No new science, no new data, no new scenario and consequently no new cause for panic.
Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor
It’s been a long heatwave in much of Europe which has prompted questions like ‘what is the influence of climate change on this year’s heatwave?’ Some claim that it’s twice as likely to occur, while others claim that climate change is making it worse. “This is the face of climate change,” says Professor Michael Mann. There is a feeling in the hot air that this summer is showing the way of the future. ‘Expect this kind of thing more often’, is the cry.
Whatever way the evidence points, wherever the argument goes or the temperature changes in the future, the media have loved the “Earth’s on Fire,” headlines. But if you thought that was bad wait for the apocalypse. A new paper claims were are heading to a “Hothouse Earth,” and perhaps soon. Cue the heatwave fever on steroids.
The first thing to bear with the paper that suggest this is that it is a “Perspective” paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA.
Fig1 from paper.(Click on image to enlarge). — The possible trajectories of the Earth. Towards a hothouse — or an region of stability, if we take drastic action.
Yet, it is not a research paper and contains nothing new in the way of climate science. It is a future scenario pieced together by quoting selected (cherry-picked) references with a lot of hand-waving in-between. The author’s say it’s not conclusive, and they hope it’s not going to be true. They have a responsibility to ask the question, they claim, admitting it’s extreme.
The report starts as it continues. It says the formalisation of the Anthropocene – the controversial ‘geological’ epoch in which mankind allegedly dominates natural processes – is being considered by the stratigraphic community. Just a few days after this paper was accepted for publication, the International Commission on Stratigraphy decided against endorsing the Anthropocene, saying that we live in the Meghalayan Epoch instead. However the authors then go on to say that it is actually irrelevant what the geological community decides, they are going to claim the Anthropocene exists anyway. Human activity, they conclude, now rivals geological forces.
So the authors ask, ‘Is there a tipping point’, a threshold, in climate change and where might it be? How much will the Earth warm and how fast? Earlier this year a paper in Nature revised the calculation of how greenhouse gases drive up the planet’s temperature. It reduced the range of possible end-of-century outcomes by more than half and concluded that any worst-case scenarios were unlikely. It’s not mentioned in the “Perspective.”
Fork In The Road
The paper’s conclusion is that we have already broken out of the Ice Age-Interstitial see-saw of the Late Quaternary (last 1.2 million years), and that the one degree C temperature rise since pre-industrial times is nearing the upper envelope of interglacial conditions. “The Earth system may have already passed the ‘fork in the road’ of potential pathways,” they write, suggesting that the next glaciation might not happen. Next they speculate that, “biogeophysical feedback may be stronger than normally assumed.”
This whole scenario moves into what many would regard as extreme scientific speculation. There is no real evidence in the scientific literature that a rise of global temperatures by two degree C above pre-industrial temperatures will be a tipping point. The most recent report by the IPCC rejected such doomsday scenarios as highly unlikely. There is no new science that this is a threshold after which global warming will become unstoppable. No new science, no new scenario and consequently no new cause for panic. But that’s not the message in the media.
There is nothing wrong with presenting an extreme scenario in order to highlight possibilities and to stimulate research. But as far as presenting it to the public, and as far as reporting it by the news media, it is essential to put it into the context of scientific facts and research. The vast majority of climate scientists are not predicting a Hothouse Earth. This provocative paper contradicts the scientific state of climate research. If it is a warning then it should not be presented as a prediction. It does not warrant all the lurid headlines.
But it has been a very hot summer and a cool approach and rational perspective has gone out of the window like the hot exhaust from an air-conditioning unit. In the words of Dr Phil Williamson of the University of East Anglia quoted in the media, “In the context of the summer of 2018, this is definitely not a case of crying wolf.” Yeah, right.
Source: The GWPF
This Northern Hemisphere summer has been in no way unprecedented. It’s well within the normal range.
For instance, Arctic sea ice extent yesterday was higher than on August 6 in the record low years of 2007 and 2012.
It has not been a hot summer in NY. It has yet to break 100.
Nor have we had a spell of more than two 100+ days where I live, which usually gets over 110 F. at least once in July and August. Tomorrow and Thursday are both supposed to be over 100, however, then again cool off.
So, if anything, on the relatively cool side.
Jonesboro Arkansas has not had a one hundred degree in 5 years. A modern day record. By comparison in 1901 the same city had over 30 days of 100 degree days one of 116
Don’t worry: Now that you have pointed it out, it will be adjusted away.
Hey , we don’t care where it is cooler than average we need to focus all our attention on where it is hotter than average. That is the climatology works. Otherwise we’ll never get the message across.
That is why, when there is an increase in Arctic ice cover we must divert elsewhere and wait until there is another low work screaming about.
Where I live, June and early July were very cool. Since then it’s been pretty much normal.
Last previous two years, the whole summer was cooler than normal.
It’s been slightly below average in the Great Plains.
It’s been below average across the Eastern two-thirds of the U.S. California is where all the high heat is focused because that is where the persistent high-pressure system has been located.
Persistent high-pressure systems are what cause heat waves and where the heat waves occur depends on where the high-pressure systems set themselves up.
There is no evidence that CO2 has anything to do with where persistent high-pressure systems are located.
If you happen not to be sitting under a persistent high-pressure system, then your weather has been fairly mild this year. I’m sitting in the heart of Tornado Alley/1930’s Drought country and we just had rain in August with more in the forecast and the temperatures are running in the 80’s. We hardly ever have rain in August around here. California’s high-pressure system is usually sitting on top of us here in the middle of the country about this time of year. We don’t miss the high heat.
Just checked. Yesterday’s Arctic sea ice extent was also higher than in 2016 and 2017.
UAH’s July global T. anomaly was 0.32 degrees C, which is a bit higher than last year’s July, but well below 2016’s and way below 1998’s. August will be interesting.
