An artist
Sir Fred Hoyle Vindicated
(Via Dr. Benny Peiser of the GWPF)
According to new research to be published in Nature Geoscience (embargoed until 1800 GMT/10AM PST, Sunday 8 January 2012), the next ice age could set in any time
this millennium where it not for increases in anthropogenic CO2 emissions that are preventing such a global disaster from occurring.
The new research confirms the theory developed by the late Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe in the 1990s that without increased levels of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere ‘the drift into new ice-age conditions would be inevitable.’
Hoyle and Wickramasinghe published their controversial idea in CCNet in July 1999:
CCNet-ESSAY: ON THE CAUSE OF ICE-AGES
Sir Fred Hoyle - Image via Wikipedia
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/ce120799.html
By Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe
[…] The problem for the present swollen human species is of a drift back into an ice-age, not away from an ice-age. Manifestly, we need all the greenhouse we can get, even to the extent of the British Isles becoming good for the growing of vines….
The renewal of ice-age conditions would render a large fraction of the world’s major food-growing areas inoperable, and so would inevitably lead to the extinction of most of the present human population. Since bolide impacts cannot be called up to order, we must look to a sustained greenhouse effect to maintain the present advantageous world climate. This implies the ability to inject effective greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the opposite of what environmentalists are erroneously advocating. …
Full paper available here:
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/ce120799.html
If you want see the Milankovitch Cycles and the ice ages over the last 800,000 years, here it is.
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/8735/milankovitch800k.png
You should be able to tell the Milankovitch Cycles are not anywhere close to as regular as people think.
We need a really good downturn to kick us into an ice age and then 2 or 3 really good upturns to break the back of the glaciers. One really good downturn will keep is in an ice age for 100,000 years because so much ice builds up that a single upturn (or even 2 or 3) cannot melt the ice back enough to put us into an interglacial. Glaciers can reflect up to 80% of the sunlight which is the real key issue. Once they get started, reflecting up to 80% of the sunlight, they are tough to melt back (see Greenland which is really too far south to have glaciers in at least the southern half).
Otherwise, the Milankovitch Cycles do not change the summer solar insolation by enough to put glaciers in New York, Chicago or even Iqaluit. It is actually a very, very small change – like a 100 kms. There should be more than enough summer sun to melt all the snow and ice as far north as Ellesmere Island, even in the deepest downturns of the Milankovitch Cycles. It is the far, far north where the snow and ice barely melts in the summer now, that it can make a difference. At 75N.
CO2 has nothing to do with it.
I loved Hoyle’s books and his theory of “Continuous Creation”. He was entertaining, contrarian and a fighter to the end. Unto death he fought the “Big Bang” theory.
Sadly he was wrong about CO2 staving off the next Ice Age even though he has acolytes like David Archer pushing the same idea:
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2005.trigger.pdf
You are going to love Figure 3. Ain’t it amazing what models can be made to show! What a shame that it is fantasy or I would be buying another SUV and one each for my six kids.
Fred Hoyle was right about one thing. We need all the global warming we can get.
Bill Illis,
Amen to all that.
When it comes to central Greenland the ice ain’t melting because it is 3,000 metres thick so thanks to the adiabatic lapse rate (phoeey to RTEs and CO2) the temperature averages -29 Centigrade.
George says:
January 8, 2012 at 7:06 pm
“30ky would be a very long interglacial. There hasn’t been one that long as far as I know.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangamonian_%28stage%29
During the Sangamonian, N. America was home to a wide variety of megafauna and other exotic mammals. These include types of lions, cheetah, bears, elephants, sloths, horses and camels, all now extinct.
Obviously CO2 in the atmosphere is now so thick it is acting as a conductor of surface heat away from the surface, sending it to the upper atmosphere. The tripping point was in 1998. The heat trapping characteristic of CO2 has phase shifted to that of a heat conduit that is transporting our life giving warmth to the dead places between the galaxies.
We need to do all we can to reduce CO2 – it’s for the children! Yes – it’s worse than we thought. Snowball Earth! OMG! We’re all going to die. Meh.
