We all know how much NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze has been touting the idea of the “Arctic death spiral“, and we’ve had predictions of ice free summers in 2008, 2013, 2015, 2020, 2030, 2040, 2050, 2060, 2070, and 2100 to name a few. Other forecasts don’t give specific dates but say things like within 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 100 years, decades, and sooner than expected. Such “all over the road forecast certainty” doesn’t really build any confidence that any of these climate soothsayers have any idea when or even if the Arctic will be “ice free” in the summer in the next 100 years.
Now, inconveniently, we have this new paper via ScienceDirect New insights on Arctic Quaternary climate variability from palaeo-records and numerical modelling which says that their studies show that the early Holocene might very well have had ice free summers. This is interesting, because as this generally well accepted graph shows, temperature was higher then. But there’s more.
From the description for this graphic: The main figure shows eight records of local temperature variability on multi-centennial scales throughout the course of the Holocene, and an average of these (thick dark line). (to 10000 BC-2000CE (from 0 — 12000 BP)) The records are plotted with respect to the mid 20th century average temperature, and the global average temperature in 2004 is indicated. An inset plot compares the most recent two millennia of the average to other recent reconstructions. At the far right of this plot it is possible to observe the emergence of climate from the last glacial period of the current ice age. During the Holocene itself, there is general scientific agreement that temperatures on the average have been quite stable compared to fluctuations during the preceding glacial period. The above average curve supports this belief. However, there is a slightly warmer period in the middle which might be identified with the proposed Holocene climatic optimum. The magnitude and nature of this warm event is disputed, and it may have been largely limited to high northern latitudes.
But, the other rub of the early Holocene is CO2 in the atmosphere. We know from ice core records that CO2 concentration has varied with ice ages. Coming out of the last ice age into the Holocene, we know that atmospheric CO2 concentrations rose as CO2 came out of the oceans as they warmed. This graph from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) shows that the early Holocene (~10,000 years before present), had a rise coming out of the ice age and then had CO2 concentrations stabilize lower than that of today, about 260-270 ppm:
Figure 1. Top: One sigma-calibrated age ranges for the 14C control points 1, 2 and 6 as an indicator of the possible age range of the CO2 record reconstructed from stomatal frequency. The labels are the same as in Wagner et al. (1). Center and Bottom: Atmospheric CO2 concentration reconstructed from stomatal index (
) (1) and direct measurements of CO2 concentration of air enclosed in bubbles in the ice cores from Taylor Dome (
) (3, 4) and Vostok (
) (7, 8).
This new paper in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews throws a formidable monkey wrench into the the theory that CO2 induced warming is the cause of current Arctic ice loss. Because if we had ice free summers ten thousand years ago at ~ 260 ppm CO2, and we had warmer temperatures than today, we can’t then conclude that an additional 100 ppm of CO2 since then would be the cause of an ice free summer in the Arctic today. And ice free summer at lower CO2 and higher temperature is an incongruity with today’s theory of the “Arctic Death Spiral”.
