Geological Society statement about climate change

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.

Why is that quote interesting? It’s just reiteration of standard AGW scripture for explaining the T/CO2 lag. Maybe I’m missing something…

Feedback, feedback…..toujours le feedback issue!

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.

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.

“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.

UK Geological Society
In the coming centuries, continued emissions of carbon from burning oil, gas and coal at close to or higher than today’s levels, and………….

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.

In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan’s third-story windows.
Superfreakonomics

As they say, the rest is history. Vrooooom!

I counted 3 references to the IPCC. All hope is lost. :>(

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.

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.

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.

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.

Well a last the Australians are growing up hahaha
http://australianetworknews.com/stories/201106/3253943.htm?desktop

Tilo Reber & Peter F., see my response to Evan M. Jones at 11:49 am. One must consider the rock-carbon cycle and its ability to create the negative feedback necessary to remove CO2. This is a very elegant way to ensure that CO2 stays within the range we’ve seen over at least the past 800,000 years– until of course the past few hundred.

Much of this is likely to be back pedalled once we have the report from Svensmark’s CLOUD experiment at CERN.
As said by others the CO2 hypothesis fails to explain cooling with CO2 rising.
CLOUD may show that anything that increases the Solar wind and protects the Earth from GCR will lead to a drop in cloud cover and an increase in ocean heat content. Unlike the CO2 release on warming hypothesis the CLOUD hypothesis also shows how the reverse cooling works – less Solar wind leads to less protection against GCR which seed more clouds and thus albedo leads to a loss of heat content.

Can anyone explain to us how co2 traps energy from going out but doesn’t prevent at least the same amount of energy from coming in?
It seems like we are being told that it should be hotter in the shade because the canopy keeps the energy from going out.
Is there any explanation of this?

Having had more scientific training than Algore (BA in General Biology-never used)
NOAA certified weather Observer, Professional Pilot (28 years) and general student of things
atmospheric:
Prediction: as the cooling in the Oceans takes hold more CO2 get absorbed.
in other words we will see a leveling off to a decline in CO2’s minor prescience in the
Atmosphere…
No I do not pretend to be an expert…

From the UKGS text;-
“In the light of the evidence presented here it is reasonable to conclude that emitting further large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere over time is likely to be unwise, uncomfortable though that fact may be.”
“….LIKELY to be unwise” ……..”uncomfortable though that FACT may be.”
In one clause it’s uncertain, in the next, the “science is settled.”
In the same sentence, how scientific is that?

R. Gates, you were going to answer a question for me and haven’t yet. Did you find the answer?
I asked: Your global map shows global temps that fall in the lower range and higher range as compared to a 29 year base period (1961-1990). I don’t understand why a very short base period ending 21 years ago is used.
Your link: http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproom/.Global/.Atm_Temp/Persistence.html
Your reply: Don’t know the full answer to that and it may require more research, but if true, it may be based on data that is reliable with known margins of error. I will have to look into this a bit more.

A C Osborn says: ‘The UK Geological Society has put all it’s eggs in the CAGW basket’. Slight correction. it’s has put all its eggs in the CAGW basket.

The thing about the orbital change hypothesis is that the orbital change is gradual. The tipping points into and out of glacial periods is not. It is quite sudden. I am talking about dramatic changes on the century scale, short enough to become the stuff of legend from one generation to another and certainly to become tales passed from generation to generation (was Atlantis really a vast area that was flooded by rising sea levels, maybe meltwater pulse 1A?, say the Adriatic or what is now the Arabian Gulf?).
While changes in orientation might be an enabling factor in the transitions from glacial to interglacial and back, I don’t believe it is the cause. The cause is something that happens quite suddenly and has dramatic impact and changes things for a very, very long time (100,000 years in the case of a glaciation).
The interglacial period is the abnormal time. It accounts for about 10% of the time. The “normal” condition over the past few million years has been glacial conditions.

@ Titan28
“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,”
What else did you expect? It’s a scientific society, not a Blog.
BTW: The explanation given here is a liittle simplifying. I’ve just read about the topic in David Archers book “The long thaw”. Outgassing oceans cannot explain all the CO2 in atmosphere. Complex carbon cycle feedbacks (not yet fully understood) have to be considered, too. Details in the recommended book.
But what can we learn today about this event in regard to modern times?
The carbon cycle feedback is slow, about some millenia. Supposed our modern CO2 pulse is much shorter, we have a good chance not to see this form of amplification.
OTOH we can learn, that small forcings can have a big effect in connection with feedbacks.
And we can learn, that it’s not God’s Law, that the oceans will further uptake half of CO2 emissions. Maybe they will do for decades, maybe longer, but not for all times.

Laurie says:
June 26, 2011 at 12:22 pm
R. Gates, you were going to answer a question for me and haven’t yet. Did you find the answer?
I asked: Your global map shows global temps that fall in the lower range and higher range as compared to a 29 year base period (1961-1990). I don’t understand why a very short base period ending 21 years ago is used.
Your link: http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproom/.Global/.Atm_Temp/Persistence.html
Your reply: Don’t know the full answer to that and it may require more research, but if true, it may be based on data that is reliable with known margins of error. I will have to look into this a bit more.
——–
I have looked into this and it seems to be a function of the data set that is consistent with the parameter being compared. For example, in this data set they use 1971-2000 as the the baseline:
http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproom/.Global/.Atm_Temp/Anomaly.html
So for the first link, the parameter is persistence of an anomaly and the second one is simply the monthly anomaly itself, which has a base period more current.

R. Gates says:
June 26, 2011 at 10:42 am
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.
Just a thought about your new theoretical position which seems to have changed over time. Previous warming cycles as seen in the Vostok ice cores are natural, there was no anthropogenic input, you seem to suggest that natural planetary cycles and spacial alignments were the prime movers of cyclic warming and cooling events and it was CO2 that played a contributing role after warming began hence the lag time between temp and CO2 rise. But what caused the warming cycles to end? CAGW theory dictates that increasing CO2 leads to more warming leading to more CO2 leading to a runaway warming tipping point. CAGW doctrine states that an anthropogenic effect is the primary cause of the most recent warming cycle and if it were not for the extra CO2 produced by human activity from the 1700s on there would have been almost no warming of the planet.
Yet we know from the Vostok ice cores that previous warming cycles were higher and lasted longer with no anthropogenic input, how could this be? We can also clearly see that temperatures fell first and CO2 levels followed, there was no runaway tipping point. Yes there looks to be a relationship between warming and CO2 but it cannot be causal but simply and effect of natural cyclic warming, if it were causal there would have been a tipping point with runaway warming but each time the warming cycles ends first and then CO2 declines. Look back to previous warming cycles highs where as you claim CO2 was a contributing factor and that as CO2 increased so did warming, what then caused temperatures to decline and indeed collapse in spectacular fashion? Because an examination of the actual evidence clearly shows temperatures falling even as CO2 levels remained high. Only when temperatures fell did CO2 decline.
In effect CO2 did not cause warming and it did not cause the decline and collapse in temperatures after the end of the warming cycle. From the evidence it shows CO2 is a passenger NOT a driver, at no point in history has CO2 driven warming cycles. It is clear that the planet has been in a natural warming cycle and there is mounting evidence that this warming cycle is ending, it is also clear that there has been nothing special about this most recent modest warming cycle. The recent decline in global temperatures cannot be denied and it cannot be denied that whilst temperatures declined CO2 levels increased. If we take the ice cores as our guide to what will happen in the future we will see a decline in temperatures and then a lagging decline in CO2 levels.
Now note that CO2 levels began to rise after the most recent warming cycle began and notice that measured atmospheric CO2 rose even as global temperatures peaked and then declined post 1998, yes we have had local warming and cooling but the general trend is in decline. Now note that temperatures are declining and CO2 is still rising as measured, it is still too early to categorically assert with 100% confidence that CO2 will continue to rise and GATs will continue to decline but what it does clearly show is that the debate is not over and the consensus is by no means perfect. I can understand a theoretical evolution but your post just seems to fly in the face of everything you have claimed up to now. It aint a done deal is it? The CAGW theology is by no means the only game in town and there is a plausible plan B.

