I noticed these press releases for the new “ramp up to Paris” paper at Eurekalert today. One is from Boston College, the other is from Oregon State University. The headlines seem about as far apart as the schools themselves.
You’d think that authors of the same paper could get their PR straight.
The certainty of the theory as they present it is typical of alarmist PR’s but the conclusion, trying to link boulder deposition to CO2 levels seems a bit rocky at best. They claim to be able to resolve when boulders were uncovered from ice and link that to CO2 levels, and thus prove CO2 levels caused the end of the ice age. Of course, nether press release tells you the paper title, the DOI, or links to the journal, because as we’ve seen so many times, the paper itself is just a ticket to media coverage, and isn’t important enough to be part of the story that will be foisted upon the public. I’ve posted both of them below for comparison in the sequence presented above in the screencap.
As Ice Age ended, greenhouse gas rise was lead factor in melting of Earth’s glaciers
New findings have implications for recent carbon dioxide rise and melting glaciers
BOSTON COLLEGE
Chestnut Hill, MA (Aug. 21, 2015) – A fresh look at some old rocks has solved a crucial mystery of the last Ice Age, yielding an important new finding that connects to the global retreat of glaciers caused by climate change today, according to a new study by a team of climate scientists.
For decades, researchers examining the glacial meltdown that ended 11,000 years ago took into account a number of contributing factors, particularly regional influences such as solar radiation, ice sheets and ocean currents.
But a reexamination of more than 1,000 previously studied glacial boulders has produced a more accurate timetable for the pre-historic meltdown and pinpoints the rise in carbon dioxide – then naturally occurring – as the primary driving factor in the simultaneous global retreat of glaciers at the close of the last Ice Age, the researchers report in the journal Nature Communications.
“Glaciers are very sensitive to temperature. When you get the world’s glaciers retreating all at the same time, you need a broad, global reason for why the world’s thermostat is going up,” said Boston College Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences Jeremy Shakun. “The only factor that explains glaciers melting all around the world in unison during the end of the Ice Age is the rise in greenhouse gases.”
The researchers found that regional factors caused differences in the precise timing and pace of glacier retreat from one place to another, but carbon dioxide was the major driver of the overall global meltdown, said Shakun, a co-author of the report “Regional and global forcing of glacier retreat during the last deglaciation.”
“This is a lot like today,” said Shakun. “In any given decade you can always find some areas where glaciers are holding steady or even advancing, but the big picture across the world and over the long run is clear – carbon dioxide is making the ice melt.”
While 11,000 years ago may seem far too distant for a point of comparison, it was only a moment ago in geological time. The team’s findings fix even greater certainty on scientific conclusions that the dramatic increase in manmade greenhouse gases will eradicate many of the world’s glaciers by the end of this century.
“This has relevance to today since we’ve already raised CO2 by more than it increased at the end of the Ice Age, and we’re on track to go up much higher this century — which adds credence to the view that most of the world’s glaciers will be largely gone within the next few centuries, with negative consequences such as rising sea level and depleted water resources,” said Shakun.
The team reexamined samples taken from boulders that were left by the retreating glaciers, said Shakun, who was joined in the research by experts from Oregon State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Purdue University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Each boulder has been exposed to cosmic radiation since the glaciers melted, an exposure that produces the isotope Beryllium-10 in the boulder. Measuring the levels of the isotope in boulder samples allows scientists to determine when glaciers melted and first uncovered the boulders.
Scientists have been using this process called surface exposure dating for more than two decades to determine when glaciers retreated, Shakun said. His team examined samples collected by multiple research teams over the years and applied an improved methodology that increased the accuracy of the boulder ages.
The team then compared their new exposure ages to the timing of the rise of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, a development recorded in air bubbles taken from ice cores. Combined with computer models, the analysis eliminated regional factors as the primary explanations for glacial melting across the globe at the end of the Ice Age. The single leading global factor that did explain the global retreat of glaciers was rising carbon dioxide levels in the air.
“Our study really removes any doubt as to the leading cause of the decline of the glaciers by 11,000 years ago – it was the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere,” said Shakun.
