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
Geology provides a several orders of magnitude longer perspective on the history of changes in the amount of energy in the total earth system than paleontology does. Climatology based on instrumental data is short from a statistical perspective.
The geological record has an epistemological ranking higher than the other two.
AGW must show its consistency with geology. It does not do so.
AGW then, second in epistemological order, must show its consistency with paleontology. Inspite of the stagirian efforts of Mann & the team, it does not.
AGW then, third in epistemological order, must conform with the instrumental climate records. So we then come back to the lingering issues of openness by the organizations managing the thermometer records. At least we have satellite records now that can contribute independently of the thermometer records for the critical analysis of AGW.
One wonders how there ever was imagined to be a so-called IPCC centric climate science of AGW.
John
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.
Pat Frank says:
June 26, 2011 at 11:22 am
Extending the logic of the UKGS to its full symmetry, we can further surmise that the high-point of atmospheric CO2, reached several hundred years after air temperature had already begun to fall, ‘reinforced the temperature decline already in train.’
Yes indeed! But what else would we expect from “the physics” of such Anthropomorphizing Anthropogenics, who will ‘perforce’ no doubt only next “prove”, via the usual greenback-greased physic used in producing the rest of their sheep dip, that “It’s stronger than we thought!” and more “elegant”?
And who ever said that the fact that we haven’t been able to find the Missing Link meant that we couldn’t replicate it? Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the “Anthrowbacks”!
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.
@Marc and rbateman, here’s how it works:
The hotter a body is, the higher the peak frequency at which it emits radiation. The Sun is very hot, so it emits a large portion of its radiation in the high frequency visible and ultra-violet range, although there is some in the low frequency infra-red range. The earth is much cooler, so much more of the radiation it emits is infra-red.
CO2 and other greenhouse gases, e.g. water vapour, ozone, methane, are transparent to visible and ultra-violet but can absorb and re-radiate infra-red. No energy is being created, just absorbed and re-radiated. (what all GHGs have in common is having more than two atoms per molecule, which allows them to absorb IR by “bending” – thus oxygen, O2, and nitrogen, N2, are not greenhouse gases but ozone, O3, is)
So, greenhouses gases are largely transparent to incoming, high frequency radiation, but can asborb and re-radiate low frequency infra-red being radiated from the surface of the Earth. The re-radiated IR goes in all directions. Some of it goes back to the surface of the Earth, warming it.
That’s the basics of it, but for a better explanation, you can easily find links to “greenhouse effect”.
[When people talk about “amplification”, they are not referring to amplifying energy, which would, as rbateman says, be absurd. They are talking about the greenhouse effect amplifying the warming or cooling cause by other effects. This is primarily due to more CO2 being released or taken up by the oceans as they get warmer or cooler, thus creating more or less warming through greater or smaller greenhouse effect]
Hope this helps,
John
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
Marc says:
June 26, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Meant… Certainly, if it can block outgoing, it must block some substantial incoming.
Exactly. There are narrow windows of incoming (Just into the UV to end of visible) and 3 narrow windows of outgoing longer that the incoming. The outgoing are dominated by H20 vapor.
Two different lags are evident, one of which–the more important one–is ignored by the Society’s statement: the 6 to 8 millenium lag between June 65 North insolation and T and the roughly 1 millenium lag between T and CO2. The statement speaks rather ridiculously of ice sheet amplification when it is clear that ice sheet extension and T are directly related. Insolation forces melting/T followed by CO2. Remember the old ice in water on a stove experiment: the water won’t warm till the ice melts. Similarly, increased insolation has no immediate effect on T/CO2–the ice sheets must recede, and it takes between 6 and 8 (depending on whose glacial mass reconstruction) thousand years to do it. These geologists seem to be ignorant of this very basic fact, or they ignore the compelling statistical evidence linking insolation to T: T = insolation + 7000 years; CO2 = insolation + 8000.
Another ridiculously fatal flaw: population density rises hundreds of times faster due to population growth than sea level rise. We’re not even sure the sea is rising. –AGF
more of the boring usual.
the assumption of hyper sensitivity makes a co2 doubling sound like it’s going to have some serious effect. It’s a log type of function! What’s more, so is the h2o vapor and this supposed feedback can’t generate anything significant either. (significant means beyond some value greater than a fraction of a degree). The co2 with feedbacks can’t even make it to the level of a full deg C rise for a doubling.
