From the University of Utah
Size, duration were like modern climate shift, but in two pulses
SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 15, 2014 – The rate at which carbon emissions warmed Earth’s climate almost 56 million years ago resembles modern, human-caused global warming much more than previously believed, but involved two pulses of carbon to the atmosphere, University of Utah researchers and their colleagues found.
The findings mean the so-called Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM, can provide clues to the future of modern climate change. The good news: Earth and most species survived. The bad news: It took millennia to recover from the episode, when temperatures rose by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (9 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit).
“There is a positive note in that the world persisted, it did not go down in flames, it has a way of self-correcting and righting itself,” says University of Utah geochemist Gabe Bowen, lead author of the study published today in the journal Nature Geoscience. “However, in this event it took almost 200,000 years before things got back to normal.”
Bowen and colleagues report that carbonate or limestone nodules in Wyoming sediment cores show the global warming episode 55.5 million to 55.3 million years ago involved the average annual release of a minimum of 0.9 petagrams (1.98 trillion pounds) of carbon to the atmosphere, and probably much more over shorter periods.
That is “within an order of magnitude of, and may have approached, the 9.5 petagrams [20.9 trillion pounds] per year associated with modern anthropogenic carbon emissions,” the researchers wrote. Since 1900, human burning of fossil fuels emitted an average of 3 petagrams per year – even closer to the rate 55.5 million years ago.
Each pulse of carbon emissions lasted no more than 1,500 years. Previous conflicting evidence indicated the carbon release lasted anywhere from less than a year to tens of thousands of years. The new research shows atmospheric carbon levels returned to normal within a few thousand years after the first pulse, probably as carbon dissolved in the ocean. It took up to 200,000 years for conditions to normalize after the second pulse.
The new study also ruled as unlikely some theorized causes of the warming episode, including an asteroid impact, slow melting of permafrost, burning of organic-rich soil or drying out of a major seaway. Instead, the findings suggest, in terms of timing, that more likely causes included melting of seafloor methane ices known as clathrates, or volcanism heating organic-rich rocks and releasing methane.
“The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum has stood out as a striking, but contested, example of how 21st-century-style atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup can affect climate, environments and ecosystems worldwide,” says Bowen, an associate professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah.
“This new study tightens the link,” he adds. “Carbon release back then looked a lot like human fossil-fuel emissions today, so we might learn a lot about the future from changes in climate, plants, and animal communities 55.5 million years ago.”
Bowen cautioned, however, that global climate already was much warmer than today’s when the Paleocene-Eocene warming began, and there were no icecaps, “so this played out on a different playing field than what we have today.”
Sudy co-author Scott Wing, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, adds: “This study gives us the best idea yet of how quickly this vast amount of carbon was released at the beginning of the global warming event we call the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum. The answer is just a few thousands of years or less. That’s important because it means the ancient event happened at a rate more like human-caused global warming than we ever realized.”
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  IMAGE: This image shows University of Utah geochemist Gabe Bowen working on Wyoming sediment cores at a lab in Germany for a study that showed today’s global warming is more similar…
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Bowen and Wing conducted the study with University of Utah geology and geophysics master’s graduate Bianca Maibauer and technician Amy Steimke; Mary Kraus of University of Colorado, Boulder; Ursula Rohl and Thomas Westerhold of the University of Bremen, Germany; Philip Gingerich of the University of Michigan; and William Clyde of the University of New Hampshire. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation and the German Research Foundation.
Effects of the Paleocene-Eocene Warming
Bowen says previous research has shown that during the Paleocene-Eocene warm period, there was “enhanced storminess in some areas, increased aridity in other places. We see continent-scale migration of animals and plants, ranges are shifting. We see only a little bit of extinction – some groups of deep-sea foraminifera, one-cell organisms that go extinct at the start of this event. Not much else went extinct.”
“We see the first wave of modern mammals showing up,” including ancestral primates and hoofed animals,” he adds. Oceans became more acidic, as they are now.
“We look through time recorded in those rocks, and this warming event stands out, and everything happens together,” Bowen says. “We can look back in Earth’s history and say this is how this world works, and it’s totally consistent with the expectation that carbon dioxide change today will be associated with these other sorts of change.”
The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum also points to the possibility of runaway climate change enhanced by feedbacks. “The fact we have two releases may suggest that second one was driven by the first,” perhaps, for example, if the first warming raised sea temperatures enough to melt massive amounts of frozen methane, Bowen says.
Drilling into Earth’s Past
The new study is part of a major drilling project to understand the 56-milion-year-old warming episode, which Bowen says first was discovered in 1991. The researchers drilled long, core-shaped sediment samples from two boreholes at Polecat Bench in northern Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin, east of Cody and just north of Powell.