Carbon dioxide levels rose from approximately 180 parts per million to 280 parts per million at the end of the last Ice Age, which spanned nearly 7,000 years. Following more than a century of industrialization, carbon dioxide levels have now risen to approximately 400 parts per million.
“This tells us we are orchestrating something akin to the end of an Ice Age, but much faster. As the amount of carbon dioxide continues to increase, glaciers around the world will retreat,” said Shakun.
###
Greenhouse gases caused glacial retreat during last Ice Age
OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
CORVALLIS, Ore. – A recalculation of the dates at which boulders were uncovered by melting glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age has conclusively shown that the glacial retreat was due to rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, as opposed to other types of forces.
Carbon dioxide levels are now significantly higher than they were at that time, as a result of the Industrial Revolution and other human activities since then. Because of that, the study confirms predictions of future glacial retreat, and that most of the world’s glaciers may disappear in the next few centuries.
The findings were published today in Nature Communications by researchers from Oregon State University, Boston College and other institutions. They erase some of the uncertainties about glacial melting that had been due to a misinterpretation of data from some of these boulders, which were exposed to the atmosphere more than 11,500 years ago.
“This shows that at the end of the last Ice Age, it was only the increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that could have caused the loss of glaciers around the world at the same time,” said Peter Clark, a professor in the OSU College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, and co-author on the study.
“This study validates predictions that future glacial loss will occur due to the ongoing increase in greenhouse gas levels from human activities,” Clark said. “We could lose 80-90 percent of the world’s glaciers in the next several centuries if greenhouse gases continue to rise at the current rate.”
Glacial loss in the future will contribute to rising sea levels and, in some cases, have impacts on local water supplies.
As the last Ice Age ended during a period of about 7,000 years, starting around 19,000 years ago, the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased from 180 parts per million to 280 parts per million. But just in the past 150 years, they have surged from 280 to about 400 parts per million, far higher than what was required to put an end to the last Ice Age.
The new findings, Clark said, were based on a recalculation of the ages at which more than 1,100 glacial boulders from 159 glacial moraines around the world were exposed to the atmosphere after being buried for thousands of years under ice.
The exposure of the boulders to cosmic rays produced cosmogenic nuclides, which had been previously measured and used to date the event. But advances have been made in how to calibrate ages based on that data. Based on the new calculations, the rise in carbon dioxide levels – determined from ancient ice cores -matches up nicely with the time at which glacial retreat took place.
“There had been a long-standing mystery about why these boulders were uncovered at the time they were, because it didn’t properly match the increase in greenhouse gases,” said Jeremy Shakun, a professor at Boston College and lead author on the study. “We found that the previous ages assigned to this event were inaccurate. The data now show that as soon as the greenhouse gas levels began to rise, the glaciers began to melt and retreat.”
There are other forces that can also cause glacial melting on a local or regional scale, the researchers noted, such as changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun, or shifts in ocean heat distribution. These factors probably did have localized effects. But the scientists determined that only the change in greenhouse gas levels could have explained the broader global retreat of glaciers all at the same time.
In the study of climate change, glaciers have always been of considerable interest, because their long-term behavior is a more reliable barometer that helps sort out the ups-and-downs caused by year-to-year weather variability, including short-term shifts in temperature and precipitation.
###
Other collaborators on this research were from the University of Wisconsin, Purdue University, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The work was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation.
CO2 ha zero to do with changing the climate it is an effect of the climate no the cause.
The causes for the climate to change will be on my next post.
Here is what regulates the climate , in a brief concise nutshell. This is what keeps it within a range bound to a degree.
Land/Ocean Arrangements and Land Elevation.
Milankovitch Cycles- where earth is in regard to these cycles.
Solar Variability- primary and secondary effects..
Geo Magnetic Intensity- which moderates solar activity.
Initial State Of The Climate- how far the climate is from the glacial /inter-glacial threshold.
Ice ,Snow, Cloud Cover Dynamic – which are tied to the above to one degree or another.
Intrinsic Earth Bound Climatic Items- such as ENSO which refine the climate trends.
Rogue Terrestrial Event- such as a Super Volcanic Eruption.
Rogue Extra Terrestrial Event – such as an impact.
