Foreword by Anthony Watts.
This essay is written by a student at the University of Wyoming, who finds herself in the middle of a set of circumstances that are pushing her further into the realm of being a climate skeptic. It is an eye-opening read. I have verified the identity of the student, but per her request (due to the backlash she fears) I am allowing her to write under the pen name of “Clair Masters”
Guest essay by Clair Masters
The class was languid, most kids were on their phones, or surfing Facebook on their laptops. I sat with my notebook open in front of me, empty except for the lecture title at the top of the page. The professor put a slide up on the projector showing a chart relating CO2 and temperature over the course of a few million years, the one we’ve all seen by now. The CO2 curve lags after the Temperature one, and anyone’s first reading of the chart would probably be that temperature is driving the CO2 changes, not the other way around, if there is any trend at all. I perked up slightly, it was new for a professor to show alternate data, and looked around expectantly at other students, waiting for some kind of reaction—confusion, frowns, anything to show they’re seeing something that fights what we’ve been told since elementary school. I saw a few yawns, dull stares, people on their phones, though one loud girl who was a religious global warming fanatic was glaring at the slide, slouching in her seat so her hand could pet her (dubiously trained) service dog.
Besides her, no one cared, and certainly I was the only one who glanced up in surprise when our professor began to talk about the chart as if it didn’t matter, something like “This trend suggests the opposite of what we know to be true” before moving on. I looked down at my notebook—friends and family tell me my face does not hide emotions well, and I didn’t want my professor to know I was annoyed. I don’t know why he even included it in the lecture, but that’s what happens in these courses. It was incredible to me at the time, but my professors would often include evidence contrary to the anthropogenic climate change theory before quickly sweeping it aside with some short remark. It doesn’t matter this data exists, it doesn’t matter that there is debate in the climate science community—not here. This is a University, after all.
College wasn’t when I first started questioning the “acceptable” views of climate change. As far back as middle school I was a tough case for teachers trying to push global warming. It was fashionable back in 2008 to rabidly teach the “polar bears are drowning” narrative after those photographs from 2007 that showed the bear standing on a single hunk of ice. Tragic! A picture like that was all it took to have most of my classmates nodding solemnly along while our teachers taught us about our carbon footprint—about how we were contributing to the plight of the poor polar bears with our gluttonous use of electricity, by our parents having more than one car.
An animal fanatic, I spent hours paging through my Zoobooks and animal encyclopedia collections, reading all about polar bears. A number stood out to me; 60 miles. Polar bears often swim for 60 miles to get from one body of solid ground to the next. Proud of myself, I brought it up to my science teacher, and instead of getting the glowing pat on the head I was used to when I did outside research for classes, I was chastised.
“You’re wrong,” she said, looking surprisingly angry, “polar bears can’t swim that far. Global warming is melting their home, and they’re dying off.”
At the time, I thought of myself as a teacher’s pet, the good student, so her tone took me completely by surprise. I wasn’t trying to say global warming wasn’t killing the bears, as far as I knew it was. My teachers told me so, so it must be true. Her denial about the swimming capabilities of the bears is what threw me off, and for the first time I was faced with doubting a teacher. Who do I trust, the books I’ve read or this teacher? Something changed in me around that time, and that seed of doubt she unknowingly planted ended up making me who I am today—a skeptic. Not just for climate change and the like, but for everything. I abruptly stopped believing everything my teachers told me, it was a hard wake up call to the real world as I realized that adults had agendas.
This idea was reinforced when one of the books in a beloved young adult series by James Patterson abandoned the original plot and conflict to go fight against global warming—essentially like rewriting the X-Men as Captain Planet. Horrified and disgusted that the characters would rather go protect those (at this point, goddamn) polar bears than stop the original mad scientist threat, I recognized the real propaganda element of this whole global warming deal. I started fighting back in small ways, mostly in the form of asking questions; “Don’t we breathe out CO2?”, “Warmer weather will help some animals, won’t it?”. I was not popular with my seventh-grade teachers. My friends were oblivious to my small insurrection; I was always the kid who raised her hand in class anyway.
It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I finally got the scientific background to really combat the ideas that were being pushed on me. I took a high level environmental science class that pushed me to dig deep and question what I thought I knew about the way our climate works. I loved that class, and for once I had a teacher who didn’t try to shut me up. She acknowledged and engaged me, didn’t brush away my questions, and every year since my graduation from high school I’ve given a short presentation over Skype to her class about Petroleum engineering, petroleum geology, a little paleontology, and college life.
I distinctly remember two specific moments in that class that were “a-ha” moments for me. The first is when we watched that required documentary: Gasland. Some of the claims made in that documentary were beyond absurd, and like the skeptical jerk I am, I fact checked while watching it in class. On the school-administered iPad, I googled every single thing Josh Fox presented that got my spider-sense tingling. Antelope in Wyoming are going extinct? Not even close. Fracking fluid is in people’s water, letting them light it on fire? Try naturally occurring methane. At this point, I was already toying with the idea of going into some kind of geological science, and I was intrigued by the idea of fracking technology. We did a short lab in that class where we tried to get oil out of sand, and I thought it was cool. It was my love of all fields of science, not to mention the thrill of being involved in such a villainous industry, that helped me decide on Petroleum Engineering.
