Yes, our forebears started global warming by hunting the woolly mammoth. Right. Must be the mammoth albedo effect, much like the sheep albedo effect. Oh, wait, no it’s birch trees albedo calculated via pollen proxy. The mammoths stopped eating birch trees, that’s wot did it. And those hunters used cooking fires too. Gosh. I wish I had more time to refute this, travel beckons, but I’m sure readers can lend a hand in comments.
UPDATE: Carl Bussjaeger points out in comments that;
Just last month, USA Today told us that Felisa Smith of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque discovered that…
Mammoth extinction triggered climate COOLING
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/05/mammoth-extinction-triggered-climate-cooling/1
Man-made global warming started with ancient hunters
AGU Release No. 10–15 Link here
30 June 2010
For Immediate Release
WASHINGTON—Even before the dawn of agriculture, people may have caused the planet to warm up, a new study suggests.
Mammoths used to roam modern-day Russia and North America, but are now extinct—and there’s evidence that around 15,000 years ago, early hunters had a hand in wiping them out. A new study, accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), argues that this die-off had the side effect of heating up the planet.
“A lot of people still think that people are unable to affect the climate even now, even when there are more than 6 billion people,” says the lead author of the study, Chris Doughty of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California. The new results, however, “show that even when we had populations orders of magnitude smaller than we do now, we still had a big impact.”
In the new study, Doughty, Adam Wolf, and Chris Field—all at Carnegie Institution for Science—propose a scenario to explain how hunters could have triggered global warming.
First, mammoth populations began to drop—both because of natural climate change as the planet emerged from the last ice age, and because of human hunting. Normally, mammoths would have grazed down any birch that grew, so the area stayed a grassland. But if the mammoths vanished, the birch could spread. In the cold of the far north, these trees would be dwarfs, only about 2 meters (6 feet) tall. Nonetheless, they would dominate the grasses.
The trees would change the color of the landscape, making it much darker so it would absorb more of the Sun’s heat, in turn heating up the air. This process would have added to natural climate change, making it harder for mammoths to cope, and helping the birch spread further.
To test how big of an effect this would have on climate, Field’s team looked at ancient records of pollen, preserved in lake sediments from Alaska, Siberia, and the Yukon Territory, built up over thousands of years. They looked at pollen from birch trees (the genus Betula), since this is “a pioneer species that can rapidly colonize open ground following disturbance,” the study says. The researchers found that around 15,000 years ago—the same time that mammoth populations dropped, and that hunters arrived in the area—the amount of birch pollen started to rise quickly.
To estimate how much additional area the birch might have covered, they started with the way modern-day elephants affect their environment by eating plants and uprooting trees. If mammoths had effects on vegetation similar to those of modern elephants , then the fall of mammoths would have allowed birch trees to spread over several centuries, expanding from very few trees to covering about one-quarter of Siberia and Beringia—the land bridge between Asia and Alaska. In those places where there was dense vegetation to start with and where mammoths had lived, the main reason for the spread of birch trees was the demise of mammoths, the model suggests.
Another study, published last year, shows that “the mammoths went extinct, and that was followed by a drastic change in the vegetation,” rather than the other way around, Doughty says. “With the extinction of this keystone species, it would have some impact on the ecology and vegetation—and vegetation has a large impact on climate.”
Doughty and colleagues then used a climate simulation to estimate that this spread of birch trees would have warmed the whole planet more than 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.18 degrees Fahrenheit) over the course of several centuries. (In comparison, the planet has warmed about six times more during the past 150 years, largely because of people’s greenhouse gas emissions.)
Only some portion—about one-quarter—of the spread of the birch trees would have been due to the mammoth extinctions, the researchers estimate. Natural climate change would have been responsible for the rest of the expansion of birch trees. Nonetheless, this suggests that when hunters helped finish off the mammoth, they could have caused some global warming.
In Siberia, Doughty says, “about 0.2 degrees C (0.36 degrees F) of regional warming is the part that is likely due to humans.”
Earlier research indicated that prehistoric farmers changed the climate by slashing and burning forests starting about 8,000 years ago, and when they introduced rice paddy farming about 5,000 years ago. This would suggest that the start of the so-called “Anthropocene”—a term used by some scientists to refer to the geological age when mankind began shaping the entire planet—should be dated to several thousand years ago.