I fear the wolf of fimbulwinter more than the warm growing season of today. If only it were true that a few grams of carbon could stave off the ravening jaws of the wolf who precedes the worlds end in ice.
Spot on. And if humanity is unprepared for the coming ice age expect a massive population reduction.
Curious that they claim the end of the ice age.
What is the economic savings on extending an inter-glacial indefinitely? ( Not to mention the human suffering prevented, the wars prevented)
The Earth has two quasi-stable states: glaciation and interglacial. The only tipping point is the one leading to the next glaciation.
Figure 1 is total fiction , there is ZERO evidence that such a figure in anyway represents the actual climate of Earth.
Yeah the media are supremely bad when it comes to scientific papers. Context doesn’t seem to be important
Same old, same old …. socialism. Marx and Engels repeatedly talked about the need to create chaos to bring on doomsday as a precondition for establishing the socialist world order. The pseudoscientists at the Resilience Center are working in the Marxist tradition to establish themselves as the new totalitarian tyrants.
A progressive liberal leaning MSM has nothing to do with Marx, they are pseudo Marxists.
Rousseauan romantic socialist is a pretty good characterisation as well
@Ironicman, how so? They advocate statism without shame. The promote false alarmism to control the population. They are currently trying to shut down dissenting voices. They advocate violence and hate against peaceful opposition. The oppose individual liberty and defend historic statist.
Everyone needs to move to Australia…it’s bloody chilly down here.
We’re freezing this winter in New Zealand, mate. The flasher in my town has been reduced to leaping out and describing himself.
Ha! Handing out ‘selfie’ fig-leaflets, is he?!
To be honest, without checking the exact figures, I think that Canberra has had a mostly mild winter, with only a few days below -4C.
We need a new term for this. Perhaps “Global Milding”.
Remarkably mild winter in inland South Canterbury and a possibility of early Spring. Plants quite confused.
Numerous frosts but only one morning below -5oC and half a dozen under -3oC.
Very dry: about 1 mm/day in June; under 0.4mm/day in July; just 0.6 mm total to date in August.
Very little in the way of foehn winds from the Southern Alps.
“Very little in the way of foehn winds from the Southern Alps.”
That would fit with a general global circulation change from the previous zonal dominated flow to the now establishing meridional dominated flow that heralds the next stage of the natural climate cycle.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2018/08/07/1500Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=167.99,-48.97,1107/loc=172.458,-43.486
I’m looking forward to a nice sweltering day down here at 34 South.
It has been a rather cold winter in South Africa as well. Another cold front working its way up north at the moment. Of course, the media loves posting all the photos of rather unusual snow but they’ll tell you the earth is getting warmer and that we’re all doomed. They’re right about the doomed part considering what the government is doing, just totally wrong on how and why we’re doomed. Fun times.
Professor Michael Mann, Professor Michael Mann – why do I glaze over when I see commemts from this man. Awaiting comment from Professor Groucho Marx in support of the guy.
PoliticsClimate science is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. linkI read some of his published papers. I find it amazing that they were actually published. I taught secondary physics, chemistry, biology and earth science for 33 years. His introduction/hypothesis on each paper that I read are rambling and scientifically pointless. They are what I saw daily from students in a 9th grade science class. They were simply trying to snow me into giving them a passing grade. I do not believe that he even believes what he publishes. He simply has no other means by which he could achieve the life style he desires and maintains. He has made himself out to be a useful political pawn in another pseudo-science, money making scam.
The BBC is all over it:-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45084144
dodgy proposition?
As the high temperatures in Europe are connected to a jetstream-shift, which is connected to the solar minimum – so we have a summer we really can name “summer”.
Of course if they actually believed that humans now dominate existing natural forces then that would remove the need for alarm:If it really got too toasty then we could change the climate back to something we liked a bit better. We could jolly well tip it back again
Also, every random person I’ve met who expressed an opinion seemed to think the recent high temperatures constitutes good weather. Similarly the equally hot dry period we had in 1976 is not remembered as a bad summer. Lower temperatures and icy winds in winter are still generally described as bad or harsh.
Decent warm summer, but after a dreadful cold winter that went on without let-up. Not looking forward to a three-peat of that one. Nothing about the sun gives me encouragement on the cold front.
Oh, I see what you did there!
Proposition
There is a feeling in the hot air that this summer is showing the way of the future. ‘Expect this kind of thing more often’, is the cry.
At least he inserted “summer”. When winter hits, the cold and freezing will be the result of global warming and we should expect more of that too.
This past northern hemisphere winter, when record cold temperatures were being broken all over, the usual trolls were making their presence felt declaring that only an idiot would mistake weather for climate.
Now that it’s summer …
They make it seem like “feedbacks” are always “bad”. I have to wonder if they understand the control theory they are aping
Is it really even conceivable that there can be positive feedbacks that are not substantially balanced by negative feedbacks? It would seem to me that if positive feedbacks really existed and could dominate, temperatures would already have gone out of control eons ago, like a screeching microphone receiving positive feedback. It’s easy to see the negative feedbacks in the natural system. Thunderstorms, clouds, winds, ocean currents that pump heat from the tropics to the poles where it radiates away. All of these act to prevent temperatures from rising too far. What is an example of a positive feedback that is actually observable in nature? While there may be some, it’s my belief that they are always balanced by negative feedbacks that would at most only allow for minor deviation from the long-term average.
Apart from this, look at the history of the planet. With our current configuration of continents and oceans, the overwhelming bias is toward glaciation, not melting. What has changed in the past few million years that alters this reality? A 0.013% rise in CO2? Seriously? When we had ten times the CO2 in recent geological history?
Net positive feedbacks in nature are rare.
