately reproduce the ice-core record for the last 800,000 years — the record of atmospheric C02 based on measurements of carbon dioxide in gas bubbles in ice,” Tripati said. “This suggests that the technique we are using is valid.
“We then applied this technique to study the history of carbon dioxide from 800,000 years ago to 20 million years ago,” she said. “We report evidence for a very close coupling between carbon dioxide levels and climate. When there is evidence for the growth of a large ice sheet on Antarctica or on Greenland or the growth of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, we see evidence for a dramatic change in carbon dioxide levels over the last 20 million years.
“A slightly shocking finding,” Tripati said, “is that the only time in the last 20 million years that we find evidence for carbon dioxide levels similar to the modern level of 387 parts per million was 15 to 20 million years ago, when the planet was dramatically different.”
Levels of carbon dioxide have varied only between 180 and 300 parts per million over the last 800,000 years — until recent decades, said Tripati, who is also a member of UCLA’s Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics. It has been known that modern-day levels of carbon dioxide are unprecedented over the last 800,000 years, but the finding that modern levels have not been reached in the last 15 million years is new.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the carbon dioxide level was about 280 parts per million, Tripati said. That figure had changed very little over the previous 1,000 years. But since the Industrial Revolution, the carbon dioxide level has been rising and is likely to soar unless action is taken to reverse the trend, Tripati said.
“During the Middle Miocene (the time period approximately 14 to 20 million years ago), carbon dioxide levels were sustained at about 400 parts per million, which is about where we are today,” Tripati said. “Globally, temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, a huge amount.”
Tripati’s new chemical technique has an average uncertainty rate of only 14 parts per million.
“We can now have confidence in making statements about how carbon dioxide has varied throughout history,” Tripati said.
In the last 20 million years, key features of the climate record include the sudden appearance of ice on Antarctica about 14 million years ago and a rise in sea level of approximately 75 to 120 feet.
“We have shown that this dramatic rise in sea level is associated with an increase in carbon dioxide levels of about 100 parts per million, a huge change,” Tripati said. “This record is the first evidence that carbon dioxide may be linked with environmental changes, such as changes in the terrestrial ecosystem, distribution of ice, sea level and monsoon intensity.”
Today, the Arctic Ocean is covered with frozen ice all year long, an ice cap that has been there for about 14 million years.
“Prior to that, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic,” Tripati said.
Some projections show carbon dioxide levels rising as high as 600 or even 900 parts per million in the next century if no action is taken to reduce carbon dioxide, Tripati said. Such levels may have been reached on Earth 50 million years ago or earlier, said Tripati, who is working to push her data back much farther than 20 million years and to study the last 20 million years in detail.
More than 50 million years ago, there were no ice sheets on Earth, and there were expanded deserts in the subtropics, Tripati noted. The planet was radically different.
Co-authors on the Science paper are Christopher Roberts, a Ph.D. student in the department of Earth sciences at the University of Cambridge, and Robert Eagle, a postdoctoral scholar in the division of geological and planetary sciences at the California Institute of Technology.
The research was funded by UCLA’s Division of Physical Sciences and the United Kingdom’s National Environmental Research Council.
Tripati’s research focuses on the development and application of chemical tools to study climate change throughout history. She studies the evolution of climate and seawater chemistry through time.
“I’m interested in understanding how the carbon cycle and climate have been coupled, and why they have been coupled, over a range of time-scales, from hundreds of years to tens of millions of years,” Tripati said.
In addition to being published on the Science Express website, the paper will be published in the print edition of Science at a later date.
UPDATE: Bill Illis add this graph in comments, which brings up the obvious correlation questions.
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Joel Shore,
Lots of the charts I link to are from NASA, NOAA, the IPCC and other favs of yours. The fact that you reject every last one of the hundreds of charts posted means that your mind is made up and shut tight, and facts don’t matter.
