From NSF and the 66 million year old mud department comes yet another hockey stick making proxy. So far, the reliability of proxies has been questionable at best, and it seems to me they found exactly what they expected to find. They are using climate models to estimate lead/lag times, so the obvious question is, what models and how good are they? They also don’t seem to have an SI with data that I was able to find on the journal page, so verifying the work might be difficult, if not impossible. Here’s a graphic showing the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) for reference:
Humans responsible for carbon release 10 times faster than any event since age of dinosaurs
The earliest measurements of Earth’s climate using thermometers and other tools start in the 1850s.
To look further back in time, scientists investigate air bubbles trapped in ice cores, expanding the scope of climate records to nearly a million years. But to study Earth’s history over millions of years, researchers examine the chemical and biological signatures in deep-sea sediments.
New research published today in the journalNature Geoscience by geoscientist Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and colleagues looks at changes in Earth’s temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) since the end of the age of the dinosaurs. The evidence is in sediment cores retrieved from beneath the seafloor by geologists working aboard the ocean drillship JOIDES Resolution.
“In studying one of the most dramatic episodes of global change since the dinosaurs, the researchers show that we are currently in uncharted territory in the rate carbon is being released into the atmosphere and oceans,” said Candace Major, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research.
The findings suggest that humans are responsible for releasing carbon about 10 times faster than during any time in the past 66 million years.
The research team developed a new approach and was able to determine the duration of the onset of an important past climate event, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 56 million years ago.
“As far as we know, the PETM had the largest carbon release during the past 66 million years,” Zeebe said.
Zeebe and co-authors Andy Ridgwell, of the University of Bristol and University of California, and James Zachos, of the University of California, combined analyses of chemical properties of sediment cores dating back to the PETM with numerical simulations of Earth’s climate and carbon cycle.
The new method allowed them to extract rates of change from a sediment record.
Applied to the PETM, they calculated how fast the carbon was released, how fast Earth’s surface warmed, and what constrained the time scale of the onset, which was across 4,000 years.
The rate of carbon release during the PETM was much smaller than the current input of carbon to the atmosphere from human activities.
Carbon release rates from human sources reached a record high in 2014 of about 37 billion metric tons of CO2. The researchers estimated that the maximum sustained carbon release rate during the PETM was less than four billion metric tons of CO2 per year — about one-tenth the current rate.
“Because our carbon release rate is unprecedented over such a long time period in Earth’s history, it also means that we have effectively entered a ‘no-analogue’ state,” said Zeebe. “This represents a big challenge for projecting future climate change because we have no good comparison from the past.”
Whereas large climate transitions in the past may have been relatively smooth, there is no guarantee for the future, the scientists said. The climate system is non-linear, which means that its response to inputs, such as CO2 emissions, is a complex process involving multiple components.
“If you kick a system very fast, it usually responds differently than if you nudge it slowly but steadily,” Zeebe said. “It is likely that future disruptions of ecosystems will exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM.”
The PETM suggests that the consequences of our massive burning of fossil fuels will have much longer-lasting effects, said Zeebe.
“Everyone is focused on what happens by 2100, but that’s only two generations from today,” he said. “It’s very clear that over a longer time scale there will be much bigger changes.”
The scientists are continuing their work on the PETM to study other aspects of the event — for example, determining how severe ocean acidification was during that time and what effect it had on calcifying organisms in the ocean. The results will provide insights about what to expect in the future as Earth’s climate likely continues to warm and oceans keep acidifying.
###
Anthropogenic carbon release rate unprecedented during the past 66 million years
Richard E. Zeebe, Andy Ridgwell & James C. Zachos
Abstract
Carbon release rates from anthropogenic sources reached a record high of ~10 Pg C yr−1 in 2014. Geologic analogues from past transient climate changes could provide invaluable constraints on the response of the climate system to such perturbations, but only if the associated carbon release rates can be reliably reconstructed. The Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is known at present to have the highest carbon release rates of the past 66 million years, but robust estimates of the initial rate and onset duration are hindered by uncertainties in age models. Here we introduce a new method to extract rates of change from a sedimentary record based on the relative timing of climate and carbon cycle changes, without the need for an age model. We apply this method to stable carbon and oxygen isotope records from the New Jersey shelf using time-series analysis and carbon cycle–climate modelling. We calculate that the initial carbon release during the onset of the PETM occurred over at least 4,000 years. This constrains the maximum sustained PETM carbon release rate to less than 1.1 Pg C yr−1. We conclude that, given currently available records, the present anthropogenic carbon release rate is unprecedented during the past 66 million years. We suggest that such a ‘no-analogue’ state represents a fundamental challenge in constraining future climate projections. Also, future ecosystem disruptions are likely to exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM.
Determining the minimum release time.
Maximum lead/lag is based on data records (τdat) and model time lag (τmod) calculated using carbon cycle/climate models GENIE (ref. 12) and LOSCAR (refs 29,30), see text. The intercept of the shortest τmod and τdat yields the minimum onset
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2681.html
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All mammalians perhaps and condemned in mass by association
This just in: Humans are most likely responsible for the large increase of CO2, perhaps even at an “unprecedented” rate, causing a massive, shocking even, greening of the planet. Horrors! Guilty as charged.
We humans should be ashamed.
A speculation that depends on observations far outside of a scientific frame of reference filling a secular demand for god-proxies.
Just-so stories: masquerading as science since 1859.
Better stories, and likely truer:
We are not going to be releasing CO2 at the current rates for another 4,000 years (as happened in the PETM or the 20,000 years the same authors said it took in their previous publications). We will have run out oil and coal long, long before then.
This is completely a moot point paper.
The PETM Carbon release was likely from volcanism which occured as the north Atlantic unzipped. The UK split away from Greenland basically exactly where Iceland is today. The split probably extended far into the Arctic ocean fairly rapidly and very large volcanoes resulted. They are mostly at the bottom the north Atlantic right now so there is not much direct evidence for how big they were.
didn’t we peak in 2,000; haven’t we already run out….
“Humans responsible for carbon release 10 times faster than any event since age of dinosaurs”
And the plants are truly grateful. They were beginning to worry about low CO2 levels.
The Earth was covered in forests before we cut em down when C02 was 280ppm. The plants were doing just fine back then…
Sahara, Antarctica, Gobi, Atacama, Nullarbor, Arabia?
More fantasies that you can vacate the laws of chemistry through magical thinking on your part.
Plants do better in more CO2.
By definition they weren’t doing as well.
You have a huge problem in your attempted defenses of your church’s teachings: your illiteracy regarding the laws of atmospheric chemistry.
The Earth has never been “covered” in forests. Primary production effectively shuts down if CO2 levels hit around 180 ppm. Botanical, satellite, geological and paleontological evidence all show that plants respond positively to higher CO2 levels see for instance :
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130708103521.htm
Among other things plants use water more efficiently. A small number of efforts have been made to show that more CO2 is bad for plants, but not particularly successfully. After all, that tree in your yard consist of nothing but CO2, water, sunshine, and minute traces of minerals.
In North America there far more trees now than at any time in the historic past (i.e. since about 1500 CE). I have read estimates of an order of magnitude more trees in the present. The additional forestation has immensely increased the problem of catastrophic forest fires in the western US. One example of simple empirical evidence is a set of historic and modern photographs of Yosemite. The increase in forest cover following the establishment of the park is pronounced. This is due in a large part to the attempts to suppress fires. Now we are dealing with the legacy attempting to reduce the intensity and extent of fires through controlled burns, but the results are a drop in the bucket compared to the accumulated fuel load.
The premise of the article is faulty – It is worthless to discuss only the anthropomorphic RELEASE of CO2 without, at the same time, addressing the normal reabsorbtion paths. This is true whether or not CO2 can be shown to have any detectable effect on any aspect of climate.
Yah, OMG, my eyes: the blurb from University of Hawaii’s Zeebe, in HawaiiNewsNow today, ” … “The CO2 in the atmosphere essentially puts a blanket around the earth. The more CO2 you put in the atmosphere, it means essentially the higher the surface temperature of the planet will be,” Zeebe said. …” Sheesh: musta been all that AlGore training.
Whoopee. So now we are at 400 ppm CO2, compared to thousands way back when. It is a good thing, since CO2 is our ally, producing wood, food and fiber, which in turn produces O2, which, conveniently, we breathe. You go, mankind! If not for you, this blue green orb might just become a dead sphere.
The rate of change in atmos CO2 not correlated with the rate of emissions
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2642639
and the rate of warming also not correlated with the rate of emissions
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2662870
The claimed correlation between cumulative emissions and surface temp is spurious
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725743
The bottom line is that we don’t know natural flows well enough to do carbon accounting at a precision needed to detect the presence of fossil fuel emissions. The IPCC carbon budget ignores these uncertainties.and creates a fictitious account that balances exactly.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2654191
So, early man released the first anthropogenic gases by firing up wood fending themselves off from hungry T-Rex dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Apparently creationism is a valid theory for climate scientists.
Do we know how much Carbondioxid is released with a vulcanic erruption?
As we have seen, erruptions are either explosive and/or have long lasting active lava flow.
To my knowledge we don’t have that data!
Common sense is that the amount of gas released is very large and different with each erruption and location!
One of the models Zachos has been working on. Don’t know if it is the one used in this current paper.
http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~jzachos/pubs/Lauretano_etal_2016.pdf
Obviously to the very same extent that “Human-driven carbon release rate unprecedented in past 66 million years” is true,, so is Human-driven carbon release rate unprecedented in past 4.5 Billion years.
Unnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnprrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrecedennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnted in 66 milllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllionnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn yearrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs!
Bruce Atwood March 22, 2016 at 5:52 pm
Oh, here is the recent warming satellite data:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2016/03/uah-v6-global-temperature-update-for-feb-2016-0-83-deg-c-new-record/#comment-211617
sorry if I’m out of line
michael
Look at the massive long warming Before the PETM, ony after said warming, and not preceding it, did the warming culminate in the PETM. The PETM resolved itself as well, both the warming and its resolution were entirely natural. Further only about half of the PETM can be explained by c02 if you assume IPCC numbers.
Do we know what caused the PETM “pulse”? I’d suggest the Deccan Traps.
Get with the program – Hansen wasn’t the author of the paper being discussed. It’s these guys..
Richard E. Zeebe, Andy Ridgwell & James C. Zachos
Anthropogenic carbon release rate unprecedented during the past 66 million years
http://sci-hub.io/10.1038/ngeo2681
Sober up vapid. Somewhere between Hansen telling you “Magic makes the sky hot” and you believing it,
you showed up holding birdcage liner up like a torch of illumination.
To your thermodynamically befuddled, ”Magic Made The Sky Hot” head.
“The findings suggest that humans are responsible for releasing carbon about 10 times faster than during any time in the past 66 million years.”
This argument MAY be true, but for it to have any importance it would need to demonstrate a rational relationship between CO2 and temperature. So far, the only rational relationship is the utter dependence of CO2 on temperature as we descended into the current ice age.
Before this decent, with much higher CO2 levels, there is no discernible relationship.
We have lots more work to do. Nothing in this realm is certain. We need to find the inflection point(s) between discernible relationships and none.
Never in the last 66 million years have humans emitted as much CO2 as they have in the last 200 years.
Please bear in mind that the genus Homo is only about 2 million years old. The “twin towers” of geological CO2 production from about 120 to 80 million years ago may well have equaled current human efforts.
DonK31, do you base your statement on ice core evidence tacked on with current atmospheric levels? If so, you are using an apple and an orange to make your case. Ice core specialists have yet to determine whether or not directly measured atmospheric CO2 levels are muted as bubbles of the stuff become entrapped in ice core layers, which takes several decades, possibly hundreds, to happen. We don’t have old enough direct atmospheric CO2 measurements to compare with layered ice core CO2 analysis. It may be that current atmospheric amounts are at levels previously identified in the ice core record during warm interstadials. That also means that we could be at a normal warming interstadial peak which will be followed by a normal jagged drop to the normally longer stadial cold period, an oscillation that is ubiquitous in our current Pleistocene age.
gymnosperm,
I am wondering for some time why the CO2 levels were so high during the Cretaceous at the same time that there were no reversals in the earth’s magnetic field. Something to do with continental drift / mantel plume / CO2 releases which are driven (in part?) by the geomagnetic field?
And the day we think we control CO2 emissions Lake Toba or Yellowstone goes boom, and we can start all over again.
Don’t forget a nice big Carrington event which would throw Western civilization back to the stone age.
When one plots the simple annual % change in human Co2 emissions from 1966 (BP Statistical Review is source of CO2 emissions) versus the plot of annual % change of atmospheric CO2 levels, it is rather difficult to surmise that human emissions are in any way driving change rates in the atmosphere over the last 5 decades.
Using Excel, the r-squared between the two plots is significantly abysmal: http://www.c3headlines.com/2015/07/climate-factcheck-co2-emissions-growth-has-no-impact-on-atmospheric-co2-growth.html
Combined with this study’s ‘4,000-year resolution’ thingy, one can conclude that the speculative conclusions by the authors and media are in reality just more fact-less absurdities that press release science has become addicted to.
The modern rise in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide doesn’t even break out of the Cenozoic noise level…
Cenozoic CO2 (older is to the left).[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_138417" align="alignnone" width="800"]
The proxy data lack sufficient resolution to say anything definitive about millennial scale rates of change, much less century-scale.
“The findings suggest that humans are responsible for releasing carbon about 10 times faster than during any time in the past 66 million years.”
Ten times? Is that all? There are 7.3 billion people now so even if there were 7.3 million humans 66 million years ago ( probably closer to 7.3 thousand) then per person we are releasing 1/1000th (or 1/1,000,000th as much). What’s the problem?
Modern humans are thought to have evolved less than half a million years ago and the first examples of the genus Homo dates to about 2.8 million years ago. 66 Million years ago there were no hominins of any description and the nearest thing to a primate was a creature which is believed to have looked more like a modern squirrel.
The estimates I have seen is that the human population reached 100,000 about 200,000 years ago.
” Claim: Human-driven carbon release rate unprecedented in past 66 million years ” Excuse me, but how can this possibly be true? Look at the graph below, the Keeling curve. Every year the slope of increase is at least 10 times the average increase in CO23 as shown by the main graph. So are the authors implying that in the NH Winterts that man produces ten times as much CO2 as is adsorbes/removed/disapears during the NH Summers? Or am I confused. What is causing this rapid Increase and equally rapid decrease?
http://www.planetforlife.com/images/keeling2.gif
The NH seasons:
Global atmospheric CO2 increases during the NH Autumn Winter and decrease during the NH spring/ summer.
Regarding their analysis of past CO2 emissions: they suffer from the low-pass filter problem.
This is the first thing to look for in any trend. or rise-and-fall, analyses like these. It is over. They have no good accounting for this.
If the past includes one data point per 100 years, then they only get to include one data point for the 1800s, the 1900s, and 2000s. Ten teams working overtime could not figure out the CO2 variance of the last century given a foot of mud.
You need some reliable way of “modeling” or adding back in the peaks and troughs that are missed across 66 gaztrillion years when examining one data point for each one hundred fipillion years.
Same, same.