From the National Science Foundation – Press Release 12-115
Remote Siberian Lake Holds Clues to Arctic–and Antarctic–Climate Change
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Intense warm climate intervals–warmer than scientists thought possible–have occurred in the Arctic over the past 2.8 million years.
That result comes from the first analyses of the longest sediment cores ever retrieved on land. They were obtained from beneath remote, ice-covered Lake El’gygytgyn (pronounced El’gee-git-gin) (“Lake E”) in the northeastern Russian Arctic.
The journal Science published the findings this week.
They show that the extreme warm periods in the Arctic correspond closely with times when parts of Antarctica were also ice-free and warm, suggesting a strong connection between Northern and Southern Hemisphere climate.
The polar regions are much more vulnerable to climate change than researchers thought, say the National Science Foundation-(NSF) funded Lake E project’s co-chief scientists: Martin Melles of the University of Cologne, Germany; Julie Brigham-Grette of the University of Massachusetts Amherst; and Pavel Minyuk of Russia’s North-East Interdisciplinary Scientific Research Institute in Magadan.
The exceptional climate warming in the Arctic, and the inter-hemispheric interdependencies, weren’t known before the Lake E studies, the scientists say.
Lake E was formed 3.6 million years ago when a huge meteorite hit Earth, leaving an 11-mile-wide crater. It’s been collecting layers of sediment ever since.
The lake is of interest to scientists because it has never been covered by glaciers. That has allowed the uninterrupted build-up of sediment at the bottom of the lake, recording hitherto undiscovered information on climate change.
Cores from Lake E go far back in time, almost 30 times farther than Greenland ice cores covering the past 110,000 years.
The sediment cores from Lake El’gygytgyn reflect the climate and environmental history of the Arctic with great sensitivity, say Brigham-Grette and colleagues.
The physical, chemical and biological properties of Lake E’s sediments match the known global glacial/interglacial pattern of the ice ages.
Some warm phases are exceptional, however, marked by extraordinarily high biological activity in the lake, well above that of “regular” climate cycles.
To quantify the climate differences, the scientists studied four warm phases in detail: the two youngest, called “normal” interglacials, from 12,000 years and 125,000 years ago; and two older phases, called “super” interglacials, from 400,000 and 1.1 million years ago.
According to climate reconstructions based on pollen found in sediment cores, summer temperatures and annual precipitation during the super interglacials were about 4 to 5 degrees C warmer, and about 12 inches wetter, than during normal interglacials.
The super interglacial climates suggest that it’s nearly impossible for Greenland’s ice sheet to have existed in its present form at those times.
Simulations using a state-of-the-art climate model show that the high temperature and precipitation during the super interglacials can’t be explained by Earth’s orbital parameters or variations in atmospheric greenhouse gases alone, which geologists usually see as driving the glacial/interglacial pattern during ice ages.
That suggests that additional climate feedbacks are at work.
“Improving climate models means that they will better match the data that has been collected,” says Paul Filmer, program director in NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the “Lake E” project along with NSF’s Office of Polar Programs.
“The results of this collaboration among scientists in the U.S., Austria, Germany and Russia are providing a challenge for researchers working on climate models: they now need to match results from Antarctica, Greenland–and Lake El’gygytgyn.”
Adds Simon Stephenson, director of the Division of Arctic Sciences in NSF’s Office of Polar Programs, “This is a significant result from NSF’s investment in frontier research during the recent International Polar Year.
“‘Lake E’ has been a successful partnership in very challenging conditions. These results make a significant contribution to our understanding of how Earth’s climate system works, and improve our understanding of what future climate might be like.”
The scientists suspect the trigger for intense interglacials might lie in Antarctica.
Earlier work by the international ANDRILL program discovered recurring intervals when the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melted. (ANDRILL, or the ANtarctic geological DRILLing project, is a collaboration of scientists from five nations–Germany, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States–to recover geologic records from the Antarctic margin.)
The current Lake E study shows that some of these events match with the super interglacials in the Arctic.
The results are of global significance, they believe, demonstrating strong indications of an ongoing collapse of ice shelves around the Antarctic Peninsula and at the margins of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet–and a potential acceleration in the near future.
The Science paper co-authors discuss two scenarios for future testing that could explain the Northern Hemisphere-Southern Hemisphere climate coupling.
First, they say, reduced glacial ice cover and loss of ice shelves in Antarctica could have limited formation of cold bottom water masses that flow into the North Pacific Ocean and upwell to the surface, resulting in warmer surface waters, higher temperatures and increased precipitation on land.
Alternatively, disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may have led to significant global sea level rise and allowed more warm surface water to reach the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait.
Lake E’s past, say the researchers, could be the key to our global climate future.
The El’gygytgyn Drilling Project also was funded by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research, Alfred Wegener Institute, GeoForschungsZentrum-Potsdam, the Russian Academy of Sciences Far East Branch, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, and the Austrian Ministry for Science and Research.
-NSF-
“The polar regions are much more vulnerable to climate change than researchers thought”
I see. So if it has not happened before, it is “unprecedented” and “a sign of man’s effect on climate”, whereas if it has happened several times before, then it is a sign that the climate is “more vulnerable than previously thought”.
How come they cannot see that “It has happened before and is therefore proof of natural variability, which the earth’s bio-diverse life has successfully adapted to many times before?”
So the find out that a warming Arctic is “business as usual”, and come to the conclusion that “The polar regions are much more vulnerable to climate change than researchers thought”, when the obvious conclusion would be that “Even after polar warming exceeding our wildest expectations, glaciations return, so CAGW theory is dead – there will be no ‘run-away warming'”.
Oh come on guys, you know the script. It’s always “worse than we thought”. Big deal.
Simulations using a state-of-the-art climate model show that the high temperature and precipitation during the super interglacials can’t be explained by Earth’s orbital parameters or variations in atmospheric greenhouse gases alone, which geologists usually see as driving the glacial/interglacial pattern during ice ages.
That suggests that additional climate feedbacks are at work.
Or, to unwrap that a little:
“Even with our best models, there’s completely natural, and very powerful, stuff going on that we simply don’t know about”.
That’s pretty damning for the central claim that AGW must be true because natural forcings / feedbacks alone can’t explain current warming. In fact, if you admit you don’t know what all the natural forcings / feedbacks are then you can’t make that statement at all. At least, not with any semblance of scientific integrity!
On shorter timescales I have found another kind of relationship with regards to air temperatures.