“This site has been excavated for well over 100 years by paleontologists studying fossil mammals,” Bowen says. “It documents that transition from the early mammals we see after the extinction of the dinosaurs to Eocene mammals, which are in groups that are familiar today. There is a great stratigraphic sequence of more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) of rocks, from 65 million years ago to 52 million years ago.”
The Paleocene-Eocene warming is recorded in the banded, flood-deposit tan and rusted red rock and soil layers of the Willwood formation, specifically within round, gray to brown-gray carbonate nodules in those rocks. They are 2 inches to 0.1 inches diameter.
By measuring carbon isotope ratios in the nodules, the researchers found that during each 1,500-year carbon release, the ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in the atmosphere declined, indicating two large releases of carbon dioxide or methane, both greenhouse gases from plant material. The decline was three parts per thousand for the first pulse, and 5.7 parts per thousand for the second.
Previous evidence from seafloor sediments elsewhere is consistent with two Paleocene-Eocene carbon pulses, which “means we don’t think this is something is unique to northern Wyoming,” Bowen says. “We think it reflects a global signal.”
What Caused the Prehistoric Warming?
The double-barreled carbon release at the Paleocene-Eocene time boundary pretty much rules out an asteroid or comet impact because such a catastrophe would have been “too quick” to explain the 1,500-year duration of each carbon pulse, Bowen says.
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 IMAGE: A rainbow appears over National Science Foundation-funded drilling site in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin. In a study led by University of Utah geochemist Gabe Bowen, sediment cores drilled at the site…
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Another theory: oxidation of organic matter – as permafrost thawed, as peaty soils burned or as a seaway dried up – may have caused the Paleocene-Eocene warming. But that would have taken tens of thousands of years, far slower than what the study found, he adds. Volcanoes releasing carbon gases also would have been too slow.
Bowen says the two relatively rapid carbon releases (about 1,500 years each) are more consistent with warming oceans or an undersea landslide triggering the melting of frozen methane on the seafloor and large emissions to the atmosphere, where it became carbon dioxide within decades. Another possibility is a massive intrusion of molten rock that heated overlying organic-rich rocks and released a lot of methane, he says.
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There is lots of good news in this article.
First, very few extinctions (a second post for the other good news). We are being told that we will get massive extinctions if we go past, depending on who is saying it, 500 or 600 ppm of CO2. Yet in the world discussed in this article, CO2 was around 2,000 to 3,000 ppm, and the world was far hotter than today (no ice in the Arctic, before the twin releases of CO2). So one thing we can learn from this article is that life can be very resilient. Next time somebody at a cocktail party tells you about all the creatures that will go extinct because of global warming, as them why so few went extinct at the PETM, when the Arctic was 74 degrees F, and when atmospheric CO2 was 2,000 to 3,000 ppm:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-north-pole-once-was-tropical/
You can also ask why so few sea creatures (with the exception of some that lived very deep) went extinct (according to this article), when ocean pH (the ocean acidity issue) must have been extremely low, given the concern people have today when CO2 is just 400 ppm.
Probably tropical ocean temperatures were like they are today. Willis has shown from Ceres data, I believe, that SSTs don’t get hotter than 31C – clearly because of the evaporative and convection characteristics of the oceans. I think all the fuss about arctic amplification is ridiculous. Polar amplification IS all the earth can do once the tropics have reached 31C – added heat is circulated away toward the poles in the water and the air.
Willis was mistaken, whilst evaporation plays a part, it does not cap ocean temperature at 30degC
The physics of evaporation is a universal law extending all over the planet, and not just between the tropics.
If evaposration capped water temperature at 30degC, then we would not see any seas that have a temperature in excess of 30 deg C. However, the Red Sea frequently has temperaturs in the 33 to 35 degC range, areas of the Indian Ocean, Gulf of Mexico have temperatures in the region of 33 to 34 degC, areas of the South China Sea and the coast off say South West Aftrica (Ghana) frequently record asea temperatures of around 33degC.
The reason why the equitorial and tropical oceans do not, in general, exceed 30deg C is due to currents; namely the currents that sweep away the warm equitorial/tropical seas in a poleward direction before these seas can reach a temperature higher than 30 degC.
Where these currents do not exist, we see temperatures of 34degC or even higher, so evaporation is not the crucial cap (although undoubtedly it plays a role).
Further to my last comment. Since we do not know how the currents worked in the past, we do not know whether the eqitorial/tropical seas were warmer than today, but I have read articles suggesting that the seas were warmer. Personally, I take all proxy evidence with a pinch of salt. The error bands are always large so really it is guesswork, or the scientist’s hunch, and little more than that..
They do seem to infer that CO2 was solitary in causing the optimal periods. perhaps that is to please the conventional viewpoint and secure future grants. Looks like another assumption of cause and effect (post hoc, ergo propter hoc).
Also, can anybody more informed tell me how an asteroid impact would have caused warming? I would think the opposite would be true (nuclear winter).
“That’s important because it means the ancient event happened at a rate more like human-caused global warming than we ever realized.””