We live on a largely homeostatic water planet, upon which one would expect net negative feedbacks to predominate. Hence, ECS is liable to be less than 1.2 degree C per CO2 doubling, rather than 1.5 to 4.5 C, as imagined by IPCC.
Rich, Every one of those things you mention has been repeated for many years by many people to every alarmist.
They hit the warmistas as forcefully as if we were hurling snowflakes at Frosty the Snowman.
Stuck in cognitive dissonance and unable to truly consider such obvious truisms, they either completely ignore each of the points or offer up one of an endless series of nonsensical and lame and mutually contradictory explanations.
Warmistas are immune to facts, like Mary Mallon was immune to typhus.
Rich Davis asks
Is it really even conceivable that there can be positive feedbacks that are not substantially balanced by negative feedbacks?
If you’re asking can these imbalances happen over short (geological) periods, then the answer is of course, how do you think the climate transitions from one state to another? It’s what puts us into and out of a glacial, triggered by very touchy tipping points.
This from above illustrates it.
The deeper trough is more stable.
Didn’t you mean to say that the pretty drawing proves it, Ryan? Because reproducing the nonsensical contents of the original article sure is a slam-dunk rebuttal to my comments!
Wait, let me sketch up a unicorn farm for you to prove that unicorns exist and that they fart rainbows.
But you duly demonstrated Menicholas’ point, thank you very much.
The basic idea of the diagram is right, but the real picture would be a broad frigid ice age well, a small well representing current conditions with a relatively small “hump” the get over before sliding into glaciation, and a large, probably insurmountable climb before reaching your putative tipping point to hothouse conditions.
Why do I say that? Because first and foremost, changes in temperature are not driven by CO2 concentration and there are no significant positive feedbacks in today’s climate system. Increased albedo is a strong negative feedback that kicks in as glaciation advances. I think you must be aware that the configuration of continents is the primary reason why hothouse conditions occurred in the past. If you can rearrange the land masses to impede ocean currents in such a way that the polar heat pump depends on air flow more than ocean currents then you can get hothouse condition. Or you can make the sun hotter or the earth closer to the sun. All quite easy, right? There’s an app for that.
There are positive feedbacks when the earth is in the depths of glaciation at the transition to interglacials. I do not know what they are. I suspect that nobody actually does at this point. I’m aware that your team puts their faith in GHGs such as methane hydrates suddenly releasing large amounts of methane. I know that you deny all the proxy evidence of vastly higher CO2 concentration even during ice age periods, but in my view, that disproves any theory that CO2 can drive temperature. It’s the other way around of course.
Unlike you, I still see the cause of interglacials as an unexplained mystery. But the idea of mythical tipping points just over the horizon is as much nonsense as the fear that we may sail over the edge of the earth and fall into an abyss.
“I do not know what they are. I suspect that nobody actually does at this point.”
Ignorant, arm-waving baloney from start to finish, nicely done. Dunning and Kruger would be shaking their heads.
Fascinating.
You have no idea what these mythical positive feedbacks are, yet you are 100% certain that they exist.
Yet you insult others when they admit that they don’t know everything about climate.
You embarrass yourself Ryan. Marx and Lenin would be shaking their heads in Fremdschämen.
The earth moves from glacial to inter-glacial because of changes in the energy budget. No need to invoke mythical positive feedbacks.
The cynical clowns who wrote the faux paper and its misleading graph ignore the thing we know actually happens:
Heavy ice ages.
Millions of years ago the Earth had 19 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere, yet we were in the middle of an Ice-Age! Go figure that! 😉
Seems like these “poindexters” are not aware of the Stephan-Boltzmann law. T to the fourth power would seem to strongly resist global warming and preclude any “tipping points” to a warmer climate regime. The fanciful diagram showing the trajectory into a deep hothouse well is scientifically ludicrous. But then the “Anthropocene” label shows the integrity of the authors.
“ludicrous”
Except the deep hothouse climate has been far more common.
‘deep hothouse climate has been far more common’
Not on this planet, perhaps you’re thinking of mythological places, or places described in religious texts, or perhaps other planets?
Um, no this planet.
Ryan S,
Why don’t you stop lying and making stuff up?
He’s not making it up, it’s what he’s been paid to preach.
Mere billions of years ago with vastly different continental orientation. But let’s just assume “it could happen!”
Millions, not billions.
Liar.
I see this statement: “Except the deep hothouse climate has been far more common.”
It is a MOST interesting statement to me. If, and I’m willing to go along with you on that premise (warmer conditions are the ‘norm’ for planet Earth), where is the demonstrable harm to life from the , ” … deep (sic) hothouse climate … “?
If the warming was natural, it’s good.
If the warming was caused by man, it’s evil incarnate.
At least that’s how too many so called environmentalists think.
The harm in abrupt warming? What, you don’t expect any?
The facts are abrupt changes ocurr at tipping points and it depends on the scale of human impact. We’ve given it a shove with a big pulse of CO2, who really knows how it will react. Models say not very well.
The fact that ‘hot earth’ is so much more common than ‘cold earth’ escapes the willfully blinkered is par for the course it seems.
Ryan, your own graph proves you wrong.
Why are you promiting untruths?
Um, no it shows exactly what I said was correct – that of the two stable states of the earth’s climate the warmer is more common.
Let’s see: where to start … … …
“The harm in abrupt warming? What, you don’t expect any?”
And then: “We’ve given it a shove with a big pulse of CO2, who really knows how it will react. (sic) Models say not very well.”
Actually, since the mid-1990’s, recognition of abrupt transitions between glacial and interglacial conditions has been documented. The consensus view is a few decades, with the average global temperature change on the order of four (or more) Celsius degrees (and, Alley even argues that a transition takes place in LESS than a decade, with up to double-digit temperature change).