The other moment was when we were focusing on alternative energy, including a lengthy discussion about Hydrogen powered cars. I raised my hand quickly.
“If we’re worried about CO2 causing global warming, wouldn’t it be much worse if we were all driving cars that had water vapor as their exhaust?”
She paused, thinking it over. “I think you might be right, that’s a very interesting observation.” She said, before re-explaining to the class what I was talking about, how water vapor captures much more heat than carbon dioxide. I felt good about being able to apply what I learned about climate and our atmosphere to challenging popular “green” narratives. The best part was that my teacher was so supportive, and was willing to admit when something our textbook claimed wasn’t entirely true.
It has been a very different ride in college. Exhausting, as now I’m surrounded by professors and students who promote anthropogenic climate change predictions with such intensity, it makes the most zealous cultist fanatics look calm and reasonable. Again and again I’m surprised by the reactions of my peers to my skepticism, sometimes I even prompt truly angry reactions from people. One crunchy granola geology guy engaged me in a conversation about alternative energy, he tried to argue that hemp oil would soon overtake our need for fossil fuels. Right. Somehow the conversation got to land use, and I expressed an opinion that the states probably could deal with their environmental problems and land use better than federal agencies—he quoted something about the Koch Brothers, and I left him for class. Maybe a week later, he handed me a piece of notebook paper with “research” written up on it—mostly a series of bullet points about the American Lands Council which he somehow connected to white supremacy, right wing fanaticism, and most bizarrely of all the Kim Davis controversy. I couldn’t believe that someone who was a “scientific” person felt the need to use the guilt by association trap, the screeching leftist “Racist! Sexist! Homophobe!” nonsense in a discussion about land use. I gave up my favorite study spot after that, opting to avoid him instead of giving him the what-for I’d so like to. I don’t have time for that—I have school to worry about.
There have been plenty of times that I wondered if it’s my perspective that is wrong, I’ve done some soul searching on the topics I’m passionate about. College has challenged my views, while it seems to only confirm the ideas that the “warmists” hold. Some of my previously held beliefs have changed, like much of what I understood (or thought I understood) about climate, but I’ve still yet to be presented solid evidence for primary anthropogenic climate change that isn’t either refuted by another study, or backed with accusations like the ones crunchy granola guy lobbed my way. I’ve stopped being shocked by the way my professors obediently tow the party line—as I learned a few years ago that at least here, federal funding is dependent on a certain amount of global warming acceptance. I’m thankful for the engineering courses I’m taking, because if my geology and earth sciences were not balanced out by the dry technical calculations of engineering, I’d probably lose my mind. (Just imagine how bad it would be if I were in sociology or women’s studies!) I am disappointed by the quality of the “science” taught at University though—when theory is presented as fact, and computer models are regarded as gospel despite their infamous unreliability, it’s not actual science.
It’s propaganda—dogmatic as any religion.
It’s my 5th year since heading west for my engineering degree. This year I’m taking a handful of great little petroleum classes, and finishing off my geology minor. Of course, it’s my geology class that is giving me a headache. A mineral resource course sounds pretty straightforward… except of course our professor managed to turn it into a climate change/ humans are killing everything/ we’re all going to die class. We even have a section of the class towards the end of the semester dedicated to social justice, because that’s why I’m getting a science degree. In retrospect, I should have known what I was getting into when I looked around and saw several students with either half shaved heads or hair colors that in nature scream “I’m toxic”.
It’s gonna be a fun semester, and I’ll try to keep you updated.
Your teacher was right, polar bears can’t swim 60 miles. They can only swim 426 miles:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/07/110720-polar-bears-global-warming-sea-ice-science-environment/
Polar bears are marine mammals.
Hence the name, Ursus maritimus.
It seems that this young lady learned something about honesty and reasoning somewhere else than school.
She applied what she learned.
Clair,
Not sure if you have ever heard of the Gell-Mann syndrome, but most people suffer from it, and it is the very thing you are noticing.
Describing Gell-Man is fairly simple, it is a sort of willful amnesia in the face of the unknown. If you are reading the newspaper, perusing the articles, you stumble across one where the journalist is talking about an event you actually experienced, or a topic of which you know a great deal. As you read the article you become angry and confused. They have mixed up cause and effect. The have misquoted, and misconstrued what happened. “Hrumph” you say, then immediately turn the page to an article about Afghan politics, a subject you know next to nothing about, and eagerly read on.
Now logically, this makes no sense. If the article where I know the facts about is wrong, why would I automatically assume the article where I personally don’t know the facts about, is right? Shouldn’t I be extra cautious of articles where I don’t have any information? Instead we are the opposite – more accepting.