However, Field and colleagues argue, the evidence of an even earlier man-made global climate impact suggests the Anthropocene could have started much earlier. Their results, they write, “suggest the human influence on climate began even earlier than previously believed, and that the onset of the Anthropocene should be extended back many thousands of years.”
This work was funded by the Carnegie Institution for Science and NASA.
Notes for Journalists
As of the date of this press release, the paper by Doughty et al. is still “in press” (i.e. not yet published). Journalists and public information officers (PIOs) of educational and scientific institutions who have registered with AGU can download a PDF copy of this paper in press.
Or, you may order a copy of the paper by emailing your request to Maria-José Viñas at mjvinas@agu.org. Please provide your name, the name of your publication, and your phone number.
Neither the paper nor this press release are under embargo.
Title:
“Biophysical feedbacks between the Pleistocene megafauna extinction and climate: The first human‐induced global warming?”
Authors:
Christopher E. Doughty, Adam Wolf, and Christopher B. Field, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, California, USA
======================
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Note to self: Any animal changing the climate = good… as long as that animal isn’t man. then its bad.
George E. Smith says:
July 1, 2010 at 6:19 pm
[–snip for brevity–]
Well 899, if you believe that; then perhaps I should state more explicitly exactly what I mean by the use of that term “Positive feedback”; same goes for “negative feedback”.
[–snip rest–]
Negative feedback in an atmospheric system works simply because of the conservation of energy principle: You cannot extract more energy out of a system than was put into it to begin with. But you may certainly LOSE energy in the process, and that is exactly what happens.
Positive feedback is –again– a myth.
In conclusion, the longer it takes to posit a thought, the less likely it has validity.
@ur momisugly Cassandra King June 30, 2010 at 10:34 pm:
I take it this is said tongue in cheek. This IS the myth, though, isn’t it? And it has nearly 100% acceptance, here and around the world.
For a different and more scientific take on the reality of it all, I would recommend the book 1491. It talks about how very extensively the indigenous peoples transformed/modified the land in various ways – from the burning of prairies to the invention and use of terra preta in huge swaths of the Amazon basin. The notion that the “Indians” did nothing to the land at all is shown to be more or less a fantasy. That myth started with the “noble savage” myth that dates far back even into the 1700s.
The book argues pretty persuasively that there were far more pre-Columbians here than most people realize – possibly as many as 50 million or 100 million in both of the Americas. The reaction of most reading this will likely be, “Oh, Yeah! And just where did they all go, then?” Disease. Some estimates are that over 98% of them were killed by European diseases for which they had no immunity. Read the book. It is an eye opener on many fronts.
@ur momisugly MikeinAppalachia June 30, 2010 at 11:06 pm:
I LOVE IT. Someone else brought in the death of the Clovis barrier.
For those who are not informed in that area of inquiry:
Up until 1997 the arkies all had what was known derisively as “The Clovis Barrier.” They argued since 1929 that no one came to the AMericas until Clovis man came over the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska and then down “the ice-free corridor” in western Canada. The ice-free corridor did not open up until around 13,000 BP, so any claims of evidence of humans in the Americas prior to Clovis were ignored, shot down, ridiculed, blackballed and shouted down.
In 1997, at a place about as far from the land bridge as possible in the Americas, a place called Monte Verde in southern Chile, a large team of arkies was allowed to convince themselves that man was here before Clovis.
Once the Clovis barrier was blown up, other sites all over NA and SA were finally accepted as valid – though some of the Clovis supporters are still out there arguing that a mistake has been made. Some sites that were Clovis sites were actually found to have human artifacts at lower levels; the researchers simply assumed once they hit the Clovis layer that nothing COULD be below, so they stopped there and hadn’t dug any deeper. The pro-Clovis arkies were a mere foot or so from finding the evidence themselves, yet it never occurred to them to look.
Since 1997, activity has been frantic, with evidence that people came from other places, dating back at least to nearly 20,000 years BP. The earliest dates may yet go back further. One of the other places is Europe. The Solutreans in Spain and France and Portugal were making one-step-earlier “Clovis points” 3,000 years before Clovis in America, but no one before 1997 was allowed to see the link. Mitochondrial DNA haplotype studies have shown that there were at least FIVE incursions into the Americas from elsewhere.
