Once Again: The Current "Super Freeze" Doesn't Mean Global Warming Is A Hoax

Once again, almost like clock work, the  "dummy brigade"  has emerged (mainly on FOX, Limbaugh) to dismiss the bitter sub-zero temperatures sending the mid-western U.S. into a deep freeze  as  part of a "natural cycle".  Thereby arguing there's really no global warming, no climate change and hey,just bundle up more for the polar vortex.  It's all a "hoax"according to these nitwits.  

A recent example of the latter was a  letter in the local press (COS Indy, Jan. 2-8, p. 4 ) by a  Mark Rozman who claimed:

“Climate change is a natural, ongoing process as evidenced by tree ring data”   etc.

But there is more than tree ring data to be factored in here.   While tree ring data is a useful proxy indicator, it still doesn’t come close to ice core analysis in ascertaining the increasing concentration of CO2 and its effect on climate. In ice core analysis the air trapped in  cylindrical ice cores (extracted from deep within the Earth)  is chemically assayed .  The gases are analyzed to quantify the  CO2  concentration, then related to the climate at the time.

One of the most prolific ice core researchers - who originally discovered (ca. 1986) that the Arctic was warming much more than the continental U.S.  -  was Prof. Gunther Weller of the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska- Fairbanks :

Prof.  Gunther Weller (1987)

 His work and that of others has disclosed that over the past 800,000 years the CO2 concentration of  300 ppm was never crossed until after the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the burning of fossil fuels.  Further, it has been found that no Ice ages have occurred whenever the CO2 concentration exceeded 200 ppm.  This means that climate change cannot be a “natural ongoing process.´ How can it when the greatest spike in CO2 concentration (now approaching 410 ppm) occurred after the human-instigated Industrial Revolution? 

In terms of tree rings, the relevant indicator is the ratio of the C14 isotope to the C12 isotope, as disclosed by solar physicist John Eddy.    

Eddy showed (‘The New Solar Physics’; p. 17, 1978) that an anthropogenic effect could be deduced from a graph of C14:C 12 deviations over a long enough period, i.e. 2,000 years.  

Specifically, “the sharp upward spike at the modern end of the curve is  attributed to anthropogenic causes and is the mark of increased population and the industrial age.” (Op. cit.)

Eddy’s work  in concert with many others, shows clearly humans are the primary agents driving climate change. Remove the human influence from the past 250 years or so and we are not approaching 410 ppm of CO2 concentration. Not even close!

Now what about the polar vortex? What is its role in climate change- global warming?

This Arctic heat emphasis, for example,  was exposed in the January , 2016 zonal temperature map :

Data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed that January was, for the entire  globe, was an extraordinary month. In particular the data showed the Arctic took the brunt of heating (see graphic) with a temperature increase more than 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 1951 to 1980 average in this region. (This data constitutes a "zonal mean" temperature map, which shows how the temperature departures from average change based on one's latitude location on Earth.)

The finding dovetailed  with Prof. Gunther Weller's predictions (from the mid -1980s) - based on his ice core analyses- that future warming would be greatest in the Arctic.  This is  a phenomenon known as "Arctic amplification".  In papers and seminars delivered at the GI over 1985-1990 he pointed out that a much warmer Arctic also means a much more unstable polar region with more frequent intrusions ("waves")  of the polar vortex,  leading to frigid temperatures in parts of the U.S. such as we've seen the past few years.  In one seminar he described it "almost like moving the Arctic to the continental U.S."

Unpacking it further: there is generally an immense cold mass of air that sits over the Arctic.  Because of global warming, climate change the Arctic has experienced diminished sea ice, E.G.


As the sea ice mass melts there is less reflection of radiation into space and hence more rapid warming of the surface.  This diminished sea ice then results in more heat dispatched into the atmosphere. This in turn destabilizes the polar vortex - a low pressure area normally residing over the north pole. This instability then allows polar air to plunge southward into the continental U.S. .

The details leading to what we've seen the past several days (with temperatures in some locations even rivaling those in Antarctica) occurred on January 2nd.  NOAA monitors showed that part of the stratosphere had a rapid rise of 50 degrees F in just a few days.    The event split the unstable polar vortex, so that part broke off. Afterward, pockets of Arctic air migrated south causing the current deep freeze.

