It's the Sun stupid – The minor significance of CO2

Only thing worse than danceing on the head of a pin is danceing on the head of the wrong pin.

lsvalgaard,
Sorry for not making myself clear. You said above that, ” CO2 comes from the oceans then when the oceans have outgassed their CO2, warming stops, no? No matter how long you boil Coca Cola, after the initial fizz is gone, it is gone.” I then said you then must believe, therefore, there is NO negative forcing, i.e. when all the CO2 that outgasses, warming stops. You then said, ” Are saying that CO2 has negative forcing? I don’t think so.” No, that is not what I said.

CRISP says
CO2 produces energy!!! Fantastic. Who knew? I must get some…
Henry says
true. Good comment.
I also have to laugh at those who refuse to answer me on my post but then prefer to make personal attacks. See here
anthony says
REPLY: wrong Henry – its Leif, and he’s right – Anthony
henry@Anthony
Note that Leif quoted the last part of my post that I had addressed to Steven M.
and not to him, Leif.
I had added this last sentence only because I never get any replies from StevenM
Nevermind that, if Leif had answered the questions I had posed to StevenM, I would be happy.
But instead he chose to imply with that selective quote from the end that my post to StevenM contained nonsense.
Seeing now that you (Anthony) say that he (Leif) was right,
then can I ask you, Anthony, instead of Leif or StevenM, to answer me on my post, here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/20/its-the-sun-stupid-the-minor-significance-of-co2/#comment-1229527
seeing as that they (StevenM and Leif) simply refuse to answer?
thanks!

Leif “If you assume that the CO2 comes from the oceans then when the oceans have outgassed their CO2, warming stops, no? ”
No. The historical records shows that warming has often stopped and reversed direction while CO2 was still on the rise. Conversely cooling has often reversed itself and turned into warming while CO2 was still in decline. This tells you that the “feedback” strength of CO2 is weak enough that it can be easily overpowered by other elements of natural variation.

Dr Page says
Can you agree with the following propositions
1. On millenial and shorter time scales the Sun is the main climate driver.
2. CO2 is of minor significance – there is no need to waste billions on controlling CO2 emissions
3 There is a built in negative feed back in the system probably along the lines suggeted in the Trenberth link which prevents the earth from warming too much.
4 Variations in TSI alone do not account for the amplitude of temperature change on earth.
5.There is some other solar caused mechanism which acts in conjuction with or amplfies the TSI changes to affect the Temperature.
If you agree with the above and you don’t think the cloud hypothesis is useful could you give us conceptually some notion of what you think is happening.
Finally where you think earth’s temperature is headed in the next 30 years – ballpark guess.
Henry says
I would advise you to study my tables as they give a lot of insight as to what exactly is happening.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
Most of the energy comes in via the SH (if you look at maxima) but it is not causing any warming in the SH.(if you look at means). SH temps. have stayed remarkably constant. Most of the warming on earth (if you look at the means) happens in the NH. So, this (extra) warming of the past 50 years must have entered via the SH, mostly, and is spread by currents and wind to the NH.
So to answer your questions:
1) True. The sun /earth interaction seems to cause cooling and warming periods. Most likely the variation in the E-UV causes a variation in ozone, peroxides and nitrous oxides, at the TOA. For example, ozone is now increasing while global temperature is dropping.
2) If there were any warming caused by more GHG you would expect to see a slowing down of cooling. In that case you should see minima rising, pushing up means. If you look at all my tables that is just not happening. Over the longest period (38 years) the ratio is 0.036 to 0.014 to 0.006. That is 6: 2 : 1. So it was maxima pushing up means and minima and not the other way around. There may be a few places where I found minima rising faster than means but that was in places like Las Vegas where they turned a desert into a paradise in a few decades. (BTW that just shows that more vegetation causes some more heat entrapment, i.e. warming).
3) True. More warming causes more clouds which deflect more heat. At some stage a balance must reached where adding more heat will cause more cooling.
4) TSI may not change much when measured in total, but there could be a change in distribution within TSI caused by magnetic or gravitational factors which in turn sets off a chain of events leading to different reactions TOA, which in turn leads to increased ozone & others, leading to more back radiation of SW radiation, which is the main component heating the SH oceans.
5)As explained above 4). The dates for the bending points for the measured increases in ozone both NH and SH correlate closely to my proposed best fit for the drop in maximum temperatures which give 1951 and 1995 as significant dates..
The Svensmark cloud proposition is not useful. I can show you an interesting correlation with the flooding of the Nile. During a cooling period – such as now – you simply get more clouds and more snow and rain at lower latitudes. Cooling off at higher latitudes will be remarkable (look at the results for Anchorage!) plus you will get more droughts to the north.

