Arguments
Are we heading into a new Ice Age?
What the science says...
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The warming effect from more CO2 greatly outstrips the influence from changes in the Earth's orbit or solar activity, even if solar levels were to drop to Maunder Minimum levels. |
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Climate Myth...
We're heading into an ice age
"One day you'll wake up - or you won't wake up, rather - buried beneath nine stories of snow. It's all part of a dependable, predictable cycle, a natural cycle that returns like clockwork every 11,500 years. And since the last ice age ended almost exactly 11,500 years ago…" (Ice Age Now)
Just a few centuries ago, the planet experienced a mild ice age, quaintly dubbed the Little Ice Age. Part of the Little Ice Age coincided with a period of low solar activity termed the Maunder Minimum (named after astronomer Edward Maunder). It's believed that a combination of lower solar output and high volcanic activity were major contributors (Free 1999, Crowley 2001), with changes in ocean circulation also having an effect on European temperatures (Mann 2002).
Figure 1: Total Solar Irradiance (TSI). TSI from 1880 to 1978 from Solanki. TSI from 1979 to 2009 from Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos (PMOD).
Could we be heading into another Maunder Minimum? Solar activity is currently showing a long-term cooling trend. 2009 saw solar output at its lowest level in over a century. However, predicting future solar activity is problematic. The transition from a period of 'grand maxima' (the situation in the latter 20th century) to a 'grand minima' (Maunder Minimum conditions) is a chaotic process and difficult to predict (Usoskin 2007).
Let's say for the sake of argument that the sun does enter another Maunder Minimum over the 21st century. What effect would this have on Earth's climate? Simulations of the climate response if the sun did fall to Maunder Minimum levels find that the decrease in temperature from the sun is minimal compared to the warming from man-made greenhouse gases (Feulner 2010). Cooling from the lowered solar output is estimated at around 0.1°C (with a maximum possible value of 0.3°C) while the greenhouse gas warming will be around 3.7°C to 4.5°C, depending on how much CO2 we emit throughout the 21st century (more on this study...).
Figure 2: Global mean temperature anomalies 1900 to 2100 relative to the period 1961 to 1990 for the A1B (red lines) and A2 (magenta lines) scenarios and for three different solar forcings corresponding to a typical 11-year cycle (solid line) and to a new Grand Minimum with solar irradiance corresponding to recent reconstructions of Maunder-minimum irradiance (dashed line) and a lower irradiance (dotted line), respectively. Observed temperatures from NASA GISS until 2009 are also shown (blue line) (Feulner 2010).
However, our climate has experienced much more dramatic change than the Little Ice Age. Over the past 400,000 years, the planet has experienced ice age conditions, punctuated every 100,000 years or so by brief warm intervals. These warm periods, called interglacials, typically last around 10,000 years. Our current interglacial began around 11,000 years ago. Could we be on the brink of the end of our interglacial?
Figure 3: Temperature change at Vostok, Antarctica (Petit 2000). Interglacial periods are marked in green.
How do ice ages begin? Changes in the earth's orbit cause less sunlight (insolation) to fall on the northern hemisphere during summer. Northern ice sheets melt less during summer and gradually grow over thousands of years. This increases the Earth's albedo which amplifies the cooling, spreading the ice sheets farther. This process lasts around 10,000 to 20,000 years, bringing the planet into an ice age.
What effect do our CO2 emissions have on any future ice ages? This question is examined in one study that examines the glaciation "trigger" - the required drop in summer northern insolation to begin the process of growing ice sheets (Archer 2005). The more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the lower insolation needs to drop to trigger glaciation.
Figure 4 examines the climate response to various CO2 emission scenarios. The green line is the natural response without CO2 emissions. Blue represents an anthropogenic release of 300 gigatonnes of carbon - we have already passed this mark. Release of 1000 gigatonnes of carbon (orange line) would prevent an ice age for 130,000 years. If anthropogenic carbon release were 5000 gigatonnes or more, glaciation will be avoided for at least half a million years. As things stand now, the combination of relatively weak orbital forcing and the long atmospheric lifetime of carbon dioxide is likely to generate a longer interglacial period than has been seen in the last 2.6 million years.
Figure 4. Effect of fossil fuel CO2 on the future evolution of global mean temperature. Green represents natural evolution, blue represents the results of anthropogenic release of 300 Gton C, orange is 1000 Gton C, and red is 5000 Gton C (Archer 2005).