Let's also process that the warming onslaught is exacerbated by the rapid melting of permafrost. Vast expanses of former  Arctic permafrost have been reduced to mud, and also in the process of warming released methane - perhaps the Greenhouse gas which is most potent.  See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/03/more-rapid-permafrost-melting-triggers.html
As reported by the University of Alaska -Fairbanks Arctic Research site:
In 2016, the latest year of complete records, the majority of Arctic observation sites reported the highest permafrost temperatures on record.

The takeaway is that these sub-zero super freezes we're seeing with polar vortex intrusions are likely to become more frequent in the future, not less. The deniers and climate dummies would do well to learn more about this phenomenon and why they should be fearful, not wise ass snarky, to play into the agnotology narrative.  See e.g.

Brane Space: The Pseudo-Science Agnotologists Strike Again!

brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/as-i-noted-in-earlier-blog-httpbrane.html

Taking Down An Annoying "anti-Evolutionist" On His Dinos Co-Existing With Humans Bunkum

While Charles Pierce's 'Idiot America' skewers Americans who actually believe that humans could have co-existed with dinosaurs,  he missed all the loons in Barbados who accept the same codswallop.  One of these characters whose letters feature prominently in the Barbadian press is Roger Marshall.( I have also had media battles with Mr. Marshall - a self-declared "anti-Evolutionist" - for over 25 years now.)

Not long after arriving in Bim I encountered Marshall's latest letter to the Barbados Advocate editor (‘Genesis Foundation of Christianity Still Strong’, April 10,  p. 11).  As usual there were so many outlandish claims made for his already scuttled creationist codswallop that it would take a text book to refute them in depth – but I confined myself to primary themes, main points. The letter was subsequently published after we left in the May 5 edition of the Advocate. The main content of the letter is shown below:
-------

Let’s begin with the claim the “Earth is only a few thousands of years old”. (He says “probably 6,000-10,000) according to Genesis. ) It ought to be obvious that radiocarbon dating totally refutes this foolishness, but perhaps not in Marshall’s mind – or perhaps he himself isn’t familiar with the principles of radioactive dating. (Say as elaborated in A-level physics).  But to be blunt, there are no dinosaur bones found for which accurate dating has them only six to ten thousand years old.  Leaving even that aspect out, Marshall is oblivious to the fact the climate six to 1ten thousand years ago was simply too cold for dinosaurs to survive, whether Brontosaurus, Allosaurus, Diplodicus or Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Indeed, Luis Alvarez’ seminal work with the identification of a massive asteroid strike 65 million years ago (validated by Iridium in key fossil layers) disclosed that once this monster (6 km) object hit, the dinos were not long for this world.  The massive impact equal to billions of megatons equivalent of TNT would have resulted in gigatonnes of dust hurled into the atmosphere blocking out the Sun in a nuclear winter type scenario (similar to what would occur today if all 9,400 -odd nuclear weapons were detonated in a war – say between the U.S. and Russia).  The blocked sunlight not only limited photosynthesis, resulting in the mass extermination of the plants that the herbivorous dinosaurs needed (affecting the meat eating dinos like T-Rex next) but sent temperatures plummeting to levels to which the reptiles couldn’t adjust.

Even if the dinosaurs had survived that asteroid impact, they’d never have survived subsequent Ice Ages that gripped most of North America and Eurasia. (Maybe Marshall doesn’t accept Ice Ages either).

Also figuring into the mix is the fact the Sun operates according to nuclear fusion reactions.  Given the computed nuclear cross section reaction rates we can compute the Sun had been going for at least 4.5 billion years – which immediately destroys the pet Genesis claim the Earth (and cosmos) is only a few thousand years ago.

Marshall next makes much of the dinosaur “soft tissue riddle” where in March, 2005, “paleontologists were stunned to find that the soft tissue of a dinosaur was preserved within a fossil from Tyrannosaurus Rex”.

But this can be easily explained without invoking the malarkey that “dinosaurs and humans lived contemporaneously”. For example, it has since been found that  the iron in their blood formed minuscule iron nanoparticles. This according to a recent paper (Nov. 26, 2013) appearing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biologic Sciences. The process also releases free radicals involved in aging. But according to the authors (Mary Schweitzer and colleagues at the Univ. of N. Carolina), the free radicals released caused proteins and cell membranes to tie in knots, “basically acting like formaldehyde”. As we know formaldehyde preserves tissue, in this case by cross-linking the amino acids that make up proteins.  The key takeaway? Prof. Schweitzer and her colleagues found that the dinosaur soft tissue is closely associated with iron nanoparticles in both T Rex and another species, Brachylophosaurus Canadensis. The scientists tested their theory using modern ostrich vessels, soaking one group in an iron rich medium, e.g. soaked in red blood cells, and another soaked in water. The former remain recognizable even after two years.