Now it doesn’t get much better than this: the sediment found at the bottom of some lakes, I kid you not, is called ‘gyttja’.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gyttja
Oddly parallel etymological coincidence….? (Lake El’gygytgyn (pronounced El’gee-git-gin))
Back to regularly-scheduled scepticism….
Ken Hall says:
June 22, 2012 at 1:08 am
Of course, Ken, you are exactly right. MSM accounts of these types of things never question anything while doing their standard regurge. It borders on the ludicrous, but that doesn’t appear to discourage them.
And now, of course, they shoot themselves in the foot by confirming north/south climate coupling, a fact already known from the MWP…and poo-pooed by the Hockey Team.
It really is laughable.
“That suggests that additional climate feedbacks are at work.”
Not feedbacks. Other (natural) factors.
Lake E’ has been a successful partnership in very challenging conditions. These results make a significant contribution to our understanding of how Earth’s climate system works, and improve our understanding of what future climate might be like.”
What contribution? Might, Could, possibly, likely. These people have no idea whatsoever what real science is. None.
These data should be given to other less “contaminated” scientists for analysis then they we will extremely useful.
“The polar regions are much more vulnerable to climate change than researchers thought”, say the National Science Foundation-(NSF).
Why not just say:
The polar regions are much more subject to climate change than researchers thought, say the National Science Foundation-(NSF).
Why say the polar regions are “vulnerable”, when if all they’re saying is true, then the climate would be expected to vary more in the polar regions than anywhere else?
Climate scientists just don’t get that climate is. They interject human emotion on inanimate systems. Claiming that the polar regions are defenseless/vulnerable life forms is akin to saying the mountains have feelings, rivers are emotional and wind is deliberate.
The National Science Foundation are a disgrace to allow inappropriate emotional terminology to creep into science like this. When you have to market science like this or hijack the Holocaust to prevent debate, you simply lose the argument, even with the public that have least interest in science.
Well its reassuring that GHGs alone can’t cause 4-5C warming.
But then they say,
The results are of global significance, they believe, demonstrating strong indications of an ongoing collapse of ice shelves around the Antarctic Peninsula and at the margins of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet–and a potential acceleration in the near future.
Antarctic Peninsula icesheets are ‘collapsing’, while the sea ice that surrounds them for 100s of kilometers is at the greatest extent ever recorded.
Could the reason be that glacial land ice is dirtier with a lower albedo than sea ice, and therefore more susceptible to melt from increased insolation.
“The super interglacial climates suggest that it’s nearly impossible for Greenland’s ice sheet to have existed in its present form at those times.”
I’d be so bold as to say that the only time that Greenland’s ice sheet existed in its present form is now.
I’ll read the full paper. However, it should be noted that there is an overflow to the S-E even today and that stories of “12 inches wetter” (than what?”) evoke images of sediment just piling out of the overflow.
Given the current interest in the MWP, I wonder if it gets some special mention?
If the theory of moving tectonic plates is to be believed, then the antarctic was not always the south pole..and not always covered with ice. I wonder how that figures into their theory.
“Simulations using a state-of-the-art climate model show that the high temperature and precipitation during the super interglacials can’t be explained by Earth’s orbital parameters or variations in atmospheric greenhouse gases alone, which geologists usually see as driving the glacial/interglacial pattern during ice ages.
That suggests that additional climate feedbacks are at work.”
Oh deary, deary me. It was all going so, so well until they mentioned the “S” word. Here we go again, POED:1925:Simulate, Simulation, “to feign, pretend, to feel (oh those “feelings” yet again), wear the guise of, act the part, counterfeit, shadowy likeness of…………! I can say no more. As others have amply demonstrated, too many “could, may, might, possibly” involved! Wishy washy as ever. Natural variations show the way but the blinkers are firmly tied in place! The last 4 interglacials were warmer than todays by 2-3°C, ice-core data show rapid rises & falls in temperature that make the late 20th C modest rise look pathetic, as do data for the Younger Dryas in which temps fell by up to 6°C in as many decades then promptly rose by as much again in a similar timeframe! What’s new?
.
Makes the whole business of Tipping Points uncertain, to say the least.
South Pole New Temperature Record
June 11th: The temperature of -73.8°C/-100.8°F broke the previous minimum temperature record of -73.3°C/-99.9°F set in 1966.
http://amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/news/index.php?id=41
“the super interglacials were about 4 to 5 degrees C warmer, and about 12 inches wetter,”
That’s gotta be a typo of some sort? What the heck does “12 inches wetter” mean?
So they found out the don’t have the slightest clue about what was going on in the Arctic during the past 3+-million years and now use that as a confirmation for their own hypothesis of current “AGW”?
Well, you should try that in a 6th-graders geography-test and see how it works out for you in the real world – off AGW-fairy tales.
Peter Stroud says:
June 22, 2012 at 2:41 am
Makes the whole business of Tipping Points uncertain, to say the least.
————————————————————————————————————-
Well, at least it’s ample proof that the existence of Tipping Points on my forehead concerning AGW-proponents is fully justified.
Lake El’gygytgyn – Google Earth takes you straight there..
I thoiught we klnew all this already. Polar regions are highly vulnerable as witnessed by the 7 major warming periods experienced during the Holocene
tonyb
Cores from Lake E go far back in time, almost 30 times farther than Greenland ice cores covering the past 110,000 years.
I presume these sediments will show up the MWP being warmer than today, or will they keep away from that one.
http://thegwpf.org/the-observatory/940-greenland-warmer-1000-years-ago.html
Simulations using a state-of-the-art climate model show that the high temperature and precipitation during the super interglacials can’t be explained by Earth’s orbital parameters or variations in atmospheric greenhouse gases alone, which geologists usually see as driving the glacial/interglacial pattern during ice ages.
That suggests that additional climate feedbacks are at work.
And until you know what these are you can’t say CO2 is the cause of the current warming just because you can’t think of anything else (quote from Jones of the University of Easy Access)
Joe+1
All that warming and no tipping point. What a surprise.
There has been ample evidence for many years that northern Alaska, now arid tundra, was densely forested. Fossil evidence in the coal seams show tree trunks 2ft or more in diameter. These coal measures are on the north slope on the Arctic Ocean coast. I have maps and photographs.
Actual Measured Data – don’t you love it? It is the only thing that can fix broken theories.