How the Earth will “react” to this “shove” from a “big” pulse of CO2 is certainly up in the air (no pun intended). But, the “models” you are so fond of, are programmed to show a big reaction consisting of warming, based on the false hypothesis that carbon dioxide is some kind of thermostat on the Earth climate system. Your presentation of Vostok shows that temperature and CO2 have a “track” record; what you failed to acknowledge was that even the IPCC has accepted that temperature DRIVES CO2, according to Vostok, EPICA, and even GISP II (I showed a 600-year delay between temperature change and CO2 change, but the commonly accepted figure is about 800 years, and some have argued in favor of four digits; the commonly accepted explanation for this is the time it takes for the thermohaline circulation to accommodate to the new temperature regime).
This “shove with a big pulse of CO2” is the difference between carbon dioxide changing from 0.0284% of the atmosphere to about 0.0412%; it’s still a TRACE gas. Add to that, the ‘effect’ or ‘influence’ of carbon dioxide (in the sense of causing ‘warming’) follows the law of diminishing returns : each additional molecule of CO2 does less and less ‘warming’. Considering that the ratio of water vapor to CO2 in the atmosphere is on the order of 25:1, even if the two “greenhouse” gasses had the same “warming power”, water vapor would overwhelm any effect that CO2 might have.
I’ve seen Scotese’s ‘paleotemperature’ chart any number of times; I’m not a big fan of it, since it implies that the Earth (for all practical purposes) has but two ‘stable’ states. It is much to stylized to be a decent presentation (aside from the fact that on his original, he included CO2 concentration, to show that CO2 and temperature have no relation to each other). I think a better presentation is either Veizer, or the one that Bill Illis put together, and Anthony keeps in his “Reference” pages. The specific one I am referring to is labeled “750 million years of Temperature and CO2”. You might want to peruse it, and see if you can find a ‘correlation’ between temperature and CO2 such that CO2 consistently drives global temperatures.
And, since you avoided the question above, I’ll ask again: Where is the demonstrable harm to the environment from ‘warmer’ temperatures? If you look at your Vostok graph, you might notice that at about 425 ka, 325 ka, 225 ka, and 125 ka, it was WARMER than it is at present. ‘Hunter’, below your Vostok graph has asked the same question: why is warmer AUTOMATICALLY a bad thing? Models can say lots of things, but why does that make them more reliable than the documented geological history?
My regards to you and yours,
The Mostest Whack-job (according to P.S. at WUWT) and Deplorablest Vlad the Impalerest, a crashingest bore and an even biggerest bullyest (according to C.T. at JoNova)
Vlad
I’ll ask again: Where is the demonstrable harm to the environment from ‘warmer’ temperatures?
The “environment” couldn’t give a fig. The question is what rate of temperature change could a complex, globalised economy with a just in-time food supply endure? It took 10,000 years of climate stasis to develop, one or two modern-day failed monsoon/famines alone would rent it asunder.
Tip Using the word “trace” in conjunction with CO2 in attempt to downplay its effects is not very edifying. This “trace” is enough for all the world’s plants and it stubbornly casts quite a dark shadow in IR.
I know I’ve seen some whopper non sequiturs here, but this one takes the cake, by far:
Abrupt (and recall, the current view is ‘abrupt = decades’) climate changes happened naturally, and from what I can tell, life adapted. Whether it was a transition from interglacial to glacial, or glacial into interglacial, ” … life found a way.” (quoting the character of Dr. Ian Malcolm [Jeff Goldblum] in Jurassic Park). Who ever was around had far less technology than we do.
You’ve seriously contradicted yourself with this pair of statements:
” The harm in abrupt warming? What, you don’t expect any? ” (at 2045 hours, 08 August); implies you expect/anticipate ‘harm’; then followed with:
” The “environment” couldn’t give a fig. ” (at 0131 hours, 10 August).
Which, by the way, I agree with you: the Earth, the ‘environment’ could not give a hairy rat’s eyelash what happens. I certainly don’t see any harm from a warmer, more verdant (h/t: “hunter”) environment. You didn’t answer my comment about the previous interglacials that were warmer than today.
As far as what rate of temperature change this globalized economy (sic) with a just in-time (sic) food supply could endure, it is self-evident that it has “endured” quite well, especially since the atmospheric fertilizer called carbon dioxide is more prevalent, and causing a generalized “greening” of the Earth.
Whatever is happening to climate in the 21st Century, it is well within natural variability limits; there is nothing unusual about what is happening.
I’m clueless on this statement: “It took 10,000 years of climate stasis to develop … “. What is ‘climate stasis’? There is no such thing! Climate always changes; not even in your own Vostok presentation do I see a place where the slope on the y-axis equals to zero (definition of an unchanging condition [(delta-y)/(delta-x)]). On larger presentations, it is even more obvious that there is no ‘stasis’ for any measurable period of time. Vostok, EPICA, GISP II all show the same things: much of the Holocene Epoch has been “warmer” than it is in 2018.
Or have you conveniently ignored that tidbit of information?
This brings us to this non sequitur: ” Tip (sic) Using the word “trace” in conjunction with CO2 in attempt to downplay its effects is not very edifying. ” Point-of-fact, I’m not trying to “downplay” the ‘effect’ that CO2 has on Earth climate; Physics does that for me. Again, since you have comprehension issues, it is well known, even to the IPCC, that CO2 follows a ‘diminishing returns’ curve; the more CO2 you add to a system, the less effect each addition has to the total. If CO2 had the incredible “dark shadow” in IR (by which I think you meant thermal IR), then there would not have been a glacial episode during the Ordovician-Silurian transition, when CO2 was at least ten times the current concentration (and some charts in Gradstein’s Geologic Time Scale 2016 are now firming up on about 7,000 ppm in the Hirnantian, but that is awaiting confirmation). Of course, it gets worse for alarmists, since the Cryogenian Period saw millions-of-years of glacial episodes, during which time CO2 concentrations were measured in PERCENTS, and not ppm. Current estimates range between 4% and 13% of the atmosphere consisting of CO2.