The experiment does not prove this process was applicable to preservation of dinosaur soft tissue but it does provide a naturalistic explanation which is the paramount attribute of all good science. It is far superior to any supernatural explanation or one that appeals the less understandable (in terms of context) to account for a peculiar condition or event. In the latter case we say the person commits the fallacy of ignotum per ignotius, or using the less well understood to make sense of the poorly understood. This, I believe, is the fallacy Mr. Marshall commits in his letter.

Finally, Marshall never considered what would have occurred if the dinosaurs had actually been herded “two by two” into another mythical entity he's convinced existed – “Noah’s Ark”.   Well, just a few of those pairs would have sunk the craft under their combined weight – and that’s even before all the pairs of mammals, other reptiles etc. made it on. A myth sinking another myth!!

High CO2 Levels Have Prevented New Ice Ages

According to new research published Wednesday in the  journal Nature  humans may have had a close escape from an imminent Ice Age as recently as the current geological epoch known as the Holocene. The tenet being that pre-industrial  modifications of the climate through agriculture, large  fires and deforestation might have barely avoided it

In the words of Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, one of the paper's three authors and founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research:

"Humanity narrowly escaped a glacial inception in the middle of the Holocene, which was almost suppressing the formation of civilization,"

In addition, the study asserts that massive human greenhouse gas emissions since that time have probably "postponed" what might otherwise be another ice age "by at least 100,000 years."
The new research is based on the idea that there are two key factors that shape whether Earth goes into an ice age. There's one that humans can influence, as well as one they really can't.

The authors claim that the factor "out of our control" is Earth's "Milankovitch cycles", which  supposedly describe the erratic way in which the planet orbits the sun and spins on its axis over vast time periods. Earth's orbit grows slowly more and less elliptical, even as the angle of the planet's axial tilt and the wobble of the poles as the planet spins (much like what you see with a spinning top) also change slightly over thousands of years.

However, in an earlier blog post I noted there is no support from standard celestial mechanics for any such changes, e.g. in obliquity,

I wrote:  cf. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2007/12/travails-of-milankovitch-hypothesis.html

'its contention that the obliquity of the ecliptic (inclination of Earth to its orbital axis) varies from 21 to 24 degrees over a 41,000 period .... is certainly a magnitude in excess of a half degree (1800”) on either side of its current 23.5 deg.

Astronomers-astrometrists recognize no such period or differential of axial tilt. The following is from the book, Astronomy- Principles and Practice by A.E. Roy and D. Clarke, 1978, Adam Hilger Books, p. 118:

“Because of the nutational wobble in the Earth’s axis of rotation, the obliquity of the ecliptic (KP in Fig. 10.32) varies about its mean value. The magnitude on either side is about 9.”2.”

For the benefit of non-astronomers, the magnitude cited (9.”2) isn’t even one hundredth of a degree"

The point is that until such time this conjecture is confirmed and integrated into celestial mechanics, it is really not a factor at all, especially one "out of our control".

Hence, the authors' claimed  "second factor that's in our control" is actually the only one:  how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. We are able to turn this knob by how many forests we cut down and how many fossil fuels we burn, both processes that transfer carbon into the atmosphere.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide traps heat, causing an overall warming effect, and this will happen no matter where the planet is in its various orbital cycles. And if there's enough of it, it can counteract the tendency of these cycles to make and then unmake ice ages.

Using analysis of past planetary glaciations and a computer model of Earth that is able to predict their occurrence, the researchers found that carbon dioxide concentrations were only slightly too high to push us into glaciation a few thousand years ago.

"The Earth system would already be well on the way towards a new glacial state if the pre-industrial CO2 level had been merely 40 (parts per million) lower than it was during the late Holocene," the authors write. Indeed, they note that about 800,000 years ago, orbital alignments were similar, but carbon dioxide concentrations were around 240 parts per million, and glaciation did indeed occur.  But now, as concentrations push 400 ppm and are rising by 2 ppm/ yr. there is no chance at all of further Ice ages, period - unless our planet truly did suddenly tilt its axis by three degrees or more, or somehow alter its orbit to one with a longer semi-major axis.

Climate scientists from CU near Niwot Ridge, measuring snow depth.