Marc says:
June 26, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Can anyone explain to us how co2 traps energy from going out but doesn’t prevent at least the same amount of energy from coming in?
It seems like we are being told that it should be hotter in the shade because the canopy keeps the energy from going out.
Is there any explanation of this?
——-
Incoming radiation and outgoing emitted radiation are different frequencies– higher coming in and lower being emitted from the surface. CO2 is transparent to the higher, but absorbs and re-emits the lower. This absorption and re-emission of longer wave radiation is the essence of the the GH effect.

At first I read into the paragraph, which includes a “positive feedback” reference, a nod towards the current CAGW hypothesis. But then I realised (I hope correctly) that they’re talking about just CO2 in itself being a (small, limited) positive feedback of the tilt change, rather than the runaway H2O feedback hypothesised by alarmists. Then if you read the full piece, it mentions other points which really don’t give strength to the CAGW theory – although they try to imply that they do.
Unfortunately it all ends with the usual crap about the so-called necessity to decrease CO2 output, or we’ll fry. As per usual, there’s no mention of by how much we should reduce our CO2 output, and what cooling effect said reduction would have. No mention either of how exactly we reduce it, although to be fair that would not be in their mandate.
So here are some ways of how we can reduce CO2: Governments ban companies from producing too much stuff (producing stuff needs energy, energy produces CO2). As a consequence a proportion of the workforce unfortunately automatically becomes redundant and living on welfare, supported by those taxpayers lucky enough to still be in work, but hey ho, “when needs must.” Or the Government passes a law to limit the number of hours in a working week, so everyone gets a job (working a few hours a week) – and is necessarily supported by welfare. But such is life. Or the end products are taxed so highly that no one except the privileged few can afford to buy them, and the manufacturers go out of business (or move to India or China). National debt rises even more than it is already. Prices rise as goods become more rare, inflation goes through the roof, the welfare economy collapses, and the Greens have their goal of the destruction of western economies. People die and the crime rate soars as food and medicine become rare commodities. But Gaia is saved. Now those are – as far as I can see – the only ways of actually reducing CO2 output measurably. But in return we’d have a cooler climate (by about 0.00000001 degree C or so, in about a hundred years). THIS concept is what is being sold to us by anyone who tells us we need to measurably reduce CO2.

Cassie King,
Don’t know why you’d call this a new theoretical position, as it hardly is. The role of outgassed CO2 to amplify Milankovitch forcings has been a basic position for quite some time, and the role of rock weathering to remove CO2 has also been researched and the basic chemistry known for a long time. The lag time of CO2 to temperatures going into and out of glaciations has to do with the negative and positive feedback lag times in both adding and subtracting CO2 from the atmosphere via their respective feedback mechanisms.
Also, you can’t look at just a few years data on this to see the longer-term forcing that CO2 represents. You use the year 1998 as some kind of benchmark for the height of modern warming, yet the decade after that year, 2000-2009 was the warmest on record.

David, UK says:
June 26, 2011 at 2:17 pm
“energy produces CO2”
Not necessarily. Nuclear doesn’t produce CO2, neither does hydroelectric. I don’t even need to mention other “green” sources.
And don’t be so pessimistic about the future if AGW is finally accepted by governments and we start to do something about it. It could go like this:
Most of the big economies (USA, Europe, Australia, Canada for starters, say) impose a tax on CO2 emissions. Energy companies look for ways of reducing emissions so as to pay less tax and therby out compete other energy companies. Companies and individuals find ways of reducing energy usage to reduce their taxes. The tax revenues are redistributed in whatever ways our democracies decide. The big economies that impose carbon taxes charge equivalent import duties on those that don’t to avoid “exporting emissions” and to ensure those economies don’t see an unfair competitive advantage. Eonomists call this a “Pigouvian” tax.
Can someone explain why this would be such a bad thing? (Asssuming, for the moment, that AGW is real, mitigation is needed, and CO2 emission reductions will work)

Much of the discussion above is centered around the premise that Milankovitch forcing is relatively weak. The reality is that this is not true. There are several components to the forcing, being eccentricity, obliquity and precession. The first (eccentricity) is generally viewed as being significantly weaker than the other two. But the combination of precession and obbliquity has substantial climate forcing impacts, particularly on icesheet formation and destruction in the Northern Hemisphere.
One of the biggest climate feedbacks is albedo. The combination of change in reflectivity due to ice sheet and sea-ice expansion/contraction, cloud cover and vegetation change provides most of the positive feedback that forces global temperature change. About 70 to 80 ppm of the change in atmospheric CO2 concentration is a side-effect of the warming of the oceans. There is no particular need to invoke change in the optical thickness of the atmosphere as a cause of glacial-interglacial temperature change. I have seen no proof that, on the glacial-interglacial timescale, there is any substantial change in atmosheric optical thickness that is suficient to force glacial-interglacial temperature changes.

Something fishy here. Why draw attention to a small part of the document.
The rest of it appears to have been drafted by Greenpeace for them:
…Evidence from the geological record is consistent with the physics that shows that adding large amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere warms the world and may lead to: higher sea levels and flooding of low-lying coasts; greatly changed patterns of rainfall; increased acidity of the oceans; and decreased oxygen levels in seawater…
etc, etc

R. Gates: “Tilo Reber & Peter F., see my response to Evan M. Jones at 11:49 am. ”
R. Gates: “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.”
I don’t follow your argument. Can you explain this better please.
Also note that whatever your considerations about removing CO2 from the atmosphere, the record shows that CO2 was still on the rise and continued to rise when temperature turned around and went down.

R. Gates?
Are you trying to say none of the incoming energy has the same wavelength as tthe outgoing. Certainly, if it can block outgoing, it must block some substantial outgoing.
Isn’t it the case that our magnetic field is what give us a steady atmosphere and the fact that we have so much water? It is hard to conceive that a few 100 parts per million can have any significant effect on temperature compared to the myriad other factors dictating temperature.
Would not the world be much hotter during the day and much cooler at night without the atmosphere.? So clearly, the fact that daytime temperatures are so low means that a whole bunch of the energy is not getting in?
Albedo and clouds and cosmic rays and all that stuff have to be a much bigger effect.
Seems the focus on CO2 is dogmatic, not even remotely proveable, or even likely, given the complexity of the system and our inchoate understanding.

A lot of talk about CO2 as an atmospheric amplifier.
It doesn’t amplify anything, and there are no physics to prove this.
It’s a molecule, period. It obeys quantum physics no differently than any other molecule, save for the wavelength of light it will receive. It cannot pass on magical quantities of trapped energy without receiving more.
As for the physics to disprove CO2 as an atmospheric amplifier: energy is neither created nor destroyed.
CO2 amplification is a myth created to get around the above, and CO2 cannot create energy out of nothing, nor can it amplify the energy received from LIR outgoing.
Bunch of hogwash, because if it were true, then scientists and power plant operators would be drooling over a miracle power-generation breakthru. Eureka…Cold Fusion at last and unlimited power.

Rhoda Ramirez says:
June 26, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Doesn’t their emphasis on the positive feedback mean that there should never have been any ice age at all? At one time the CO2 was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5000 PPM, yes?
=================
During that time the surface of the Earth was completely uninhabitable. Nothing lived. All life has appeared since the CO2 dropped below 500ppm. With the IPCC climate sensitivity of 6C, the temps would have been… 36-40C higher than they are now. Clearly nothing could survive.
Also, since the current increase in CO2 is far larger than that of the interglacials’ and the current warming is far less, the only reasonable conclusion is that the IPCC models and hockey stick are grossly underestimating how warm it’s really gotten. Small CO2 changes back then apparently resulted in LARGE temp shifts (10C plus) therefore our much larger CO2 increase must have resulted in a temp increase that’s much larger than 10C. Which explains all the snow we’ve been having…
Everyone mentions rock weathering, no one mentioned CO2 consuming, or emitting, life forms. Clearly the reason the CO2 plumeted after the previous interglacials was due to an excess of plants and insufficient numbers of critters exhaling CO2. The plants ate all the CO2 and the climate crashed back into an ice age.
Do I have to? Ok…
/sarc_off

SØREN BUNDGAARD
Thank you very much. Have you sent the link to Michael Mann?

John B: “Can someone explain why this would be such a bad thing?”
I don’t want to use less energy. A high quality modern life is depended on energy consumption. And the energy companies will not pay those taxes; they will pass them on directly to us. But if you want to propose a steady and consistent program of building nuclear reactors, I’m all with you.