Kelvin says
Here is the spookey thing. The temperature seemed to lead the sun spot number. It seemed to know how the sun spot number would go
Henry says
Jolly good show. Good independent research. It would be very possible for me to ponder that “the thing” that causes the change TOA (in the concentration of certain substances) is actually happening before it becomes visible as something happening on the sun. I think “the thing” could well be something magnetic or a magnetic force coming from the sun/earth that Vukcevik has been thinking about. I don’t know much about that. But always remember, in the end, what earth does with “the thing” is smooth it out over time and its space. Hence, the A-C curve or binomial curve when you evaluate the change in maxima over time….
I can check your result at other stations. Which is your source for SSN data?

My above comment to Jon Schneider, answers Dr. Svalgaard’s question. I really do not care if the sun, a variable star according to astronomers, remains constant. What I care about is a decrease in insolation or other solar influence that effects the climate. My concern is not the mile high glacier sitting on NYC, I will be long dead by then, but the wild climate oscillations linked to the ending of an interglacial.
There are many other factors involved that have not been solved due to the bonehead insistence that CO2 is the control knob of the climate. There are the Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillations, Bond Events, and Heinrich Events and we do not know what caused them NOAA link
Dr. McClenney mentioned the Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillations too.

I am familiar to Rahmstorf’s research, but also to a great deal of other papers where the back and forth of the origin of the D-O oscillations are debated at length. I think Sole, Turiel and Llebot summed this up nicely (reposting the last bits):

“Our analysis of the warming phase seems to indicate a universal triggering mechanism, what has been related with the possible existence of stochastic resonance [1,13, 21]. It has also been argued that a possible cause for the repetitive sequence of D/O events could be found in the change in the thermohaline Atlantic circulation [2,8,22,25]. However, a cause for this regular arrangement of cycles, together with a justification on the abruptness of the warming phase, is still absent in the scientific literature.”

Some more comments by Dr. McClenney on D-O oscillations

The vast research I have done attempting to ferret out whatever is available on the last several ice ages and interglacials, especially the transitions, suggests that the single greatest mystery in all of climate science is what causes abrupt climate change in the absence of hominid emissions. Evidence for D-O oscillations extends as far back as 680 million years in varves found in lacustrine sedimentary rocks. Which neatly extends this out of the tectonic regime.
So in response to your first point, the above suggests that it might not be all that simple to assess the causation of D-O events, in fact this science is not at all settled. In fact, if I had the time I could reference/quote many papers which suggest the recognition of D-O oscillations within both the Eemian and the Holocene. And they might be right. There do appear to be upper limits on earth’s warm state in the ride down from the PETM. So the D-O signal would be anticipated to be muted at the upper end of the scale and most observable in contrast to the cold state limits. …
If we take a stroll between this interglacial and the last one back, the Eemian, we find in the Greenland ice cores that there were 24 Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillations. Sole et al, 2007), or abrupt warmings that occurred from just a few years to mere decades that average between 8-10C rises (D-O 19 scored 16C). The nominal difference between earth’s cold (glacial) and warm (interglacial) states being on the order of 20C. D-O events average 1470 years, the range being 1-4kyrs….
Sole, Turiel and Llebot writing in Physics Letters A (366 [2007] 184–189) identified three classes of D-O oscillations in the Greenland GISP2 ice cores A (brief), B (medium) and C (long), reflecting the speed at which the warming relaxes back to the cold glacial state:

“In this work ice-core CO2 time evolution in the period going from 20 to 60 kyr BP [15] has been qualitatively compared to our temperature cycles, according to the class they belong to. It can be observed in Fig. 6 that class A cycles are completely unrelated to changes in CO2 concentration. We have observed some correlation between B and C cycles and CO2 concentration, but of the opposite sign to the one expected: maxima in atmospheric CO2 concentration tend to correspond to the middle part or the end the cooling period. The role of CO2 in the oscillation phenomena seems to be more related to extend the duration of the cooling phase than to trigger warming. This could explain why cycles not coincident in time with maxima of CO2 (A cycles) rapidly decay back to the cold state. ”
“Nor CO2 concentration either the astronomical cycle change the way in which the warming phase takes place. The coincidence in this phase is strong among all the characterized cycles; also, we have been able to recognize the presence of a similar warming phase in the early stages of the transition from glacial to interglacial age. Our analysis of the warming phase seems to indicate a universal triggering mechanism, what has been related with the possible existence of stochastic resonance [1,13, 21]. It has also been argued that a possible cause for the repetitive sequence of D/O events could be found in the change in the thermohaline Atlantic circulation [2,8,22,25]. However, a cause for this regular arrangement of cycles, together with a justification on the abruptness of the warming phase, is still absent in the scientific literature.”

In their work, at least 13 of the 24 D-O oscillations (indeed other workers suggest the same for them all), CO2 was not the agent provocateur of the warmings but served to ameliorate the relaxation back to the cold glacial state, something which might have import whenever we finally do reach the end Holocene. Instead of triggering the abrupt warmings it appears to function as somewhat of a climate “security blanket”, if you will.
…“Skeptics” and “Warmists” thus find themselves on the mutual, chaotic climate ground where the efficacy of CO2 as a GHG had better be right.