As I mentioned in a previous comment, evidence of Clovis man (predominantly Clovis arrowheads and spear points) terminated at the same time as the extinction of the mammoths, but the article seems to ignore that fact. Maybe it was a mutual suicide pact – one that included the American sloth, the saber-toothed tiger and the American horse. There is no evidence for humans here for about 1200 years after the “black mat” was laid down. The black mat is mostly carbon, evidently from some huge fires, and it is present in many sites from the Rockies to the Atlantic and down into New Mexico at least. And more sites are turning up all the time.
THE HYPOTHESIS THAT MAN KILLED OFF THE MAMMOTHS HAS HAD MANY SCIENTISTS QUESTION IT. In public, they pretend that there is a “consensus” (does that ring a bell with anyone here?) on this, but the likelihood of so few humans killing off ever single megafauna species in the New World stuck in many a scientist’s craw.
I cannot believe that these people have the audacity to keep throwing the CLOVIS MAN KILLED ‘EM joke out there in some other “Humans are evil” clothing. They obviously think we are all stupid and didn’t know what happened in 1997.
899 wrote: “So, no thank you to the invite to do nothing. In fact, at every turn of the CAGW/CC worm, I’ll be there poking it mercilessly.”
The invite is not to “do nothing” – quite the contrary. The point is that screaming protester types are more easily dominated than cool, calm, & collected types. Raw nature.
899 wrote: “[…] we do ourselves no great favor by remaining on the sidelines, unengaged […]”
Engage wisely.
899: July 1, 2010 at 5:15 pm
There is a logical reply: Said animals were feeding when caught in an avalanche of snow, and eventually the snow turned to solid ice.
That’s a logical reply. Unfortunately, you need some steep, elevated terrain (i.e., mountains) in order to get an avalanche, and the frozen mammoths have all been found in the muskeg, miles from the nearest mountains.
All we know for sure is that Mama Gaia got upset with them and gave ’em the ultimate cold shoulder…
@ur momisugly Bill Tuttle July 2, 2010 at 2:51 am:
899 is doing what so-called scientists do when we stump them: He SPECULATES on what COULD have happened, WITHOUT ONE SHRED OF EVIDENCE – and THEN, they walk away, patting themselves on the back, saying to themselves, “Another stupid lay ‘problem’ solved.” And it isn’t solved at all. All that is done is that they’ve convinced themselves that speculation BY A SCIENTIST is a superior form of thinking, when all it is is them stroking themselves. It is a joke, really.
Speculation is not science. Especially speculations pulled out of their arses.
Note that 899 began with, “There is a logical reply.” No, 899, what you did was speculate. Out of your arse.
That Bill Tuttle pointed out your specific error will not improve your demeanor for next time. Next time you will again ASSUME something WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE. And then you will puff out your chest – again – and consider yourself to have solved the “problem,” with your self-delusional “scientific approach.” Calling it “logical” does not make speculation turn magically into science. Science is the accumulation of FACTS, not imagined scenarios. Science is formulating AND THEN TESTING, based on the REAL facts, not imagined ones conjured up to convince yourself of your “logical” mental superiority.
Real science is experimentation. Repeatable experimentation. Not in your head, but in the real world.
“”” 899 says:
July 1, 2010 at 8:07 pm
George E. Smith says:
July 1, 2010 at 6:19 pm
[–snip for brevity–]
Well 899, if you believe that; then perhaps I should state more explicitly exactly what I mean by the use of that term “Positive feedback”; same goes for “negative feedback”.
[–snip rest–]
Negative feedback in an atmospheric system works simply because of the conservation of energy principle: You cannot extract more energy out of a system than was put into it to begin with. But you may certainly LOSE energy in the process, and that is exactly what happens.
Positive feedback is –again– a myth.
In conclusion, the longer it takes to posit a thought, the less likely it has validity. “””
Well I’ll repeat what I said before; you can believe that if you want to.