Somehow, I guess I’m just missing that “dark shadow” (have you been watching 1960’s soap operas?) that CO2 stubbornly casts in IR.
Regards,
Vlad
Vlad said
You’ve seriously contradicted yourself with this pair of statements:
” The harm in abrupt warming? What, you don’t expect any? ” (at 2045 hours, 08 August); implies you expect/anticipate ‘harm’; then followed with:
” The “environment” couldn’t give a fig. ” (at 0131 hours, 10 August).
Nope. When I say harm I’m talking about effects on human and their societies particularly modern ones complex, interelated economies. Other species are also going extinct as a result of human interference and that is likely to be exacerbated by abrupt warming but in a million years there will still be an environment (your choice of word).
“10,000 years of climate stasis” I thought would have been obvious but here let me spell it out for you – the relatively stable temperatures of the Holocene compared to the abrupt rises and falls of the last million years.
“Ordovician-Silurian transition, when CO2 was at least ten times the current concentration…”
You’re forgetting a weaker sun as a factor.
“I’m just missing that “dark shadow”…”
If CO2 cast no shadow earth would be an ice-ball.
Greetings:
OK, the Holocene has been, in a relative sense, a lack of abrupt changes. We can agree on this. We’re still left with the cause of the sudden changes since the late Pliocene, and that would be Nature. No, I do not have have any more answers for why global climate suddenly went glacial, or suddenly went interglacial, but the one “cause” that can be ruled out is carbon dioxide. Your statement below, 0708 hours, 09 August, to wit: “It does seem CO2 is driving at the moment though.” is lacking in any support from the geological record.
Now, as to the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide during the Ordovician/Silurian, I stated that the accepted value is at least in the 4,000 ppm range (possibly higher), to which you gave the standard answer: “You’re forgetting a weaker sun as a factor.”
This is not true; I am well aware that solar radiance has changed (i.e., increased) since the first fusion reaction took place, some 5 ga ago. As the helium ash builds up in the core of our star, eventually, it becomes a red giant (engulfing the three inner planets), and finally, a planetary nebula.
Please recall that I advised you that the Scotese chart you provided has been slightly modified from the original. His original presentation was designed to show the lack of relationship between CO2 and temperature (and, again, the Vostok chart reinforces that temperature drives CO2, not the other way around).
Your statement that a weaker sun was involved in an early Paleozoic glacial episode, leaves this question: So, why was it ever warm during the Edicacaran, Cambrian, Devonian, etc? If you peruse the original Scotese chart, or Bill Illis’ chart on the “Reference” pages (750 million years), you’ll see that during the Cambrian, about 7,000 ppm (warm), Ordovician, 4,000 ppm (warm), glacial at the transition, then remainder Silurian, 3,000 ppm (possibly less), warm, and so on. You suggest that a less-radiant sun had some effect on this cold period; that same ‘less-radiant’ sun could not simultaneously cause ‘cold’ and ‘warm’.
And the Earth WAS an ‘ice-ball’ several times during the Cryogenian, this in spite of CO2 that was in PERCENTS, not ppm. If you invoke the ‘less-radiant’ sun for this, then I’ll have to come back with the obvious question, so why was much of the Proterozoic warm, other than the Cryogenian? The sun, we agree, was less radiant during the PaleoProterozoic than the NeoProterozoic, but the NeoProterozoic Era had the Cryogenian Period (appropriately named).
It is obvious you skipped Astrophysics: “If CO2 cast no shadow earth would be an ice-ball.” Sorry, false. The Earth, orbiting as it does a G2 V (Roman Numeral for ‘five’, our luminosity class) yellow dwarf star, at a nominal distance of 150 million kilometres, with NO ‘greenhouse’ gasses (water vapor being the most abundant; see 0626 hours, 09 August) in the atmosphere, would have an equilibrium blackbody temperature of about 277 Kelvins. The derivation is standard pedagogy (or at least it was, when I attended school) in freshman Astrophysics. What alarmists like to forget is that nitrogen and oxygen DO, in fact, have thermal capacity. Earth would be a habitable place, even if we did not have the mis-named ‘greenhouse’ gasses in our atmosphere (and, yes, I am not going to go into how the oxygen is here — yes, it comes from the plants who use CO2 and H2O to make O2 as a waste product). You should recall that equilibrium blackbody temperature is derived by assuming a ‘nominal’ atmosphere (e.g., one could use a pure Argon atmosphere, if desired; the point being that the atmosphere in question has NO ‘greenhouse’ gasses present). One of the great misconceptions among the alarmist community is that you can compare the Moon’s subsolar blackbody temperature (254 Kelvins) to at atmospheric body — — this is where you get your misconception that the Earth would be an, ” … ice-ball. ” (sic) if we did not have ‘greenhouse’ gasses present.
Hope that helps, and “warm-ist” regards,
Vlad
Garbage!!! Three proof-reads and I miss “at” in the fourth line from the bottom! Should be: “… compare the Moon’s subsolar blackbody temperature (254 Kelvins) to AN atmospheric body — — … … ”
My apologies — — need more coffee, and less barley-pop.
It has been more common, yet there has never been any correlation between CO2 levels and temperature.
Duh…
chrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/http://static.berkeleyearth.org/pdf/annual-with-forcing.pdf
What a goose you are.
RyanS, you do realise that the change in co2 levels came after the change in temperature, don’t you?
Yes, thank you Bill. However, you do realise that I am merely demonstrating a “correlation” for the goose, don’t you?