Speaking of glaciers, alarming new findings from here in Colorado disclose that rock glaciers and other ice contaiing water -  west of Boulder - will soon vanish. The Arikaree Glacier, which feeds North Boulder Creek, had held steady from 1965 through 1997. This glacier, likely more than 1,000 years old — has been thinning by about 1 meter a year over the past 15 years and will disappear completely in 25 years, a team of scientists concluded.

The scientists, from CU - Boulder, scientists using ground-penetrating radar to learn that climate change is shrinking glaciers and other icy terrain in the Rocky Mountains — raising concerns about water supplies. In the words of hydrologist Mark Williams of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, and lead author of the study and a principal investigator at CU's Niwot Ridge station:

"We can't get out of this. It is wired now, on the Colorado Front Range and in the Arctic. There's going to be less ability, on the water side, to address low flows in July and August .Glacier National Park is not going to have glaciers in another couple decades. People are going to be upset about that. We're in a loop we cannot get out of."

He added that a loss of sunlight reflectivity, as snow and ice disappear, will push temperatures even higher.

While idiot deniers continue their harangues against the "climate change and global warming hoax"  actual science has had the last word. In this case, the melting of glaciers and other ice in Colorado's mountains jibes with a worldwide trend that scientists and governments have linked to climate change. The shrinking of Earth's frozen "cryosphere" has been documented across Arctic sea ice, tundra and other areas that traditionally hold packed snow.

Janice and I observed these effects also, back in March, 2005, when we flew in a small plane round Mt. Denali, Alaska, e.g.














Before taking off, above, and one view from the cockpit of the plane on or approach  below

The original deal was that we were supposed to land on a glacier near the peak and be able to walk around and see Denali up close and personal. This was the package promised. However, after several swoops low over the area the pilot warned he wouldn't be able to fulfill it. His 27 years of experience and hawk eyes informed him the supporting snow and ice was much too treacherous to sustain even a small plane landing. Did we really want our "money's worth"? Uh no.  What we saw, however, was enough to show us that those who denied global warming were spouting bollocks and balderdash.

Alpine glaciers form when net snow accumulation leads to snow compressing and re-crystallizing into dense ice, which flows slowly to lower elevations, sculpting land. Over the past three decades, scientists measuring glaciers worldwide, using remote sensing and other methods, have documented shrinkage. We saw it in Alaska, as well as in Switzerland (Jugfrau region) when we were there in Sept. 2014, and compared it to photos of when we were there in August, 1978.

The work in Colorado focused on the size of the glacier, which had a maximum depth of 25 meters, shallower at the top and toes. Scientists also measured ice thickness in the Green Lakes Valley area below Niwot Ridge, which includes mounds of ice, dirt and rock that store water as well as subsurface ice and seasonally frozen lakes. They used radar, electrical devices and seismometers that send signals through subsurface ice.

The data continue to accumulate that the Earth's warming is real and having major consequences, and yet a sector of the populace remains firmly committed to the fiction that it's all part of "natural cycles".  Mostly done to try to escape species' responsibility and the sobering economic changes needed to at least make the coming climate onslaught more adaptable for humans,

We may have to "repent at leisure" thanks to attending too long to these naysayers.

Kids "Indoctrinated" By Feds On Climate Change? Get Real!

 
Paul H. Tice,  in a WSJ op-ed ('Schoolroom Climate Change Indoctrination', May 28, p. A15) claims American kiddies are being relentlessly "indoctrinated" on climate change via "teaching materials largely sourced from federal agencies". But who is he kidding? His real beef is that the info and materials aren't coming from the climate change deniers - recently exposed as generating a $140m blitz to try to torpedo the scientific facts on what's happening to our planet.
 -
But see, deniers aren't interested in facts, but supporting a massive campaign of agnotology, or the sowing of doubt in order to promote an unsustainable economic model based on fossil fuels. See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/as-i-noted-in-earlier-blog-httpbrane.html

Tice is vexed that (ibid.):

"The National Research Council framework for K-12 science education recommends that by the end of Grade 5, students should appreciate that rising global temperatures will affect the lives of humans and all other organisms on the planet. By Grade 8 students should understand that the release of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels is a major factor in global warming. And by Grade 12, students should know that global climate models are very effective in modeling and predicting the current and future impact of climate change."

He then complains of the "reach" - noting "the  learning concepts have been incorporated almost verbatim into the New Jersey Department of Education model science curriculum". He then beefs that the "materials and resources used by instructors in teaching are sourced from government agencies" - to which I respond, 'So what?'

