Guest essay by James McCown
Oxford economists Felix Pretis and David Hendry (henceforth Pretis), published a critical paper, with a very patronizing and sanctimonious tone, in 2013 in Earth System Dynamics to comment on earlier research by Beenstock, Reingewertz, and Paldor (2012), (henceforth Beenstock) in the same journal. Amazingly, they didn’t bother to note that their criticisms, if accurate, also invalidate the results of previous researchers who support the AGW theory.
Beenstock’s research concerns the issue of whether or not there is a statistical relation between the radiative forcing of greenhouse gases (GHG), and atmospheric temperatures, using advanced statistical methods that were developed by economists. There have been a number of researchers who have previously used this methodology to discern a relation between the GHGs and temperature, including both climatologists and economists. The latter include James Stock at Harvard, one of the foremost experts at time series econometrics.
Beenstock’s paper was in response to earlier papers by pro-AGW researchers Stern and Kaufman (2000), Kaufman and Stern (2002), Kaufman, Kauppi and Stock (2006), and Liu and Rodriguez (2005), and several others, who claimed to have found an equilibrium relation between radiative forcing from GHGs and atmospheric temperatures. The main contribution of Beenstock was to show that there cannot be an equilibrium relation between temperatures that are integrated of order one, I(1), and GHGs integrated of order 2, I(2), unless they are polynomially cointegrated. And Beenstock show they are not polynomially cointegrated.
Beenstock’s conclusion (from their abstract) is:
…greenhouse gas forcing, aerosols, solar irradiance and global temperature are not polynomially cointegrated, and the perceived relationship between these variables is a spurious regression phenomenon.
Pretis criticize Beenstock’s use of spliced data for atmospheric CO2 and N2O, and criticize them for not stating that this data comes from a variety of different sources. However, they do not criticize the previously mentioned pro-AGW researchers who used the exact same data.
Pretis criticize Beenstock for finding the time series properties of the radiative forcing of the three human-emitted GHGs to be integrated of order 2, I(2), even though the pro-AGW researchers came to the same conclusion. And they don’t bother to mention that the pro-AGW researchers also found the GHGs to be I(2).
Pretis’ comment shows dismayingly flawed logic. To give an analogy to what they have done: Suppose that Kaufman claimed to have built a house, from the foundation to the roof. Beenstock claim that Kaufman could not have done so, by proving that they never shingled the roof. Pretis reply that Beenstock are in error, because Pretis prove that the foundation was never laid. Therefore Beenstock must be wrong and Kaufman is right! The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it sounds.
Pretis point out there is a structural break in the annual data for CO2 at 1957 (Hardly surprising since that is the point at which the data were spliced from the different sources), then they run Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) unit root tests (Said and Dickey, 1984) on the first differences of the data for the two subperiods from 1850 – 1957 and 1958 – 2011 (See Table 1 of Pretis), and conclude that the CO2 radiative forcing series cannot be I(2). However, Pretis omitted tests of the levels of the series, which would enable the researcher to determine whether the GHGs are I(1), which could potentially be cointegrated with the I(1) temperature series, as the warmist researchers have claimed.
I tested the CO2 radiative forcing for the two subperiods in levels, first differences, and second differences. I used the ADF test, and also the test by Kwiatkowski, Phillips, Schmidt, and Shin (1992) (KPSS). For the latter 1958 – 2011 period, I conclude the series is I(1), as did Pretis. However, for the earlier 1850 – 1957 period, which uses CO2 data from ice core measurements by Etheridge et al (1996), I got the following results:
| ADF with Trend & Constant | ADF D-lag | KPSS with Trend & Constant | |
| Levels | -3.496* | 2 | 0.126 |
| 1st Difference | -3.807* | 0 | 0.078 |
| 2nd Difference | -13.288** | 0 | 0.039 |
* Rejects null hypothesis of a unit root at 95% confidence
** Rejects null hypothesis of a unit root at 99% confidence
The ADF D-lag is the number of lags included in the ADF test, selected using the Schwarz criterion.
