Continued from part 1…
Guest Post by Caleb Shaw
I will now tell you what I’ve learned, so you can subject it to your kindly WUWT peer- review. I’m fairly certain I’ve gotten some of it wrong, because it doesn’t entirely make sense.
For the purposes of this paper we will imagine a place where snow falls at a great rate, builds up and compacts swiftly, and turns to ice with little bubbles, in only sixty years. We will begin sixty years ago, in the year 1951, on an icecap where the temperatures are always below freezing.
When snow first falls it is called, “Snow.” I find this very relieving, because Climate Scientists have more words for snow than an Inuit. Their official reason for this is to respect other culture’s words for “snow,” and to demonstrate political correctness, as in Climate Science that correctness is more important than the mathematical sort, and they are exceedingly respectful towards all cultures, except Yankees. (In fact I imagine their secret reason for creating the snow-jargon is to keep Yankee laymen like myself confused, hoping the confusion will keep us from butting in where we are not wanted. It is almost as if they are saying, “Yankee go home,” but two can play that game. With the exception of the single word “firn,” I will only use Yankee lingo.)
The snow that fell in 1951 was dry, and around 95% air, but wind whipped it around and it became the sort of packed powder that is around 90% air. At this point the snow is 1951 snow, and the air is 1951 air.
As seasons pass this snow gets buried deeper and deeper by successive snowfalls, as temperatures never allow thawing. As 1951 turns to 1961, and 1961 turns to 1971, the sheer weight of the snow overhead causes changes in the packed powder. Despite the fact temperatures never rise above twenty below, the snow behaves as if it had thawed, and becomes “firn,” which involves the snowflakes becoming crystals of ice too large to be called flakes.
As decades continue to pass and pressures build the firn becomes what Yankee call “gritty snow,” (like granulated sugar,) and then becomes “corn snow,” and finally becomes “candle ice.” Then, in the year 2011, with over 400 feet of snow overhead, we arrive at a momentous occasion, wherein the air in the ice, which once was able to move with some degree of freedom through the firn, is locked into little bubbles. Firn is firn no longer, and has stepped over the frontier and become ice.
I’m sure Climate Scientists have a word for this frontier, but I can only research so long before my computer freezes up, and therefore I’ll make up my own Yankee jargon, and call the boundary between firn and ice, “The Firnopause.”
It is at the Firnopause that the formerly free air suffers the indignity of an icy chastity belt clamping about its freedom, forcing it to become what Climate Scientists call, “pristine.” And pristine it must remain, eon after eon, until at long last a gallant Climate Scientist rides up and frees it from its deplorable condition. (Sorry about the purple prose. Unfortunately that is a prerequisite, in Climate Science.)
And that gallant Climate Scientist then discovers a remarkable thing. As you remember, the snow originally fell in 1951, so the ice around the bubble dates from 1951. However the air within the bubble dates from 2011. Somehow the air from 2011 has made its way down through over 400 feet of tightly packed snow, and all the air from 1951 has been booted out.
Accepting authority, I try to get my mind around this amazing natural phenomenon, and to think of what natural factors could have caused it to occur.
It can’t be the kinetic movement of air, for that higgiltypiggilty movement would not cause 1951 air to only move up, even as 2011 air only moves down. Even the most frenetic kinetic motion would create a mix of airs from all the years between 1951 and 2011, with air from 2011 the least likely to be down that deep.
It can’t be due to expansion and contraction of summer and winter air, because, once you move down ten feet into the firn, temperatures remain constant, and air neither expands nor contracts.
The best solution involves the difference between a huge 950 mb winter storm and a huge 1040 mb winter high pressure area. Before my computer froze I determined this was a difference between 13.778 psi and 15.084 psi. (I haven’t a clue what this means in terms of volume; the peer-review of WUWT will help me out, I’m sure.) However, because I prefer math to be simple, I will state there is a ten percent difference in volume between the same amount of air in a 950mb low and a 1040mb high.
This is a significant difference. Stand by a cave with a large chamber and a small entrance as barometric pressures falls, and you will feel a breeze blowing out.
A cave is actually a poor analogy for firn, for firn in effect has a large entrance which funnels down to smaller and smaller cracks and capillaries. However, just to shut me up, assume that, as a 950mb low gives way to a 1040 mb high overhead, air actually can be inhaled 10% of the way down into the firn.