But what about this statement; which is wholly your own work:- ”’ Negative feedback in an atmospheric system works simply because of the conservation of energy principle: You cannot extract more energy out of a system than was put into it to begin with. But you may certainly LOSE energy in the process, and that is exactly what happens. “””
I’m sure that must be correct; because it is brief; and you said :- “”” In conclusion, the longer it takes to posit a thought, the less likely it has validity. “””
Perhaps you could point out where in my apparently erroneous analysis, I claimed to get more energy out of the system than was put in. I’m quite positive that nowhere in my analysis is that claimed or suggested; nor would that seem to occur in a system such as I described. So why don’t you tell us; where my analysis purports to get more energy out than was put in. Or would that take so long an exposition to be obviously false by virtue of its excessive length.
Feedback systems modify the GAIN of the system; GAIN being defined as the output RESPONSE, divided by the input SIGNAL.
The feedback paths simply modify the EFFECTIVE input SIGNAL; they do not involve adding additional power that wasn’t previously there.
The mechanisms that I described which are completely understandable by anybody who ever took an 8th grade science course; result simply in a rerouting of ENERGIES that are already in the system. No additional energy is added from any source; and I provided NO energy source other than the original solar energy input. And nowhere does the sum total of all of the rerouted components add up to more energy than was originally input from the sun.
Now I’m sure this explanation is likely not corredct because it is probably too long.
I could give you a much shorter explanation; but I won’t; because I am much more polite than to do that.
By your understanding; there could be no such thing as positive feedback anywhere in any system.
I’m sure that somewhere in your past experience, you have likely encountered sytems that are called OSCILLATORS. You probably could explain for us, how oscillators work, in the absence of positive feedback; which you assert is impossible.
Bill Tuttle says:
July 2, 2010 at 2:51 am
899: July 1, 2010 at 5:15 pm
There is a logical reply: Said animals were feeding when caught in an avalanche of snow, and eventually the snow turned to solid ice.
That’s a logical reply. Unfortunately, you need some steep, elevated terrain (i.e., mountains) in order to get an avalanche, and the frozen mammoths have all been found in the muskeg, miles from the nearest mountains.
All we know for sure is that Mama Gaia got upset with them and gave ‘em the ultimate cold shoulder…
Correct me, should I happen to err here, but were not all of the encased mammoths found very close by to the glaciated areas?
Many of those were several hundred to several thousand feet high depending upon their location.
Here in Northwest Washington, there are a few surviving glaciers in the Cascades, and in the springtime it is not uncommon for the ground areas below them to be completely clear of snow. There is some vegetation in the rocky moraine areas beneath, and those experience the occasional pelting of ice and rock released from the glaciers.
Since the animals in question were encased in ice –whilst having vegetable matter still in their mouths– it might be accurately presumed that they were in the process of feeding close by to a glacier when their happenstance occurred, and that would be the release of a massive amount of accumulated snow –and perhaps ice– which overtook them.
I’ll take the chance of adding an additional dimension here: Since the Black Mat areas all seem to occur at the same geological point of time, it is entirely likely that whatever caused the demise of that whole band of life –some remark that it was likely an asteroid– then the shock wave produced by its entry was sufficient to cause the release of snow from a cornice or other larger collection.
Again: If you might surmise a more appropriate demise whereupon the animal is quick-frozen and thusly encased in ice, I’d like to read of it.
feet2thefire says:
July 2, 2010 at 7:31 am
[–snip–]Note that 899 began with, “There is a logical reply.” No, 899, what you did was speculate. Out of your arse.
My! My! Such vituperation!
Did someone whiz into your morning coffee?
You will please take note that while I engaged in conjecture, I certainly did NOT assert that my theory was in any way factual.
In light of the lack of information regarding the mechanics of the matter under discussion, I merely put forth what I think is a probable and likely scenario.
And again: If you have a more probable theory of the matter, then please DO share it with the rest of us.
Otherwise, you can keep your insults to yourself.
More propaganda from Al Gore’s minions and the religion of A.G.W.
If you want to read about what really happened, go to the radical websites run by Nova, Scientific American, National Geographic, and Science Daily. Read about the most recent iridium layer and nanodiamonds, deposited in North America 12,900 years ago.
The Wooly Mammoth, Giant Sloth, and Sabre toothed cat went extinct only 12,900 years ago, the same time that the iridium and nanodiamond layer was deposited, most likely from an object striking the earth. It’s pretty lame watching the A.G.W. religion attempt to blame mankind for an act of nature.