The KPSS test has the null hypothesis of stationarity with a trend and constant, versus the alternate hypothesis of a unit root. The results fail to reject the null hypothesis of stationarity at 95% confidence or higher.
The results of both tests indicate that time series of the levels of CO2 radiative forcing from 1850 to 1957 is well-modeled by a trend stationary process with no unit root. That is, I(0). An ordinary least squares regression of the series on the year gives the following relation:
RFCO2 = -9.935203+0.005346 x YEAR
where RFCO2 is the radiative forcing from the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, converted to radiative forcing using the method of Myhre et al (1998). This regression has an adjusted R-square of 0.988 and the slope coefficient has a t-statistic of 41.34.
The CO2 radiative forcing series is very close to a straight line. Since it does not have a unit root, it cannot be cointegrated with the nonstationary temperature data for the period from 1850 to 1957. See the following graph of the series:
Kaufman and Stern (2002) give their economic justification for the nonstationary time series of global average temperatures:
…changes in radiative forcing might introduce a stochastic trend in temperature if the radiative forcing variables have a stochastic trend. This is likely because the concentrations of trace gases and sulfate aerosols are driven by anthropogenic emissions, which are determined by the stochastic trends that characterize many macroeconomic time series.
But as can be seen in the graph above, and the tests of stationarity of CO2 I have conducted for the 1850 – 1957 period, the GHG that is widely viewed by the warmists as the primary culprit has a trend-stationary process. This leads me to believe that if the CO2 concentration is accurately measured by Etheridge et al (1996), then it is more likely the result of a natural process than from industrial sources.
The editors of Earth System Dynamics did not allow Beenstock to publish a response to Pretis’s comment. Beenstock made an informal response here: http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/4/C118/2013/esdd-4-C118-2013-supplement.pdf.
The last two sentences of Beenstock’s response are telling:
The main difference between this [warmist] literature and our paper is that we do not think that greenhouse gas emissions have a long term effect on Earth’s climate. Perhaps this is why HP waited until 2013 to voice their criticisms rather than 1997 when this literature was pioneered by Stern and Kaufmann.
Pretis have opened up a can of worms through their comment, and have likely done more damage to the warmist cause than help.
Furthermore, as an economist who has done research on pre-World War II data, I am struck by something I don’t see in the above chart. If the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is caused by burning fossil fuels, which has increased significantly during the industrial era, then why don’t we see any decrease, or at least a deceleration, during the great depression of 1929 to 1933?
The great depression had severe effects on two of the largest industrial economies: the USA and Germany. Industrial production in the USA, from 1929 to 1932, dropped by 46%. Coal production in the USA dropped from 608 million short English tons in 1929 to 359 million in 1932. In Germany, industrial production dropped by 42% from 1929 to 1932. German coal production dropped from 163 million metric tons in 1929 to 104 million in 1932.
And yet, according to Etheridge et al (1996), the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased from 307.2 ppm in 1929 to 308.9 ppm in 1933. And the concentration kept increasing every year after that until 1942. There was no deceleration in the increases. Either the theory that burning fossil fuels adds to the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is flawed, or perhaps Etheridge’s estimates of the concentration of this GHG are inaccurate. I don’t know which is the case.
References
Beenstock, M., Y. Reingewertz, and N. Paldor (2012). Polynomial cointegration tests of anthropogenic impact on global warming. Earth Syst. Dynam., 3, 173–188.
Etheridge, D. M., Steele, L. P., Langenfelds, L. P., and Francey, R. J.: 1996, ‘Natural and anthropogenic changes in atmosphericCO2 over the last 1000 years from air in Antarctic ice and firn’, J. Geophys. Res. 101, 4115–4128.
Liu, H. and G. Rodriguez (2006), Human activities and global warming: a cointegration analysis. Environmental Modelling & Software 20: 761 – 773.
Kaufmann, A., Kauppi, H., and Stock, J. H.: Emissions, concentrations and temperature: a time series analysis, Climatic Change, 77, 248–278, 2006.