Big deal. That is only 40 feet, and leaves you with 360 feet to go, for 2011 air to be at the Firnopause in time to be clamped into little bubbles. Furthermore, as soon as the 1040 mb high starts to move off and pressures fall, the 2011 air gets exhaled out.
Obviously we need to discover a way to inhale the 2011 air down, and exhale all the pre-2011 gas out. Fortunately Climate Science is much like undone homework; if you have no excuse you can always make one up.
Therefore, to be helpful, I have invented the concept of “grabacules.” Grabacules are yet-to-be-discovered, gravity-activated, kinetic bonds on the sides of fresh air, but worn off the sides of stale air. Because they are gravity-activated, 2011 air slides freely downwards through the firn, but grabs onto the ice when any power tries to move it back up. In essence 2011 air stands aside for pre-2011 air, (which lacks grabacules,) to pass, and then moves downwards again the next time downward forces come into play. The 2011 air moves like an inchworm, moving foreword, grabbing, and moving foreword again.
Pretty cool theory, aye? Isn’t Climate Science wonderful!? (And if you think that idea is good, you should have heard my excuses for undone homework. A breathless hush would fall in the classroom, as I arose to speak…)
The problem with my admittedly brilliant idea is that the inch-worm gets shorter and shorter. Moving 10% of the way to your goal can never get you to your goal. Up at the surface of the firn, a huge change in atmospheric pressure may shove the 2011 air 40 feet downwards, but 100 feet from the firnopause the same change only moves the 2011 air 10 feet towards the goal, and 10 inches from the goal it only moves an inch towards its goal.
According to my layman’s calculations that is as far as the 2011 air gets, for by then it is 2012, the 2012 Air starts downwards, and the 2011 air, its grabacules all shot to heck, has to U-turn and start back upwards to make room for the 2012 air.
This leaves a space of nine inches the 2011 air never gets to. This is a very important space, for it is this air which is actually is incorporated into the little bubbles. If this air isn’t 2011 air, what is it?
First we must have a name for this nine inches, just above the Firnopause, and I suggest it be called the Yankeeopause, (named after me, of course.)
It is in this nine inches which a factor so tiny it is unseen, up at the surface, becomes glaringly apparent. It is a factor I call “Spongeosis.”
We all know that, when you squeeze a sponge, water comes out. The exact same thing happens when you squeeze snow, which is 95% air, and wind up with the Firnopause ice, which is at best 10 % air. The difference is that with a sponge you squeeze out water, but when you squeeze snow you squeeze out air. Where is that air to go? Nowhere but up.
This very weak, nearly imperceptible flow is unseen at the surface, where changes in barometric pressure have veritable tides of air inhaling and exhaling through the firn, but down in the quiet and still depths of the Yankeeopause, this flow is all there is. Like the bow-wave of a boat, it moves just ahead of the freeze-up at the Firnopause, and consists of the very last bit of air squeezed from the snow. It never holds air from above, and rather consists of a great many years worth of air all slowly pushed ahead like snow before a plow. Some of the air may be centuries old, and when a part of the Yankeeopause’s blended air gets left behind as a bubble in ice at the Firnopause, the CO2 level in that bubble will not represent any particular year, but rather an average. All peaks and valleys in the CO2 record will be smoothed out. The firn, in the end, has been a great equalizer.
And that is the end of my story, which I have told for your entertainment. It flies in the face of the desire of Climate Science, which is to move 2011 air down to inclusion in tiny bubbles at the Firnopause. However it’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
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A simpler explanation for the air-ice age difference is that modern air migrates into microcracks in the ice cores. These cracks result from the expansion of air as the pressure of all that ice above is removed. Two observed facts support this idea. One, the measured air-ice difference increases with depth from about 80 years at the “fern” to over a thousand years at depths. Two, carbon 14 has been detected at depths where it should not be detectable. Click on my name for more details.
Dear Caleb,
I am a little disappointed. I expected a firm proof that countered the conventional wisdom of why ice core bubbles are not reliable. But all what I see now is that you haven’t read the relevant items in the literature.