= = = = = = =
More funding is urgently needed here. Well, we need – of course – to establish, once and for all, what the “rate of human-caused global warming” is – And maybe even that “human-caused global warming” exists at all. – Oh drat! Back to the start of the old circle — — – – -.
The second bit of good news can be found in this quote from the article above: “…the global warming episode 55.5 million to 55.3 million years ago involved the average annual release of a minimum of 0.9 petagrams (1.98 trillion pounds) of carbon to the atmosphere…”
This seems to imply that for a period of 200,000 years, the average annual release of CO2 was at least a petagram a year (rounding 0.9 up to 1.0). That would then be a minimum of 200,000 pentagrams total.
Another quote from the article, just after the first quote, says: “That is “within an order of magnitude of, and may have approached, the 9.5 petagrams [20.9 trillion pounds] per year associated with modern anthropogenic carbon emissions,” the researchers wrote. Since 1900, human burning of fossil fuels emitted an average of 3 petagrams per year – even closer to the rate 55.5 million years ago.”
Let’s accept that humans have emitted 3 petagrams per for 110 years, and will emit 10 petagrams per year for another 300 years, average on average, as CO2 emissions continue to grow for some decades, then gradually decline as solar cells and such become economical. That would be 330 plus 3,000 pentagrams. Let’s round up and call it 3,500 pentagrams. That is about 1/57th of what was released just before the PETM.
Contrary to some who read WUWT, I accept that CO2 warms the climate (but don’t accept the IPCC model results of the rate of warming), and I accept that sea levels will rise more than they would without CO2 emissions. So there will be harm, just as there will be benefits (greater crop production with more CO2 plant food, more tolerance to drought with higher CO2, more farmland to plant in a warmer world).
What I get from this article, IF the math above accurately reflects the findings of the authors, is that our CO2 emissions will be a thimbleful compared to the PETM, AND that creatures the world over seem to have survived far higher temps and far more CO2 and far more ocean acidity quite well. And we won’t come within miles of the temp increases seen back then.
“Contrary to some who read WUWT, I accept that CO2 warms the climate …”.
============================
Hmm, my guess is the vast majority accept CO2 is a so called greenhouse gas though.
I’m always amazed at how confident scientists sound making definitive statements about global conditions over a million years ago based on a core sample taken at one tiny little spot on the globe.
Amazing- like determining the global temperature with a bunch of differently calibrated thermometers, only put in places convenient to be read, by many different people at every location over the years.
When you invent time travel that allows us to go back and do it properly, do let us know.
There has been an enormous amount of speculation about posited large releases of of methane hydrates
in the late Precambrian, the P/T boundary, Cenomanian-Turonian 90 million years ago, the C/T boundary and several at the P/E boundary.
Massive releases of methane into the atmosphere could raise the atmospheric temperature quickly as the
climate experts state that CH4 is 25-30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2.
The ~8C rise in temperature was dramatic.
For methane hydrates to have a massive release requires a mechanism to remove them from their “zone
of stability”. This requires a rapid rise in temperature or a massive shock or vibration.
Small changes allow small releases until once again stability is reached.
I have looked for mechanisms which could accomplish this, and space impacts would be my first choice,
as indications that the one at the C/T boundary did release hydrates, along with doing for the dinosaurs.
The 55 million years ago period has some evidence of that potential impact. Kimber pipes (such as the Canadian one of that age), I believe, require an enormous input of mechanical energy. There is also some Iridium dated to that period.
Another candidate would be the collision of the India subcontinent with Asia 55 million years ago
and the raising of the Himalayan range could supply the subsequent shocks, which with increased water temperature could cause subsequent releases of hydrates from their zone of stability.
Drilling of the Blake Plateau by Leg 164 found the Blake Ridge hydrates to be 55 million years old.
The fact that the core showed the hydrates to be of an age means to me (my hypothesis) that enough
overburden was freed so as to allow a large upward migration of methane to once again form hydrates
so as to have the same date within the blunt resolution of the dating process.
Thanks, that answers my question about the relationship between an impact and warming
Seems like an interesting study, and may be correct, but there are two reasons to be cautious. As the authors say, this prehistoric release of carbon started from a warmer base than our current climate, and it occurred in two bursts lasting on the order of 1500 years. What are the chances that humans will be able to emit carbon from fossil fuels at the current rate for another 1500 years? Close to zero.
While it’s always informative to learn more about how the system works it’s unlikely that this study offers a strong analogy with the present.
The warming was driven by changes in the Earth orbit, tilt, and precession. Nothing to do with CO2. About 800 years later, the warmth drove CO2 out of the ocean in accordance with known gas laws.
The idea that CO2 caused this warming is simply ‘magical thinking’. Look at the regularity of the peaks. That’s orbital mechanics, not random CO2 changes.