Where the hell else do you think the materials will come from, and at a price the schools and instructors can afford?  Let me correct that, where do you think the scientifically factual materials will come from?  It is precisely the federal agencies,  including the NRC, the NSF (National Science Foundation) and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) that will be the optimal sources for materials given the volume of work already published.

Tice then claims that relying on such curriculum materials from federal agencies "raises a number of issues". Chief among these is that the materials leave "no room for balanced discussion". What balanced discussion? There is no "balance" in this discussion because there are not two sides to this issue any more than there are two sides to whether the Holocaust occurred.  This is exactly what the economic agnotologists want you to believe: the 2 sides malarkey. Then they can keep the  pseudo debate churning  endlessly while the planet goes down the shitcan.

Tice then commits the most basic error of the scientifically uninformed by averring:

"The science of climate change is still just a theory"...

Oblivious to the fact that a theory  - by definition - has already made confirmed predictions based on the associated observations. In this case - for example  - that the polar regions are warming more rapidly than temperate regions, and that sea level increase is an accompaniment of ongoing climate change, see e.g.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/22/kiribati-president-buying-land_n_5860064.html

He then, as if to try to make his specious case, asks more questions typical of the scientifically ignorant such as:

"For instance, why has the planet inconveniently stopped warming since the late 1990s even as carbon dioxide levels continue to rise?"

The fact is this is a myth, originating through a goofy, statistical misinterpretation of the data that a high school science nerd ought to have spotted, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/george-will-no-warming-for-last-16.html

In addition, an important paper by Sonia Seneviratne appearing in Nature Climate Change in March last year showed another, secondary source of statistical error inheres in ignoring peak high temperatures over long duration in extended land areas. Seneviratne's team reported a clear rise in the area of land experiencing more than 30 days of harsh heat per year and other regions experiencing more than 50 days of sever heat. Both of these under-reported in satellite assays and hence disclosing a lower mean temperature than should have been noted. The results, the authors state:

"Show that it would be erroneous to interpret the recent slowdown (in the late 90s and early 2000s) as a general slowdown of climate change"   Adding:

"The mean temperature or any single variable is not enough to talk about climate change"

A more recent paper, published in the journal Science on June 4 also knocks down the "temperature pause" bunkum  noting that previous research wasn't accurate because of irregularities in how temperatures are measured on land and sea - basically confirming the research of Seneviratne appearing in Nature Climate Change  a year ago.  The lead author, Thomas Karl, quoted in a related WSJ piece ('Warming Hasn't Slowed, Study Says'. June 5, p. A12) asserted:

"We found that the rate of warming over the past 15 years was no different than the rate of warming in the second half of the twentieth century"

As I pointed out before, the whole boondoggle with this fake pause was unfortunate, given how the climate change skeptics jumped on it to try to bolster their flimsy case and push their agnotology.

Another specious question put forward by Tice is:

"How statistically significant is a 1.4 degree Fahrenheit increase in average global surface temperatures since 1880 for a 4.6 billion year old planet with multiple ecosystems and a surface area of some 200 million square miles?"

But he commits the error of statistical conflation, mixing up different epochs when average temperatures varied wildly, i.e. on account of intermittent Ice ages. Thus, "significance" is only valid for the epoch under consideration.  The key statistical fact Tice ignores? Never has an Ice Age occurred when the CO2 concentration is above 200 ppm, and never has an interglacial lasted very long when the CO2 concentration is less than 200 ppm. It now stands at nearly 396 ppm, and we believe the threshold to trigger the runaway greenhouse effect will kick in between 480- 500 ppm. At even 400 ppm, most climate scientist acknowledge any future Ice ages are out of the question.

Thus, neither the planet's age nor its total area  matters, it is instead all about the given epoch under which we consider the pertinent conditions, namely temperature increase since the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the accompanying CO2 concentration and its rate of increase. Let's also not forget the 1.4 F increase Tice references  appears to be less than it actually has been - closer to 2.0 -2.4 F. See also:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-new-reality-global-mean-temperature.html

An equally absurd question, but typical of the agnotology -denier brigade is:

"How dangerous is the current level of carbon dioxide in the world's atmosphere when 400 parts per million expressed as a percentage of the volume of the atmosphere would equate to only 0.04% or approximately zero?"

Here Tice fails to note or process that it is the nature of the molecule as a thermal insulator that renders its proportion in the atmosphere critical, not the proportion in relation to total atmosphere per se.   To fix ideas, Spencer Weart in his excellent article: 'The Discovery of the Risk of Global Warming’, in Physics Today, Jan. 1997, p. 34). pointed out that even a tiny, minuscule amount of CO2 is vastly more efficient at blocking the re-radiation of energy than any amount of water vapor- at those bands. Part of the misconception arose because early researchers, lacking the current technology of infrared spectroscopy, assumed that water vapor bands already blocked out most of what would (ordinarily) be taken by CO2.