Nobody in the ice core world says that air enclosed at 72 meter depth (that is where the Law Dome ice cores are sealed off from the above layers) has the same composition as in the atmosphere of that moment. That is only the case for the upper 10 meters (at Law Dome, different for different places and circumstances). Below that, there is a “stagnant” layer where only diffusion is at work, diffusion you don’t mention at all? The diffusion speed depends of temperature and pore diameter and of course goes in both directions. That is nicely explained at:
http://courses.washington.edu/proxies/GHG.pdf
One can use a diffusion model to calculate the theoretical mixture of gas ages at closing depth, as was done for the Law Dome ice cores, but the model calculation was confirmed by Etheridge e.a., 1996, by measuring CO2 levels in firn at different depths, top-down until closing depth for one of the ice cores:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_firn.jpg
The average gas age at closing depth was 7 years older than the air at the surface:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_overlap.jpg
with a huge, assymetric distribution of gas ages as can be seen in the graph nr. 11 of the first reference.
The end of the story is that, while there is averaging at work, the averaging is far smaller than the 40 years that the gas exchange is possible (the bulk is at +/- 5 years around the average gas age) and any peak value of more than 20 ppmv during 1 year or 2 ppmv sustained over 20 years would be detected in the Law Dome ice cores. Still, you haven’t shown any proof that the ice core measurements aren’t reliable…
John West says:
November 1, 2011 at 10:43 pm
The reference you gave only shows that the resolution of the ice core (the averaging over a period) theoretically broadens from 20 years to 22 years at some depth to 40 years at full depth (at 70 kyr age). That is all. Thus the resolution gets worse with migration, but that doesn’t change the average level over that period. For much colder ice cores like Vostok and Dome C, that is even unlikely, as there is no change in CO2/temperature ratio over each glacial/interglacial period 8 times 100 kyr back in time. If there was the slightest migration, the ratio would fade over time, as 90% of the time the temperature/CO2 levels are low and only 10% of the time they are high.
Richard S Courtney says:
November 2, 2011 at 2:04 am
And the IPCC says the firn takes 83 years to seal. Assuming this 83-year figure is correct, then the effect of diffusion in the firn is similar to the effect of a 83-year running mean conducted on data from ice that sealed in each single year.
Dear Richard,
The age distribution of the air at start closing depth is not a running average of the years to date, as the average gas age is much younger than the average of years to sealing. For the 40 years to sealing in the high accumulation Law Dome cores, the average age is 7 years, not 20. For the 600 years to sealing of Vostok, the average age of the gas at sealing depth is about 60 years, not 300. Thus the age distribution is quite assymetric, with relative much young air and a long but small tail of old air.
See the age distribution map for the Law Dome ice core of Fig. 11 at:
http://courses.washington.edu/proxies/GHG.pdf
That graph shows that a 80 ppmv peak around 1942 as the late Beck’s data shows, would be detected in the high resolution Law Dome ice cores as an 8 ppmv peak value for the gas age of that period. And detectable over a period of more than 20 years.
Further, there is an overlap of about 20 years between the Law Dome ice cores and direct measurements at the South Pole, within the accuracy of the ice cores…
Richard S Courtney says:
November 2, 2011 at 2:04 am
And the IPCC says the firn takes 83 years to seal.
At Vostok, the air is 1,000 years to 5,000 years older than the ice. (It varies depending on how much snow falls per year.) Now that’s a smoothing filter!
On top of that, CO2 is sampled by crushing 40 grams of ice and measuring the released gas. The references don’t say how many years that represents. But it is clear that no one is sampling the air in a single bubble.
I have wondered about this in another way. If CO2 can diffuse from the air bubble into surrounding ice, how much negative bias (CO2 concentration may be much lower than measured) is inherent in the process. I am confident that there have been some studies that consider this and offer corrections…can anyone give me a cite?
OK, now for some fun.
I have made it clear elsewhere that I’m not a scientist. I lacked the discipline necessary for science, and have an unruly imagination. I chose “The Arts,” and not “The Sciences.”
I have great respect for true scientists, and would never be so rude as to tresspass on their territory, but they started it. By that I mean Climate Scientists left the strict confines of science, and tresspassed on my turf, which is the land of fiction, as opposed to fact. If they are going to so rude as to come horning into my landscape, well, I am going to defend my space.
I was talking with my eldest daughter this morning about all the reponses I got, when I brought up daughters in part 1. There is even some disappointment I didn’t bring daughters into part 2. She got quite a chuckle that I got 40 responses about daughters in a thread about icecores.