Marc: “Meant… Certainly, if it can block outgoing, it must block some substantial incoming.”
Marc, the incoming is absorbed when it stikes the surface. It comes in at a range of frequencies that are mostly not absorbed by the atmosphere. When these frequencies stike the surface the energy is absorbed and then eventually reemitted. But when the energy is reemitted, it is reemitted at a different frequency than when it was absorbed. And the atmosphere is not as transparent to the new frequency as it was to the incoming. None of this is actually debated by people on either side. Everyone generally agrees that one doubling of CO2 raises the temp by 1C. The issue of debate is in the feedback. For example, the warmers claim that rising temperature puts more water into the atmosphere, thereby giving a positive feedback such that the 1C basic change from CO2 yields around 3C of total effect when feedback is counted. But there is no consensus on feedback. Some very good scientists think that the feedback may even be negative due to cloud formation. And clouds do in fact reflect light back into space as you suggest. That’s called albedo. So we have a range of climate sensitivity guesses that go all the way from .5C per CO2 doubling up to 6C per CO2 doubling. Now, since the effect of CO2 decreases logarithmically as CO2 increases, if the climate sensitivity is on that lower end of that scale, there will be no climate emergency. On the other hand if it is somewhere between 3C and 6C we are going to need mitigation. I don’t want to go on with this for too long, but more and more it appears that the climate sensitivity number is on the smaller side. My own opinion is that it is between .5C and 1.2C per CO2 doubling.

John B says:
June 26, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Energy companies look for ways of reducing emissions so as to pay less tax and therby out compete other energy companies. Companies and individuals find ways of reducing energy usage to reduce their taxes. The tax revenues are redistributed in whatever ways our democracies decide. The big economies that impose carbon taxes charge equivalent import duties on those that don’t to avoid “exporting emissions” and to ensure those economies don’t see an unfair competitive advantage. Eonomists call this a “Pigouvian” tax.
Can someone explain why this would be such a bad thing?

Put some reality on your scenario. A tax on everything increases retail prices on everything. The working man sees his real income drop and screams for help from his Union. The Union calls for strike action until working man’s wages now compensates for artificially increasing prices. Inflation is not the solution to climatic variation. GK

For those trying to make issue of the GHG effect of CO2 … Seriously, what’s your point other than arguing for the sake of arguing? The GHG effect of CO2 is completely non-controversial. It’s well known – it’s been tested in research labs all over the world. The vast majority of skeptical scientists don’t dispute this piece of science re: incoming/outgoing radiative wavelengths and other characteristics. Geez.

Even this is a very weak statement, far weaker than those from the national academies of science of most countries. It kind of makes me wonder about the effect of the petroleum geologists- employed by ExxonMobil, for example- on the Geological Society.
One funny thing is that this statement leaves out the End Permian mass extinction, also accompanied by carbon isotope signatures which show the injection of several trillion tons of carbon 12 enriched carbon at this time, consistent with a massive destabilization of the methane hydrates at that time.
The End Permian made extinct on the order of 90 percent of species then living.
What sort of global warming related catastrophe could extinguish 90 percent of species living on the earth now? What could have killed so many species?
Perhaps it was clouds of toxic hydrogen sulfide gas coming from anoxic oceans that killed so many species. Anything that could make so many species extinct must surely have killed 99 percent or greater of individual organisms.
Of course, the sun is a couple of percent brighter now than during the End Permian mass extinction. According to Hansen, this two percent in increase in brightness of the sun is equivalent to around another 1000 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. So, right now, we’re at the equivalent of about 1400 ppm CO2 back at the time of the End Permian.

Just keep publicizing how the deserts are shrinking and global vegetation cover is rapidly increasing,
a story the AGW crowd assiduously ignores, because it wasn’t in their models
and utterly contradicts their shrill doomsaying.
The higher CO2 goes the happier GAIA will be, because Her plants feel more at Home.

John B – you must be joking, right ? ! ?

Hi Smokey-
Well, nature isn’t wacky, but it is sometimes very strange.
We really could plausibly set off such an extinction event- or worse totally destabilize the system and end up with an atmosphere resembling that of Venus, with temperatures of hundreds of degrees C.
This is the most horrifying scientific paper I have ever read:
atmos.washington.edu/academics/classes/2011Q2/558/IsaksenGB2011.pdf

Strong atmospheric chemistry feedback to climate warming from Arctic methane emissions
Ivar S. A. Isaksen,Michael Gauss,Gunnar Myhre,Katey M. Walter Anthony,and Carolyn Ruppel
[1] The magnitude and feedbacks of future methane release from the Arctic region are
unknown. Despite limited documentation of potential future releases associated with
thawing permafrost and degassing methane hydrates, the large potential for future methane
releases calls for improved understanding of the interaction of a changing climate with
processes in the Arctic and chemical feedbacks in the atmosphere. Here we apply a “state
of the art” atmospheric chemistry transport model to show that large emissions of CH4
would likely have an unexpectedly large impact on the chemical composition of the
atmosphere and on radiative forcing (RF). The indirect contribution to RF of additional
methane emission is particularly important. It is shown that if global methane emissions
were to increase by factors of 2.5 and 5.2 above current emissions, the indirect
contributions to RF would be about 250% and 400%, respectively, of the RF that can be
attributed to directly emitted methane alone. Assuming several hypothetical scenarios of
CH4 release associated with permafrost thaw, shallow marine hydrate degassing, and
submarine landslides, we find a strong positive feedback on RF through atmospheric
chemistry. In particular, the impact of CH4 is enhanced through increase of its lifetime,
and of atmospheric abundances of ozone, stratospheric water vapor, and CO2
as aresult of atmospheric chemical processes.

Methane actually depletes concentrations of hydroxyl radical, the chemical species which oxidizes it into CO2, increasing its own lifetime in the atmosphere. Because this is an atmospheric chemistry effect, it can grow much, much faster than logarithmically. The indirect atmospheric chemistry effects that Isaksen talks about make everything much, much worse. And radiative forcing from any greenhouse gas, not just CO2, is multiplied several times by increased water vapor in the atmosphere.
I really, really do hope that you guys know what you are doing, since you seem to be betting all of our futures on your sense of what is or is not ridiculous.

In all the comments defending the “blocking” action of CO2 (absorption and reemission of radiation), the word “convection” doesn’t appear. Let me fix that:
Does CO2 stifle convection?
“Energy is transferred between the earth’s surface and the atmosphere via conduction, convection, and radiation.”
http://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_1_1.htm
How does convection affect global temperatures?
Is convection a negative feedback?

Leland Palmer says:
June 26, 2011 at 7:55 pm
…”So, my crystal ball is a little cloudy about things that haven’t happened yet and that depend on what we do now in the future,”….
=========
Good God, it is not all about you, get over yourself !!

Leland Palmer says:
June 26, 2011 at 7:28 pm “…One funny thing is that this statement leaves out the End Permian mass extinction, also accompanied by carbon isotope signatures which show the injection of several trillion tons of carbon 12 enriched carbon at this time, consistent with a massive destabilization of the methane hydrates at that time….”
Hey, have you got a link or two to that data? Actually, it seems that End Permian was one of the lowest CO2 times in the Paleozoic (along with temperature). Actually, it seems it was about the same as today’s dangerously low CO2 content. Maybe the little varmints froze their as*es off?
Let’s see some good geologic paper links to back up your claim.

contrary to the global warming theory, infrared ‘back-radiation’ from greenhouse gases has declined over the past 14 years in the US Southern Great Plains in winter, summer, and autumn. If the anthropogenic global warming theory was correct, the infrared ‘back-radiation’ should have instead increased year-round over the past 14 years along with the steady rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide”……”A trend analysis was applied to a 14-year time series of downwelling spectral infrared radiance observations from the Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI)…The AERI data record demonstrates that the downwelling infrared radiance is decreasing over this 14-year time period in the winter, summer, and autumn seasons but is increasing in the spring; these trends are statistically significant and are primarily due to long-term change in the cloudiness above the site.”

