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
Tilo Reber says:
June 27, 2011 at 12:11 pm
“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.”
The effect of c02 is nothing like ablanket. If you substitute the blankets with thin paper with lots of holes in it then you’re half way there to a good analogy
tommy says @ur momisugly 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.
Peter Kovachev says @ur momisugly June 27, 2011 at 11:16 am ” 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. ”
As opposed to say, Big Oil who are collectively powerless and kind? Snort.
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?
mkelly says:
June 27, 2011 at 12:32 pm
“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.”
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..
That 6-8% is a fixed percentage, which was established before the conjecture of Anthropogenic Global Warming by c02. It is fixed at 6-8% of energy regardless of quantity, so doubling theh quantity won’t intercept any more heat than a prior concentration of c02. Its rather like sunblock. Putting twice the amount of factor 10 won’t increase it to factor 15, or factor 20
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.
Moderate Republican,
“As opposed to” ? Not at all, dear Mister or Mis Misnomer. Very much a part of that same jolly Green crew, as you must surely know. With its oily paws deep in the greenish pie, admirably serving as the valiant and dumb straw man, Big Oil does a marvellous job of obscuring the shenanigans of the supposed enviro organizations and “renewables” speculators, all who are quite powerful and well connected and are in many ways much more vicious mega-corporations, owing to their warm and cuddly façades. Capitalism with a Panda Face, as it were.
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.
So, sooo, soooooooo many positive and negative forcings, few known, most UNKNOWN mixed up in a tremendous goulash of Milankovitch Ice Ages, albedo-influenced movements of multiple gases, unexplained quick coolings and fast heatings, unexplained lag times all moving inexplicably in various directions at various times… And so this goulash has already exploded from the gigantic pot called “the Ice Age we are currently living in…” and the grotesque mess is dripping from the walls and already starting to stink while the cook proudly proclaims that the science is “settled”…
Now THAT’S comedy, folks.
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.
@P Wilson
Where do you get the “6-8%” idea from? Are you really trying to say that the effect of CO2 is independent of its concentration? References, please…
@- 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.
“… via positive feedback, to reinforce the temperature rise already in train”
So who turned off the amplifier to stop it rising ?
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?
Dr A Burns says:
June 27, 2011 at 2:49 pm
“… via positive feedback, to reinforce the temperature rise already in train”
So who turned off the amplifier to stop it rising ?
It’s kind of like this: You turn up the heating in your house. Your house gets warmer. But it doesn’t go on getting warmer till the windows melt, does it? Even if you leave the heating turned up. Same thing with climate (to a first approximation).
Everyone, by all means think that politicians are all @ur momisugly$%&s or whatever, but stop thinking you have found the killer flaw in basic science. Believe me, you are not Gallileo!
“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.”
The IPCC says that CO2 is the main driver of climate.
The problem for the IPCC and the CO2 GHG theory, is that it was developed before we discovered that CO2 lags Temperature. When it was first discovered that CO2 varies with temperature the lag was not known, so everyone assumed that it was CO2 driving temperature and this was taken to be proof of GHG theory.
When it was finally established that CO2 lags temperature this should have caused everyone to seriously reevaluate the GHG theory – but it didn’t happen because by then there were a lot of people with money and reputations that were dependent on the GHG.
The problem of CO2 reinforced warming is that if the effect is as strong as the IPCC says it is, then there is no way for the earth to enter an ice age with elevated CO2 levels. The Milankovitch effect is too small.
This suggests that something is wrong with the GHG theory and in normal scientific practice using the scientific method, this would be enough to call the theory into question. However, the IPCC practices post-normal science, which replaces the scientific method with consensus science – the more scientists that believe in something, the more likely it is to be true.
As a result, evidence that few scientists have heard about is is rejected as being false, simply because few scientists know about it, which prevents most scientists from learning about it. This is contrary to the scientific method, which says you must test all evidence equally, regardless of what people believe.
@Marc
Where are you going with this?
John B says:
June 27, 2011 at 3:41 pm
It’s kind of like this: You turn up the heating in your house. Your house gets warmer. But it doesn’t go on getting warmer till the windows melt, does it? Even if you leave the heating turned up. Same thing with climate (to a first approximation).
But the ice cores show that every time it gets warmer, more CO2 will be released, which will have the effect of turning up the thermostat every time it gets warmer.
So, when your house warms up, if you then turn up the thermostat each time it warms up (more CO2 released by the warming), pretty soon you are going to run out of thermostat. If your thermostat goes high enough, you will eventually melt the windows.
This is the run away greenhouse gas effect that mainstream climate science says will happen. The problem for climate science is that CO2 levels have been much higher many times in the past and there has never been any run away greenhouse gas effect.
Outside of Ice Ages, global temperatures consistently leveled out at 22C in the past as CO2, which is the exact same temperature (72F) that people find most comfortable for their household thermostats. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution at work, telling us what the most comfortable temperature is.
John B — As I said in my comment, if you don’t want to answer the question, please ignore.
Not remotely evident to me why I should have to answer to you regarding the nature or direction of my questions. Nice people have been helpful, you’ve been more condescending. That makes me quite uninterested in your opinions.
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.
ferd berple says:
June 27, 2011 at 4:00 pm
“The problem for the IPCC and the CO2 GHG theory, is that it was developed before we discovered that CO2 lags Temperature. When it was first discovered that CO2 varies with temperature the lag was not known, so everyone assumed that it was CO2 driving temperature and this was taken to be proof of GHG theory”
Rubbish! “An inconvenient truth” was criticised for not mentioning the lag, but it was well known. Think about it, even those dumb climate scientists knew that there were no humans emitting CO2 in ancient times. So they knew that it was the temperature rise that started the CO2 rise. But they also knew that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so it amplified the rise (see above in this thread). But now we are emitting CO2, and the rise in atmospheric CO2 comes from those emissions, not from temperature rise. There is no conflict in those statements.
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.
izen says:
June 27, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Yes, that’s exactly the kind of get-out for the scare-mongers I’m talking about. Thank you for expressing it so succinctly.
We don’t need heads on sticks; what we need is a return to real science.
R. Gates says:
June 27, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Yep, R. Gates. That right thar is settled science topped with consensus.
R. Gates:
“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.”
We’ve already been down this road. The record shows that CO2 was still rising strongly when temperature turned around and went down. So this effect has nothing to do with reversing temperature.
R. Gates: “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.”
The saliniy/conveyor belt theory was debunked a few years ago. There is now no existing evidence for this. It is simply a wild conjecture. In fact, there is some evidence that the current strenghtens with warming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circulation
So you are back to square one. You have no mechanism and no explanation for how temperature can start a steep decline while CO2 is still on a steep rise. Why are you so determined to not accept the obvious. CO2 forcing is just not that strong.