There is an average time between ice ages and we're getting due for it.
Oh, you must be talking about the glaciation cycles of the current Quaternary ice age. For about the last 800,000 years there has been a cycle of about every 100,000 years but from 2.8 million years ago until 800,000 years ago the cycle was more like every 41,000 years. Before the Quaternary the last ice age was the Karoo that ended around 260 million years ago.
As to CO2 concentrations, where are you getting your information? Because the ice core records are known to be unreliable indications of CO2 concentration.
Of course the CO2 levels I mentioned were not found from ice cores but from other proxy measurements because ice cores only go back about 800,000 years at best and the CO2 levels I mentioned were from ~300 and ~440 million years ago. The scientists who study ice cores consider their CO2 concentrations to be quite reliable so you're going to have to present some real evidence that they aren't rather than just making the assertion. Maybe you're thinking that they aren't precise because they show an average of maybe 100 years of atmospheric CO2 rather than a year by year account.
Regardless, the levels of CO2 have gone up and down many times in earth's past without correlating temperature swings. The notion that CO2 is a relevant driver of global climate makes very little sense.
Again, rather than just making the assertion you need to provide some real evidence. I've heard a number of scientists, notably Richard Alley say you can't understand temperature during any period of the Earth's history over the last billion years without taking CO2 into account.
Mostly this is because it makes up a relatively small portion of our atmosphere....
There is overlap between the absorption spectrums of water vapor and CO2 but it isn't 100% for either of them. In areas where the humidity is low CO2 has a larger effect. The latest studies I've seen on clouds effects on global warming show they have somewhere between a slightly negative and moderately positive effect on it. As far as the effects of snow, I think we have a pretty good handle on the albedo of the Earth after observing it from satellites for the past 50 years.
Ultimately, I think you have grounds to be concerned but I think without reservation anyone that says they know what they're talking about on the issue is talking out of their asses.
That would include you? (Sorry, I guess that isn't respectful but I couldn't help myself.)
Not one of the models subjected to scrutiny has withstood it....
As George Box famously said "All models are wrong, but some are useful". The rightness or wrongness of climate models is not a binary choice but rather a question of degrees. We don't have anything better than current climate models to help us understand the evolution of climate. They're not perfect but they're better than nothing.
I'd like you to give me some examples of a falsifiable test that climate models have utterly failed because I can't think of any.
What you probably don't know is that the scientist that came up with the green house theory disavowed it before he died.
The guy who came up with the greenhouse theory was Joseph Fourier in the 1820's but I doubt that's who you're talking about. Maybe you're talking about Svante Arrhenius who in 1896 quantified the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere. Never the less we've learned a lot since their time.
This whole thing is a lesson in the ability of money to pervert science.
Whenever someone brings up money it makes their argument seem more political in nature. Yes, scientists live and die by their grants but they're not getting rich on them. Money can at best only temporarily pervert
It may be raining but there's a long way to go before the drought is truly over. Most importantly you need a good snow pack in the Sierras this winter to end the drought.
I just spent the past hour or so researching ice ages. Great fun and I learned a lot more details about the history of ice ages. Thanks for that.
There are 5 known ice ages in Earth's past. The Huronian (around 2.4 to 2.1 billion years ago), the Cryogenian (850 to 630 million years ago), the Andean-Saharan (460 to 420 million years ago), The Karoo (360-260 million years ago) and the current Quaternary (since 2.58 million years ago).
You must be talking about the Andean-Saharan ice age because during the Karoo CO2 levels were under 300 ppm. It's true that during the Ordovician and Silurian period CO2 levels were over 10 times as high as they are now. It's also true that the Sun was about 4% fainter than it is now and the land where the evidence for the A-S ice age was found was part of the Godwana super-continent and was located right at the South Pole at the time, both conditions conducive to ice forming. As I said, CO2 is a factor but not the only factor.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the normal cycles of ice ages" because it's not clear that there is one.