I post charts so people can make up their own minds. If the media was doing its job they would show both sides of the debate. Since they don’t, it’s up to skeptics to show there’s another side to the AGW story. You clearly don’t like the fact that people are thinking for themselves based on all the information, not just what is spoon fed to the public through a biased media that takes its marching orders from the UN’s IPCC.
Or maybe you believe what you believe despite the facts. Then it’s just a case of common Cognitive Dissonance.
Smokey says:
Can you show me an example of a graph from NASA, NOAA, or the IPCC that I have rejected?
Well, there is a difference between giving people good information and giving people propaganda or deceiving information. The plot that you posted here was out-of-date and also contained a smoothing error near the endpoint of the data that was shown. A more modern extension of that data shows a dramatic divergence between solar cycle length and temperature. You are just dodging and weaving in the hopes that you distract people from recognizing this fact.
“Can you show me an example of a graph from NASA, NOAA, or the IPCC that I have rejected?”
Yes. But it would be more interesting if you show some charts I’ve posted that I’ve posted that you agree with without any reservation.
BTW, how’s that article coming along?
savethesharks says
Actually, I didn’t evade it at all. I showed that the data on CO2 that he was using to make his inferences conflicts with other data on CO2 at the time. I didn’t claim that the data in the paper I referred to is definitely correct and his wrong because I don’t decide which data to believe on the basis of whether it supports my pre-conceived conclusions or not. However, I did note that the data was at least roughly in agreement with that of Tripati et al, except with what looks like a bit of an offset in when the CO2 levels began to drop. (I don’t know if the offset is within the dating uncertainties of the two techniques or not.)
[I could have also pointed out that one does not expect a perfect correlation between CO2 and temperature on timescales where other important factors can be operating.]
tty says:
Dave Middleton says:
That is a fair question. As I point out above, I was fairly cautious in claiming that these data are the correct values for CO2 levels pre-ice-core data. The fact is that it is very difficult to get good estimates of CO2 during such time periods and that is why I was surprised that Bill Illis presented the CO2 data like it was written in stone, without even any discussion of what the errorbars might be on the estimates.
However, I also just had a look at the stomata papers and it looks like there is a trend over time for the stomata to come into better agreement with the ice core data. For example, in this 2008 paper http://www.pnas.org/content/105/41/15815.full , they look at the level of CO2 over the last 1000 years and, once they account for smoothing of their data over the roughly century scale that it takes the gas bubbles to close off then the agreement with ice core data is quite good, to within the methodogical errors that the estimate for their technique. (See Fig. 1D.) And, in fact, if you look closely at Fig 1C, which is their fully-resolved data, you can see that the variation in CO2 is only modestly larger (perhaps a factor of 1.5, although given the error bars it is hard to say for sure) than for their smoothed data in Fig. 1D.
So, it seems to me that the ice core data and the stomata data are converging, although the stomata data still tends to show somewhat more variability. Whether that variability is real or whether it is exaggerated remains to be determined.
From Kouwenberg’s PhD Thesis (2002), a comparison of SI-derived CO2 vs. ice core-derived CO2 from 200 AD to 2000 AD…
Figure 5-4
Caption 5-4
Kouwneberg’s CO2 reconstruction from conifer needles clearly indicates that atmospheric CO2 levels ranged from ~280ppmv in 300 AD to ~400ppmv by 400 AD and then steadily declined to ~280ppmv by 800 AD.
If we are to accept SI as a proxy for CO2, then the modern rise in CO2 is no different in magnitude or pace of onset than the 300 Ad to 400 AD rise.
If the SI proxy is rejected… We’re back to a non-correlation of CO2 and temperature.
So… Either CO2 changes have no measurable effect on temperature… Or temperature changes drive CO2 changes.
Wouldn’t it be reasonable to make the determination as to which proxy is a more realistic measure of past natural CO2 variability before the IPCC made sweeping scientific statements as to the settled science of climate change? Particularly when we are quite probably talking about policy decisions that could cost the United States up to 5% of its GDP for the next several decades?