I find this article to be a quite perplexing addition to WUWT…
On the one hand, as has been pointed out repeatedly by the skeptics (myself included), CO2 is only a minor greenhouse gas. How can increasing this gas delay a glaciation event but not be a major contributor to AGW?
On the other hand, as has been pointed out in earlier comments, glaciation events occur at times of maximum atmospheric CO2 content. Can increasing CO2 content drive us into an early glaciation event?
We appear to live in interesting times. The shrill voices of doom and alarm surround us on all sides. I for one do not wish to join the alarmist choirs either on the warmist nor coolist side. Let’s let true empirical science determine how the world works, not computer models. We have data records covering only a relatively short time period, that are spacially sparse and inconsistently distributed, and are poorly instrumented. Using this data, no one can really discover what is driving environmental changes. We need high quality, meaningful, long-term climatic data to be collected. Only then can we make any intelligent, balanced decisions regarding the management our global environment.
This is all rubbish. Anthropogenic CO2 DOES NOT control the temperature of the Planet.
Sir Fred Hoyle was 84 when he wrote this paper, and probably not in full possession of his faculties. Certainly he was unaware of recent research results such as the cloud experiments of Svensmark, Kirkby et al, and the radiation budget satellite experiments of Lindzen, Choi et al. Then the Solar evidence from Balunas, Soon et al. There is absolutly NO EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE for the so called Man-Made Greenhouse effect. The whole thing is based on Models. It is a giant Sham and in fact a Fiasco of Fraudulence.
See the videos by Willie Soon & Richard Lindzen at Video Wall #1 at the website linked to Axel.
Well, instead of tiny mirrors in space to reflect solar radiation, we might need to send tiny lenses to get more energy to earth.
George – I was basing the length of interglacial periods on the plot in this item http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_glaciation
Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been reading your posts for years and know I KNOW that CO2 can’t cause significant warming. How could it stop an entire ice age?
@Contrari says:
“…Behold the world’s scaremongers reversing their predictions. It is just a matter of changing a little sign, after all….”
From the politicians point of view it’s all pretty irrelevant. Watch how easily they change into taxing low-CO2 activity, and setting up minimum levels of emission which must be exceeded for any new energy interchange process. And subsidies to encourage inefficient energy conversion with lots of heat loss….
Since man’s input of so called GHG’s is but 3% of the total CO2 natural production then I find the Hoyle statement rubbish.
wermet: it is indeed confusing. This is because in this article WUWT is referencing the peer reviewed scientific literature, where greenhouse warming has been demonstrated and is almost universally accepted.
The other articles you’ve read telling you that CO2 can’t cause much (if any) warming have largely been blog opinion pieces and are not peer reviewed scientific work.
Alexander Feht says:
January 8, 2012 at 10:13 am
Fred Hoyle was right not only about this…
I agree with you, Light looses energy travelling through the black matter of space for millions of years and therefor red shifts! That’s why the further out you look the bigger the red shift.
So basically its anybody’s guess what the future will be?
Hot, Cold, Temperate only time will be the judge.
Doug Cotton says:
January 8, 2012 at 5:33 pm
If what we are talking about is really glacial cycles, then it appears that, for the last million years or so, the predominant cycle has been of about 100,000 years periodicity, with roughly 70,000 years glacial and 30,000 years interglacial in each cycle. We are about 10,000 years into the current interglacial period.
The simulation above (01:57 pm) I did, can be compared with the Vostok data for 1 Million years and is based on the known solar photon diffusion time of 2/377.137 ky from the center of the Sun to the surface. Resonant modes let the Sun ringing in the whole solar system.
The cycle times of the modes are : tn = pow(n,-2.0) * 377.134 [ky], were n is the mode number.
n time [ky]
==========
1 377.13
2 94.28
3 41.127
4 23.535
4.5 18.623
==========
These time cycles can be found also on other places.. But there are some more modes ringing the Sun:
http://volker-doormann.org/images/bolshakov_peak_1.gif
http://volker-doormann.org/images/bolshakov_plot_modes.jpg
(Credits to Dr. Bolshakov )
A simple summation of these saw tooth modes results in the simulation above.
