Dr. Capell Aris writes:
Dear Mr. Watts,
The UK Geological Society has made a statement about climate change.
This seems to have received very little attention. It’s not a particluarly strong statement, given that it contains the statement:
“During warmings from glacial to interglacial, temperature and CO2 rose together for several thousand years, although the best estimate from the end of the last glacial is that the temperature probably started to rise a few centuries before the CO2 showed any reaction. Palaeoclimatologists think that initial warming driven by changes in the Earth’s orbit and axial tilt eventually caused CO2 to be released from the warming ocean and thus, via positive feedback, to reinforce the temperature rise already in train”
Full statement here:
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/views/policy_statements/page7426.html
This is nothing new. It has long been thought the Milankovitch forcings begin the warming that end glacials and that warming oceans then release more CO2 through outgassing which then cause more warming and so on. This is why CO2 lags the initial warming in the ice core data. Milankovitch forcings in and of themselves are not enough to explain the large temperature difference between the bottom of a glacial period and the top of an interglacial. When CO2 data was finally recovered from ice cores the pieces fell into place as we could see the changes in GH gases that provided the addition forcings necessary to explain the temperature swings.
Except there is no “positive feedback” on temperatures by any GHGs excluding water vapor… that has been shown conclusively by the radiosonde data over the last 61 years.
Nice try twisting the science Dr. by leaving that fact out. (most call it a lie by omission)
Why is that quote interesting? It’s just reiteration of standard AGW scripture for explaining the T/CO2 lag. Maybe I’m missing something…
The intro claims they are basing their opinions on the data collected from the earth rather than models, but the body and conclusions keep going to the models to provide the basis of their conclusions. Too bad.
Feedback, feedback…..toujours le feedback issue!
That is an ace statement. Does it conflict directly with the conclusions of the IPCC and AR4?
They had to include the obligatory nod to “CO2 contributes warming” meme.
A causes B, but then B ends up feeding back and causing A to go runaway.
If there was a greater than 100 year lag in the past, they don’t give any explanation for WHY. Nor do they apply the same to the present centuries; i.e., shouldn’t the present be a result of what happened at the end of the LIA circa 1800?
No. That is too consistent. Much more important to support their brother climatologists against the denier plague.
I may be missing something, but if you read through the entire page, or the whole of the statement (made in 2010), the UKGS supports AGW, with maybe a tilt toward CAGW, when it says toward the bottom of the page that nothing natural accounts for the marked increase in CO2 since 1970. Was there supposed to be something new on this page? Have I goofed in reading?
Once again, no mechanics and no maths to show that the change in CO2 can and will continue to warm the oceans (from whence our weather systems come from) to the degree such that our global temperature will increase by 4 to 6 degrees.
We are dealing with wriggle matching in every sense.
Dr. Capell Aris states:
During warmings from glacial to interglacial, temperature and CO2 rose together for several thousand years, although the best estimate from the end of the last glacial is that the temperature probably started to rise a few centuries before the CO2 showed any reaction. Palaeoclimatologists think that initial warming driven by changes in the Earth’s orbit and axial tilt eventually caused CO2 to be released from the warming ocean and thus, via positive feedback, to reinforce the temperature rise already in train28. Additional positive feedback reinforcing the temperature rise would have come from increased water vapour evaporated from the warmer ocean, water being another greenhouse gas, along with a decrease in sea ice, and eventually in the size of the northern hemisphere ice sheets, resulting in less reflection of solar energy back into space.
Thank you Dr. Capell Aris for restating the historical facts about the timed delayed relationship with the planet warming first, and then causing the CO2 to increase due to the temperature raise.
This has been the bone of contention between the warmist and the skeptical scientist.
First – The warming planet
Second – Warmth causing the CO2 to be released.
Al Gore and the IPPC pushers have systematically tried to destroy these facts stating the CO2 causes the planet to warm, this was done by stating the warming was caused by the rise in CO2, in order to demonize CO2 as the major cause of planetary heating, therefore allowing them to create a tax system that would permit them to control every aspect of life!
