A new study reports that Northwest Greenland was ice free 400,000 years ago when the atmospheric CO2 level was an estimated 286 ppm. But the study authors don’t look at that finding the same way you probably do.
Here is the study media released abstract:
So I look at then result and I think: Northwest Greenland was ice-free 400,000 years ago when CO2 was at 286 ppm. Yet today Northwest Greenland is a frozen wasteland at 424 ppm CO2. That must mean that atmospheric CO2 is not determinative of whether Northwest Greenland is ice-free.
But the study authors interpret it quite differently. They need to spin readers away from that obvious conclusion.
Their bizarre take-away is essentially that we are overdue for Greenland melting because atmospheric CO2 has already increased so much past 286 ppm and all that CO2 is warming the planet.
Also note that the study authors somehow estimate it will take 30,000 years for CO2 levels to get to 380 ppm if atmospheric CO2 starts to decline by 2040. Accepting that at face value, the 350 ppm level espoused by Jim Hansen and Bill McKibben, ex of 350.org) is never happening.Not that we need this study to tell us that.
“Yet today Northwest Greenland is a frozen wasteland at 424 ppm CO2. That must mean that atmospheric CO2 is not determinative of whether Northwest Greenland is ice-free.”
No, it just means that melting ice takes time.
Then why do the CAGW advocates keep saying New York City and Miami will be inundated in just a couple of decades?
Hypocrisy is just endemic in everything climate catastrophe advocates put out. “It’s going to take thousands of years for the ice to melt but it’ll flood everything in ten years!”
Cognitive dissonance at its finest!
“Then why do the CAGW advocates keep saying New York City and Miami will be inundated in just a couple of decades?”
They don’t.
Of course they do! go here: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/urgent-call-to-action-research-identifies-victorian-areas-most-at-risk-from-rising-seas-20230719-p5dpgt.html
Or here: https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-miami-keeps-building-rising-seas-deepen-its-social-divide
Yes they do, on a very short Google (News) search on “Sea Level” turns up this:
Dozens of House Democrats put forward legislation last
week that claims the sea level will rise as much as 30 feet
by the year 2100 if the government does not act to counter
climate change. LINK
That’s truly hilarious. Or would be if it were not frightening! The most hilarious (or frightening) thing is that they seem really to believe that the government actually can ‘counter climate change’.
Right. Maybe make everyone in the US drive electric cars? Maybe build a few wind farms off the Atlantic coast? Right, that should drop the temperature a few degrees, that should stop them sea levels in their tracks!
got that at https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/547906-this-was-the-moment-when-the-rise-of-the-oceans
Once a shaman, always a shaman.
N.B. This must be the reason BO chose to purchase an $11.75 million dollar estate located basically at sea level in Martha’s Vineyard, MA (see story and photo of estate relative to nearby water at https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/real-estate/a30169311/barack-michelle-obama-buy-marthas-vineyard-house/ )
Nit-pick not following and reading his masters’ hysterical propaganda…
Naughty little boy !
Nick-picking you mean.
I see what you did there…
“They don’t.”
Quite.
On a slightly more irrational note…
“Miami and New Orleans face greater sea-level threat than already feared” …in even greater peril from sea-level rise than scientists already feared
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/10/sea-level-rise-climate-crisis-miami-new-orleans?%202023
You missed New Orleans.
I’ll see your irrational note and point to this one:
15 USA Cities That Will Be Underwater By 2050 (thetravel.com)
“Take advantage of the clubs and restaurants before 2050 (and perhaps even before the mid-2020s) because environmental writer Jeff Goodell predicts that Miami may be underwater sooner than you think.”
As regards New Orleans:
“Parts of New Orleans are also experiencing high rates of sinking, due to both human-induced and natural processes. Research showed that rates are highly variable across the city, ranging from 150 to 500 millimeters (6 to 20 inches) over the past 20 years.”
—https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/05/30/land-sinking-us-subsidence-sea-level/
As regards Miami:
“In this study we evaluate the contribution of land subsidence to the increasing flooding hazard in Miami Beach using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) observations. “Preliminary InSAR results detected localized subsidence, up to -3 mm/yr, mainly in reclaimed land located along the western side of Miami Beach.
“Although the detected subsidence velocities are quite low, their effect on the flooding hazard is significant, because houses originally built on higher ground have subsided since the city was built, about 80 years ago, by 16-24 cm down to flooding hazard zones.”
— Simone Fiaschi, Department of Geosciences, University of Padua, Padua, Italy, and Shimon Wdowinski, RSMAS, University of Miami, Miami, USA
and
“Geological changes along the East Coast are causing land to sink along the seaboard. “New research using GPS and prehistoric data has shown that nearly the entire coast is affected, from Massachusetts to Florida and parts of Maine.
“The study, published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, outlines a hot spot from Delaware and Maryland into northern North Carolina where the effects of groundwater pumping are compounding the sinking effects of natural processes”
—John Upton, “Sinking Atlantic Coastline Meets Rapidly Rising Seas”, Scientific American, 14 April 2016
Bottom line: look not to “sea level rise” as the basic problem facing some major coastal cities in the US and around the planet, but more to land subsidence as the most critical issue to be addressed . . such subsidence often being directly attributable to human actions, such as pumping out excessive amount of ground water and water in deeper aquifers and/or building on “reclaimed” wetlands.