Leland Palmer says:
June 26, 2011 at 7:55 pm “…Leland Palmer says: “…What we do have are carbon isotope signatures showing the input of trillions of tons of C12 enriched carbon into the active carbon cycle, and oxygen isotope signatures showing large amounts of global heating at that time. There is also, of course, evidence of anoxic conditions on the floors of the oceans, including vast deposits of petroleum, left over from dead creatures preserved by low oxygen conditions, during these oceanic anoxic events associated with destabilization of methane hydrates….”
It is true that the Permo-Cretaceous, especially the Cretaceous, generated massive accumulations of kerogenic organic matter, especially in rift basins and restricted seas. This accounts for your “anoxic conditions”. In fact it was one of the most prolific times for life in earth’s history, which suggests, rather than some sort of disaster as you pose it, the conditions were ripe for living things (remember, the dinosaurs ruled the earth during most of this time, about 150 million years).
Further, it was 6 -10 deg.C hotter than today, and the atmospheric CO2 content about 6 times today’s value. However this latter value was a lot less than most of the preceding 450 million years, which saw life burgeon and expand almost magically, although punctuated by glacial eras and unexplained mass extinctions. In conclusion, as speaker for organic life, I declare warmer is better, CO2 helps, and there’s one hell of a lot of things that go into a planet’s climatic condition than one little gas.

Marc says:
June 26, 2011 at 9:27 pm
The decline of the UV portion of the spectrum. during solar minima and into the prolonged portion SC23/SC24 from low to very low solar activity. has led to a subsequent decrease in the most energetic portions of the downwelling radiation. It should follow that outgoing LIR would likewise decrease.
Poor old CO2 ain’t what it used to be. Weak, leaky, and not located in the interception scheme of things to cut the mustard, a victim of Planks Constant.

Jim F. “Considered by whom? Milankovich is FIRST order forcing; CO2 is a Fourth order forcing, i.e. nothing much.”
Don’t jump me Jim, I’m on your side. LOL. The idea that Milankovitch is weak and CO2 is strong comes from many warmer sources. Here for example:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=116
My opinion is that the CO2 forcing is also weak. Which is why I asked, how can temperature turn around and go back down while CO2 is still climbing sharply, as is shown in the record.
Apparently R. Gates has simply walked away without trying to answer that question.

R. Gates: “Well Chris, seems you may have a sensible bone in your body after all…”
R., you have been asked several times now how temperature could turn around and go down while CO2 is still climbing. Did I miss your answer? Because the only answer that I saw had to do with what would happen after temperature began a decline. I never saw an answer for how temperature could begin a decline while CO2 was still moving up.

It would be interesting for the UK geological society and the geologists in the rest of the world to have a debate on the role of c02 on past climates.The UK geological assume that more co2 always causes global warming while others say that co2 has been higher or risen when global temperatures have fallen.We are not seeing the calculated response of 3 deg c to a co2 doubling in the present rise of co2, it is much less than this.Could it be that that the UK geological society view of the role of co2 in past climate change is wrong?

Since we’re on the subject of the Permian Mass Extinction, let’s examine a few geological papers.
This one:
webh01.ua.ac.be/funmorph/raoul/macroevolutie/Benton2003.pdf
is interesting, with some good general geologic descriptions that a layman would enjoy, and very promotive – without much backing data – of a “runaway greenhouse effect” caused by methane clathrates derived from the sea floor due to oceanic heating. The publication is not a hard science site, and the style is almost breezy, but again, it’s interesting and will appeal to some.
This one:
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/19/8543.full
looks at another isotopic variation along with that of carbon (i.e. calcium) and considers how it might be affected in any of three contending models of the conditions presumably causing the Permian extinction. It concludes that the Siberian traps, erupted through a column of coals and other carbon-rich rocks, most likely provided the acid and the C12 enriched gases that are reflected in the isotopic signatures.
This one:
http://open.academia.edu/GarethIzon/Papers/160176/The_mid-Capitanian_Middle_Permian_mass_extinction_and_carbon_isotope_record_of_South_China
similarly rejects the clathrate hypothesis. It’s not the scholarly work of the previous reference, but the author is an active researcher into the causes of the Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Events (OAEs) 1a and 2, as well as over the Miocene cooling event.
So the upshot of this is that there was a big deal in the Permian, some 251-252 MYBP. Something caused the death of lots of animals, and affected the composition of rocks then being deposited. The earth was undergoing the biggest concentrated volcanic event in geologic history as revealed in the rocks. Read the papers (this listing is the tip of the iceberg) and come to your own conclusions, but facile conclusions about clathrate releases and runaway global warming should be taken with a block of salt.

steptoe fan says:
June 26, 2011 at 7:56 pm
“John B – you must be joking, right ? ! ?
About radiative physics or carbon tax?
I presume you meant the carbon tax. No, not joking. I was just asking, if we had to reduce CO2 emissions, what would be so bad about taxing emissions and imposing import duties on countries that don’t. Call me naive (there you go, quoteminers), but the “everyone will go on strike” scenario does not seem that plausible to me. And, of course, the money raised as taxes isn’t simply burned, it will go somewhere and, as democracies, we get to choose where.
@Tilo Reber: Yes, I support a full nuclear program. And, yes of course the carbon tax gets passed on to consumers, but that will still make energy companies innovate to be cheaper than the competition. IMHO.

Geoff Sherrington says:
June 27, 2011 at 12:41 am
So, what happens to the upward-travelling portion of the spectrum between 0.72 and 3.3 microns? I think you owe it to Marc to complete your answer to his/her question.
The Earth isn’t hot enough to radiate in that region. There is some radiation from the Sun in that region, which is scattered as shown on the diagram, but the major portion of the Sun’s radiation is visible and ultraviolet.
The confusion comes from a loose use of the term “infrared”. To be more precise, the Sun radiates ultraviolet, visible and “near infrared”, whereas the Earth radiates “mid infrared”. But if you ignore the names, the chart is showing that the Sun’s and Earth’s radiation do not overlap. GHGs absorb and re-radiate little (25-30%) of the Sun’s radiation but most (70-85%) of the Earth’s.
I think I, Tilo and Nick have done as much as is reasonable to explain this. If you, Marc or anyone else still have questions, there are plenty of resources on the Web to explain it further.

“….and thus, via positive feedback, to reinforce the temperature rise already in train.”
Wow …. . some real rocket science ……. except they galactically fail to mention the key uncertainty … which is …..BY HOW MUCH !

At the end of the last ice age,
we had Noah’s flood.
That is the historic record /memory of man.
The flood story is existent in many ancient stories not just the bible.
The tale is that the first rainbow is seen and that we collectively recognize
that there has been a fundamental change in global climatic conditions.
The significance of the rainbow is that there was cloud cover on the entire earth. Thick water vapor and no direct sunshine. That is how Methuselah could live so long. No sun burn or harsh UV rays. Then the rains came and dense could cover collapsed. This a fairly rapid, probably not as short as forty days, change in our world was the most amazing ecological/natural disaster ever witnessed by man. The flood also leads to massive sea level rise washing away the records modern man would need to scientifically prove it.
There is so much we do not have any idea about on this little ball of mud.
And what is going on with the weather/climate is a huge part of that.
One thing that is clear however is that the climate debate keeps the real agenda hidden. Climate change is a smoke screen. The actual attack is on cars those 3000 pound steel boxes that only go 19 miles an hour average city speed while using tons of space (36% of the our cities land mass) there are 6 parking spaces for every car in Los Angeles. Our cars sits unused 95% of the time.
So the environmentalist want to take away your car and force you to use public transportation and or bicycles. But such a direct assault would be had to mount and untenable given the current economic climate. So they are trying to scare us into living simpler and less energetic lives while using the all the recourses it takes to build the 1.6 cars for every licensed diver in the United States for other decentralized produces. Beware all you city dwellers the days of the private car and anonymous lives is under attack. And if you are among the increasingly few who live in the rural, areas when the cars are no longer coveted by the masses in the cities they will be too expensive for use in places where there is enough room to use them.
Yes it is the climate thats changing but not the one related to weather.

@- Tilo Reber says:
June 26, 2011 at 11:49 pm
“Look at this chart.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/63/Co2-temperature-plot.svg/2000px-Co2-temperature-plot.svg.png
Look at about 330 thousand years ago. First notice the period when temperature is rising while CO2 is falling. Then look where temperature completes it’s up surge while CO2 is only half way to it’s peak around 320 thousand years ago. ”
But on the same graph the rise in temperature and CO2 are simultaneous in the interglacial warming ~130 thousand years ago, and the CO2 rise PRERCEDES the warming in the interglacial just under 600 thousand years ago.
You might quibble about the accuracy of the cores and the timelags – but that calls ALL the timing claims into question.
Several posters have also asked the, presumably rhetorical, questions – why/how does it cool down when CO2 has risen and why does the CO2 rise not cause a ‘runaway’ warming.
Obviously these are questions that have long been answered within the scientific community over the last 150 years of study on the climate and is ‘common knowledge’ among those interested in the subject.
The answer is the extremely powerful negative feedback embodied in the Stephan-Boltzmann emissivity charateristic that results in energy emitted increasing with rising temperature – but to the FOURTH power of the temperature. Small temperature changes cause massive energy flux variations.