We tend to overrate others expertise in things we know very little about. The mechanic at the shop telling me my flange is oscillating. Hey the guy is a mechanic, and he looked in the engine. he must know what he is talking about, right? Most people are very susceptible to herd thinking, of following authority. Very few want to think for themselves – very few want to ask dumb questions about a subject they are not familiar with. Who are you to question the status quo, the status quo, by the way, that most people simply accept without understanding? Try asking any catastrophic global warmer who the IPCC is and what “IPCC” even stands for sometime – be prepared for a lot of blank looks.
Anyway, you have learned a lot of valuable lessons in college. Don’t trust authority, especially authority that insists it is right simply because it is the authority. Also be very wary of scientific viewpoints that flatter your ego, or confirm your assumptions, or make you look better than someone else. Finally, if you can’t explain it, then you don’t really understand, it do you? You are just parroting something you heard, or something you read in the paper ;). The world would do a lot better, if more people were a bit more humble about things they know very little about.
+ 1 for Tenn.
Clair Masters wrote: “Some of my previously held beliefs have changed, like much of what I understood (or thought I understood) about climate, but I’ve still yet to be presented solid evidence for primary anthropogenic climate change that isn’t either refuted by another study, or backed with accusations like the ones crunchy granola guy lobbed my way.”
You have correct rejected the gross oversimplifications about CAGW that have been foisted on the public by scientists more interested in political advocacy than in scientist accuracy. However, it is possible to lean that certain aspects of AGW – radiative forcing, in particular – are reliable science. Radiative forcing plus conservation of energy demands that the earth warm in response to rising GHGs. If the Earth were a simple gray body it would warm about 1 degC in response to a doubling of CO2. However, the earth isn’t a simple gray body (with an absorptivity and emissivity that is constant with temperature), so we can’t say how much it will warm in practice. Feedbacks climate scientist’s names for temperature dependent changes in absorptivity and emissivity.
Unfortunately, the typical engineering education doesn’t involve two fields that are useful to understanding climate physics: quantum mechanics (the interactions between molecules and photons) and chaos. Chaotic fluctuations in fluid flow (ocean currents that exchange heat between the deep ocean and the surface) are responsible for large unforced or internal variation in surface temperature like El Nino that are not caused by radiative heat exchange with the sun and space. Given this chaotic evolution of surface temperature, it is very difficult to determine the cause of short term variations in our planet’s surface temperature – such as the fairly meaningless Pause in warming between about 2000 and 2013.
Since engineers deal with macroscopic materials, they usually don’t learn much about non-intuitive behavior of individual molecules and photons that results in the thermodynamics we observe. It turns out the individual molecules and photons don’t obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics; individual molecule have kinetic energy, but not a temperature that defines which way heat can flow. The field of statistical mechanics explains how the quantum behavior of large numbers of molecules results in the laws of thermodynamics of the macroscopic world. And the spectrum of blackbody radiation. Statistical mechanics is a highly mathematical subject of negligible utility to engineers who already need to take a heavy load of courses. That leaves no one to tells you blackbody radiation is the result of thermodynamics EQUILIBRIUM between radiation and molecules. In our atmosphere, some wavelengths of thermal IR are in equilibrium with the local atmosphere and some are not. So applying the principles of blackbody radiation to our planet doesn’t work very well. Another untaught concept is “local thermodynamic equilibrium” in the atmosphere, which ensures that the number of CO2 molecules in an excited vibrational state depends only on the local temperature, not the intensity of the radiation passing through the atmosphere. Collisional relaxation of excited states is vastly faster than re-emission of a photon from an excited state.
The point of you long comment is what? That engineers didn’t study physics or other science on the way to getting their engineering degree? That they are not capable of understanding quantum mechanics or Chaos theory? As for engineers only dealing with macroscopic material demonstrates only you misunderstanding of what some modern engineers now study and actually do.
Edwin: (I was rushed after writing much of my long comment.) Engineers are among those with a technical education who are best prepared by education to understand the physics of climate (change). Nevertheless, experience has taught me that there are certain topics engineering has not prepared them to deal with: DLR photons traveling from the cooler atmosphere to the warmer surface and “violating” the 2LoT. Local thermodynamic equilibrium (aka thermalization of absorbed photons). Assuming the atmosphere behaves like a gray body. Chaotic fluctuations in temperature. Our author may incorrectly believe that radiative forcing has been discredited for some of these reasons.
The fundamental equation of radiative transfer through the atmosphere, the Schwarzschild eqn., is not one dealt with in undergraduate courses – which usually stop with blackbody radiation.
dI = n*o*B(lambda,T)*dz – n*o*I_0*dz
It say that – for a given wavelength – the change in the intensity, dI, of radiation passing an incremental distance, dz, through the atmosphere depends on radiation added/emitted by gas molecules (the first term) and radiation removed/absorbed by gas molecules along the dz increment. n is the density of emitting/absorbing molecules (aka GHGs), o is their absorption cross-section at the wavelength of interest, I_0 is the intensity of radiation entering the dz increment and B(lambda,T) is the Planck function for that wavelength and local temperature.