The impact of CO2 on climate is not controversial in climate science circles. Even such notable contrarians as Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen admit that CO2 will cause warming. They just think there are other factors that will counter that effect.
When specifically was it you think we had an ice age with 4 times higher CO2? My interpretation of that was back when we had a snowball Earth more than 650 million years ago. Back then the Sun was at least 6% fainter than it is now and the land surface was all gathered into one giant continent, Rodina, located at the Equator, both conditions conducive to and ice age.
Yeah, back when the Sun was fainter and the configuration of the continents was completely different. CO2 isn't the only factor, just a major one. Notice I said "With the current conditions on Earth...".
We are probably going to go into an ice age in the next few thousand years. At least, that is what the climate records show... we're due an ice age. When that comes, I hope we have the foresight to pump something into our atmosphere to limit it. Ice ages are a thousand times worse then any of the silly predictions about Global Warming. A Global Ice Age would make much of the world uninhabitable.
There is no chance of that happening for the foreseeable future. With the current conditions on Earth it is impossible for an ice age (glaciation) to occur as long as CO2 levels in the atmosphere are greater than around 250 ppm even if Milankovitch cycles would otherwise lead to one.
Technically speaking we're currently and still in an ice age and will be until the Antarctic ice sheet melts away./pedant
If you're going to do percentages with temperatures you have to use an absolute temperature scale like the Kelvin scale. So 90 degrees F = 305.37K and 20F = 266.48K, the difference being 38.89K. That's a 12.8% difference (39/305).
Regarding less extreme weather because of smaller temperature differences between different air masses that's possible but don't forget that warmer temperatures mean more total energy in the system overall so it's not clear exactly what will happen. The simple fact of a warming Earth means extreme heat waves are more likely. Also a warmer atmosphere means more water vapor in it which means more water available for extreme precipitation events.
The Arctic warming faster than the Equator is a predicted and observed effect of global warming from increased greenhouse gases.
The climate system is too chaotic for us to predict conditions in 1-5 years time accurately, you scientific illiterate. Yes, of course we know what it will look like in 100 years time, why wouldn't we? Don't you understand the science???
Predicting conditions in 1-5 years time is weather prediction. Predicting that the 30 year running mean temperature of the Earth will be 1 degree C warmer than it is now is a climate prediction. Chaos in weather and chaos in climate are two different things.
Yes, but there is an active carbon cycle which is the carbon that cycles through the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere on relatively short time scales and carbon stores that are not actively in the cycle and has been fundamentally sequestered from the active cycle for millions of years. The Earth's biological systems are well adjusted to the current level of carbon in the active cycle and will be disrupted by changes in it.
The difference being that the carbon in the methane that cows emit comes from CO2 the grass that the cows ate absorbed from the atmosphere in the first place so there is no net increase in carbon in the carbon cycle. Fossil fuel derived methane on the other hand does increase the total carbon in the carbon cycle.
First let me just state that realistically we won't end the use of fossil fuels overnight. It's at best a 30 or 40 year process. Second the price of fossil fuels doesn't include the cost of a lot of externalities such as pollution and global warming so from a holistic point of view the price is artificially low.
As far as the economics of alternative energy and batteries they are reaching the point of being competitive with traditional fossil fuels and I expect they will continue on the path they're on for some time to come. Regarding Tesla batteries don't you think the factory that Elon Musk will bring the price down and other advances will do the same? I am confident that within 20 years or so it will be fossil fuels that aren't competitive for most applications.
On nuclear power I'm not against it per se but the biggest reason there hasn't been more nuclear over the past several decades was that it's very expensive compared to the fossil fuel plants they were building.
Because man made CO2 is not causing global warming. The sun drives our climate, not CO2. Read the NIPCC reports.
Tobacco companies and others published reports about how tobacco use wasn't bad for you too. The even include some of the same people such as Fred Singer.
When you add up all of the natural factors that affect temperatures it's clear that we should be in a slight cooling trend right now but the warming continues. That alone implies that human contributions are responsible for all of the warming lately.
Pretty much every prediction they've made to date have been proven wrong...