The most misused word in climate science today is “weathering”.
As if CO2 can only be removed from the atmosphere by being buried in sedimentary/marine rock.
Plants absorb 15% of the Carbon in the atmosphere each year. Oceans and plants are permanently removing 1% of the excess Carbon in the atmosphere each year.
1% per year only takes 150 years, not hundreds of thousands of years as climate science and the UK Geologic Society would have one believe.
——–
CO2 lags behind temperature in the entire 800,000 year ice core record, interglacial or not.
In the -5.0C ice ages; the components responsible for the temperature change are:
—> Increased ice, snow, grassland, desert (partially offset by less cloud) Albedo -4.0C
—> CO2 only 1.0C

I also want to destroy this myth that the CO2 released in the PETM event took 200,000 years for the CO2 to be removed. (which is contained in the UK Geologic Society statement).
———
First, temperatures did not rise 6.0C globally or 20.0C at the poles in this event as they stated. There is NO DATA that says this.
The data available says 1.0C to 2.0C globally from the event alone. Temperatures were already about 5.0C higher at the time and they only went up to about 7.0C for a short period – keeping in mind that polar amplification could have resulted in twice the temperature change at the poles. (The myth keeps getting pushed but I think they are confusing the temperature rise with what temperatures were at the time).
There is evidence of a Carbon release on the order of 2,000 to 4,000 billion tons (or about 4 times the amount of Carbon that is in our atmosphere right now so it was a big release – probably lasting 100,000 years all together – north Atlantic volcanism most likely – it was just opening up at the time to form what is now Iceland and the north Atlantic.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/Early_Eocene_Arctic_basin.PNG
How long does it take to remove 3,000 billion tons of Carbon? The UK Geologic Society says it took 200,000 years or about 15 mega tons per year.
But Plants and Oceans are today absorbing 4,000 mega tons per year so the estimate of 200,000 years is just an exaggeration. Plants and Oceans are currently absorbing Carbon out of the atmosphere at a rate which is 300 times higher than that proposed for the PETM.
So, climate science needs to go back to basic math class. I continue to be amazed at how poor Phd climate scientists are at just simple calculations. They want to believe so badly that they put their calculators/spreadsheets away.

G. Karst says:
June 26, 2011 at 12:12 pm
You really don’t the first clue about geology do you?
That hypothetical situation has never happened other than in your head. Radiometric dating is how virtually all rocks have an absolute age.

Tilo Reber says @ June 26, 2011 at 10:53 pm “Did I miss your answer? Because the only answer that I saw had to do with what would happen after temperature began a decline. I never saw an answer for how temperature could begin a decline while CO2 was still moving up.”
Tilo – seriously now, who ever said CO2 is the only climate forcer?

John B,
In response to a very realistic economic collapse scenario due to imposed CO2 taxes on industrial economies by David, UK, you propose this solution:
“And don’t be so pessimistic about the future if AGW is finally accepted by governments and we start to do something about it….It could go like this: Most of the big economies (USA, Europe, Australia, Canada for starters, say) impose a tax on CO2 emissions. Energy companies look for ways of reducing emissions so as to pay less tax and therby out compete other energy companies. Companies and individuals find ways of reducing energy usage to reduce their taxes. The tax revenues are redistributed in whatever ways our democracies decide. The big economies that impose carbon taxes charge equivalent import duties on those that don’t to avoid “exporting emissions” and to ensure those economies don’t see an unfair competitive advantage. Eonomists call this a “Pigouvian” tax. (John B responding to David, UK, June 26, 2011 at 2:49 p)
You then conclude by asking, “Can someone explain why this would be such a bad thing? (Asssuming, for the moment, that AGW is real, mitigation is needed, and CO2 emission reductions will work).”
You asked, John B, so let me give it a shot with my G-D (Global-Delusion) hypothesis:
First, with the evidence for AGW deflating and collapsing rather than solidifying, your uncertainty about the assumption is justified. The AGW was born in pre-Internet days. It relied not on science, as it’s proponents like to believe, but on centralized communication…Marshal McLuhan’s old “the medium is the message” saw, and the ability of governments and international organizations to maintain authority and control. The Internet changed all that within a decade since its appearance on the scene, and the imposed austerity measures with their high taxation and over-regulation as well as the credibility of ruling establishments and the United Nations are now subject to an unprecedented populist push-back. With all the occultist predictions, think tanks, sci-fi speculation and computer modeling, no one important saw that one coming, did they?
Sorry, John B, but your quaint model of this being an issue between governments and corporation is, to borrow Hilary Clinton’s trite term, “so yesterday.” This is why the planned and already tried “Pigouvian” measures are failing: Democracies, the very sources of your proposed AGW mitigation grand plan, still have a fail-safe system and unpopular or insane measures can be dumped in due time. Economic forces appear to be far more powerful than ideas, and pushing against them is akin to trying to hold back a tidal surge with a mop, a bucket and a book of regulations. This is why some Warmists, who have recognized the problem unfettered communication, the New Media and democracy pose to their scheme, are openly proposing dictatorial measures on an international scale. So, if you can shut down free communication, restore the authority of agreeable governments and mainstream media, and allow trans-national or international bodies to wield draconian powers, you’d be on the way.
Well, almost. There is, another “minor” problem. The plan you propose assumes that a few artificially-set taxes and regulations (assuming they’ll be unchallenged) will give “corporations” the nudge they need to develop the “renewables” which are supposed to be just around the corner. Well, that gamble didn’t work out either. Wind and sun are flops even with massive funding and regulatory assistance, and other promising technologies are too far in the future. Fossil fuels are already far ahead of anything that came before, such as wood burning and for a time, whale oil, and when everyone calms down a bit, we’ll be seeing a lot more of them.
When all that became clearer, there remained the hope that massive, government sponsored and media-propelled eco propaganda would get a critical mass of people to voluntarily submit to poverty by paying a lot more for a lot less. But the first secular “mass worship” rituals involving recycling, reduction of energy use and “organic” food predictably brought expensive and insufficient waste disposal, high energy bills and over-priced food. Religion only goes so far, and it too runs up against the hard economic forces wall; well-off people may feel better putting some cans and paper into blue boxes, they may get a kick from expensive “urban gardens” and “organic” produce, and they may be convinced for a while that chemicals are evil, but that’s as far as the fad goes. Don’t expect for all of that silliness to disappear overnight, but disappear it will, albeit in a gradual, almost imperceptible way which will allow the principals and the public to retain their dignity.
So, basically, John B, what you are proposing was already started decades ago, failed catastrophically, as you should be able to see as well, and now we are, thankfully, seeing the beginning of its end. Democracies, such as my country, Canada, which you mention, are quietly but decisively abandoning the AGW hypothesis-rationalized “Pigouvian” policies after seeing how damaging and ultimately unworkable they are. The idea that growing government waste can be hidden or mitigated by made-up taxes on mad- up problems works in the short run (and without the Internet’s explosive effects, it might have dragged on for longer), but in the end, poor economic strategies always result in poor economic performance and economic forces, likes tides, always win in the end. Those who still feel the need for a secular religion better throw themselves on their knees and pray to Free Enterprise…instead of Gaia…to pull our chestnuts out of this fire. Others can get a few chuckles by watching entire governments, activist organizations, crony capitalists, scientific institutions and international bodies writhe through the predictable dance of collapsing illusions; doubling-down and denial, anger and threats, “genius” solutions, desperate PR maneuvers, special pleading and eventually, rationalization and attempts to save as much as can be saved while trying to look dignified and totally in control throughout the whole sorry farce.

The problem with assuming that CO2 is a positive feedback that aids the Milankovic cycle is that there is no evidence that the rate of temperature rise increasing once CO2 starts increasing.
Thus for this theory to be held true, it would be necessary to show that whatever started the warming trend fades out at exactly the same time that CO2 induced warming starts. Not only that, but the record shows that the delary between start of warming and start of CO2 is not constant from one cycle to the next, so somehow the timing of the fade out has to vary as well.