Given that there is a 400,000 year Milankovitch cycle also (Earth orbital eccentricity period), the super inter glacials at 0.4 and 1.1 m years ago would indicate that this interglacial could be expected to be a super inter glacial also.
Intense warm climate intervals–warmer than scientists thought possible–have occurred in the Arctic over the past 2.8 million years.
Over the past 2.8 million years there were 4-5 geomagnetic pole reversals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
since the Arctic temperature oscillations appear to match those found in the geomagnetics
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Arctic.htm
then it would be reasonable to assume there were large swings in the Arctic temperature.
On the other side of the globe the changes in the Antarctic’s geomagnetic intensity are reversely correlated to the changes in the solar magnetic output
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Aa-TSI.htm
this would indicate that ‘it is the sun …..d’, hence no surprise there.
They say:
“The sediment cores from Lake El’gygytgyn reflect the climate and environmental history of the Arctic with great sensitivity, say Brigham-Grette and colleagues.”
References? proof?
Ken Hall nailed it and them first off
Quote
“The polar regions are much more vulnerable to climate change than researchers thought”
The publishers need to delete the word “vulnerable”, as it is both incorrect and misleading. Substitute the word “subject” which is correct according to their findings.
Now the AGW folks are going to have to find a way to hide the incline.
Philip Bradley says:
June 22, 2012 at 2:22 am
Antarctic Peninsula icesheets are ‘collapsing’, while the sea ice that surrounds them for 100s of kilometers is at the greatest extent ever recorded.
Could the reason be that glacial land ice is dirtier with a lower albedo than sea ice, and therefore more susceptible to melt from increased insolation.
Don’t forget that the area where the ice sheets are detaching just happens to be located on the side with the most active vulcanism — both above and below the ice.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/22/surprise-theres-an-active-volcano-under-antarctic-ice/
Is that cannot be another indication of possible slippage of the earth crust ?
I’m wondering what makes a “state-of-the-art climate model” different to any other climate model?
CRUSTAL DISPLACEMENT!!!!!!
As I understand it, the current glacial/interglacial dance began about 3 million years ago. Any connection to the referenced meteor impact that may have changed orbital dynamics just enough to cause this?
“‘Lake E’ has been a successful partnership in very challenging conditions. These results make a significant contribution to our understanding of how Earth’s climate system works, and improve our understanding of what future climate might be like.”
Since glacial periods occur for longer periods of time than interglacials, one might assume future climate will be somewhat cooler!
Warmer in the past? Give those data to NOAA — they’ll fix them right up.
Joe says: Or, to unwrap that a little: “Even with our best models, there’s completely natural, and very powerful, stuff going on that we simply don’t know about”.
I.E. – There’s more to discover so we need MORE MONEY to continue looking for it.
A link to the paper is http://www.geo.umass.edu/lake_e/Mellesetalscience2012.pdf.
Measured:
Clear evidence for long term global cooling!
“Claim: Fates of polar ice sheets appear to be linked”
Let’s take all the money spent on AGW, CAGW, IPCC, CC, CACC, wind and solar power and buy up Panama. A few – more than a few I suppose – well-placed suitable explosive devices could open up the Pacific to the Atlantic. Then we can watch what happens to both poles and to see if there is some sort of link. Now there’s an experiment that could answer some global climate questions.
Drilling in a lake is all well and good, but the results don’t seem to be definitive from the way I read the article.
P.S. I too, am stumped by “12 inches wetter.” The units aren’t in (SI) Olympic-size swimming pools so I’m not sure what they were getting at.
This warming triggered an irreversable trend which resulted in… exactly the climate we have today?
“””””…..
the whole business of Tipping Points uncertain, to say the least.
Mark.R says:
June 22, 2012 at 2:42 am
South Pole New Temperature Record
June 11th: The temperature of -73.8°C/-100.8°F broke the previous minimum temperature record of -73.3°C/-99.9°F set in 1966.
http://amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/news/index.php?id=41…..”””””
Ho hum !! wake me if the South Pole ever gets within 10 deg C of the Temperature record at Vostok. It might actually get closer than 15 deg C to Vostok
“That suggests that additional climate feedbacks are at work.”
Interesting that they are assuming that whatever caused the warming, must be terrestrial based.
Since this study finds that the arctic/antarctic are much more sensitive to climate change that we believed before.
How does this correlate with the fact that despite apocalyptic predictions, the arctic/antarctic are not showing any significant signs of change at present.
Does this prove that any change that we have seen so far, is less than previously believed?
Another study that shows CO2 fails the “necessary and sufficient” requirement to be the logical cause of global warming.
I guess (scientifically), that Lake Etzj a skezj is some kind of interesting place. Nice when the Boiz an Gerlz, can find a whole new playpen like that, to bestow taxpayer granz on. I’m kind of fond ov Laik Vostok too. Not too happy they decided to cut into it and start to ssshRed the evidenz, before we get a chance to figure out who or wot is there; or was before they woke ’em up.
As for the Antarctic Peninsula eiz sheets; well the AP ain’t really in the Antarctic, now iz it. Well maik up your minds, does Arctic/Ant- Arctic start at +/-60 liek somesay or izzit +/-66 1/2 ??
I’ll take a stab at that one Skeptical — A “state-of-the-art climate model” would neccesarily incorporate some degree of imagination if true to the definition of art. After countless failed climate predictions, it takes little imagination to acknowledge mixing of art and science is best left to the experts in Hollywood.
I wondered about this statement “The results are of global significance, they believe, demonstrating strong indications of an ongoing collapse of ice shelves around the Antarctic Peninsula and at the margins of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet–and a potential acceleration in the near future.”
I can understand the reference to West Antarctica but certainly not to “an ongoing collapse of ice shelves around the Antarctic”. With ice being above average I don’t think this statement holds up to scrutiny if used as an argument for “a potential acceleration in the near future”. I think this is science mixed with a dose of required AGW, probably to generate further grant funding. As I understand it calving is old hat and they need to demonstrate acceleration if they want to tout AGW.
Mark.R says:
June 22, 2012 at 2:42 am
South Pole New (LOW) Temperature Record
=======
The magnetic south pole continues to move away from the geographic south pole, and south polar temperatures continue to drop. The magnetic north pole continues to move towards the geographic north pole and north polar temperature continue to rise.
They hit the nail on the head “can’t be explained by Earth’s orbital parameters or variations in atmospheric greenhouse gases”
“The Science paper co-authors discuss two scenarios for future testing that could explain the Northern Hemisphere-Southern Hemisphere climate coupling.