The goose is still an arm-waving, “there has never been any correlation between CO2 levels and temperature” goose.
Btw you may also realise that, despite what you say being true, it does not mean CO2 rise cannot also cause a temp increase, don’t you? Ie one does not preclude the other.
RyanS, are you a schoolteacher by any chance? I only ask because of your tendency to talk down to people.
Sorry for the tone Bill, not a teacher. The tone was for my shadower.
Ryan,
I understand that point, and think it’s a fair one that deserves consideration. But, I think the counter is apparent upon review of the charts. If temperatures are able to drop when CO2 levels are high, then this constitutes evidence that CO2 is not forcing the temp.
What is much more likely, considering the paleoclimate record and all the uncertainties associated with it, is that CO2 provides a floor for global temps, and does not have much power to raise them above this floor. (This was stated in a Lindzen or Soon or ??? paper that I read a while back. Will have to look for it to see if I can find it.)
Regards,
rip
rip, that may be true or there may be other reasons. It does seem CO2 is driving at the moment though.
Not at all. Decadal scale changes can easily be assigned to many disparate factors, ocean currents and heat release – retention variation. ( The atmosphere is a thin blanket of weak thermal capacity between the Sun and the oceans, cloud flux, solar flux, jet stream patterns, etc.
If one really could indefinitely extend the inter glacial would one not do so on purpose?
It is very clear that the KNOWN benefits of CO2 out weigh the failing to manifest projected harms.
If you mean Earth has been warmer, more verdant and conducive to life, then yes.
There is no evidence we have experienced dangerous “houthouse” conditions in the past.
So the Earth came to a “fork in the road”. If it was lost, you would think it would stop and ask for directions. But nooooooo, it just forged ahead blindly. But wait, it’s Mother Earth, right? And women always stop and get directions, so the Earth is actually a guy? Stop the presses!
That’s just great; the Earth is lost, and headed who-knows-where. We really are doomed.
“When you come to a fork in the road, Take it!”
Yogi Berra
It’s just following Yogi’s advice: When you come to a fork in the road, take it…
Well, typical of guys the earth refuses to even look at the alarmist road map.
I am in central Virginia, which usually has hot summers. So far this summer has averaged (compared to the long-term average for Richmond, 12 miles away) as follows: June, -1.58; July, -3.9; August (first week), -1. What’s been above average has been rain: May and June both collected record rain, July had nearly 6″, well above average; and August so far is about average. The result has been stifling humidity, with dew-points up to 76, which makes it hard to work outside. I believe the Richmond airport had slightly above-average temps in June, a degree or two below average in July, and about average so far in August. Of course, this is a tiny corner of a small location (Virginia, as compared, say, to Canada), and the averages here are not necessarily indicative of the whole continent. And yet–if the panic-mongers are looking for evidence of global warming, they won’t find it here. No 100-degree days yet this summer, precious few 90s; just lots of humid days with warm nights. At my house, I noted one “record” as compared to the Richmond history: on July 9, the morning low was 52, compared to the airport record low of 53. Of course, I can’t submit my observation as a new record; but it was a pleasant, cool morning.
I also note that the Richmond record is compiled at the airport, with lots of paved surfaces and large buildings, and lots of jets whooshing around, up, and about; likely a record taken in, say, a city park, would be cooler, just as the record at my house is cooler.
John WM
I think we should start a movement to report the temperature ‘average’ with a Normal range attached. It may well be that no day is ‘average’. It seems silly to report that the temperature is 1.5 deg above average without also pointing out that sigma 1 is ±4 degrees. In other words, it is well within normal range for that location.
What do you think?
Hothouse? Does this mean that we are actually going to get tomatoes that taste good, instead of the GMO tomatoes that have been altered to be tasteless?
Please……. ‘GMO’ didn’t make them tasteless. Picking tomatoes when they are hard and barely ‘breakers’ (turning from green to cream white) and then flooding the shipping container with CO2 gas to artificially turn them red before arrival at the markets is what makes them tasteless. Because they are still unripened, hard ‘green’/fake red tomatoes!
Ethylene is used to ripen tomatoes. But otherwise I agree.
Arg! Ethylene it is. My ‘random access memory’ failed me again.
Thanks for the correction, Frazier!
Did you mean “proposition”? A preposition is something completely different.
The difference is in what comes after it.
Headline should read, Earth Going To Hell
But the Progressives have paved the road to it so well with their moral prescriptions for everyone else but themselves.
The good news is that nothing can be done, so we best just break out the suntan lotion and enjoy it. Seriously, this kind of reporting speaks against any policy changes.
Those writers have lost themselves in a self-invented wood of ‘self-reinforcing feedbacks’, ‘thresholds’ and ‘self-invented dangers’. They seem to live completely in ‘their own virtual world’. Their own overheated virtual world.
They should return with both feet on the ground of the real Earth. Perhaps some universities and science magazines could wake up too.
My take for what is needed to create a Hothouse World: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/15/how-the-earth-became-a-hothouse-by-h2o/
Reality is not as profitable as the virtual world.
Wim
Sorry that I missed your last article (comments are now closed). Thanks for the H/T, much appreciated.
In one reply to co2isnotevil you say:-
“The whole process is set in motion by the continents that create seas that produce warm deep water or make them disappear. About the disappearance of these deep warm water producing seas an interesting story might be told. Later I will publish a post about that.”
I am looking forward to that.
With regard to the comment made by co2isnotevil:-
“The thermohaline is driven by cold water sinking at the poles,”
True in the modern world, but only if the cold water is dense enough. In terms of density the warm saline water exiting the modern Persian Gulf through the Gulf of Oman into Indian Ocean is more dense than the coldest and most dense Antarctic bottom water of the polar regions.