CO2 being a result of the climate not the cause.
Salvatore,
You did not list the the second most important parameter: The physical properties of water.
Of course the first and most important parameter being the outputs from the SUN.
I’m not a chemist or physical scientist, but I work with lags in data almost daily. So I’m taking a shot at this. I’m finding disagreements about the true half-life of Beryllium-10 that are on the order of +- 2%. Let’s also assume that our notions of measurement of CO2 in the historic record are accurate to +- 2%. Then looking back over 11,000 years we’ve got potential swings in the lead / lag of over 400 years, which is enough of a discrepancy to complete annihilate this analysis. One can say, at best, that the recession of glaciers and increased CO2 follow a similar trend, but causality is out of the question.
Dunno about the Be and other recalculations. Do know this new Shakun paper is junk. Because all the CO2 concentration/timing/temp estimates (figure 2, middle panels) come from his 2012 paper. Which is complete statistical junk. A simple, proper, parametric demonstration of how junky was provided in Essay Cause and Effect. Both Northern and Southern hemisphere ice cores make it quite clear that rising CO2 lagged temperature (and SLR as a proxy for ice retreat) by something between 400 and 1200 years, with 800 being the best estimate from several Antarctic ice cores. That is a simple consequence of Henry’s law. 800 years is not coincidentally the estimated total overturning time for complete global thermohaline circulation, which should govern how long it would take for oceans to respond completely to warming by outgassing CO2 per Henry’s law.
ristvan,
Totally agree on this one! They first removed the CO2 lag after temperature increase and now couple the ice melt, which follows temperature, with the CO2 increase as cause, while CO2 is the result of the temperature increase of the (deep) oceans…
Yup.
So if they are trying to claim that increases in CO2 ended the ice age, will they also be claiming that the big swings in temperature in Greenland and the Northern Atlantic during the ice age were also caused by large swings in CO2 levels during the ice age?
Or would that make their ideas sound like BS?
“…most of the world’s glaciers will be largely gone within the next few centuries, with negative consequences such as rising sea level and depleted water resources,” said Shakun.”
Maybe Shakun can explain how a frozen glacier that never melts and is an available water resource is conceptually different from a melted glacier that flowed to the sea ten years ago. There is no water available from either.
This is a repetition of the nonsense from the Moonbat that if the Himalayan glaciers melt, the Mekong River will dry up – i.e. that it will stop raining in SE Asia because the trickle at the source will run all year instead of in spring.
If it rains and there is no glacier, it goes into the river. Duh.
The study finds a correlation between rising CO2 and glacier retreat over a period of 7,000 years. Can they really pinpoint which is cause and which effect over such a long timespan? Antarctic ice core data indicate that changes in global temperature precede changes in natural CO2 emissions by hundreds of years (http://www.co2science.org/articles/V16/N28/EDIT.php; http://www.co2science.org/articles/V6/N26/EDIT.php). The study does not even mention the Vostok ice core.
There is no substantial difference between the press releases.
so, rather than wasting skeptical brain power on PR analysis ( nobody here has a clue how to do that )
why not look at the actual argument.
“Here we use recently improved cosmogenic-nuclide production-rate calibrations to recalculate the ages of 1,116 glacial boulders from 195 moraines that provide broad coverage of retreat in mid-to-low-latitude regions. This revised history, in conjunction with transient climate model simulations, suggests that while several regional-scale forcings, including insolation, ice sheets and ocean circulation, modulated glacier responses regionally, they are unable to account for global-scale retreat, which is most likely related to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.”
Argument #1. An improved dating process has been developed.
A dumb skeptic will just ‘doubt’ this. you can doubt anything. A smart skeptic
will show and demonstrate that the new dating process is wrong.
There is an old process and a new process. the skeptical job is to prove that
the new process is not improved.
Argument #2. Regional scale forcings (insolation, ice sheets, ocean circulation ) are unable
to account for the Global retreat.
A) this argument relies on models. You model what you know about the climate
and see if regional forcings Alone can explain the global retreat.
B) The assumption here is that all regional forcings are accurately modelled.
