From the POTSDAM INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE IMPACT RESEARCH (PIK) and the “take what PIK says wth a heavy dose of salt” department. On the plus side, if true, this means that burning coal will prevent a global glaciation.
Formation of coal almost turned our planet into a snowball
CREDIT (Image courtesy of NASA)
While burning coal today causes Earth to overheat, about 300 million years ago the formation of that same coal brought our planet close to global glaciation. For the first time, scientists show the massive effect in a study to be published in the renowned Proceedings of the US Academy of Sciences. When trees in vast forests died during a time called the Carboniferous and the Permian, the carbon dioxide (CO2) they took up from the atmosphere while growing got buried; the plants’ debris over time formed most of the coal that today is used as fossil fuel. Consequently, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere sank drastically and Earth cooled down to a degree it narrowly escaped what scientists call a ‘snowball state’.
“It is quite an irony that forming the coal that today is a major factor for dangerous global warming once almost lead to global glaciation,” says author Georg Feulner from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “However, this illustrates the enormous dimension of the coal issue. The amount of CO2 stored in Earth’s coal reserves was once big enough to push our climate out of balance. When released by burning the coal, the CO2 is again destabilizing the Earth system.”
The study examines the sensitivity of the climate in a specific period of Earth’s deep past by using a large ensemble of computer simulations. While some of the changes in temperature at that time can clearly be attributed to how our planet’s axis was tilted and the way it circled the sun, the study reveals the substantial influence of CO2 concentrations. Estimates based on ancient soils and fossil leaves show that they fluctuated widely and at some point sank to about 100 parts CO2 per million parts of all gases in the atmosphere, and possibly even lower. The model simulations now reveal that global glaciation occurs below 40 parts per million.
Burning that same coal dangerously raises greenhouse gas concentration in our atmosphere
Today, CO2 levels in the atmosphere have reached more than 400 parts per million. Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas: the Sun warms Earth’s surface, but most of the heat radiated by the surface escapes into space; CO2 and other greenhouse gases hinder part of this heat from escaping, hence warming the planet.
“We should definitely keep CO2 levels in the atmosphere below 450 parts per million to keep our climate stable, and ideally much lower than that. Raising the amount of greenhouse gases beyond that limit means pushing ourselves out of the safe operating space of Earth,” says Feulner. “Earth’s past teaches us that periods of rapid warming were often associated with mass extinction events. This shows that a stable climate is something to appreciate and protect.”
###
Article: Feulner, G. (2017): Formation of most of our coal brought Earth close to global glaciation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/10/03/1712062114.abstract
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Except coal doesnt all come from just those two periods.
There was Zero coal formed in the Snowball periods, before or after or during or at the end of. Must be very difficult for a climate scientist to understand what Zero means.
Even funnier when the CO2 level was still much higher than today.
When CO2 was much higher than today…life flourished
For the CO2 to have destabilized the climate, the stable climate should be snowball earth, CO2 would be <80ppm and life would be nonexistent.
For life to thrive, CO2 needs to be above 350ppm.
Seems like the report has it Bass Ackwards
To an alarmist, zero, is the value of his credibility.
They make up what zero means. Same as they made up what hole means in the term “ozone hole” or what essentially ice free means when they talk about “essentially ice free Arctic”.
Hint: essentially ice free means less than 1 million square kilometres. FYI the area of the state of Texas is 695,662 km². Less than 1 million km²
The evidence of snowball earth occured 700 million years ago. Plants didn’t exist at that time. Only Algae in the ocean. Very different condition than when coal was formed.
700 million years ago is well beyond our ability to measure anything from that time.