Here’s the paper abstract:
New insights on Arctic Quaternary climate variability from palaeo-records and numerical modelling
Abstract
Terrestrial and marine geological archives in the Arctic contain information on environmental change through Quaternary interglacial–glacial cycles. The Arctic Palaeoclimate and its Extremes (APEX) scientific network aims to better understand the magnitude and frequency of past Arctic climate variability, with focus on the “extreme” versus the “normal” conditions of the climate system. One important motivation for studying the amplitude of past natural environmental changes in the Arctic is to better understand the role of this region in a global perspective and provide base-line conditions against which to explore potential future changes in Arctic climate under scenarios of global warming. In this review we identify several areas that are distinct to the present programme and highlight some recent advances presented in this special issue concerning Arctic palaeo-records and natural variability, including spatial and temporal variability of the Greenland Ice Sheet, Arctic Ocean sediment stratigraphy, past ice shelves and marginal marine ice sheets, and the Cenozoic history of Arctic Ocean sea ice in general and Holocene oscillations in sea ice concentrations in particular. The combined sea ice data suggest that the seasonal Arctic sea ice cover was strongly reduced during most of the early Holocene and there appear to have been periods of ice free summers in the central Arctic Ocean. This has important consequences for our understanding of the recent trend of declining sea ice, and calls for further research on causal links between Arctic climate and sea ice.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fig. 1. Map showing the locations of some of the studies included in the papers presented in this special issue. Numbers refer to Table 1, which contains the references to the respective study. Some of the papers on the Arctic Ocean involve sediment cores from a large spatial area; these are only plotted with boxes enclosing the areas of the studied cores. Furthermore, Cronin et al. (2010) analyzed sediment cores from virtually the entire central Arctic Ocean and, therefore, there is no number representing that study on the map. The maximum extensions of the Eurasian Ice Sheet during the late Quaternary compiled by the QUEEN project (Svendsen et al., 2004) are shown. LS: Late Saalian (>140 ka), EW: Early Weichselian (100–80 ka), MW: Middle Weichselian (60–50 ka), LGM: Late Weichselian (25–15 ka). The speculative extent of an MIS 6 ice shelf inferred by Jakobsson et al. (2010) is shown by the hatched area enclosed by a gray stippled line. The approximate spatial minimum cover of sea ice during 2007 is shown with a white shaded area enclosed by a black stippled line as a comparison to the median extension for the period 1979–2005 shown by a blue stippled line (Data is from National Snow and Ice Data Center). MJR: Morris Jesup Rise; YP: Yermak Plateau. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
================================
h/t to WUWT reader “josh”
Addendum: Some follow up graphic from comments, in my response to Richard Telford:
Here’s an interesting plot of solar insolation at 65 degrees north over time. To give readers an idea of this line, here is a map:
(Map from WikiMedia) Fairbanks, AK is at 64.5° N
The plot below shows how insolation varied with the Milankovitch cycles at 65° N. I’ve added the deltas comparing 10KYA to present.
The “Fermi Paradox” blogger who originally made the graph I annotated wrote: The graph shows the insolation in W/m^2 at 65 degrees norther latitude from 20ky before present to 10 ky in the future, calculated with the program insola from J. Laskar et al. The four plots are for the two months after the summer solstice and the two months before. It can be seen that the change in insolation over time is quite significant. Note though that this only applies at high latitudes – the global mean barely changes at all.
Note the magnitude of the change in insolation from 10K years ago to present, from 15 to 40 Watts/m2
Now look at this image from NOAA’ s Environmental Research Laboratory (ESRL):
CO2 accounts for 1.4 Watts/m2 of forcing in the last 150 years, so compared to the forcings of the Milankovitch cycles (at least at 65N) it is an order of magnitude lower. My point is that given the small impact of CO2 in forcings, it is not likely to be the driver of Arctic ice melt in the present, just like it wasn’t much of a significant factor 10K years ago.
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richard telford says:
“The conclusions of this paper are entirely reasonable – you will be hard pressed to find any palaeoclimatologists who are surprised that sea ice extent was lower in the early Holocene.”
The late, great John Daly wrote on pretty much the same thing, an ice-free Arctic.
The Arctic has been ice free countless times over the past 10,000 years. It is called “natural variability,” and if CO2 has any effect, it is too insignificant to be measurable. Many other so-called forcings overwhelm any putative CO2 effect. Face it, you can’t pick out your supposed CO2 effect from past or current natural climate fluctuations. It all looks the same. [<— this is a Phil Jones chart].
Richard sums up:
"Ice doesn’t particularly care whether it is warm because of high insolation or high CO2 levels."
Richard, when ice is warm we have a different word for it: "water." And if CO2 is the cause of Arctic ice melting… prove it. Or at least provide convincing, testable, reproducible evidence showing that is so, and empirically quantify the percentage of melting ice due to increased CO2. Do that and you will be on the short list for the next Nobel prize [for whatever that is now worth]. The fact is that the claimed connection between CO2 and Arctic ice is pure conjecture, nothing more.