Science discusses facts.
V.
Alan Statham says:
January 8, 2012 at 10:47 am
“You have spent years denying in the face of all the evidence that CO2 has any effect on global temperatures….”
What evidence? Despite steadily rising CO2 there’s been no global warming in this century. The Mann Hockey Stick is completely discredited and shown to be fraudulent, as demonstrated by the work of McIntyre and McKitrick, and dramatically confirmed by a Climategate2 email (Mann’s method generates hockey sticks even if random data is fed in). There is overwhelming historical and scientific evidence that the world was warmer both in the Medieval and Roman periods. Warming in the last century was inevitable as the world was emerging from the Little Ice Age. The ice cores show no sign of warming caused by CO2 (it shows the precise opposite). Climate models only have forecasting skill for climate that has already happened – I wonder why? Predictions made by AGW climate models are contradicted by the real world. Indeed, as demonstrated by Lindzen recently, the trend of infra red emissions back into space is actually of the opposite sign compared to the AGW prediction. If climate science had not been corrupted by money and politics, AGW would be dead, just like previous ‘concensus’ theories (e.g. that continents are static and cannot move).
I’m proud to be a sceptic. I believe that warming is far, far more preferable to cooling, and that during warm periods mankind has prospered. It’s when the world gets colder that we have problems e.g. the Dark Ages and the fall of entire civilisations. I also believe that CO2 has a negligible affect on the climate, and that it has been a huge benefit, being one reason why the world grows more food than ever before.
The bad news? The 20th century warming period may be coming to an end and many of us, or our children, will live to see a sustained period of cooling or even the start of a new Little Ice Age. What happens may well be determined by the state of the sun, and CO2 will have a negligible effect. To put it simply: Nature will continue to do what Nature has been doing for millions of years.
Chris
re; Fred Hoyle
I don’t think he got everything right. For instance it’s difficult to ignore the rough timing of interglacial periods and correlation with Milankovitch cycles.
I believe that “perfect storms” are what determine the precise timing. Milankovitch cycles line up to produce a minimum temperature diffence between NH winter and summer. This is favorable for glacial expansion because any temperature below 32F will prevent ice melt so there’s no advantage for the glacier in winter temperatures colder than 32F. In the summer however every additional degree above freezing accelerates ice melt. The NH is the sensitive hemisphere because it has twice the land mass of the SH and year-round ice cover is easier to establish on land. There’s also a positive feedback as ice extent increases global albedo increases which fosters even more ice formation.
So what I think happens is that Milankovitch cycles, volcanic eruptions, AMDO, PDO, and perhaps solar cycles (a la Svensmark), all conspire into a perfect storm to begin or end interglacial periods. Some of these things are cyclical but others appear random but over a period of several thousand years when the Milankovitch cycle is near the optimum for glaciers and all the other cyclical factors are lined up with it one or a few random but inevitable volcanic eruptions happen which temporarily cool the globe a few degrees and that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
So anthropogenic CO2 emission probably isn’t enough to guarantee no end to interglacial conditions but it must at least provide a larger safety margin i.e. the perfect storm must be more perfect than otherwise. If anthropogenic warming extends through the peak of the Milankovitch cycle (still a few thousand years in the future) then it might be enough to make the Holocene interglacial persist for another 100,000 years until the Milankovitch cycle comes full circle to another peak.
We wrote this about ice ages in 2002 at
http://www.apegga.com/members/Publications/peggs/Web11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
This PEGG article remains more scientifically realistic than anything produced since then by the IPCC or acolytes of the Global Warming Cause. Thanks to my co-authors, Sallie and Tim.
Excerpt about ice ages :
Climate Is Always Changing
The only constant about climate is change. For as long as Earth has existed, natural climate changes have occurred and will continue. Change occurs at many scales, from gradual variation over millions of years, to rapid climate shifts in a decade or less. The question is how to distinguish between natural climate variation and possible change caused by human activity.