First, they say, reduced glacial ice cover and loss of ice shelves in Antarctica could have limited formation of cold bottom water masses that flow into the North Pacific Ocean and upwell to the surface, resulting in warmer surface waters, higher temperatures and increased precipitation on land.
Alternatively, disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may have led to significant global sea level rise and allowed more warm surface water to reach the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait.”
Or the factors that influence the climate are global in nature because the entire planet is warmed or cool due to variations in the sun and cosmic rays. So both poles warm at the same time because the cause is external to local conditions.
“Skeptikal says:
June 22, 2012 at 4:13 am
I’m wondering what makes a “state-of-the-art climate model” different to any other climate model?”
The amount of PR.
Every day more and more people become aware of the fact that AGW is a huge scam and our institutions of higher learning have become homes for the idiots. With wack jobs in control of universities and embeded in our government the only hope for this country surviving is in the resiliency and tenacity of the common citizen. But that’s the way it’s always been. It’s time to take their computers away from them and make them get real jobs.
“Improving climate models means that they will better match the data that has been collected,” says Paul Filmer, program director in NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences…
No. Improving climate models mean that they would make accurate and relevant predictions about the future. All that will happen here is that modelers will find some new and more terrible than ever feedback mechanisms that, after being factored into their models, will mean: It’s worse than we thought!!!
Online copy of the paper.
http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/jbg/Mellesetalscience2012.pdf
12 km-wide crater from an asteroid impact 3.6 million years ago and which is situated so that ice age glaciers have not scoured it away over time.
Holocene 2.0C warmer, last interglacial 4.5C warmer, interglacial at 400,000 years ago 2.0C warmer but lasted much longer than other interglacials and is most similar to the current orbital forcing scenario.
This is consistent with the numbers from the Antarctic and Greenland ice cores (if one uses the proper numbers). So, an undisturbed 3.6 million year Arctic Lake sediment core is going to provide another valuable source of high resolution paleoclimate data.
How does it get 4.5C warmer 125,000 years ago with CO2 at 280 ppm and methane at half of today’s numbers. hmmm. How does it get 2.0C warmer 410,000 years ago and Greenland’s glaciers melt out completely in the southern third with CO2 at 280 ppm and methane at half of today’s levels. Obviously, there is an answer. Its just that climate science can’t bring themselves to even think about it.
@Skeptikal
“state-of-the-art” i.e. not science
OT But Sunspots at 13! is cycle 24 over?
http://www.solarham.net/trends.htm
Sorry re SSN solar correct link with the numbers here
http://www.solarham.net/
vukcevic says:
June 22, 2012 at 3:16 am
since the Arctic temperature oscillations appear to match those found in the geomagnetics
You still haven’t learned anything.
“state-of-the-art climate model” is a climate model that uses extreme ARTistic license to portray “science” according to what STATE bureaucrats/propagandists have paid researchers to portray.
4 to 5c hotter and 12 Flanneries extra of precipitation and the world did not end, What.
We have been told that 3 to 4c would see a tipping point of Venus like atmosphere and a 100 metre rise in sea levels. Have they been lying to us?
“The polar regions are much more vulnerable to climate change than researchers thought”, say the National Science Foundation-(NSF).”
Vulnerable to ice?
Yes they are!
Just who is ‘vulnerable’ to mild weather?
“The polar regions are much more vulnerable to climate change than researchers thought”
So if the Antartic is gaining ice, it must be getting only a “little” cooler
Several individuals have hinted at the same thing that I am wondering… how did they adjust/account for plate tectonics and the fact that the land mass has slowly moved northward over the last 3.6 million years?
Andrew Greenfield says:
June 22, 2012 at 6:51 am
OT But Sunspots at 13! is cycle 24 over?
No, it is quite normal in weak cycles to have isolated days with very low sunspot count [or none], e.g.
http://www.leif.org/research/SC14-and-24.png
“state-of-the-art climate model
That means the graphics are much, much prettier…
Jeremy (June 22, 2012 at 6:53 am)
Theodore (June 22, 2012 at 6:15 am)
Hugh K (June 22, 2012 at 5:53 am)
Skeptikal (June 22, 2012 at 4:13 am)
“state-of-the-art climate model”
I always laugh when I read that too.
Looks like Jeremy is proposing they actually mean:
Art-of-the-State Model-Climate
By the way: 1 + 1 = 3 (Art-of-the-State Theorem)
—
@vukcevic
Prikryl, P.; Rusin, V.; & Rybansky, M. (2009). The influence of solar wind on extratropical cyclones – Part 1: Wilcox effect revisited. Annales Geophysicae 27, 1-30. doi:10.5194/angeo-27-1-2009.
http://www.ann-geophys.net/27/1/2009/angeo-27-1-2009.pdf
Paul Vaughan says:
June 22, 2012 at 8:02 am
Part 1: Wilcox effect revisited. Annales Geophysicae 27, 1-30. doi:10.5194/angeo-27-1-2009.
I was a co-discoverer and co-author [actually did most of the work] of the Wilcox Effect. I now think [actually since 30 years] that the finding was spurious.
Grey Lensman says:
June 22, 2012 at 3:44 am
The publishers need to delete the word “vulnerable”, as it is both incorrect and misleading. Substitute the word “subject” which is correct according to their findings.
They used “vulnerable” a-purpose. It fits the meme that the polar regions are too fwagile to withstand much more warming…
“12 inches wetter” probably means 12 inches more precipitation, IMO.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 22, 2012 at 8:08 am
Paul Vaughan says:
June 22, 2012 at 8:02 am
Part 1: Wilcox effect revisited. Annales Geophysicae 27, 1-30. doi:10.5194/angeo-27-1-2009.
I was a co-discoverer and co-author [actually did most of the work] of the Wilcox Effect. I now think [actually since 30 years] that the finding was spurious.
______________
I take that statement as a pre- release notice.
Props for getting in there and doing the work. Google Earth does not show a convenience store for at least 500 miles in any direction. The research team posted some interesting pictures on Google Earth – including the drilling platform.
Somewhere, I think, in my some 8,000 papers and abstracts on climate change and evolution (because the two are tied) in my digital library (cybrary) there either is or was a paper where Arctic sediment core researchers presented evidence showing that one feature that was consistent was the complete melting away of the Arctic at the end of each extreme interglacial. I remember the discussion involving the fact that when ice is present this restricts currents from widely distributing sediments entering from the various land masses surrounding the Arctic but when ice-free, fine deposits of characteristic mineral assemblages were distributed more widely across the basins and shelves as the sea surface responding to the wind access produced currents with stronger circulation.
