From the University of Leicester press office: An ancient Earth like ours
Geologists reconstruct the Earth’s climate belts between 460 and 445 million years ago
An international team of scientists including Mark Williams and Jan Zalasiewicz of the Geology Department of the University of Leicester, and led by Dr. Thijs Vandenbroucke, formerly of Leicester and now at the University of Lille 1 (France), has reconstructed the Earth’s climate belts of the late Ordovician Period, between 460 and 445 million years ago.
The findings have been published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA – and show that these ancient climate belts were surprisingly like those of the present.
The researchers state: “The world of the ancient past had been thought by scientists to differ from ours in many respects, including having carbon dioxide levels much higher – over twenty times as high – than those of the present. However, it is very hard to deduce carbon dioxide levels with any accuracy from such ancient rocks, and it was known that there was a paradox, for the late Ordovician was known to include a brief, intense glaciation – something difficult to envisage in a world with high levels of greenhouse gases. “
The team of scientists looked at the global distribution of common, but mysterious fossils called chitinozoans – probably the egg-cases of extinct planktonic animals – before and during this Ordovician glaciation. They found a pattern that revealed the position of ancient climate belts, including such features as the polar front, which separates cold polar waters from more temperate ones at lower latitudes. The position of these climate belts changed as the Earth entered the Ordovician glaciation – but in a pattern very similar to that which happened in oceans much more recently, as they adjusted to the glacial and interglacial phases of our current (and ongoing) Ice Age.
This ‘modern-looking’ pattern suggests that those ancient carbon dioxide levels could not have been as high as previously thought, but were more modest, at about five times current levels (they would have had to be somewhat higher than today’s, because the sun in those far-off times shone less brightly).
“These ancient, but modern-looking oceans emphasise the stability of Earth’s atmosphere and climate through deep time – and show the current man-made rise in greenhouse gas levels to be an even more striking phenomenon than was thought,” the researchers conclude.
Reference: Vandenbroucke, T.R.A., Armstrong, H.A., Williams, M., Paris, F., Zalasiewicz, J.A., Sabbe, K., Nolvak, J., Challands, T.J., Verniers, J. & Servais, T. 2010. Polar front shift and atmospheric CO2 during the glacial maximum of the Early Paleozoic Icehouse. PNAS doi/10.1073/pnas.1003220107.
Contacts: (Mark Williams and Jan Zalasiewicz at the Department of Geology, University of Leicester: Respectively tel. 0116 252 3642 and 0116 2523928, and e-mails mri@le.ac.uk and jaz1@le.ac.uk).
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I get tired of repeating this: addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere does not cause temperature rise. This is an empirical observation that follows from the work of Ferenc Miskolczi. Let me go through this one more time. Ferenc Miskolczy [E&E 21(4):243-262 (2010)] has shown that further addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere cannot change the already-existing greenhouse effect that keeps the earth habitable. He did that by using NOAA weather balloon database to show that the global average annual infrared optical thickness of the atmosphere has been unchanged for 61 years, with a value of 1.87. It will be inferred that CO2 does not affect the Earth’s climate through the greenhouse effect, he concludes. The optical thickness he speaks of is a logarithmic measure of the transparency of the atmosphere to heat radiation from below. This means that constant addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere for 61 years straight has not changed its transparency or its optical thickness would have increased, and this did not happen. And this is a stunning result: it means that the greenhouse absorption signature of the added carbon dioxide simply isn’t there. Hence, the runaway greenhouse effect that IPCC models thrust upon us is physically impossible. These modelers have discovered that if they used only carbon dioxide in their climate models the warming predicted was modest and did not lead to any dangerous warming. So they juiced up these models by assuming that water vapor provides positive feedback that increases warming. This is how they get those fantastic predictions of five or six degree warming. And these outrageous predictions are then used in proposals to Congress to justify emission controls. But their juiced-up models are all wrong. That is because Miskolczy has shown that water vapor feedback is strongly negative and suppresses warming instead of increasing it. And as the present article points out ,in Ordovician time when CO2 was five or more times higher than now the climate was not particularly warmer. And that is exactly what Miscolczi’s work would predict: increased carbon dioxide in the air does not mean increased global temperature. It is simply physics, and it applies to Ordovician times just as it applies to our time.
“”” Michael Larkin says:
August 10, 2010 at 6:23 pm
George E Smith,
Nothing snarky about this, honest – just a genuine question. Why do you often use semicolons instead of commas? Or is there a problem with your keyboard? I only mention it because I find it affects the readability of your posts, which is a shame. “””
Well Michael call it a problem of idiom confusion. I grew up on a Colonists diet of movies from Hollywood and J. Arthur Rank which gave me two species of the English language to add to my native tongue.
In my final year of high school which was the final instance of ANY formal training in the English Language or any other subjects covered under the general heading of English I actually was awarded the classs prize for the best score in the English final exam. Memory serves me to suggest that my score was 60/100 which I am sure was by far the highest score I ever got on any English exam. Actually the score is printed inside my prize “Standard Stories From the Operas.” which is howcum I remember it.
But bottom line is that I was taught to use commas whenever I needed to take a breath and to use semiccolons when there was a change in subject matter such as between major clauses.
Having not so much as an English Dictionary now in my technical library I am quite out of touch with modern English usage but I do from time to time consult with Dr Richard Lederer the foremost authority on the English language also the father of Annie Duke and Howard Lederer two of the slickest Professional Poker players on the circuit.
Annie Duke is of course the lady who cleaned the clock of Joan Rivers that old bag who won that rigged Donald Trump Celebrity Apprentice program a year or two ago on the T&V.
I can remove all the commas and semicolons if that would make you happier.
So what are YOUR roolz for punctuation ?