During the past two million years, the Earth has been as ice-age cold as it has ever been, experiencing more than 30 glaciations. In the past 800,000 years, the pattern has been approximately 100,000 years of extensive glaciation, interspersed with warmer interglacials of around 15,000 years. By studying climate changes through these previous cycles, we surmise that the next ice age is less than 5,000 years ahead. At that time, large portions of North America will be buried under kilometres of ice.
(end of excerpt)
Regrettably, I doubt that humanmade CO2 emissions will have any impact on delaying the next ice advance. I have seen no evidence that CO2 is a significant driver of global warming. Increased atmospheric CO2 may even be a result of natural warming, not a cause.
This is the excerpt about the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA):
Record of Surface Temperature
The Earth has been much warmer and colder in the past, before we started burning fossil fuels. From about 900 to 1300 AD, during the Medieval Warm Period, the Earth was warmer than it is today. In the 20th century the global average surface temperature rose about 0.6º C, as measured by thermometry, after a 500-year cool period called the Little Ice Age.
(end of excerpt)
The point is, we have known these facts for decades, and we have been systematically scammed by the IPCC and acolytes of the AGW Cause.
The IPCC tried, through the false (and apparently fraudulent – see CG1 & CG2) Mann hockey stick papers, to eliminate the MWP and LIA from the historical record.
It is time to abolish the IPCC and all the wasteful government departments and agencies it has spawned. Our governments are still squandering many billions on global warming fraud. Even the most obtuse politicians can read the Climategate (CG1 & CG2) emails and see that they have been scammed.
Give it up! As written in Hebrew Scripture, …as long as the earth remains, everthing remains the same… Watch! Caution: Did I mention that only 144,000 from the 12 tribes of Israel will survive, less the Irish? Just saying what is written… Watch!
Profound question indeed! You have thought up the only logical justification for Carbon micromanagement that I have ever seen. The fact that it is a complete inversion of the idiotic CAGW ‘warm is bad’ religion, is also very telling.
Very true as long as humans don’t screw this up. Let us not underestimate the sickness found in the minds of the modern doomsayer, our AGW cultists. Just imagine a massive geo-engineering project building massive barriers so that ice cannot blow out of the Arctic. Or worse, one that connects South America to Antarctica disrupting the circumpolar current. Imagine a successful attempt to reduce atmospheric CO2 into the 200 ppm’s. Imagine painting everything white. The possibilities are endless. And unlike CO2 in the parts per million, the results would be catastrophic.
Not perplexing! The articles and topics you see here do not necessarily voice the opinions of Anthony or WUWT readers! They are articles. You read them. You decide for yourself. You sound like you expect Anthony to only post articles that fits the meme of WUWT, whatever that is.
Not confusing at all. We have greenhouses all over my area and they do indeed work, and my peers will back me up. But that is not what you meant at all, is it?
Perhaps you had a repeated typographic error above substituting greenhouse warming for Anthropogenic CO2 warming? You definitely had a repeated typographic error above substituting peer for pal reviewed. Or is it Team reviewed?
Likewise, almost universally accepted only flies when you limit your sample to the handful of hardcore nutjobs that call themselves ‘Climate Scientists’. The bolded part of your comment is ridiculous. Try taking a poll of real Scientists today using that statement and get back to us.
Agree on the rock-and-roll and other music. But isn’t British Comedy something like American Cheese, French Military, German Humor …
🙂 🙂 🙂
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Bill Illis says:
January 8, 2012 at 5:07 pm
We are at least 50,000 years away from the next ice age.
*****
We can hope. There’s some indication that this IG will be similar to the one (stage?) around 400kya, which IIRC lasted about 1.5 eccentricity cycles (~33 kyrs).
I agree that the focal point of glaciation will be in the N Canuckian islands. That’s where the permanent yr-round snow/land-ice line is now. When that line moves south significantly, there’s a potential problem looming. Note that a decrease in temp really isn’t needed to cause that, a simple increase in the snow amount there will do fine — as long as it’s enough to survive the summer. Cross our fingers that the high arctic remains quite dry…
Blade says:
January 9, 2012 at 8:09 am
But isn’t British Comedy something like American Cheese, French Military, German Humor …
Benny Hill, Monty Python need I say more? 😉
Wermet’s perplexed, and Axel worries that Prof Hoyle was losing his marbles, when he wrote the paper. I think I can explain why there’s no need for perplexity, and that Fred was clear thinking and combative almost right to the end of his life. His paper, with Wickramasinghe only mentions CO2 to dismiss it, and give no comfort to the huge, rent seeking, AGW ‘team’, who are costing us all dear.