By
robustlyrigorously adhering to the scientific method – with all raw data, methodologies and metadata provided upon request to skeptical scientists – try to show us convincingly that CO2 is the main climate driver. If you can.Natural climate variability within the parameters of the Holocene explains all observations of the current climate. Nothing unusual is happening, despite all the alarmist hand-waving. Regional climate constantly changes, but the globe’s current temperature is well within the bounds of past extremes. In fact, today’s climate is extremely benign. Nothing unusual or exceptional is occurring due to CO2.
Alarmists contort themselves trying to prove that CO2 has a measurable effect on the temperature. But the null hypothesis, as described above, has never been falsified – while the alternative hypothesis, CO2=CAGW, has been repeatedly falsified, not least by the planet itself.
The day the alarmist contingent decides to follow the scientific method is the day that their CO2=CAGW hypothesis goes down in flames. And they know it, which is why they hide from the scientific method like Dracula hides from the dawn. If followed, the scientific method would destroy them and derail their gravy train.
My post crossed with Anthony’s above. It would have saved me some typing if I had seen his detailed rebuttal. MartinGAtkins makes good points too, as do others.
And whatever happened to that thingy called “sublimation”? If the relative humidity is low, and there is wind, sublimation occurs. So long a this planet rotates on its axis, there will be wind.
As to the H2O molecule, it would be better, for understanding, that H2O molecules never travel alone. Heat baggage travels along with them, the quantity dependent on the state or phase, that is, the solid state, the liquid state, or the vapor state of H2O. When there is a change of state, heat baggage is either greatly increased or decreased on a molecular basis; the heat baggage has to either come from somewhere, or go somewhere with a change of state, or phase change, of H2O. H2O is one of the two great heat movers on the planet, moving heat from the equatorial regions in the direction of the polar regions.
The other great heat mover is the Coriolis effect, which moves colder water from the polar regions to equitorial regions, displacing warmer equatorial waters in the direction of the polar regions. Within the polar regions, huge amounts of heat are radiated away from Earth into space, and corresponding huge amounts of heat are radiated to equitorial regions from the sun. H2O is the vehicle that transports massive quantities of heat around.
As for CO2, greater concentrations of it in the atmosphere increase green plant growth and vice versa. There is such a small concentration of it in the Earth’s atmosphere, it is clear to me, at least, that it can have little if any effect on the overall temperature of Earth. Other forces overwhelm it as a driver of temperature. With less of it, there will be less food for all animal life to eat, and vise versa, no more.
CO2 has become the bugaboo of alarmists, only because by alarmist methods, great sums of money can be made, Follow the money, every time.
Mind all, I am a mere civil engineer, but lo, those many years ago, I did learn the fundamentals of chemistry, and physics; statics and dynamics, thermodynamics, and electrical, along with appropriate courses in mathematics. It has been more than 50 years since I attended college and university, back when there was no more than fundamentals to be taught, and professors of chemistry and physics were determined that their students learned those fundamentals of chemistry and physics well.
I have been a “science buff” from a very early age, and having a huge idle curiosity of all things of a scientific nature, I have also, from my own efforts, “kept on top”, as best I could and can do, of all advances in most all scientific fields of endeavor, just for my own edification.
I might also add, that I had good success, through necessity of income, in sales as well, and I do know a confidence artist when I hear one speaking or read the writing of one, and this CO2 bugaboo is, without question, no more than a confidence artist’s game.
So many assumptions are included in the mix, on which the speculations of AG warming, AG climate change and AG climate disruption are dependent, a good many of which have been falsified , that I am amazed that anyone who understands scientific method takes it seriously at all. Only the desire of government grant money could drive this parody of science.
