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dehammer wrote:
"from what i have read my understanding is that vulcanologist can predict with large certainty eruptions within 6 months for regular volcanos"

Correct your "understanding." Because you are most incorrect. We can certainly tell whether magma is moving. Even the direction of movement. But whether that movement will stall? Crystal balls and ouija boards are still inadequate.

DA Morgan wrote:
"Correct your "understanding." Because you are most incorrect. We can certainly tell whether magma is moving. Even the direction of movement. But whether that movement will stall? Crystal balls and ouija boards are still inadequate."

perhaps you should learn more about it. if there is magna rising, there is an exceeding strong chance of an eruption. if the magna reaches a certain lvl, and there is an increase is so2-co2 proportion, the odds are extreamly high that there will be an eruption within a month. if you would bother to read what i wrote you will see that i did not claim that they could give you the hour of the eruption, but it has been proven to the statisfaction of the vulcanologist that certain indicators mean that there will be an eruption within a certain time frame.

while we're in the area of understanding, please explain how such an expert in glacers (you said you wrote a paper that was approved by peir review on glacers) did not understand terms like glacerition, interglaceral period, and can claim that glacers dont retreat during an ice age. also how did you write that paper and get it approved with out understanding the difference between Ice Age (with caps on i and c) and ice age (no caps).

Hi esin,

Those are really pretty graphs. Pity they don't necessarily have science to back them up. The temperature ranges are guesses, and imho, bad ones at that. The amount of carbon dioxide is also questionable although the variation over time is not.

If you have been reading the posts for a while, you will know I have a real aversion for science presented as graphs without the underlying data being accessible or referred to. In this case, I have a pretty good idea where that data came from. This is the stuff of text books, not accurate scientific argument.

I must say the graphs are a pretty good argument against global warming due to increased CO2 but that is beside the point. Graphs showing summarised data without a reference are BAD regardless whether they support what I'm arguing or not.

That's not to say anything negative about you by the way, only that there should have been link to the data or at least the study that came up with these figures. Since this is an area of interest I have a fair idea where these figures came from and could also produce a graph but looking dramatically different.

Christopher Scotese, while a paleogeorgrapher with terrific credentials, has been studying plate tectonics and how best to present these in a teaching environment for the last 25 years. The climatic side of this is a minor part of what he has been doing.

Christopher Stotese, and this is no critiscim of him at all - the stuff he does is really terrific - is a "big picture" person.

The argument I would have is that it is just impossible to tell from the study of rocks, what the world's climate was in more than generalist terms. You can say it was hot or cold but not what temperatures. So actual temperatures become a guess. In many parts of geologic time, there is not sufficient samples to actually even say what happened would wide and so it is extrapolated from what is available.

I really don't know what you were trying to argue but the quote at the beginning of your post suggests you were trying to demonstrate that plate movements always cause Ice Ages. It is the always I would not be so quick to agree with, otherwise I'd agree. I'm not sure the graphs provide supports the argument simply because of its time scale.

As to the CO2 levels, these are even worse guesses, but don't take my word for it. Read an article by RA Berner, the person to which the CO2 on the graph is attributed to. (http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/CrowleyBernerScience01.pdf)

It really is fun to look at just how figures are created by anyone arguing about climate, especially as it relates to todays micro changes in world climate. Climate of 55 million years ago is relevant to the study of dinosaur deaths, the development of birds, flora and a whole heap of other things but relevant to whether there is global warming? Huh! The methodology of how the gross climate models are developed are actually much worse than those for global warming models. But then again, they don't need to be all that accurate, trends and major cycles are what is important.

Back to my very orginal argument. GIGO!

Undelying data for any global climate model cannot simply be accepted because someone has a PhD, a professorship or anything else. If you truly are interested in the study to which the model refers, in order to rank the model into degrees of accuracy even if only for your personal satisfaction, just how the data was used and how it was obtained is important. If the model is being used to support the ban on greenhouse gases then I would suggest the data HAS to be closely scrutinised.

Richard

one thing that is good at demonstratin the tempature and co2 lvls are plants. some type of plants cant grow in high co2 lvls, and others cant grow in low co2 lvls. they are also the ones that grow in warmer climes and colder. by find out what plants grew at what time and what areas they can get a good picture of co2 and tempature lvls.