Potscam Institute
lmao
And a lot of it comes from after the glaciation…
Henry Fountain reports via The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source):
The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as other parts of the planet, and even here in sub-Arctic Alaska the rate of warming is high. Sea ice and wildlife habitat are disappearing; higher sea levels threaten coastal native villages. But to the scientists from Woods Hole Research Center who have come here to study the effects of climate change, the most urgent is the fate of permafrost, the always-frozen ground that underlies much of the state. Starting just a few feet below the surface and extending tens or even hundreds of feet down, it contains vast amounts of carbon in organic matter — plants that took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere centuries ago, died and froze before they could decompose. Worldwide, permafrost is thought to contain about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere. Once this ancient organic material thaws, microbes convert some of it to carbon dioxide and methane, which can flow into the atmosphere and cause even more warming. Scientists have estimated that the process of permafrost thawing could contribute as much as 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit to global warming over the next several centuries, independent of what society does to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and other activities. In Alaska, nowhere is permafrost more vulnerable than here, 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle, in a vast, largely treeless landscape formed from sediment brought down by two of the state’s biggest rivers, the Yukon and the Kuskokwim. Temperatures three feet down into the frozen ground are less than half a degree below freezing. This area could lose much of its permafrost by midcentury.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/08/25/2124203/alaskas-permafrost-is-thawing
And it still wouldn’t be enough to get CO2 levels back to the levels they were when the earth almost froze over.
Keep on burning that coal so that we can escape a dreaded Snowball earth, which we know that you would not like.
These “scientists” completely ignore the Beer-Lambert Law, in which, if CO2 had any detectable effect, its main contribution would have been with the first 20–40 ppm. As the effect plateaus, its ability to have any effect has gone to inconsequential. They seem to think CO2’s effects are HUGE and linear. Stupid.
They also ignore the fact that water vapor is up to 40,000 ppm and is 20 times the radiative gas that CO2 is. It beggars the imagination that these purported scientists are willing to claim that our climate history if dominated by CO2 in the atmosphere. How stupid are they? Well, I guess they are trying to show us.
Better yet, they probably assume that water vapor magnifies the effects of CO2. First, have they ever looked at CO2’s absorption spectrum? It looks like a picket fence with only two pickets in it, with most IR radiation transparent to it. Water vapor does better but only on one side of the IR range and it overlaps with one of CO2’s pickets, thus these two gases interfere with each other.
One effect these atmospheric brains do not recognize is that, as CO2 rises, the absolute water vapor concentration in the atmosphere decreases, such that, since water vapor is the superior radiative gas, the result of increased CO2 would be global cooling through decreased water vapor..
Regardless, what they also ignore is that water vapor makes air less dense and warm, and humid air rises as part of the water cycle, carrying heat energy as well as the latent heat of evaporated water (insensible heat) to altitude where the heat is lost to space as the water condenses and rains back to the surface.
This water cycle is a huge global heat engine that moves roughly 85% of the planet’s solar energy budget. This is Trenberth’s missing energy, which he pretends is “lurking” in the deep ocean, waiting to jump out of the closet in the future (really, that their level of thinking). The warmist climate models do not use the water cycle, considering, myopically, that water vapor is commanded by CO2, it’s slave. And, if the climate does warm, this engine ramps up to bring the temperature back down. What changes the climate is changes in the solar input and the solar wind/cosmic wind balance.
Nice summary!
Higley, water vapor is the surface temp regulation system
https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/observational-evidence-for-a-nonlinear-night-time-cooling-mechanism/
A response to Higley7 ….. “These “scientists” completely ignore the …… ”
Excerpted from above article:
And just how many “global glaciations” occurred as a result of the atmospheric CO2 “ingassing” that resulted in the formation of all the different forms of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) that are now sequestered as part of the earth’s solid surface, …… given the fact that said quantity of sequestered calcium carbonate is probably 10 to 15 times greater than the quantity of sequestered coal?
To wit:
Samuel S. Cogar,
“… sequestered calcium carbonate is probably 10 to 15 times greater than the quantity of sequestered coal.”
No, that figure is a gross underestimation. Sequestered calcium carbonate is likely 10,000 times greater than the quantity of sequestered coal. Think of the enormous tonnages (untold trillions upon trillions) of CaCO3 deposited in huge carbonate basins around the world. Coal deposits are trivial in comparison.
Higley7, I am interested in how you came to your statement: “water vapor is up to 40,000 ppm and is 20 times the radiative gas that CO2 is”. How did you get to that number ’20’?