C) the strongest counter argument will be a demonstration that SPECIFIC regional
forcings are missing from the models and a demonstration that these forcings are
significant
D) the weakest argument is this “I think their models are missing something”
Argument #3. We can explain the global retreat if we include a GHG effect.
A) this is an argument to the best explanation. simply A, and B and C cannot explain
“X”. A, B, C and D can explain “X”. Therefore our best evidence suggests that D
is needed as a cause to explain “X” but for D, there is no “X”.
B) in general we can see this as a form of Abduction.. an inference to the best explanation
A simple example: I walk outside. I see that the grass is wet. I reason that it has rained.
I notice that the street is dry and my neighbors grass is dry. I reason
that someone turned on my sprinklers last night. I am reasoning to the best explanation.
That explanation will hold until a better one comes along
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning
By inductive reasoning you can convince yourself of anything.
No so. I cant convince myself that you know popper or the history of the philosophy of science.
Apparently dew is missing from your model of what makes grass wet.
May I again suggest that you have some Popper?
It might hurt a little bit the first time, thereafter it will do you good the rest of your life.
Chapter 1 is called: “The problem of induction”
http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/popper-logic-scientific-discovery.pdf
Karl Popper was the mastermind behind the modern scientific method; Poppers empirical method.
Popper was wrong.
Later he would admit it.
In building a philosophy of empirical sciences it is important to be empirical.
to wit, science uses abduction. Any theory of science which fails to account for this
is falsified
Steven Mosher:
Though some model builders use abduction others use optimization. Optimization works better.
The word “abduction” alone should give you a hint that this kind of reasoning isn´t sound within science.
From the link you provided:
“As such, abduction is formally equivalent to the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent (or Post hoc ergo propter hoc) because of multiple possible explanations for b.”
keep reading.. google abduction and the philsophy of science.
“Abduction or, as it is also often called, Inference to the Best Explanation is a type of inference that assigns special status to explanatory considerations. Most philosophers agree that this type of inference is frequently employed, in some form or other, both in everyday and in scientific reasoning. However, the exact form as well as the normative status of abduction are still matters of controversy. This entry contrasts abduction with other types of inference; points at prominent uses of it, both in and outside philosophy; considers various more or less precise statements of it; discusses its normative status; and highlights possible connections between abduction and Bayesian confirmation theory.”
“have argued that abduction is a cornerstone of scientific methodology; see, for instance, Boyd 1981, 1984, Harré 1986, 1988, Lipton 1991, 2004, and Psillos 1999. Ernan McMullin (1992) even goes so far as to call abduction “the inference that makes science.” To illustrate the use of abduction in science, we consider two examples.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was discovered that the orbit of Uranus, one of the seven planets known at the time, departed from the orbit as predicted on the basis of Isaac Newton’s theory of universal gravitation and the auxiliary assumption that there were no further planets in the solar system. One possible explanation was, of course, that Newton’s theory is false. Given its great empirical successes for (then) more than two centuries, that did not appear to be a very good explanation. Two astronomers, John Couch Adams and Urbain Leverrier, instead suggested (independently of each other but almost simultaneously) that there was an eighth, as yet undiscovered planet in the solar system; that, they thought, provided the best explanation of Uranus’ deviating orbit. Not much later, this planet, which is now known as “Neptune,” was discovered.
The second example concerns what is now commonly regarded to have been the discovery of the electron by the English physicist Joseph John Thomson. Thomson had conducted experiments on cathode rays in order to determine whether they are streams of charged particles. He concluded that they are indeed, reasoning as follows:
As the cathode rays carry a charge of negative electricity, are deflected by an electrostatic force as if they were negatively electrified, and are acted on by a magnetic force in just the way in which this force would act on a negatively electrified body moving along the path of these rays, I can see no escape from the conclusion that they are charges of negative electricity carried by particles of matter. (Thomson, cited in Achinstein 2001, 17)
The conclusion that cathode rays consist of negatively charged particles does not follow logically from the reported experimental results, nor could Thomson draw on any relevant statistical data. That nevertheless he could “see no escape from the conclusion” is, we may safely assume, because the conclusion is the best—in this case presumably even the only plausible—explanation of his results that he could think of.
