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
Leland Palmer says:
June 26, 2011 at 8:28 pm
This is the most horrifying scientific paper I have ever read: [on a possible, Model outputted Arctic Methane release catastrophe]….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.
No, it’s nowhere near as subjective as “your sense” would imply. For example, in spite of active resistance form ipcc “Climate Science” by commission and omission in order to induce your “sense” of impending catastrophe as a critical part of its “method”, I’ve learned over the past 10 years that the current warm period is very likely not as warm as ~4 previous warm periods occurring since the ending of the last glaciation around 10-12,000 years ago: the Medieval WP, Roman WP, and Holocene Optimum[s]/ “Minoan” WP.
I’ve also read – in what seems to be a very reality based book by Steven Arnot, which I had purchased in the 1980’s and was published in 1984 before the advent of ipcc “Climate Science”, on the truly temperature dependent Alpine and Arctic Treelines, various intra-continental climates, and treeline ecology and more local climate factors – that Arctic treelines in some areas have already been 300+ miles farther North than they are now and, therefore, were unaccompanied by the occurrence of any alleged CH4 induced catastrophe – which, strangely, it looks like this paper is saying might happen anyway?
We’ve already heard about it many times right here at WUWT, so it’s no surprise and no reason for being panicked into then producing real disasters.
In other words, actually insuring the occurrence of a net disease disaster via an enforced economic/energy regression by limiting and reducing fossil fuel CO2 production is obviously what not to do as judged by its known real effects. In fact, this state of regression is pretty much what underdeveloped countries such as India and China are currently trying to escape from by producing nearly as much fossil fuel CO2 as possible in order to create the energy they need to get out of the diseased states they are in due to underdevelopment.
So, where the rubber meets the road, India and China are betting exactly opposite to the CO2 = CAGW “science” too.
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?
R. Gates: “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.”
How could it lag temperature on the downside? If it is not there to move temperature to the downside in the first place, how do you get temperatures going from up to down. The only way that this would be possible is if Milankovitch forcing was strong enough to overcome CO2 forcing. And since Milankovitch forcing is known to be weak, that means that the CO2 forcing must be even weaker to make this possible. Your explanation is simply inadequate to explain what is observed, namely that temperature reverses itself and goes down while CO2 is still climbing. Whatever effects you believe are there to reverse CO2 are irrelevant, because the record shows that these have not come substantially into play when temperature reverses. Now if you believe that CO2 forcing is weak, then the whole picture can make sense. So if you believe that just say so and we can go on to a different topic.
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.
@ur momisugly R. Gates
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. How did temperature get turned around like that? Obviously it was not caused by your explanation because CO2 was still climbing like gangbusters. It looks very much like the temperature didn’t give a squat about what CO2 was doing. It went where it wanted to go and it let CO2 follow or not follow.
Nick Stokes says “Here is a plot of the spectra which shows the point. ”
Nick, you would have to regard the colouring and captioning of that plot as misleading to a non-expert., who might be left with the impression that the distinction betwen visible and IR is where blue meets red at about 3.3 microns. The actual visual cutoff is well down into the red coloured region, at about 0.72 microns.
If one adopts a visual interpretation of wavelength, then something closer to 50% of the incoming light is visible and 50% is IR. 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.
if you live in sydney DONT LET LABOUR / GREENS TAKE US BACK TO THE DARK AGES . friday 1st of july at 12.00 at martin place a rally will be held to stop carbon tax lies and to try and dump the gillard govt
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.
The oceans must have become very ‘un-acidic’
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.
Unfortunately for the USGS temperatures fell followed by atmospheric CO2 levels. IF the CO2 reinforced the earlier warming then this would not happen. We would be into the scenario oft presented by the warmists of tipping points, irreversible climate change and all the other rubbish. Fortunately the atmosphere follows the laws of physics not some model.
“….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 !
Geoff,
I don’t think it matters at all here whether the light is visible or not. All that matters is the transparency. The plot shows very well how the red incoming and blue outgoing are almost totally separate in wavelength, and how the red corresponds to a region with little absorption (most loss being Rayleigh scattering) while the blue is a region where there is a lot of GHG absorption. Which is all, as Tilo Reber tried to explain, not controversial.
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.
A G Foster says:
June 26, 2011 at 8:26 pm
The mass extinctions began 10,000 years ago
—————————————————————————————————-
Hunh? 10,000 years is a blink of an eye. +95% of all the species that ever existed were extinct by then. Either gradually or by events such as at the K/T boundary https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Tertiary_extinction_event
@- 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.
How do co2 and h2o variations affect transparency in the troposphere?