Things still to think about:
1. The role of anoxia in sapropel production and the geological evidence for the deep ocean high temperatures of the Boreal Ocean leading to oil source rock formation in this basin in the Lower Cretaceous.
2. Notice how the modern Black Sea maintains its deep water anoxia in spite of the freezing of the shallow surface waters in the Sea of Azov each winter. The cold dense surface water produced in the Sea of Azov of the does not displace the warm dense deep water in the main basin to the south. The Black Sea provides a modern analogue to the Cretaceous Boreal Ocean.
3. Notice also how the modern tropical shallow marine carbonate platforms (such as the Bahamas) are flat topped and therefore easily become exposed if the global sea level falls as ice builds up on the northern continents. However in the Cretaceous (and also in the Carboniferous) the carbonate seas of the tropics were carbonate ramps. These ramps with their shallow shelving bathymetry are insensitive to ocean level fall if they are located on open and extensive continental shelves and so can maintain their production of dense saline warm water as a counterbalance to any production of cold dense polar water, particularly so during the Gondwana southern glaciation of the Carboniferous and Permian periods.
4. For Paqyfelyc who requested more references:-
Bower, A.S., Hunt, H.D. and Price, J.F., 2000. Character and dynamics of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf outflows. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 105(C3), pp.6387-6414.
5. Notice how during the ice ages the global sea level fall is so large that the floor of the Persian Gulf is dry land and so this modern restricted area shallow sea contains a carbonate ramp that cannot have acted as a source of dense warm saline marine water during most of glacial times.
Best Regards
Phil
That graphic….. I’m getting dumber just looking at it!!!
Post modern climate science is Science by graphic design programs. Let your imagination run free.
That’s why you need to look at my version of it:
… which is a more truthful representation of what the situation really is. (^_^)
Climate “science” today is the metaphorical transformation of the traditional heaven/hell religious outlook, cloaked in science to make it seem more acceptable. Okay, that’s a long shot.
That graphic shows / stabil / labil / indifferent :
https://goo.gl/images/BgXPkW
While “That graphic….. I’m getting dumber just looking at it!!!”
should show :
– cool is kind of stabil BUT
– “hothouse” is “unprecedented” stabil
” I’m getting dumber just looking at it!!! ”
Is that possible?
Sorry had to go there it was too big an opportunity to let go
The 2 degree C threshold has to be adopted because their earlier 3 degree C claimed threshold collapsed finally under the weight of observation and time. Which of course was also preceded by their 4+ degree C catastrophic threshold claims.
One day soon, their journal postings will be proclaiming a 1.5 degree C threshold as the current 2.0 C threshold collapses into unlikelihood.
Hothouse Earth may be an extremely dodgy preposition… but juxtipose it could happen??
Yeah – What then, Mr. Punny Man?! /s
Wouldn’t a dodgy prEposition be something like the word, “over” or “around”, as in “over the top” or “around any semblance of truth”, since the premise totally dodges reality? Is the word in the title supposed to be “prOposition” ?
2 ºC of warming relative to pre-industrial doesn’t even get us out of the Pleistocene ice age climate…
Dr. Middleton:
If able, please add Bill Illis’ ‘750 million year” chart that Anthony keeps in the “Reference” section.
I am NOT technologically astute, otherwise I’d do it.
Thanks,
Vlad
In the 50’s at night where I live in summer, and usually the mid-upper 70’s during the day, most days—and dry. Just like normal for here, which is why I moved here, to live in a town at an 8600 ft. elevation.
Isn’t a preposition a part of speech? Did you mean “proposition” for the title?
‘Double entendre…’
A “preposition” is what you never use to end a sentence with.
Perhaps the graphic should be redrawn to show we are statistically more likely to be tipped into an ice age. See the last 450,000 year graphic in the link.
https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/ice-ages-what-are-they-and-what-causes-them/
The world is warming. There is nothing we can do to stop it now.
Unless the whole proposition is just Fake News.
How can you prove them wrong?
You can’t.
Just remember to tell your grandchildren about how the global warming facade took hold of some of the population and was pushed so hard by those living off of the grants but was ultimately buried by the funding agencies when nothing happened. Tell them that they need proof before accepting the new propositions in the future.
Bill says
How can you prove them wrong?
You can’t.
Yes you can. You can point to temperatures plunging back to below the 30 year average for say 2 or 3 years in a row. That would be proof for you I pesume? It would be for me.
Ryan,
That is highly likely in the 2020s, if for no other reason than the fact that the baseline will be 1991-2020 rather than 1981-2010. But the world is liable to cool, in any case.
Even if temperatures stay the same, we’re not due for another super El Nino until 2032-33, since 17 years passed between the SENs of 1998-99 and 2015-16.
I’m expecting them to find some excuse not to adjust the baseline in two years.
Ryan, 2 or 3 years of temperature doing anything does not convince anyone, who understands “climate”, of anything about “climate”.
Thank you for confitming that you are one of those who understand nothing about climate.
But seem to be obsessed with spreading apocalyptic crap.
“The world is warming. There is nothing we can do to stop it now.”
or you could just say there never was anything that we could do to stop it.
Day 1. I did not punch Michael Mann in the face, today.
Baffin Bay has ice in it. Baffin Island has ice on it. Gteenland has ice on it. There were no forest fires on Greenland today. There were no forest fires on Baffin Island today.
I did not punch Michael Mann in the face, today.
One Day at a time.
I applaud the hot spell in the title. Europe is on [preposition] fire [noun].
Admit it, you just wanted to draw in the grammar nazis!
Bad grammar can make for a grumpy grampa!
What the Nature abstract says:
There is nothing wrong with presenting a 1% scenario if you clearly identify it as remote chance that is worth being aware of because the costs are so high. Without making that context clear its just catastroporn.