The paper, by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe was published in 1999. It explains with beautiful economy, using real quantitative physics (not made-up plausible mush), why CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas (GHG), and water vapour is by far-and-away the dominant GHG. They go on to show that the combined effect of GHGs (mainly water vapour) raise the temperature of the Earth to 292K instead of 245K.
They dismiss astronomical theories of ice-age causation, such as Milankovitch theory of small oscillations of the tilt of the Earth’s rotation axis to the plane of the ecliptic, or small oscillations in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit. Because neither produces enough change in the amount of solar energy incident on the Earth, and could not lead to widespread cooling. They focus on the heat stored in the ocean, and how this might be steadily reduced. Once this has happened, and average rainfall falls below 50cm, small ice crystals form in the upper atmosphere, dramatically increasing the Earth’s albedo, and we’re plunged into another prolonged ice-age.
And what’s their explanation for ice-ages ending? They’re solution is bolides plummeting into the ocean raising enough water into the atmosphere to increase the greenhouse effect, and eliminate the small water crystals. This seems to me to be the weakest part of their argument. Why should a bolide collide with the Earth on a semi-regular cycle to give Earth a procession of ice-ages and inter-glacials? Even so, the earlier quantitative arguments are elegant, and seem robust (although I am not enough of a physicist to critically examine the detail).
Whatever the truth of Fred Hoyles ideas, about what precipitated and ended the ice-ages he was completely dismissive of CO2 as a primary driver. In his book “Ice: A chilling scientific forecast of a new Ice Age” (1981) he says “The efficiency of carbon dioxide trap is insensitive to the amount carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: increasing the amount five-fold would scarcely change the trap, in spite of the stories currently being circulated by environmentalists” (page 130)
And as for Florida University’s notion (link), that slightly increase man-made levels of CO2, will ‘save’ us from the next ice age. I think I can hear Fred snorts of angry laughter coming from his grave.
Fred Hoyle was an irascible marvel, able to contribute clear, quantitative physics-based ideas in in a wide range of fields outside of his own. His steady state view of the universe may have been wrong, and his idea that ice-ages ended (or started) when a large bolide collided with the earth, may be far-fetched. But whether he was right or wrong, he clearly, very clearly spelt out his thinking, his physical logic and assumptions and it’s all properly quantitative. He’s such a contrast to today pontificating scientific cardinals such as David King and Robert May (ex UK Chief Scientists) who say that it’s all about basic physics, and therefore unquestionable. And that we should all bow down, submit to and worship the ‘scientific truths’, as spoken by the church-of-science, their church. But they never have the ability or the guts to spell it out, and spit it out like Fred did. We live in an age of pompous, political, scientific pigmies.
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Jerker Andersson says:
January 8, 2012 at 2:49 pm
But if such fast and massive temperature changes can happen both ways and they are permanent, we certainly dont want a downward spike, I dont think 10C up would be an good idea either though.
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From our current interglacial state, such a rise isn’t possible — the planet is in “warm” mode. No land glaciers at low-enough latitudes to melt & produce enough albedo change to support it. Greenland & Antarctica’s ice-masses are too large, thick & far poleward to melt very fast.
If you’re thinking the route that ocean current or atmospheric changes could cause a 10C rise, I don’t see how. The large changes you refer to are often centered in the N Atlantic (Greenland) and presumably produced by Gulf Stream/thermocline changes. Presently the thermocline is in a “warm” state — it historically doesn’t increase any more than it already has during this IG (or any other according to the ice-core history). But the thermocline could certainly shut down or move southward, and 10C drops are certainly possible at any time from a “warm” state.
So I don’t think there any climatological evidence to think a 10C rise could occur now in this IG. A 10C drop is quite plausible, tho, if at/near the “end”. Fear the cold….