As already stated, the real factor in Earth’s temperature is albedo, and that, no one has even bothered or been able to measure over the longer term. For the modern Earth, it’s all about cloud cover and the negative feedback self regulating system. One doesn’t even have a significant contribution from land surface to really matter much. In a major ice age, it’s all about the short circuiting of this by snow cover (glaciation) replacing the cloud cover.
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.
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
(rounded and approximate, of course)
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.
You might want to do it before they realize that the vast majority of their data contradict their cherished beliefs, and the owners expunge the data!
Thanks for writing, hope you have a great day.
Mark H.
Moderator:
The data did not post as intended; the second set of numbers should fall underneath the column which says “% effect (saturation)” . Any chance of getting fixed before posting?
MH
[Sorry, WordPress deletes more than one consecutive space. But it was clear enough for me to understand. ~dbs, mod.]
Hmmm, this was also part of the statement:
Funny that you all left that part out, I guess. The part about the mass extinctions, I mean.
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…”
Except that air temperature turns down centuries before the CO2 level does. Throughout the ice ages the atmospheric CO2 level behaves as an effect, not as a cause.
So the difference in wavelength of uv vs. ir is fine, but what about all the incoming ir being blocked? Isn’t it the case that more co2 blocks more incoming ir as well as outgoing?
The earth would be over 100C during the day (or there abouts) without the filtering of incoming energy.
However, isn’t the larger point that we don’t know near enough to conclude that our co2 emissions will have any noticeable effect on the future of the climate, and even if it does, whether it will be better, neutral or worse for humankind?
Leland Palmer,
“May have,” “perhaps,” etc. Perhaps I won the lottery; I may have.
There was greater warming much more recently: click
It may have caused mass extinctions. Perhaps.
So the difference in wavelength of uv vs. .ir is fine, but what about all the incoming ir being blocked? Isn’t it the case that more co2 blocks more incoming ir as well as outgoing?
The earth would be over 100C during the day (or there abouts) without the filtering of incoming energy.
However, isn’t the larger point that we don’t know near enough to conclude that our co2 emissions will have any noticeable effect on the future of the climate, and even if it does, whether it will be better, neutral or worse for humankind?
G. Karst, your supposed circular thinking doesn’t reflect the reality of geological dating. It’s done by radiometric dating, which gives absolute ages (given constant radiological half-lives). The circularity argument you presented is a classic mistake most often made in certain circles. So perhaps this is a more appropriate forum for the explanation.
Marc, you’ve had good explanations from John B and Tilo Reber. You should read them.
Here is a plot of the spectra which shows the point. Incoming solar, in red, has a tiny fraction of its energy in the far IR. In the frequency range where its energy is, most gets through.
Thermal radiation from the Earth (blue) is in a very different range, mich subject to GHG blocking.
Greg, “All life has appeared since the CO2 dropped below 500ppm.”
Atmospheric CO2 was several thousand ppm during the Cambrian, when highly complex life emerged 500 million years ago. Life itself, however, began some 3 billion years before the Cambrian, when the atmosphere most likely included about 50 bars of CO2 (now all locked up in carbonate rocks) and approximately zero dioxygen.
The last paragraph of the statement indicates the position of the GS on the current warming debate, “In light of the evidence presented here it is reasonable to conclude that emitting further large amounts of CO2 … is … unwise…”
They are in bed with Mann, et al.
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.
Pat Frank says:
June 26, 2011 at 7:09 pm
Greg, “All life has appeared since the CO2 dropped below 500ppm.”
Atmospheric CO2 was several thousand ppm during the Cambrian, when highly complex life emerged 500 million years ago.
===============
Impossible, with temps being vastly hotter than they are now organic life would have burned up so, therefore, never formed. It came later.
Yes, I’m pulling your leg. Here, you can have it back. Clearly my snark failed.
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.
Hi Smokey-
Well, it is the future we are talking about here, and also the past of tens or hundreds of millions of years ago. 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, or that happened millions of years ago. Still, anybody with half a brain would be cautious about initiating a mass…extinction…event.
Duh.
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.