It would appear this is all about FEAR!!
Eh? “Northwest Greenland was ice-free 400,000 years ago when CO2 was at 286 ppm. Yet today Northwest Greenland is a frozen wasteland at 424 ppm CO2.” So, while CO2 has increased for 400,000 years, NW Greenland ice has also increased (from 0 to, er, quite a lot). When does the melting start? When CO2 gets back below 286 ppm?
Don’t bother citing logic or asking smart questions of the warmunists. They don’t engage, they just shout “the models say …”
Apparently anthropogenic CO2 is like an uber mensch of molecules, and oh the horror, the flattening of New York City by mile thick glaciers will be delayed because of it.
Oh the horror? NYC destruction delayed?
LOL!
Trouble is my house is between that glacier and NYC.
Stokes-Bueller?
Stokes-Bueller?
Stokes-Bueller?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f4zyjLyBp64
Greenland is melting:
As Nick notes above, this process is not instantaneous, yet our injection of CO2 into the atmosphere has, on a climate timescale, been extremely rapid. The warming and ice melt are playing catch-up.
How about re-doing that graph as a percentage of total ice mass?
The argument Nick is making is that Greenland ice is melting, it is just takes a while to melt. What you’re trying pivot into arguing is that the amount of ice that has melted so far is not large compared to the total mass of ice. Do you see how the point you’re trying to make is irrelevant to the point Nick is making? It’s a straw man.
Yes, but CO2 levels were at about 280 ppm in 1750, so Nick’s point must be that Greenland ice has been melting for 250 years at least.
Didn’t see Nick making that response to all the claims of disastrous SLR coming in 50 years or less that have been made of the last few years.
You’re looking at it arse about face.
The question is how long was CO2 at around 286ppm before the ice free situation. According to most hysterical reports less than 300ppm for 2.1 million years or like NOAA say the same thing in a less sensational way!!!
So what caused all the ice to melt all that time ago if it wasn’t CO2?
And why couldn’t that be why it’s happening now?
“It’s a straw man.”
Yep, CO2 warming IS a straw-man
A petty distraction being used to destroy western society.
CO₂ warming is a Red Herring logical argument straw-man.
First, they stuff all sorts of “feedbacks” into the concept. Otherwise, actual CO₂ warming is inconsequential, at worst.
Except that along with sea level rise the loss of ice in Greenland coincided with the end of the LIA and not with the rise in CO2. The Dow also tracks CO2 pretty closely does that mean CO2 caused the DOW to rise? You and not-pick are both hucksters.
“are both hucksters.”
Is that something like being a “grifter” 😉
Both JA and Nick-pick seem to have about the same “climate” knowledge as John Kerry..
And that is firmly marked in the ANTI-knowledge category.
As a matter of fact, I don’t. There is plenty of geological evidence that the ice sheets have been more expansive and recent measurements suggest that the glaciers are receding in recent decades along the shores. So, Nicks point isn’t in question. Suggesting it is, is the actual straw man.
The more important question is whether the melting poses any kind of near-term, or long-term existential threat. Plotting the available data on a scale that shows the long-term changes (or lack thereof) is more important.
In the long-term we are all dead. How accurate are 40-year projections? How about 40,000-year projections? Sheesh.
Maybe someday it will be possible to grow barely there again.
Yep, nowadays they can barely grow barley !
There was obviously a warmer climate, with more growing area available, during Viking times.
Then during the LIA, when CO2 was much lower than now, the Greenland ice sheet expanded and living became untenable.
That graph is total BS.
The first question I ask when I see such bull is: Where’s the water? Where is the spike in the SLR rate?
The next question is how is that increase in melting occurring since summer after summer the temperatures in the arctic circle have been running at or under the mean?
Ocean and Ice Services | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut (dmi.dk)
Ummm . . . didn’t you miss one obvious conclusion from the above article:
the Earth did just fine with all of the Greenland ice sheet melted and it recovered just fine to the pleasant climate conditions (and current Greenland ice shelf) we have today, despite atmospheric CO2 concentration having increased by 48% since then?
Also, you are following lock-step with the sophomoric alarmist technique of presenting a graph with a truncated vertical axis to emphasize relative change in a variable over time as opposed to more properly displaying absolute change in a variable over time.
Let’s put the graph you presented in proper perspective:
1) the current total volume of ice comprising the Greenland ice sheet is about 2.9 million cubic kilometers (696,000 cubic miles)
— ref: https://nsidc.org/learn/parts-cryosphere/ice-sheets/ice-sheet-quick-facts# ,
2) freshwater ice has a density of 0.92 g/cm^3
3) therefore, the Greenland ice shelf has a total mass of about 2.7 million GT
4) the plotted change of about 5,000 GT decrease in mass of the Greenland ice sheet from 2002 to 2022 represents an actual decrease of only 5,000/2.7e6 = .0019 = 0.19%
Seriously, you want to raise concern here at WUWT over a 0.19% decrease in Greenland ice sheet mass over a period of 20 years? Seriously???