Such broken thinking from so many Ph.D.s Piled Higher and Deeper does seem to be correct these days…
Good points. The magic molecule is credited with damn near everything these days. Someday people will look back at this era and laugh their asses off.
Also see my comment further down regarding the fact that back then, it wasn’t the same planet with the oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns.
I totally agree. AND, the number of highly educated people that believe that it is only the human induced CO2 from fossil fuels that is causing all the [non-existent] global warming.
How much is that again?
Amount of CO2 in the atmosphere = 0.04% which = 0.0004 of the atmosphere.
Man-made CO2 is 3% of that which = 0.0004×0.03 = 0.000012.
Burning fossil fuels is about 50% of that.
Therefore: The amount of man-made CO2 from burning fossil fuels is about 0.000006 of the atmosphere.
That must be some powerful “polluting” gas.
I agree with markstoval. How could any one believe this nonsense?
http://www.examiner.com/article/hungarian-physicist-dr-ferenc-miskolczi-proves-co2-emissions-irrelevant-earth-s-climate
Garbage by Ferenc
These guys forget that even Roy Spencer ripped Miskolsczi to shreds.
Brandon
No he did not.
Spencer merely pointed out that there were data issues on which Miskolsczi based his study.
However, this is so of every data set used in climate science. It is data issues that are the prime reason why no one has yet been able to put forward any evidence that withstands ordinary scientific levels of scrutiny showing that CO2 drives temperature. There is no first order correlation between CO2 and temperature in any data set, and many data sets significantly vary with one another.
All we can say is that the signal to CO2 induced warming is less than our ability to measure it using our best measurement devices. That may suggest that the signal, if any, to CO2 induced warming is very small (if any at all), but then again, the margin of error with most data sets is probaly plus/minus 1degC (and with some more than that) so based upon the lousy data that we have available no one can yet rule out the possibility that CO2 may cause some warming.
It is a great pity that we have permitted the data sets to become so horribly bastardised that for the main part we are merely reviewing manmade adjustments thereto.
richard verney,
No he did not only do that. Spencer also merely pointed out that Miskolczi apparently lacks more than the average amount of common sense:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/08/comments-on-miskolczi%E2%80%99s-2010-controversial-greenhouse-theory/
Different amounts of IR being absorbed and re-emitted by greenhouse gases at different altitudes in the atmosphere are fundamental to the explanation of Earth’s natural greenhouse effect. But Miskolczi claims that there is no net exchange of infrared radiation between different layers of the atmosphere, or between the atmosphere and surface of the Earth.
If this were true, then (as far as I can tell) there is no way for IR radiation to affect the temperature of anything. I know of no one else who believes this, and it seems to fly in the face of common sense.
But then, understanding the greenhouse effect requires more than an average amount of common sense, anyway.
He does caveat away some of his stronger rebuttals, pre-apologizing if he misunderstood something. But on the whole he roundly rejected Miskolsczi’s interpretation of Kirchoff — “This appears to fly in the face of people’s real world experiences.”
Elsewhere, Spencer agrees with Miskolczi on some things, even approvingly so, but he rejects so many core premises as to qualify as a pretty thorough debunking. YMMV.
Brandon Gates December 15, 2014 at 5:31 pm
These guys forget that even Roy Spencer ripped Miskolsczi to shreds.
No he didn’t. He singled out a part of the paper that is either misworded, or just plain wrong, and critiqued that. But if you read the entire paper, the balance of it ALSO refutes that statement. So I personally lean toward miswording of some sort. Bottom line though is that if you take that section out and look at the rest of the paper, it shows that based on the data, sensitivity to CO2 is low, and there is no evidence of plausible high positive feedbacks, and potentially evidence of negative ones. That’s exactly what we’re seeing in the real world. Sure, he might be right for the wrong reasons, but that’s what we are seeing, and his explanation as to how he comes to that conclusion (the oddly worded section excepted) is worth a read.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/E&E_21_4_2010_08-miskolczi.pdf
@B. Gates:
You are two-faced. Your holier-than-thou defense of climate peer review is sacrosanct — until it isn’t.
Dr Miskolczi is a peeer reviewed author. His paper on IR has never been falsified. The petty sniping you refer to as your rationale means nothing.
What matters is the real world. Planet Earth is decisively debunking your CAGW belief system. All your incessant, pointless arguments ignore the fact that the planet itself is proving that your beliefs are nonsense. But you never give up — and this is why:
You picked a position based on scant knowledge, and now you constantly look for factoids to support your false conclusions. You are no skeptic; skeptics change their minds when the facts change. But you? You cherry-pick confirmation of your beliefs, instead of accepting the fact that every last alarming prediction has turned out to be flat wrong. When someone is 100.0% wrong in every prediction they make, you know what that means? It means your initial premise was wrong: CO2 is not a problem. At all.