But using this stratagem to try to baffle the scientifically illiterate is typical of climate disinformationists like Tice.  "The tiny little number compared to the whole" ....makes it meaningless!   When in fact, the relative increase from an Ice age threshold of 200  ppm to 400 ppm is highly significant, because it means the difference between future Ice ages and no Ice ages. Not to mention further increases at the rate of 2 ppm/year push us into the maw of the runaway greenhouse within 30-40 years.

In many ways this sort of "tiny change" argument resembles that of the pro-Warren Commission disinformers who would have us believe that Gerald R. Ford's "tiny alteration" of the bullet wound placement upwards (from the  third thoracic vertebra level of back,  to the 5th-6th cervical vertebra)  "didn't change a thing". When in fact it literally provided the spurious basis for the idiotic single bullet theory and the lone gunman myth.

But this is the nature of  the bogus craft of agnotologists, pseudo skeptics and disinformationists: to always keep the hoi polloi guessing and in a state of perpetual doubt or denial.  Paul Tice, alas, has taken a page right out of this forlorn playbook.

Accelerated Warming is Indeed in Effect

In response to a question on my Mail Brane blog of Feb. 28, I replied that if global warming is accelerating - meaning much higher CO2 concentrations added each year-  there'd higher solar insolation (by about 2 W/m^2 per year) and the date of the first year of no seasons could arrive as early as 2025, if not sooner. Now a new report appears to validate that, and indeed the global temperatures are hotter now than they've been in 4,000 years.

This  research team just published their results in the journal Science, assembling  a record of global temperatures going back to the end of the last ice age — about 11,000 years ago — when mammoths and saber-tooth cats roamed the planet. The study confirms that what we're seeing now is unprecedented and we may well be past the time to do anything effective.

The Science researchers effectively peered into the past. They analyzed ice cores from polar regions that show what temperatures were like over hundreds of thousands of years. However, those only reveal changes only in specific regions; cores aren't so good at depicting what happened to the whole planet. Tree rings give a more global record of temperatures, but only back about 2,000 years.

According to Shaun Marcott, a geologist at Oregon State University:

 "Global temperatures are warmer than about 75 percent of anything we've seen over the last 11,000 years or so."

He adds that the other (optimistic)  way to look at is that  25 percent of the time (since the last ice age), it's been warmer than now.

Given such a relatively  lower proportion of higher temperatures since the previous Ice Age, many people might ask, 'Why worry?' After all, it's been colder for 75% of the time! But Marcott dismisses this given the record shows the alarming rate is unusual and we ought to be worried at this recent trend. As he puts it:

 "It's really the rates of change here that's amazing and atypical. Essentially, it's warming up superfast."

And in fact, my answer in the Mail Brane tried to draw emphasis to the RATE of warming. Indeed, in earlier blogs I also noted that this was critical since a threshold for the runaway Greenhouse Effect could be reached much sooner. This would mean maximum entropy globally, not a favorable prospect.   According to statistical mechanics, the entropy (σ ) is defined according to:

σ = log g

where g denotes the number of accessible states. As that number g increases, so does log g and hence the entropy. When g is maximized for a given system one will say it is in an equilibrium condition and has no further states which can be accessed. Such is the case with a planet  (e.g. Venus) uniformly at 450 C across its surface ....no climate to speak of, no 'cool nights', no variation in temperatures of any significance. The first year of no seasons for Earth would mark our strong trend toward that unsavory end.

Of course, the world will become unbearable long before that. The full horrors incepted, of which the loss of seasons is merely the most distinguishing, will include lack of sufficient water, lack of food - because of the inhospitable conditions to grow crops, and other hostile factors (catastrophic storms with hundreds of F5 tornadoes a year, monster hurricanes, rising sea levels inundating 30% of coastal lands in the U.S. alone).