If someone knows which paper I am talking about please post a link or reference.
The interesting thing I remember was that this was indicated as happening at the ends of the extreme interglacials. Given that the Holocene is presently 11,715 years old this year, eerily close to the half-precession cycle age of 5 of the past 6 interglacials (the 6th being MIS-11 400kyrs ago), and that we are at the long end of the precession 19-23kyr variation, 11,500 would be half.
The period referenced as occurring about 1.1 million years ago could be MIS-31, an interglacial which occurred close to the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT) and the Jaramillo magnetic pole reversal, and which from the LR04 age model built from 57 deep ocean sediment cores peaked at close to our present O18 temps.
Probably worth another read of http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/16/the-end-holocene-or-how-to-make-out-like-a-madoff-climate-change-insurer/ if you want to get a better perspective on the end extreme interglacials.
Tipping points were frequently mentioned above. I asked the following a while back and below is Lord Monckton’s reply.
So while Le Chatelier’s Principle initially just basically applied to simple systems, I believe a much more complicated set of Le Chatelier’s types of Principles could be developed for climate, but we are not there yet. Perhaps 50 variables may be changing at any given time.
Lord Monckton’s reply to me:
Werner Brozek asks whether the quite small variations in global surface temperature either side of the billion-year mean indicate that “tipping-points” do not exist. In mathematics and physics the term “tipping-point” is really only used by those wanting to make a political point, usually from a climate-extremist position. The old mathematical term of art, still used by many, was “phase-transition”: now we should usually talk of a “bifurcation” in the evolution of the object under consideration. Since the climate object is mathematically-chaotic (IPCC, 2001, para. 14.2.2.2; Giorgi, 2005; Lorenz, 1963), bifurcations will of course occur: indeed any sufficiently rare extreme-weather event may be a bifurcation. We know that very extreme things can suddenly happen in the climate. For instance, at the end of the Younger Dryas cooling period that brought the last Ice Age to an end, temperatures in Antarctica as inferred from variations in the ratios of different isotopes of oxygen in air trapped in layers under the ice, rose by 5 K (9 F) in just three years. “Now, that,” as Ian Plimer likes to say in his lectures, “is climate change!”
But the idea that our very small perturbation in temperature will somehow cause more bifurcations is not warranted by the underlying mathematics of chaos theory. In my own lectures I often illustrate this with a spectacular picture drawn on the Argand plane by a very simple chaotic function, the Mandelbrot fractal function. The starting and ending values for the pixels at top right and bottom left respectively are identical to 12 digits of precision; yet the digits beyond 12 are enough to produce multiple highly-visible bifurcations.
And we know that some forms of extreme weather are likely to become rarer if the world warms. Much – though not all – extreme weather depends not upon absolute temperature but upon differentials in temperature between one altitude or latitude and another. These differentials tend to get smaller as the world warms, so that outside the tropics (and arguably in the tropics too) there will probably be fewer storms.
Leif Svalgaard says: June 22, 2012 at 6:53 am
@vukcevic says:
You still haven’t learned anything.
Hi doc, learning is for school kids and scholars, adventurers are interested in discoveries. Since you could not explain this one:
Comparing the Svalgaard’s TSI data with the Antarctic’s MF (after re-trending to match the trend of the Svalgaard’s reconstruction of y = 0.0007x) for period 1900 to date, shows stronger correlation than the Wang et al (2005) method, while prior to 1900 the correlation is about equal.
solar science lacks theoretical resources, it is bound to cause headache to the geo-physicists:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Aa-TSI.htm
Perhaps you might venture to comment on the next:
Global temperature’s primary spectral component is identical to the solar magnetic cycle:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GTavSpec.htm
again equally not within ability of the climate scientists to grasp.
I got another real gem waiting in the background.
It must be extraordinarily inconvenient to wrap AGW are facts that suggest natural variability. It also demonstrates why these Warmists are such poor scientists.
One day a researcher will simply point out his findings without the obligatory AGW wrap and he will actually be respected.
Wait a minute… a huge meteorite hit Earth leaving an 11-mile-wide crater and for 3.6 million years no one has done anything to keep this sort of thing from happening again?
Is not it pure wonder how far one can get with logic?
IPCC AR4 WG1 FAQ 9.2 Can the Warming of the 20th Century be Explained by Natural Variability?
“It is very unlikely that the 20th-century warming can be explained by natural causes.”
because
“The models fail to reproduce the observed warming when run using only natural factors.”
Therefore
“The human influence on climate very likely dominates over all other causes of change in global average surface temperature during the past half century.”
Summary: If it can’t be explained by computational climate models using natural factors, it is man made.
NFS Press Release 12-115 Remote Siberian Lake Holds Clues to Arctic–and Antarctic–Climate Change
“Simulations using a state-of-the-art climate model show that the high temperature and precipitation during the super interglacials can’t be explained by Earth’s orbital parameters or variations in atmospheric greenhouse gases alone, which geologists usually see as driving the glacial/interglacial pattern during ice ages.”
Summary: Super interglacials can’t be explained by computational climate models using natural factors.
Therefore super interglacials are obviously anthropgenic.
Unfortunately there is the minor issue of the utter lack of human presence on Earth 400 or 1,100 kyears ago. But wait. What if our distant descendants would discover a particularly clever way for carbon sequestration? I mean they may dig time tunnels into the deep past and dump their carbon pollution there. And it is entirely consistent with the fact the farther one goes back in geologic time the higher the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere!
Of course it implies the tunnels will have been designed much deeper than the level of these super interglacials. The only reasonable explanation that comes to mind is they will do sloppy work possibly using faulty materials in construction supplied by irresponsible vendors, so their time tunnels will get cracked and leaking all over history, but at some points more than usual. There, you have it.
As I have said, is not logic wonderful?
We have learned two important lessons:
1. Our era is criss-crossed by faulty time tunnels possibly leaking stuff
2. People will occasionally do slapdash job even in the future
Leif Svalgaard (June 22, 2012 at 8:08 am)
“I now think [actually since 30 years] that the finding was spurious.”
The SPE analysis was framed optimally in neither 1973 nor 2009.