More CO2 is a net benefit to the biosphere. And although one doesn’t have anything measurable to do with the other, a warmer world is also a net benefit. The stupid arm-waving over the possibility of a 2º rise in temperature is nothing but modern day Chicken Little scaremongering.
That is you and your ilk. You have been consistently wrong all along. But you still argue incessantly, because Leo Tolstoy had your number: it’s due to your stupid ego, not because of science. The ‘carbon’ scare has colonized your mind. You can’t even see that. But we do.
davidmhoffer,
I’ve read three papers by Miskolsczi in their entirety, several times. I read the 2010 paper again along side Spencer’s rebuttal of it. I didn’t find any misrepresentations. If you have, I’d be happy to discuss one or several specific examples you think Spencer got wrong or glossed over.
What other real world observations corroborate Miskolsczi’s conclusions and redeems the rest of his paper from the poor sections you’re unusually willing to give a free pass?
dbstealey,
By your own argument that “pal review” is self-serving, you should be joining me in drubbing Miskolczi’s conclusions.
One big reason I read this blog is to have my own assumptions challenged because I know that I’m not immune to confirmation bias. Thanks for the Tolstoy quote. Perhaps next time I show you a chart or link you to some peer reviewed literature I’d like to discuss, you’ll remember that Leo was speaking to both of us, not just me.
Brandon Gates;
If you have, I’d be happy to discuss one or several specific examples you think Spencer got wrong or glossed over.
If you had read what I wrote, you’d see that I said that Spencer got it right, not wrong.
You’d also see that I said that the balance of Miskolsczi’s paper is also at odds with the section Spencer focuses on. Miskolsczi’s paper goes one to PROVE that the balance between the slabs is not zero (contrary to the snippet focused upon by you and Spencer), and spends most of its analysis on trying to understand how the balance between the slabs CHANGES based on changes is GHG concentrations rather than claiming they don’t exist. In other words, save that one oddly worded paragraph, the paper is entirely consistent in the treatment of the physics, the data, and the analysis of them. The conclusions, based on data rather than computer models. bear out that sensitivity is low and the system exhibits damping characteristics.
So read it again, that one section removed, and it makes a lot more sense.
davidmhoffer,
That didn’t take very long. From the very first sentence in the abstract:
By the line-by-line method, a computer program is used to analyze Earth atmospheric radiosonde data from hundreds of weather balloon observations. In terms of a quasi-all-sky protocol, fundamental infrared atmospheric radiative flux components are calculated: at the top boundary, the outgoing long wave radiation, the surface transmitted radiation, and the upward atmospheric emittance; at the bottom boundary, the downward atmospheric emittance …
Modern GCMs’ radiative transfer modules use the same kind of computer codes crammed full of all sorts of observational data including that from radiosondes. Miskolsczi’s main issues are not his fundamental research methods, those parts of his papers are widely accepted, standard practice.
Having overlooked the absolute beginning of this paper in your rush to trash mainstream atmospheric research it’s really not at all difficult to understand how you’ve missed the flaws pointed out by others far more qualified to comment on it than I.
…..Andy Lacis
Anything Lacis says should be taken with a boulder of salt…
dbstealey,
This is too rich. I cite Spencer trashing Miskolczi, you rip me a new one. MikeB cites Lacis trashing Miskolczi, you cite Spencer trashing Lacis GISS ModelE. How do you not constantly have a headache?
Some advice for would-be sceptics….
.
Reading rubbish is not good.
Quoting rubbish is not good.
Defending rubbish is not good.
Not being able to tell what is good from rubbish is not good.
[That advice is valid for all. More valid, actually, for those claiming “consensus” than for ‘would-be sceptics” actually. .mod]
Who is this mod?
MikeB, someone who exemplifies the adage: One man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure.
Something is either valid or it is not valid.
There is no such thing as “more valid”
Well when you have a cyclic phenomenon, the they can both lead and lag at the same time, just the leads, and lags may be different lengths.
But the graph shows that for most of the time, the climate trend in Temperature is down, with only very brief periods of up.
The trouble is, when you extract a LINEAR trend, from a data set, that clearly is not linear, then you are forced to accept a trend that is either always upward or always downward. That is the way a linear graph is.
If the phenomenon is not linear but you choose to represent it by a polynomial, then an odd order polynomial always leads to a one directional trend over the long haul, but if it is an even order polynomial, then you get either a long term bucket, or a long term mountain.
When Dr Spencer used to publish his third order polynomial fit to the UAH date, just for amusement, I don’t recall him ever implying that their was some theoretical physics basis for assuming a cubic relationship.
And polynomial expressions are not always the right choice for curve fitting.
Any polynomial fitting to the experimental near black body radiation spectrum, back in the classics days, would have had researchers going around in circles trying to match the experimental mountain peak that the saw in experiments.
But today, climatist insist on maintaining the mythology of a logarithmic physical basis for the CO2 / lower tropospheric Temperature connection. I won’t call it a relationship, because there is no such established relationship, either in the experimental data, or in any physical phenomenon.