Kaufmann, R. K. and Stern, D. I.: 2002, ‘Cointegration analysis of hemispheric temperature relations’, J. Geophys. Res. 107, D210.1029, 2000JD000174.
Kwiatkowski, D., Phillips, P. C. B., Schmidt, P., and Shin, Y.: Testing the null hypothesis of stationarity against the alternative of a unit root, J. Economet., 54, 159–178, 1992.
Myhre, G., Highwood, E. J., Shine, K. P., and Stordal, F.: New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases, Geophys. Res. Lett., 25, 2715–2718, 1998.
Pretis, F. and D. F. Hendry (2013). Comment on “Polynomial cointegration tests of anthropogenic impact on global warming” by Beenstock et al. (2012) – some hazards in econometric modelling of climate change. Earth Syst. Dynam., 4, 375–384.
Said, S. and Dickey, D.: Testing for unit roots in autoregressive moving average model with unknown order, Biometrika, 71, 599–607, 1984.
Stern, D. I., and R. K. Kaufmann, Detecting a global warming signal in hemispheric temperature series: A structural time series analysis, Clim. Change, 47, 411 –438, 2000.
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James McCown an economist with Toltec Group, an economic consulting practice in Oklahoma and has a PhD in economics from Ohio State. You can see some of his research here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=154208.
Willis:
This is the summary of the existing carbon cycle which I promised to provide.
Mechanisms of the carbon cycle
The IPCC reports provide simplified descriptions of the carbon cycle. In our paper, Rörsch et al. (2005), we considered the most important processes in the carbon cycle to be:
Short-term processes
1. Consumption of CO2 by photosynthesis that takes place in green plants on land. CO2 from the air and water from the soil are coupled to form carbohydrates. Oxygen is liberated. This process takes place mostly in spring and summer. A rough distinction can be made:
1a. The formation of leaves that are short lived (less than a year).
1b. The formation of tree branches and trunks, that are long lived (decades).
2. Production of CO2 by the metabolism of animals, and by the decomposition of vegetable matter by micro-organisms including those in the intestines of animals, whereby oxygen is consumed and water and CO2 (and some carbon monoxide and methane that will eventually be oxidised to CO2) are liberated. Again distinctions can be made:
2a. The decomposition of leaves, that takes place in autumn and continues well into the next winter, spring and summer.
2b. The decomposition of branches, trunks, etc. that typically has a delay of some decades after their formation.
2c. The metabolism of animals that goes on throughout the year.
3. Consumption of CO2 by absorption in cold ocean waters. Part of this is consumed by marine vegetation through photosynthesis.
4. Production of CO2 by desorption from warm ocean waters. Part of this may be the result of decomposition of organic debris.
5. Circulation of ocean waters from warm to cold zones, and vice versa, thus promoting processes 3 and 4.
Longer-term process
6. Formation of peat from dead leaves and branches (eventually leading to lignite and coal).
7. Erosion of silicate rocks, whereby carbonates are formed and silica is liberated.
8. Precipitation of calcium carbonate in the ocean, that sinks to the bottom, together with formation of corals and shells.
Natural processes that add CO2 to the system:
9. Production of CO2 from volcanoes (by eruption and gas leakage).
10. Natural forest fires, coal seam fires and peat fires.
Anthropogenic processes that add CO2 to the system:
11. Production of CO2 by burning of vegetation (“biomass”).
12. Production of CO2 by burning of fossil fuels (and by lime kilns).
Several of these processes are rate dependant and several of them interact.
At higher air temperatures, the rates of processes 1, 2, 4 and 5 will increase and the rate of process 3 will decrease. Process 1 is strongly dependent on temperature, so its rate will vary strongly (maybe by a factor of 10) throughout the changing seasons.
The rates of processes 1, 3 and 4 are dependent on the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The rates of processes 1 and 3 will increase with higher CO2 concentration, but the rate of process 4 will decrease.
The rate of process 1 has a complicated dependence on the atmospheric CO2 concentration. At higher concentrations at first there will be an increase that will probably be less than linear (with an “order” <1). But after some time, when more vegetation (more biomass) has been formed, the capacity for photosynthesis will have increased, resulting in a progressive increase of the consumption rate.