If this rate were to continue linearly (as it appears from your posted graph), why don’t you get back to me in, say, 1000 years when there has been a 10% decrease in Greenland ice sheet mass.
LOL, those are incredibly small amounts relative to the mass of Greenland ice
They are also done using gravity based instruments over a region of moving magma.
They are basically meaningless, especially since they only start in 2002.
“yet our injection of CO2 into the atmosphere “
Around 250ppm, most plants stop growing.
You should be EXTREMELY thankful for the increase in atmospheric CO2.
(still a ways to go before we reach optimum levels, if ever.)
It is what allows the world’s population to be fed.
Just as fossil fuels are what allows modern civilisations to exist.
Where are the error bars? The graph shows a minuscule loss of mass (the Greenland Ice Sheet is massive) over two decades in a what looks like a linear trend with seasonal fluctuations. The actual loss compared to the mass of the ice sheet is close to nothing – and I really wonder what the error in this estimate may be? Or do you have perfect measurements with no error?
As Nick says, ice takes a long time to melt – how long would this trend line need to reach a significant mass loss and how many millimetres a year would this add to sea level rise? Asking for a former president with beach front property.
Specious comment, as usual.
From the WUWT article published October 2022 on Greenland Mass Balance.
?w=780&ssl=1
It looks like you totted up all of the alleged ice losses and ignored ice accretions.
We do not know what CO2 was 400K years ago, we know it was at least 286 PPM.
The slight, insignificant melting started when the globe started, thankfully, to warm out of the LIA.
Atmospheric CO2 has absolutely nothing to do with it.
The polar ice caps have always retreated and grown – hell, the caps have even been ice free during the earths history, long before humans existed – get a grip man
“No, it just means that melting ice takes time”
Nit-pick correct for a change…
The current volume of Greenland ice will take many many thousands of years to melt.
Also, the current area of Greenland Ice is only a tiny amount down from the LIA, and considerably above what it has been for the last 8000+ years.
Nick-pick is not correct. (The perfect record still stands!)
It’s true that any melting of the GIS is going to take many millennia, but as Herrnwingert and Michel ably explained, if CO2 level rising is the cause of ice melting and at 285ppm was enough to wipe it out, then it should not have come back and reached its current state as CO2 steadily rose. Instead it should have held back the glaciers all this time.
Deacon Nick-pick of the Church of Latter Day Climastrologists is muddled by his dogma. Only CO2 causes warming and current CO2 levels are higher than when there was no ice, but ice is higher than when CO2 was low…That…does not…compuuuuuuuuute!
” … then it should not have come back and reached its current state as CO2 steadily rose. Instead it should have held back the glaciers all this time.”
Logic and common sense are not allowed in “Climate Science”™.
But I give you credit for trying.
Greenhouse gas level highest in two million years, NOAA reports (Update 2)Worldwide levels of the greenhouse gas that plays the biggest role in global warming have reached their highest level in almost 2 million years—an amount never before encountered by humans, U.S. scientists said Friday.
Which means the area of Greenland in question must become ice free at CO2 levels of less than 300ppm.
I read somewhere that the current peak elevation of Greenland is actually increasing.
That little bit of his statement was partly correct.
Greenland Ice will take one heck of a time to melt, especially as it refreezes every winter. !
The SMB has been positive for in some recent years..
Everything I say is a lie
“I am lying”
Norman says, ” If everything you say is a lie, and you say that you are lying, then you must be telling the truth, but you cannot….
Does Not Compute!!!!
The current ice sheet area is 1.7million sq kms!
Briner included the archipelago.
Try again. !
Then whoever produced that graph should say so. However Briner doesn’t say that, he calls it Greenland Ice shelf, based on a model by Larsen. However, the paper by Larsen he refers to only refers to Southern Greenland and does not show that graph. In fact Briner also shows on the graph the Laurentide Ice Sheet which is the archipelago so he regards them as two separate regions. So the argument still stands.
And here is a chart of the Greenland Ice volume/mass since 1900…
What is the data source for this graph?
Do you own research, little boy
… , look up the total mass, and graph the tiny insignificant changes you gave before.
ps Willis had a similar graph recently.
Get things into perspective, and stop your ridiculous chicken-little hysterics.
bnice: There you go again, using a zero-based graph to put the tiny variations into perspective.
AlanJ: Does the data source matter? Unless it’s a computer model that’s been carefully tweaked to correspond to the modeler’s prejudices rather than the real world, on a zero-based graph, the variation is going to be less than the thinnest visible line.
On the other hand, it may provide exactly the perspective necessary to properly appreciate the risk or lack there of.
There are charting techniques designed to ameliorate such issues.
Maybe not the best, but here is one:
maxresdefault.jpg (1280×720) (ytimg.com)
One could also use logarithms to compress the vertical scale when the dependent variable has a large range. That is essentially the point of pH of solutions.