Not necessarily.
If increased radiative forcing leads to an increase of the planet’s albedo (for example) then the temperature may even fall.
Or more likely it will be restricted from moving far.
This is the strange attractor theory; that the climate is chaotic. And if Lorenz is right then your simple linear equation is irrelevant.
M Courtney wrote: “If increased radiative forcing leads to an increase of the planet’s albedo (for example) then the temperature may even fall.”
Incorrect. Radiative forcing (the slowing of radiative cooling to space) has no direct effect on planetary albedo. It only changes albedo by first causing warming. The amount of warming caused by radiative forcing can be reduced by a temperature-dependent increase in albedo (a feedback) measured in W/m2/K, but the some warming is required.
M Courtney: You are correct that climate is chaotic. When you are discussing chaotic change (or unforced or change or fluctuations in heat transfer between the surface and the deep ocean), there need not be an apparent cause for change. However, it doesn’t mean that forced change can’t occur.
There is a wonderful short article from Lorenz about this subject entitled: Chaos, spontaneous climatic variations and detection of the greenhouse effect. It is found on page 445 of this conference proceedings. (Basically, it says you can’t attribute warming to GHGs using climate models if they have been tuned to the historical record.)
http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/24/049/24049764.pdf?r=1
Good for you, Clair Masters. I note your points about water vapor. The consensus explanation, as you have heard, is that water vapor condenses out, resulting in a short turnover period in the atmosphere, and therefore massive human emissions of it (think evaporative heat rejection from coal-fired and nuclear power plant cooling towers) cannot cause warming from its radiative absorption and emission properties. This is half right, but misses the reason why the atmosphere returns water to the surface so readily. Keep asking, “Where does the heat go?” Precipitation makes it obvious that the atmosphere behaves powerfully as a heat engine, putting heat into motion at impressive rates. For example, on this website recently there was a posting of a 6.3″ per hour rainfall rate from NASA and NOAA sources for Hurricane Irma earlier in its development. That rate of condensation from the updrafts implies upward heat delivery of 100,000 W/m^2. Consider this question: “What does CO2 do to the effectiveness of air and water vapor as the working fluid of the atmospheric heat engine?” It’s a good question for an engineer to ask.
David Dibbell: You are executing a classic Gish Gallop: Changing the subject to distract from your being wrong. What does your paragraph have to do with water vapor being a feedback rather than a forcing of atmospheric temperature, and anthropogenic CO2 injection into the atmosphere being a driver?
Tom Dayton: “Changing the subject to distract from your being wrong.” Please tell me what I said above that you believe to be wrong, and why you believe it is wrong.
David Dibbell, search the comments for Tom Dayton’s name and you will find he has repeatedly demonstrated a clear lack of understanding on atmospheric water vapour.
He’s actually stated that warmer air carries more water vapour (yes) and that therefore it cannot form clouds (no, temperature varies with altitude and merging of air masses. And, of course, nucleation is required to form clouds, which he doesn’t know).
My suspicion is that Skeptical Science hasn’t covered latent heat yet so he hasn’t even heard of that.
Anyone who links to Skeptical Science is providing a condemnation of the Arts syllabus.
M Courtney: Thank you. I see.
M Courtney: No, I absolutely did not state that warmer air cannot form clouds. I can’t tell whether you are intentionally misrepresenting my statements, or have really poor reading comprehension.
M Courtney: Of course Skeptical Science deals with latent heat, as does all of climatology. You should read more and type less. Here is merely one example that took me all of 2 seconds to find by typing “latent heat” into the Search field on the Skeptical Science site: https://skepticalscience.com/tropospheric-hot-spot.htm
David Dibbell: You wrote that “the consensus explanation…is that water vapor condenses out, resulting in a short turnover period in the atmosphere, and therefore massive human emissions of it…cannot cause warming from its radiative absorption and emission properties,” is only “half right.” You were wrong about that being only half right. It is in fact completely right. Then you tried to distract from your incorrect assertion by throwing out a bunch of other things that are not in any way relevant to the original point of discussion.
Tom Dayton: Thank you for your response. You say, of the consensus view about water vapor, “It is in fact completely right.” Then I will direct to you the same question I posed in my original comment. When water vapor is emitted into the atmosphere by systems such as cooling towers, and condenses out as precipitation, where does the heat go?
(And just to be clear especially to others who read this, when I say “half right” I mean this: the conclusion that emissions of water vapor are harmless make sense to me, but for a different reason than argued from the climate consensus viewpoint. The real reason, as I see it, that these emissions are harmless is that the atmosphere operates so readily as a heat engine, using water vapor to help drive upward motion to deliver the heat to high altitudes unimpeded by the greenhouse effect.)