However I believe this demonstrates something. I believe it shows Climate Science (like Sociology and Psychiatry,) have wandered outside the strict confines of science, and have abandoned the strict discipline, and have entered the land of romantic mush. Sorry, fellows, but that is my turf. Don’t go there, unless you want to leave yourself wide open for some serious tweaking. If you don’t have a sense of humor, and can’t take a joke, go home.
Either that, or just be honest, and renounce science. Announce you have decided to be a “Social Reformer,” and we can duke it out as equals. This business of hiding behind the father’s leg of Science while picking a fight is not very grown up.
(The post “Thank You, Matt Ridley” is great. It describes psuedoscience and confirmation bias supurbly. Study it, and weep, (or preferably laugh.))
I know a lot about childish behavior, because we run a child care at our farm, teaching children the grim truth: Eggs don’t come from supermarkets; they come from the butt of a chicken. Carrots don’t grow in plastic bags; they grow in dirty dirt. It amazes me how many don’t even understand this simple science, these days.
Instead we have people who walk around thinking they are scientific, with their head in the clouds. They need to be tweaked. There needs to be a clear distinction between Science and “the Arts.”
I have more to say about tweaking, but have to run children to the local kindigarden.
Francis Massen says:
November 2, 2011 at 5:22 am
Dear Francis,
Some time ago we had some discussion about this point… I fear that the Giessen data are not reliable at all (method, apparatus, sampling?), but besides that, there are too few data points and with a high spread, at high wind speed only (about 20 datapoints at over 4 m/s wind speed) to make a reliable prediction with your method… The same problem for the Liège data (although these have a smaller band) and the Vienna data still have a huge spread (290-380 ppmv) at over 4 m/s still wide at 10 m/s and beyond.
Thus I like to see the error band of the prediction for few points and/or huge bandwidth at high wind speed…
We have human artifacts with verifiable provenance in the ice from 40+ years ago. Can’t we just dig one of them up and measure the gas content of the ice right next to it? Hasn’t this been done? There’s also carbon dating to compare to ice gas content. I don’t understand why this is being treated as a purely theoretical issue, when experiment is clearly possible.
There are a number of research studies which have looked at the question of biological activity and biological contamination of ice core samples. Brent et wanted to study decontaminaton protocols for returned samples of extraterrestrial samples, and discovered the Vostok ice cores were extensively contaminated by reference strains of biological markers, biological contaminants in the diesel fuel used as the driloling fluid, and other biological contaminants. See:
Brent C. Christner, Jill A. Mikucki, Christine M. Foreman, Jackie Denson, John C. Priscu. Glacial ice cores: A model system for developing extraterrestrial decontamination protocols. Received 15 February 2004; revised 8 September 2004.
It is unscientific to ask anyone to “prove” a negative proposition. It is up to the climate scientists to demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that the air recovered from the bubbles of air in the ice are relatively unchanged in composition before and after sampling in the ice cores. This task they have so far failed to do, because there are far too many unresearched and unscientific assumptions incorporated into their conclusions. They would serve the scientific community better by acknowledging the true extent of what they do not know than asserting without adequate evidence that which they claim to know.
Having conducted some experiments involving gas-solid diffusion, I have an alternate hypothesis for the bubbles in the ice: The bubbles are mostly not from the atmosphere at all. All of the atmospheric gases have either escaped back up into the atmosphere, or are in solution in the ice, where pressure can cause them to accrete in the grain boundaries (ice being a mineral with a crystal structure). So where do most of the bubbles come from? From the underlying rock that the mass of ice is sitting on. The ice is not static, it is constantly moving, and thus it is constantly grinding the surface of the rock. The particles of rock become a very thick slurry with the ice, and the resulting combination leads to the rock giving up some gases, which rise slowly through the ice mass as very small bubbles (gas-solid diffusion). Therefore, the gas bubbles detected have very little to do with the atmosphere, and a lot to do with the underlying rock.
It is just like that with teenagers: It is not always clear what the mechanism is that is causing the problem. Is it hormones, low self-esteem, high self-esteem, hunger, lack of sleep, or just immaturity? And trying to discuss these problems with a teenager is like trying to tell some scientists that they may not be as scientific as they think they are. You are met with anger and resistance, name-calling, and such behavior as often seen in teenagers.
The problem with bubbles in ice, is that if you have already made up your mind, then all you will ever find in your studies is how to make the facts fit your preconceived notions. Science always suffers when there is a lack of objectivity. What is a primary cause of lack of objectivity? I would guess that grant money is one of the problems, as money has a way of driving scientific objectivity out the window. Writing papers, and having peer review, would also drive out objectivity, as scientists require the approbation of their peers in order to get papers published and books written.