Processes 1 to 5 are obviously coupled by mass balances. Our paper (4) assessed the steady-state situation to be an oversimplification because there are two factors that will never be “steady”:
I. The removal of CO2 from the system, or its addition to the system.
II. External factors that are not constant and may influence the process rates, such as varying solar activity.
Modeling this system is a difficult because so little is known concerning the rate equations. However, some things can be stated from the empirical data.
At present the yearly increase of the anthropogenic emissions is approximately 0.1 GtC/year. The natural fluctuation of the excess consumption (i.e. consumption processes 1 and 3 minus production processes 2 and 4) is at least 6 ppmv (which corresponds to 12 GtC) in 4 months. This is more than 100 times the yearly increase of human production, which strongly suggests that the dynamics of the natural processes here listed 1-5 can cope easily with the human production of CO2. A serious disruption of the system may be expected when the rate of increase of the anthropogenic emissions becomes larger than the natural variations of CO2. But the above data indicates this is not possible.
The accumulation rate of CO2 in the atmosphere (1.5 ppmv/year which corresponds to 3 GtC/year) is equal to almost half the human emission (6.5 GtC/year). However, this does not mean that half the human emission accumulates in the atmosphere, as is often stated. There are several other and much larger CO2 flows in and out of the atmosphere. The total CO2 flow into the atmosphere is at least 156.5 GtC/year with 150 GtC/year of this being from natural origin and 6.5 GtC/year from human origin. So, on the average, 3/156.5 = 2% of all emissions accumulate.
The above qualitative considerations suggest the carbon cycle cannot be very sensitive to relatively small disturbances such as the present anthropogenic emissions of CO2. However, the system could be quite sensitive to temperature. So, our paper considered how the carbon cycle would be disturbed if – for some reason – the temperature of the atmosphere were to rise, as it almost certainly did between 1880 and 1940 (there was an estimated average rise of 0.5 °C in average surface temperature).
It is that temperature effect I have been reporting in this thread.
But the effect of temperature on atmospheric CO2 emission would be very different in an Ice Age because all the processes 1 to 7 and processes 8 and 10 would be different. There is no data which indicates seasonal variation in the last Ice Age and, therefore, the relationship of temperature and CO2 cannot be determined for that climate state.
Richard
levi pearson says:
June 29, 2014 at 5:19 pm
Stalin’s first Five Year Plan (1928-32) was cut short at four years because of the horrendous suffering & disruption it caused, but the regime claimed to have raised coal production from 35.4 to 65.4 million long tons during that time. Even if accurate, the alleged increase could not compensate for the drop in use in the much larger economies of developed Western countries after 1929. For instance, US coal production crashed from over 600 million short tons to under 400 million early in the Depression.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1942/russian-economy/ch01.htm
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/052504_coal_peak.html
richardscourtney says:
June 30, 2014 at 11:24 am
Willis Eschenbach:
Thanks for that, Richard, and anything’s possible, I’d have to look at it, but guess what … it’s paywalled. Which is why I haven’t read it the other times you’ve referred to it.
I’ll read it if you post it. I look forward to your explanation of how if temperature drives CO2 we didn’t get a 500 ppmv increase after the ice ages.
w.
PS—You make the argument that if there are annual fluctuations in a system of an amplitude X, that means that the system is capable of handling an ADDITIONAL input of X … as in, CO2 varies by X annually, and therefore it can sequester an ADDITIONAL amount X of CO2 annually … I’ll leave that for the reader to determine if your argument makes sense.
Willis Eschenbach:
Thankyou for your reply to me at June 30, 2014 at 12:34 pm.
As you know I am now on the Editorial Board of E&E so I cannot by-pass the publisher’s paywall. However, my paper to the Heartland 1 Conference is almost entirely a ‘copy & paste’ from the paper and I will send you a copy of that. I need to access my main computer to do that and my health issues prevent me doing that until tomorrow when I will do it.
I apologise for the delay until tomorrow.