Sometimes CO2 and T go in the same direction and sometimes they go in opposite directions, and never for long enough, are they the same, to get statistically significantly close to a logarithmic relationship, or anything different from near linear.
The “Beer’s Law” model is not even valid for the situation, since the absorbed photons do not stay absorbed and converted to phonons instead.
And the mathematical analysis commonly referred to as deriving a logarithmic relationship, is an unreal one dimensional model, that clearly does not mimic the three dimensional diffusion of heat or emission of EM radiation.
There are way too many interacting variables to believe that a simple two variable model of CO2 and Temperature has any chance of imitating reality, let alone being able to state it in a closed form mathematical equation. Even the popular “logarithmic” relationship, morphs into two other quite different mathematical expressions, depending on the values of the variable; and of course, without physical bases for such morphing.
Any linear “trend” proposed for some time / Temperature data set, is valid only as a “numerology result” that only has validity for the given data set, and has no information regarding any numbers not in that data set.
If you do enough low pass filtering or running mean filtering of a finite data set, you eventually must arrive at just a single point, somewhere in the interior of the data set, with truncation errors having corrupted every other point, before and after the final result of such machinations.
Numerology is fun. Any integer divided by nine, will yield …xyz.000000… , or xyz.1111.. through to xyz.88888…. and so forth.
Or divide by 7 and you will get …xyz…..142857142857….. with the recurring set, starting at any one of the 6 recurring digits, depending on the original integer.
Well ok just for fun, and so is doing equally arbitrary algorithms on climate data sets, to determine results that contain no more information, than the original raw data set.
And the mathematicians will continue to dream up new algorithms, that do other meaningless things, but which eventually become a part of “statistical mathematics.”
The sort of “statistics” that do give useful information are results such as:
1% of all US taxpayers pay 50% of US income taxes.
or; 47% of US workers pay no federal income taxes at all.
But those are no more than statements off fact, and they make NO predictions at all.
Well neither does any other sort of Stat Maths make predictions.
The ability to predict the future, gives access to the means for preventing the occurrence of that future event. Ergo, such prediction is inherently impossible; no matter what. (as Dr. William Shockly would have put it.
Prediction is possible and is the basis for our often successful attempts at controlling systems. Prediction does not provide us with the ability to prevent the occurrence of events but rather provides us with the ability to influence the outcomes of events. Climatologists have erred by spending 200 million US$ on global warming research without providing us with the ability predict the outcomes of events; in fact, for modern global warming climatology there is no such thing as an event! Despite the huge expenditure of taxpayer money, it is currently impossible to control the climate.
Despite the current impossibility of doing so governments persist in attempts at controlling the climate. This is not an example of good government!
Well Terry, if you want to offer as an example of “prediction”, the fact that some physical systems behave according to some well established theoretical physical model; such as for example, the cavity resonance modes of some exactly specified resonator containing EM radiation, or the exact frequency of some photon emitted as a result of a certain electron transition, in say the atomic spectrum of Cesium, which might be accurate to parts in 10^13 or better, as examples of “prediction” fairly comparable to predicting the noon time Temperature on July 4 2015 outside the front door (closed) of The White House, I would have to call on the joker, to trump your comparison.
Namely Heisenberg’s assertion that we can’t even determine completely, the present state of any physical system, let alone predict where it will be at some distant future time.
This is after all, a thread about Earth’s long term climate; and not about when a spark plug will fire in some internal combustion engine.
G
george e. smith,
In another forum I recently pointed Terry to a list of clearly defined events used to build statistical reports from the output of climate GCMs. His rebuttal was something along the lines of “indices are not events.” In my experience he cannot be dissuaded by even the simplest incontrovertible factual evidence.
george e. smith,
Great comment. The relationship between T and CO2 is presumed to be a given. But looking at the real world, it is nonsense. If there is anything measurable involved, it is that changes in T are the cause of changes in CO2. Because there are no measurements showing that CO2 runs the show.
The entire premise for climate alarmism is based on the exact opposite belief: that a tiny trace gas is the major control knob of the climate. But despite decades of ‘studies’, and immense piles of tax monies, we do not have one verifiable measurement of AGW.
It would be hilarious, if these climate clowns weren’t blowing $billions that should be used in productive ways, instead of being completely wasted chasing an impossible will o’ the wisp called AGW.
I should point out, that even though the NUMBERS upon which one applies stat maths algorithms, are exact real rational numbers, that does not mean that they exactly represent anything real. Most of the time, they are never numbers that anyone ever actually measured. They are composites of lots of numbers that might have been measured by different persons, in different places, and at different times. So they never represent a “snapshot” of the earth at any point in time.
It is those raw measurements that have legitimate error bars; but after mastication, they become exact real rational numbers in a data set.