Extinction of North American Megafauna, 12,900 years ago:
Nova: Megabeast’s Sudden Death:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/clovis/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080702160950.htm
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/41/16016.abstract
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/41/16016.full
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=did-a-comet-hit-earth-12900-years-ago
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090105-nanodiamonds.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ice-core-reveals-how-quickly-climate-can-change
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080619142112.htm
Chris Shaker
George E. Smith says:
July 2, 2010 at 10:26 am
[–snip for brevity–] Feedback systems modify the GAIN of the system; GAIN being defined as the output RESPONSE, divided by the input SIGNAL.
The feedback paths simply modify the EFFECTIVE input SIGNAL; they do not involve adding additional power that wasn’t previously there.
The atmosphere of the Earth is NOT some kind of amplifier.
Ergo, it DOES NOT possess that quality referred to as ‘gain.’
The whole process of ‘amplification’ of necessity refers that ability of taking a small signal and turning it into a larger one.
In order to accomplish any such thing, the system MUST be possessing of MORE energy than the impinging energy.
Now, since you’re so self-convinced that the Earth is possessing of some kind of energy amplifier, you’ll please explain how that would be, and from WHENCE that energy arrives?
I take it that English is a second language for you; since you clearly didn’t understand what I wrote.
“”” Feedback systems modify the GAIN of the system; GAIN being defined as the output RESPONSE, divided by the input SIGNAL. “”” Now there it is; nowhere did I mention the word ENERGY, EITHER AS AN INPUT OR AS AN OUTPUT RESPONSE.
I defined for you exactly what I meant by the word GAIN. The input SIGNAL could be the number of ducks sitting on a pond in front of a duck blind. The output RESPONSE could be the number of rounds of shotgun ammunition discharged by hunters in response to that number of sitting ducks. Input and output, can be any quantities specified in any units . None of those quantities need to be energy; and nobody said the output RESPONSE needed to be greater than the input SIGNAL. The gain could easily be less than one; maybe it might be 0.oo1. Nobody said any amplifier needs to be involved; whatever an “amplifier” might be in any particular system.
Perhaps you are unaware that your computer contains physical structures that started off as drawings that were millions of times larger than the final elements that ended up in your computer. Those drawings were “amplified” by a sytem with a gain very much less than unity; and with no particular focus on energy.
When somebody gives a specific definition of something in a scientific paper or article; or a blog post such as here; the fact that you might associate something quite different with that word, is of no relevence; because the author has defined for you just what that word will be taken to mean in the context of his essay.
So don’t come here and start flippantly throwing around one liners; like you do.
Nobody besides you is seeing any expansion of energy that wasn’t there to begin with, in anything I have posted here; or anywhere else for that matter. That is a figment of your refusal to read what others write; rather than what you think they wrote.
When you have 50 years of on the job daily usage of Physics; following five years of High School Physics and by five more years of University Physics; then come back here so we can have an intelligent discussion; but in the meantime; your assertions are just not very credible.
George E. Smith says:
July 2, 2010 at 1:42 pm
[–snip snide remarks–]Nobody besides you is seeing any expansion of energy that wasn’t there to begin with, in anything I have posted here; or anywhere else for that matter. That is a figment of your refusal to read what others write; rather than what you think they wrote.
It was YOURSELF whom employed the term amplification.
From the American Heritage English Dictionary:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
am·pli·fi·ca·tion
n.
1. The act or result of amplifying, enlarging, or extending.
2.
a. An addition to or expansion of a statement or idea.
b. A statement with such an addition.
3. Physics
a. The process of increasing the magnitude of a variable quantity, especially the magnitude of voltage, power, or current, without altering any other quality.
b. The result of such a process.
4. Electronics See gain1.
5. Genetics The process by which extra copies of a gene or a DNA sequence are formed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Take due and careful note of sense 3a in the above.
“The process of increasing the magnitude of a variable quantity, especially the magnitude of voltage, power, or current, without altering any other quality.”
Yeah, how about that. Now, DO TELL: Precisely HOW is said ‘amplification’ taking place when the amount of HEAT ENERGY in the system cannot possibly be greater than the energy imparted to it?
I really, REALLY wanna know all about that!!
So unless and until you can prove that energy amplification is taking place, then CAGW is a myth!