I was searching for the Global Warming Factor (GWF) of water vapour, but although the IPCC admits that water vapour is the most abundant greenhouse gas, they ‘forgot’ to mention the GWF of water vapour while mentioning the GWF of all kinds of trace gases…. (At least, I could not find such a number)
Sam C Cogar – “probably 10 to 15 times greater”
Dr Patrick Moore had the number just a bit larger than that.
Today, at just over 400 ppm CO2 there are 850 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. By comparison, when modern life-forms evolved over 500 million years ago there was nearly 15,000 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere, 17 times today’s level. Fossil fuels, which were made from plants that pulled CO2 from the atmosphere account for 5,000 – 10,000 billion tons of carbon, 6 – 12 times as much carbon as is in the atmosphere.
But the truly stunning number is the amount of carbon that has been sequestered from the atmosphere and turned into carbonaceous rocks. 100,000,000 billion tons, that’s one quadrillion tons of carbon, have been turned into stone by marine species that learned to make armour-plating for themselves by combining calcium and carbon into calcium carbonate.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/15/greenpeace-founder-delivers-powerful-annual-lecture-praises-carbon-dioxide-full-text/comment-page-1/
100,000,000 / 10,000 = 10,000 x’s more.
The model simulations now reveal that global glaciation occurs below 40 parts per million.
No, CO2 always FOLLOWS Temperature – So, now reveal that below 40 parts per million occurs only during global glaciation.
@ur momisugly Jan Christoffersen and DD More ….
I knew that about the massive amounts of sequestered CaCO3 but didn’t know the actual estimations ….. so I just stated a CMA of 10/15X greater ……. which was for the benefit of the science illiterates.
“Burning that same coal dangerously raises greenhouse gas concentration in our atmosphere”…now only if there was some evidence to substantiate this claim.
There is no evidence that CO2 heats the Earth’s atmosphere and there is no evidece that CO2 cools the Earth’s atmosphere.
This is all pure speculation.
The meercat of CO2 = SIMPLES.
Yes, TA, we like it . Can you suggest any kind of experiment or observation we can do which will either confirm or deny the veracity of your statement?
We should get working on spending a modest amount, say $100 million, on testing this statement. If it turns out to be true we will have literally saved the Earth. If it turns out to be false we will maybe have quantified the effect.
The effect has been measured and the measured effect is small. The radiative forcing from CO2 went up at 0.2 watt per square meter per decade while CO2 was rising at 22 ppm per decade.
The positive feedback mechanisms that they claim turn that small radiative forcing into the main driver of climate change is the missing and undefined affects that are assumed in AGW, but for which there is no evidence.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/02/25/co2-greenhouse-effect-increase/
Richard Bell says:
October 10, 2017 at 10:52 am
The effect has been measured and the measured effect is small. The radiative forcing from CO2 went up at 0.2 watt per square meter per decade while CO2 was rising at 22 ppm per decade.
I find this study a bit strange. Let me explain why:
1) “The scientists measured atmospheric carbon dioxide’s contribution to radiative forcing at two sites, one in Oklahoma and one on the North Slope of Alaska, from 2000 to the end of 2010”
I think this is a very short time period with very small CO2 variation. Do we talk of 390 ppm to 400 ppm?
2) It is nowhere stated that the average air/soil temperature was constant or measured in this period.
If the ground was warmer in 2010 then in 2000, the increase in temperature results in an increase in infrared radiation from the ground towards the air and from the warmer air towards the ground.
Did they measured the increased radiation of the warmer air and attributed it to radiative forcing?
The path through the air (transparency) of the CO2 frequency radiation is about 10 – 20 meters (if I correctly remember)
So what was the temperature of the air in 10-20 meters height during all these measurements? I fail to see that they accounted for that.
Same with “While burning coal today causes Earth to overheat…” – I couldn’t read past this BS.
Yep! Especially when you think of the Holocene optimum, when it was much warmer than today, without burning fossil fuels.
Well yes, the evidence is there – but based on a computer programme. That same computer evidence is, of course, the basis for this present research result. The problem is : We observe climate changes, and assume we know the reason for all climate changes, namely atmospheric CO2 – and proceed to put that theory into the computers as if it were a fact. These computer wizards must learn to differentiate between facts and theories.