Here’s a model output for you.
co2 concentration rel. to 1976
W/m^2 at 11km change in absorption
4x 3.92
2x doubling 3.69
1/2 3.58
1/4 3.56
1/8 3.53
1/16 3.36
1/32 3.07
1/64 2.70
And now for the h2o concentration
4x 8.70
2x 8.44
1/2x 8.10
1/4x 7.68
1/8x 7.21
1/16x 6.73
1/32x 6.23
1/64x 5.66
again, W/m^2 change for each doubling or halving with the sign being + for doublings and – for halvings.
The biggest problem with ‘feedback’ is a change of 5 degrees C in an entire atmospheric column will result in a change of only about 30% in h2o concentration and that is nowhere close to an actual doubling. This is using the usual assumption of constant RH.
You’ll note that a change of only 30% in h2o concentration results in less change than in a doubling of co2 despite the fact that a doubling of h2o would result in 8.44 W/m^2 versus 3.69W/m^2 for a doubling in co2. In short, if co2 actually could raise Temps by 1.2 deg C, even a 5 deg C rise could not provide the h2o necessary to raise the temperature by another 1.2 deg C for a grand total of 2.4 deg C. The assumption that co2 doubling will contribute 1.2 is a miscalculation as the overall contribution would be closer to 0.8 and a 2 deg C rise would contribute to only a 13% increase in h2o using the constant relative humidity, RH, assumption. And that turns out to be peanuts. In other words, you’d still be short of a cause for half of that 2 deg C warming.
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
How many examples are there of a British scientific society publicly disputing the stated scientific public policy position of the Crown Prince and/or Royal Family? Are there examples of British scientists who have publicly disputed the Crown Prince’s position on science and subsequently went on to receive a knighthood or other noteworthy awards from the Crown, and are there examples of scientists who did not receive such awards?
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.
Tilo Reber says:
June 26, 2011 at 11:33 am
“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. ”
Milankovich cycles don’t cause more or less forcing, per se. They increase or decrease the temperature difference between winter and summer. When winters get warmer and summers get cooler the glaciers advance. That’s because a glacier can build up in the winter at any temperature below freezing and colder won’t help them build faster. On the flip side any summer temperature above freezing will bring on a melt and the farther above freezing the faster the melt.
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.
But the positive reinforcement failed when the temps subsequently plunged, and CO2 followed with its usual lag time?
Major logic FAIL in thar somewhars.
Tilo Reber says @ur momisugly 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?
Hi JPeden:
Oh, I’m not sure we can draw much comfort from the fact that the earth has been warmer in the past.
The runaway greenhouse scenario involving methane suggests we can send the system out of control by simply changing from one warming state to another too quickly. So, it’s a rate of change dependent destabilization scenario. And our current warming due to combustion of fossil fuels is much, much faster than traditional orbital driven warming.
If methane is released too quickly from the hydrates, it does not have time to be oxidized into CO2, and the CO2 safely sequestered as carbonate by the rock weathering cycle. As methane is released from the hydrate deposits, it starts degrading the concentrations of hydroxyl radical in the atmosphere. Methane lifetime increases, methane concentrations rise, and its greenhouse warming is therefore increased. At the same time, according to Isaksen, atmospheric chemistry effects from tropospheric ozone, stratospheric water vapor, and CO2 from methane oxidation multiply the effect of methane several times.
Each bit of radiative forcing from any source including methane is amplified still more by water vapor from the oceans. Isaksen does not even consider this effect, but it is a very well known effect:
nasa.gov/images/content/488311main_feedback-forcings.jpg
The end result is very rapid warming, resulting in faster and faster release of methane from the hydrates, leading to a scenario similar to those which have caused mass extinction events in the past. Those sudden temperature spikes include the PETM, a couple of events in the Triassic, and the End Permian. Carbon isotope signatures show massive inputs of carbon from an organic source (C12 enriched) consistent with the methane hydrate runaway greenhouse scenario.
Isaksen’s paper outlines a plausible sequence of events which could plausibly lead to a true runaway greenhouse scenario, leading eventually to conditions resembling those of Venus. It may be that the earth could recover from this, due to inertia of the tectonically driven rock weathering cycle. Or maybe not. Maybe we would end up hotter than Venus, because Venus has lost all it’s water due to loss of hydrogen to space.
I know that you guys will find some objection to this information. Somehow, either the style or the substance of this information will lead you to reject this scenario, in order to protect your core system of beliefs about AGW.
Like I have said above, I really hope you guys know what you are doing. The methane hydrates are cocked and loaded, it appears.
In reality, of course, you don’t really know what you are doing. You are a cult like collection of amateurs, engaging in groupthink driven by fossil fuel corporation astroturf propaganda.