David Dibbell: The energy emitted by the condensation of water vapor that was emitted by cooling towers, of course goes into the atmosphere. It is the same amount of energy that was human-generated to evaporate the water in the first place. The amount of human-generated energy by that and all other means (“waste heat”) is nonzero but trivial in contrast to the long-term insulation increase from anthropogenic CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions: https://skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm.
Your reliance on a “heat engine” is incorrect. Directly injecting water vapor into the atmosphere has only a trivial and temporary effect, for the reasons I’ve repeatedly explained and provided evidence for; the water vapor quickly condenses out of the atmosphere.
I’m replying to my own comment here to close out the exchange with Mr. Dayton you can see below.
NASA described the heat-engine nature of the atmosphere (and the oceans for that matter) in a January 14, 2009 article on its Earthobservatory website, by Rebecca Lindsey, entitled “Climate and the Earth’s Energy Budget”. It’s still there. Here is a quote: “The atmosphere and ocean work non-stop to even out solar heating imbalances through evaporation of surface water, convection, rainfall, winds, and ocean
circulation. This coupled atmosphere and ocean circulation is known as Earth’s heat engine. The climate’s heat engine must not only redistribute solar heat from the equator toward the poles, but also from the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere back to space.”
Want to see the heat-engine nature of the atmosphere for yourself? Watch a thunderstorm.
Yes, David Dibbell. In other news, the sky is blue. All that is completely irrelevant to the fact that water vapor added to the atmosphere condenses out unless the atmosphere’s temperature is increased by other means.
Claire M, you are probably on the right track. But don’t take my word for it.
Take care.
I graduated with MS atmos sci right when global warming was taking off. Then, it was just science, not politics
Fast forward… about half my now mostly retired professors that I still know are skeptics
Probably 80% of my classmates who Do NOT work for gov’t or academia just roll their eyes at this stuff.
But those in academia remain “all in”. My kids are barraged with pure propaganda in public school.
Not sure how to kill this ugly goose that has laid such a golden funding egg
At home.
Maybe you don’t know the “New Math”…er…Climate Science”, but you can teach (and show them) them values and principles.
Required skills to sift the wheat from the chaff in the classroom.
Good thing she didn’t take gender studies, the whole things a fraud, even worse than eugenics. The whole of the social sciences is one reason fewer and fewer men than women are going to university. Economics is another corrupted science. Profs get the funded if they promote theories validating unbridled greed, the kind that gave us the 08 crash.
I wish Clair Masters was one of my students: She can write clearly and expressively. And she would like my classes in which I abjure my students to “Question Everything”. Many of them obviously have difficulty with that concept, poor dears.
Great to read about your “adventures” in college Clair, and keep doing what you’re doing. Also, as a trained electrical engineer, I’m glad to hear that your engineering classes are staying honest. Sciency beliefism like you’re getting in your non-engineering science classes don’t pay the bills in the real world, but engineering does, which is why they have to stick to the truth.
To “Clair Masters”: If you find the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis, and its adherents, to be zealots, then you may find the rest of the story to be quite fascinating. For there is not one argument about climate change, there are actually three…..
The 2nd argument is purely geological and independent of greenhouse gases. It involves the age of the present geologic epoch, the Holocene. Under natural boundary conditions how long should the Holocene be expected to last? The answer is anywhere from “it should already be over” to possibly as long as 50k years. The former estimate is derived from orbital dynamics obliquity and precession. The data suggests that no previous interglacial has sustained interglacial warmth much longer than about ~5,000 years from peak obliquity. Obliquity peaked in the Holocene about ~10,000 years ago. Many workers have published results suggesting that only 1 of the past 8 interglacials has lasted longer than about half a precession cycle. The precession cycle varies from 19,000 to 23,000 years and we are at the 23kyr point now, making 11,500 half. The Holocene is, as of this year, precisely 11,720 years old……..
The 50kyr argument is based on results of a 2-dimensional intermediate resolution model that was soundly trounced by Lisiecki and Raymo (2004) in their landmark paper found here http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/Lisiecki_Raymo_2005_Pal.pdf.
The 3rd, and far more interesting debate stems from Ruddiman’s Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis (EAH), first published in 2002. The gist of the EAH is that we have either delayed or obfuscated glacial inception BECAUSE of our GHG emissions! Here are a few poignant quotes from the literature summing this up:
“We will illustrate our case with reference to a debate currently taking place in the circle of Quaternary climate scientists. The climate history of the past few million years is characterised by repeated transitions between `cold’ (glacial) and `warm’ (interglacial) climates. The first modern men were hunting mammoth during the last glacial era. This era culminated around 20,000 years ago [3] and then warmed rapidly. By 9,000 years ago climate was close to the modern one. The current interglacial, called the Holocene, should now be coming to an end, when compared to previous interglacials, yet clearly it is not. The debate is about when to expect the next glacial inception, setting aside human activities, which may well have perturbed natural cycles.”