So we can rest assured, there is no ice age around the corner. To those with lingering doubts that an ice age might be imminent, turn your eyes towards the northern ice sheets. If they're growing, then yes, the 10,000 year process of glaciation may have begun. However, currently the Arctic permafrost is degrading, Arctic sea ice is melting and the Greenland ice sheet is losing mass at an accelerating rate. These are hardly good conditions for an imminent ice age.
intermediate rebuttal written by Daniel Bailey
Update July 2015:
Here is a related lecture-video from Denial101x - Making Sense of Climate Science Denial
Additional video from the MOOC
Expert interview with Mike Lockwood
Last updated on 12 October 2016 by pattimer. View Archives
Regards,
John
Looking at graphs of prior interglacials and glacations there is a particular constant: it warms slowly for thousands of years then cools rapidly (it looks very similar to a sawtooth inventory graph).
Another fact is that CO2 has been very high when it suddenly became very cold (it did nothing to stop the glacations). So be afraid, be very afraid.
The glacial cycles of the last 450'000 years have consisted of long periods of slow cooling, followed by rapid warming. (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ice_Age_Temperature.png - please note that present day is to the left).
This rapid warming is believed to be started by small changes in solar forcing (see Milankovitch cycles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles) which is enough to start positive feedback spirals: warmer -> more greenhouse gases -> even warmer...
Since we've recently come out of an glacial period, temperature is basically is as it gets and should be slowly decreasing (on a long timescale) until we reach the next glacial period. But instead, anthropogenic releases of greenhouse gases have started the process of warming. The amount of released GHG so far is enough to keep the planet warming for a long time (but of course, with possible micro trends of cooling) and we've soon reached a level where positive feedback spirals kick in, meaning that temperature will continue to rise even if we would stop our own releases of GHG.
What was perihelion at this time? Orbital eccenticities have FAR greater effects on the amount of radiation recieved (between 6 -7% depending on source)than solar variations.
What other factors were different then as opposed to now? You cannot isolate one component of a system and use it to determine an end result. You have to include all factors.
My general conclusions from what I have read and what I have tried to model, is that the 'normal' state of the earth is "cold". That the warm phases are the anomalies.
I accept this is MY opinion, but given the choice between a longer, warmer interglacial period or an earlier decline into one, I think I would opt for the warmth; life ( of all kinds) flourishes better in warm climates
How do you accomodate variations in surface species numbers due to local climate?
Are 57 core samples sufficient to give a general trend?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleothermometer
Wang 2005: "The increase in cycle-averaged TSI since the Maunder minimum is estimated to be ~1 W/m2" (instead of 0.17 W/m2?)
Krivova 2007: "[The model predicts] an increase in the solar total irradiance since the Maunder minimum of 1.3^+0.2_-0.4 W/m2" (instead of 0.23 W/m2?)
"Al Gore" etc thinks it is going to get warm.
The "skeptics" say it is going to get cold.
I think that if I lived in the NH I would make sure I have got some warm clothes.
The bottom line is that all our heat comes from the Sun. If it cools down so does Earth. Any variances due to different Ocean Currents, Magnetic Fields etc are only releasing stored energy from the Sun.
At the end of the day this planet will be a Dead Rock circling a spent Sun.
Lets hope it warms up, CO2 increases, Plants grow and life becomes comfortable for a while. The alternative is not nice.
I doubt the dinosaurs worried too much about how much land they had available or how many times they were flooded out or how many died in forest fires or died of thirst.
Don't worry about the sun cooling down just yet, providing it doesn't do anything silly it will follow the normal sequence for its type and increase in luminosity ( by about 10% over the next billion years).
And you're right: warmer is better as the paleorecord shows.
The view that sea levels will rise to the levels predicted is based on assumptions, not facts. All that water has to come from somewhere- snow,glaciers, icecaps, thermal expansion et al. There are many unresolved factors such as land rebound, greater oceanic uptake of CO2 due to rising ocean volume decreasing the GG efect at the same time as ocean warming releases more CO2...and one can go on and on.
We currently simply do not have the ability (or data)to fully understand and accurately model the climate process, so it is not reasonable to take action that would have severe economic and societal repercussions until that time arrives.
Well said. Warm is better than cold.