From Kürschner (2008)…
If the ~34ppmv of CO2 variability between 1000 AD and 1500 AD pretty much had to be naturally-sourced and driven by changes in oceanic temperatures… And Kouwneberg’s CO2 reconstruction from conifer needles that indicated an atmospheric CO2 rise from ~280ppmv in 300 AD to ~400ppmv by 400 AD pretty well had to be naturally-sourced and driven by changes in oceanic temperatures… How can we even begin to guess that the post-Little Ice Age rise in atmospheric CO2 from ~280-300ppmv to the current 385ppmv isn’t, in part or totally, naturally-sourced and driven by changes in oceanic temperatures?
There are uncertainties and levels of doubt in stomatal indices, and this paper outlines some of them – different plants respond differently to c02 concentrations, so some proxies will converge with (non segalstad) ice core proxies, whilst others will diverge wildly
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/41065/
http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/49/326/1603
Reid, C.D., Maherali, H., Johnson, H.B., Smith, S.D., Wullschleger, S.D. and Jackson R.B. 2003 discovered that stomatal densities can be unresponsive to c02 increases. Luckily a synopsis can be found here:
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V6/N45/B2.php
It would take a botanist to interpret these findings.
Simply gluing vostok ice core data to take pre industrial c02 onto instrumental records from 1957 onwards is a crude attempt at best to create past c02
Dave Middleton (06:21:57) :
to Joel Shore (20:08:15) :
Of interest is also the paper in that issue by Royer and Berner further discussing these results and putting them into context: …
Shaviv’s and Veizer’s reply to Royer (2004) was equally interesting. Royer’s pH correction for sigma-18O was a product of bootstrapping… The pH correction for temperature was essentially derived from RCO2… So it’s no surprise that Royer and Berner’s “corrected” Phanerozoic temperatures yielded a better match to CO2. Royer’s pH corrections to temperature also resulted in anomalously warm ocean temperatures during know glacial episodes
Actually, Royer and Berner’s ph/CO2-correction of Shaviv and Viezer’s temperature numbers better matches just 1.0C per doubling (1.5C at a maximum). So it might be more of a Schadenfreude moment rather than disproving Shaviv and Veizer.
(I don’t agree with Shaviv’s numbers either but Veizer’s database is the best there is. They played around with the numbers too much in order to prove the point Shaviv wanted to make. The basic database provides very good temperature numbers that match up to the timeperiods we know about if you don’t smooth them too much).
CO2 is an ‘extremely’ biologically and physically active compound — highly soluble in a tempertaure-dependent way in water and rapidly turned over in the biosphere. The basis of all life on Earth via photosynthesis. It is also chemically reactive as an electrophile.
I would suggest that that anyone who claims that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been constant at 280 ppm for most of 15 million years should recheck their methodology for this is clearly impossible unless the the Earth itself has remained unchanged over that period of time.
Don’t our schools teach people to think critically anymore?
PS: the assumption that CO2 in trapped air bubbles in ‘ancient’ ice is representative of that period is incorrect, as it diffuses through ice — see Ahnn et al , Journal of Glaciology, vol. 54, p. 685-695, 2008.
Dave Middleton says:
There are also considerable and, I bet, underestimated errorbars on that. As I noted, the latest stomata paper for the last 1000 years can basically be reconciled with the ice core data once one accounts for the fact that it takes the bubbles close on the order of several decades to a century to close off. The data from that thesis can’t be.
No. We are at worst back to the situation where we don’t know very much about the degree of correlation for periods before the ice core record.
(1) It seems extremely unlikely to me that past variability could be what is shown in that 2002 thesis that you cite.