This needs to be done carefully and fully explained when it is done. Otherwise it tends to hide the variance of the data which is a big clue to the uncertainty associated with the data.
The point is … THERE IS NO VARIABILITY IN DATA OVER THE LAST TWENTY YEARS, with respect to Greenland ice gain/loss, or its impact to any other systems.
If your choice in axis scaling is determined by your sole desire to scare the logic impaired, then what you have provided may well be particularly useful.
“If your choice in axes scaling makes it impossible to see variability”
Then the change is totally and absolutely INSIGNIFICANT
Stop your panicked caterwauling !
You have failed to answer the argument. Because you did not quote the first sentence.
Northwest Greenland was ice-free 400,000 years ago when CO2 was at 286 ppm. Yet today Northwest Greenland is a frozen wasteland at 424 ppm CO2. That must mean that atmospheric CO2 is not determinative of whether Northwest Greenland is ice-free.
The argument is not about the speed of melting. Its that the level of CO2 is not correlated with Greenland ice. We have had historically an ice free Greenland at 286ppm. So low CO2 levels are compatible with no ice. This should not be. If the theory is correct, CO2 levels that low should lead to a cool Arctic and lots of ice. This is his first point.
At about the same levels of CO2 we then had a buildup of Greenland ice over the millenia. This shows that Greenland ice. having started out at zero despite very low levels of CO2, can rise dramatically without any change in CO2 levels. If the theory is correct, and CO2 is the driver, this should not happen either.
We now are at high levels of Greenland ice with 424ppm. His second point is to argue that this shows high levels of CO2 are compatible with heavy Greenland ice, so we have no reason to expect current CO2 levels to lead to melting.
To this you reply that it hasn’t had time to take effect yet. Your argument is that the ice will melt, and the cause will be the rise in CO2. What’s the evidence for this? There doesn’t seem to be any in the historical record. We saw a fall and then arise in Greenland ice in the Viking settlement period, without any change in CO2 levels.
And you haven’t met his first point. His first point shows that previous falls in ice were caused by something other than CO2 changes. His argument is that an ice free Greenland with low CO2ppm shows that there is a different driver, and so its reasonable to be skeptical about the claim that rising CO2 will lead to a melt. Given the historical record, this is hard to argue with.
You expect Stokes to address the point? I thought you had been around here longer than that…
Stokes is a master of deflection.
Nick’s response so far to his challengers –
Like when I asked him to produce the prices he was being charged for electricity over the last few years.
Slinking away, cowed and defeated.
I placed a large pot of water on my stovetop, then I turned the heat all the way to high. The water did not instantaneously boil away. I therefore concluded that the heat output of the burner has no relationship to whether the water in the pot is boiling. There is no correlation.
However, if you had placed a thermometer in the pot and observed for a short time you could have predicted when it would boil. Try suspending your pot of water in the exhaust of very large rocket. The problem is poor experiment design and therefore jumping to conclusions that are unwarranted.
You’re again trying to deflect and pivot. The point is that CO2 driven ice mass loss is not instantaneous, while the injection of CO2 into the atmosphere is quite rapid. Just like cranking the heat on your stove doesn’t immediately boil the water. It takes time.
How much time? CO2 levels have been about 280 ppm for over a thousand years (give or take) and the new paper shows that is what it takes to start the melting process.
So what’s the point? The point is that Greenlands ice sheet has melted away due to natural variability when atmospheric CO2 levels were well below the 350 ppm that they now say is the danger level.
Greenhouse gas level highest in two million years, NOAA reports (Update 2)
Worldwide levels of the greenhouse gas that plays the biggest role in global warming have reached their highest level in almost 2 million years—an amount never before encountered by humans, U.S. scientists said Friday.
Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per million Thursday at the oldest monitoring station in Hawaii, which sets the global benchmark.
The number 400 has been anticipated by climate scientists and environmental activists for years as a notable indicator, in part because it’s a round number.
At the end of the Ice Age, it took 7,000 years for carbon dioxide levels to rise by 80 parts per million, Tans said. Because of the burning of fossil fuels, carbon dioxide levels have gone up by the same amount in just 55 years.
Link
That means that for 1,7 million years before the time of this report atmospheric CO2 was at 300ppm or lower.
Explain how that works please?
Your comment can’t possibly true. The IPCC claimed that we were melting the glaciers in various mountain ranges. Hell there were signs up in Glacier National Park telling us that human s were melting the glaciers there because of CO2 rising since the 1850’s.
We were even going to cause all the ice in the Arctic Ocean to melt away by 2014 or some such. So it is almost instantly that melting begins.
Melting has indeed already begun, melting hasn’t finished. It is still ongoing. That is the point myself and Nick have made.
When the Earth had CO2 of 280 ppm, elephants walked across the frozen Thames in winter. If CO2 is reduced to that level, will melting stop?
Myself has made the point?
Your English grammar is as egregious as your Climastrology!
And i as you have been shown , your point is absolutely meaningless.
There was actually a more negative SMB when CO2 was much lower.