“”” 899 says:
July 2, 2010 at 2:37 pm
George E. Smith says:
July 2, 2010 at 1:42 pm
[–snip snide remarks–]Nobody besides you is seeing any expansion of energy that wasn’t there to begin with, in anything I have posted here; or anywhere else for that matter. That is a figment of your refusal to read what others write; rather than what you think they wrote.
It was YOURSELF whom employed the term amplification.
From the American Heritage English Dictionary:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
am·pli·fi·ca·tion
n.
…………………
3. Physics
a. The process of increasing the magnitude of a variable quantity, especially the magnitude of voltage, power, or current, without altering any other quality.
…………………..
Take due and careful note of sense 3a in the above.
“The process of increasing the magnitude of a variable quantity, especially the magnitude of voltage, power, or current, without altering any other quality.” “””
From the Oxford English Dictionary:-
” It was YOU WHO employed the term amplification. ”
So my INPUT SIGNAL was three ducks alighting on the pond; and my OUTPUT RESPONSE was seven 20 gauge shotgun shells being discharged.
So my SYSTEM GAIN is 7/3 shells. duck^-1
So is that an amplification since the GAIN is 7 shells per three ducks or is that not an amplificatiuon, since actually the seven shells were thereby lost due to their discharge; and actually none of the ducks was bagged.
You see; 899, you can only say whether the output is LARGER than the input; and therefore claim an AMPLIFICATION in your definition of the word; if the system Input and the system output; are measured in exactly the same dimensions and units.
So if the sun INPUTS 1000 W/m^2 into the system; but the surface temperature increases by 30 degrees celsius; then those are two different units; and therefore one cannot say whehter the input is greater than the output since they are incommensurate quantities that are measured in totally different units.
Which is why I specifically DEFINED the sytem GAIN as being the OUTPUT RESPONSE divided by the SIGNAL INPUT, and once so defined; it matters not a jot what the dimensions or the units of each of those quantities is; but since the input and the output are not even the same physical quantities it is quite meaningless to describe one as being larger than the other; or smaller.
And you still haven’t shown where in my analysis I claimed or even intimated that there was any INCREASE in the energy of the system, as a result of the processes taking place; over and above what incoming solar energy there was.
And I’ll tell you once again (and for the last time) that I specifically described a process, that simply redistributes energies that are already in the system; and that redistribution was in no way intended to be exhaustive; so there are likely many other avenues for the system energy to be re-arranged.
And as you took the trouble to mention that the whole thing is explainable on the principle of conservation of energy; then you are already aware that no energy is either lost or gained in the process.
You assert that there can be NO positive feedback because that implies the output is more energy than the input. By the same token; there can be NO negative feedback because that implies the output is less energy than the input which is equally mythical.
You need to go some other place to Troll.
George E. Smith says:
July 2, 2010 at 6:12 pm
[–snip all–]
Once again, George:
From the American Heritage English Dictionary:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
am·pli·fi·ca·tion
n.
1. The act or result of amplifying, enlarging, or extending.
2.
a. An addition to or expansion of a statement or idea.
b. A statement with such an addition.
3. Physics
a. The process of increasing the magnitude of a variable quantity, especially the magnitude of voltage, power, or current, without altering any other quality.
b. The result of such a process.
4. Electronics See gain 1.
5. Genetics The process by which extra copies of a gene or a DNA sequence are formed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
See also 4 above, in addition to –as before– 3a.
You want gain? You get amplification. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
You’re playing fast and furious with terms, but in the end you’re still playing fast and furious with a concept which doesn’t fly: You can NOT obtain more energy from the system then was put into it to begin with.
So let me get this straight: We’re supposed to plant trees to sequester CO2 and prevent global warming, yet growing more trees causes global warming….
We’re doomed, DOOMED I say, as trees will always increase and decrease a little from year to year, so every year will become warmer, no mater which way the change was! Oh Noooo!!!
Oh, and they completely ignore the homeostasis temperature behaviour of tree leaves and the transpiration effect cooling the leaves…
@Christopher John Shaker
Is Al Gore really high enough up in the CAGW church power structure to have minions? I rather thought he was just a useful idiot to those in the power structure.
It only occurs now to me that this is strictly agenda-driven pseudoscience:
““A lot of people still think that people are unable to affect the climate even now, even when there are more than 6 billion people,” says the lead author of the study, Chris Doughty of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California. The new results, however, “show that even when we had populations orders of magnitude smaller than we do now, we still had a big impact.”””