(2) Even if there were greater variability, it still doesn’t get us around the fact that we KNOW how much CO2 we are putting into the air and it takes a lot of convoluted logic to argue that the oceans are magically absorbing this excess CO2 but at the same time spontaneously deciding to emit more CO2, besides which it conflicts with the considerable evidence of the oceans being a sink and taking up CO2 rather than emitting it. On top of this, there is the isotopic data and the fact that the changes in CO2 levels from the ice age – interglacial oscillations show the sensitivity of CO2 levels to a given change in CO2 is at most something like 20 ppm per 1 C of global temperature change and that even this likely took a while (although on this last point, I suppose that you could believe that the ice core data is completely wrong and the oscillations in CO2 that actually occurred were much larger…but that seems pretty far out there!)
(3) Where do you get your estimate of the GDP cost? When you say 5% of GDP over several decades, what you are likely talking about is a cumulative cost which, over that time, adds up to a reduction in GDP growth on the order of 0.1% per year (as the IPCC estimates as pretty much the high end cost estimate). That’s a pretty small amount given that estimates of expected GDP growth are on the order of ~2-3% per year.
(4) And, no, I am not the type of person who believes that I shouldn’t buy fire insurance for my house unless I am absolutely sure it is going to burn down. Given the considerable inertia involved both in terms of the climate system and in terms of making the transition in our societies, it is best to plan for what scientists believe is the most likely scenario rather than hold out the hope that the scientific consensus is wrong in one particular direction. It is the nature of science that there is always uncertainty and rarely does ALL of the available data point in one direction.
(5) What the proposals for cap-and-trade (or a carbon tax) essentially do is create the market incentives for efficiency and alternative energy that will allow us to transition away from fossil fuels. We know that we are going to have to do this eventually anyway since fossil fuels are a finite resource, so any such costs will have to be borne eventually. Better to do it before we have likely made dramatic changes to our climate & sea levels and changes to ocean chemistry than before.
Because it is in contradiction to known empirical data that I mentioned above that convincingly show that the current rise is due to humans. The fact that CO2 hasn’t been this high in the last 750000 years is only one of several lines of evidence that leads us to conclude that we are responsible for the current change in CO2 levels.
I’ve just read both the papers: The impact of Miocene atmospheric carbon dioxide fluctuations on climate and the evolution of terrestrial ecosystems
Wolfram M. Kürschner et al,
and the paper :
A role for atmospheric CO2 in preindustrial climate forcing
Thomas B. van Hoof et al
From the 1st paper its commented above that there is a tight linkage between c02 and temperature during the miocene. They (the authors) also say that c02 concentrations are up to 200ppm higher than accepted values.
However, in the 2nd paper they write:
“Records of paleo-CO2 from these methods as well as calculations of CO2 from geochemical models (4) generally correlate well with independent records of temperature. Over the past 450 million years (Myr), CO2 was low when extensive, long-lived ice sheets were present (≈330–290 Myr ago and 35 Myr ago to the present day) and moderately high to high at other times (5, 6). However, some intervals in Earth’s past fail to show any consistent relationship. One conspicuous example is the Miocene (23.0–5.3 Myr ago), an Epoch where multiple advances of the Antarctic ice sheet are juxtaposed with a period of global warmth ≈15 Myr ago (7). Most CO2 records during this period are low [<300 ppm by volume (ppmv)] and do not covary with temperature (8–10) (Fig. 1). These records imply that other radiative forcings such as changes in paleogeography or meridional heat transport were disproportionately more important than CO2 at this time."
I'm not sure that the authors are claiming that there is a tight relationship between c02 and temperature during the period. They take it as a geologic period where this wasn't the case.
Smokey says:
I’d rather let you take the initiative. After all, this is basically just a distraction from the fact that the particular graph that you posted here and that I objected to was in fact a graph that was not up-to-date and had an error in the smoothing near the end of the data that it did show, and that the new data contradicted the thesis that the rise in temperatures over the last ~30 years is correlated to solar cycle length.
If you can find an example of a graph that you think I have objected to for no good reason, then great. Otherwise, you are just distracting from the fact that I have had very good reasons to object to this graph and many of the previous graphs that you have shown.