‘Tis a pity that there now seem to be only “specialists” and “experts” in the sciences anymore, or at least heard from nowadays. Where have the generalists of science gone, the equivalents of the giants of science of yesteryear, who made such wonderful and important discoveries that actually advanced scientific knowledge greatly? No government grant money for them, I would only guess.
you do not have to go back 8000 yrs to see a major change for ice in the artic
http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic37-1-49.pdf
ABSTRACT. The release of a dead but well-preserved higahr ctic plant community, entombed for about 400 radiocarbon years (WAT-778 and 789)
under glacial ice at TwGinl acier, central Ellesmere Island (78″53’N7,5 35%)’ is reported. Remarkably intact plants have been emerging from under
the ablating front of this polar glacier which has been retreating for several decades at an average rate of 4.1 m.yr” over the last 22 years. The
vegetation can be readily recognized as a Cassiope terragona-Dryas integrtfolia-dominated community, similar in species composition and cover to
an extant Cassiope-Dryas community 200 m below the ablationf ront. The excellent preservation of the plants supports the thesis that polar glaciers
are frozen to their bases, and hence their movements are by internal deformation rather than by erosive basal sliding.
——————–
http://hol.sagepub.com/content/17/8/1069.abstract
Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada
Abstract
Holocene glacier fluctuations prior to the `Little Ice Age’ in Garibaldi Provincial Park in the British Columbia Coast Mountains were reconstructed from geomorphic mapping and radiocarbon ages on 37 samples of growth-position and detrital wood from glacier forefields. Glaciers in Garibaldi Park were smaller than at present in the early Holocene, although some evidence exists for minor, short-lived advances at this time. The first well-documented advance dates to 7700—7300 14C yr BP. Subsequent advances date to 6400—5100, 4300, 4100—2900 and 1600—1100 14C yr BP. Some glaciers approached their maximum Holocene limits several times during the past 10 000 years. Periods of advance in Garibaldi Park are broadly synchronous with advances elsewhere in the Canadian Cordillera, suggesting a common climatic cause.
and for those who want to say that the MWP was only NH
http://www.clim-past.net/5/375/2009/cp-5-375-2009.pdf
Abstract. The rapid expansion of the Inca from the Cuzco
area of highland Peru (ca. AD 1400–1532) produced the
largest empire in the New World. Although this meteoric
growth may in part be due to the adoption of innovative
societal strategies, supported by a large labour force and a
standing army, we argue that it would not have been possible
without increased crop productivity, which was linked
to more favourable climatic conditions. Here we present a
multi-proxy, high-resolution 1200-year lake sediment record
from Marcacocha, located 12 km north of Ollantaytambo, in
the heartland of the Inca Empire. This record reveals a period
of sustained aridity that began from AD 880, followed by increased
warming from AD 1100 that lasted beyond the arrival
of the Spanish in AD 1532. These increasingly warmer
conditions would have allowed the Inca and their immediate
predecessors the opportunity to exploit higher altitudes
(post-AD 1150) by constructing agricultural terraces that employed
glacial-fed irrigation,
More from the Holocene.
Could it be in the cycles?
A Pervasive Millennial-Scale Cycle in North Atlantic Holocene and Glacial Climates
Climate Change in Eurasian Arctic Shelf Seas
Holocene Sea-Ice Variations and Paleoenvironmental Change, Northernmost Ellesmere Island, N.W.T., Canada
It *could* be in cycles but I believe there is a very clear and steady cooling trend for the past 2000 years or so. Yes, that trend is punctuated by periods of warming and cooling but each warm period seems to have been a little cooler than the previous and each cooling period cooler than the previous.
We can talk about these cycles of warming and cooling superimposed on that trend but I believe the real issue is that trend and I have seen nothing from the 20th century warm period that breaks that trend. It still appears that this warm period is cooler than the MWP. The LIA was the coldest period since the Younger Dryas. This is the coolest “warm period” we have had in a long time.
Long term cooling trend from Vostok ice cores: click Current temperatures are not unusual, nor is the rate of increase.
Take a look at what I’ve just found:
and
Added to the above post this means that it’s much, much worse than we thought. :o)
Climate science believers would do well to avoid making arguments like
“it’s unprecedented”
Even if you believe it to be true, it’s a bad argument. That should be apparent on its face.
Anthony, your argument seems to have not to subtly changed.
The uninformed reader could have assumed from your previous text that the cause of the early Holocene warming was unknown, perhaps part of internal variability. Why else should the paper be a “formidable monkey wrench”?