So, rig the assumptions and the models until they show that humans are changing the climate even when just spitting in the wind. I guess that’s what the funding entities, Carnegie Institution for Science and NASA, ordered.
Now here comes the conclusion of this mad idea that humans are changing the climate since 15,000 years ago, and Doughty probably didn’t notice it: When even a small non-industrialized group of stone age hunters can affect the climate by 0.1 degree with their actions, we can safey assume that later communities of people with higher degrees of technology had bigger impacts – for instance, bronce age cultures in the mediterranean, or early Indian and Chinese high cultures.
Now the planets climate didn’t fall off a cliff and didn’t tip over to ice age or hothouse Earth conditions during the entire 15,000 years even though people multiplied in numbers, and probably had ever larger effects on their surroundings.
So thank you Mr. Doughty, by assuming that your junk science holds water, i get a very strong argument for a self-stabilizing climate of the planet and the overwhelming influence of negative feedbacks. (Unfortunately, your fellow AGW people will see this very soon as well and quietly discard your work)
899: July 2, 2010 at 11:05 am
Correct me, should I happen to err here, but were not all of the encased mammoths found very close by to the glaciated areas?
Many of those were several hundred to several thousand feet high depending upon their location.
Since the animals in question were encased in ice –whilst having vegetable matter still in their mouths– it might be accurately presumed that they were in the process of feeding close by to a glacier when their happenstance occurred, and that would be the release of a massive amount of accumulated snow –and perhaps ice– which overtook them.
Most of the mammoths were found when streams and rivers cut banks through the muskeg — only a few were found encased in ice — but the rest were killed and buried *rapidly* in liquified mud. If they’d been buried by an ice fall, they would have been crushed flat, and if they’d been buried by an avalanche, the snow would have to have been replaced by soil very rapidly, or decomposition would have set in and the remains would have been scavenged. The vegetation — Arctic buttercups, in most cases — indicates that whatever killed them happened during the early spring.
Rather than an avalanche, try this scenario: an ice dam breaks, releasing all the water from a *large* prehistoric lake formed in high ground. The channelized wall of water will also carry *large* amounts of soil and vegetation it scoured from the hillsides, and when it erupts from the valley onto low ground, it’s still moving fast enough to catch the mammoths, bowl them over and, after it subsides and the silt precipitates, buries the mammoths.
Of course, I can see problems with that one, because I pulled the scenario right off the top of my head — I haven’t walked the actual terrain where the mammoths were found, but I’m familiar enough with the characteristics of the muskeg.
Bill Tuttle says:
July 3, 2010 at 6:09 am
Most of the mammoths were found when streams and rivers cut banks through the muskeg — only a few were found encased in ice — but the rest were killed and buried *rapidly* in liquified mud. If they’d been buried by an ice fall, they would have been crushed flat, and if they’d been buried by an avalanche, the snow would have to have been replaced by soil very rapidly, or decomposition would have set in and the remains would have been scavenged. The vegetation — Arctic buttercups, in most cases — indicates that whatever killed them happened during the early spring.
Rather than an avalanche, try this scenario: an ice dam breaks, releasing all the water from a *large* prehistoric lake formed in high ground. The channelized wall of water will also carry *large* amounts of soil and vegetation it scoured from the hillsides, and when it erupts from the valley onto low ground, it’s still moving fast enough to catch the mammoths, bowl them over and, after it subsides and the silt precipitates, buries the mammoths.
Of course, I can see problems with that one, because I pulled the scenario right off the top of my head — I haven’t walked the actual terrain where the mammoths were found, but I’m familiar enough with the characteristics of the muskeg.
Have you by any chance given this a gander:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/fit/chapter1.asp
Oddly enough, I did, about two weeks ago. It makes the odds against finding mammoths fresh-frozen in the muskeg *and* entombed in ice even dicier, because conditions were evidently radically different than we had originally believed — but we’ve found them that way, nonetheless.
As I said, I could see problems with the ice-dam release, because I pulled the scenario right off the top of my head, but I couldn’t figure any other way to soak a steppe and turn it into a swamp *rapidly*.
And here’s the big puzzle —
“There is no known modern counterpart of the Siberian Ice Age steppes.