You conclude saying to me
I did explain that in my posts you say you are answering.
I wrote
Your “500 ppmv increase after the ice ages” assumes the relationship of temperature and atmospheric CO2 was the same in the Ice Ages as now but the only thing we know about that with certainty is they would NOT be the same.
Richard
Willis Eschenbach:
I am making a separate reply to the PS to of your post at June 30, 2014 at 12:34 pm.
It says
That is NOT what I said.
I wrote
I said the natural fluctuation is “more than 100 times the yearly increase of human production” and that is very different from saying the natural fluctuation and the additional input are each equal to X.
The fluctuation is net sequestration for half the year. Hence, it is obviously true that the net sequestration of the fluctuation “strongly suggests that the dynamics of the natural processes here listed 1-5 can cope easily with the human production of CO2”.
Also, if the anthropogenic addition were overloading the sequestration processes then the increase to CO2 remaining in the air should increase with the increase to the addition. As I explained, it does not; i.e. I said
And the dynamics of the seasonal variation also deny such overloading at all locations; i.e. Estevan, Alert, Shetland, etc.. This is the Keeling Curve of atmospheric CO2 obtained at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. since 1958
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-mlo.html
At all locations the seasonal variation is a saw-tooth and not a a sine wave (this saw-tooth is least noticeable at Mauna Loa so it is not a cheat to show it). There is no reduction to sequestration rate as ‘sinks’ fill: the seasonal cycle switches from a rate of sequestration to a rate of accumulation. Clearly, the sinks do not fill. As I said,
and as I also said
Fday
Richard
Oops, I don’t know where Fday came from. It has no meaning.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
June 30, 2014 at 12:49 pm
Thanks, Richard. Actually I was unaware you were on the Editorial Board, or I wouldn’t have asked. Thanks for your offer, please send me the copy, and you have my best wishes regarding your health issues.
w.
Willis,
I’m asking for a favor. Would you read my reference all the way through and comment.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ygv83mwpytn4p65/AN%20ENGINEER%E2%80%99S%20TAKE%20ON%20MAJOR%20CLIMATE%20CHANGE%20F.53.pdf
There are many things you don’t like about it as you have already said. Nonetheless, it just might surprise you with some of its insight.
RonaldVoisin@gmail.com
Ron Voisin says:
July 1, 2014 at 10:20 am
Ron, I’m very sorry to say this, and I invite you to take it in the positive spirit in which it is offered, as I am not your opponent and I enjoy your comments … but your prose is simply too dense, too long, too tangled, too detailed, and too unclear to follow. I’ve tried to read it three times now, and stopped from a combination of ennui, frustration, and impatience. If you ever want your ideas to get traction in this world, you need to boil it down, boil it down again, and then boil some more.
I find it important to convert my ideas into either an “elevator speech” or a “matchbook speech”. The “elevator speech” is the speech you’d give if you have the length of an elevator ride (call it 30 seconds) to convince someone of the validity of your theory. The “matchbook speech” is even shorter, just the main ideas that you could write on the back of a matchbook.
So let me invite you to make your elevator speech to us about your hypothesis. Read it out loud before you post it, and trim it to where you can read it in thirty seconds. It is an important exercise, because it will force you to discard the dross and concentrate on the gold.
Obviously, you’ve thought long and hard about this, and I’m not trying to either diss or dissuade you, as I enjoy your interest and your point of view. It’s just that your cited work is well over my TL,DR limit.
All the best,
w.
Willis,
Here is the 730 word elevator ride:
Hypothesis Summary to a Geo-Reactor Explanation of Major Climate Change
Any attempt to confine the scope of major climate change drivers to CO2 or solar phenomena (or both) is bound to run afoul of “first principles”. There simply is no climate “hammer” to be found in these areas. Without a “hammer” we become compelled to search for powerful positive feedback amplifiers to explain major change driven by small perturbations. But such amplifiers always and intrinsically lead to an unstable and precarious system and therefore, most likely don’t exist. Somewhere there must be a “hammer” – a powerful and overriding, yet limited in extent, driver that comes and goes without feedbacks, positive or negative. Otherwise we would not be here to debate this issue.
An examination of the ice core data reveals that this hypothetical climate “hammer” is able to move the nominally equilibrated mean temperature of the Earth by as much as 10-12OC as its modulating effect comes in and out of play. I propose that this temperature modulation arises from a core geo-reactor that takes on two primary states. In one state, its fissionable materials are relatively scattered such that the reactor kinetics are characterized by little chain-reaction. It is in this state that the Earth experiences major glaciation. In the other state, the core geo-reactor’s fissionable materials are highly proximate and appropriately moderated such that the reactor kinetics are characterized by a great deal of chain-reaction. It is in this state that the Earth experiences the warming of an interglacial period.
I further propose that in the early history of the Earth, when the nuclear fuel available to power this geo-reactor was more abundant, the geo-reactor’s duty-cycle was characteristically in the “on” state, with only sparsely spaced shorter periods of scattered low activity. Collectively these epochs are known as the “hot house”. As time passed and fuel availability diminished the geo-reactor’s duty-cycle shifted over time to the state of affairs observed over the last several million years (most likely many). This more recent duty-cycle is characterized by generally being in the “off” state with only sparsely spaced shorter periods of high activity. Collectively this more recent period of time is also known as the “ice-house”. (Fuel availability may have shifted the duty-cycle rather abruptly ~25M years ago.)
I further propose that the impetus for generating these recent, sparsely spaced, shorter periods of high activity has become synchronized to the celestial mechanics of the 100k year Milankovitch Cycle of orbital eccentricity (for the last 1My or so). And while the classic interpretation of Milankovitch Theory has been confounded in that it expects glacial events to fall on eccentricity maxima, when empirical data show them falling on eccentricity minima the proposal herein resolves this matter. According to the proposal herein, eccentricity maxima incite high geo-reactor kinetics for a limited period of time (an interglacial), leaving the longer glacial period to exist during eccentricity minima.
Further, during the 4My prior to the last 1My, I propose that the intermediate fuel availability of this period allowed the synchronization to be paced by the smaller, more rapid celestial perturbations of obliquity and/or precession.
If the foregoing statements are true, there should be a significant correlation to be discerned between rates of tectonic activity and large scale Earth temperature swings. In order to determine rates of tectonic activity over time it is required to accurately date sub-ocean crust samples. However, the current state-of-the-art regarding oceanic crust sample dating is very limited. Least count time resolution of this type of sample dating has, until recently, been limited to a few million years leaving no opportunity to observe a tectonic activity rate relationship to the 100ky orbital eccentricity cycle. Recent work at the Univ. of Wyoming has provided an improved, albeit laborious and expensive, dating technology for sub-oceanic crust samples. The new technique yields a least count time resolution of ~10ky which should be readily capable to resolve the proposed relationship.
In the event that the proposed relationship can be definitively established, I further propose that this would constitute substantial and compelling evidence of major climate change being primarily driven by geo-reactor energy output variability. Only a very short time ago we considered solar activity to be substantially invariant. We now know otherwise. It may well be so that the core geo-reactor is similarly highly variant, but yet more consequentially so; and currently synchronized to orbital eccentricity.
Ron Voisin says:
July 2, 2014 at 5:35 am
Thanks, Ron, that’s very clear. Let me give you my three main objections to your hypothesis:
1. Lack of evidence.
2. Lack of evidence.
3. Lack of evidence.
As near as I can tell, you have no evidence for your hypothesis.
Now, let me look at the other side, what we do have evidence for.
The main piece of evidence we have against your theory is the known thermal conductivity of the earth. In order for the heat to be coming up from below, it has to pass through the earth. But with the known thermal conductivity of the earth, for there to be a significant amount of heat passing through it, the core would have to be unimaginably hot.
Here’s a thought experiment. ASSUME that there is a 1 W/m2 forcing from geothermal heat at the surface. There isn’t, there’s only about a hundredth of that, let’s call it a tenth of that to be really conservative … so IF we had a 1 W/m2 forcing at the surface, how much hotter would the core have to be to maintain that flow?