Now you are arguing that orbital forcing at 65N was an order of magnitude higher in the early Holocene that CO2 forcing is today. This is completely different argument. Is this an admission that the earlier argument could have been misread? But is also misleading. First, it shows the radiative effect CO2 in 2000. This effect will be higher by the end of the century. Second, it ignores the slightly reduced early Holocene winter insolation. More importantly, it ignores the impact of feedbacks. A global radiative forcing and a forcing with a near zero global average cannot be expected to cause the same feedback. Further, it ignores the possible duration of the sea-ice period in the early Holocene, which may be longer than that forecast for the end of this century.
REPLY: Sorry, your argument fails to convince, especially since the “feedbacks” issue is, ahem, still up in the air. Bottom line, you’ve offered no evidence that CO2 is driving changes in Arctic ice then or now. – Anthony
In answer to crosspatch, I would just say that the forcing from doubling CO2 (3.7 W/m2) is seven times larger than the estimated solar-change forcing at the Maunder Minimum (-0.5 W/m2 derived from the solar data at climate4you for example) that drove the Little Ice Age. This is just comparing forcing, not considering feedbacks that would amplify both. I think this puts it into a perspective that is not often recognized.
richard telford says:
October 31, 2010 at 3:46 pm
“The uninformed reader”……..
==============
No uninformed readers here, they/we come here to be informed.
We may be unwashed, but we are not uninformed.
Anyone who hasn’t read it should – “The Secret of Atlantis” by Otto Muck. Atlantis was destroyed 10,000 BC by the comet Adonis IV which also caused teh biblical deluge (and the mass freezing of mammoths). Anyone taht even doubts this for one second will have their mind blown when they read the book. The Atlantis destruction event was THE event that ended the last age. There is absolutely NO DOUBT.
[Reply: Perhaps you should take this comment over to Climate Progress, where it would be more appropriate. ~dbs]
Hunter,
I guess I am not sure what you mean by “the the Earth did just fine.”
The disaster scenarios that come from global warming, as I understand them, involve increased volatility of the weather, significant changes in precipitation patterns globally, and rising sea levels worldwide that threaten low lying areas where millions of people live.
The loss of Artic ice in the summer has its own positive feedback mechanism because the loss of ice changes the albedo of the polar region so more energy is absorbed by the (darker) water instead of being reflected by the more reflective ice.
I don’t know what study you are referring to that claims that loss of Artic Sea Ice triggers the disasters as much as loss of Artic Sea Ice being a result of Global Warming.
So I still don’t see how a period 10000 years ago when it was warmer than it is now and the Artic Ocean was ice free part of the time challenges the basic conclusions of Global Warming.
CO2 is not the only driver of heating and cooling cycles. Other factors such as the Milankovitch cycles had impacts as well.
But when you pump unprecedented levels of CO2 into the atmosphere, it’s not illogical to consider that the effect of those levels of CO2 might large enough to overcome all the factors that have governed climate cycles in the past.
The same thing applies to methane releases. Some models suggested that as the globe gets warmer, there could be massive releases of Methane into the atmosphere. Though it doesn’t appear to be happening as yet, nothing that has happened makes such releases impossible as the warming trend continues. Maybe the methane releases are yet to come.
Your conclusion:
“The point is that AGW- the idea that we are facing a global climate disruption due to CO2- is not supported by the history.”
Misses the point. We are dealing with CO2 levels much higher than any time in history and the effect of those CO2 levels overrides the trends and triggers we might be able to discern from the record of past cycles.
There are a LOT of assumptions in those numbers that have not borne out in actual observation. The assumption that feedback would be positive is a major one and the amount of forcing that CO2 actually provides is another. Neither of those have been shown to be true. They are basically little more than guesses. IF the forcing from CO2 is as that researcher thinks it is and IF the resulting feedback (if any) are positive (there is more observational data that the feedback is negative!) then yes, maybe. But to state it as if it is some sort of truth is intellectually dishonest.