Actually, the quote that you have taken is from the Royer (2008) paper that discusses the Kürschner et al (2008). And, what you have done is quoted from the introductory paragraph of that paper but left out the final sentence that markedly changes the whole implication of what he is saying:
That is a pretty important sentence to leave out! So, in other words, before Kürschner et al., most CO2 records did suggest that CO2 was low during that period, but Kürschner et al. provide evidence going the other way. Is the Kürschner et al. result correct? Given the disagreement that the stomata data has had with the ice cores, I would not embrace as the final answer, although Royer does explain why this particular stomata result might be more believable than previous ones:
Furthermore, as I noted, the Tripati et al. result using that is the subject of this post uses a different method and seems to pretty much confirm the Kürschner et al. results…and furthermore it also is in good agreement with the ice core data over the past 750000 years.
From 10/9
Smokey:
Scientists on the AGW side believe they have proven their argument and the vast majority of scientists agree with them. They are moving on to getting policies implemented to resolve the problems with pumping CO2 into the atmo. Their proof is the studies that demonstrate the link between the warming of the 1980’s through the 21st century and increasing CO2 levels. Temperatures are higher than the have been since the MWP.
Denny
Even though CO2 shares “frequencies” with water, all agree that a doubling of CO2 will increase temp 1C. With feedbacks that will bump it up to +3 to +5C. Cloud Feedbacks may minimize if they turn out to be negative but that is about the only hope the skeptical side at this point..
Joel Shore
I did not imply that skeptics were nuts. Those are your words and I consider myself a skeptic. I do however accept the premise that increases in CO2 will increase temperature. I’m open to discovering that recent increases are a cycle or that cloud feedbacks are negative but in the long run getting to 500ppm of CO2 or more will have some impact on temperature and climate. I do not have to prove “CO2 controls climate” as you state. It’s easier to show that doubling CO2 increases the amount of heat retained from what is recieved from the sun. That heat energy has an impact on climate.
Save the sharks
So the other side in the global warming debate is wrong because “they suffer from mass delusions”? I suggest you re-evaluate how you view people who disagree with you. Your comment reminds me of a lyric from the song “Bad Indication” by the Pop Band Off Broadway: “If the world revolved around you……..” Consider the possiblity that you are wrong, that hundreds of scientists who disagree with you are correct and that the world does not revolve around you.
Shiny
william
william (13:22:54):
“Scientists on the AGW side believe…”
You phrased that exactly right. It’s a true belief.
And your “vast majority” of scientists is also a true belief. Tens of thousands of scientists have signed this statement:
So much for that mythical ‘consensus’.
Its good to see that people now know there are all these PaleoClimate estimates. I’ve been working on a paper for quite awhile now (it is basically finished) that should be able to put it all into some perspective and will provide all the data (and throw a few twists into the discussion as well.)
Joel is not going to be happy with me.
They are only “reconciled” in the sense that the ice core record looks like a low frequency component of the SI record over the last 1000 years. Prior to 1000 AD, the “reconciliation” deteriorates badly.
Which would be a non-correlation.
That variability is totally consistent with both the early to mid Holocene variability demonstrated by Wagner et al (1999) and with the CO2 variability in modern instrumental records (e.g. Keeling) which can also be correlated with SI data (Wagner et al. (2005)).
I think the ice core data are not reliable for anything more than a low frequency component of past CO2 trends.
Mankind accounts for somewhere between 1% and 3% of the Earth’s carbon budget… So I think there’s a strong possibility that some of the difference between 320ppmv and 385ppmv CO2 is anthropogenic.
But… If the SI data are accurate, almost all of the current 385ppmv CO2 could be naturally sourced and is of no climatological consequence. If the ice core data are correct, it should be about 2C warmer now than it actually is and the Earth should not have cooled from 1942-1976 and it shouldn’t be cooling now.