Maybe it has more to do with your lack of understanding of what real scientists are actually predicting and the time scale of those predictions than any bad predictions by the scientists. Also maybe your judgement of "wrong" is not scientifically justified when you take into account the uncertainty attached to the predictions. Finally if you are getting the supposed predictions from bloggers rather than directly from the scientific literature they are often expressed out of context and in a hyperbolic manner just for the effect of getting lazy people who don't take the time to dig deeper to believe they are wrong
I figured someone would think I'm a Republican when I wrote that. I haven't voted for a Republican for President since Gerald Ford in 1976 and the last time I voted for a Republican for any national or statewide office was 1998. I didn't vote for Barak Obama in 2012 (I might have if I lived in a swing state, I voted for Rocky Anderson) but I have no use for today's Republican party. Yes, I credit Obama with stopping the use of torture but for too long this country has not been holding people accountable for crimes like this and I'm tired of it.
Waterboarding was regarded by the US as torture and at least a couple of Japanese officers were tried and put to death over applying it to captured US soldiers in WW II. It's hard to express how much disgust and shame I felt when I learned that elements of the US government were using it. Even worse is that no one has been held accountable for it yet, one the the biggest failures of the Obama administration.
If electric cars become a reality, they will need to produce and distribute a lot more electricity to generate the energy currently generated by ICEs in the cars.
Keep in mind that ICE's are at best about 1/3 efficient with the fuel they burn while electric cars are around 90% or better with the electricity they use.
Slashdot Mirror
There is an average time between ice ages and we're getting due for it.
Oh, you must be talking about the glaciation cycles of the current Quaternary ice age. For about the last 800,000 years there has been a cycle of about every 100,000 years but from 2.8 million years ago until 800,000 years ago the cycle was more like every 41,000 years. Before the Quaternary the last ice age was the Karoo that ended around 260 million years ago.
As to CO2 concentrations, where are you getting your information? Because the ice core records are known to be unreliable indications of CO2 concentration.
Of course the CO2 levels I mentioned were not found from ice cores but from other proxy measurements because ice cores only go back about 800,000 years at best and the CO2 levels I mentioned were from ~300 and ~440 million years ago. The scientists who study ice cores consider their CO2 concentrations to be quite reliable so you're going to have to present some real evidence that they aren't rather than just making the assertion. Maybe you're thinking that they aren't precise because they show an average of maybe 100 years of atmospheric CO2 rather than a year by year account.
Regardless, the levels of CO2 have gone up and down many times in earth's past without correlating temperature swings. The notion that CO2 is a relevant driver of global climate makes very little sense.
Again, rather than just making the assertion you need to provide some real evidence. I've heard a number of scientists, notably Richard Alley say you can't understand temperature during any period of the Earth's history over the last billion years without taking CO2 into account.
Mostly this is because it makes up a relatively small portion of our atmosphere. ...
There is overlap between the absorption spectrums of water vapor and CO2 but it isn't 100% for either of them. In areas where the humidity is low CO2 has a larger effect. The latest studies I've seen on clouds effects on global warming show they have somewhere between a slightly negative and moderately positive effect on it. As far as the effects of snow, I think we have a pretty good handle on the albedo of the Earth after observing it from satellites for the past 50 years.
Ultimately, I think you have grounds to be concerned but I think without reservation anyone that says they know what they're talking about on the issue is talking out of their asses.
That would include you? (Sorry, I guess that isn't respectful but I couldn't help myself.)
Not one of the models subjected to scrutiny has withstood it. ...
As George Box famously said "All models are wrong, but some are useful". The rightness or wrongness of climate models is not a binary choice but rather a question of degrees. We don't have anything better than current climate models to help us understand the evolution of climate. They're not perfect but they're better than nothing.
I'd like you to give me some examples of a falsifiable test that climate models have utterly failed because I can't think of any.
What you probably don't know is that the scientist that came up with the green house theory disavowed it before he died.