Distance to the shore is irrelevant, height above sea level is relevant. But a small factor is left out when the alarmists talk about sea level rise and that is porosity and absorbtion. The Newark Basin in New Jersey is not very much higher than sea level and yet it was swamp lands during the mesozoic, not ocean bottom. Much of the coast that will flood is swamp land now. During the Mesozoic the midwestern US was an inland sea and remains lowland today. A catastrophic rise in sea level will most likely result in a return of the inland sea, something that alarmists fail to mention.
In Australia a bed of semi-fossilised molluscs has been found above current sea level and dated at between 4500 to 6000 years old. This suggests current MSL has fallen over the last 6000yrs. since Australia is not very active tectonically.
Wait til the creationists find that one!
I can't remember the exact page but more detail is at John-Daly web site.
Plates literally float. They can shift, rise or fall. There are no true continents, what we see is a result of large pieces of lighter material breaking and mergeing or subducting. There is no real difference between sea floor and land other than elevation. So while Australia is relatively free from volcanism it is still subject to plate tectonics which are constantly active but change intensity and speed is cycles.
The Isles of Scilly is a group of around 50 islands some 45km south west of Cornwall, England. They have been inhabited since (at least) the bronze age, some 4000ya. At low tide, stone houses, roads and field perimeters are revealed, dating from that time, so either msl has risen a few metres in 4000yrs or the islands have sunk.....how to tell the difference?
I think Dr. Rhodes Fairbridge answered that question in his study of sea level cycles. It's referred to as the "Fairbridge curve" and I think wikipedia posted an explanation of how it works. I have not looked too deeply into it as I am more interested in his later "Solar Jerk" hypothesis.
This seems to be the strategy for defense of these advocates: "if any part of the earth gets warmer during the industrialized age, industrialization is to blame. If the earth gets cooler, of course, industrialization is a bad thing anyway. Heads, I win. Tails, you lose!
http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf
How's the greehouse project?
Yes that was the first piece I saw that got me interested in the hypothesis. Mackey said the test period would be 2007-2011 and so far it's on the money.
It's also the ONLY paper that predicted the cold snap, all the other articles and papers at that time said exactly the opposite. (I kept all the failed forcasts in a file to serve as bad examples for future generations).
ps
The green house is on hold until the ice melts. Right now I'm waiting on delivery of a larger snow blower that I can mount off the PTO on my tractor. Snow has been way too heavy for the gas fired one and too deep to plow, I have been using a bucket loader all winter to shovel it off and it's ruining my driveway. So I'm going to have to resurface it when everything finally melts. But I am planning to go with the blue plastic for the roof.
"We're heading into a new Little Ice Age" equals "It's the Sun". No different, same thread.
"Are Sunspots Different"
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009EO300001.pdf
"LONGER TERM SOLAR MINIMUM"
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/SOLAR_MINIMUM.pdf
Solar radiative forcing is not the only change to account for.
Solar minimum may also mean less solar wind and solar cosmic rays and geo-magnetic interaction.
There is a correlation between solar cycles and the number of galactic cosmic rays, wich can cause more or less cloud formation that can increase the albedo reflecting a significative part of the total sun power.
So when we talk about a solar cycle influence we should include also this issue.
The third issue to be considered is a change to ocean currents - specifically the interchange of waters from the North Atlantic and the Arctic waters. It was noted in a number of studies in the 1930's that the arctic ocean was showing signs of warming.
The discussion is too narrow.
Do not say "it is getting warmer, we must cool the earth." Ask what will come next? What should we do if the future will be warmer? and also ask "What should do if the trend is for cooler weather?"
Our changes to the atmosphere must be in response to what we know about the climate in the future. Warmer will be inconvenient. Ice will kill most of us.
I don't know what will happen. I know we need a wider discussion. Our most important question is "So what?"
We need more data and a more comprehensive picture with many more questions. The cureent discussion in public is limited.
Cooling is not going to be a problem. Heat, sea level rise, and especially alterations to the hydrologic cycle will be.
High sea levels (if slow enough) just means rebuilding on higher ground. Most commercial buildings last less than 30- years.
Water is the ultimate recyclable commodity. We can manage water if we have enough energy. Solve the energy problem and food and water will be sufficient for all.
