Guest “I couldn’t make this sort of schist up if I was trying” by David Middleton
H/T to Robert Bissett…
Drop in Greenhouse Gas Caused Global Cooling 34 Million Years Ago, Study Finds
August 6th, 2021, 6:00AM / BY Abigail Eisenstadt[…]
A paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience confirms that a drop in carbon dioxide around 34 million years ago caused Earth to enter a period of global cooling, called an icehouse state.
[…]
In the past, scientists were unsure why the Eocene Oligocene transition happened. For a while, they thought it was because of a change in the Antarctic ocean’s currents. But that theory gradually grew out of favor.
“The question has always been what was driving this change,” said Naafs.
Through climate modeling, the researchers found that only a decrease in carbon dioxide could have led to such a big temperature drop in the geologically short span of 300,000 years.
[…]
Smithsonian Magazine
This is from the paper:
Two main mechanisms have been proposed as drivers for this greenhouse-to-icehouse transition: (1) changes in Southern Ocean gateways, leading to the thermal isolation of Antarctica and onset of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current7,8; and (2) a decline in atmospheric pCO2 driving the cooling and build-up of continental ice sheets9–11. Different mechanisms have been invoked to explain this drawdown in pCO2, including a shift from shelf to basin carbonate fractionation12, driving the deepening of the calcite compensation depth13, possibly associated with increased weathering and/ or a perturbation in organic carbon fluxes14. A different hypothesis identifies the intensification of silicate weathering, linked to the tectonic deepening of the Drake Passage and the strengthening of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, as the primary mechanism15.
Laurentano et al, 2021
Where do I start?
- Models can’t confirm anything.
- We pretty well know that the “thermal isolation of Antarctica and onset of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current” occurred approximately 34 million years ago.
- We pretty well know that the abrupt cooling at Eocene-Oligocene boundary was coincident with the “thermal isolation of Antarctica and onset of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current”
- Estimates of Paleocene-Eocene atmospheric CO2 vary widely depending on the method of investigation.
This is from my college meteorology text book:
FORECASTING THE FUTURE. We can now try to decide if we are now in an interglacial stage, with other glacials to follow, or if the world has finally emerged from the Cenozoic Ice Age. According to the Milankovitch theory, fluctuations of radiation of the type shown in Fig. 16-18 must continue and therefore future glacial stages will continue. According to the theory just described, as long as the North and South Poles retain their present thermally isolated locations, the polar latitudes will be frigid; and as the Arctic Ocean keeps oscillating between ice-free and ice-covered states, glacial-interglacial climates will continue.
Finally, regardless of which theory one subscribes to, as long as we see no fundamental change in the late Cenozoic climate trend, and the presence of ice on Greenland and Antarctica indicates that no change has occurred, we can expect that the fluctuations of the past million years will continue.
Donn, William L. Meteorology. 4th Edition. McGraw-Hill 1975. pp 463-464
The Antarctic ice sheet likely began to form prior to the sudden drop in temperature, allegedly caused by a drawdown in atmospheric CO2… Indicating that the onset of cooling probably preceded the onset of CO2 drawdown.
This is from my historical geology text book:
Suggestion that changing carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere could be a major factor in climate change dates from 1861, when it was proposed by British physicist John Tyndall.
[…]
Unfortunately we cannot estimate accurately changes of past CO2 content of either atmosphere or oceans, nor is there any firm quantitative basis for estimating the the magnitude of drop in carbon dioxide content necessary to trigger glaciation. Moreover the entire concept of an atmospheric greenhouse effect is controversial, for the rate of ocean-atmosphere equalization is uncertain.
Dott, Robert H. & Roger L. Batten. Evolution of the Earth. McGraw-Hill, Inc. Second Edition 1976. p. 441.
While a great deal of progress has been made since 1976 in estimating changes of past CO2 content, it is still not accurate enough to draw the conclusion that CO2 has been a major climate driver over the Phanerozoic Eon.