AndyE,
None of those ‘computer programmes’ have been calibrated or certified as having any predictive capabilities as relates to climate changes. That isn’t ‘evidence’. It is baseless conjecture!
between facts and false theories.
The Snowball periods happen when 60% or so of the continents are connected together in a land mass centered over one of the poles. Think Antarctica times 10 or times 20. Each Antarctica drops Earth temperature by 2.0C just by the amount of solar energy reflected back to space versus not having an Antarctica. Make that 10 of them and yeah, you get a Snowball. Continental drift breaks up this alignment and moves the continents away from the pole and the Earth is much warmer. The math says +/- 40C from this impact alone.
Why didn’t a peer reviewer point this out? Tsk, tsk.
I don’t believe the “renowned Proceedings of the US Academy of Sciences” is peer reviewed.
Why didn’t a peer reviewer point this out?
Common blindness, perhaps. Or maybe something less innocent…
Merriam-Webster definition of peer: One that is of equal standing with another; equal; one belonging to the same societal group especially based on age, grade, or status.
“I don’t believe the “renowned Proceedings of the US Academy of Sciences” is peer reviewed.”
It is supposed to be at least for non-members of the Academy.
CO2 dropped during the Carboniferous Period because earth cooled. Lowering CO2 didn’t cause the Carboniferous-Permian Ice Age, but the cold caused the decline, as the oceans could hold more gas.
Land plants without today’s fungi to help their decay did contribute to the formation of coal deposits, however. Marine transgressions however also helped build up the coal swamp deposits, delaying decay.
We also have the Carboniferous to thank for the evolution of amniotes, ie reptiles (including birds) and mammals.
Is Willy Pete code for White Phosphorous? Like marker rockets in VietNam? Snowball Earth on one side and Dangerous Global Warming on the other side. What is a person to do? Wait a minute…”computer simulations”? Never mind.
Yup.
Better living through chemistry. Or killing, as the case may be.
and for many of the (large) limestone deposits.
Limestone = naturally ‘sequestered’ carbon. … (1)
Creation of limestone = oceanic method of pH (alkalinity) maintenance. (2).
All nature does is repeat eqns (1) and (2), which happens in far greater
quantities than mankind will ever be able to replicate.
Me thinks the majority of all coal deposits were formed as the result of the dead biomass being deposited in the shallow waters of swamps, lakes, tidal zones, inland seas, etc. ….. wherein the oxygen (O2) content of the water was extremely low or totally absent.
Without O2, microbial decomposition of dead biomass is greatly hampered.
An alternative reason for the formation of coal would be that, at the start of the carboniferous era, plants evolved lignin, which is the substance that gives stiffness to plant material – in effect, lignin makes wood woody, and hence trees can evolve. However, neither fungus nor bacteria had evolved the capability to digest lignin at that time, so dead trees simply accumulated in vast layers. A 100-metre wood deposit would later be compressed into a 10-metre coal seam, or thereabouts. The sequestration of carbon by this means would presumably have reduced the atmospheric CO2 content to something like the levels discussed here.
After a considerable time, fungi and bacteria presumably evolved a capability to digest lignin, thereby ending the carboniferous era. The CO2 content of the atmosphere would then have a chance to be restored. The question is, where did the additional CO2 come from, since dinosaurs were not known for coal mining?
Further evidence to the process of coalification being more rapid (i.e. not a really slow process after deep burial) is found in beds that were reworked with sandstone (and or shaley) casts of calamites and lepidodendron within the coal seam and seams cut by cross beds without distortion of the cross beds that would have occurred if there were a 10:1 reduction in thickness after burial.
Evidence that some sort of “swampy” process possibly involving oxygen is that underclays can be very thickly mixed with lepidodendron casts, and rapidly buried casts of upright calamites are found over seams, that were not changed to coal (both of which can have coal “skins’).
Bottom line: we really don’t know how coal was formed, but it looks a whole lot like what was growing and where had a lot to do with the kind of coal that formed.
@ur momisugly Roger Graves – October 10, 2017 at 10:28 am
Now I can agree with you that “lignin makes wood woody”, …….. but I cannot agree with you that it was the “woody wood” portion of dead trees accumulating in vast layers that resulted in the formation of coal.