This is an interesting study, but there is a logical fallacy (not made in the study by the way) in drawing a conclusion that just because CO2 levels may not have been the driver behind a warmer Arctic during the Holocene Optimum, that they couldn’t be the driver behind a warmer Arctic now. This is exactly the same logical fallacy that looks at the longer term CO2 levels and warming periods and draws the false conclusion that just because CO2 levels SOMETIMES followed a rise in temperatures in the records, that rising CO2 levels cannot cause a rise in temperatures in and of themselves. There can be many different causes that lead to the same effect, and there is no logical or justifiable reason to draw the conclusion that the existence of one precludes the existence of others.
hunter says:
October 31, 2010 at 5:50 am
@bublhead,
The point is that it was warmer, the Arctic icecap was gone, and the Earth did just fine.
Whatever forced the changes during the study period, loss of the icecap did not trigger, as AGW theory claims, a run away disaster. Polar bears seals whales and walrus all did fine.
And the increased temps did not cause a tipping point of run away positive feedbacks.
The methane did not bubble up from melting permafrost and poison life or cook the planet.
The point is that AGW- the idea that we are facing a global climate disruption due to CO2- is not supported by the history.
Is that something you are willing to deal with or will you seek to avoid the topic?
I could not agree more with that summary and have posted, on numerous occasions, similar comments. Whilst I have real concerns regarding the so called ‘science’ behind AGW, and concerns regarding the accuracy and reliability of the collation of the temperature record during the instrument period, what I find most surprising about the theory is the prophesies of doom that accompanies a warming world. History simply does not support those prophesies. In fact not only did man survive a warmer planet, he greatly flourished during such periods. The birth of modern civilisations occurred during the warm Holocene period (8,000 to 3,000 bp). Historically, the only Northern civilisation of note is the Vikings and it is no surprise that they flourished during the MWP. If only proper studies into the geological and historical record were carried out, it would soon become apparent that warm is good and cold is bad.
Whilst I do not believe that man is significantly impacting on climate (and to the limited extent that he may be doing so, this probably mainly due to land change uses in which I include UHI), I can see no evidence that a planet warmer by 2° or 3° or 4° C will be a bad thing and I am unaware of any sound scientific evidence supporting runaway forcings..
“We are dealing with CO2 levels much higher than any time in history and the effect of those CO2 levels overrides the trends and triggers we might be able to discern from the record of past cycles.”
Really? What do you mean by “history” here? Just curious. Your comment does not make any sense either way, but it would help if you were precise in your writing.
I assume that you take the models that even the IPCC warns against placing too much faith in at face value?
Can you provide me with evidence that man-made co2 was responsibe for the late 20th century reduction in Arctic sea ice extent?
Do you have evidence that the 2007 minimum extent (satellite records since 1979) was casued by man-made co2?
Please bear in min NASA who have put the blame on wind and currents. They also point to soot.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_aerosols_prt.htm
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/2/423.long
bublhead says:
October 31, 2010 at 5:05 pm (Edit)
Hunter,
I guess I am not sure what you mean by “the the Earth did just fine.”
The disaster scenarios that come from global warming, as I understand them, involve increased volatility of the weather, significant changes in precipitation patterns globally, and rising sea levels worldwide that threaten low lying areas where millions of people live.
The loss of Ar[c]tic ice in the summer has its own positive feedback mechanism because the loss of ice changes the albedo of the polar region so more energy is absorbed by the (darker) water instead of being reflected by the more reflective ice.
I don’t know what study you are referring to that claims that loss of Ar[c]tic Sea Ice triggers the disasters as much as loss of Ar[c]tic Sea Ice being a result of Global Warming.
So I still don’t see how a period 10000 years ago when it was warmer than it is now and the Ar[c]tic Ocean was ice free part of the time challenges the basic conclusions of Global Warming.
CO2 is not the only driver of heating and cooling cycles. Other factors such as the Milankovitch cycles had impacts as well.
Regrettably, almost each of your sentences needs correction/comment:
“The disaster scenarios that come from global warming, as I understand them, involve increased volatility of the weather, significant changes in precipitation patterns globally, and rising sea levels worldwide that threaten low lying areas where millions of people live.”