Crucifix, M. and J. Rougier, 2009, “On the use of simple dynamical systems for climate predictions: A Bayesian prediction of the next glacial inception”, Published in Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Topics, 174, 11-31 (2009)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.3625.pdf
“The possible explanation as to why we are still in an interglacial relates to the early anthropogenic hypothesis of Ruddiman (2003, 2005). According to that hypothesis, the anomalous increase of CO2 and CH4 concentrations in the atmosphere as observed in mid- to late Holocene ice-cores results from anthropogenic deforestation and rice irrigation, which started in the early Neolithic at 8000 and 5000 yr BP, respectively. Ruddiman proposes that these early human greenhouse gas emissions prevented the inception of an overdue glacial that otherwise would have already started.”
conclude Muller and Pross (2007)
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ulrich_Mueller7/publication/222561971_Lesson_from_the_past_present_insolation_minimum_holds_potential_for_glacial_inception/links/0c96051e593f3a593d000000.pdf
So there you have what might just be the most ironical thing in all of human history! The Anthropocene being the GHG extension of Holocene interglacial warmth until we decide to pull the plug in preference of a ~100,000 year long ice age instead.
William McClenney: 50k years, 5,000 years, 10,000 years, 19,000 years, 23,000 years … Climate change on the orbital forcing time scale is irrelevant to anyone alive today. AGW is a problem for the next century or perhaps two. It is tough enough to decide what to do about the next century or two. If we haven’t learned how to manipulate our climate within a millennium, we will probably be dealing with much worse problems than a coming ice age.
Frank, you completely missed the point. We are there. We should be well into glacial inception by now or entering it right now. But clearly we are not. Why?
William: You miss my point. Orbital forcing changes on the thousand year time scale. Without rising GHGs, we might be entering the next ice age right now. However, that is irrelevant, since it will take perhaps a thousand year to cause 1 degC of cooling. AGW is about roughly 1 degC of warming in the past century and a minimum of 1 degC in the next century – possibly more. That will overwhelm the oncoming ice age.
Even worse, our understanding of orbital forcing is so poor, that no theoretical framework properly hindcasts the glacial/interglacial changes we have experience. We can’t know if the next ice age was supposed to start this century, about 10 millennia in the past (if it weren’t for human agriculture) or 10 millennia in the future.
Frank,
The issue of how fast glacial inception can occur is one I have been looking at for some time now. While it is obviously related to insolation changes precipitated by orbital frequencies, it is non-linear and seemingly related to changes in such things as oceanic circulation changes, albedo etc. Some useful guidance on speed of glacial inception from the literature seem to suggest that:
“According to the marine records, the Eemian interglacial ended with a rapid cooling event about 110 000 years ago (e.g., Imbrie et al., 1984; Frenzel and Bludau, 1987; Martinson et al., 1987), which also shows up in ice cores and pollen records from across Eurasia. Adkins et al. (1997) suggested that the final cooling event took less than 400 years, and it might have been much more rapid.”
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.540.101&rep=rep1&type=pdf
“MIS-5e ended abruptly with a rapid transition to glacial conditions, the lake was covered by a layer of firnified snow and ice, and phototrophic biological activity ceased for a period of c. 90,000 years.”
“Our results suggest that MIS5e was not a stable period as there are two distinct periods of elevated organic and carbonate carbon deposition (Fig. 2b). We speculate that these were short-lived warm periods. Two warm periods (130.7–130 and 125.7–118.2 kyr BP) have also been detected in Austrian alpine stalagmites (Holzka¨mper et al., 2004). Until there is an appropriate technology for dating MIS5e in these lake sediments we cannot establish if there is a common forcing behind these warm events. The transition from interglacial into glacial conditions was rapid and is represented in its entirety between 26 and 23 cm. This suggests that the end of MIS5e was a relatively sudden event and not a gradual transition to colder conditions. Alkenone sea surface temperature data from the Southern Ocean record this sharp cooling at around 120 kyr BP (Ikehara et al., 1997), marine cores from the Atlantic suggest that it occurred over a period of less than 400 yr, and possibly much shorter (Adkins et al., 1997), and in Greenland the transition took as little as 70 yr (Anklin et al., 1993).”
“The transition into glacial conditions was a relatively sudden event. This is supported by marine and ice core records.”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Elie_Verleyen/publication/222333370_Interglacial_environments_of_coastal_east_Antarctica_Comparison_of_MIS_1_%28Holocene%29_and_MIS_5e_%28Last_Interglacial%29_lake-sediment_records/links/0c960525ff43b0ac6b000000.pdf
Finally, the very abrupt end of the LI, that occurred within no more than 0.15 ka (Fig. 3b), but that lagged by ~6.3 ka the onset of long-term decreases in SST, Vostok dD and CH4 and increase in global ice volume, once again indicates a nonlinear response and suggests important threshold processes.