@Doug McGee, GM
The argument that “temps and CO2 levels from deep time are not relevant to the present” due to differences in continental layout, volcanism, solar output e.t.c., while politically convenient for CAGW, are false and illogical.
CAGW theory revolves around atmospheric radiative balance and the IR transmission / absorption of IR. This over-riding factor is supposed to sweep everything else aside. So the “Ordovician paradox” does indeed challenge the core of CAGW. Arm-waving about these other climate factors is not a counter-argument. Lets look at some of these factors anyway.
Different continental layout. How should that afffect climate? Ocean currents? This leads on to oceanic oscillations and phenomena succh as ESNO, PDO, AMO, more in the skeptical than the AGW lexicon. Orthodox CAGW rhetoric ignores such phenomena, or alternatively ascribes e.g. ENSO pattern to CAGW. So pleading continental / oceanic factors to escape the Ordovician paradox is illogical and inconsistent. How exactly would the Gondwanaland world map negate an otherwise huge CO2 forcing?
What about volcanism? How does volcanism affect climate and temperature? O yes – by CO2! So this introduces nothing new. There were no flood basalts in the Ordovician.
What about the dim sun? As Alan McIntire showed above (Aug 10, 4:20 pm), in the 4.5 billion year earth history, 460 mya is relatively recent, and the solar effect negligible in terms of temperature forcing (0.991 compared to today).
So I’m afraid that CAGW really does have to confront the Ordovician paradox. And after it has done that, it can move on to an even “worse” one. There were still more severe, global ice ages around 600-700 mya, of the “snowball earth” variety. And during which atmospheric CO2 was higher still, at 5000 – 10000 ppm or higher.
CAGW? “Its dead, Jim.”
Read all about it!
Episodes of much higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in the geological past.
Without being accompanied by runaway greenhouse effects.
No obvious increases in oceanic acidity.
Continued flourishing of corals and other marine invertebrates!
Tom C says:
August 10, 2010 at 11:30 am
“How much faster did the Earth rotate on axis 450 million years ago? Faster rotation rate will always lead to more rapid heat transfer between the low lats and poles, yielding a more uniform global temperature.”
Can you explain your thinking here? I would have expected a higher rotation rate to lead to less rapid heat transfer, and less uniform temperature (because the Coriolis effect stops the wind flowing directly where it wants to go, and turns it sideways, so that it has to rely upon friction with the ground to overcome the deflection). Day to night extremes would presumably be less, but tropics to poles should be more.
In the absence of negative feedback it certainly will indeed cause a temperature rise at the surface as surely as putting a blanket over a hot rock at night will keep its surface warmer than without it. That just elementary statistical thermodynamics. Questioning it puts one in the same crank category as those who think perpetual motion machines are possible.
Whether there are negative feedbacks that nullify the insulating effect of CO2 is a legitimate matter of debate but it appears that the best empirical evidence (scant and unreliable as it might be) is that there are no feedbacks, either positive or negative, that diminish or increase the net result. The correlation of actual temperatures vs. CO2 content both in recent history and over geologic time is just about perfect. The thing to note is that, because it takes a doubling of CO2 to acheive fixed increments of warming at this point in time there isn’t enough fossil fuel on the planet to get two more doublings from current level and at 1 degree C per doubling that is a good thing not a bad thing. The whole CAGW fright-fest is built upon baseless positive feedbacks causing far more warming, catastrophic melting of Greenland and Antarctica, excessive droughts and floods and extreme weather, failure to acknowledge the benefit to the biosphere of a warmer earth with more atmospheric CO2, and other assorted but still baseless FUD factors.
Dave;
I noticed you didn’t address the rock-solid 1.87 optical transparency of the atmosphere through a period of significant (almost the entirety of modern industrial output) rise in CO2 levels.
How does that permit any form of CO2 increase in downwelling IR hitting the surface? Or any other putative CO2 effect?
George;
Your own comma-semicolon rules are OK. But you must use them.
“by eye; without any” — no subject change.
“CO2 level; thereby proving” –no subject change.
“tables to base 2; but if you can find one; then you can” — no subject changes.
“that 22 deg C ;”do not exceed” ceiling ” — no punctuation needed at all.
“to watch; and I plan on staying” — no subject change.
And so on and so forth.
Dave, CO2 is referred to as a greenhouse gas because it is used in greenhouses to promote growth, it has a insulating factor given to it of 1, freon is12 and the new super eco refrigerant gas R123 is 123! there is no honest evidence to show CO2 has any talents as a greenhouse!
The AGW crowd have to resort to corrupt practices to create the illusion of warming, they spend vast sums of taxpayers money on this scam while real problems go unseen.
Dave Springer
In view of the figure at the top of this thread, how can you possibly describe the correlation between global temp and CO2 as “just about perfect”? A more appropriate description would be “nonexistent”. Over the last half billion years CO2 has declined but temperature has not – it instead shows a preferred stable level (attractor?) of 22 deg C with periodic dips to 17 or 12 C every 150 Myr. We are in one such periodic dip now – to find a declining temperature trend on this basis would be cherry-picking.
Do you have other data on temps and CO2? Shaviv and Veizer 2003 seems to show the same picture.
It is funny what creepy-crawlies slither out of the wood work when some common sense data is produced. You have to perform some major sleight of hand to any data to support the AGW scam. Without some serious “correction” there can be no connection between CO2 and temprature, get the CO2 down sufficiently and you will find a direct connection between CO2 and human life, cutting out the fabrications the only effect that has been scientifically demonstrated (as in the ild , correct definition of scientific) is that plants grow faster, this is an effect known for a long time, in fact CO2 got its name from its use in greenhouses to promote growth.