Even stats like “47% of all US workers pay no Federal income taxes.”, although real facts, they may not be accurate, in that the counts of who does what, and who pays what can have error bars.
So of course nobody should go to the bank with such statistics; nor include them in their PhD thesis.
The meaningfulness of any statistical prestidigitation of any climate data, is only to those who defined what it is they are doing.
Well we do that with virtually every branch of mathematics.
There is an obscure plane geometry, called “Projective Geometry” which has a set of defining axioms, and some rules for manipulation. Note it is a Plane two dimensional geometry.
The first three defining axioms are simple in the extreme.
1/ Two points define a line.
2/ Two lines define a point.
3/ There are at least four points.
That is it. The first theorem in Projective Geometry proves that there are at least seven points. It is not possible to prove that there are any more than seven points.
In Projective Geometry, a CIRCLE is a special case of a HYPERBOLA.
In fact all circles are infinite in size, and they all INTERSECT at the same two points, called the “Circular Points at Infinity”. Since they are separate points on the “Line at Infinity”, they are Hyperbolas, NOT ellipses, which do NOT cross the line at infinity.
Yes you guessed it. PARALLEL lines intersect at points (axiom 2) on the “Line at Infinity” (which is actually over there on the edge of the page).
I believe that all of the Euclid Plane Geometry Theorems can be proven in Projective Geometry.
So mathematics is all fictitious, and it does just what we invented it to do, as defined by its axioms.
I think it was Kurt Godell, who proved a theorem, that every system of mathematics contains legitimate problems (questions), for which there is no proof within that system or discipline. I think it is called the “Principle of Undecideability” or words to that effect.
So remember that the statistication that is applied to climate data, only does what was intended by the definers of that particular statistical maths algorithm, so you have to be careful, when you try to extrapolate the field of application of the results beyond the data set, that was used in the first place.
You could find yourself over on the other side of the line at infinity. (up there in the corner, with a Dunce hat on.)
The graph of temperatures over the last 425,000 years, at the head of the article, shows a blunted and extended recent warm period maximum compared to all past maxima? At present we are quite comfortable compared to those ancient ice ages. If this warming is, in fact, caused by our activitu, then we should just keep on doing exactly what we are doing now, for as long as possible in the hope that we can keep the temperatures up. Contrary to popular CAGW belief, the danger is clearly lower temperatures, not higher temperatures. Keep going everyone!
Indeed! So let’s burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn and so on, according to that excellent and refreshing carbon-liberation hymn by Ellie Goulding 🙂
BTW: The plants of the Earth are eager proponents of carbon liberation and this music as well! In case you don’t believe this, just ask your little green cactus… 😉
Looks like a system which gets a ‘kick’ every 75,000 or so, and the temperature oscillates to a lower temperature then is ‘kicked’ again.
The apparent regularity of these ‘kicks’ is surprising and would lead me to conclude some long term external influence such as astronomical…
Here they go again trying to compare the PETM to the climate of today. They might as well be comparing apples to rottweilers.
I’d like to see how climate models handle the conditions at the poles during the PETM where temperate conditions existed even in the dark of winter.
Speaking of poles, the lack of icecaps during the PETM might give one some pause.
Hey! Another factoid!
Add that one to Gates’ confirmation bias.
dbstealey,
Just keep chanting “CO2 lags not leads” and maybe someday I’ll remember all the other factoids I’ve read about. Like increasing Antarctic sea ice extent and thickness, winter cold snaps, CO2 rise since 1996 being 45-50% of the rise from 1850-1996, the last 20 years of flattish surface temperature rise, correlation not necessarily implying causation ….
B. Gates says:
Just keep chanting “CO2 lags not leads”
All together now, chant along with me…
CO2 lags not leads
CO2 lags not leads
CO2 lags not leads
Got plenty more, if you’re interested. Lots more. They all show that “CO2 lags not leads”.
Now let’s see you produce verifiable, testable, peer-reviewed charts, showing conclusively that “CO2 leads, not lags”.
If you can, you will be the first — and on the short list for a Nobel prize! Plus, you would have some credibility. Win-win!
“The decline was three parts per thousand for the first pulse, and 5.7 parts per thousand for the second.”
Does this mean that the pulses were (delta) 3000ppm/1500yrs = 2ppm/yr and (delta) 5700ppm/1500yrs = 3.8ppm/yr? That seems to be 50-270% more than our current (delta) 140ppm/100yrs = 1.4ppm/yr?
What caused the PETM?
Maybe the same thing that caused the temp. spike at the beginning of the Holocene and the beginning of the previous interglacials, as shown in the ice cores (much more pronounced than thePETM)
We don’t know what caused those spikes but we DO know that it was not CO2.
This is the sort of study that comes from those who have CO2 on the brain.
The cause behind the data they have been deriving is nothing but speculation. What about variations in total solar output during that same period? Then there is the question of temporal resolution? I can only guess that connecting their work with the AGW conjecture attracts funding.