“to reinforce the temperature rise already in train” Is that like shoveling extra coal into a locomotive engine at top speed, it doesn’t increase the top speed? Reinforce? One way to look at that is that word is a clever dodge from Lorious, Hansen et al.’s famous “amplifying” effect of CO2. Hard core anthrowarmists always have this argument in their bag of tricks, often pointing to this crappy analysis at Real Climate:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
This non-peer reviewed gobbledy-gook solely exists to confuse the “lag” issue and Al Gore’s blatant molestation of a chart in AIT. It also exists because more hand waving is required since the underlying Hansen article on “amplification” does not really support it. The chart shows no visible speeding up, by CO2. And, when temps go down, and CO2 trails that to, does CO2 also have a de-amplifying effect??? That little statement about “Amplifying” totally exists only because Hansen et al. knew they had a problem in their science. I completely read this Geological Society brief as needing to fudge the obviousness that CO2 lags temp in the records, but they did not have the utter shamelessness to use the word “amplify”, as is a standard in warmist agit-prop. (Often related to debating Gore’s movie) . So the peeps who signed off on this statement dreamed up “reinforce.” It is a vague, confusing term here.
The UK Geological Society has put all it’s eggs in the CAGW basket, even though their own evidence says CO2 follows the Temperature.
How embarrassing.
I doubt very much that we will be burning oil, gas and coal at close to or higher than today’s levels at the end of this century. The reason is innovation and invention. To ilustrate my point here is manure.
As they say, the rest is history. Vrooooom!
This rather lame excuse was dreamt up by the IPCC-ers years ago and (since apparently abandoned) when denying the ice core record was no longer feasible.
It is remarkable that the UK’s Geological Society apparently still sees the need to be politically correct, while ignoring the opinions of most geologists, worldwide.
Extending the logic of the UKGS to its full symmetry, we can further surmise that the high-point of atmospheric CO2, reached several hundred years after air temperature had already begun to fall, ‘reinforced the temperature decline already in train.’
The mechanism, of course, would be negative CO2 feedback, evidenced in climate model outputs that are discarded because they contradict what is accepted to be true.
(According to Google the linked paper has been cited 529 times. Apparently, publicly discarding adverse results does not diminish one’s reputation as a climate scientist.)
R. Gates: When CO2 data was finally recovered from ice cores the pieces fell into place as we could see the changes in GH gases that provided the addition forcings necessary to explain the temperature swings.
Not even close. CO2 changes a mere 100 ppm from bottom to top of the Milankovitch Cycles. There is positive feedback going into an ice age, but that comes mostly from a slower summer ice pack melt and the resulting increase in albedo. (And reverse when entering an optimum.) The 100 ppm CO2 delta is spit in the ocean.
I counted 3 references to the IPCC. All hope is lost. :>(
As I’ve said before, if CO2 has this magical feedback-enhancement attribute (the “simple physics” that the alarmists like to throw out to all you unsophisticated skeptical slobs), then
WHY DOES IT EVER, EVER, EVER COOL DOWN?
They can try to finesse with this sleight-of-hand to explain the lag on warming trends, but what could possibly counteract the overpowering influence of a few ppm of CO2 when the climate (inevitably) cools?
Hmmmmmmm?
Here’s an interesting quote from the linked pdf:
“During the Ice Age of the past two and a half million years or so, periodic warming of the Earth through changes in its position in relation to the sun also heated the oceans, releasing both CO2 and water vapour, which amplified the ongoing warming into warm interglacial periods.”
So, the orbital element phase of the Earth causes the brief Interglacials in the Geologic Era of Ice Ages that the Earth is now in. We are geologically in an Ice Age. When the orbital elements conspire the Earth back into it’s current Geologic norm, the excess CO2 will succumb to removal by the biosphere and subsequent burial. The Ice Sheets will take care of the rest of the messy details.