An 80% reduction in CO2 emissions from 2005 levels would reduce our per capita carbon footprint to somewhere around the Plymouth Rock Pilgrim level. To make such a reduction by 2050 would probably cost more than a 5% annual reduction in our GDP.
I buy fire insurance for my home because I know that houses catch on fire… It has happened before. There is direct observational evidence of other houses catching fire and burning down. I don’t carry flood insurance because I don’t live in a flood plain. I don’t carry asteroid impact insurance or other act-of-God-type insurance because those sorts of things have a low probability of occurring and an even lower probability that the insurance would do any good.
I’m not going to willingly fork up several thousand dollars per year just in case the IPCC are right… When I know for a fact that their hypotheses run counter to the last 600 million years of geological history…Much the same way that I’d never willingly purchase asteroid impact insurance.
Rather than going broke trying to alter the Earth’s natural climate cycles, I’d rather generate as much wealth now as possible so that we have the financial means to cope with future climate change. Because, if there is one thing that I do know for certain, it is that the Earth’s climate will always be changing.
The House version of Cap & Trade will reduce the amount of electricity generated by natural gas-fired plants and increase the amount of electricity generated by coal-fired plants. So even if the precautionary principle made any scientific sense, Cap & Trade won’t do anything but make energy more expensive and destroy wealth.
Again… If the plant SI data are correct, CO2 was as high as or higher than it now is as recently as 400AD. If the plant SI data are wrong, CO2 has never correlated with temperature change in a manner supportive of AGW at any time in the last 600 million years.
Either mankind pretty well caused all of the CO2 rise from 280ppmv to 385ppmv without warming the planet any more than it warmed in the Medieval Warm Period, the Sangamon Interglacial or the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period… Or modern CO2 levels have largely been driven by temperature change, rather than by anthropogenic activities.
Joel: It looks like it is too hard to tell from stomata densities just how much c02 there was in the atmosphere. Where densities are known to be determined by c02 alone then they could be accepted, but when other factors are involved then its less certain they can be used as a proxy. Then there is the case of partial pressure. on a range of species of tree, shrub and herb -This was done as an experiment at Cambridge University – shown that stomatal density and stomatal index increase as the partial pressure of CO2 decreases over the range from the current level of 34 Pa to 22.5 Pa. Stomatal density responds to the reduced partial pressure of CO2 in a simulation of high altitude (when the CO2 mole fraction is unchanged.
Here’s a brief synopsis:
When the partial pressure of CO2 is increased from 35 to 70 Pa stomatal density decreases slightly, with a response to unit change in CO2 which is about 10% of that below 34 Pa.
Measurements of gas exchange on leaves which had developed in different CO2 partial pressures, but at low saturation vapour pressure deficits in the range of 0.7 to 0.9 kPa, indicated lower photosynthetic rates but higher stomatal conductances at reduced CO2 partial pressures.
Experiments on populations of Nardus stricta originating from altitudes of 366 m and 810 m in Scotland, indicated genetic differences in the responses of stomatal density to CO2 in pressures simulating altitudes of sea level and 2 000 m. Plants from the higher altitude showed greater declines in stomatal density when the CO2 partial pressure was increased. ”
Gases react to their partial pressure – not necessarily their concentrations. React meaning dissolve, dissuse, and so forth, and needs a knowledge of air pressure and density at the altitude and geographic location of the sample proxy.
Its really hard to know which proxies to use for an aerial c02 construction from the past. Bill Illis quotes Veizer, but Veizer decouples temperature from pressure altogether
so
oops.. last sentence should read: “decouples temperature from c02 concentration altogether”. I’m thinking faster than i’m typing
Joel Shore “If you can find an example of a graph that you think I have objected to for no good reason, then great. Otherwise, you are just distracting from the fact that I have had very good reasons to object to this graph and many of the previous graphs that you have shown.”
HUH?
[This is almost comical. Reminds me of cartoon dialogue “Well YOU sir are a reason that I object to your objectivity…..etc.”