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/2/450.full?origin=publication_detail
“Furthermore, astronomical calculations (Berger, 1978) show that the insolation values underwent much wider variations at high latitudes than at mid-latitudes during the Quaternary. Therefore, the astronomical forcing on climate (and vegetation) might be less at the latitude of the presently discussed pollen records in comparison to the marine record. The North Atlantic Ocean circulation, which directly influences the climate of Europe (Broecker et al., 1989), shows also that sea surface temperatures and salinity are subject to far stronger changes at high latitudes than at lower latitudes (Keigwin et al., 1994).”
“The result of these high resolution climate reconstructions is the discovery of a rapid (human scale) and significant cooling event within the Eemian interglacial.”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Guiot_Joel/publication/223344451_Was_the_climate_of_the_Eemian_stable_A_quantitative_climate_reconstruction_from_seven_European_pollen_records/links/546399af0cf2837efdb3423c.pdf
“Data from a core on the Bermuda rise, located at the mixing zone of North and South Atlantic deep water, show a pronounced decline of the North Atlantic deep-water component at the MIS 5e to 5d transition within a period of ~200 yr (Lehman et al., 2002).”
http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~born/share/papers/eemian_and_lgi/mueller_kukla04.geo.pdf
This record also reveals that the transitions at the beginning and end of the interglacial spanned only ~100 and 150 years, respectively.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/2/450.full?origin=publication_detail
“Relatively few marine or terrestrial paleoclimate studies have focused on glacial inception, the transition from an interglacial to a glacial climate state. As a result, neither the timing and structure of glacial inception nor the spatial pattern of glacial inception in different parts of the world is well known.”
“But relatively few paleoclimate studies have focused on the details of the other transition between climate states – glacial inception. The relative age of the most recent glacial inception, about 120 ka, is likely a factor since far fewer high-resolution archives of climate, either marine or terrestrial, extend so far back in time.”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stephen_Burns2/publication/281431728_A_tropical_speleothem_record_of_glacial_inception_the_South_American_Summer_Monsoon_from_125_to_115_ka/links/563274ea08aefa44c368517e.pdf
We are therefore left with timeframes that seem to span something like 400 years to sudden.
Cheers
William,
Ruddiman’s hypothesis is ridiculous.
No interglacial has lasted as short a time as the 6000 years from the start of the Holocene to the end of its Climatic Optimum.
In the past 800 thousand years, there have been two integlacials as brief as 9000 years, but most are much longer. The last one, the Eemian, lasted 16,000 years and was much warmer than the Holocene. The interglacial during MIS 11 was even longer and hotter.
So there is no reason whatsoever to imagine that human activity 5000 years ago and more forestalled a return to glacial conditions.
Frank,
No, we would not be entering the next ice age right now without man-made GHGs. In the first place, they have had no detectable effect on GASTA. In the second place, based upon the tilt cycle, we have about 3000 more years to go in this interglacial. If eccentricity rules instead, then it’s more like 30,000 years, for a super interglacial akin to MIS 11.
Sixto,
“Ruddiman’s hypothesis is ridiculous.” One must presume that you have references to document your assertion but that you choose not to provide them. Might I suggest Ruddiman et al’s (2016) thorough analysis of the subject. Now, I do not want to do all of your research for you, so you will have to look this one up yourself (for practice) (hint: AGU).
Your assertion of the length of the Eemian was equally well documented. A lot of that depends on just what proxies one uses to provide the estimate. Using your methodology, off the top of my head (not taking the time to consult my exhaustive literature archives) the estimates run from roughly 9,000 to 23,000 years. From memory the consensus seems to be about 11,000 years.
You are correct about MIS-11. It was both longer and warmer than the Holocene. However not for the entire length of the extended interglacial. It consisted of two precession driven insolation peaks, with very cold conditions in-between.
One of the many papers you may wish to consult regarding MIS-11 is a landmark one by Lisiecki and Raymo (2005):
“Recent research has focused on MIS 11 as a possible analog for the present interglacial [e.g., Loutre and Berger, 2003; EPICA community members, 2004] because both occur during times of low eccentricity. The LR04 age model establishes that MIS 11 spans two precession cycles, with 18O values below 3.6 o/oo for 20 kyr, from 398-418 ka. In comparison, stages 9 and 5 remained below 3.6 o/oo for 13 and 12 kyr, respectively, and the Holocene interglacial has lasted 11 kyr so far. In the LR04 age model, the average LSR of 29 sites is the same from 398-418 ka as from 250-650 ka; consequently, stage 11 is unlikely to be artificially stretched. However, the June 21 insolation minimum at 65N during MIS 11 is only 489 W/m2, much less pronounced than the present minimum of 474 W/m2. In addition, current insolation values are not predicted to return to the high values of late MIS 11 for another 65 kyr. We propose that this effectively precludes a ‘double precession-cycle’ interglacial [e.g., Raymo, 1997] in the Holocene without human influence.”
A friendly piece of advice. If you are going to issue unsupported/unreferenced assertions then you may wish to consider how that affects your credibility, especially here on WUWT. It takes little time to eviscerate such assumptions.