(Dr. McClenney’s comments for both my comments come from articles and comments at WUWT, from “the CONVERSATION” a University blog link and from the Huffington Post comment section link
Bond Events:

A Pervasive Millennial-Scale Cycle in North Atlantic
Holocene and Glacial Climates
Gerard Bond,* William Showers, Maziet Cheseby, Rusty Lotti,
Peter Almasi, Peter deMenocal, Paul Priore, Heidi Cullen,
Irka Hajdas, Georges Bonani
ABSTRACT
Evidence from North Atlantic deep sea cores reveals that abrupt shifts punctuated what is conventionally thought to have been a relatively stable Holocene climate. During each of these episodes, cool, ice-bearing waters from north of Iceland were advected as far south as the latitude of Britain. At about the same times, the atmospheric circulation above Greenland changed abruptly. Pacings of the Holocene events and of abrupt climate shifts during the last glaciation are statistically the same; together, they make up a series of climate shifts with a cyclicity close to 1470 Ϯ 500 years. The Holocene events, therefore, appear to be the most recent manifestation of a pervasive millennial-scale climate cycle operating independently of the glacial-interglacial climate state. Amplification of the cycle during the last glaciation may have been linked to the North Atlantic’s
thermohaline circulation.
….Hence, contrary to the conventional view, the North Atlantic’s Holocene climate must have undergone a series of abrupt reorganizations, each with sufficient impact to force concurrent increases in debris-bearing drift ice at sites more than 1000 km apart and overlain today by warm, largely ice-free surface waters of the North Atlantic and Irminger currents. The ice-rafted debris (IRD) events exhibit a distinct pacing on millennial scales, with peaks at about 1400, 2800, 4200, 5900, 8100, 9400, 10,300, and 11,100 years ago….
We argue that the immediate cause of the Holocene ice-rafting events was a series of ocean surface coolings, each of which appears to have been brought about by a rather substantial change in the North Atlantic’s surface irculation. The most consistent evidence of ocean surface coolings is the succession of prominent increases in Globigerina quinqueloba …. Although some of the faunal shifts are not large, all are defined by more than one species, and they are correlative at two widely separated sites. Moreover, because the foraminiferal concentrations increased markedly during most events….

The there is the new paper on the bi-polar see-saw where the ice increases in the Antarctic and decreases in the Arctic. Sound familiar?

Can we predict the duration of an interglacial?
P. C. Tzedakis1 , E. W. Wolff2 , L. C. Skinner3 , V. Brovkin4 , D. A. Hodell3 , J. F. McManus5 , and D. Raynaud
Abstract
Differences in the duration of interglacials have long been apparent in palaeoclimate records of the Late and Middle Pleistocene. However, a systematic evaluation of such differences has been hampered by the lack of a metric that can be applied consistently through time and by difficulties in separating the local from the global component in various proxies. This, in turn, means that a theoretical framework with predictive power for interglacial duration has remained elusive. Here we propose that the interval between the terminal oscillation of the bipolar seesaw and three thousand years (kyr) before its first major reactivation provides an estimate that approximates the length of the sea-level high-stand, a measure of interglacial duration.
… The onset of interglacials occurs within 2 kyr of the boreal summer insolation maximum/precession minimum and is consistent with the canonical view of Milankovitch forcing pacing the broad timing of interglacials. Glacial inception always takes place when obliquity is decreasing and never after the obliquity minimum. …
A corollary of all this is that we should also be able to predict the duration of the current interglacial in the absence of anthropogenic interference. The phasing of precession and obliquity (precession minimum/insolation maximum at 11 kyr BP; obliquity maximum at 10 kyr BP) would point to a short duration, although it has been unclear whether the subdued current summer insolation minimum (479Wm−2), the lowest of the last 800 kyr, would be sufficient to lead to glaciation (e.g. Crucifix, 2011). Comparison with MIS 19c, a close astronomical analogue characterized by an equally weak summer insolation minimum (474Wm−2) and a smaller overall decrease from maximum summer solstice insolation values, suggests that glacial inception is possible despite the subdued insolation forcing, if CO2 concentrations were 240±5 ppmv (Tzedakis et al., 2012).
….In a similar vein, the end of terminal Heinrich Event 11 defines the onset of the Last Interglacial

So we are back to the events with unknown causes. (Heinrich events occur during some, but not all, of the periodic cold spells preceding the rapid warming events known as Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events, which repeat around every 1,500 years.)
Graph showing obliquity The graph showing the calculated values for 300,000 years of orbital variation by Berger and Loutre, 1991. Taken from http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Giants/Milankovitch/milankovitch.html.