Back to the Science journal paper, we can ask: What happened after the end of the ice age? What does the 11,000 year record disclose? Well, the planet got warmer, then, 5,000 years ago, it started to get cooler — but slowly. In all, it cooled 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, up until the last century or so. Then it flipped again — global average temperature shot up. This coincides almost exactly with the kicking in of CO2 atmospheric absorption from the Industrial Revolution. This is verified by a previous 2000-year record of C14:C12 deviations compiled by P.E. Damon ('The Solar Output and Its Variation', The University of Colorado Press, Boulder, 1977)

As John Eddy observes concerning this output (Eddy, The New Solar Physics. p. 17):

“The gradual fall from left to right (increasing C14/C12 ratio) is…probably not a solar effect but the result of the known, slow decrease in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic moment exposing the Earth to ever-increased cosmic ray fluxes and increased radiocarbon production.The sharp upward spike at the modern end of the curve, representing a marked drop in relative radiocarbon, is generally attributed to anthropogenic causes—the mark of increased population and the Industrial Age. "

Not surprisingly, the Science authors report:

"Temperatures now have gone from that cold period to the warm period in just 100 years,"

Hence,  it's taken just 100 years for the average temperature to change by 1.3 degrees, when it took 5,000 years to do that before.

The Science  research team tracked temperature by studying chemicals in the shells of tiny, fossilized sea creatures called foraminifera. Their temperature record matches other techniques that look back 2,000 years, which supports the validity of their much longer record.

Climate scientists predict that the current warming will continue, given the amount of greenhouse gases going up into the atmosphere. According to Gavin Schmidt, a climate reseachers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies:

"The climate changes to come are going to be larger than anything that human civilization and agriculture has seen in its entire existenc. And that is quite a sobering thought."

"Sobering" is perhaps an understatement to describe what's in store for us!

More "Ice Ages" In the Distant Future? Don't Believe It!

Figuring out climate science is not an easy task, and often requires plenty of devotion, including to historical records, as well as climate physics, solar physics and ....plain old regular physics. This is often more than most lay folks or press pundits are willing to commit to so it's no surprise that so much bollocks can be written which gets attention either in a comatose corporate media or on some blogs.

Much more difficult to parse or grasp is how any academic worth his or her salt could seriously believe that another Ice Age could be on its way.....even over a thousand years hence! Yet in his Jan. 14-15 column in the WSJ ('Are We Holding A New Ice Age at Bay?'), Matt Ridley cites a paper published by university reearchers in Cambridge, London and Florida, claiming that while current greenhouse emissions may temporarily avert an Ice Age, we will still expect to see one "within about 1,500 years".

I don't think so!

Their argument is that our current "inter-glacial" (I refer to it as the first era of the "no more glacial") echoes the patterns of a previous warming period about 780,000 years ago. Like other Ice Age claimants, they make the mistake of believing that the Earth's orbit will somehow change and its eccentricity, axial tilt or both will over compensate for the CO2 accumulated and produce a new glacial period.

They fail to grasp that the change in gravitational potential energy (V = - GM/r) required to alter the Earth's orbit even a minuscule amount is stupendous - as even simple calculations would disclose. To get a magnitude of change sufficient for triggering major climatic impact you're talking about changes of the orbital elements in the range of 2- 5%. This is totally preposterous, given solar system energy constraints, and why most astronomers dismiss Milankovitch.

The alteration of the Earth's axial tilt is equally formidable to effect. For a theoretical change in obliquity, say from 21 to 24 degrees one can work out the change in angular momentum that’s required:

Since:

L = w I_p (ñ + cos ^2 (Θ)]

where w is the radial velocity, I_p the polar moment of inertia, ñ a direction in space and Θ the angle from vertical. Then d L = w Ip ( cos ^2 (Θ2) – cos ^2 (Θ1)] since we do not expect the magnitude of either w or I_p to change.

Then if Θ2 = 24 deg (= 0.419 rad), and Θ1 = 21 deg (= 0.367 rad):

Using I_p = 0.3307M r^2 =

I_p = 0.3307 (6.0 x 10^ 24 kg) (6.378 x 10^6 m)^2

I_ p = 8.07 x 10^ 37 kg- m^2 (polar moment in appropriate units)

dL = {7.272 x 10^ -5 rad/s) (8.07 x 10^ 37 kg- m^2 ) x ( cos ^2 (Θ2) - cos^2 (Θ1)]

dL= (5.87 x 10^33 kg-m2 s-1) (0.871 - 0.834) = 2.17 x 10^ 32 kg-m2/s

This is an enormous change in angular momentum of the planet – even given a presumed 41,000 year period to accomplish it. WHERE is the external force coming from to effect this change in angular momentum? We don’t know – since neither the Milankovitchies or their apologists and academic invokers never say. All they have is an empirical correlation schema – as opposed to a bona fide theory with self-consistent explanatory power and predicted orbital parameters, for the changes postulated.