Hi esin,

May I ask you what the quote you produced is meant to convey especially since it seems to contradict your last quoted message.

I would also suggest you do not quote newspapers if you really want to support some position you might have. Quote the study instead. Taking a small section of a large research paper on ice cores and blowing it into an article that seems to support global warming really is what newspapers have been doing for many years, often grossly misquoting the studies. Yes, even mainstream papers.

Richard

Hi dehammer,

I quite agree with your last post but only as far as it goes.

Plant records for this Ice Age are quite difficult to obtain. Further back it only gets worse.

Just as with fossil records, what we have left is only fragments. Certain plants certainly suggest the CO2 levels and relative climate of an area but it is quite hard to get that for the whole world. The best you can use this for is trends. What it does not tell you is that 1.2 million years ago the average world temperature was 14.6 degrees or any other temperature for that matter.

Since we are arguing about fairly small changes for supposed man made effects on climate, the available evidence of the past geologic periods tells us nothing except general trends imho, especially if you are attempting to provide a world picture.

RicS, yes there are plants fragments and little else, but they are simular to current plants. the difference is that in pre glaceral times they were bigger, meaning they had more co2, and water and they type that was more prevailant are the warm weather varity. this will not give us the exact tempature, but it does go a long way towards supporting the idea that co2 and tempature were much higher than they are now.

"Core Evidence That Humans Affect Climate Change
Ice drilled in Antarctica offers the fullest record of glacial cycles and greenhouse gas levels.
The Los Angeles Times, November 25, 2005

The research, published in today's issue of the journal Science, describes the content of the greenhouse gases within the core and shows that carbon dioxide levels today are 27% higher than they have been in the last 650,000 years and levels of methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas, are 130% higher, said Thomas Stocker, a climate researcher at the University of Bern and senior member of the European team that wrote two papers based on the core."

The problem with using ice cores is that it is limited to the ice age. it does not tell you what happen before the ice age.

one thing that is known about co2 is that rain and snow will absorb it and wash it out of the atmosphere. when the co2 is trapped in ice, it ends up staying in the snow, trapped until its released. when that snow finally melts, some of that co2 will go back into the atmosphere, so with melting snow, you automatically get an increase in co2. since there have been few times that there have been less ice, the amount of co2 released would be higher than any but those time due to natural process. release a little more co2 from human processes and we have a little bit more than those two.

also plants use the co2 acid (co2 in water) as a ferterlizer, which, after they die is released back into the atmosphere as well.

also methane is produced by animals, during the glaceral max periods, there were fewer animals, so less methane was produced

considering that we have gotten rid of most of the bison, and have replaced a lot of them with hogs sheep, which are much more effecent methane producer, its not surprising that man has increased the methane, but it is surprising that we have done so little

dehammer, I again agree with you for the most part.

I remember a study of the Arctic tundra that in its sample found bumble bees. From that it was concluded that the climate at the time that the ice froze was warmer than it really was. No on ehad thought to come up with another explanation until other evidence very much contradicted the proposition that the climate was warmer. The bumble bees' presence was almost certainly been caused by a storm that blew them into a frigid region from well to the south.

That's the trouble when you have only fragments of anything, extrapolation can be quite dangerous. So it is for plants. Just because you find a certain plant in sediment or trapped in a glacier or wherever does not mean anything but that plant was in a local area at that time. There are tropical rainforest plants today in the middle of the Australian deserts. That does not mean that the centre of Australia is currently experiencing tropical climate, only that there is a tiny pocket of those plants that have survived many thousands of years after the climate changed. Now if you found evidence of these plants in sediment for instance, in 100,000 years from now you would quite wrongly conclude that Central Australia had a tropical climate with a certain CO2 output.

To get any real idea you need to find evidence world wide and in various areas within each region for exactly the same time period. That very rarely happens.

This is what I was trying to get at. The evidence we have on which so much of earth's history, especially its climate, is based is extremely sketchy. It is my view that it is useful for trends but not for even a remote guess at what was the world's average temperature in the past or what was the actual CO2 concentration.

That said, the evidence does suggest that our current age has a very low CO2 atmospheric level, many times lower than in the past and during those times there has been periods both a little hotter and considerably colder than now despite the much higher CO2 levels.