In summary, the ecology of the Siberian animals suggests a much more diverse vegetation with a fertile soil. This further implies a comparatively mild winter with light snowfall and a long growing season. These conditions differ markedly from the modern environment and climate, not to mention uniformitarian computer simulations of the Ice Age climate.” [my emphasis]
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/fit/chapter2.asp
I gather from this, that the best thing to do to fight global warming is cut down all the forests in Finland. I hope the green coalition will agree. We need urgent action.
“”” 899 says:
July 2, 2010 at 7:33 pm
George E. Smith says:
July 2, 2010 at 6:12 pm
[–snip all–]
Once again, George:
From the American Heritage English Dictionary:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
am·pli·fi·ca·tion “””
Well I seldom tell a person that they are “full of it”; specially in a public forum such as this; but you are a textbook case of the phenomenon. And you think that hiding under a number stamps you with credibility.
You will have to present somewhat more than your “Conservation of Energy Principle” one liners to make any headway.
It so happens that I have been building Amplifiers; that Amplify; probably longer than you have been taking up space on this planet. I know I built my first one at least 65 years ago; and I have been doing it ever since; and at least 50 years as a professional enterprise.
So I have designed and built Amplifiers whose INPUT SIGNAL was either; a Voltage (V), a Current (I), a Charge (Q) (down to a single electron), a Power (W), amechanical deflection, a Photon or stream of photons both coherent, and incoherent, a Temperature (T), an electromagnet field wave; or even a radioactive decay particle; well at least Electrons (betas), Alphas, Neutrons, and Protons; nothing more exotic than that; and I’m sure I am missing some other input signal categories that I have worked with.
And for OUTPUT RESPONSE I have dealt with Power (W), Voltage (V), Current (I), Charge (Q), Mechanical Deflection (s)or a Pressure (P), Temperature (T), Electromagnet Radiation (EM Waves), Streams of Photons.
I’ve built Amplifiers whose GAINs were Voltage (Vout/Vin), Current (Iout/Iin), Power (Wout/Win), Resistance (Vout/Iin), Conductance (Iout/Vin). I’ve made feedback loops that fed back a Voltage Proportional to Output Voltage; or a Voltage proportional to the Output Current; or Current proportional to the Output Voltage; or a Current Proportional to the Output Current; feedback signals have been Temperatures, or Powers. I don’t think I have actually used Radioactive decay products as Feedback signals (yet). I’ve built Amplifiers whose Gains were linear (highly) or even Logarithmic; well but only Logarithmic over about seven orders of magnitude; 23 to 24 “doublings”; so perhaps I should only call them pseudo-logarithmic; to distinguish them from the fundamental axiom of Climate science; that the Earth’s mean global surface Temperature is proportional to the Logarithm of the atmospheric CO2 abundance; well +/- 50% on the “GAIN” of that Logarithmic relationship; which so far in terms of real measured data; has been explored over a full 1/3rd of one doubling. Whoopee ! That’s a staggering piece of scientific discovery.
So if you think that YOU know something about Amplification; well so far we know that you were able to find the word in the American Heritage English Dictionary; but beyond that you’ve demonstrated NO knowledge whatsoever.
You still haven’t shown where in ANY of MY posts, I claimed that any of the climate processes I described were claimed to produce more output ENERGY, than the TOTAL INPUT ENERGY; or provided data or analysis that would even hint such a result.
In any case; the “Principle of Conservation of Energy” which seems to be the sum total of your demonstrated Physics knowledge; only applies to Isolated Systems. It does not apply even to Closed Systems; which are free to exchange energy with their environment; so Energy IS NOT CONSERVED in a Closed System; ONLY an Isolated System; and as luck would have it; there is actually no such real thing, as an Isolated System; so it is; to use your word “A Myth”. The earth’s climate system, is neither Isolated, nor Closed; so your Conservation of Energy Principle is moot. Sorry !
But as I said I prefer to not tell people, that they are “full of it”; well it is hardly necessary; since it is quite apparent to any casual observer.
I could recommend for your reading; since you know your way, around the American Heritage English Dictionary,already; buy yourself a paperback copy of Galileo Galilei’s “The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo) “. You’ll find it illuminating; specially when it comes to making a rational plausible argument.
I’m sure you’ll find a nice fellow traveller in Simplicio; one of the three characters in the story.