Those people who founded the principles of modern science had, for the most part, one thing in common. They were all independently wealthy, and therefore not dependent on anyone else for how to think about problems. When science became a job, with an employer, objectivity was lost.
I have much enjoyed Caleb Shore’s down to earth approach to what is clearly a taxing subject. I have also read and missed understanding much of the erudite discussion that has followed.
One aspect that has occurred to me that no-one has mentioned is the effect of the lateral movement of ice in the ice caps. Am I right in believing that, in one way or another, the ice caps are all moving subject to gravity? Are they not behaving like glaciers, albeit in slower motion. Non movement of the ice, say in a perfect bowl will only give a record as long as it took to fill the bowl, after which time excess ice/snow will be blown off or fall over the edge of the bowl.
These shearing movements through the ice field will happen at disparate rates and at disparate angles. These will lead to a mixing of the ice as well as setting up stresses that will rupture gas bubbles. Being more or less a plastic at the depths/pressures suggested, ice will flow around bubbles to reform them in different layers and travelling through different time slices. How can anyone be sure that the core samples follow a true time sequence?
Being blindly “respectful” towards other cultures is wrong whenever it condomes inhumane conduct and unjustifiable discrimination against another culture, including what you call “the White/Christian/European culture ” For example, being “respectful” of the Aztec culture’s taking a Mayan princess, flaying her alive, donning her skin, and returning her in this manner to the her Mayan father and king may not be a cultural practice worthy of respect just because it did not come from what you describe as “the White/Christian/European culture” which forbade such practices. In other words, discrimination and bias can be justifiable when it seeks to curb inhumane acts, and blind respect towards cultural practices can often result in inhumane or other improper acts. The human condition improves by improving cultures, and not by blindly tolerating their worst practices.
I had hoped that you were going to get into the distribution coefficient for CO2 ice phase/gas phase and losses of CO2 on the surfaces of the devices used for sampling. Alas, I’m dissappointed. The above factors would lead to underestimating CO2 concentrations in ice cores.
In analytical chemistry, “spike and recovery” experiments are accepted prodedures to demonstrate a measurement methods accuracy. To my knowledge, no one has published any work on this re: ice core analysis. I think I know the answer why.
Does anyone know of CO2 in ice core spike and recovery results, how about published distribution coefficients for CO2 in ice core conditions?
And…worse if we consider the analysis of 10 Be (Cosmogenic 10Be is produced in the atmosphere of the Earth by the cosmic ray spallation of oxygen and nitrogen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryllium ) related to unknown variations in GCR.
Thus any dating by proxies becomes doubtful.
Joe says:
November 1, 2011 at 10:48 pm
re the drilling and lab uncertainty – I can honestly say that I have not bothered to research into this. Primarily because, as a geotechnical engineer, I know that when we take a core sample from out of the ground at some depth, and bring it to the surface, we are effectively releasing pressure on that sample. Depending on the various properties of the material being retrieved, it could be affected in a number of ways. So, for example, in really simple terms, if we imagine a 3inch core of ice, it will have ice bubbles in it, but the surrounding ice lattice will be de-stressed (in 3 planes) as a result of being lifted out of its environment, and in addition, the ‘internal’ pressure from the bubbles should be higher than the pressure on the outside and thus trying to ‘exit’ the sample. (in geotechnical terms, we call this pore pressure)
Compacted ice will have various planes of weakness through it (minute fault lines if you like as the ice crystals are forced together,etc) and hence, pressured gas from the bubbles could escape. However, it is not really possible for lower pressure atmospheric gas to enter the bubbles (at least not the ones in the middle of the sample). so the issue of accuracy is really only dependent on the quality of the ice core itself, the time in open low pressure air before bubble analysis, etc, and of course, the the care with which gas from bubbles is extracted.
I must admit, I was watching some program on it once and they were cutting up ice cores into slices, which kind of bothered me, as that obviously allows for potential gas mixing through smaller ‘walls’ of ice around any bubbles but I am aware that there are several gas extraction techniques they have used which AFAIK are pretty good.
This article highlights the uncertainty in the gas bubble formation – and whilst there are potential errors in any analysis – the main root of error/uncertainty must be in the actual ice bubble formation IMO?