The guy who came up with the greenhouse theory was Joseph Fourier in the 1820's but I doubt that's who you're talking about. Maybe you're talking about Svante Arrhenius who in 1896 quantified the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere. Never the less we've learned a lot since their time.
This whole thing is a lesson in the ability of money to pervert science.
Whenever someone brings up money it makes their argument seem more political in nature. Yes, scientists live and die by their grants but they're not getting rich on them. Money can at best only temporarily pervert
It may be raining but there's a long way to go before the drought is truly over. Most importantly you need a good snow pack in the Sierras this winter to end the drought.
I just spent the past hour or so researching ice ages. Great fun and I learned a lot more details about the history of ice ages. Thanks for that.
There are 5 known ice ages in Earth's past. The Huronian (around 2.4 to 2.1 billion years ago), the Cryogenian (850 to 630 million years ago), the Andean-Saharan (460 to 420 million years ago), The Karoo (360-260 million years ago) and the current Quaternary (since 2.58 million years ago).
You must be talking about the Andean-Saharan ice age because during the Karoo CO2 levels were under 300 ppm. It's true that during the Ordovician and Silurian period CO2 levels were over 10 times as high as they are now. It's also true that the Sun was about 4% fainter than it is now and the land where the evidence for the A-S ice age was found was part of the Godwana super-continent and was located right at the South Pole at the time, both conditions conducive to ice forming. As I said, CO2 is a factor but not the only factor.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the normal cycles of ice ages" because it's not clear that there is one.
The impact of CO2 on climate is not controversial in climate science circles. Even such notable contrarians as Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen admit that CO2 will cause warming. They just think there are other factors that will counter that effect.
When specifically was it you think we had an ice age with 4 times higher CO2? My interpretation of that was back when we had a snowball Earth more than 650 million years ago. Back then the Sun was at least 6% fainter than it is now and the land surface was all gathered into one giant continent, Rodina, located at the Equator, both conditions conducive to and ice age.
Yeah, back when the Sun was fainter and the configuration of the continents was completely different. CO2 isn't the only factor, just a major one. Notice I said "With the current conditions on Earth ...".
We are probably going to go into an ice age in the next few thousand years. At least, that is what the climate records show... we're due an ice age. When that comes, I hope we have the foresight to pump something into our atmosphere to limit it. Ice ages are a thousand times worse then any of the silly predictions about Global Warming. A Global Ice Age would make much of the world uninhabitable.
There is no chance of that happening for the foreseeable future. With the current conditions on Earth it is impossible for an ice age (glaciation) to occur as long as CO2 levels in the atmosphere are greater than around 250 ppm even if Milankovitch cycles would otherwise lead to one.
Technically speaking we're currently and still in an ice age and will be until the Antarctic ice sheet melts away. /pedant
Too hard for your simple mind to understand the subtleties of science? It's all a hoax to take power over us and take our money!
If you're going to do percentages with temperatures you have to use an absolute temperature scale like the Kelvin scale. So 90 degrees F = 305.37K and 20F = 266.48K, the difference being 38.89K. That's a 12.8% difference (39/305).
Regarding less extreme weather because of smaller temperature differences between different air masses that's possible but don't forget that warmer temperatures mean more total energy in the system overall so it's not clear exactly what will happen. The simple fact of a warming Earth means extreme heat waves are more likely. Also a warmer atmosphere means more water vapor in it which means more water available for extreme precipitation events.
The Arctic warming faster than the Equator is a predicted and observed effect of global warming from increased greenhouse gases.
The climate system is too chaotic for us to predict conditions in 1-5 years time accurately, you scientific illiterate. Yes, of course we know what it will look like in 100 years time, why wouldn't we? Don't you understand the science???
Predicting conditions in 1-5 years time is weather prediction. Predicting that the 30 year running mean temperature of the Earth will be 1 degree C warmer than it is now is a climate prediction. Chaos in weather and chaos in climate are two different things.