Thus, we need to know – before “time expires” – where all the external torque is coming from to alter the Earth’s angular momentum by such a vast amount! Even allowing for the length of time- the magnitude of angular momentum must be accounted for. It has to come from somewhere, it simply cannot materialize in vacuo.

So if orbital changes are out, what IS the cause of the Ice Ages we've experienced? Basically, the CO2 concentration! Never has an Ice Age occurred when this is above 200 ppm, and never has an interglacial lasted very long when the CO2 concentration is less than 200 ppm. It now stands at nearly 380 ppm, and we believe the threshold to trigger the runaway greenhouse effect will kcick in between 480- 500 ppm.

Now, an added fact is that we are adding CO2 at the rate of 2 ppm/ year and the insolation is increasing at 2 watts/yr. A more disturbing fact is that CO2 also accumulates because earlier depositions remain even as new burdens are added yearly! Thus, the CO2 warming we’re now experiencing is not the result of just one year – but 100 years’ accumulation. In effect, each year we not only deal with the immediate concentrations of CO2 produced but also cumulative concentrations added from 100 years ago.

The process may be described something like a series with terms being added, viz: to describe the CO2 content added up to now in the atmosphere (CO2 depositions added by the completion of year 2011), we must initiate the series with n= 1 (e.g. for 1912), viz. CO2( 2011) = x_1 + x_2 + x_3 + x_4 +.............+ x_100

E.g. terminating at the last term, 100 years later. Here each ‘x’ denotes the CO2 burden added for each year in succession.Thus, the CO2 effect for a given year is not just for that year, but rather inclusive of the cumulative additions for all the years - starting up to 100 years before!

This means, all other things being equal, at any given time we have at least 100 years worth of CO2 concentrations to ADD, as well as the infrared energy component in watts. So, we can safely say - unless human cease using all fossil fuels immediately - that by the year 2112 we will have added another 200 ppm in CO2 concentration to the 200 ppm yearly real time additions, and also added 200 watts to the solar insolation or heat effect of it (estimated now at 1370 w/m^2). That means the latter will be expected to rise to 1770 w/m^2 while the CO2 concentration will reach 380 ppm + 400 ppm = 780 ppm. In other words, we will already have not only reached but surpassed runaway greenhouse conditions.

But it gets even worse!

An article appearing in Eos Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (Vol. 83, No. 34), August 20, 2002, ‘Progress Made in Study of Ocean’s Calcium Carbonate Budget’, noted that sedimentary carbonates represent the largest reservoir of carbon on Earth. The author also noted that “a third of the anthropogenic CO2 that has been added to the atmosphere since the middle of the 18th century has been absorbed by the oceans. " This means that the oceans, acting as CO2 reservoirs, have actually masked the worst effects of global warming and that when their saturation point is reached, the spillover effect will be rapid and calamitous indeed.

Well, as the CO2 concentrations exceed 500 ppm, that threshold will be reached! In other words, like by the year 2060. Increases of atmospheric CO2 also increase concentrations of inorganic carbon, mainly in the forms pCO2 and HCO3. A side effect is to also diminish the pH of sea water. The author notes p. 374:

“Future decreases in sea water pH (and CO3(-2)) concentration will decrease the saturation state of the waters with respect to Ca CO3”.

This means that spillover becomes much more likely as the saturation threshold is lowered, with masses of CO2 released additionally into the atmosphere. Melting ice from glaciers, etc. – far from being an assisting agent to a new ice age, will reduce further the sea water pH and accelerate the release of CO2 from the oceans. Leading to much much warmer conditions and even more acidic oceans than exist currently (likely pH of 6 or less by 2075).

Indeed, we have excellent research showing that once CO2 levels reach 1 ½ times or more their current concentration - resulting in mean temperatures up to 10 degrees Celsius higher- there'll be NO way to halt the warming process. (See: Kerr, R.: No Way To Cool The Ultimate Greenhouse, in SCIENCE, Vol. 262 (October 29, 1993, p.648.)

Let's get it straight that once that runaway greenhouse sets in, it's game over - and there will be absolutely NO chance of any Ice Age recurring.

More amusing than the academics' take of "a new Ice Age in 1,500 years" is the ultimate irony that all of humanity will be dead long before that time, since all the oceans will have long since reached their latent heat of vaporization. Those highly acidic oceans from which life would have vanished even decades earlier will now be mere memories. And Earth?.....It will have mutated into Venus II.