21st century climate change will mean real hardship for many people, primarily due to alterations of patterns of rainfall and drought, plus the impacts of sea level rise on poorer countries where "just rebuild on higher ground" isn't necessarily an option. (Who's going to offer to take in a few tens of millions of Bangladeshis?)
I don't think it's reasonable to impose that kind of hardship on actual people living in this century while patting yourself on the back for "preventing" a very slow glacial advance 50,000 years in the future.
If that was your concern, then you can rest easy tonight. And tomorrow you can wake up and start working on the real problem, which is preventing the potential catastrophe caused by too much warming rather than too much cooling.
Warmer may be inconvenient. Ice will kill most of the life on the planet.
I think we should plan for every possible future and not pick only the ones we want to "solve."
By the way - how do I get the nam "N/A" and how do I change it?
I am having some degree of trouble here.
Really, I am not. My point is that it is possible warming will be good if it prevents an ice age. We seem to be in agreement that CO2 is preventing an ice age. We differ if the CO2 is good or bad. Butr I do not know. I only see it as an important question to answer and have yet to see a satisfactory answer.
Also, an ice age hardly kills most of the life on the planet. We have been in and out of ice ages right through quaternary period. They affect temperate zones mostly.
Nothing wrong with that. Spend some time browsing through the pages on this site -- there is a lot of information, and a lot of very careful discussion of the current peer-reviewed literature. A number of the commenters here are scientists working either within climate science or in related fields ... they can provide a very valuable perspective, too.
I do question those who want to divide comment into either "warmer" or "denier." And I do want us to consider many other questions other than "Is it getting warmer?"
I think it is getting warmer. I wonder if that is good or bad. And I am not convinced that it is bad.
Your comments on this general theory would be considered a rare light in an area I consider shadowed, and confusing at best. Im sorry for the lack of references. It has been many many years since I read of this odd theory and references are lost to time.
But I have one last thought.
What are the circumstances that would make more CO2 good?
How do we know they arr not in the future?
Best to ask many questions and be ready for anything that happens.
Have a Swiss army knife of solutions - not one solution for one problem and only that one solution.
Warmer will be inconvenient.
Ice will kill most of us - if not all.
I am gary4books.
More information can be found by clicking on the links in the "More Information" section at the bottom of the page by climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf, "The Day After Tomorrow: Some Comments on the Movie." (For the quickest route to the information, skip straight to the bottom of that page.)
"Positives and negatives of global warming" is a ridiculously one-sided attempt of trying to purport to have a balanced view. (of course there are more papers on scary outcomes than on positive outcomes - no one funds/reads rosy pictures)
Even with all the evidence in the world nothing is going to make energy companies let go of the status quo in time to make a difference, nor will it make enough people CHOOSE to pay more for energy.
I believe all of us in the scientific community need to stop trying to WIN the argument and start working out what we know and what we still need to know - then we will actually be able to move forward intelligently.
That's true, but that adaptation process involves lots of losses (e.g., lots of species go extinct during time of abrupt change). Just because "life as a whole" survived the K-T impact doesn't mean we as one particular species should welcome catastrophic climate change.
In addition, we have a huge investment ("sunk costs") in technological and cultural infrastructure built around a relatively stable climate. Here in the US (where I live), a small but long-term change in patterns of precipitation could be hugely expensive, dwarfing the trivial costs of things like the Iraq war or health care. Look at economic impacts of the 1993 or 2008 Midwest floods, or of similar drought years. The West Coast would (will?) incur immense costs if snowpack in the Sierras declines and the regional water infrastructure has to be completely reworked. Etc, etc, etc.
As for willingness to change, we're going to have to change anyway, due to the conflict between increasing demand and decreasing availability of oil in the coming decades. Nuclear would help but can't replace oil by itself, at least not in the near future. Switching back to coal will incur huge health and environmental costs, and if continued for the long term it would drive the climate into absolutely disastrous conditions.
mginaus concludes: I believe all of us in the scientific community need to [...] start working out what we know and what we still need to know - then we will actually be able to move forward intelligently.
Hear, hear! I agree with that, more or less. I'd just add that we know enough already to justify starting making changes now (actually, we should have started 20 years ago...) -- I think John Cook and all the others who contribute to this site have done a great job of summarizing what we do know and what we still need to figure out.
How do we know that decreased insolation due to the larger projections of increased ppm CO2 in the atmosphere (i.e. GTon C) doesn't outweigh the resulting reduction of outgoing radiation thus causing global cooling?