Trees live for years n’ years, ……. but it was primarily the accumulation of the yearly “die-off” of all types of fast growing non-woody plant material that resulted in the formation of coal.
My neighbor worked as a bulldozer operator on “strip (coal) mining” jobs and he showed me a piece of petrified “tree trunk”, approx. 12” in diameter and 14” in length, that he retrieved from its vertical position in a seam of coal that he was ripping out to be loaded and hauled away. Thus the obvious explanation is, …… that seam of coal formed around the trunk of a “woody wood” tree.
So saidith Roger G:
UH, the above appears to be “old science”, …… to wit:
“While burning coal today causes Earth to overheat,”
Starting out with a false assumption is never a good thing. There’s no evidence burning coal causes the Earth to heat or overheat.
Well burning coal does heat the earth, well at least my living room but it’s still part of the earth
it does look like PIK is trying to justify models on the effects of CO2. Could be, though, as if CO2 did drop to 40ppm, that level is down on the curve where increases had a larger effect.
Oh, okay, was this after Pangaea or after Gondwanaland? Or before either of them? Or both? I thought Snowball Earth was 600 million years ago. Was somebody using a time machine or something to get the exact dates?
See, I can’t keep things straight any more in these arguments about ‘XXXX cause this’ and ‘TTTT cause that’. I really can’t tell if they’re fielding a request for more money or telling us to continue using carbon-based fuels to cook, heat the house, and heat water.
So are we supposed to start doing whatever we can to start continental drift again?
I’m just trying to understand here, although I would love to ask the people who do this if they’re serious, because I can keep a straight face for a considerable length of time, but at some point, the lips start twitching, the giggles rise, and — well, I just roll of the chair on to the floor.
And anyway, as Bill Illis points out above, there has to be a sufficient land mass to help Snowball Earth proceed. So…. what was their point in publishing this?????
>>
When trees in vast forests died during a time called the Carboniferous and the Permian, the carbon dioxide (CO2) they took up from the atmosphere while growing got buried; . . . .
<<
The upper Carboniferous (or late Carboniferous) was about 323.2 million years ago to 298.9 million years ago. It’s interesting that dragonflies date to about 325 Mya and had wingspans of about 30 inches. That’s a big bug! My guess is that there was enough CO2 in the dense atmosphere to support these large insects. How come the planet didn’t burn up back then?
Jim
Inevitably the story is 1. “Something” 2. CO2 levels change. 3. climate changes.
Why do these people never seem to have any concept of cause and effect? How is it they can gloss over the “Something”. Every. Single. Time.
They do it because of $ and everyone else gets away with it. I doubt very much 100% actually believe what they are saying as many are educated intelligent people. They will jump to the other side of the ship as soon as the money moves.
http://www.joetaxpayer.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/miracle.jpg
Models can create any kind of fantasy The programmer requires.
“using a large ensemble of computer simulations.”
Ah, more Xbox science.
Jolly good, carry on.
“David Walker October 9, 2017 at 5:07 pm
Ah, more Xbox science.”
I don’t think it is as advanced as that. Maybe a Casio handheld game console like one of these…
https://au.pinterest.com/pin/568720259166381017/
How about one of these – one of which I still have.
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/PRODPIC-8095.jpg
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/8095/science-of-cambridge-mk14/
If they had used the Climate Super Computors, then it would have hit…Those things are always great for producing Doomsday scenarios
I am disappointed with the weak findings. They should have used an extremely vast ensemble of computer simulations. More grants please
If they had used those Climate Science Super Computers, then that coming asteroid would have hit the earth in 97% of them. They are always good for predicting Doomsday Scenarios 97% of the time
“Estimates based on ancient soils and fossil leaves show that they fluctuated widely and at some point sank to about 100 parts CO2 per million parts of all gases in the atmosphere, and possibly even lower.”