G. Karst says:
June 26, 2011 at 12:12 pm
You need to study a little more. The way initial dating works is by use of volcanic ash. Using radioactive elements in the ash, it can be accurately dated. In areas with multiple volcanic layers, any fossils found between those layers can be determined to be younger than the lower layer and older then the upper layer.
Then when an identical fossil is found elsewhere, it can be used to date the layer it is found in.
This is no different than using pottery to date archeological sites. Once a style is dated, then finding a pot of similar style in another site can be used to date that site.

R. Gates says: June 26, 2011 at 10:42 am
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.
What a bunch of crap, Gates! So the extreme forcing of CO2 goes away when it reaches its maximum in the ice cores and we get another ice age. Why not argue that CO2 causes cooling, as every time it gets high per the ice cores we get really cold. What nonsense.

izen: “But on the same graph the rise in temperature and CO2 are simultaneous in the interglacial warming ~130 thousand years ago,”
No, temp still preceeds CO2 there.
izen: “and the CO2 rise PRERCEDES the warming in the interglacial just under 600 thousand years ago.”
Yeap, and around 530 thousand years ago the temperature and the CO2 ran a completely inverted pattern from each other.
izen: “You might quibble about the accuracy of the cores and the timelags – but that calls ALL the timing claims into question.”
I’m not quibbling about the timelags, I’m saying that CO2, in general, follows temperature but that it is a very weak driver of temperature. That is the only way that you can make any sense of the chart if you also maintain that Milankovich is weak.
The 330 thousand years ago spike is an important example because you had temperature climbing. This means that polar sea ice should have been shrinking and the ice sheets should have been shrinking. Both those factors should have contributed to the continuing rise of temperature. CO2 was still increasing sharply and would continue to do so, adding more drive to move temperature up. If CO2 feedback theory is correct, then more moisture should also have been added to the air, again, providing even more positive feedback. And yet, the temperature simply ignored all of these positive forcings and turned around and went down. That is simply not possible if CO2 is a strong forcing agent and Milankovich is a weak one. But CO2 in itself is what it is; 1C per doubling. This means that the feedback must be either very weak or even negative.
izen: “Several posters have also asked the, presumably rhetorical, questions – why/how does it cool down when CO2 has risen”
No, not “has risen”, but was still rising strongly.
Izen: “Obviously these are questions that have long been answered within the scientific community over the last 150 years of study on the climate and is ‘common knowledge’ among those interested in the subject.”
Blah, blah, blah.
Izen: “The answer is the extremely powerful negative feedback embodied in the Stephan-Boltzmann emissivity charateristic that results in energy emitted increasing with rising temperature – – but to the FOURTH power of the temperature. Small temperature changes cause massive energy flux variations.”
So the small temperature changes that we have going on now should be causing “massive energy flux variations” all working to offset the effects of CO2 – especially since we are closer to the top end of the pattern that we see in the chart. And according to you, then, these changes, being “to the FOURTH power of temperature”, will not give much room for CO2 to push things up further since you seem to think that their effect increases faster than the effect of the increase in CO2.

You are a cult like collection of amateurs, engaging in groupthink driven by fossil fuel corporation astroturf propaganda.
—
I don’t care who you are, that there is funny.

I’ve read many things over the past few weeks that have disturbed me. There appears to be a growing amount of pseudoscience [snip] on this board, presenting unverifiable claims and supporting obvious untruths such as the fact that the greenhouse gas effect exists or claiming this or that completely throws the global warming hypothesis out the window when it is a relatively minor claim that is undermined (the only thing that truely does that is the lack of a hot spot, which points to a non-GHG warming source). I have also seen increased vitrol towards counter-points, even when these points are correct.
For example: CO2 amplification of warming has been neither proved nor disproved on a historical scale. Why? Because GHG warming is a very quick effect (occurring on a sub-year if not a daily span of time) and is indistinguishable on a geologic time scale from the initial warming cause. It will not prevent temperatures from falling just as your power steering does not prevent you from going straight. Amplifiers amplify in BOTH directions. They are not magical, and certainly can exist. The issue with the CO2 amplify9ing estimates is that the IPCC calculates the amplification as being 2 or greater, when a more natural range is 0.5-1.2.
We cannot win this debate with falacies, and we we cannot afford to waste our time spouting nonsense.

Very simple question — and quit saying go read the internet, if you can’t answer a question simply ignore it.
People on this blog are asserting that none of the incoming radiation from the sun occurs in the wavelength that interacts with CO2 — none at all.
Is that true or not? I don’t care if most is in other wavelengths or whatever.
My question:
Is it true that 0.00% of the incoming radiation from the sun is in wavelengths that interact with CO2?
I have a different valid point to make after receiving the answer from the “experts” on this.

Marc says:
June 27, 2011 at 10:55 am
My question:
Is it true that 0.00% of the incoming radiation from the sun is in wavelengths that interact with CO2?
No, it is not true. See here at about 2 micrometres (just left of centre). A small CO2 absorption band coincides with the lower end of the solar radiation spectrum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_Transmission.png
So, what’s your point?

Ben of Houston: “Amplifiers amplify in BOTH directions.”
CO2 amplifies the warming effect of the sun. When temperature reverses direction and starts to go down, how can CO2 amplify that effect when the CO2 is still going up? CO2 can only amplify cooling once it has reversed and followed the cooling. So you are left with the question of what started the cooling. You could blame it on Milankovic, but the effect of Milankovic is weak. The rising contribution of CO2 warming should still be higher than the effect of Milankovic if CO2 is a strong forcing agent. Let’s say that you are sitting in front off a heater and you are wearing a blanket. Then you turn the heater down 2% and you put on another blanket. You can still get warmer even though you turned the heater down.

Robert of Ottawa says:
June 27, 2011 at 12:23 pm
Note it is not the BRITISH or FRENCH or whoever geololical society, this is THE geological society, a very august body.
Yep, we do that. Our armed forces are called:
The Royal Air Force
The Royal Navy
The Royal Marines
and, best of all…
The Army
🙂

SteveE:
Mark Wilson:
Ok, ok… I won’t poke fun at geologists anymore. What would be the point, as they don’t seem to have much sense of humor. I assume everyone else, on the planet, is still fair game?? I see no point in apologizing AGAIN, or have you not read the thread? I laughed when you referred me to a creationist site… Why can you not laugh at my poor little joke? GK

tommy says @ June 27, 2011 at 12:05 pm “What is even more funny is that ice ages started even when co2 was in THOUSANDS of ppm range. How can they explain this??”
You are making the mistake of assuming that modern climate science is saying that everything depends solely on CO2. CO2 plays a role but is not the only forcer.

Mark Hladik says:
June 26, 2011 at 6:13 pm
To Derek Sorenson:
The effect is negligible beyond 200 ppm. Archibald summarized the empirical data, and the best presentation is at JoNova’s site, in the latest incarnation of “The Skeptics Handbook”.
CO2 conc. % effect (saturation)
20 ppm 54
40 ppm 68
60 ppm 75
80 ppm 79
100 ppm 83
120 ppm 87
140 ppm 89
160 ppm 91
180 ppm 93
200 ppm 95
I would also encourage a visit to the website called , and put the graph of ancient CO2 concentrations up against the graph for paleotemperatures, and look at the negative correlation coefficient.
Thanks for this, although I can’t make sense of the %ages. What does it actually mean to say the effect is 95% at 200ppm? 95% of what?
I was under the impresion that hardly anyone on either side of the fence questions that for each doubling in CO2 we get an approx 1.2C warming directly attributable to CO2 (ignoring feedbacks – of either sign). Admittedly, each doubling gets harder and harder to achieve, i.e. doubling CO2 from 200ppm is easy compared to doubling CO2 from 64,000ppm. This is the basis upon which I questioned the “negligibility” of any increase of CO2 beyond 200ppm.
Also, I think something must have gone wrong with your link to the website for the graphs of co2 v temp. Can you repost the link?

Peter Kovachev says:
June 27, 2011 at 11:16 am
The best path to enbark on, methinks humbly, is to gradually and firmly push, to keep on pushing and winning “territory,” and to reduce resistence by humanly providing soft landing spots and face-saving measures for the losers.
Agreed.
Although it is understandable that those who have perpetrated this fraud (if that is what it turns out to be) be somehow punished, that’s not really what is important. It seems to me that the important thing is to stop the gravy train, and the resultant damage to western economies, for no benefit and significant harm (note: there is no benefit irrespective of the truth or falsity of the CAGW hypothesis). If allowing the perpetrators a way out helps that happen more quickly, then we should be seeking ways to offer them that way out.