It took only a few seconds to figure out where you guys lost course 30+ years ago: http://i45.tinypic.com/2nbc3dw.png .
I’m impressed that looking at these sedimentary laminae we can see the collapse of the Antarctic ice shelves and the disappearance of the Greenlandic ice cap. Maybe there is a fossil emperor penguin beak or two in the sediments. Now that is extrapolation gone a land bridge too far.
It seems clear that in desperate efforts to salvage the crumbling AGW edifice, alarmists are rushing around looking for ways to make the ice disappear and bring on the droughts, floods and shoreline submergence. After climategate, there appeared to be a hiatus of CAGW papers as the ‘consensus’ recovered from shame and despondency following being caught ‘en flagrante’ (a period of hysterics and gnashing of teeth rather than scientific production). Skeptics finally were able to get a toehold in the published literature with the gatekeepers hors de service, and since, the team and its fledglings.have been popping up with mission-oriented papers to deal with skeptics – a time I refer to as the Whack-a-Mole alarmist literature period. The only trouble is, looking for alternatives to meet their climate armageddon forecasts, and shooting off in all directions, they have caused CO2 to take a back seat, the MWP, LIA, to reappear, the 30s to reclaim the hottest period of the 20thCentury, fossil fuels to return to some respectability (shale gas is too good to shelve, German’s are back to coal, solar and wind people are going broke…. Boy that climategate was huge.
Luther Wu says:
June 22, 2012 at 8:59 am
“the finding was spurious.”
I take that statement as a pre- release notice.
More like a post-post-release
vukcevic says:
June 22, 2012 at 9:16 am
Hi doc, learning is for school kids and scholars, adventurers are interested in discoveries.
Spurious correlations are not ‘discoveries’
Paul Vaughan says:
June 22, 2012 at 9:51 am
It took only a few seconds to figure out where you guys lost course 30+ years ago
We can’t all be geniuses like you.
/sarcon
As a recreant unrepentent programmer, I can tell you explicitly what customers and bosses would say when faced with a program that fails to perform. On second thought, skip that before I get banned. I’ll tell you instead what the marketing folks would say after they spun the results senseless; “After extensive preparations and tests our super climate model performed excellently, but the results will need years of study.”
/sarc
What this does mean is that state-of-the-art climate model doesn’t work beans when compared with real data. Not to worry, we’ve already decided all results.
What!? And from this you haven’t already verified that tipping points are caused by… whatever is the CAGW’s favorite bad thing this week. Or is it that the data need ‘adjustments’ to convert it to usable current databases?
Leif Svalgaard says:
Spurious correlations are not ‘discoveries’
‘Correlation between a flat car tyre and price of a postage stamp is spurious’.
300-400 year long correlation between solar magnetic and the Earth’s magnetic changes
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Aa-TSI.htm
it is puzzling, it is not easily explainable, it is on no account spurious but a worth while scientific discovery.
It also appears in another set of data by Jeremy Bloxham and David Gubbins.
Science is not settled on this one, it is just opening a new chapter !
p.s. Have a good look on this one too: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GTavSpec.htm
As I read it, this paper seems contrary to CAGW dogma in at least two ways:
1) No “tipping point” even in conditions warmer than alarmists predict for the next century;
2) There is substantial but unknown natural variability in the climate system even after orbital mechanics and greenhouse gasses are taken into account.
If that’s a fair summary, I have to wonder how it managed to get published.
The short of it is the corollary to Occam’s Razor: if your explanatory model is not adequate to explain your phenomeon, then either it needs to be more complex, or your theory is wrong.
vukcevic says:
June 22, 2012 at 11:26 am
‘Correlation between a flat car tyre and price of a postage stamp is spurious’.
300-400 year long correlation between solar magnetic and the Earth’s magnetic changes
is equally spurious. The changes of the Earth’s field take place in the core which is completely shielded from any outside magnetic changes [which you claimed that you ‘knew all about’]. The core field is thousands of times stronger than the external field and its changes are highly irregular. This is what they look like: http://www.leif.org/research/core-secular-change.png
Vuk,
The fundamental problem with doing any correlation with the “global temperature” is that
the global temperature is not really a physical measure. It’s a mismash of the subsurface water
temperature ( 70%) and the air temperature over land at 1.5 meters.
It’s one thing to look at that metric as it compares to itself and we can look at trends in that metric as indicators. But it’s not a measurement of the same thing. Lord knows why Hansen decided you could average water temperatures and air temperatures, but there you have it.
If you want to get any attention for the the relationship you propose you need to have the
physics expressed.
steven mosher says:
June 22, 2012 at 12:24 pm
If you want to get any attention for the relationship you propose you need to have the physics expressed
I think you miss the point, which is that he claims this is ‘new physics’ [as it is impossible using current physics] and is a major discovery.
No, No, No. IF AGW is true, then there can only be one explanation for those past ultra warm periods that can not be explained by orbital and solar influences. That previous human civilizations flowered and then destroyed themselves along with the normal climate only to be reset by an ice age. What is happening now, has happened before. We are merely the genetic survivors of previous civilizations who haven’t learned their lessons and are doomed to Karmic reincarnation for our endless sins. ala Battlestar Galactica /sarcasm/
Lief, what new physics? How about the application of the proper physics called enthalpy? Any scientist and engineer worth their salt knows you don’t measure heat in degrees K because it’s only a PARTIAL measurement. Purporting to assert climate change from a trend in tenths of a degree K is sheer incompetence. You use the wrong units, you get the wrong results. In the vernacular, if you do a half assed job, you get a half assed result.
James Hansen is incompetent. What is the proper unit measurement of Heat? James Hansen doesn’t know because he demonstrated he doesn’t know by using the wrong unit measure.
dscott says:
June 22, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Lief, what new physics? … if you do a half assed job, you get a half assed result.
Not me, but Vuk is claiming this, and it is even worse than a half assed job, it is simple nonsense dressed up as a major discovery by an adventurer who doesn’t need to learn [“that is for school kids and scholars”]
to Leif Svalgaard
and
Steven Mosher
Science is not settled, it is opening a new chapter !
See it, read it, study it, it is a window to the true nature
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSO.htm
(ignorance is a bliss, obscurantism is an affliction)
vukcevic says:
June 22, 2012 at 1:17 pm
Science is not settled
What you are peddling is not science, but nonsense. And as you say, ignorance is indeed bliss, so stay happy.
dscott says:
June 22, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Lief, what new physics? How about the application of the proper physics called enthalpy? Any scientist and engineer worth their salt knows you don’t measure heat in degrees K because it’s only a PARTIAL measurement. Purporting to assert climate change from a trend in tenths of a degree K is sheer incompetence. You use the wrong units, you get the wrong results. In the vernacular, if you do a half assed job, you get a half assed result.