LOL
Joel…I hope you are not using the public dole to for your research.
But if you are on the public dole (and specifically if you are paid for by the American taxpayer….(translation: “You work for us” ….) then you need to get your @ur momisugly$% off this blog and start doing some ACTUAL research.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Dave Middleton “I buy fire insurance for my home because I know that houses catch on fire… It has happened before. There is direct observational evidence of other houses catching fire and burning down. I don’t carry flood insurance because I don’t live in a flood plain. I don’t carry asteroid impact insurance or other act-of-God-type insurance because those sorts of things have a low probability of occurring and an even lower probability that the insurance would do any good.”
“I’m not going to willingly fork up several thousand dollars per year just in case the IPCC are right… When I know for a fact that their hypotheses run counter to the last 600 million years of geological history…Much the same way that I’d never willingly purchase asteroid impact insurance.”
WELL SAID.
Joel….why is this so hard for you to understand???
You are a physicist. Be objective. Let go of the natural cognitive dissonance tendencies that is endemic in our species and OPEN YOUR MIND.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
My dear, dear savethesharks, while I appreciate your recent knight in shining armor rescue, Joel has been working extra hard to present his point of view. As much as I disagree with his beliefs and his posts that have gone beyond high road debate techniques (which begs the question why I don’t follow such rules), your last couple of posts seem lacking in scientific rigor and slip into hyperbole, doncha think? Don’t let em git under your skin, lessen you have had a sip or two of red wine and 85% cocoa chocolate. Then it’s understandable. Trust me.
And this one….also worth repeating AGAIN AND AGAIN:
Dave Middleton “Rather than going broke trying to alter the Earth’s natural climate cycles, I’d rather generate as much wealth now as possible so that we have the financial means to cope with future climate change. Because, if there is one thing that I do know for certain, it is that the Earth’s climate will always be changing.”
This….THIS, folks….is the crux of the matter.
Flawless, irrefutable logic of the ages.
Needs to be repeated again and again and again.
It is truly sad that people hold onto their belief systems when their belief systems fail…and even betray….them.
That is why the AGW myth will go down in history as just that.
“I want to believe.”
“I want to think that I am helping my planet.”
Hey…noble cause.
What if “helping our planet” was foregoing all of the wild goose chases about trace gasses in the atmosphere determining Earth’s climate [I mean….just even LOOK at Al Gore….would even trust him to give Halloween candy to your kid? I think not.]….but what if “helping our planet” was defined as simply learning to ADJUST WITH HER CYCLES.
We have SO much to learn a species. We have been here but such a short period of time.
Perhaps there is hope.
But it ain’t remotely in the hands of the IPCC!!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Pamela Gray “…your last couple of posts seem lacking in scientific rigor and slip into hyperbole, doncha think?…”
No, I don’t Pamela. No hyperbole at all.
Just simple, direct OBSERVATION of a flaw.
No scientific “rigor” needed. And DEFINITELY no hyperbole.
Just the facts, ma’am.
[My name is Chris by the way].
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
This is worth re-posting….beyond Pamela’s interference:
Go OSU! 🙂
——————————————
Dave Middleton “I buy fire insurance for my home because I know that houses catch on fire… It has happened before. There is direct observational evidence of other houses catching fire and burning down. I don’t carry flood insurance because I don’t live in a flood plain. I don’t carry asteroid impact insurance or other act-of-God-type insurance because those sorts of things have a low probability of occurring and an even lower probability that the insurance would do any good.”
“I’m not going to willingly fork up several thousand dollars per year just in case the IPCC are right… When I know for a fact that their hypotheses run counter to the last 600 million years of geological history…Much the same way that I’d never willingly purchase asteroid impact insurance.”
WELL SAID.
Joel….why is this so hard for you to understand???
You are a physicist. Be objective. Let go of the natural cognitive dissonance tendencies that is endemic in our species and OPEN YOUR MIND.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA