![Cretaceous_Trail_sign,_South_Table_Mountain[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/cretaceous_trail_sign_south_table_mountain1.jpg?quality=83)
An argument regularly advanced by alarmists is – can we afford to take the chance? This argument is often associated with a claim that a rise in global temperature greater than 2°C would be catastrophic – a theory backed by authoritative sounding computer simulations which suggest dangerous ocean acidification, deadly heat, and extreme weather.
It is all very well to simulate these scary possibilities, but at the end of the day a computer simulation is just an educated guess – it is no substitute for observation.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to actually observe what a warmer world would actually be like? What if it were possible to create a parallel Earth, dial up the CO2 level, and actually see what really happens? Would anyone bother running a computer simulation, if we could observe the reality?
We can’t create a new planet, but there is a way we can observe the effects of elevated levels of CO2, and higher global temperatures, without relying on computer simulations – because these are the conditions which prevailed during the Cretaceous Period, the age of the dinosaurs.
According to Wikipedia,
“The Cretaceous was a period with a relatively warm climate, resulting in high eustatic sea levels and creating numerous shallow inland seas. These oceans and seas were populated with now-extinct marine reptiles, ammonites and rudists, while dinosaurs continued to dominate on land. At the same time, new groups of mammals and birds, as well as flowering plants, appeared. The Cretaceous ended with a large mass extinction, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, in which many groups, including non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs and large marine reptiles, died out. The end of the Cretaceous is defined by the K–Pg boundary, a geologic signature associated with the mass extinction which lies between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.”
According to Wikipedia, the mean global temperature during the Cretaceous was 18c, 4c higher than today’s global temperature. The CO2 level in the Cretaceous was around 1700ppm, over 4x higher than today’s 400ppm.
Was the Cretaceous too warm for Earth’s diverse species? Absolutely not – the Cretaceous hosted a bounty of life and biodiversity, the emergence of the first flowering plants, the first appearance of our mammal ancestors. The Dinosaurs dominated the warm Cretaceous for 80 million years, a long period during which life flourished.
The event which finally brought this golden age of bounty and biodiversity to an end was the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. This event had nothing to do with prevailing CO2 levels, the extinction event was a gigantic meteor impact, the site of which is believed to be a location in the Gulf of Mexico, an impact which produced a crater over 100 miles across, and blotted out the sun, spreading a thin layer of Iridium dust across the entire World.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous–Paleogene_extinction_event
What can we learn from the the Cretaceous? In my opinion, the lesson from the Cretaceous is – we have nothing to fear from CO2. And if our civilisation has any money to spare on preparations for possible disasters, we should be spending that money on building meteor defences, not on trying to curb harmless CO2 emissions.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/15/a-problem-that-is-bigger-than-global-warming/
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Maybe someone reading and contributing to WUWT can explain in simple terms why adherents to CAGW believe (i.e., how they reason), that 2 degrees C (or even 4 degrees C) is a problem, aside from sea level rising. (and without all the unfounded BS about more extreme weather). Preferably a CAGW believer.
Not a believer, but I too have wondered what supposed catastrophes could actually occur. Hansen says we’re on the Venus Express, but even the Team doesn’t go that far.
As per your comment, extreme WX can be excluded. A warmer world is less stormy than a colder one. The engine of WX is the difference in temperature between the poles and equator. With less difference comes fewer and weaker storms, whether tropical cyclones or tornadoes over land.
Sea level rise from a two degree increase would take decades if not centuries to become a problem, so can be easily adapted to (I know that’s a preposition). During the Eemian, two degrees or warmer lasted thousands of years and still the GIS only melted a little. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet maybe some as well. No big deal.
Lately ocean “acidification” has been added to the list, but that’ also a non-starter, since the seas have been much less basic in the past with no worries.
The IPCC still clings to three to 4.5 degrees by AD 2100, but that becomes less and less likely the longer the “pause” continues. Clearly, earth at present is much less sensitive to CO2 doublings than imagined by the IPCC scary fiction writers, so even two degrees higher than AD 1850 seems improbable by AD 2100 (assuming a doubling from “pre-industrial” 280 ppm to 560 ppm by then) at equilibrium. And about 0.7 degree of that has already occurred, if the “adjusted” record is to be believed.
The problem is that they don’t reason. They believe what they have been told without question. Their reality has been constructed for them by the media and they seem to be incapable of accepting factual information that counters what they have unwittingly accepted as truth. Success in our educational system depends on how well what you are told can be repeated. The sad truth is that the majority of the population can be controlled by what information they expose themselves to and accept.
Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detector should be taught to middleschoolers, or some form of critical thinking anyway. The worst thing to do is tell students that any science is “settled”. Kids are taught not to question certain authority and as adults often retain this programming. It really can make life easier when someone tells you what the correct opinions are, so independent study and reasoning are not required.
While we’re fantasizing about a +2°C warmer world, it might do to contemplate the far-more likely scenario of -2°C, and what that might look like. During the Dalton Minimum, from 1790 to 1830 a 2°C cooling occurred in the space of 20 years. And cooling, as anyone with half a brain knows is far, far more deadly to all life, including humans.
Meteor defenses, got just the man for the job.
Winter is coming.
2 degrees warmer, most of it in the winter… oh horror! Instead of cosy -15C I would have to endure… I dont know -10C, -12C ? Or even -5C?
But I guess if I tried really hard I could maybe adapt.
Yes, you guys have it tough, having to adjust from freezing your nuts off in -15C to freezing you nuts off in -13C. Do you think over the next 100 years or so you will be able to make the leap? 🙂
I find it amazing the warmists gold standard for the just-right global temperature seems to be the end of the LIttle Ice Age when glaciers were swallowing Alpine villages and trees in the Urals could not grow. And millions in tax money are spent on bogus climate-engineering to deliver us back to those “Good O Days”
To make the LIA sound good, they gotta push all these climate horror stories that are mere fearful speculation about a warmer earth.
The problem is, the best and cheapest way to deflect meteors are H-bombs. But the left HATES those! We haven’t even exploded a single one in space yet to study the effects. It’s illegal!
Thanks jim for bringing on some reality. Here is are some more details about the Little Ice Age. The perfect, safe temperature.
The effects of the Little Ice Age on humanity from the literature. In short we had crop failures, hunger, mass migration, epidemics, great storms in the North Atlantic, Europe wide witch hunts, endemic Malaria in England & part of the Arctic Circle, higher wildfire frequency in circumboreal forests, strong droughts in central Africa (1400–1750), social unrest in China, dead Central American coral reef, century-scale droughts in East Africa, large increases in flood magnitude (upper Mississippi tributaries), environmental and economic deterioration in Norway, decline in average height of Northern European men, climate became drier on the Yucatan Peninsula, sudden and catastrophic end of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland, River Thames freeze-overs, agro-ecological, socioeconomic, and demographic catastrophes, leading to the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century.
The last flyby inside of one lunar distance was discovered about 24+ hours before its closest encounter with Earth.
And apparently, according to wik, Robert McNaught had his funding cut. He has spotted dozens and dozens of asteroids and comets, including the recent Comet Siding Spring which flew by Mars.
Instead, NASA wants to count molecules with OCO-2, and spy on human activity, looking for Almighty Tipping Points in the Anthropocene Age Paradigm. Global Warming is just a subcomponent of this scientific paradigm shift. Hippy horsemanure, I say!
So 24 hours is not a lot of time to prepare for an asteroid. The Russians however are claiming that their SS-18 Satan will be fitted to hit asteroids. Great.
ref: Wik R-36 Missile
NASA own words , no bucks no buck Rogers and right now the bucks are the CO2 scare
Anthony is correct as usual. The current climate is on the cold side. A couple of degrees warmer would be wonderful.
I also agree a couple of degrees warmer would be a good thing, but at the current rate of global warming we’re never going to get it.
“we have nothing to fear from CO2” – that in the context of an article focusing on a 2C, then a 4C warmer world.
Nothing ?
Not even the rise in sea level a 4C warming would result in ?
That would not only melt most, if not all of the Greenland ice cap, it would melt some of the Antarctic ice sheets.
So minimum 7m, probably much more sea level rise.
That’s a lot of cities that would each need billions spent on sea defences, plus the huge areas of low lying non-urban land across the world that would have to be abandoned to the sea – unless of course we are going to be told a warmer world won’t increase sea level.
King Canute all is forgiven.
More like 40 m sea level rise with 4 degrees. The inundated coastlines would be more than made up for with new arable and habitable land at high latitudes.
Consider the opposite, that is much more likely to happen, a glacial period. A drop in sea level that would leave most coastal cities without usable harbors, so they would need rebuilt anyway. Deserts would be much more widespread and much less land arable. And then you have the 2 km thick glaciers that would cover much of North America, Europe, and Asia which would leave almost all of the high latitudes completely uninhabitable.
“More like 40 m sea level rise with 4 degrees.”
That requires that all ice in Greenland, all ice in West Antarctica and about half of the ice in East Antarctica melts. That means that a 4 degree rise will cause ice to melt in areas where the temperature never reaches -4 degrees.
Even at a four degree C rise, it would take thousands of years at least to melt the GIS. Not that an increase of four degrees from human activity is remotely possible, since IPCC only gets there by making unsupported feedback assumptions.
Even the Father of Global Warming, Wallace Broecker, says that man-made CO2 would be worked out of the atmosphere within 1000 years.
James Abbott,
You can’t help yourself, can you? You just have to wring your mitts in front of the world.
In fact, atmospheric CO2 is entirely beneficial. Sea levels are not rising, temperatures are about to fall as the next ice age cometh. We will all die of cold and hunger. There now, feel better?
“Sea levels are not rising”
…
How do you explain this?
..
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Juan:
That is a fabrication. See NOAA Mean Sea Level Trends for the truth.
And Juan, please don’t bring anymore of your alarmist junk science to me.
Yup….I like what NOAA says about Global Sea Level Trends.
…
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/faq.htm
…..
“Additionally, a steady increase in global atmospheric temperature creates an expansion of saline sea water (i.e., salt water) molecules (called thermal expansion), thereby increasing ocean volume. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report estimates that the global sea level rise was approximately 1.7-1.8 millimeters per year (mm/yr) over the past century (IPCC, 2007), based on tide station measurements around the world”
…
Thank you for pointing out an additional resource.
juan, you reference thermal expansion, here is something you may have missed.
Here is a bonus.
It was about 8 degrees warmer in Greenland during the Eemian interglacial, and most of the ice certainly didn’t melt then (in all the ice.cores that have been taken on the main ice-cap none shows ice-free conditions during the Eemian). At the NEEM site the ice was actually slightly thicker than today.
Relatively little of the Greenland Ice Sheet melting during the Eemian, warmer & longer than the Holocene. A fraction of its Southern Dome did melt. But at the cooler temperature of the Holocene, even with the man-made warming assumed but not in evidence, it would take thousands of years more of interglacial now than then to produce even that small reduction in the ice sheet.
If, as some argue, the Holocene were to last twice as long as it has already, the natural melt wouldn’t be catastrophic. And whatever effect human GHGs might have would last less than 1000 years.
And what happened during the catastrophic melt of the Greenland ice sheet during the Eemian interglacial? 4C warming or more and here are the results of the ice stuck in a bowl.
Reminder: During the Eemian hippos splashed in the Thames and Rhine rivers. Hippos today live primarily in sub-saharan Africa in the tropical savannah climate. How warm did south east England get?
“STOP GLOBAL WHINNING!”
James.
There will be a number of Mediterranean towns, and no doubt others, that were ports ages ago that will be ports again.
But then CO2 is not driving the slight increase in temp. or sea level.
The comments from fear mongers, possibly with a hidden agenda, are driving the drivel. That drivel by itself, according to my predictive computer model, can cause a sea level increase of 5 metres.
Hilarious…
A benign AGW is still AGW by any cut.
Even M. Mann is clearly showing that he does not really believe in the AGW anymore.
You see… at 450ppm there is no any chance of a sign of AGW….already at 420ppm and no sign of AGW…the very main problem the AGW has with the reality, but still Mann claims a possible collapse of modern civilization and the modern way of life. Funny isn’t it!
Is like saying we would’t be able to see or experience any AGW because our modern way of life will collapse well before any chance for it.
At least he is covering all the possible grounds, and technically can’t be found wrong, as far as he is concerned, because he believes that no AGW means a much more danger.
I somehow understand that and to a degree accept it as a possible argument from a man like M. Mann… …but what I fail to understand is……how could a benign AGW could not be AGW…and why should it be acceptable as possible now, at this very point, for as long as it is not dangerous!
To me that seems a very foul approach. It simply helps the suppression of any scientific opposition to AGW by the sience itself.
While M. Mann’s last move seems to add more force towards that suppression….. your kinda of the “benign AGW” approach helps further the suppression.
So hilarious not to see this.
If you have any problem with the CO2 emissions interpretation in regard to climate and atmospheric changes….. and what that could mean….I will say you better start sticking to and supporting the AGW science, as the case of showing no any real danger or any immediate need to worry about CO2 emissions it is a very easy indeed case.
But I have to say that it would not be a support for better science, but incontrary will be a suppression of it.
cheers
from the wiki link –
co2 was 6 x pre-industrials levels @ur momisugly 1700
temperature was 4°C above modern level
so climate sensitivity = 2 x co2 = 0.67°C
Except that in reality it is the climate that controls the amount of CO2 in the air, not the other way around. That’s why our CO2 quickly absorbs into the oceans, we are in an ice age climate.
Well unfortunately we will never enjoy the comfort of a world climate like the Cretaceous. Plate tectonics’ control on the oceans and atmosphere are the first order control on Earth climate, not CO2. We will be lucky if we can make the next glacial period warmer for future generations.
Robert W Turner
November 4, 2014 at 12:07 pm
Hi Robert.
you say:
“We will be lucky if we can make the next glacial period warmer for future generations.”
———-
Please do allow me to make once more a point that I always try to “push” through.
Don’t get my reply to you the wrong way please.
But is really hard for people to really move away from an ACC-AGW mentality even in the case of someone like you.
You see, we making the next glaciation period warmer, we impacting climate to a degree of causing a new climate equilibrim, We making the Next Climate Equilibrium to be a New Climate Equilibrium, is a basic ACC-AGW claim.
That is achieved only if ACC-AGW probable,no matter to what extent or when and exactly how.
In natural terms the next climate equilibrium it will be exactly when and as supposes to be, a Next Climate Equilibrium.
There only two possibilities, either is going a be ACC-AGW, or a natural climate change, regardless what our current understanding about the CO2 emissions role in it all.
Even contemplaiting the possibility of any kinda of “hybrid” climatic outcome, for the sake of the argument, still that “hybrid” will be an anthropogenic one and not natural. 🙂
hope you get the point I am trying a make.
cheers
Robert, I agree with what you say except your support of the idea that man somehow is not natural . Maybe the aliens caused the climate change and they are us.
An educated guess? I do not agree, it is even worse than a SWAG, (Super Wild Ass Guess), it is biased speculation using models to give the impression it is not speculation.
It similar to the speculation during the cold war space race, great advances made in technology and landing on the moon led to speculation as to when we would have colonies on Mars. Speculating on Mars colonies is fine, speculating as to our civiliaztion in 1000 years or the planets biosphere in a hundred years is fine. It is a travesty to dress up speculation as fact, hard evidence or proven theory.
This article fails to take into account a major breakthrough in geological history:
Once, we thought the Earth was flat and God had made it in six days. The Earth IS flat over a modest distance when you travel by foot. Eventually, mankind noticed the curves of the Earth and we got a spherical concept. This was refined as we measured the Earth. It is a bit flattened at the poles.
A child can look at a globe and see that Africa was once next to the Americas. Wegener did that in the early 20th century and came up with his Continental Drift theory. This theory was not accepted for decades until a subduction zone was found off Japan and a believable mechanism was found. That mechanism was incorrect as was totally proven by examination of sea-floor spreading. We are going to have to come up with new mechanisms.
I laughed out loud.
Sorry, but that is the most ridiculous gibberish I’ve ever seen posted on this blog. And our host is pretty liberal when it comes to gibberish.
Where do you suppose the water came from to fill the ocean basins after the earth “expanded”?
Where is the geological evidence for the continental connections you imagine within the past 200 million years? To take but one example, how about China & Australia/New Guinea?
The reason that plants & animals around the Arctic Ocean are similar is because they can spread from North America to Eurasia over ice or frequent land bridges. They can’t however get from Iceland to Norway.
Going farther back, plant & animal species show how the continents actually were conjoined in the past. Here, based upon actual scientific evidence, is how the world looked 195 million years ago, contrary to your baseless fiction:
http://www.scotese.com/jurassic.htm
While we’re fantasizing about a +2°C warmer world, it might do to contemplate the far-more likely scenario of -2°C, and what that might look like. During the Dalton Minimum from 1790 to 1830 a 2°C cooling occurred in the space of 20 years. And cooling, as anyone with half a brain knows is far, far more deadly to all life, including humans.
‘at the end of the day a computer simulation is just an educated guess – it is no substitute for observation.’
Well that is your struck down by the most holy ’cause ‘ then , as you can get no worse a heretic then to defame the most sacred ‘models’
Meanwhile take a close look at your skin you will see lots of little holes , their for sweat because human evolved in a warm climate , on the other hand without clothes human life would be virtual impossible on large parts of the planet. Now which is worse for humans , heat or cold ?
On the other hand when I take a look at my skin – doesn’t even have to be a close one – I see those hairs… YMMV!
So ~4x CO2 and ~4 deg C warmer. ECS =~1C.
2 C? (2 doublings x 2C = 4C)
2C. One doubling (2xCO2) gives 1C. Two doublings (4xCO2) give 2C. Three doublings (8xCO2) give 3C.
If it were true that CO2 caused warming with an ECS of 1C, which it doesn’t.
So we all learned that about the Cretaceous period many years ago. Maybe we need 31,000 scientists to send a letter CNN, TWC, etc… Overwhelm them with truth!!
Al Gore and Michael Mann in mankinis? We’re all gonna die!!!!!!
Has anyone else noticed the subtle change in rhetoric of the IPCC recently? Just like they moved from global warming to climate change they have now gone from 2C rise to 2C ABOVE PRE INDUSTRIAL LEVELS. So now the “threat” they are talking about in 85 years time is just 1.2C above today’s levels! Pathetic really.
Has anyone else noticed the subtle change in rhetoric of the IPCC recently? Just like they moved from global warming to climate change they have now gone from 2C rise to 2C ABOVE PRE INDUSTRIAL LEVELS. So now the “threat” they are talking about in 85 years time is just 1.2C above today’s levels! Pathetic really.
I suppose the real question should be
We have already experience the 0.8C and life is wonderful. The rest of the Warmists’ complains are about bad weather and nothing else. Screaming about extreme weather doesn’t cut it.
Arctic death spiral has ‘paused’? Antarctica sea ice extent at record levels. The biosphere is greening. Agricultural production recently reported to be at record levels. The 50 million climate refugees can’t be found. Most coral island atolls have risen with sea level rise since the 1960s. Snowfalls are a thing of the present. Sea level rise has decelerated and so on……………. Bring on the +1.2°C rise.
Nothing to fear you say? How about writhing in agony in the jaws of T-Rex! Or all that extra CO2 painting a great big “hit me” target for comets to see from all the way out in the Oorte cloud!
Einstein once said “God does not play dice with the universe”. Are you suggesting that God plays boules? 🙂
Eric: Einstein may have said that but someone else said in reference to Einstein’s statement, (paraphrasing here) But He sometimes throws them where they can’t be seen
I usually tune out when I see the phrase, “According to Wikipedia”
Whether a 2 degree warmer world would be much better or worse, partly depends on where most of the land mass is. If most land is near the poles it is actually better for life if it is a but warmer. (such as now).
In the Cretaceous, Australian and Antarctica were joined, and India was also joined with Africa.
North and South America were apart from Eurasia and Africa, but not by as much as they are now.
It may have been warmer back then due to different ocean circulation, more circulation from equator to poles would increase average temperatures by reducing excessive ice build up and also methane capture near the poles.
“And if our civilisation has any money to spare on preparations for possible disasters, we should be spending that money on building meteor defences, not on trying to curb harmless CO2 emissions”
I don’t think meteor defences would work, but earthquake preparedness and building codes in developing countries is my pick. Volcanoes can be predicted and people evacuated, earthquakes and tsunamis not so much.
mpainter: I am a geologist. and the phrase “….the implications of basement granitoids from the middle of the Panamanian Isthmus that are dated to the Paleocene?” simply tells me that there were basement rocks being emplaced in the isthmus at that time. It does not say anything about the isthmus being closed closed at that time. From the paper by Montes et al…”These findings are interpreted to show that the SanBlas Range, as a single tectonic unit east of theCanal Basin (Fig. 1), was emergent above sealevel starting in late Eocene time through Oligo-cene and Miocene time, becoming a peninsula of North America since early Miocene time(Whitmore and Stewart, 1965; Kirby and Mac-Fadden, 2005). This paleogeographic configu-ration greatly restricts the width of the seaway [approx 200 km] separating the Pacific and Caribbean waters since early Miocene times.” (My bold)
Now are you still going to insist that the isthmus was closed before 2.7 my?
It appears that no amount of evidence will disabuse mpainter of his anti-scientific fiction attachment.
Just for the record mpainter; the quote above is from the conclusions of the Monteset al paper which you chose to use as support for your contention that the seaway did not exist.
IOW:
Cuckoo!
Thanks. I’m not a geologist, but obviously you have the real “gear” that our resident loon imagines he has.
Thanks.
Global warming is not in the league of giant meteors. AGW is in the league of intestinal worms. According to eminent economists surveyed by Bjorn Lomborg, deworming of schoolchildren is more urgent than global warming.
The greatest blooming of life in earth’s history is the Cambrian explosion when CO2 was 7,000 ppm and temperature was 22 C. If we want biodiversity explosion, keep pumping that life gas.
Why would economists be equipped to judge AGW risks? And a climate and attendant ecosystem suitable for an explosion of trilobites isn’t necessarily ideal for a large human population.
Also, if Wikipedia is the be believed, “The later half of Cambrian was surprisingly barren and show evidence of several rapid extinction events”. That would be the hot part of the Cambrian.
I suggest you look farther than Wiki before leaping to conclusions. Three main extinction events are recognized in the Cambrian, generally attributed to the breakup of supercontinent Rodinia. Please explain how you imagine these events were related to global warming. Thanks.
Catherine – I don’t imagine those extinction events had anything to do with warming; and I don’t think the earlier explosion of (marine) life did either. That was kind of the point.
Well, that’s where you’re wrong. Warming was arguably responsible for the Cambrian Explosion of larger animals with hard body parts. Before that, during the previous Snowball Earth episode and its still cold followup, organisms were small and soft-bodied.
Throughout geologic time, warming has generally been good for life and cold worse. High levels of CO2 are also usually better for living things. Most plants get near to starving during ice ages.
“Why would economists be equipped to judge AGW risks?”
Because unlike you, they can do a credible cost-benefit analysis. Stalling economic growth will kill more poor people than climate change.
“And a climate and attendant ecosystem suitable for an explosion of trilobites isn’t necessarily ideal for a large human population.”
Yeah sure because trilobites can’t build air-conditioners. Isn’t it too hot in Dubai? Why are the Arabs still alive?
“Also, if Wikipedia is the be believed, “The later half of Cambrian was surprisingly barren and show evidence of several rapid extinction events”. That would be the hot part of the Cambrian.”
The temperature in Cambrian period was almost constant at 22 C but CO2 went down to below 5,000 ppm in the later half, so the extinctions. Plants and animals didn’t like low CO2.