Many other examples of scientific uses of abduction have been discussed in the literature; see, for instance, Harré 1986, 1988 and Lipton 1991, 2004. Abduction is also said to be the predominant mode of reasoning in medical diagnosis: physicians tend to go for the hypothesis that best explains the patient’s symptoms (see Josephson and Josephson (eds.) 1994, 9–12).”
Steven Mosher:
Abduction is one of many rules of thumb aka heuristics that can be used in selecting the inferences that will be made by a model. However, each time a particular heuristic selects a particular inference a different heuristic selects a different inference. In this way the method of heuristics violates the law of non-contradiction and fails to solve David Hume’s problem of induction. The solution to Hume’s problem is to replace the method of heuristics by optimization of the unique measure of an inference under the probabilistic logic: its entropy. Optimization produces, for example, the second law of thermodynamics. Abduction doesn’t produce it.
SM
Odd isn’t it that to make the result become the cause, Shakun’s speciality, ie to make CO2 look like it’s driving rather than following global temperature, he always has to (a) revise / rewrite the climate data and history and then (b) combine it with model simulations. Taking this approach you could fit any answer you want to any data.
But I forgot – neither you or Shakun would see anything wrong with this since honesty is something neither of you have a clue how to do.
Steven Mosher
Ref. various replies above – and in particular:
“Most philosophers agree that this type of inference is frequently employed, in some form or other, both in everyday and in scientific reasoning.”
My perspective of the scientific method is simply put this:
1 A hypothesis is proposed. This is not justified and is tentative.
2 Testable predictions are deduced from the hypothesis and previously accepted statements.
3 We observe whether the predictions are true.
4 If the predictions are false, we conclude the theory is false.
5 If the predictions are true, that doesn’t show the theory is true, or even probably true. All we can say is that the theory has so far passed the tests of it.
I admit that you can use inductive reasoning to come up with your hypothesis – I admit that you can use abduction to come up with your hypothesis. I admit that you can dream it, guess it, overhear it on the bus, pull it out of a hat, read it in a book, get it from a misunderstanding of what you read in a book, find a correlation by statistical means, being told by your wife that it is that way it works, find the correlation by multivariate analysis, find the correlation by artificial intelligence, find that any other explanation seems absurd to you – or what ever.
All these types of reasoning are frequently employed in establishing hypothesis.
(Except from artificial intelligence – yet).
However – these kinds of reasoning only brings you to the first step of Popper´s empirical method. Putting up a hypothesis is pretty much like making a baby – it can be more or less sophisticated – but it isn´t science.
As Karl Popper phrased it:
“From a new idea, put up tentatively, and not yet justified in any way—an anticipation, a hypoth- esis, a theoretical system, or what you will—conclusions are drawn by means of logical deduction.”
Knowledge – however – starts to accumulate as you start exposing your precisely defined idea to testing. Knowledge starts to accumulate as you deduce necessary consequences of your hypothesis – and observe, in nature or experiment (not in a virtual reality, artificial nature or models), if predicted consequences are correct within derived and stated uncertainties.
The accumulated knowledge, however, is of a vulnerable type. A single and reproducible observation can be sufficient to prove that your idea, anticipation, hypothesis, theory or what you will is outside the derived and stated uncertainties of your theory. By such observations your theory has been falsified – your theory has been proven to be wrong. It has been proven that your theory cannot predict a particular outcome within derived and stated uncertainties. Some elements of your theory might still be true, but these elements has still not been merited by testing. A theory is merited by the severity of the test it has been exposed to and survived.
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
Albert Einstein
PS For those interested in Poppers main work, search for: “The logic of scientific discovery pdf”
As far as I know, Popper´s empirical method has stood very well up to scrutiny.
“Realism and the aim of science” was published as late 1983. The book contains detailed replies to contemporary philosophical and scientific critics of his original work “The logic of scientific discovery”.
It is quite meaningless to state that “Popper was wrong. Later he would admit it.” without being precise and without providing relevant references.
GHG prevent deadly ice ages! Let us increase CO2 then.