Sandy says:
November 2, 2011 at 4:13 am
So diffusion dominates compaction outflow, ok.
Could the nuclear test of the 60′s be used as a marker to see how wide the diffusion is??
______________________________
That is what made Dr. Jaworowski smell a dead rat.
> I’ll make up my own Yankee jargon, and call the boundary between
> firn and ice, “The Firnopause.”
Firnopause is rather like the the gradient in ocean salinity known as a halocline; therefore it is sometimes referred to as the HidethedeCline.
The fact that the ‘gas age’ and ‘ice age’ are not the same is well known and many ice core records give both ages. Despite the apparently haphazard way the gas moves around, ice cores from different parts of the world show a high degree of synchronicity.
In some cases the difference between the ‘ice’ and ‘gas’ age can be hundreds of years. This means that the gas in the ‘little bubbles’ is a ‘weighted’ average over a period of centuries. A corrolory of this is that temperature increases such as those from 1910 to 1945 or 1975 to 2000 would not be picked up in the longer ice core records. From this it follows that it is not possible to know whether or not the temperature plateau of the last decade is unprecedented.
JimBrock says:
November 2, 2011 at 7:47 am
I have wondered about this in another way. If CO2 can diffuse from the air bubble into surrounding ice, how much negative bias (CO2 concentration may be much lower than measured) is inherent in the process. I am confident that there have been some studies that consider this and offer corrections…can anyone give me a cite?
_______________________________________
The study was suggested and stomped on.
(Starting from my last quote from the same artic/e)
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=25526754-e53a-4899-84af-5d9089a5dcb6&p=3
This should come as no surprise to long time readers at WUWT. Climate Scientology is not and has never been anything but a political excuse used to extract more wealth from the general population and tighten the controls of government over people’s actions.
D. Patterson says:
November 2, 2011 at 8:28 am
The references of the Law Dome ice cores I provided show that:
– the air at closing depth is 7 years younger than the atmosphere.
– the average distribution of air age in the firn and ice is about +/-5 years for the bulk of the gas.
– there is no difference in CO2 levels between still open pores and already fully closed bubbles.
– there is an overlap of 20 years between the gas in the ice core bubbles and the measurements at the South Pole, all data are within the accuracy of the CO2 measurements (1.2 ppmv – 1 sigma).
From other references:
– there are overlaps for increasing time periods between largely different ice cores for temperature, ice accumulation, salt/dust/bacterial inclusions,… which shows differences of maximum 5 ppmv for the same time periods.
– a recent investigation of sediments shows roughly the same CO2 variability over a longer time frame (2 million years), independent of ice cores, be it with lower resolution.
– migration plays a minor role in “warm”, coastal ice cores. That broadens the resolution after (ten)thousands of years, but doesn’t change the average over that time frame.
– there is a very good, linear correlation between a temperature proxy (dD and D18O) and CO2 levels of ice cores. That shows that there is no CO2 migration in the coldest ice cores like Vostok and Dome C over 400-800 kyears.
– there is a small migration at closing time and with conservation at elevated temperatures for the smallest molecules (oxygen, argon), not detected within the detection limits for CO2.
All together, a lot of objections against ice cores were answered already in 1996 by Etheridge and later by others, some small problems were found later, but had little consequences for CO2 levels. It is impossible to give a 100% proof that ice core CO2 measurements are reliable. But all available evidence shows that they are, if performed with the best possible care. I haven’t seen any counterindications which were based on real data…
Have you ever considered that there is no “direct” evidence as to the ages of the ice core samples? All ages attributed to the samples depend on assumptions (like ignoring C14 levels as irrelevant). And if the assumptions are incorrect, then your conclusions will be incorrect. There are other proposed models that have alternate explanations for what is found. All have the same “directly measured” data. The interpretation of the data depends on one’s faith in the assumptions upon which the model is based. You might even say that it is a “religious” disagreement, which might help you to understand why it is so difficult to convince a ‘true believer’.in anthropogenic global warming that the data they rely on does not support their ‘faith’.
Ian
Gail Combs says:
November 2, 2011 at 9:35 am
That is what made Dr. Jaworowski smell a dead rat.
Gail, the migration of metal(ions) is completely different from CO2 or other molecules. CO2 doesn’t migrate through the ice matrix, while metal ions do.
Could the light that determins isotope ratios reach down to the ice?