You have nothing but failed models and failed conjectures.
For the IPCC, the US government, or ice watchers to make claims that the CO2 we were emitting was causing ice loss that was visible and measurable up to and including the total loss of all summer Arctic Ocean ice it has to be near instantaneous.
By the way what caused the Wisconsin Ice sheet to melt as CO2 was in the 180 ppm range. Shouldn’t it still be here?
mkelly
Yes. And what caused the glaciers on My Kilimanjaro to change mass over historical observation time? That was not a CO2 effect. Geoff S
The melting is supposed to cause sea level rise. Yet there has been no acceleration in sea level rise. Meaning that the melting of ice is continuing at the same pace today as yesterday and will melt at the same pace tomorrow – REGARDLESS OF CO2 levels!
Melting around the edges begins every year.
Its called summer.
Then stops melting, and re-freezes in winter.
What is your point, except for the FACT that there is one heck of a lot of ice in Greenland…
More than there has been for most of the last 8000+ years.
AlanJ,
You neglect the major variable of replenishment rate by snow and rain. Without this factor, you cannot support your conclusions on overall mass change with time. Fail. Geoff S
No, the point—which you totally missed—is that there is no credible scientific evidence that atmospheric CO2 levels are a causative factor of global warming. None.
I’ll dumb it down for you:
–> CO2 levels below 300 ppm for 800 Kyr to 400 Kyr ago*:
NW Greenland ice sheet has melted
–> CO2 levels rise from <300 ppm 400 Kyr ago to above 420 today: NW Greenland ice sheet reformed and has survived the Holocene Climate Optimum (peak temperature last 20,000 years), Medieval Warm Period, and Roman Warm period with ice thickness today up to 2,500 m in some places.
*attached graph from https://timescavengers.blog/climate-change/co2-past-present-future/
There is absolutely no such thing as CO2 driven ice loss.
You are in a pathetic little fantasy land. !
“The point is that CO2 driven ice mass loss is not instantaneous”
There is no evidence that CO2-driven ice mass loss is real.
That’s pure unsubstantiated speculation and assumptions.
That’s all we get out of Human-caused climate change alarmists: speculation, assumptions and assertions.
What is your evidence that temperature responds slowly to changing CO2? During El Nino years, there is an immediate increase in the seasonal change in CO2. Maybe the change in temperature appears to be slow is because you have the cause and effect backwards.
No, not a good analogy. A better one would be like this. We have a condition, say a disease, with occasional outbreaks.
Some take the view that this disease is caused by (for instance) mists. So we record the incidence, and discover that there was a major outbreak a few years back during a season totally without mists.
We become skeptical. We look at mists now, and see that there are lots of them, and no outbreaks. We express our skepticism, and the reply is: just wait. The mists haven’t had time to take effect. But they will, mark my words.
The problem is that we have a variable, the disease or the melting, which occurs absent the putative cause.
So our question is, why do you think the rise in CO2 will lead to a melt? Why do you think the recent rise is the cause of the recent melt, as graphed by someone up the thread? The evidence from the past is that melts, even extreme melts, happen without any rise in CO2 ppm. It could still be that a rise in CO2 will lead to a melt, but there needs to be some evidence. Its not a given.
Later we discover a link with rats….
And the argument from ignorance has been known to be a logical fallacy since the Middle Ages. So don’t offer ‘we can’t think of anything else’. Limits on our knowledge or imagination about a phenomenon are not evidence about it. Rats may not have occurred to us, but that tells us nothing about the illness.
Its like the MWP, which shows that fluctuations on the level of the current warming can and do happen without any fluctuations in CO2 level. That casts doubt (to put it mildly) on the CO2 as driver of present warming theory.
What an incredibly stupid attempt at an analogy !
Hey, Alan, what are you doing trying to boil water from heating underneath?
You know that CO2 in the atmosphere does a much better job…
… according to your alarmist zealot comrades, that is… !
Your post and this article add support to my (and others) contention that there is zero (0) sensitivity by the climate to CO2.
It doesn’t matter if the sensitivity is demonstrated via math as historical evidence says it doesn’t exist.
Good comment Michel.
I would love to support that argument, but it doesn’t follow logically. The most we can assert is that CO2 is not the sole driver. It’s certain that there are other factors but probable that CO2 has some effect even if a weak one.
“It’s certain that there are other factors but probable that CO2 has some effect even if a weak one.”
Is CO2’s effect one of net warming of the atmosphere, or net cooling of the atmosphere, or not much of either?
Answer: Nobody knows.
Rich we are often told that the real world or experiments determine if something is true or not. Geologic history says CO2 has no observable effect. Here is an experiment saying same thing. I have never seen an experiment that shows CO2 causing an increase in temperature.
We’ve been over this ground many times. Claiming that CO2 has NO effect is a distraction from the critical argument that there is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY.
Enough voters could be persuaded that there isn’t an emergency that we might put a stop to the economic suicide pact called Net Zero. You set the bar far too high attempting to persuade people that a belief held by most of the public is wrong.
You could be right but you’re unable to prove a negative so there alone you set yourself up for failure. This is most assuredly not a scientific debate. It is 100% in the realm of politics.
Although I suspect that Curry & Lewis give empirical evidence that CO2 climate sensitivity is about 1.7 K per doubling of CO2 concentration, that is fairly irrelevant. Whether the answer is +3, +1.7, 0.0, or -0.5, it has the implications—NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY.
Well, I’ve got the pun even if others haven’t.
“Nick Stokes”
With silly and often outlandish claims; and it’s clickbait.
Now that you have pointed that out he will create a new profile as “Ed Jllord” and continue to spout the usual nonsense.
Oh really? Does it now? Well who’d a thunk it? I hope you picked up on the sarcasm there but I’m not finished yet. Greenland ‘climate-change driven’ ice melt will take a very long (yet undetermined) time in complete contrast to glaciers around the world whose ‘climate-change driven’ ice melt has been ‘rapid and unprecedented’ and have almost completely disappeared (apparently). Which is it Nick – you can’t have it both ways: if global warming climate change is increasing temperatures then exactly the same mechanism will drive the Greenland ice melt as well as every other glacier ice melt. So why are you trying to say these are two different things, with different rates and timescales? You have no clue is why – you see something happen and it’s “climate change”, something else “also climate change” – no investigation or scientific analysis, just slap a ‘climate change’ label on it and call it a day. Well the chickens are coming home to roost, the piper needs paying and so the AGW morons (and I generously include you, Nick) will have to admit to being clueless and deceitful in equal measure in order to line their own pockets.
It takes time? Then it can’t be an emergency- which usually means your plane is about to crash or Russian missiles are aimed at your neighborhood or you just found out you have a brain tumor.
Don’t you get it? Fifteen more minutes of emissions and we hit the tipping point where the earth spins right off the ecliptic and out into the frigid dark intergalactic realm.
The Arctic sea ice pause is entering its 16th year. How do you explain that? So much for arctic amplification?
it just means that melting ice takes time.
Please explain how it was warmer and NW Greenland was ice-free at 286ppm.
NICKSTOKES ‘No, it just means that melting ice takes time.’
SO when did this melting ice start to happen, given that in 1750 AD , CO2 levels were about 280 ppm?
” … melting ice takes time … ”
I agree: comparatively, melting brains is a much faster process.
Mr. Stokes: This is suitable for framing in the “Stokes the fire just to blow smoke” field. The “truthy” part is, melting ice takes time. Does it take more time or less time than 400,000 years ago? (Trick question, it’s the same). Your gaslighting seems to be running off renewables these days, and there’s no sun. Just enough of a breeze to blow smoke.
That previous interglacial lasted 28000 years, and was caused by orbital changes, not CO2. The rising CO2 that we have created has been going on for about a century.
So What !.
There is no evidence CO2 causes atmospheric warming
Greenland ice area is only just a slight drop from its highest extent in 8000 years.
You have NOTHING except your petty anti-science nick-picking !
Wrong.
The last completed interglacial period—we have to exclude the unfinished one that Earth is currently experiencing—actually lasted some 11,000-21,000 years; scientific estimates vary but none appear to be a long as you state.
“The Eemian (also called the last interglacial . . . was the interglacial period which began about 130,000 years ago at the end of the Penultimate Glacial Period and ended about 115,000 years ago at the beginning of the Last Glacial Period.”
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian
“The Eemian interglacial period (name taken from the Eem River in The Netherlands) was the penultimate warm period to which the land was subjected before the Holocene (current period). This period began 127,000 years ago and extended to 106,000 years ago.”
— Jean Pierre Bergoeing, in Geomorphology and Volcanology of Costa Rica, 2017 (ref: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/eemian# )
“The forest development during the Eemian (syn. Riß/Würm Interglacial in southern Germany), lasting from c. 128,000 until 117,000 years before present and corresponding to MIS 5e, was . . .”
— Philipp Stojakowits, Christoph Mayr, in Stratigraphy & Timescales, 2022
(ref: Ibid)
“Warmer temperatures than today, over a period spanning millennia, most recently occurred in the Last Interglacial period, about 129,000 to 116,000 years ago.”
— Wilcox, Honiat, et.al., Communications Earth & Environment
(ref: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-00063-w )
Furthermore, while there is evidence supporting Milankovitch (ephemeris or “orbital”) cycles as being the basic causal mechanism of glacial/interglacial cycles, this is far from being scientifically accepted or “established”. A huge problem preventing Milankovitch cycles from being more widely accepted scientifically is the fact that during the last 3 million years (the Quarternary glaciation), glacial/interglacial cycles first appeared with a full-cycle dominate period of about 41,000 years but then, after the “Mid-Pleistocene Transition”, occurring approximately 1.25–0.7 million years ago, these changed to high-amplitude cycles, with an average period of 100,000 years. The Milankovitch cycles alone simply cannot explain such a relatively abrupt change, so other factors of perhaps equal or greater importance, such as changes in ocean circulation patterns, continental drift and sea floor spreading, and gradual removal of regoliths are needed. Search Wikipedia for “100,000-year problem” for more detailed speculations and discussion about this issue.
formally or formerly ??? No, on, it was FORMALLY ice free. We have said it, so it was formally true.
Formerly it was formally, but it’s now formulaically formally formerly. But that’s firmly informal.
“But the study authors don’t look at that finding the same way you probably do.”
Clearly they do not. Man, what an inconvenient result. CO2 today is ~138ppm higher and yet there are no signs of green in Greenland.
So what went wrong?
They used an ensemble of ice models...
When I was stationed at Thule Air Base (Pituffik) in 2004-2005, I had the opportunity to hike up on the ice sheet, and the ice sheet was still pressed up firmly against its moraine. There’s a less than zero chance of that area becoming ice-free any time this century.
Did you visit the former Camp Tuto and explore the old ice tunnel? I spent a month there in 1966 supervising a closure survey. We were frequently interrupted by ‘Blue Bird Flights’ of Danish pilots and stewardesses getting clean ice from the tunnel. It had a lot of entrained air in it and apparently entertained everyone at cocktail parties to see the ice effervesce in their drinks.
Prior to the 2008 “melt down” of the economy, barge operators realized they did not have to make an empty return trip from Alaska to Seattle.
Ice was lifted out of Glacier Bay, brought south, and packaged to be sent to Japan and wherever “ice effervesce” was appreciated.
dcdd7edb19a0b0e78b2b9a2f9276ef2f.jpeg (1920×1920) (shipt.com)
I should introduce you to mom. She also tells the same stories, over and over. And as with mom, I’m glad it makes you happy….
So, 400,000 years ago Neanderthals were well-established in Europe. Since it was cold, and they utilized fire for both heat and cooking, we can interpret that their fires started the downward death spiral of thermal Armageddon we now find ourselves in. I’m thinking Climate Reparations should be paid to everyone else on the planet. Euros would be OK. Thanks.
I agree. We should scan the entire population, and those with high levels of Neanderthal genes are clearly the descendants of those planet destroyers, so should be taxed and pay reparations to the rest of us. T
The sins of the ancestors shall be visited on the descendants. I know, people will object, that was our remote ancestors, we didn’t do any of this destroying of the planet, we were just born. Wrong. That’s just Neanderthal privilege talking, its the voice of Neanderthal fragility.
Get out of denial, admit your Neanderthal guilt, and start paying those reparations!
The reparations commission should be co-chaired by F. Flintstone and B. Rubble?
(excuse me for not knowing their pronouns)
You might be hard pressed to get any dough from your local Neanderthals. I’m pretty sure their checking accounts have been frozen.
For their political views?
O/T – the warm, settled weather is making unreliable renewables even more unreliable
https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/07/21/sse-reports-29-shortfall-in-renewable-output-due-to-weather/
“Energy giant SSE has encountered a significant setback in their output of clean electricity, primarily caused by unfavourable dry and still weather conditions.”
Note to self: don’t buy an electric barbecue.
In the summer and early autumn of 2021 Europe experienced a long period of dry conditions and low wind speeds. SSE reported a 32% drop in power production from its unreliables in that period. Glad to see they are continuing the good work 🙂
The sentence you quoted has an obvious typo:
“Energy giant SSE has encountered a significant setback in their output of clean electricity, primarily caused by
unfavourable dry and still weather conditionstheir own stupidity.”There, fixed it for you.
What about a self reinforcing and insanely simple explanation?
1/ There was less/no ice snow on Greenland because the rain/snow were falling ‘elsewhere’
2/ The sea-levels were lower because the water was ‘elsewhere’
3/ The CO₂ levels were lower because the CO₂ was elsewhere
4/ There was less ice/snow because of less rain – also that what ice was there, was sublimating/evaporating away – as per Kilimanjaro’s disappearing ice.
5/ The water that would have filled the ocean and made the ice was ‘elsewhere’
6/ We don’t need to invoke Temperature at all – a lack of ‘Degrees Celsius’ do not ‘make ice’
Okaaaay and the cry goes up: Where is/was this ‘elsewhere’
The clue should be in the sediments they’re digging up but patently not examining properly or if they are, ignoring what they don’t want to see.
The water and the CO₂ were locked up in a humongous Global Rainforest.
Certainly within the fabric of the trees/vegetation themselves but mostly and by a very long chalk, in the buried litter & detritus under the forest.
Also all the lakes, rivers, swamps and peatbogs there would have been
Along with all that water was stored within it a huuuuuge amount of heat energy.
This worked to keep ‘Average Temperatures’ at and around 23°C ±3°C both diurnally and annually
That huge reservoir of heat worked to keep nights warm, days cool (minimising all sorts of heat loss processes) -working to absorb and release heat (ha ha ha) ‘over time’ as temps tried to slide outside that 23C window
Nights are the exact same as = ‘winters’ when you’ve that much heat at your disposal so winters were warmer.
Thus: The Global Average Temperature rose because there were fewer cold places.
