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
Well, just last week I was reading a report from the alarmists about the danger to the oceans that will be caused by the oceans absorbing CO2, thereby making them more acidic. Now these guys come along and say that due to global warming, the oceans will be releasing CO2. Sheeesh! Which is it guys? Will the oceans absorb, or out gas CO2 when they warm up, due to Manbearpig? Can’t do both at the same time! Amazing that few have noticed this contradiction.
Well a last the Australians are growing up hahaha
http://australianetworknews.com/stories/201106/3253943.htm?desktop
Contrary to the view being expressed by your correspondent, the UK Geological statement gives a strong warning. “In the light of evidence presented here (in their statement), it is reasonable to conclude that emitting further large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere over time is likely to be unwise…” They explain that the rate of of CO2 in the past 200 years is unprecedented and that it has no geological cause. It is, they point out a result of growing populations and vastly increased use of resources. The warming, their paper asserts, “based on physical theory and geological analogue,” results from increased CO2 in the atmosphere, and decreased Arctic sea ice.
The statement strongly asserts that “the geological record is consistent with the physics which shows that adding large amounts of CO2 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 levels of ocean acidity and decreased oxygen levels in seawater.”
The paper advises that while changes in the past were relatively harmless to human populations, because there weren’t that many of us, present changes in climate will result in massive dislocations of people and animals, with a host of attendant problems
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.
No one has proved that whatever forced the temps up in the beginning that was non-CO2 related does not magically stop in the presense of increasing CO2, such that CO2 warming takes over. The null hypothesis stands. The natural forcing continued to heat up the planet till the natural forcing was expended. Case closed.
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.
We all know that radiative forcing of CO2 is logarithmic, but understanding why it is logarithmic seem to indicate that it should be logarithmic to the total concentration of ALL greenhouse gasses combined. That is the relationship would be of the form: delta-forcing = a*ln( delta-CO2 + sum-of-GHG).
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?
I have a very high respect for geologists, however, they too, are susceptible to circle think.
ie field tour with geologist:
geologist: “Now, you see this sedimentary layer here… it was laid down 123 million years ago.”
student: “How do you know?”
geologist: ” See this little fossil here. Well paleontologist, have dated this sucker, as having walked the earth 123 million years ago.”
Student returns to campus (with fossil sample) and runs into palaeontologist and asks for a dating of the sample.
palaeontologist: “Yes, I know this fossil well. It lived and thrived 123 million years ago.”
student: “How do you know?”
palaeontologist: ” Easy, it is only found in sedimentary layers, dated by geologists, as laid down 123 million years ago.” GK
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…
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? There must have been a hellacious positive forcing making the world’s temperatures totally un survivable by any protien based life form, but it didn’t happen. The world cooled, the climate changed, and then changed again. I can’t see any scenario where postive feed back allows the temperatures to anything but up and we know that the temps have varied. Or am I an idiot.
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?
I am not a fan of ice core extrapolation of high Arctic CO2 measurements and applying that measurement of that point on the globe to an entire earth to me is akin to measuring the approximate temperature in that location then applying it to the planet at that time. That’s madness. We know today CO2 varies depending on the point on the globe where the measurement is taken.
The fact is no scientists on this planet has any idea of what exactly triggers an ice age nor its subsequent warming period. Therefore science itself is far to immature to make absolute statements about the historical earth when it has no understanding itself why. This statement above then is equivalent to guessing on your next set of lotto numbers.
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.
WE LIVE IN THE COLDEST PERIOD OF THE LAST 10,000 YEARS…
-SEE THIS SURPRISING VIDEO FROM GREENLAND, WITH LEADING GLASIOLOGIST
AND ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, JØRGEN PEDER STEFFENSEN,
FROM NIELS BOHR INSTITUTE COPENHAGEN,
CENTER FOR ICE AND CLIMATE…
THE VIDEO IS CALLED: WE LIVE IN COLD TIMES
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.