At what point can plant life not survive? My (non scientist) understanding was that 100 ppm was kind of pushing it for a flora apocalypse already
That would indeed be starvation level for C3 plants, which is all there was in the Carboniferous. The usual estimate for CO2 during the Karoo Ice Age is around 300 ppm, but it might at times have gotten down to the level of Pleistocene glacial intervals, ie 180 ppm.
That would actually be my question: would the (supposed) cooling be due to the lack of CO2? Or perhaps instead due to the death of much of the globe’s plant life and the loss of it’s aspirated water vapor? Previous articles here at WUWT have pointed out how much water vapor plants pump into the atmosphere, effecting local atmospheric conditions.
Snowball Earth occurred a few times long prior to 300 Myr ago. Reasons for chilling and then warming Earth during these have not been decided.
A lot of coal formed during the late Carboniferous and early Permian. Atmospheric CO2 went low then, and temperature also decreased. One popular idea as to why this occurred is that woody plants arose for the first time in Earth history and now produced lignin and cellulose, large organic structures, which bacteria and fungi at that time could not break down. So woody plant tissue accumulated in coal deposits, with the result CO2 was not produced from their decay, and atmospheric CO2 greatly decreased. When some tens of million years later, life developed the ability to break down these organic structures, organic decay renewed, and atmospheric CO2 rose.
This explanation implies that plant life continued through this period and possibly thrived to produce the abundant coal deposits.
Ice ages have less CO2 in the air than warm intervals because cold water holds more gas. Today we have abundant wood-eating bacteria and fungi, yet CO2 is low because it’s so cold. Not as cold as during glacial advances, but still cold relative to most of the Phanerozoic Eon.
The higher fungi evolved at the end of the Ediacaran, which fauna is so wierd that some have speculated that it was, in fact, fungi. Fungal spores are extremely abundant in Permian extinction residues…
Donb
There is a kind of hole in that theory which is that if the drawdown made it cold, why would it warm again if the carbon was still sequestered as coal? To ‘get it warm’ it would need a new source of carbon. What was that? The oceans suddenly? Hydrocarbon oil from deep in the earth?weathering rock?
One possibility is volcanoes.
How much coal did Ordovician form?
Sorry, nonsense article
There were very few land plants in the Ordovician, and no trees at all.
By the Carboniferous, however, lycopods grew up to 100 feet tall.
Ok.
Something that I have had a question about for some time. During the Carboniferous both O2 and CO2 were at much higher concentrations in the atmosphere compared to today. Why?
And with those two gases being in such a high proportion then I would assume then Nitrogen concentration in the atmosphere decreased?
RAH,
During the Carboniferous ice age, CO2 was about the same as today. During most of the period, O2 was famously higher.
So either the atmosphere was denser or N2 proportion was lower. Probably the former, ie about the same amount of nitrogen, but more oxygen.
From what I’ve read CO2 is believed to have ranged up to 800 ppm for the period. Would it not have had to have been high for such prodigious growth of vegetation? It was pretty darn hot, up to 14c more than today for much of the period as I understand it. Not saying Co2 caused that but saying that the ability of the oceans to hold CO2 would be reduced when the waters are warmer. And would not a denser atmosphere result in higher pressures and that would show up in the fossil record in adaptive traits in flora and fauna to better sustain the pressure?
Not arguing. Just questioning to try and get a handle on what were really the conditions during most of the period. Kind of difficult to find the answers to these questions all in one place or reference. Just questions that have been bouncing around in my skull for some time. So much knowledge here so I’m trying to take advantage of it.
RAH,
The Carboniferous in North America is divided into two periods, the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian. This reflects two quite different climates.
There was probably already some glaciation at the end of the Devonian Period, but the great ice age didn’t hit until the Pennsylvanian, with perhaps the last age (Serpukhovian) of the Mississippian. And it persisted well into the Permian.
An average of 800 ppm for the whole period to me seems high, since during the Pennsylvanian it was often as low or lower than today.
my point exactly. Ordovician is well known for it’s true “snowball earth” period – and no plants to form a coal; ergo, planetary mechanisms are primary, and everything else is secondary
Thanks for your responses Willy Pete.