We know because of the measurements. The Earth is retaining more energy than it is radiating back to space despite the decreased insolation. I recommend reading up on the net forcing. Likewise, if decreased insolation outweighed the forcing of CO2, then we would see a cooling trend as opposed to a warming trend. Look no further than our temperature records.
As a high school teacher, I commend the level at which you are approaching this topic. Keep it up.
So I have another question.
If you look back on the 100k year cycles in figure 4 they all peak at about where we are now and that peak is sharp. Why does the projection for the natural cycle in figure 4 predict the same estimated high temperature for the next 50,000 years if that has not happened in the past (at least in that figure)?
Question 2: Can climate change result in positive feedback as ocean warming leads to the release of more CO2?
McCloud, the 5000 gigatonnes CO2 emission is based on an estimate of how much we could potentially release if we burn all available fossil fuels. Thus, with the calculated forcing of that much CO2, we see an upper limit of 4 degrees warming. This study may not be the best source for looking at future temperature anomalies, however, because its purpose is to look at the potential for preventing the next glaciation. The scope of the study really isn't to make precise temperature anomaly predictions, but rather predict how much glaciation will be delayed under different emission scenarios. I would suggest clicking on the link to the study.
As for your second question, yes there is potential for a positive feedback here. As water warms, its capacity for storing CO2 decreases, which will eventually lead to the oceans actually releasing CO2 as opposed to taking it in. I am fairly sure that most climate projections take this into account already.
The PETM was a period 55 million years ago with no glaciation. The popular media presented this as a possible future state due to greenhouse forcing. I believe this must be a complete error.
Moran et al. presents Arctic Ocean sediment core data that argues for a transition period between glaciations during the same time (between 45 and 35 million years ago (Ma)) when the southern ocean Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) was being formed. Their graphic describes before and after the ACC formation as "Greenhouse" and "Icehouse" climate states respectively.
One estimate of that formation using neodymium isotope ratios by Scher et al. estimates the opening of the Drake Passage based on ocean mixing to be around 41Ma. Data such as Zachos et al. shows how northern glaciations occured at a time after a robust southern ice cap has been built up and maintained.
I hold a MS in Physiology, and have only done some independent study in geology and audited a course in Earth's Climate History and completed one in Physical Oceanography. Long before this, being acquainted with climate swings, I drew an analogy between a mechanism in my field, the excitable membrane action potential conduction mechanism seen most robustly in nerve and muscle tissues to the climate system. In the action potential mechanism, there is a rectification reaction that occurs because sodium and potassium ions are set in opposing gradients accross the plasma membrane, and have selective channel proteins that conduct the two ions with differing time courses so that the fast response sodium causes a change in voltage in one direction called depolarization while the slower response potassium channels cause a voltage change in the opposite direction by virtue of the fact of their opposite gradient.
I draw my analogy to the climate system in this manner: Temperature is an analogue for voltage, a greenhouse stimulus that occurs in the atomosphere is an analogue for the sodium response, and an oceanic/cryospheric rectification mechanism is analogous to the potassium response. I of course cannot deny orbital forcing mechanisms that occur on 40Ka, 100Ka, and I believe 20Ka range changes, as has been mentioned here, but I believe another very important part of the equation is the ability of the earth to respond to heating changes, which shows the contrast in response pre-ACC formation, the greenhouse earth, and post-ACC icehouse earth. The time course of cryospheric/oceanic response is on the order of multi-century to millenial, putting it an order of magnitude smaller than the orbital forcings.
There is evidence in the fossil record of events that may corroborate this idea. Terms to look for are "Iceberg Armada," "Heinrich Events," "Younger (and Older) Dryas," as well as the "8200 year before present event." I have a while to go to fully quantify this idea, but since the ocean stores about 1000 times as much heat as the atmosphere, it is not absurd to envision the domination of the atmosphere by oceanic responses. It is conceivable that a threshold for the response will be crossed where greatly increased motility of global major glacial masses could lead to a reversal of a warming trend that would include a reversal of the ability of the ocean to absorb CO2. By far the lion's share of ocean is very cold, fed by yearly calving of glaciers at both poles leading to what is known as North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) and Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW). These masses can represent a very adequate repository for resequestered CO2.
I'm still in the "hunch" stage here, but I have posted some of my ideas at http://kayve.net/kayve