Well, the thermal flow varies linearly with ∆T, the temperature difference between the core and the surface. So the answer is, of course, that the core would have to be ten times hotter than it is today … do you find that reasonable? And that’s just to get a measly 1 W/m2 increase in forcing, an amount so small that it would be lost in the noise.
Here’s a curious fact … the temperature of the core of the earth is about the temperature of the surface of the sun. Your claim says that in the recent past it was ten times the temperature of the sun … seems extremely doubtful.
Next, if there is a varying amount of heat coming up through the earth, it would pass as a “wave” through the crustal rock. This is the basis of using boreholes to detect past temperatures, for example.
So if there were a varying impulse of geothermal heat from the core, we’d see it as a change in the temperatures of the earth in the deep boreholes. As far as I know, no one has ever claimed to have seen such a signal.
Anyhow, that’s just off of the top of my head. In addition, you’d have to explain how the geo-reactor got synchronized with the Milankovitch cycles which are known to initiate the ice ages … and I’m sure there are more issues with the hypothesis.
Short answer? I’m not seeing how it would even be theoretically possible.
Sorry, but that’s my honest opinion …
w.
Willis,
There is a great deal of literature for an Earth geo-reactor. It’s size is what has been debated.
As insufferable as you find my essay, each of your concerns with the hypothesis is dealt with in the essay (though not necessarily to your liking).
Ron
Ron Voisin says:
July 3, 2014 at 5:42 am
Thanks, Ron. Regarding your claim … yes and no. There has been lots of literature about small local natural geo-reactors, particularly since the first discovery of the remains of a natural geo-reactor in Gabon in 1972. Since then, about a dozen of them have been found. They have all been short-lived and of modest power, putting out about 100 kilowatts or so for a couple hundred years.
There has NOT been much discussion of the earth as a global-scale reactor which influences the climate and is responsible for things like ice ages.
Next, is your essay “insufferable”? Nope. It’s just too many words for too little gain. I’m 67, I don’t have hours to waste prospecting for diamonds.
In any case, if there’s lots of literature on a natural global-scale climate-influencing geo-reactor such as you describe, please cite the three main studies in the field, so I can get a handle on what you’re talking about.
Many thanks,
w.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11038-006-9123-5
http://www.pnas.org/content/98/20/11085.full.pdf
http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3568
Willis,
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11038-006-9123-5
http://www.pnas.org/content/98/20/11085.full.pdf
http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3568
Thanks for the links, Ron, much appreciated. Having the documents in hand makes things much clearer.
Is there a global geo-reactor? Possibly, although none of the three papers make that claim. Instead, they point out that it is theoretically possible. They speculate that the geo-reactor affects the magnetic field.
However, I don’t see any of the three papers saying that the theoretical geo-reactor changes either the global temperature or the heat flow of the earth. Actually, middle paper says the opposite, viz:
Now, there are 5.11E+14 square metres on the surface. So we can convert their figures to per-square-metre figures, bearing in mind that about 240 W/m2 enter the planet constantly from the sun. I’ll quote their data with conversions:
“Terrestrial heat flow is about 45 TW.” This converts to about 0.09 watts per square metre (W/m2 ), and is about the value I cited to you from memory in the discussion above.
“The uranium fission geo-reactor simulation discussed in the present paper was constrained to operate at a constant power level of 3 TW.” This converts to about 0.01 W/m2.
As you can see, even if the reactor were to wuickly double its output during some periods, and go almost to zero at other periods (which none of the papers claims is happening), the difference in heat flow at the surface would only be ± 0.01 W/m2 … lost in the noise.
To summarize: Theoretical calculations indicate that it is possible that there is a planetary geo-reactor. However, we have little evidence for its existence … but in any case, the change in heat flow IF such a reactor exists would be a heat gain or loss at the surface of plus or minus a hundredth of one watt per square metre.
Thanks again for providing the links, they turn a discussion into a scientific discussion.
Regards,
w.