BTW WP is a nasty weapon but one that has saved a heck of a lot of US troops lives. During WW II the Germans and the Japanese hated to be shelled with WP rounds. Neither could ever produce anything like the quantity the US did. They allowed the VT fuse (proximity fuze) to be used by Army artillery just in time for it to be deployed during the Battle of the Bulge. Fusing a WP round with the VT was just devastating. Even Patton was impressed by how deadly it was.
Patton also admitted that we had a lot to learn about using proximity fuzes. In the woods, old fuzes were better, since the foliage caused detonations above the trees with VT fuzes, whereas in the trees caused more death, destruction and damage.
I witnessed the effects of M34 Willie Pete smoke grenades in the first Gulf War, although they’re most associated with Vietnam. We also used them in the late unpleasantnesses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Very useful munitions.
thinking we should keep the C in the ground until we need it some day…
We need a lot more of it in the air right now. Triple present concentration would be ideal.
Trillions of plants can’t be wrong.
funnily that would alter local climate 😀 The extra plants, not the CO2 #landchange
We need it now.
We have no idea what the needs of the future are going to be.
So, why didn’t the vast coal deposits formed during the steamy Cretaceous Period cool the earth?
The authors would say because Carboniferous plants didn’t decay, releasing CO2, due to lack of bacteria and fungi adapted to breaking down lignin. But these wood-eaters had long been around by the Cretaceous.
The biggest carbon repository on Earth by a very long chalk is not coal but calcium and calcium-magnesium carbonate …. limestones and dolomites, deposited in water either as chemical sediments or as shells. That alone makes this pap what it is: genuine, 24 carat unmitigated pap.
Excellent, Bob!
Right on Bob! I commonly tell friends that so many reefs die that they have a special name for them: limestone. Of course most limestone is debris from living reefs, but sometimes a reef dies and is preserved insitu, then it’s called a bioherm.
You would think that if the Earth only just escaped becoming a snowball then it would show signs of severe cooling. Yet look at the Permian. Away from the southern continents, marked by glacial deposits and temperate coals, the Permian is represented by reefs (SW USA, Arctic Canada, Norway and Russia) or by desert deposits containing the world’s largest assemblage of evaporites. Some of the Permian potash evaporites imply high temperatures during their formation.
I would back the evidence from the rocks formed at the time over model fantasies very time.
With respect to the Cretaceous, more important than its coals are the abundant and widespread oil and gas source rocks that probably removed a similar amount of carbon as all the Carboniferous and Permian coals put together. Cretaceous cooling? No evidence for.
I’ll tell you why this paper was published.
A paper won’t be published unless it provides interesting results. It doesn’t matter if the results are wrong because there’s no punishment for being wrong. If it’s interesting and doesn’t contradict the prevailing bias, the paper stands a reasonable chance of being published.
You won’t make tenure track unless you publish. What do you think is almost guaranteed to happen? link
You have to throw solar evolution into the mix. As our sun burns through its supply of hydrogen, it gets hotter by about 10 percent every 1.1 billion years. The Carboniferous era was something like 300-360 million years ago, so the sun would have been perhaps 3 percent cooler. That has to have had some effect.
It does, but we’re in an ice age now, and earth was probably at its hottest of the Phanerozoic Eon during the Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era and first two epochs of the Paleogene Period of our current Cenozoic Era. The sun was about one percent weaker than now during the middle of the Cretaceous, ie 110 Ma.
The earth cools as it gets older, should have an effect as well.
Confirmation bias in action!
There are other more common carbonaceous rocks, e.g. limestone, marble, carbonates, shales, metasomatites, etc.; basically all sediment layers where dead wildlife accumulate.
Large portions of the World’s crust is now composed of carbonaceous rock, far outweighing coal and oil deposits.
All of Earth’s oceans, lakes and tidal waters are major producers of carbonaceous material.
All these alleged researchers, aka yahoos, had to do was conduct research and consult some geologists.
Instead, these alleged researchers fabricate specious claims and write bogus announcements while ignoring carbon’s total role in Earth’s geology
And the Paleozoic carbonates also typically have abundant hydrocarbons. Even the Paleozoic black shales are rich in organic material. That is, carbon was being sequestered continuously throughout the Paleozoic, not just episodically during the carboniferous.