Not true. Each of these Dire Predictions is based on nothing more than an assumed and extrapolated linear curve of temperature into to the far future (50 – 150 years) based on simplified models that have failed to predict accurately even the near-term (15 year) future based on even their own linear and compounded CO2 level changes that themselves assume no changes in culture, technology, and energy production methods. (Based on 1908 technology, how long, how wide, and and thick should I build a runway for the airplanes that will be flying in 1948?) These predictions are made for the purpose of publicity and fear-mongering to raise taxes and to make ALL energy artificially more expensive. Nothing more. The CAGW theorists and their UN/IPCC partners are doing this for their money, their power, their glory.
Rising sea levels? How about 1/4 inch per year? There is no real-world hazard from rising sea levels. What has been seen is no different than the rates seen before CO2 began to rise. And the BENEFITS of rising CO2 levels are (deliberately) ignored by the CAGW profit-makers: more food, more fodder, more fuel, more farms, more more wood, more shelter, more greenery, more plants, more drought-resistant plants, and even longer growing seasons in more areas due to the natural 800-year warming cycle we are near the peak of today. Changing precipitation patterns cannot be established nor accurately predicted. The Sahara was green only a few thousand years ago. Changing precip patterns? Yes, they may occur. But the CAGW theorists cannot predict their own past, much less any future.
“The loss of Ar[c]tic ice in the summer has its own positive feedback mechanism because the loss of ice changes the albedo of the polar region so more energy is absorbed by the (darker) water instead of being reflected by the more reflective ice.”
Please substantiate this oft-repeated claim. Tell me the angle where sunlight reflects from the ice. Tell me the angle where sunlight reflects from the ice. Tell me the area you assume is ice-free in which summer months. Tell me the difference in heat absorption between a supposedly “dark” sea and a “white”ice field when the sun’s angle is 23 degrees from the horizon. Tell me the difference in absorbed heat based on the number of km’s that sunlight penetrates. Justify your claim for this charade. But use numbers valid for the Arctic.
Don’t use the areas covered by land. (They are already ice-free all summer months.) Don’t use absorption criteria based on the temperate climates or near-tropical sun angles. Don’t use 24 hour solar days when only a limited part of the Arctic sees 24 hour days for only limited numbers of days per year. Show me your numbers for this oft-repeated Arctic solar feedback claim. [And,please, spell Arctic correctly. 8<) ]
“So I still don’t see how a period 10000 years ago when it was warmer than it is now and the Ar[c]tic Ocean was ice free part of the time challenges the basic conclusions of Global Warming.
CO2 is not the only driver of heating and cooling cycles. Other factors such as the Milankovitch cycles had impacts as well.”
Milankovitch cycles are drivers over long-term periods of time (25,000 to 120,000 years). No CAGW/CO2 theory can explain the 800 year observed cycle of +/- 1.5 degree temperature changes. No CO2 theory can explain the observed and measured 60 year short term temperature cycle. ANY previous Arctic Ocean times when it was ice-free proves that today's warmer temperatures and lowering ice extents merely proves that you cannot explain the natural cycles that have always been present. We are in an 800 year long-term cycle. We are warming from the low temperatures of the mid-1650's. No one denies that truth – so YOU must explain why we have been warming for 350 years without CO2 and for 50 years with CO2 at the same rate. (Adding a 60 year short cycle of course – that YOU cannot explain either.) And YOU cannot do that.
And, if you cannot explain natural cycles when CO2 was NOT varying due to human causes, your assumed CO2 – driven cycles today based on a recent 20 year rise in CO2 levels are also dead wrong.
G.L. Alston
Thanks for reading my blog. I am always looking for new readers. Did you leave any comments? I got three new comments on my “These people are Nuts” post (http://bublhead.blogspot.com/2010/10/these-people-are-nuts.html). I hope you were one of them.
I wonder if you read the comments thread following my post because I think I addressed your concern. If you didn’t I will quote it here.
“ . . . the community of published climate scientists all uniformly agree on three basic tenants of this science.
The globe in getting warmer (the current warming cycle started before the industrial revolution) and is warming now faster than at any time in history.