Here are some excellent sources to understand CO2 removal from the atmosphere by rock weathering:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/clbk4a8bl8ypdn6p/
http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/21/12/1059
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1034/j.1600-0889.47.issue1.23.x/abstract
Rock weathering and uptake of CO2 either through glacial grinding and/or increased precipitation events associated with higher temps provides that critical link of negative feedback to bring CO2 levels down. And this effect would lag temperatures on the downside just as a rise in CO2 from ocean outgassing lags temperatures on the upside during Milankovitch cycles. So while Milankovitch cycles are the overall control nob for long term climate cycles, it is the positive and negative feedbacks related to CO2, ocean outgassing, and the rock-carbon cycle that do the bulk of the actual climate forcing during the cycle.
R. Gates regurgitates the “positive feedback” of carbon dioxide, right from the RealClimate website so perfectly, one wonders if (s)he did not write it him/her/self!
While other have successfully addressed R. Gates misanthropogenic hypothesis, let us also recall that anywhere past 200 ppm concentration, carbon dioxide’s absorption spectrum reaches a point of saturation, such that adding any more CO2 to the system does very little, if anything.
Please tell us, R. Gates, what exactly is it that shuts off this “positive feedback”? Last time I checked, any system which exists in a “positive feedback”, will continue to do so, unless it is interrupted by some outside factor. EPICA, Vostok, and GISP II are all consistent, in that CO2 levels remained high, during times of decreasing temperatures. As several others have addressed, if CO2’s ‘greenhouse effect’ is so strong and overpowering, there has to be some ‘yet-even-more-powerful-“anti”-greenhouse-effect’ factor which “overpowers” all that CO2 in the atmosphere, during the entrance into a glacial event.
Let us also recall that the ice core data supports field research, which indicates that transitions into and out-of glacial events and interglacials, took place in the blink of an eye, on the order of several decades, and most certainly less than a century.
Your mechanism, R. Gates, would need to be virtually instantaneous!
Mark H.
I’m not sure the UK Geological Society’s statement uses “positive feedback” as narrowly as it is usually used on this site and in many other global-warming forums. For all that is apparent from its statement, the Geological Society’s use of that phrase is broad enough to cover levels of response to CO2-concentration increase that Lindzen and Spencer, for example, have suggested (but refer to instead as “negative feedback”).
As I understand them, neither Spencer nor Lindzen denies that a CO2-concentration increase resulting from a (for example, increased-insolation-caused) temperature increase raises the temperature required for outgoing radiation to balance incoming radiation. As I understand Lindzen and Spencer, that is, they do not dispute that CO2 liberation in response to temperature increase would indeed act to reinforce the temperature increase; it’s just that they believe the reinforcement is less than an analysis based on the CO2 effect alone would suggest. And it isn’t clear that the Geological Society statement’s use of the phrase “positive feedback” necessarily excludes this lesser amount of reinforcement, even though most at this site would refer to as “negative feedback.”
In other words, I think its statement intentionally or unintentionally appears to say more than it actually does.
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.
Their letter is just a Trojan horse. It brings into the open the CO2 following temperature trend but expects us to read the attachment of how the CO2 later provides positive feedback. The psychology is that we will think they are honest chaps to tell us about the statement we didn’t make a big deal out of, so maybe they are being honest about the CO2 positive feedback. Lumumba graduates are helping them get their AGW message across.
@ur momisugly 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.
****
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.
*****
There’s no evidence for your “additional forcing”. If that were the case, the rate of temp increase would increase as the CO2 additions became significant. It did not, the rate stayed constant & then eventually topped & decreased while CO2 was still increasing. In addition, when the CO2 began decreases, the rate of temp fall should have increased. It did not, it was steady until it bottomed out and the CO2 continued to drop for a thousand yrs w/no effect on temps.
Sorry, but the data shows there’s no evidence for any “additional forcing” by CO2 either coming in or going out of the interglacials.
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, because these articles are abstracts and are likely behind paywalls, would you be so kind to tell us whether or not the authors say that this weathering is responsible for the net removal of CO2 seen in the temp-CO2 lag, and can thus be used to explain the cooling? And am I to assume that you feel this weathering was responsible for the cooling? If this is so, you have still not addressed what started the cooling in the first place. You have only addressed the lag in CO2 decrease. By every post, you believe that increasing CO2 causes warming, and as long as it is increasing, the warming will continue. Am I paraphrasing you correctly?