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
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.
It happens in particle physics as well!
This error may seem fundamental, and people may find it hard to believe that a major physicist such as Yukakwa could have gone wrong. It turns out, however, that not only great physicists can and do make mistakes, but that this specific error is taught as a valid theory up to this very day and it features in the textbooks.
http://nohiggs.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/why-the-higgs-cannot-exist/
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.
R. Gates says:
June 26, 2011 at 10:42 am
“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.”
Wrong. On greenland reconstruction of ice core proxies, there is no instances of a co2 increase preceding a temperature increase. As increasing temperatures see later elevations of c02 – which is a feedback of temperature particularly in relation to oceans, which regulates how much c02 resides in the lower troposphere, decreasing temperatures also occur at these elevated c02 levels, as c02 is powerless as a gas to maintain global temperatures. Subsequently, c02 levels fall as oceans absorb part of it again. The analogy is like a tin of coke. If it is warm, it will outgas c02. If it is cool it will not. When you drink cool carbonated drinks the belching occurs a few minutes after consumption, as the c02 outgasses due to increasing temperature.
That c02 does not add to the temperature of a confined atmosphere. What will change the temperature of the atmosphere is air pressure in a given volume, or else exposure/absebce of a given external source of radiation, and proximity to the radiation.
C02 is just the residue, which doesn’t have the efficacity to retain heat in the face of superior variables. Increasing or decreasing levels of c02 has no effect on the influence of such variables, any more than the addition of 1 car to a racing track with another car going at 150mph will not take the speed of both cars to 300mph
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.
JimF says:
June 26, 2011 at 11:41 pm
You demolished Leland Palmer’s thesis more comprehensively than I could manage.
He appears to assume that AGW is capable of causing significant methane hydrate release from the arctic. The paper he referred to (Benton 2003) attributes the release of hydrates to the following:
At the end of the Permian, giant volcanic eruptions occurred in Siberia, spewing out some 2 million km3 of basalt lava, and covering 1.6 million km2 of eastern Russia to a depth of 400–3000 metres, equivalent to the area of the European Community. It is now accepted widely that these massive eruptions, confined to a time span of 1 My were a significant factor in the end-Permian crisis.
So the paper doesn’t really support his view because it attributes the mass extinction to a long lasting and massive volcanic event.
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.
John B says:
June 26, 2011 at 2:49 pm
It’s a bad thing because all forms of alternative energy are either much more expensive, impractical, or both.
While taxes will cause people to naturally shift to other forms of energy, the tax savings of doing so will never come close to the cost of doing so, resulting in much higher energy prices. That is most definitely a bad thing, if you care about people.
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.
*****
A G Foster says:
June 26, 2011 at 5:43 pm
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.
*****
Not sure I understand that. The peak 65N summer insolation was ~11k yrs ago. The peak temp in the Holocene Optimum was ~10k to 8k yrs ago (even before all the glacial remnants were gone) — only about 1k yr lag. Temps since the HO have slowly dropped in tune w/the decreasing summer insolation (w/the typical ~1k yrs “cycles” — MWP & LIA).
Not sure where you get a 7k yr lag in temps vs insolation.
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.
Peter Kovachev says:
June 27, 2011 at 7:04 am
Good post. I do hope you are correct. There are so many miseducated people, and so many dependent on government handouts, that if we don’t don’t defeat these sob’s now, we’ll never do it.
Bill Illis says:
June 27, 2011 at 5:22 am “…As if CO2 can only be removed from the atmosphere by being buried in sedimentary/marine rock….”
Bill, there’s a lot of coal and kerogenic shales and methane clathrates, but I believe limestones, dolomites and calcareous shales far exceed them in the amount of CO2 removed from the atmosphere. All “weathering” does is release Ca and Mg ions to the sea, particularly, where they can create some more carbonate rocks.
All these processes have been massively successful: the CO2 content of the atmosphere – over the last few thousand years – is the lowest in geologic history, excepting the Carboniferous-Permian interval, well known for coal deposits and mass extinctions.
If CO2 reinforced the warming, and the warming reinforced the CO2, then how do we ever have Ice Ages given the small change in TSI due to Milankovitch? This self-reinforcement should make Ice Ages impossible if CO2 has a positive feedback on temperature. The only logical conclusion must be that CO2 has a negative feedback on temperature, and the total effect due to CO2 must be quite small as compared to changes in TSI. Otherwise, Ice Ages could not occur in regular cycles as they do.
I have picked out some specific issues with the statement by the Geological Society. They are very, very mis-leading on Antarctica. The PETM is interesting, but that there are so many mis-leading statements on other subjects really does negate the parts that could be truly insightful.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2011/06/recent-rash-of-agw-news-focus-on-geology/
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.
Correction to my previous post: “obvious untruths such as the fact that the greenhouse gas effect exists” should be “obvious untruths such as the fact that the greenhouse gas effect doesn’t exist”
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.
“…I do hope you are correct. There are so many miseducated people, and so many dependent on government handouts, that if we don’t don’t defeat these sob’s now, we’ll never do it. (JimF, June 27, 2011 at 9:01 am)
Thanks. Speed, though, may not be possible or desirable, JimF. Think about it this way; those who benefit from this “green engine”–the classes, interests, populations, institutions, industries, whatever–are all well-entrenched, with power on their side and a well-known mean streak to boot. They will undouptedly hang onto this bubble like rats off a meat truck. A decisive and rapid defeat would entail revolutions and civil disorders, which are invariably ugly affairs we, thankfully, don’t have the stomach or need for. 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.
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?
What is even more funny is that ice ages started even when co2 was in THOUSANDS of ppm range. How can they explain this?? Where was the so called positive feedback during the onset of those ice ages?
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.
Note it is not the BRITISH or FRENCH or whoever geololical society, this is THE geological society, a very august body.
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
🙂
Marc says:
June 27, 2011 at 10:55 am
Marc, 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.
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