It never ever anywhere got higher than the (easily calculable) 31°C that deep and open water gets to = the rainforest acted like ‘deep open water’
IOW: Deserts are Cold Places.
And when you’ve made and got A Desert – time stands still while you freeze.
Story tip, more climate idiocy.
According to a new study, you might not have a desert at all. Scientists (and I use that term loosely) studying the Peruvian Pacific coast and the arid/semi-arid ecosystems there were, apparently, shocked to discover extensive greening throughout the region. Again, apparently, this is Bad News because it is upsetting the delicate balance of the arid and semi-arid regions. They have this weird world-view where everything should remain exactly as it was and all change is Bad, very Bad. Someone should clue them in that the only constant is change.
https://phys.org/news/2023-07-pacific-slope-peru-greening-good.html
“IOW: Deserts are Cold Places.”
The people of Phoenix and Las Vegas would definitely disagree with you right now…
Just to put another nail in the coffin of this joke paper, I came across this nugget from 2020
“CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere nearing levels of 15m years ago”
Last time CO2 was at similar level temperatures were 3C to 4C hotter and sea levels were 20 metres higher
…
427 parts per million, which was the probable peak of the mid-Pliocene warming period 3.3m years ago
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/09/co2-in-earths-atmosphere-nearing-levels-of-15m-years-ago
Well, what can one say? Temperatures are not 3C to 4C hotter and sea levels are most certainly not 20 metres higher.
Give it a few million years, you’ll see! (Just ask Nick)
“…but the duration of peak warmth of MIS11 was exceptionally long (29 ky) because of the orbital configuration at the time (35-37).”
If orbital configuration was the cause of the melting 400 ky ago then how does this study support the conclusion that CO2 will be the driving force of future melting? Shouldn’t they look at future changes in orbital configuration?
They should but they don’t get paid to do that!
In fact, their funding would instantly be “zeroed” if they did that.
Bill McKibben came to the local prestige liberal arts college on a speaking tour this spring and I asked him about the CO2 to 350ppm goal and he basically said that he had not been part of 350.org for years and he could not say what the optimum CO2 level should be as I remember it. Ask him yourself if you see him.
Before or after I publicly ridicule him?
It seems like they’re saying 280 ppm is too high to keep Greenland from greening.
Greenland is gaining in permanent ice extent and in elevation of the summit. Calving is still outpacing snowfall but it is only a matter of decades before the mass loss reverts to mass gain.
As the northern oceans warm, the winter advection of moist air is accelerating and that guarantees increasing snowfall on freezing land. The permafrost is about 200 years from advancing south again.
The MIS 11 interglacial spanned almost one and a half precession cycles totalling 30kYr but the first of those was a weak cycle due to low orbital eccentricity and sea level only rose 40m but during the down phase of the precession cycle with falling peak solar in the NH before accelerating as the next and larger up phase, eventually going 10m above the present level.
The present up cycle in NH peak solar is quite low and the onset of glaciation is already delayed but the evidence points to the termination of the modern interglacial is under way.
The accumulation of ice on land is self limiting because there is a limit to how much ice the land can carry before glacier calving shuts down the NH water cycle due to cooling ocean surface; meaning less snowfall. Once the melt begins, the process becomes unstable as the rising water level breaks ice shelves to form massive icebergs with keel draft in excess of 500m. The sea floor around Greenland has iceberg scouring to 700m present depth.
Googling a news event can show some interesting viewpoints.
So I googled *USA Today Greenland* whichor
has this study at the top of the list, with non other than Michael Mann being selected
to give his opinion…and a long list going back several years of other stories of the
same ilk..
Googling “who blewup nordstream” show why I really don’t believe anything i hear/read.
So the Greenland ice sheet was gone when CO2 levels were what they were before 1800AD?
So why wasn’t the ice sheet melting in 1815?
Why was there ice on Greenland in 1600 AD when CO2 levels were about 280 ppm?
Remember, “follow the money”. Whoever pays for the study, or whatever, gets to call the shots on what the results show. One way or another. Scientists lie to keep their jobs and the grant money flowing. Just sayin’.
Hmmm . . . 400,000 years ago . . . isn’t that something like just the last 0.009% of Earth’s existence?
How much has changed in the figurative “blink of the eye”.
And climate alarmists want humanity to just focus on the last 250 years of “climate change”. ROTFLMAO!
According to this study, the MIS 11 warm period lasted 29,000 years and caused a sea level rise of 1.4 meters, which would translate to an average sea level rise rate of 0.048 mm/year. Why should we worry about that when tide gauges are showing a sea level rise rate of about 2 mm/yr? At that rate, sea levels would rise 1.4 meters above the present level somewhere around the year 2700. which would give our great-great (30 times) grandchildren plenty of time to move to higher ground.
Kind of funny this new study comes out at a time when for three years running the SMB of the ice sheet has grown. It is the height of the melt season .
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/surface/SMB_map_LA_acc_EN_20230721.png
SMB seems pretty close to average at the moment.
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3857.0;attach=381143;image
Paywalled, even though funded by federal grant #2114629. https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2114629&HistoricalAwards=false