First, the press release goofed and it is Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It is peer-reviewed, not to say that is necessarily rigorous. My issue with all these suppositions about Carboniferous paleoclimate and atmosphere is that nobody as far as I can tell has calculated how much coal was deposited in the Pennsylvanian (given also the need to estimate also what might have since been eroded and recycled). This is necessary to gauge the change in pCO2 due to geological sequestration. The author pays no heed to younger times of widespread coal deposition. Nor does he mention the now pretty well established glaciation in the Appalachian Mountains during the latest Devonian (Famennian).
Maybe Feulner gets more precise in the body of his article, but in the abstract he says only “the bulk of Earth’s coal deposits”.
The bulk of Earth’s coal deposits used as fossil fuel today was formed from plant debris during the late Carboniferous and early Permian periods. The high burial rate of organic carbon correlates with a significant drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) at that time. A recent analysis of a high-resolution record reveals large orbitally driven variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration between ∼∼150 and 700 ppm for the latest Carboniferous and very low values of 100 ±± 80 ppm for the earliest Permian. Here, I explore the sensitivity of the climate around the Carboniferous/Permian boundary to changes in Earth’s orbital parameters and in atmospheric CO2 using a coupled climate model. The coldest orbital configurations are characterized by large axial tilt and small eccentricities of Earth’s elliptical orbit, whereas the warmest configuration occurs at minimum tilt, maximum eccentricity, and a perihelion passage during Northern hemisphere spring. Global glaciation occurs at CO2 concentrations <40 ppm, suggesting a rather narrow escape from a fully glaciated Snowball Earth state given the low levels and large fluctuations of atmospheric CO2. These findings highlight the importance of orbital cycles for the climate and carbon cycle during the late Paleozoic ice age and the climatic significance of the fossil carbon stored in Earth’s coal deposits.
You realize that gravitational interactions among planets decrease the accuracy of estimates of Earth’s orbital parameters as one progresses back in time. Making calculations back 1 Myr may be O.K., but back 300 Myr is highly uncertain.
Interesting, but not relevant.
All years are based on the current length of the year only.
We need to keep CO2 below 7500ppm, te highest concentration tested historically and found to be safe.
As long as oxygen isn’t correspondingly low. During the Cambrian, when CO2 was around 7000 ppm, there wasn’t enough O2 in the air to meet human requirements. It might have been only 10% rather than today’s 21%. At most, perhaps 12.5%.
Isn’t there a 1-1 tradeoff between O2 & CO2? (C + O2 => CO2)
If I burn coal and raise the CO2 by 1000 PPM, doesn’t that decease the O2 by 1000 PPM (0.1%)?
If so, raising the CO2 to 7500 PPM would reduce the O2 from 21% to 20.3%
Mike,
CO2 displaces N2 and Ar as well as O2, so just increasing CO2 doesn’t have much effect directly on O2. The underlying conditions dictating the chemistry of the atmosphere however make the relative concentrations of CO2 and O2 more dramatic. Biology has a lot to do with it.
More CO2 means more plants.
More plants means more O2.
Submarines operate at up to ~11000ppm.
Submariners operate at up to 11,000 ppm, submarines can go a lot higher without those pesky carbon based lifeforms.
Science:
Forming and testing a hypothesis based on empirical observations.
Climate science:
Finding or creating observations and computer model output that suppoet your theory.
Ah come on now, are you saying they have made it all up? Oh wait…
…support your theory and grant income.
FTFY
“The study examines the sensitivity of the climate in a specific period of Earth’s deep past by using a large ensemble of computer simulations.”
Dowsing rods would have a better chance of producing meaningful results
I would posit that the movie ‘Iron Sky’ (2012) is actually about the Potsdam Institute!
Sieg Heil. Ha ha.
Based on the trailer, this looks like a pretty cool movie.
It has all the classic elements: good guys, bad guys, disasters, and everybody dies in the end.
What could go wrong?
Is it on Netflix? Gotta check it out. Load up with popcorn first…………..
Amazon prime. Try “Europa Report” on Netflix, it’s much better, and about a very cold planet, appropriate for the blog post.