James Hansen is incompetent. What is the proper unit measurement of Heat? James Hansen doesn’t know because he demonstrated he doesn’t know by using the wrong unit measure.
=========================
They’re not measuring the direct (beam) heat from the Sun, they’re measuring shortwave, Light. They say that beam thermal infrared doesn’t play any part in heating their Earth, they claim that in their world shortwave, Light, physically heats land and oceans. Blue visible light they say heats the oceans deeper down because it travels deeper. They have given the real world properties of thermal infrared to visible light and the two shortwaves either side, uv and near infrared. They’re living in a different world, their fisics is make-believe in the real world, and clearly imposssible. They have other imposssible stuff in their world, molecules of carbon dioxide that overcome gravity by their own ideal gas molecular energy …
Their fisics was deliberately created to promote AGW, it is science fiction. Their cartoon energy budget, KT97 and kin, is a comic cartoon in the real world.
They can’t see the joke.
They can’t hear it either, their atmosphere is empty space as their ideal gas molecules have no volume, etc.
Myrrh says:
June 22, 2012 at 1:42 pm
They can’t see the joke.
They can’t hear it either, their atmosphere is empty space
Even though your nonsense is certainly entertaining, perhaps let it go this time. A joke repeated too often is no longer funny.
Leif Svalgaard says:
What you are peddling is not science, but nonsense.
……………….
Here is spectrum of four major variables, all data are from respectable sources http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSO.htm
Perhaps you would be so kind, not for mine, but for the benefit of other readers, to say which particular set of data, if not all are nonsense.
Perhaps you are unduly concerned, as long as your views are based on the knowledge what the data represent, rather than on a belief what data I used should not show.
I indulge in ignorance of attitudes, but greatly enjoy getting best out of laboriously collected and assembled numerical information, including your own, for which I have greatest respect.
Views and interpretations are transient, good data are longer lasting and solid foundation for advancement in science.
vukcevic says:
June 22, 2012 at 2:51 pm
Perhaps you would be so kind, not for mine, but for the benefit of other readers, to say which particular set of data, if not all are nonsense.
None of the data is nonsense, just your ideas about them. And I’m not the least concerned about the data.
Bill Illis says:
June 22, 2012 at 6:39 am
It seems odd to me that a lake at 67.5N 172E was not glaciated in the last 3.5M years yet Wisconsin, south of 49N, was glaciated multiple times. Is/was Lake E in a dry valley?
So we agree, data shows true nature, rather than one we would whish to perpetuate.
Perhaps if you look at the graph you would agree even more so.
Billy Liar says:
June 22, 2012 at 3:19 pm
Bill Illis says:
June 22, 2012 at 6:39 am
It seems odd to me that a lake at 67.5N 172E was not glaciated in the last 3.5M years yet Wisconsin, south of 49N, was glaciated multiple times. Is/was Lake E in a dry valley?
Perhaps this will help: “The formation of an ice sheet or ice cap requires both prolonged cold and precipitation (snow). Hence, despite having temperatures similar to those of glaciated areas in North America, Europe, and East Asia remained unglaciated except at higher elevations. This difference was caused by the fact that the ice sheets in Europe produced extensive anticyclones above them. These anticyclones generated air masses that were so dry on reaching Siberia and Manchuria that precipitation sufficient for the formation of glaciers could never occur (except in Kamchatka where these westerly winds lifted moisture from the Sea of Japan). The relative warmth of the Pacific Ocean due to the shutting down of the Oyashio Current and the presence of large east-west mountain ranges were secondary factors preventing continental glaciation in Asia.”
vukcevic says:
June 22, 2012 at 3:25 pm
So we agree, data shows true nature, rather than one we would whish to perpetuate.
You seem to wish to perpetuate your nonsense interpretation, as you try to hijack every thread with it.
Bill Illis said:
How does it get 4.5C warmer 125,000 years ago with CO2 at 280 ppm and methane at half of today’s numbers. hmmm. How does it get 2.0C warmer 410,000 years ago and Greenland’s glaciers melt out completely in the southern third with CO2 at 280 ppm and methane at half of today’s levels. Obviously, there is an answer.
* * *
There is an answer.
On the Eemian period (125,000 ya) see: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005AGUFMPP41B0648K
On MIS 11 (410,000 ya) see http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Marine+Isotope+Stage+11%22
Didn’t even bother reading this one,
If the humid equatorial zone changes by as much as a few points of a degree, then arid places like the poles will change by multiples of that. Enthalpy says this.
That’s it. As long as we’re arguing temperature and not energy…
DaveE.
Regarding whether this area was glaciated or not, they say it wasn’t .
But the area immediately north of the location was probably glaciated around 2.5 Mya and several other times since. The Arctic Ocean north of Russia and north of Europe is within the continental shelf and these areas have probably been pushed below sea level due to glaciation several times in the last 2.5 Mys.
Glaciers carry a lot more weight than is generally recognized and large parts of the continents have been pushed below sea level in the past lasting for millions of years at a time.
Eurasia is a bigger continent than the above sea level maps indicate.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 22, 2012 at 1:51 pm
Myrrh says:
June 22, 2012 at 1:42 pm
They can’t see the joke.
They can’t hear it either, their atmosphere is empty space
Even though your nonsense is certainly entertaining, perhaps let it go this time. A joke repeated too often is no longer funny.
==========
It will always be funny, as each newcomer gets the joke. It will be a timeless classic in science in the years to come, when rational science is once again a discipline. People will look back at this time and be astonished at the breadth of the science scam, far, far greater than the Piltdown Man. The Piltdown Man is limited in amusement not because it’s no longer funny, but because only a few appreciate the joke because education and communication about it is limited..
To any who understand the difference.
On page 19 here is a map of the US showing heat bands of beam energy: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19730014021_1973014021.pdf
giving Figure 5 – Solar heat, btu/ft2/average day.
Please would you explain what this is saying, I’m not a scientist so in simple terms in English and not in Mathematics, and explain the differences in measuring and what is being measured between btu and kW.