Human activity is putting Green House gases, particularly CO2, into the atmosphere in quantities that dwarf all natural sources combined and is driving the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to level never before seen.
Those Green house gases are the principle driving factor behind the pace of the increase in global average surface temperature.
The devil is in the details. Depending on whose model you use, the earth will either heat up by between 1 and 5 degrees this century. 1 degree is bad. 5 degrees is catastrophic.
There is no remaining debate in the scientific community about the basics of global warming. There is a wide range of possible outcomes with the resulting wide range of costs, but the basics are known.”
I think that is actually not in conflict with your statement that “Skeptics have a wider bandwidth, ranging from what you would call lukewarmers “GW is happening, man contributes, but it’s not a disaster” all the way to the “it’s a conspiracy” crowd.”
Personally I don’t consider your Lukewarmers as Climate Change Deniers or Skeptics or whatever term you want to use. Its clear to me that past the three basics, there is little agreement on the sensitivity of the climate to CO2 or whether this will lead to a massive release of Methane or if it will shutdown the North Atlantic Circulator or if it will be bad but not catastrophic at all.
The basic are, I believe, settled. The details are not. Which is, I believe, in line with what you were saying. I don’t know that we actually disagree all that much.
The discussion here is one of the reasons I like this blog for this topic. Most conservative oriented blogs are purely deniers, global warming isn’t real, mankind isn’t doing it, temperatures have started to decline or any number of other insanities. This blog actually discusses the science.
I like that
That is why I posted my original comment and its question.
Which I still think is an open question. What in the study that was the subject of the original post, challenges any of the basic conclusions of IPCC?
I look forward to a good discussion.
As an aside, I like the way you write and wonder if you have your own blog that I could start reading?
crosspatch, I only talked about forcing, not feedback, for a reason. Even Monckton, Lindzen and Spencer agree with the 3.7 W/m2 forcing for doubling CO2 (there really is consensus on that number). Now considering the equivalent number for the Maunder Minimum, it is only -0.5 W/m2. This is just to give the most easy comparison with recent historical events, because a problem so far is that people don’t have a reference point for the 3.7 number.
The open water during that time is not really new. Studies by Dyke on Bowhead Whalebones have indicated that to be the case. The western and eastern Bowhead populations could meet 9-10,000 years ago. Likewise the drift wood carried by Transpolar Drift to Svalbard, by Hoggblom 1982, has indicated 4 periods of high percentages open water much greater than today. The driftwood and whale bones study actual suggest that the past 100- 800 years, coinciding with the LIttle Ice Age, as a period of less typical sever ice. This paper is further confirmation.
re:
I beg to differ. In science one must always have a null hypothesis. When it comes to CO2 AGW, that null hypothesis is natural causes. If you cannot show scientifically how the new hypothesis, e.g., AGW, somehow explains the recent temperature increases far BETTER than natural causes, then the null hypothesis is by definition the correct answer. In order to show that man produced CO2 explains things better, you would also have to be able to explain how we got similar temperature increases, similar rates (sometimes apparently even faster and larger increases) in the past when man wasn’t producing any significant amount of CO2, or didn’t even exist. Until that can be done, logically, and until proven otherwise, the temperature increases are of natural origin.
This is how we’ve managed to come out of the dark ages (that and a nice temperature increase giving us a much more hospitable world! :0) ) – by using our nifty tool of science in order to weed out assumptions, guesses, human error, and human bias to the greatest extent possible. In science, applying the tool correctly is crucial – otherwise, well, the earth is flat, we get sick from vapors and evil spirits, the universe and sun revolve around the Earth, and so on.
The null hypothesis is always king – ALWAYS – until the new hypothesis can be scientifically proven to fit all known data and facts significantly better than the null hypothesis does.
Thank you, racookpe1978 for your post of October 31, 2010 at 6:00 pm replying to bubblehead where you said:
“Regrettably, almost each of your sentences needs correction/comment”
I thought about replying several times and gave it up for that very reason. Where to even start when there are so many misconceptions and logical errors.