I cannot believe that even Wyoming is infested with academics who have allowed their “global warming” beliefs to push aside real science.
Roger Bacon knew better:
“Gentlemen. If we begin with certainties, we will end in doubt. But, if we begin with doubts, we may end in certainty.”
We are just sending too many people to college.
Very, very, disappointing to see someone like this write “my professors obediently tow the party line”.
It is “toe the party line”. She has been reading too many internet sites.
The phrase, “Toe the party line,” was overused long before its overuse migrated to the internet. In 1946 George Orwell himself wrote against it as an example of “worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.”
I agree with Orwell. But if you are going to use it anyway, get it right.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-toe2.htm
“Toe the line is actually the survivor of a set of phrases that were common …”
Clair’s usage is not uncommon. As an editor, one should correct it (or ask that it be), but for a blog essay — I do not find it “Very, very, disappointing…”
I do find disappointing the double “very, very” — as I think one would be sufficient, and none would be better. “Omit needless words” is good advice.
– – – – – –
Thanks, Clair, for the essay.
There are many interesting blog posts back in 2008 through 2012.
It takes much reading to go back and move forward. “The Air Vent” and “Climate Audit” come to mind. See the sidebar under Skeptical Views. Many others.
To add to the puns (schist, gneiss,…):
I love science puns but only periodically.
Good for you!
44 years ago when I was 16 a local radio talk show had a Friday night theme where a guest (Honest Chuck) joined the host (Ronn Owens on KGO radio) to do a few hours of Now Is That True? The idea was simple, callers would tell stories and Ronn and Chuck had to guess if they were true or false. If they were right they’d go on to the next caller, but if they were wrong they had to tell a story and the caller got to guess.
What was great about this show is how well it taught you critical thinking. Was the premise plausible? Was there convincing evidence? Did the teller relate it without verbal mistakes? Was all the information shared consistent? Etc. I found this show incredibly entertaining and a life lesson I have used ever since.
No matter what you are told ask yourself Now Is That True, rigorously consider the data, and value logic over emotion. After all, it worked for Spock : )
Some reflections
Although some of the objections the author has to manmade global warming is easily explained, and in no conflict with the IPCC explanation, I think the description of an education system hostile to questions about climate science is horrific. It shows how polarized the debate gas become.
Too many people think that people on the other side either are complete idiots or in some way corrupt. The reasoning seem to be like “If you do not agree with me, and you are not an idiot, you must have an economic benefit from what you are saying and therefore you are an evil person.”
Universities should be the opposite to that kind of reasoning. They should encourage students to ask questions and challenge the established beliefs.
When I was student, I financed some of the studies by being part time teacher in mathematics for ship electricians. Many of these sailor students where older than me, and they sometimes asked critical questions like “Why are we learning this?”. We then had challenging and interesting discussions. I would never dream of becoming angry for a critical question.
/Jan
THANK YOU SO MUCH ANTHONY – IM A SCIENCE TEACHER AND HAVE COPPED SO MUCH ABUSE FROM STUDENTS AND TEACHERS ALIKE FOR DARING TO SHOW THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS DEBATE – THIS REFRESHING AND HAS MAKE MY DAY!!!
this so refreshing – and has made my day I should say!
Compared to this incredibly learned person who wrote this piece and other brilliant people who know so much more than I do, I will simply concede I’m a complete idiot in comparison, and the fact that our local climate records show that the most recent 25 years, (in Central Minnesota) was actually one tenth of a degree colder than the the period of 1900 to 1924, just shows how ignorant I am. Actual climate records are obviously corrupt, since they don’t agree with Al Gore and his groupies….Just saying, And God knows we never had a hurricane till….NOW LOL
Clair, It is a shame that you have been treated badly by people who disagree with you.
All I would say is be careful that you don’t swap one group of ideological warriors for another. It is easy to reject people who treat you badly because of what you think, but you have to be careful that you don’t fall into replacing them with people who have the same issues, who seem to treat you better because they perceive you as being on the same side.
The real test is how they treat other people who disagree with them. As you will see from reading this site, and this thread discussing your letter, that while there are many knowledgeable people here, who are serious about understanding things, and who can ague in good faith, and with respect when talking to people they disagree with, there are also many who behave like the people who have given you a hard time.
You can’t let your skeptical guard down, and I would say that this is especially important in a setting where you and a great many others share common views. Keep your skeptical hat on, and be cautious of ideological cheer squads, whatever their position on the issues.
All science literate persons who bother to look at the evidence or the lack of it will become a climate skeptic. Unless they are corrupt or stupid
http://emilysquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/EmilysQuotes.Com-teach-people-help-discover-wisdom-intelligent-Galileo-Galilei.jpg
The next gen science standards for geology no longer mention the rock cycle, but there is a lot of “climate change”. Geology evolves.
With what, if anything, has the “Rock Cycle” been replaced? Have other cycles been replaced as well?