90-120 thousand years from now, when Earth once again emerges into an Interglacial, all traces of present civilization will have been long erased. Perhaps a previous one or two eras of civilization once existed on Earth. Perhaps not. Perhaps never again…
If we continue down the path of Trace Gas Hysteria instead of Geologic Ice Age norm Preparation, there will be little chance of civilization, as we know it, of enduring the next 90-120 thousand years.
@RGates
It is so simple….
So the first some hundred years it was just warm… No increase of H2O in the atmosphere? Nothing about clouds?
And how the increase of air temperature can melt 3km of ice? Greenland still looks OK, even being in latitudes where no large glaciers on the sea level exist (but this 3km of ice means something for the circulation ABOVE the ice).
Nothing else can explain…. Maybe, to get some ideas, could you have a look into work of late prof. Marcel Leroux. He explains quite nice the mechanism of accumulating of ice and de-glaciations. I can summarise: the circulation of moist air from tropics, driven by masses of polar air.
The positive feedback assertion seems a bit incongruous. After all these periods are invariably followed by a cooling period. What precipitates the CO2 drop off if the feedback was so positive? As to his assertion that axial tilt and orbital variation is a factor, these seem to be acceptable factors. But note that these last 3M years do not resemble much the previous 30M so it is likely plate tectonics also plays a part. And all astrophysicists suspect solar activity and even extra-solar activity play a very important part in climate change.
Many times I have seen this claim, which even sounds reasonable at first.
But, then, suddenly, temperatures start going down, although CO2 levels continue going up. Where is the positive feedback, then? Why it dissapears?
800 years later, CO2 levels start going down, and they keep going down even when temperatures start going up. And, miracle! after 800 years CO2 levels go up too, at last, and by miracle again, they regain the power of positive feedback.
I´ve never seen the answer to the complete cycle. Does someone knows where I could find it?
What bothers me about this explanation is that Milankovich is considered to be a weak forcing agent and CO2 is considered to be a strong forcing agent. So let’s say that the weak forcing agent, Milankovich, starts off the process and gets more CO2 into the air. The strong forcing agent, CO2, then takes the drivers seat and drives climate much higher. But there never seems to be any discussion about what happens when the trend changes direction. We can see in the records that temperature will change direction and start back down while CO2 is still rising strongly. Now, obviously, a change in Milankovich should not be able to achieve this kind of result – nor should any other weak forcing agent. A strong CO2 forcing should remain in the drivers seat and continue to propell temperatures upward. The fact that this does not happen and the fact that temperature so easily ignores the increase in CO2 when it changes direction and starts back down leads me to believe that climate sensitivity is not nearly as high as is claimed.
This explanation sounds nice but fails completely when applied to the end of the interglacial. At this point, temperature falls but CO2 keeps rising and only starts to fall some 800 years later. If you accept their (and realclimate) explanation then the interglacial would not end but get increasingly warmer. So what forces the cooling?
evanmjones says:
June 26, 2011 at 11:22 am
R. Gates: When CO2 data was finally recovered from ice cores the pieces fell into place as we could see the changes in GH gases that provided the addition forcings necessary to explain the temperature swings.
Not even close. CO2 changes a mere 100 ppm from bottom to top of the Milankovitch Cycles. There is positive feedback going into an ice age, but that comes mostly from a slower summer ice pack melt and the resulting increase in albedo. (And reverse when entering an optimum.) The 100 ppm CO2 delta is spit in the ocean.
———-
One has to look at the whole system of feedbacks. It is not just the outgassing of CO2, but the resultant additional water vapor that comes along with that. And it is here that the intriguing connection between warming and the rock weathering carbon cycle comes into play. For what would prevent a run-away greenhouse here on earth if all these Milankovitch initiated positive feedbacks went unchecked? If there were no negative feedbacks that ultimately could balance out the positive, even when the Milankovitch cycle favored cooling, the earth would continue to warm. But it is precisely in the increased water vapor levels and eventual increased rock weathering that comes from the acceleration of the hydrological cycle that removes CO2 from the atmosphere and breaks the positive feedback loop that otherwise would have created the run-away greenhouse condition.