Paleocene-Eocene CO2 estimates range from 400-800 ppm to 2,000-3000 ppm. The drawdown that allegedly caused the geologically sudden cooling at the onset of the Oligocene can’t even be properly quantified.
Changes in atmospheric CO2 can’t be clearly tied to the PETM, EECO, MECO or MMCO [1], [2]; however a model now suddenly ties it to the one major Cenozoic climate shift that was well-explained by plate tectonics and oceanic circulation changes. Surely they can’t be serious.
Yet climate models, which can’t get anything else right, particularly the Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene, suddenly nail down the Cenozoic ice age…
The models were also out of step with records of past climate. For example, scientists used the new model from NCAR to simulate the coldest point of the most recent ice age, 20,000 years ago. Extensive paleoclimate records suggest Earth cooled nearly 6°C compared with preindustrial times, but the model, fed with low ice age CO2 levels, had temperatures plummeting by nearly twice that much, suggesting it was far too sensitive to the ups and downs of CO2. “That is clearly outside the range of what the geological data indicate,” says Jessica Tierney, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the work, which appeared in Geophysical Research Letters. “It’s totally out there.”
Science! (as in, “she blinded me with”)
They “solved” the “Holocene temperature conundrum” by simply applying a downwards adjustment to Early Holocene temperatures. Unfortunately for them, it didn’t stay solved.
For their solution to the “Holocene temperature conundrum” to be valid, much of the melting of the Laurentide ice sheet and the subsequent Neoglaciation would have had to have occurred with very little temperature change. Thankfully, Kaufman et al., 2020 didn’t delete the CPS version of their reconstruction.
References
Bohleber, P., Schwikowski, M., Stocker-Waldhuber, M. et al. New glacier evidence for ice-free summits during the life of the Tyrolean Iceman. Sci Rep 10, 20513 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-77518-9
Donn, William L. Meteorology. 4th Edition. McGraw-Hill 1975. pp 463-464
Dott, Robert H. & Roger L. Batten. Evolution of the Earth. McGraw-Hill, Inc. Second Edition 1976. p. 441.
Dyke, A.S., Moore, A. and L. Robertson. [computer file]. Deglaciation of North America. Geological Survey of Canada Open File 1547. Ottawa: Natural Resources Canada, 2003.
Grosjean, Martin, Suter, Peter, Trachsel, Mathias & Wanner, Heinz. (2007). “Ice‐borne prehistoric finds in the Swiss Alps reflect Holocene glacier fluctuations”. Journal of Quaternary Science. 22. 203 – 207. 10.1002/jqs.1111.
Kaufman, D., McKay, N., Routson, C. et al. Holocene global mean surface temperature, a multi-method reconstruction approach. Sci Data 7, 201 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-0530-7
Lauretano, V., Kennedy-Asser, A.T., Korasidis, V.A. et al. Eocene to Oligocene terrestrial Southern Hemisphere cooling caused by declining pCO2pCO2. Nat. Geosci. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00788-z
Pagani, Mark, Michael Arthur & Katherine Freeman. (1999). “Miocene evolution of atmospheric carbon dioxide”. Paleoceanography. 14. 273-292. 10.1029/1999PA900006.
Pearson, P. N. and Palmer, M. R.: Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 60 million years, Nature, 406, 695–699,https://doi.org/10.1038/35021000, 2000.
Royer, et al., 2001. Paleobotanical Evidence for Near Present-Day Levels of Atmospheric CO2 During Part of the Tertiary. Science 22 June 2001: 2310-2313. DOI:10.112
Steinthorsdottir, M., Vajda, V., Pole, M., and Holdgate, G., 2019, “Moderate levels of Eocene pCO2 indicated by Southern Hemisphere fossil plant stomata”: Geology, v. 47, p. 914–918, https://doi.org/10.1130/G46274.1
Tripati, A.K., C.D. Roberts, and R.A. Eagle. 2009. “Coupling of CO2 and Ice Sheet Stability Over Major Climate Transitions of the Last 20 Million Years”. Science, Vol. 326, pp. 1394 1397, 4 December 2009. DOI: 10.1126/science.1178296
Zachos, J. C., Pagani, M., Sloan, L. C., Thomas, E. & Billups, K. “Trends, rhythms, and aberrations in global climate 65 Ma to present”. Science 292, 686–-693 (2001).
Sounds like a circular argument.
Well, I had that impression about whole argument that anthropogenic CO2 is the main driver of the current warming, which is backed up by models.
Well, these models have a high CO2 feedback built in, it would be really weird if they find anything else!
Computer models usually produce the output the programmer wants them to produce, at least where Globul Warming is concerned!!!
“ Through climate modeling, the researchers found that only a decrease in carbon dioxide could have led to such a big temperature drop in the geologically short span of 300,000 years.“
And modelled based on observations from 150 years. Mmm Ok. But what caused the drop in CO2, if it wasn’t temperature?
“But what caused the drop in CO2, if it wasn’t temperature?”
A.K.A. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
It’s well known that the egg preceded the chicken. Ova are a universal means of reproduction. Chickens are a common barnyard bird.
The conundrum also ignores that genetic mutations tend to occur over many generations. It is thus likely that the first ‘chicken egg’ would produce a bird almost indistinguishable from the proto-chicken that laid it.
In other words, the first mother clucker?
All chickens come from eggs, but not all eggs come from chickens.
The conundrum also ignores that genetic mutations tend to occur over many generations.
Scares the hell out of me as to what climate scientists will morph into!!!!
Well, if temperature decreases, the vapor pressure of CO2 in ocean waters goes down, leading to less CO2 in the atmosphere.
They confuse cause with effect – intentionally, of course.
From cooling sea water?
Models only spit out what you have fed in them.
If they say “ONLY a decrease in CO2 could have lead“, they are right: they ONLY have fed CO2 in their models. All the rest of the world physics, they have ignored it. All other known natural processes were ignored. And no provision was made for all the unknown natural processes (those that were not yet discovered or identified).
Correct phrasing would be:
I think the drawdown in CO2 over the past 500 million years is mostly due to the deepening of the ocean basins…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/10/forget-sea-level-rise-ocean-deepening-is-here/
Deeper ocean basins = Deeper carbonate compensation depth
Mr. Middleton: I’m surprised you didn’t consider this- 34 million years ago, progressives of the day convinced emerging bipeds to stop doing something they needed to do, to make the world warmer. Had the opposite result, which shivering progressives told the last survivors, “that’s what we meant.” Progressives still batting a thousand.
“ Through climate modeling, the researchers found that only a decrease in carbon dioxide could have led to such a big temperature drop in the geologically short span of 300,000 years.“
If a drop in CO2 results in a temperature decrease over 300,000 years, why does an increase in CO2 result in the end of the world in 12 years?
Modeling? When the proxies used ad inputs have such a range of possible values, it looks like an exercise in POOMA claims.
How much are you paying for your cannabis these days, Mark? Are you paying the crazy store prices, or sticking with your old dealer?
Is he getting a volume discount?
I must admit, this makes about as much sense as some of the other “science” I see.
Criminy;
One week you have even Gavin Schmidt admitting they have to figure out why their models haven’t gotten anything right the last 20 years and why they’re getting worse looking ahead.
The next you have some chuckleheads using models to look back 34 million years to tell us what just had to have happened then.
Not sure whether this story tends more to the ‘you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at it’ gag or Orwell’s “‘There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.’“
“‘There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.’“
COVID mask mandates for 5-11 yr old children prove your point.
Made a model once–of a B-17. Even it couldn’t fly
Cold ocean absorbs CO2, warm ocean emits CO2, but much more H2O vapor….forms more clouds….reflects sunlight back to outer space, ocean cools again…about 1000 years for ocean to warm or cool.
Surface pollution by oil and surfactants – whether biological or anthropogenic – lowers albedo, suppresses waves and hence salt aerosols, reduces evaporation, reduces stirring so lowers plankton numbers, reducing DMS. Fewer clouds.
Ocean doesn’t cool as quickly as expected.
Or, from a steady state, oceans warm.
JF
(I can do you the atmospheric light isotope signal if you want.)
“The drawdown that allegedly caused the geologically sudden cooling at the onset of the Oligocene can’t even be properly quantified.”
David, David! Of course it can. You have to run 88 models 100 times using the ECS range 1.9 to 5 per doubling plus CO2 from 2000 – 400ppm and subtract the lowest from the highest.
Sheesh, you’d probably say the projections to the end of 2100 from now can’t be done, and yet they do this all the time. C’mon man!
The California Sierra Nevada foothills have a unique geomorphology. There is a reversal of topography from what existed during the Eocene compared to today.
During the Eocene, there was deep (~100 m) lateritic weathering with wide, meandering rivers (Think Mississippi). During the Oligocene, extensive volcanism developed at the crest of what is now the Sierra Nevada granodiorite core. Fluid lavas poured down the rivers, as shown vividly by the quartz latite of Table Mountain near Jamestown, and extending north towards Jackson. The lavas were followed by effusive eruptions that buried the entire region under ash.
When the volcanism subsided, and the Sierra Nevada block began to tilt up with a downslope to the west, the ash was easily eroded and removed by new streams. Once entrenched, the streams continued to cut down, and eventually cut through the N-S lava-filled river beds. However, the river beds that were dissected had greater resistance to erosion than the Eocene laterites that were subsequently exposed; only scattered patches of these reddish laterites remain. Thus, the latite lavas (once river beds) stood in high relief compared to the former position of the laterite hillsides. Looking N-S today one sees concordant ridges that represent the former relatively un-weathered Eocene bedrock below the laterite. The Eocene river beds became the primary source of alluvial gold, re-concentrated in modern rivers, being particularly rich where the latite lava was breached by the modern streams.
In summary, for hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps millions, there was active effusive volcanism along the length of the Sierra Nevada range. The fine ash and aerosols wafted into the stratosphere must have had a pronounced world-side cooling effect! So, the question becomes, “Did decreasing CO2 cause cooling, or did the volcanic activity cause cooling, which in turn caused a decrease in CO2 as the cooling oceans absorbed it?”
Yeah, probably!
https://2021.goldschmidt.info/goldschmidt/2021/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/6028
If it’s scary, it must be C02.
Because of capitalists.
Don’t forget The Capitalist, Trump, who is worse than all the others combined.
Dr Lexus lectures on how companies raise capital.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o2jO1Cq3xYA
Is this supposed to mean something? It’s complete gibberish. Whoever wrote it doesn’t understand that Exxon and Mobil merged and new stock was issued. The market cap of Exxon is approximately $245B. I think most of that value was added since the days of John D Rockefeller.
Yes, which is why people today are so much richer and more numerous than in feudal and mercantile times.
your Fisher Price economics degree was no good try again
Marxists telling us that capitalism was never profitable. Will the wonders never cease.
I love the way he has just proven that paying dividends proves that a company is going under.
What bogus web site are you getting this nonsense from?
Let’s assume they’re right, if so any drop in co2 leads us to an.onset of an.ice age therefore increases in co2 are beneficial, not detrimental.
“therefore increases in co2 are beneficial, not detrimental.”
I would say a co2 increase is essential as I do not want my grand kids to freeze in their house powered by the sun
Why not? I get quite cold every winter as prices are already too high.
Yep. These greentards seem to want glaciation.
Actually, I don’t believe they even think of the flip side of the coin.
“Global warming bad!. Must reverse it.”
Me: But the alternative is worse.
True believer sheeple: “Huh?”
When you don’t know , just blame CO2 .
Motus operandi 101 of ‘ scientist climatologists ‘
David,
Excellent debunking of junk science, as usual. Unfortunately, the alarmists have no need of facts, ca. 1976, or anytime else for that matter. If I were more technically adept, I’d post the scene from the 1960 movie version of H.G. Wells ‘The Time Machine’, where Rod Taylor goes on a rant after seeing that the Eloi have literally allowed all prior knowledge to crumble.
MODS I think we have had enough of MR peak oil. We aren’t allowed to insult him because then you get upset .. so how about you do your roll and put a posting leash on it.
Rôle. Jeez!
Cmon LdB. We’re all guests here. Don’t be demanding that your hosts serve better wine.
I agree that Ingraham needs to go on a leash. Let’s all click the contribute button to show our appreciation of the mods and see if that helps.
Oh, have we reached peak whine then?
“Peak Whine” is a myth when it comes to LdB:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/05/something-wicked-this-way-comes/#comment-3077828
No whine before its time!
>”so how about you do your roll and put a posting leash on it.”
Still terrorizing the blog like the Tiny Little Tyrant you’ve always been, eh LdB?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/02/pseudo-science-behind-the-assault-on-hydroxychloroquine/#comment-2983974
Is it really that difficult for climate scientists to give up on the failed CO2 hypothesis for everything bad and realize it is the effect, not the cause. Im happy to live in a time of stable temps. I’m tired of hearing about a catastrophic degree of warming.
You are complaining about the operating mode, not the operation purpose.
The CO2 might have dropped, but likely because of the cooling instead of the cause to the cooling. Obviously either the cloud cover increased or the Sun’s output decreased. Once cooling gets started atmospheric CO2 will drop as demonstrated again and again on the ice core samples (which give only rough estimates besides).
The ice came because Gaia## made it come.
##Gaia being a nice umbrella term for it being a process caused by a living, almost sentient, ‘thing’
What happened was that Gaia started running out of food. Not what we might recognise as food – Gaia started running out of water soluble (acid dissolved) rock.
It is ‘erosion’ and it totally inevitable and unavoidable. As long as there is any CO2 in the atmosphere, all rainthat falls will be slightly acidic and will dissolve anything basic that it falls upon.
To significant extent, plants depend upon the stuff thus dissolved.
Despite all best efforts at recycling and retaining that dissolved rock, it eventually washes out into the ocean – from where it never returns – unless via volcanoes.
Considering that concrete roof tiles you may have on your house become porous and brittle after just 50 years of typical rainfall, that Gaia held on for 300,000 is pretty amazing.
Slate roofing, being that little bit harder, last for maybe 100 years until they powderise, crumble and fall/wash away..
OK
Starting with high-latitude forests, as they run out of ‘food’ from the soil under them, the trees (Gaia) will try to compensate by pulling more water out of the ground – in the hope of increasing their diminishing nutrient supply.
Whammy whammy here tho. The extra transipration will have a cooling effect on ‘weather’ in general plus the extra water vapour produced will make more clouds having an even greater cooling effect.
Thus, nights will get colder.
Not just diurnal (daily) nights, but the night that is – Winter.
Winters will get colder and longer and thus the ice will move gradually from the poles to ever lower lattitudes
Now we have whammy whammy whammy because of the massively high albedo of the ice.
Fun then really doubles up because the CO2 supply for the trees (Gaia) which would have been coming from decomposing trees in the soil slows and stops.
The creation of Permafrost – chock full of organic material as Climate Scientists endlessly preach.
In fact it don’t even need to be frozen. Once soil temps drop below 5 Celsius, all bacterial action stops and this results in quadruple whammy.
Because the decomposing trees withingn the soil normaly create organic acids as thet decopmpose and those acids (Humic Acids) would normally have broken down (made= water-soluble) even more rock than the gentle but incessantly falling Carbonic Acid solution that we call ‘rain’
In face of that quadruple whammy, you see things (temperature and plant growth esp) going downhill very very quickly.
What it took to cause it would have been a modest decrease in either/both volcanism and mountain building – those being the source of fresh rock-food for Gaia
That was 34 million years ago.
Since then, because the stuff that powers volcanoes and mountains is ever decreasing, Ice Ages will happen at ever increasing frequencies.
And Ice Ages are a lot like deserts – once one has ‘happened’, they are real pigs to get away from.
It takes something Really Drastic to break out of the ice.
Huge volcanoes are nice OR, epic meteor impacts.
But again, those things are fading into distant memory as Earth and the Solar system get old
As far as contemporary Ice Ages go, there will always be a band around the Equator that remains unfrozen BUT, the plants in there will similarly find themselves going hungry.
They will thus become weak, prone to disease and especially prone to fire.
Just Like California Now
The fires that thus break out will be the equivalent of the large volcano or meteor.
They will spread large amounts of dust, soot, smoke etc etc (all the stuff we refer to as = ‘pollution’ in fact) which will darken and dissolve the ice at higher latitudes and thus ‘break the ice’
When the ice is broken, gaia will find that all the tired old and eroded soil ha been swept away, leaving brand new tasty and nutrient-dense goodness for her to get her teeth into.
That is The Basic Process and it occurs over extended periods of time.
Gaia, being shy, retiring and shunning of limelight while at heart being a genorous sort, allows those of a Scientific Inclination to find all sorts of reasons why what happens, when, where and why.
As we see in the story presented above.
Like for examples:
CO2. Mankowitch. Natural Varation. The Orange Man. Greta. Everybody Else = because I Am Good and everybody else is out to get me
(If the latter is the case, stop consuming the cooked starch, refined sugar, the booze and cannabis)
All the while ignoring any possibility of Gaia and thus, endlessly getting Cause & Effect muddled up. Not least when it comes to CO2 and temperature.
Temperature of what tho?
You have GOT to specify what the thing you are measuring the temp of is actually made of and in the Earth System that means Water – especially because of its insanely high heat capacities
Thus you see how Climate Science has picked The Worst 2 adversaries it possibly could.
And they=know that – it’s why they are so defensive of their haha Science and constantly need to ‘Up The Ante’
There lies The Real Beauty of it all.
The sugar, the booze and the weed are all addictive chemicals = things that trigger our intrinsic reward system
Thus, after a typical day passing off porkies in the Climate Science lab (or the political arena), those liars, frauds and cheats know they can retire to the pub, restaurant and/or home safe in the knowledge of a Big Phat Reward for a Good Day’s Work Well Done
Drugs Lie
Thereafter, drug users become liars – they simply cannot stop themselves.
They can help themselves, but it requires both honesty and hard work.
Not looking good is it……….
Just what is it that causes the emission spectra of CO2?
According to the Pearson proxy, atm CO2 dropped from around 3000ppm to about 600ppm but it took the climate 20 million years to catch up.
I just we don’t need to worry about our puny emission then.
Obviously early humans went electric just before the ice age and caused it to occur- this should be a serious warning to humanity to keep CO2 levels high or go directly into an ice age. I heard SUV’s went out of favour about then.
And that my friends is as useful an example as is “climate modelling”.
Al,
They switched over to coal-fired SUVs during the glaciation for the added heat output! The lowered albedo from all the soot and coal dust is the obvious reason for the melting of the great ice sheets; I don’t know how David could have missed that!
We haven’t found relics of them because they were all parked along the seashore just prior to the beginning of the great melt floods; another proof of the stupidity of coastal elites!
Horrifying to find Einstein right again: “There are only two things infinite – the universe, and human stupidity. And I’m not so sure about the universe.”
This “The report finds that large-scale carbon-dioxide removal from the atmosphere might indeed be a way of reducing temperatures” is unsupported by any examination of history for the last 550 million years, and is unsupported by theory.
There has never been a temperature reversal preceded by a CO2 change. And the exponential decline in the GHG effect of CO2, noted by Arrhenius, now has correct numbers, and the next doubling to 800 ppm will increase its GHG effect by less than 2%.
—
Also 1917 paper debunking CO2 greenhouse effect.
And even then, only in isolation, i.e., “all other things held equal.”
‘Naff’ is the word that comes to mind.
These clowns are writing fiction and don’t even realize it. All they have to do is flesh out this paper with some human interaction and they can sell it as a new dystopian novel.
Climate Models gave them the answer they wanted. The same models which simply assume that CO2 is a major “climate control knb”. Centuries ago, they blamed witches for things, because “what else could it be?” It’s the old Argument From Ignorance. Laughable And sad. The Stupid doesn’t just burn, it annihilates. That’s our “Code Red”. We humans appear to be getting dumber.
What’s next from the loons? Code double red?
CO2 is so magically powerful it moved the entire Antarctic continent to the South Pole.
Joel,
I think we can look for new papers connecting the Magic Gas to ALL plate tectonic activity! What can not be ascribed to CO2; virtually everything else is now!
This is the theory of Universal Carbonation! The entire physical universe now revolves around the magic molecule! The models prove it time and again!
Precisely. When all that captured and sequestered CO2 gets under the mantel, won’t that serve as a lubricant and exacerbate the tectonic activity?? Just like water under a glacier.
Still doesn’t explain why a warm planet is ‘less good’ than a cold planet.
Some day, the ice will come back and these silly people won’t have anything to eat, because I ain’t going hunting for them and I ain’t gonna cook for them.
Leave it to Mr. Middleton to put the Monty Python and the Holy Grail gif for “It’s just a model” [Camelot] on this one. In all of my delving into and critiques of climate models, that one had (uncharacteristically) never occurred to me!
It never occurred to me either. I was looking for the proper featured image and it was in the WUWT image archive.
It should be a standard from now on!
Self-parody, what you would expect Mr Bean to say if he was a climate scientist. “We don’t know the question but the answer is CO2”.
https://youtu.be/mzjKDF5Hu74
I lean toward toward freezing to death several times before fire and brimstone consumes us. This may proved one thing and that is we should not mess with CO2 if it is that powerful. CO2 is like Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti westerns in the 1960s, don’t mess with him.
Antarctic isolation was not the only change causing cooling in the Cenozoic.
There was Himalayan uplift creating a large high altitude region generating cold surface air.
In addition there was the connection of North and South America cutting off the Pacific from the Atlantic and forming in the latter a meridionally bounded ocean.
True… However, those events mostly contributed to the cooling from the Pliocene into the Pleistocene, particularly the closure of the Panama Seaway.
The Isthmus of Panama formed 31 million years after the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. It caused ice sheets to grow in the Northern Hemisphere, but the Cenozoic Icehouse started with the formation of the Southern Ocean.
No, the isthmus of Panama formed between 5 to 3 million years ago with a final cut off of the seaway by 3 Ma. The age of 31 Ma is based on a publication that used U-Pb dating on detrital zircons while ignoring a great deal of geological data.
Of course there was a gradual shoaling process, but Pliocene oceanic circulation lasted until the Pleistocene. Even during that epoch, the Inter-American Waterway briefly reopened.
The faunal exchange from about 3 Ma shows that oceanic currents still ran between the continents before then. As too of course do the Panamanian Megalodon nurseries from ten to five million years ago.
The Gulf Stream did intensify from c. 4.6 Ma, thanks to the seaway’s shoaling, but ice sheets didn’t form nor animals migrate between the continents until after 3.0 Ma, especially post-Pleistocene.
Am I being totally stupid or does an explanation of the onset of terrestrial ice ages and interglacials also have to explain Martian ice ages and interglacials? Given that they are both similar planet’s in the same solar system with a few differences.
Earth’s ice ages depend upon plate tectonics as well as extraterrestrial factors.
If lowering CO2 causes ice ages, wouldn’t that be an argument to NOT lower it?
I made this years ago and never posted it. But with the video in the post.
Arctic sea ice looks like it is going to surge well above the past yearly trend line. Temps in the Arctic were well below the average point for the entire summer as seen on DMI’s arctic page. Both poles are registering colder than average temps at the same time regardless of the season.Keep an eye on this trend.
“But that theory gradually grew out of favor.”
That’s the scary bit. Its the simplest explanation, and according to Occam’s razor, the best guess until you find it doesn’t fit the data – rather than agenda. And then they swap it for an explanation that simply doesn’t fit the data.