Agreed as well, Mr Sorensen. We shouldn’t hold our breath for justice and come-upance, given that the wiggle-out card will most likely be the first installment in the “buy-out” plan.

P Wilson: “The effect of c02 is nothing like ablanket.”
I know that. The point was to explain how things could get warmer even if the heat source is turned down. For that purpose the analogy remains simple and effective.

@- Derek Sorensen says:
June 27, 2011 at 1:03 pm
“Although it is understandable that those who have perpetrated this fraud (if that is what it turns out to be) be somehow punished, that’s not really what is important. It seems to me that the important thing is to stop the gravy train, and the resultant damage to western economies, for no benefit and significant harm (note: there is no benefit irrespective of the truth or falsity of the CAGW hypothesis). If allowing the perpetrators a way out helps that happen more quickly, then we should be seeking ways to offer them that way out.”
——————-
You seem to favour some sort of amnesty or reconciliation if the green-political forces abandon their present attempts to pursue an agenda with AGW as the justifying danger.
At least, as long as they are prompt in their recantation.
But this pre-supposes that Nature cooperates and provides conclusive refutation of the AGW theory. Criteria that all but the most rabid eco-extremist would accept.
Perhaps a rapid return to the temperatures of the last century. Large gains in glacier mass balance and big increases in sea ice extent and ice-cap mass in and around the poles.
If that continued for more than a decade or so then you might get a significant renunciation.
But those abrogating the ‘faith’ would have good excuses. Over a hundred years of international research. Multiple lines of evidence. Supported by every scientific institution of any credibility, and the consensus view of over 99% of published research. In any other field of science that would be more than sufficient justification for sharing such a viewpoint.
But there is a glaring asymmetry in the positions of the ‘two sides’.
Just suppose hypothetically that Nature is … unkind, and provides another couple of decades of warming with further ice lost from land and socially damaging changes to the local climate that underpins agriculture such as droughts and monsoons. the magnitude of the changes with a continued concordance with AGW predictions would perhaps prompt some of those rejecting the AGW theory along with any associated political agenda to renounce their scepticism.
But their excuses for past errors would be a lot less persuasive.
Nature gets the first, last and only vote on this matter and as merely the art of the possible the politics will be shaped by that.

Thanks mkelley
mkelly says:
June 27, 2011 at 12:32 pm
CO2 absorbs in 3 bands (roughly speaking) 2.6, 4.7, and 15 micro. All are radiated by the sun but the 2.6 and 4.7 are not considered in the IR/CO2 discussion because the earth does not emit the 2.6 and 4.7 bands to any appreciable extent. These three bands account for about 6-8 per cent of the IR leaving the earth with 15 being almost all of it.”
the 2.6 and 4.7 bands aren’t longwave as emitted by the earth, however, these bandwidths absorb shortwave solar radiation, and so prevent those bands from reaching the earth.
So further question:
What is the Watts/m2 combined in the 2.6, 4.7 and 15 wavelength that irradiate the top of the atmosphere and what is the Watts/m2 emitted by the earth in just the 15 wavelength?

Tilo Reber says:
June 27, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Ben of Houston: “Amplifiers amplify in BOTH directions.”
CO2 amplifies the warming effect of the sun. When temperature reverses direction and starts to go down, how can CO2 amplify that effect when the CO2 is still going up? CO2 can only amplify cooling once it has reversed and followed the cooling. So you are left with the question of what started the cooling. You could blame it on Milankovic, but the effect of Milankovic is weak. The rising contribution of CO2 warming should still be higher than the effect of Milankovic if CO2 is a strong forcing agent. Let’s say that you are sitting in front off a heater and you are wearing a blanket. Then you turn the heater down 2% and you put on another blanket. You can still get warmer even though you turned the heater down.
______
If, as has been suggested, CO2 is the “master thermostat” of the planet, meaning it can control temperature up, and down, it would have to do many things at once:
1) Operate with the same dynamic over a range of temperatures, such that, temperatures and pressure would not cause it to condense from the atmosphere. CO2 does this, as it is a non-condensing green house gas, whereas water vapor is not.
2) Be “turned on” by weaker external trigger event of some kind, a “starter switch” if you would. Milankovitch cycles provide this external trigger as they initiate the heating of the oceans which begin outgassing more CO2.
3) Create a positive feedback loop, such that once triggered, trigger more of the same. Once a CO2 begins to increase, especially in the lower end of the range of concentrations, a little bit more added can mean a lot more warming through positive feedback. This is exactly how the warming effect of CO2 operates.
4) Interact with other systems in such as manner such that even though there is positive feedback, there is also a mechanism for NEGATIVE feedback, such that, at some point, the negative feedback outweighs the positive, keeping the system from creating the “run-away” green house effect. There are several potential mechanisms for this, some based on chemistry and geology, and some based on the current configuration of continents on the planet and their Interaction on the great ocean conveyor of current that connects all the oceans of the planet.
Negative feedback #1 for keeping CO2 in check and preventing a run-away green house effect is the rock-weathering carbon cycle. As temperatures rise and more CO2 builds, water vapor also builds and the hydrological cycle begins to accelerate. This acceleration of the hydrological cycle means more rock weathering, and this weathering serves to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, bind it to minerals that are then washed to the oceans where they eventually end up as limestone. This process is well known.
Negative feedback #2 for keeping CO2 in check and preventing a run-away green house effect involves an external trigger event that is precipitated by the warming planet but essentially shuts down or slows down the ocean conveyor belt, and stops this planetary heat pump. This mechanism is separate from the rock-carbon cycle, but has provided a sort of fail-safe mechanism to make sure the planet does not over-heat. How it works is like this: as the planet warms, more and more water comes off the ice-sheets that formed during the glacial period. At some point, that melting water alters the thermal and salinity gradients of the ocean conveyor enough that the heat pump shuts down, the poles begin to cool and ice begins to form. This shutting down can happen rather suddenly, (as any fail-safe mechanism does), whereas the rock-weathering carbon cycle is a longer-term negative process that slowly builds in momentum as temperatures rise.
This entire process, the Milankovitich cycle, the release of CO2 through outgassing, the triggering of additional warming through positive feedback, the slow building up of negative feedback through the hydrological cycle that removes CO2, and the ultimate fail-safe mechanism, the shut-down of the great ocean conveyor is pretty much how the planet has operated for millions of years– at least during the current ice age and the current configuration of the continents. None of this of course precludes other triggering events that can create their own cycles of interactions such as solar events, gamma ray bursts, cometary impacts, etc. When these events happen, they can create their own interactions with the cycle just described and new patterns emerge in the climate system for various lengths of time.

Marc,
Sorry if you find me condescending. I explained how the greenhouse effect works, and then I answered your question about “0.00% of the incoming radiation”. You said you were about to make your point. I just wanted to hear it.

R. Gates says:
June 27, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Yep, R. Gates. That right thar is settled science topped with consensus.

izen: “Nature gets the first, last and only vote on this matter and as merely the art of the possible the politics will be shaped by that.”
Yeap, and so far I like the results coming from the exit polls.

ferd berple says @ June 27, 2011 at 4:00 pm “The IPCC says that CO2 is the main driver of climate.”
Another strawman ferd.
Bullcr^p until you can show us where the IPCC actually says that. (hint – the IPCC has never said “CO2 is the main driver of climate”.