Yes, but there is an active carbon cycle which is the carbon that cycles through the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere on relatively short time scales and carbon stores that are not actively in the cycle and has been fundamentally sequestered from the active cycle for millions of years. The Earth's biological systems are well adjusted to the current level of carbon in the active cycle and will be disrupted by changes in it.
Well, I believe it already is the main feedstock of for the production of hydrogen and for anhydrous ammonia for fertilizer.
The difference being that the carbon in the methane that cows emit comes from CO2 the grass that the cows ate absorbed from the atmosphere in the first place so there is no net increase in carbon in the carbon cycle. Fossil fuel derived methane on the other hand does increase the total carbon in the carbon cycle.
Switching from coal to natural gas doesn't stop the CO2 levels from rising, it just slows it down by around 30%.
First let me just state that realistically we won't end the use of fossil fuels overnight. It's at best a 30 or 40 year process. Second the price of fossil fuels doesn't include the cost of a lot of externalities such as pollution and global warming so from a holistic point of view the price is artificially low.
As far as the economics of alternative energy and batteries they are reaching the point of being competitive with traditional fossil fuels and I expect they will continue on the path they're on for some time to come. Regarding Tesla batteries don't you think the factory that Elon Musk will bring the price down and other advances will do the same? I am confident that within 20 years or so it will be fossil fuels that aren't competitive for most applications.
On nuclear power I'm not against it per se but the biggest reason there hasn't been more nuclear over the past several decades was that it's very expensive compared to the fossil fuel plants they were building.
Because man made CO2 is not causing global warming. The sun drives our climate, not CO2. Read the NIPCC reports.
Tobacco companies and others published reports about how tobacco use wasn't bad for you too. The even include some of the same people such as Fred Singer.
Ohh that is a whole nother can o worms.
That question is "when is the science good enough to dislocate the entire world and crush people's dreams of a better life"
My question to you is why are you such a pessimist that you think it's impossible without the use of fossil fuels to have a better life?
Here is a graph from the IPCC AR5 that summarizes the different sources of radiative forcing since 1880. It's from Chapter 8 of the IPCC AR5 Working Group 1 report.
When you add up all of the natural factors that affect temperatures it's clear that we should be in a slight cooling trend right now but the warming continues. That alone implies that human contributions are responsible for all of the warming lately.
Pretty much every prediction they've made to date have been proven wrong ...
Maybe it has more to do with your lack of understanding of what real scientists are actually predicting and the time scale of those predictions than any bad predictions by the scientists. Also maybe your judgement of "wrong" is not scientifically justified when you take into account the uncertainty attached to the predictions. Finally if you are getting the supposed predictions from bloggers rather than directly from the scientific literature they are often expressed out of context and in a hyperbolic manner just for the effect of getting lazy people who don't take the time to dig deeper to believe they are wrong
I should add that there are a few psychopaths in the world who like terrorism just for the sake of terror but they're uncommon.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It's all a matter of your POV. The winners get to write the history books.
My outrage over failures of the Obama administration pales in comparison to my outrage over the war crimes of the GWB administration.
I figured someone would think I'm a Republican when I wrote that. I haven't voted for a Republican for President since Gerald Ford in 1976 and the last time I voted for a Republican for any national or statewide office was 1998. I didn't vote for Barak Obama in 2012 (I might have if I lived in a swing state, I voted for Rocky Anderson) but I have no use for today's Republican party. Yes, I credit Obama with stopping the use of torture but for too long this country has not been holding people accountable for crimes like this and I'm tired of it.
Waterboarding was regarded by the US as torture and at least a couple of Japanese officers were tried and put to death over applying it to captured US soldiers in WW II. It's hard to express how much disgust and shame I felt when I learned that elements of the US government were using it. Even worse is that no one has been held accountable for it yet, one the the biggest failures of the Obama administration.
If electric cars become a reality, they will need to produce and distribute a lot more electricity to generate the energy currently generated by ICEs in the cars.
Keep in mind that ICE's are at best about 1/3 efficient with the fuel they burn while electric cars are around 90% or better with the electricity they use.