The Flintstones SUV’s at work.
Looks like a graph of natural variability of the climate system between glacial and interglacial periods over the last 420,000 years to me.
Sure glad were in an interglacial period currently and not a -4C glacial period!
The sun got hotter, which warmed the Earth and then CO2 was released into the atmosphere? Much more logical than CO2 suddenly sprang out of nowhere into the atmosphere which then made temperatures saur whilst the sun looked on in bewilderment!
The key is it took 1500 years to get a major rise, not by next Tuesday.
General rule of thumb: when the Sun was younger and ditto, planet earth, it was much warmer. Now, not so much.
Actually, it is getting downright COLD with short spasms of warmth that fade fast to super cold, much colder than before the Sun grew older and the earth began to have ice on both poles all year round.
Is this science by press release?
The rate at which carbon emissions warmed Earth’s climate almost 56 million years ago
The opening statement begs the question that CO2 was the cause of the warming, while further down we get
… the global warming episode 55.5 million to 55.3 million years ago involved the average annual release of a minimum of 0.9 petagrams
which suggests that the warming caused the CO2. I could go on but this whole thing ignores that a warmer ocean releases CO2 and that the warmth preceded the release. But, the bug climate political deadline is 2015, and we will be bombarded by this carp for another 9 months.
Is this science by press release?
The rate at which carbon emissions warmed Earth’s climate almost 56 million years ago
The opening statement begs the question that CO2 was the cause of the warming, while further down we get
… the global warming episode 55.5 million to 55.3 million years ago involved the average annual release of a minimum of 0.9 petagrams
which suggests that the warming caused the CO2. I could go on but this whole thing ignores that a warmer ocean releases CO2 and that the warmth preceded the release. But, the big climate political deadline is 2015, and we will be bombarded by this carp for another 9 months.
I think they had to say CO2, how much future funding would they receive if they concluded, “Well we have looked at this very closely and we really have little to no certainty as to what drove either the cooling or warming climate cycles of 55 million years ago.”
“The new research shows atmospheric carbon levels returned to normal within a few thousand years after the first pulse,….. ”
OK, I give up. What are the “normal atmospheric carbon levels” ? Are there more than one carbon level? (Assuming the study was about CO2 and not combined solid particle of carbon in the atmosphere.)
Exactly. The whole discussion is about “carbon” in the atmosphere, how do they get away with such flawed language in a scientific paper?
“The rate at which carbon emissions warmed Earth’s climate almost 56 million years ago resembles modern, human-caused global warming much more than previously believed, but involved two pulses of carbon to the atmosphere”
When the Climate Scientists were telling us there is a new ice age coming in the 1970’s does anyone remember reading the CONSENSUS was to pump more Co2 into the atmosphere to solve the problem ?
“[…] does anyone remember reading the CONSENSUS was to pump more Co2 into the atmosphere to solve the problem ?
I remember the 70’s reasonably well and I can’t say that I recall that. But more taxes, government action, and restrictions on freedom were almost certainly on the table.
The proposed solution was black carbon spread over the northern ice sheets. Little did we know the Chinese were going to do that for us 😉
There were lots of suggestions involving “geo-engineering”, to create an ICE-FREE ARCTIC OCEAN
From the book “Omega – Murder of the Eco-system and the Suicide of Man” , Paul K Anderson, 1971
“Controlling the Planet’s Climate”, J. 0. Fletcher (Rand corporation)
“The largest scale enterprise that has been discussed is that of transforming the Arctic into an ice-free ocean. Three basic approaches have been proposed:
(a) influencing the surface reflectivity of the ice to cause more absorption of solar heat;
(b) large-scale modification of Arctic cloud conditions by seeding;
(c) increasing the inflow of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean
This is from the discussion at the start of the chapter:
“Some have suggested that the general warming that took place from 1900 until about 1940 was due to just such an increase in the atmospheric content of C02. Plass, in 1959, estimated that a warming of 0.5° C during the last century could be attributed to this cause, and this is comparable to the warming that actually did occur. It is further estimated that, by the year 2000, a further warming of three times this amount could be caused by the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. Other estimates have predicted an even greater warming.
Notwithstanding these arguments, the sharp global cooling of the past decade indicates that other, oppositely directed factors are more influential than the increasing atmospheric content of CO2. For example, Moller (1963) estimates that a 10 per cent change in CO2 can be counter-balanced by a 3 per cent change in water vapour or by a 1 per cent change in mean cloudiness.
Let it also be noted that the oceans have an enormous capacity to absorb CO2, this varying according to their temperature with colder oceans being able to store more of the gas. Thus, a warming of the oceans could also be a primary cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. In summary, it appears that, other factors being constant, the CO2 generated by human activity could bring about important changes of global climate during the next few decades. But other factors, of course, are not constant, and have apparently been more influential than the CO2 increase in affecting the climate of recent years.”