Bearing in mind that in the comic cartoon energy budget of AGW they claim that a) shortwave light physically heats land and oceans and b) that thermal infrared, the direct beam heat from the Sun, doesn’t play any part in this except for a token 1%; the meme is ‘shortwave in longwave out’.
Data are facts, not individual opinions. It is important to show theresult of spectral analysis of relevant data, while contemporary interpretations (wherever they come from) may be totally irrelevant.
Sorry that should be, differences between btu/ft2 and W/m2
For example. What is this actually measuring?:
http://mb-soft.com/public2/energyso.html
First graph – it has excluded all of thermal from the picture and has the measurements in W/m2.
What would happen to that graph if the measurements were all in Btu/ft2?
Shortwave wouldn’t show. Btu is the measure of energy it takes to heat something up, that is what thermal means in the difference in traditional science between heat and light, and light, photo, is not a thermal energy.
Visible light is not a thermal energy. It is not hot. It doesn’t move matter into kinetic energy states to heat it up, how can it be measured in Btu? We do not feel it as heat because it isn’t heat.
It is thermal infrared direct from the Sun which is collected in Solar Thermal heating systems, while visible light is collected in PhotoVoltaic systems to turn into electricity and is irrelevant to heating up matter.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/basics/renewable_energy/solar_resources.html
Why? Because they’re measuring different properties, different entities?
Heat is not Light. Thermal infrared is the direct heat from the Sun, heat is a powerful energy which heats things up. The best that can be done with shortwave light is to turn it into electricity and it produces little enough of that. Solar Thermal’s power can also be used to create electricity, it’s got plenty of power to spare for this..
Back to the first link which shows NO thermal measurements in the graph, it says –
How are they going to know if heat energy has been excluded and they pretend it is something else?
Are these saying the same thing as they make out by saying one is just an ‘English’ measuring system? What is the difference between British thermal units and Watts?
Is the Solar Constant a measurement of Heat or Light? If it’s both, where is the great heat we feel from the Sun in this graph? Which certainly feels a lot on a hot day…
We cannot feel shortwave Light. We cannot feel it because it is not hot. If it was heating us up we could feel it as hot.
Shortwave direct from the Sun including uv and near infrared are not hot, they are not thermal energies, they cannot heat us up.
NASA used to teach the difference:
So, compare with the graphic, second on page: http://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_1_2_5t.htm which shows thermal infrared to 1mm, unlike the previous graph which cuts it off.
In its spiel it says, correctly, my bold,
And then, it gives figures for LIGHT not Heat!
What happened to the energy from the Sun which is primarily heat, because they’ve defined radiation as heat transfer and said it is the primary energy from the Sun, because they ignore it completely and go on to say:
It has excluded all Radiation which it itself first defines as the transfer of heat, energy (which is only thermal infrared) and which is says is primarily this of all the energy radiated from the Sun! And which it shows on its own graphic does exist.. What would that graphic look like if it were done to scale?
Come on, people. What’s up with that??
100% uv, visible, near infrared and a bit of radio and microwave when it has just said that of the energy radiated from the Sun it is primarily Radiation=Heat. It has taken the non-primary energy from the Sun and made that 100%. So another joke, in the AGWScience Fiction world they can’t feel any heat from the Sun either.
Hasn’t it, AGWScienceFiction memes producing department, deliberately given all of the power of the primary energy from the Sun, the direct heat energy from the Sun, to shortwave? Hasn’t it deliberately screwed with real world physics? Isn’t it deliberately confusing by mixing up terms?
Does that Solar Constant relate at all to visible light or is it simply an inaccurate ‘transliteration’ of the traditional physics Btu heat measurement which is Radiation=Thermal Infrared? As the earlier link I gave showed for the US.
All, all, the heat we feel from the Sun is thermal infrared.
The amount that the other electromagnetic wave lengths are capable of directly heating matter is non-existant.
For those claiming that shortwave direct from the Sun physically heats the water in the oceans – prove it. Show and tell.
Or admit you’ve been had.
And let’s move on.
It works both ways:
If the Arctic/Antarctic can warm & shrink in tandem, they can also freeze and grow.
The road ahead might well be of an icier variety. There is nothing going on right now that says there will not be another Ice Age, that I can see. The last 8 Ice Ages were oblivious to CO2 levels, so what makes this one any different?
Now, now, folks, it really is cruel to taunt Dr. Svalgard by thinking unauthorized thoughts. It gets him all riled up and the next thing you know he’ll be out on the porch shouting “You kids get those theories off my lawn!”.
Nolo Contendere says:
June 23, 2012 at 7:18 pm
“You kids get those theories off my lawn!”.
In science, “theory” means something specific. What was peddling here was not ‘theory’, but simply nonsense. But such is there much of on the Internet, even on WUWT.
Thank you, Leif! As you [as usual] correctly point out, the term “theory” has a very specific meaning in science. Before theory, there is hypothesis. Before hypothesis, there is conjecture. And before conjecture, there is nonsense: witch doctor territory.
As far as I can see [which I admit may not be very far], CO2=AGW is a conjecture, and CO2=CAGW is nonsense.
Myrrh asked, with specific reference to a DOE web site on solar panels:
“Why (w-h/m**2 in one place and btu/ft**2 in another)? Because they’re measuring different properties, different entities? ”
Actually, no. It’s because heating systems are typically described in BTUs and electrical loads are typically described in watts, watt-hours and related units. Describing the panels in these 2 different ways makes it easier for the electrical guys or the heating guys to figure out the answer to “how much is enough?” without going through an awkward conversion. The plate on the side of my furnace describes its heat output in BTUs. The electrical loads in my house have little plates that describe their requirements in watts or kilowatts (or amps, which is a convenient conversion to watts when you know the voltage).
Since scientists aren’t generally concerned with heating houses, they tend to use Watts, meters and similar units. Many of these units “play well” with the Metric system, which itself is convenient for lots of reasons. BTU/ft**2 would not fit in very well.
By the way, you referenced w/m**2 and BTU/ft**2 in asking how a chart would be different in BTU/ft**2. That wouldn’t work at all because w/m**2 is not the same kind of measurement as BTU/ft**2. Watts are a measure of power. To measure energy, like BTUs, you use watt-hours.
There’s a pretty good Wikipedia article on insolation that can help you understand how the Sun heats the Earth and, yes, much of it is done with visible light.
———
Arctic ice volume plotted in an interesting way:
http://iwantsomeproof.com/extimg/sia_5.png