As to trapped gases in ice cores, the science that calculates the atmospheric concentrations from these ice cores is by no means settled. It is my understanding that there are arguments relating to almost everything to do with such correlations, including just how well are gases trapped, things such as slight melting and refreezing of the cores as they are laid down (something dehammer mentioned).

Once again, the newspaper article seems to have taken the figures completely on face value without looking at what issues remain in contention relating to just how these figures were arrived at.

And 27% higher is suposed to be a big deal, even if perfectly accurate? Go back to another cold period a few million years back and the best estimate is that the CO2 concentrations where perhaps 1000% higher than an present yet the place was colder, with the world in relation to the sun being in similar positions. It would seem that such massive changes in CO2 levels are not necessarily related to whether the world is hotter or colder and that particular statement is not controversial at all. Pretty much every paleoclimatologist will agree with it.


Richard

i full agree with most of that. the thing i am attpempting to point out is that there is stronger evidence that just one of two piece of, or imprints of, plants. its the animals that are there. lets take for example, the dinosars. there were basically two types (as most things are), plant eaters, and meat eaters. few things are like humans and eat anything there is around. they have found remains of plant eaters with part of the they seemed to eat in the same area.

those dinosaurs were huge, and that meant that the plants they ate had to be huge to feed the numbers that appearantly existed. plants in colder low co2 regions and times dont grow that big.

i remember the discussion about jurastic park. one of the things that came out was that the island could not feed the animals that were there. a single one of the big eater would delude a sizeable portion of the island in a matter of a couple of years, and one of the larger meat eater would not last long without a large supply of plant eaters. according to the movie, there were lots of the meat eaters running around.

the ferns the dinosuars ate were strictly high tempature, high co2 plants. considering how many of them existed the plants had to be fast growing and very big.

the corrilary of this is that the co2 had to be high as did the tempature.

what this means is that the earth will not be harmed by higher temps and co2 lvls. yes cold temp animals like the polar bear will have to adapt, like turning dark and learning to eat other sea going animals than seals. on the other hand seals will likely adapt to accept higher temps, what this means is that specices will go on even if individual classes of the animals (white polar bears) will disappear.

humans are even more adaptable than bears. man has adapted to ever single clime on this planet, and i cant see our children being less adaptable that our ancestors.

I have to agree with dehammer. It seems ridiculous that people think of future generations as being unable to live in any other conditions than the conditions we live in today.

I would like to futher this by saying that there is no solid proof that post industrialisation by humans is the direct cause of global warming. Temperature change can take dramatic and severe changes. Many people underestimate the power of nature and nature's control of the climate. Humans contribute 0.28% of all c02 emissions. This shows no evidence of humans building up a disastrous collapse of the earth's climate.

there is also more indications that sunspots have more influence on earths tempature than most ppl (i use to be included in this) give it credit.

Ah, sunspots. 1980 it was. A delightful year. One that is quoted by everyone as the year when disastrous warming really took off. Funny that from 1974 or 1975 (depending on what you were measuring) until 1980 there was one of the largest drops in average world temperatures we have ever recorded.

And what happened in 1980? Major solar activity not predicted. It seemed that there was a cycle of fairly long duration that had previously not been detected. This coincided with a shorter cycle that was very much previously understood and predicted. The combined effect was a complete reversal of the short sharp cooling trend.

It actually stuffed up my 1979 1980 studies greatly but that the time I was pretty happy to be proved wrong. Another year of grain harvest failures in the Soviet Union and the world could well have been a vastly different place than the people power pulling down of the Berlin Wall a little while later.

I think a great many people including a great many global warming scientists with their pretty climate models grossly underestimate the effect of sunspot activities, of flares, of output fluctuations and the like. Things that are not well understood at all and have not been studied with any great accuracy for very long at all.


Richard

G'day all,

There was an article in our major "quality" broadsheet a couple of days ago, that was titled "Finally, We Agree on the Disaster of Climate Change".

In this article it stated the following facts:

In the last 20 years, 19 have been the hottest experience on earth.

By the end of this century the average world temperature will rise by 5.8 degrees (although it did say that this figure was not one that all agreed with).

The 5.8 degree rise would cause a 5.8 metre rise in average sea levels.

The results would be truly catastrophic for the world.

We could do things to prevent this and those that did not sign the Kyoto accord now looked like idiots.

The journalist invited comments to her email so I commented. Funnily enough I was not graced with even an acknowledgement of receipt.

In the past month there has been about ten articles I have read - major articles - that have made similar claims, without quoting sources, except occasionally quoting a name of some scientist or David Attenborough or John Howard (PM of Australia) or Arnold Swarzenagger. All indicate that the world is poised on the brink of disaster which can be avoided by prompt action by responsible governments now.

I really loved the 5.8 metre rise in sea level with a 5.8 degree rise in average temperatures. That rise is truly breathtaking. Something that has not been experienced for around 40 million years. I really do not think that those that write these article truly understand how little the average world temperature actually changes to cause dramatic shifts in climate over large areas of the earth.

I would really like to see where the sea level rise calculation was made. Based on the evidence available, a 5.8 degree rise would mean no ice caps, almost not locked ice at all, and a rise in sea level that would dwarf the 5.8 metre prediction by perhaps 20 or 30 metres (40 to 60 feet). The land inhabited by around 85% of the world's population would be underwater.

I wonder why they don't write these sort of horrifying predictions in the articles. Surely they would spur those that cared about humanity to instant action. Or perhaps as has been shown over and over, predictions that are too extreme (even if completely accurate) are just not accepted and very quickly become the subject of ridicule.

Perhaps it really is starting to be time for those that believe in scientific principals and scientific methods to write to journalists when such articles are published and ask for references or the right to pointing out flaws in such articles. An this is whether you strongly believe in global warming by human activity or not. In the end articles without basis in scientific studies will undermine the legitimacy of any grain of truth that these articles are expressing. It may take a while but in a world increasingly cynical of journalistic integrety, the effect could be that a subject that deserves serious discussion, may end up being viewed with as much faith as the belief that there really were vast weapons of mass destruction held by the Iraqis and somehow they just were never found.


Richard

It takes a few hundred years before all the Greenland ice cap can melt. The sea level rise happens on the short term due to thermal expansion and the melting of the ice caps that are close to melting anyway. If CO_2 levels are doubled relative to pre industrial levels then it will be inevitable that the Greenland ice cap will melt but we would still have more than a hundred years to adapt.

And is your ''understanding'' based on articles published in peer reviewed journals? And if so, do the conclusions of these articles have any significant influence on the reconstructed CO_2 and temperature record (deduced from oxygen isotopes)?

People have alwys worried about the climate changes that go on, understandably as it has a huge impact on our lives. However this does not mean that we are responsible for that change. From the 1950s to the 70s people were worrying about GLOBAL COOLING. However, the Earth is warming after those years and people are doing the same thing as before - panicking about things that are beyond their control.

Hi,

Count Iblis II, where did you get that figure? "It takes a few hundred years before all the Greenland ice cap can melt". How about two years?

This was what I was most interested in when originally studying glaciation/interglacial period boundaries. The conventional wisdom was that it takes three thousand years for a transition but the evidence just did not support that. The last glaciation ended at 11,300 years ago. There is a bit of an argument about the exact time but not too much about its rapidity. This one did not take thousands of years.

Now at 11,500 years, there was permanent ice over Chicago, over middle Europe. It was of comparable thickness and apparent permanency to Greenland. The difference is Greenland (which really should have been called Iceland and Iceland-Greenland but that is a naming mishap with a whole other story attached) is in the very high latitudes where it is cold. Funny that.

This means that for much of the time the prevailing weather (not climate, weather, the day to day stuff that affects what happens in days or weeks) means that ice will not melt. However, it snows in Denver and ice covers New York for periods of each year. Does this mean that it will stay there? No. The reason is that the climate of the region allows the area to warm beyond the point where ice coverage remains sustainable.

Greenland is in an area where the climate basically says, "stay covered in ice". But the balance is really very small. Ice melts very quickly indeed but in large quantities it creates its very own climate. That is the reason for glaciers in areas where the climate would not support them. They have created their own climate which has sustained them for thousands of years beyond when they should have melted.

From all of this, most people would assume a large ice mass in a very high latitude would take its own good time to melt regardless of global warming and they would be wrong. Their arguments would seem very valid but the evidence from the last melts just doesn't support it.

And this is where it actually gets complicated. Large quantities of ice create its own climate, leading to stability in the face of average temperature fluctuations. But even small changes in ice coverage can have devistating effects to the extent of ice coverage despite this seeming stability. The reason is partly due to the immense albedo difference between ice coverage and what remains when ice melts (95% down to around 35%). Instead of all the solar radiation being reflected away from the surface as with high albedo, it is absorbed, warming the ground at the ice boundaries and causing thawing.

It has a number of names but the one I like is the "snow blitz theory". More snow and ice means a higher albedo therefore less warming leading to ... wait for it ... more snow and ice. The reverse works just as well but much much faster. Of course it works better in lower latitudes where the energy per square metre from the solar radiation is a much higher unit anyway but it still works all the way to the poles due to the earth's tilted axis.

An average 5.8 degree temperature increase would be much more than enough to cause a massive retreat of snow and ice in the very short term. Oh, and there are a number of peer review articles available (most a few years old now but still valid none the less) concerning the argument as to the rapidity of global changes during the flip between glaciations and interglacial periods (a large rise in world temperature would be pretty much the same except the flip would be between an interglacial period and a super hot interglacial period - assuming the ice age did not end because of it).

The argument was a major one around 35 years ago when global warming was of no importance to anyone but scientists still had an interest in climate as an acadamic pursuit for its own sake. Before huge amounts of money was available to act as oracles rather than research scientists (Now that is a personal and rather pointed opinion of mine and not subject to peer review).


Richard

Hi,

What is this fascination with "peer reviewed journals". To answer part of Count Iblis II's comments relating to ice cores, Yes, there is peer reviewed evidence to back the comments I made. They can easily be found in the details of many of the studies that are often quoted in relation to CO2 levels in ice cores and global warming. There are other papers, peer reviewed, available that question methodologies concerned. They are not difficult to find.

But since when is "peer reviewed" a guarantee of accuracy or even honesty. South Korea spend billons on technology based on "peer reviewed" studies that turned out to be fraudulent relating to stem cell research. Now that was a pretty big error considering just how scrutinised the research was. Yet all that scrutiny did not stop the fraud or that the results were fake.

Going back a little bit you can find in the 80's journals that refused to publish studies which showed that ulcers were caused by a bacteria. Since there was no peer review, obviously it must must been wrong!

Einstein could not get his most famous theory reviewed and when it was it was rubbished because he was about the only person on the earth at the time that could understand it.

Until the 50's plate techtonics was the belief of a lunatic fringe. The scientist that first worked all the clues out and put it together never did get a peer reviewed paper published and was unable to work in the field that was his passion.

Of course that was years ago, and science has developed so much that such mistakes would never occur today.

Pure science is as riddled with petty jealousies, politics, cheats and outright frauds as any other human endeavour. If any view finds favour in a field of research, to swim against the tide requires far more than simply the search for academic excellence. It requires the ability to ignore vicious insults, the loss of funding and the prospect of not being able to work in the field where you are most qualified. This certainly does not simply apply to climatology but the current histeria concerning global warming will one day be used in ethics classes for science students to show just how extreme the herd mentality can get in scientific research.

So forgive me if I do not quote peer review articles on a discussion forum that is not subject to peer review but is here only for the benefit of those that wish to offer counter views and engage in discussions with those of other views so that all may gain a better appreciation of the breath of reasonable opinion available. And perhaps learn something.

Peer review does not guarantee valid conclusions. Puplication is a guarantee of nothing other than the journal thought the subject printworthy. Cold fusion was published and quite rightly the assertions were discounted when the experiments could not be replicated. The trouble with a subject such as climatology is that it is often impossible to replicate the research and so only the published information can be scrutinised. It is less likely in these cases for flaws to be discovered, especially where the study accords with the current mainstream thinking of the time.


Richard

Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! "Peer review" should be re-examined. Novel ideas are rejected, not because it can be proved that the concept violates basic physical properties but only because it is at variance with what is popularly believed what is correct. Science is forced into mediocrity. Ptolemy's model of the solar system works and therefore a model based on a sun-centred solar system MUST BE WRONG! In fact it is even worse: Many of the journals have chief editors who have contributed to a certain field; and when they receive a manuscript that is at odds with what they have done, they do not even send the manuscript out for peer review. There are many such journals but I will in the mean time mention two: "Foundations of Physics" and "Annals of Physics".