Peter Kovachev says:
June 27, 2011 at 11:16 am “…The best path to enbark on, methinks humbly, is to gradually and firmly push, to keep on pushing and winning “territory,” and to reduce resistence by humanly providing soft landing spots and face-saving measures for the losers….”
izen says:
June 27, 2011 at 2:45 pm “…But this pre-supposes that Nature cooperates and provides conclusive refutation of the AGW theory. Criteria that all but the most rabid eco-extremist would accept….”
Peter: Maybe that’s the approach for Europe, but not here. If the Republicans win it all, these folks stand to lose big. It’s already started, with votes against ethanol. The EPA and its illegal efforts against CO2 will be completely defunded, etc.
izen: Nature may or may not deliver, but “Big Green” is the key component. I don’t mean the environmental idiots and wind power grifters and so forth: I mean the economy (US $). These aforementioned people have cost us untold billions, maybe trillions, and we simply can’t tolerate them any more. More than anything, the economic plight we find ourselves in will force action that will overcome the obstacles (I don’t hold out any hope for Europe; they are going to have to pay for their follies in blood and tears, I fear).
Imagine if the US really opened the doors to developing its own energy resources (just one area of the economy hamstrung by rampant environmentalism). The massive new onshore discoveries of gas and increasingly, oil, in tight shales accessible with horizontal drilling and fracking on completion (cf. North Dakota, where the Bakken play has made ND the state with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, down around 4%). Offshore, multibillion barrel potential exists in the Gulf beneath the salt (now accessible to seismic exploration and drilling techniques) and in the Atlantic rift basins (similar to Brazil’s newly-discovered trend where they now tout 35+ billion barrels in reserves after only a few years of work). We haven’t even mentioned Alaska, coal or oil shales. All this could stimulate hundreds of thousands of good jobs.
Vicious Little Green (the environmental cabal) is going to fight like hell against this – and lose. Once they’ve lost, they won’t be coming back.

R. Gates says:
June 27, 2011 at 4:31 pm “…blah, blah…” Why don’t you write a book? You seem to have it all figured out. 😉
Or else go read this article, which is a sensible concept of global climate change primarily controlled by plate tectonic activity, and which actually supports or better explains some of the ideas you list in this post I am responding to:
ALARMIST GLOBAL WARMING MODELS VS THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD
Pierre Jutras
http://www.smu.ca/academic/science/geology/bios/documents/ALARMISTGLOBALWARMINGMODELSVSTHEGEOLOGICALRECORDHongKong2007.pdf
Enjoy.

John B says:
Marc,
I explained how the greenhouse effect works, and then I answered your question about “0.00% of the incoming radiation”. You said you were about to make your point. I just wanted to hear it.
Marc’s response
Okay — I was working today, and couldn’t really get to what I wanted to say, so let’s put aside my snippiness earlier.
The reason I read and participate in a blog like this is to learn, in general, and to continue to evolve, if appropriate, my views on CAGW and AGW. It is a subject that interests me from a scientific point of view and a socialogical/psychological dynamic point of view.
I have a wife and young kids, and a large stake in a decent world. I am not a scientist but take a scientific-like curiousity in the world, and like figuring out things that can be figured out and also knowing what isn’t yet known. I have dual degrees in engineering and history from two of the top universities in the country; but I’m not saying that to brag, I was definitely mediocre as far as my engineering class was concerned — there were some real studs (and studettes). I make huge differentiations between knowledge, intelligence, common sense and wisdom.
I have been earnestly trying to come to a belief in the possibility of CAGW and/or material AGW, for the past two years. Despite vigorous attempts, including the initial inclination to believe it to be both true and needing some action, I have been unable to find the evidence which would support such a position with honest facts about what is known.
Let’s take them in order:
A) I was really turned off by the clear and massive fraud perpetrated my Michael Mann and the IPCC. The orginaly hockey stick has been shown to be unambiguously fraudulent and wrong in so many ways: a) statiscally, M&M demonstrated that even using Mann’s data, proper statistical modeling would not produce that shape at all. b) the underlying data is horrific i) it uses proxies that are truly unknown in their reliability as temperature reconstruction ii) even if the proxies are valid, their level of accuracy is dubious, and there is complete dishonesty on using the correct error bars for the reconsstructions, which makes current temperature trends indecipherable in the error bars iii) the data is massaged and cherry picked and altered to a degree making it false iv) even honest data is polluted by things like UHI, and there’s not much honest data out there. c) the mixing of proxy data, instrumental data and other more precise instrumental data in reconstructions is just plain disingenous and scientifically invalid.
I could go on, but the points here are two:
1) It nearly impossible for me to get over such massive fraud by the leaders of the so called science and trust the data and conclusions.
2) The leaders are lying about what they actually know — they do not know, nor can they reasonably predict what kind of situation we are in or where the climate is heading or why.
B) My second larger point plays off the last point above — the leaders of this field are taking particles of knowledge and drawing conclusions which the level of science doesn’t support. It doesn’t hold up. They make leaps that would fail to persuade teachers in middle school science classes.
I live by the credo that knowledge of one’s ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. No matter how intelligent or learned one may be, one is severely compromised by not being able to distinguish what one doesn’t know. Honest arbiters of this issue would be significantly more muted in their conclusions and prognistications.
The evidence seems clear that the climate is a chaotic system that, even with super computers, is orders of magnitude beyond our ability to predict. We know only a fraction of the drivers and the correct coefficients and permutations that would make prediction possible. Therefore, any handwring is superstition at this point regarding a future that we can neither predict nor control. It is driven by leaps of logic and knowledge that are utterly unscientific, as are most superstitions. furhermore, the future climate is much likelier to be driven by large black swan events or non-linear occurrences than anything put in a computer model. These models are worse that those at Long Term Capital Management and they will fail miserably. There are no better than shamanic crystal balls.
The scientists are trying to turn a little knowledge into something that it isn’t — a window into the future. The basic premise is that, “all other things being equal,” more CO2 will create more warming. What we know about chaotic systems is that most certainly all other things will not be equal. Secondly, the behavior of energy in a controlled environment with respect to CO2 cannot suggest in the least what will be the behavior of energy in the complex climate system.
So a couple of basic calculations apear to be complete BS:
1) The so called energy budget will be changed many times before we reach a point where accuracy of it is refined to a truly useable level — decades to centuries — and by the way, it will change along the way and act differently along the way in response to a nearly infinite number of drivers.
2) The calculation that a doubling of CO2 will have a 1.2C impact absent forcings is breathtakingly simplistic and essentially irrelevant. This is not calcuable in such a complex system of when and where CO2 will be at any time in any concentration at any time of year in any atmospheric conditions. There is to much randomness and chaos in the real system for this to be calculable Not to mention the fact that actual forcings, were they relevant, could just as easily negative 1 or 5 or whatever.
There will be massive climate change no matter what we do over the long-run.
The agenda of those promoting this shamanic endeavor is very familiar to any history student of substance. It grows out of an insecure need to be powerful based upon a FALSE internal belief in one’s own insufficiency and unworthiness. It comes from an unhappy and unhealthy place where the dark attributes of the human psyche dominate and drive behavior in ways unknown to the unfortunate and unfortunately malevelolent actors in the unnecessary and destructive drama that subverts the emergence of a higher human condition.
I have to put the kids to bed — respond if you dare.
Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

Hi Tilo Reber-

Moderate Republican: “Again with the notion that CO2 is the only forcer ”
Nope. No such notion. And you never saw me write that. What is stated, by the warmers, is that CO2 is a strong forcing agent and Milankovitch is a weak forcing agent. That being the case, how is it possible for temperature to sharply change direction when CO2 is still rising steeply. That would mean that the weak forcing agent is overcoming the strong forcing agent. Very unlikely. The other option is to identify another strong forcing agent to overcome CO2. I have seen no such agent offered by the warmers.

Oh, I can give you another strong forcing agent- methane and it’s indirect atmospheric chemistry effects. Methane levels could certainly decline while CO2 remains high, leading to a cooling effect. Methane actually oxidizes into CO2.
I follow your argument, and it seems like a potentially sound argument- if CO2 was the only greenhouse gas, and discounting random variability. I’m not sure about your data, though. When is this decline in temperature while CO2 remains high, that you are talking about?

People ask why we are in this cycle of ice ages,why does the Earth not keep on getting warmer during the interglacials or keep on getting colder during the glacial periods.I think that albedo is something that is underestimated as a forcing, it may explain our current warming better than co2.The oceans produce more cloud which act as a sun shade but continents have no shade and have to warm up as albedo falls

albedo isn’t underestimated, it’s totally ignored as a forcing. It is almost totally an unknown even now. Clouds comprise the vast majority of the albedo in today’s world, a job usurped by the snow and ice during glaciation periods.
Effects are also twofold. Cloud cover fraction affects the albedo and the particulate nature of the clouds can also vary and substantially affect their reflectivity and consequently the Earth’s albedo even without a change in the cloud cover fraction.
The only way the CAGW promoters have been able to get their ‘models’ to support their position has been to assume that increased temperatures with increased h2o vapor content will result in a few percent decrease in cloud cover. This isn’t even the results of a gcm. In fact, it was an assumption made when they were using a one dimensional model to create parameters for their gcm 20+ years ago.