The most likely reason for the ending of the recent ice age. Is the fact that it remained warm in the tropics during the ice age and that there was a long lasting increase in the variation of the weather patterns across the globe. In order to allow this warm air to flow freely across the areas covered with ice sheets. Which it was not allow to do during the ice age, because of the static weather patterns which lead to the forming of the ice age.
Having now read much of the paper (quickly) it’s logic appears to be:
1) Use a climate model that assumes CO2 is the strongest forcing agent by a factor of 4 or more on global temperatures.
2) Align their newly estimated date ranges for glacial retreats with their time frames for the (model-assumed) CO2 driven temp increases.
3) Conclude CO2 is only likely cause for glacial retreats on a global scale because it is the most significant agent forcing the temp increase.
It becomes a form of Circular Reasoning because we already know that almost all climate models grossly overestimate the effect of CO2 on temperatures.
The only thing surprising here is that many of their results (looking at the regional variations) do not exhibit the required correlation in timeframe for CO2 driven warming and glacial retreat. For some it’s too late and others it’s too early. Only a few align well.
So, naturally, it is the AVERAGE that gets used to support their correlation claims.
Causation, of course, is then assumed.
The salient point in the second press release demonstrates the absolute bias of the author: “There had been a long-standing mystery about why these boulders were uncovered at the time they were, because it didn’t properly match the increase in greenhouse gases,” said Jeremy Shakun
You see it was improper that it wasn’t linked to C02 and had to be fixed by data torture. Now: “Based on the new calculations, the rise in carbon dioxide levels – determined from ancient ice cores -matches up nicely with the time at which glacial retreat took place.”
They release nothing on their error bars for “cosmic rays produced cosmogenic nuclides, which had been previously measured and used to date the event” which it would not be a surprise to be approx. a 800+ years. You know those cosmogenic nuclides in basaltic granite doesn’t seem very accurate.
Matches up nicely – CO2 increased after warming caused the glacial retreat. Wait, that doesn’t help the warmist cause. Better leave out the dates to imply the reverse.
Uh huh – more “science by press release”. Who told them that ALL glaciers were retreating? Or that air temperature is that important in the process? Dumb stuff.
County Fair “Pecker-Pull” competition.
Ha ha
How surprising that this paper is open access! (not).
The discussion is much less certain than the press releases. For those who only read the PR the conclusion is certain. For those who dig — whom I’m sure will include journalists! (not) — the wording is much more cautious. I’ve attempted to highlight some of the words which seem to have been omitted from the PR. I also note that they’re talking about a period of 7,000 years, a period in which almost anything could happen! How they can compare over 7,000 years to the last 30-50 years I don’t know. Oh, and I see from their map that they have not looked at any glaciers in the Himalayas, which is where they predicted all would be gone by 2035. Why would that be?
“A reassessment of the cosmogenic-nuclide based chronology of glacier fluctuations spanning over 100° of latitude shows that glacier retreat was broadly synchronous with the increase in atmospheric CO2 and global temperature from 18–11 ka. Transient simulations with a coupled global climate model show that modulation by other forcings can explain regional variability in the glacier retreat chronology, with insolation explaining early deglaciation in the western United States, and seesaw responses to the AMOC explaining millennial variability in the Southern Hemisphere. Within dating uncertainties, onset of glacier retreat in the tropics is generally consistent with CO2 forcing, but the existing chronology cannot exclude earlier retreat, possibly identifying the influence of ENSO variability on glacier surface mass balance, or some other as yet unidentified regional forcing. While an imperfect comparison due to differences in time scales and several forcings, there is thus some similarity between glacier retreat over the last deglaciation and the last century.”
The paper has been paid for by tax payers money – the crap should be open access.
It´s about time to start saying that we have had enough of inconsistent fiction from bad fiction authors on scientists wages.
Sophisticated? maybe – Scientific method? not at all – Logical consistent? no – Knowledge? no way
There is a paper that demonstrates that, as we come out of glaciation, increased plant life actually increases atmospheric CO2 by causing it to be released from soil!
link
The Shakun paper uses cosmic ray bombardment to determine how long rocks haven’t been buried under ice. There are some types of cosmic ray that can penetrate the Earth to depths of 2 miles. Presumably they will penetrate most glaciers (with various degrees of attenuation), thereby invalidating the paper’s results.
link
Another question occurs to me. To what extent are Shakun’s results affected by the flux amplitude of the cosmic rays? Do cosmic rays correlate with the melting of the glaciers?