There is something really weird going on in US culture on this. Nowhere else is there this hysterical alarm and forecasts of doom about ordinary weather events. Nowhere else is there this completely dysfunctional association between political party affiliation and views on climate science. Weird.
Another weird thing is this mania the activists have for simultaneously urging actions which, in their own theory, will be ineffective, while refusing to advocate actions which, again in their own theory, should be both effective and essential.
Very, very weird.
Most of the “left” in the U.S.A. and Canada have gone to the “Socialist” end of the spectrum ! They think Venezuela is paradise !!
Also in the UK.
See current furore over a Tory defending the right of Muslim women to wear a burqa in public, if they chose.
He indicated, rightly, I think, that they shouldn’t be forced to wear a burqa, or a niqab, if they do not wish to do so.
But he noted that, a burqa- wearer does look a bit suspicious – a bit like a bank-robber, or a pillar-box (used for mail posting here in the UK; also ‘Post Box’].
And the fuss from the usual super-sensitive souls seems seriously surreal.
Auto
PS –
Late football result –
Real Madrid, 2: Surreal Madrid, Fish.
Apocalyptic death cults are not known for rational or reasoned thinking.
See posts by RyanS for example.
Since when has the climate of the Earth been stable?
The concept of a stable climate is ridiculously teleological, the climate does what it does, it has no purpose to serve or ideal qualities or attributes.
Relating the purported temperature trend over the past century or two with the proxy data resolutions for previous interglacials is also risible.
They have a responsibility to ask the question, they claim, admitting it’s extreme.
Total. Complete. Bollox.
They have a responsibility to remain level & clear headed.
They have a responsibility to talk about legitimate actual solid science.
They have a responsibility not to be wild-eyed panic stricken fear mongers.
If no-one else, they owe those responsibilities to each and every one of themselves.
Personally.
It’s been a ‘very hot summer’ in some places, cool in others.
It happens that way every year.
The difference is that this year, it’s hot where most of the reporters live.
Does “hothouse earth” describe the times when the planet was so conducive to life that lizards grew to be well over 100 feet long, dogs grew to the size of horses, and butterflies had 2′ wingspans?
Then there will be winter… which will be blamed on global warming making it worse.
Nowhere is the mindset more apparent than when a Nor’easter hit Boston. The flooding that occurred was naturally a result of anthropogentic warming. And the cars that were frozen in place, “if you want to see global warming, come to Boston ” said the Mayor.
Why I remember a time when global warming was keeping the cold air confined to the polar regions and the jet stream pushed further north. And now, somehow by magic, global warming is allowing the jet stream to become loopy bringing polar vortexes south.
Consistency, repeat-ability, nor memory is a virtue of AGW.
Nonsense. AGW is a perfectly excellent random number generator!!
Still 50 degrees below zero in Antarctica. Not going to change that with a little CO2.
I like to think eventually humans will deliberately push us toward a HotHouse Earth, perhaps by damming the Drake Passage, in order to help support the 100B people that will be alive a few hundred years from now. They will need a lot of water, and Elon Musk has only started boring us.
“This whole scenario moves into what many would regard as extreme scientific speculation.”
And some of us go as far as saying it’s fraud. It’s not even pseudoscience, it’s antiscience.
Heat wave?? Here in Montana we’re having a relatively cool summer, and nighttime temps are running about ten degrees below normal.
In other words, a summer about like we get every decade or so.
We’ve had another downpour here in Toronto, with the inevitable (very) local flooding.
This is mostly due to old infrastructure and bad planning (seriously: just walked by a drain on the street that was a good 4 feet from the puddle adjacent to the curb).
You can guess what the true culprit is though, right?
Yep, the same climate change that has goosed our forest fire levels (i.e., low precip) is also to blame for high precip.
Economists, betting touts psychics and climate alarmists…all have the same ability to remain employed and in the news while being wrong most of the time. Nice work…
I’m sure, a heatwave, is like every other weather event that has gone before and, no doubt, will happen again in the future. So how do they believe, heatwaves will play out in the future if we somehow manage to cease CO2 emissions? Records being broken by tenths of a degree. Big deal if a location in Portugal is 44.1C instead of 44.5C. Or it lasts for 15 weeks instead of 16. How much ”better” will things be?
Interesting though how well the propaganda works. When you see countries like the U.K. and here in Ireland, notorious for poor summers, yet everyone (well some any way) is convinced that Hell has broken loose, and this glorious weather is a baaad thing. Roll on winter. Yeah, right. They seem to have forgotten the last one. And that’s the problem. Most live in the now, and don’t have any recollection of previous weather events, even in the short time span of their own lives. The next dump of snow will be blamed on climate change and the ”Hothouse Earth” will be retired until the next one…
I seem to recall a claim that without collective climatic action ten years ago the Earth would grow its atmospheric mass by 9300%, increase the CO2 component from 0.04% to 96.5%, lose its rotational energy, boil away its oceans, and revert all its organic matter to disassociated molecules. Was this a lie?
Yes. Anyone promoting a runaway hothouse Earth as an actual risk is fibbing.
A human caused hothouse Earth is not physically possible.
The scammers who wrote the paper knew it but decided to promote it anyway.
They are anti-science and ignore reality and expert opinion.
That one of the authors helped to manipulate the Pope into making a fool of himself along with Church he leads only makes this current piece of fiction more unpleasant.
I think last summer, and the one before that, were signs of what to expect the coming years and decades, it was cold and wet here i northern Europe. We are now approching an exeptionally low solar minimum and the cosmic radiation is increasing, consequently the cloudiness on the planet will increase according to research by Professor Henrik Svensmark. A cold sun and more clouds gives more shade and a colder climate…
The real reason for the paper:
“…behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed
social values.”
Cart put first, then horse.
PROPOSED OR DO YOU REALLY WANT TO SAY PREPOSTEROUS?