My gut instinct tells me that Shakun’s paper isn’t particularly ‘bullet proof’.
If a glacier melts in the forest 12000 years ago and no one is there to hear it, does it still make noise (as in sending out alarms that the world is about to come to its end because of mankind).
Apparently it does, just 12000 years later and if you are a CAGW activist with an agenda.
It is quite clear that the end of the glacial periods resulted in increase of CO2 (out-gassing of oceans, and decay of previously frozen organic material, as well as direct release from melting ice), not the other way. Those article are junk science.
I predict that the Earth’s climate will change quite a bit during the next 1,000,000 years.
Most people will think of it as ridiculous to think that the the climate will not change over 1,000 years.
A important factor in the ending of the ice age across the northern Atlantic area is the fact it remained warm in the Mid Atlantic during the ice age. lts also what explains the big swings in temperature in Greenland during the ice age and part of what convinces me that ice ages are largely caused by little change taking place in the weather patterns over many years. Because without this change in the weather patterns l can not see how the large extent in the ice sheets would have happened.
The ice had started melting back as early as 18,000 years ago. Deglaciation timeline below
CO2 did not start rising until about 16,800 years ago – the traditional lag-time of 1,200 years.
This study is just based on fake timelines.
Exactly Bill.
Back to the basics. By what possible mechanism could CO2 possibly lead temperature coming out of an ice age? The ice core data certainly shows CO2 lagging Temperature coming out of an ice age. By what mechanism does CO2 lead temperature to bring us out of an ice age? Did we repeal Henry’s Law and the laws of biology? Why doesn’t CO2 lead temperature in the ice core data? What makes this cycle repeat itself every 100k or so years? This is a smoking gun of climate change, they have no answer as to why CO2 would lead temperature. They also have no answer as to how CO2 and 13 to 18µ IR can warm the oceans, especially with only 1 to 2 W/M^2 under ideal situations.
“As the last Ice Age ended during a period of about 7,000 years, starting around 19,000 years ago, the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased from 180 parts per million to 280 parts per million. But just in the past 150 years, they have surged from 280 to about 400 parts per million, far higher than what was required to put an end to the last Ice Age.”
First, NO, the change from 280 to 400 PPM is NOT greater than the change from 180 to 280PPM.
Going to 280PPM from 180PPM was a 55% increase in concentration.
Going to 400PPM from 280PPM was a 43% increase in concentration.
As has been mentioned, we still have the chicken & egg problem. What was the source of CO2 if CO2 caused the end of the ice age? Something tells me the source of the CO2 was from the global warming that was already happening.
It would be impossible to demonstrate that CO2 caused the warming which ended the last ice age, rather than the warming caused the CO2 if the two followed the same curve with minimal temporal offset. I’m sure CO2 played some role in the feedback, but the ice age warmed up by 8~11C globally to reach Holocene levels. And CO2 trailed the temperature rise, always following, very rarely leading it – or preventing it from falling again.
Unless there is some, as of yet unknown, major CO2 sink, ice ages would be impossible if CO2’s effects were strong enough that a gradual move from 180PPM to 280PPM could result in an abrupt 11C increase in global temperatures.
I would also like to state that, contrary to so many claims I see made, the current interglacial has already long outlived its expected life and the earth should be dropping back into an ice age. An ice-covered earth is normal, the last 10,000 years have been abnormally warm – and we’ve benefited tremendously as a result.
If Shakun e.a. were right, indeed there couldn’t be a new ice age, as the CO2 levels after the Eemian remained high for thousands of years while temperatures were falling (but CH4 levels closely followed temperature in the Vostok ice core, thus the timing between gas age and ice age was about right).
Only after temperatures reached a new minimum (and ice sheets a new maximum), the CO2 levels started to go down. The subsequent drop of ~40 ppmv had no measurable effect on temperature or ice sheet formation… Here for the Vostok ice core:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/eemian.gif
There is no synchronization between CO2 and temperature or ice sheet formation during a deglaciation…
Forgot to add:
Delta Ts (corr) is the corrected temperature scale according to Jouzel e.a., in an attempt to synchronize the CO2 and T changes (which didn’t help at all).
18Oatm is a proxy for ice sheet formation. It is measured in N2O of the air, which 18O/16O ratio (δ18O) is inversely correlated to ice sheet volume (or area?). In the graph already inverted and scaled to give an impression of ice sheets growth and wane.
Actual CO2 change from 18,000 years ago to 11,000 years ago –> 187 ppm to 265 ppm –> 1.86 W/m2 in forcing using the 5.35 ln formula —> and the temperature change over the period was +4.7C
Actual CO2 change in the last 250 years —> 275 ppm to 400 ppm —> 2.00 W/m2 (so it is actually a greater forcing change) — temperature change +0.7C.
As one can see, something is wrong with the basic math when a smaller forcing can have 6 and half times as much impact on temperatures.
In other words, CO2 could also have Zero impact since one needs to also know what happened to the planetary Albedo over both of those time periods and in the deglaciation timeline in order to resolve what part CO2 played. The climate science prophesy community is very cagey about releasing what Albedo estimates they are using and I can guarantee you that the Shakun study does not show what they used.
My estimate is the global Albedo went from 33.3% 18,000 years ago to 30.0% 11,000 years ago and then changed from 29.9% 250 years ago to 29.8% today. Shakun probably used 30.6% 18,000 years ago and then 29.8% for all the other times in question – completely fake numbers in order to maximize the role played by CO2.
Interesting that the author refers to the end of the last glacial maximum of the present Pleistcene-Quaternary Glaciation as the end of the present Ice Age.
Also interesting that the role of ice-albedo feedback is not identified as the primary positive feedback involved in the abrupt end of a glacial period- just a hypothetical CO2 effect.
My understanding was, that at the temperature peak at the end of the last glacial maximum, atmospheric CO2 levels (as measured in Antarctic ice cores) continued to rise, even well after the period of peak northern hemisphere summer insolation had passed.
If CO2 was the strongest feedback factor, why did its influence abruptly ‘switch off’ after the end of the glacial maximum?
Concentration of CO2 is irrelevant. What is relevant is the Δ of W/^2.
MODTRAN:
http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
Going from 180 to 280 resulted in W/M^2 going from 293.056 W/M^2 to 290.952, or about 2.1 W/M^2
Going from 280 to 400 resulted in W/M^2 going from 290.952 to 289.288 W/M^2, or about 1.6 W/M^2
BTW, going from 0% humidity to 4% humidity (0 to 40 mbar water vapor) W/M^2 goes from 360.786 to 266.46, or about 94 W/M^2. That is why a desert gets so cold at night. No water vapor to trap the heat. The impact of H2O completely dominates anything CO2 could do, and we can have 4% humidity on a rainy day.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/SH400TropicsVsCO2.jpg
Of course GHGs caused it. The rocks are the gunning smoke.
How did these studies pass the sniff test of a good peer review? The reviewers must have plugged their noses because the stink of bullshit was so bad, and they couldn’t read them very well because they’re eyes were tearing up from the smell.
“How did these studies pass the sniff test of a good peer review? ”
A perverse culture in climate science, called pal review, is being run by the editors at Science and Nature. History will not be kind to them. The reputations at those journals will be destroyed once the Great Climate Scam is unmasked by a few unscruplous editors.
“Science and Nature”…
Yes, but they will just rename them.
This non-scientist has two questions:
1) What’s so great about glaciers anyway?
2) If the “the exposure of the boulders to cosmic rays” caused them to “produce…cosmogenic nuclides,” couldn’t those same cosmic rays have melted the ice in the first place?
Oh, and another question…how does melting glaciers cause “depleted water resources”?
katherine009,
1) For many people glaciers provide a buffer solution for their water supply as good for drinking as irrigation. In many cases can be solved by building dams which collect the spring melt water…
2) Each cosmic particle has enormous energy, but there are too few numbers of cosmic rays to give a total energy enough to melt anything.