Reply to: Sun going into hibernation

[DimPrawn]

So now it's 288.5 degrees K instead of 288.0K.

How come all of these temperature graphs have such dramatically-arranged vertical axes?

Climate science is to science as the Daily Mail / Express journalism is to journalism.

Express.co.uk - Home of the Daily and Sunday Express | UK News :: Winter is here... four-week Siberian freeze to grip UK

[KimberleyChris]

So now it's 288.5 degrees K instead of 288.0K.

How come all of these temperature graphs have such dramatically-arranged vertical axes?

[pjclarke]

As it is, there's very little warming if any.

Well, it is about half a degree warmer than it was in the seventies. Not much on an absolute scale, perhaps, but do you know how much extra heat is needed to raise the surface of an entire planet by that increment?

[DimPrawn]

It's utter bollox.

If CO2 was the driver of the warming, then at current concentrations we'd be sitting on a global desert, all the ice would be water and the Maldives would be gone.

As it is, there's very little warming if any.

Why are we not burining in hell at these levels and these levels have been around for at least 50 years.

Warm planet releases CO2 it doesn't mean the CO2 warms the planet very much. You could take all the CO2 out of the atmosphere and the Earth would still have very warm peroids and very cold periods over thousands of years.

[pjclarke]

Changes in insolation due to orbital eccentricities initiate the warming - the warming releases CO2 from the oceans, over about 800-2000 years the enhanced greenhouse from the elevated CO2 causes more warming, which releases more CO2 which causes more warming - until the Milkanovitch cycle kicks in and reverses the process. Hence the lag.

Of course this all happens on century and longer timescales. Carbon is released and sequestered and temperatures rise and fall within a defined range. Within less than 2 centuries, we've dug up and burnt enough carbon to elevate the concentrations 35% outside the historical range. But I can't see that having much of an effect

Shorter Kimberley - I can't answer your argumenst so I am going to call you names.

PS the arrow top right is current levels.

[pjclarke]

RealClimate: What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?

[original PM]

But about 300 thousand years ago it looks like CO2 levels were higher than they are now..

I did not think we had huge amounts of industry and motor vehicles pumping out CO2 back then.

So where does it come from?

[KimberleyChris]

You're asking a question of somebody who is indoctrinated.

Good at cutting-and-pasting from 'learned' works, but appears to have no opinion save that which has been fed to him by the MMGW propoganda machine.

The MMGW lobby already have all their answers ready, no matter what the climate actually does in the future, the culprit will always be man-made CO2 regardless ofwhat the question is..

Ready for another cut-and-paste diatribe about CO2 v. Temperature lag/lead?

[BlasterBates]

Ah, the cherry-picked short period again. The paper was talking about variations on glacial timescales



Do you think we might have a teeny bit of a problem?

That's interesting because if you look on your graph there are numerous instances where the CO2 level is going down and the temperature at the same time is going up.

On closer inspection it would appear there is a lag i.e. the temperature goes up, but the CO2 levels seem to be following the curve down, before then following the curve upwards. Could it be that CO2 levels follow temperature? Is it possible that as the oceans warm that the dissolved CO2 is released ?

Just asking like, because if we go through a solar maximum and the earth warms isn't it possible that CO2 is released out of the oceans.

[Spacecadet]

Ah, the cherry-picked short period again. The paper was talking about variations on glacial timescales



Do you think we might have a teeny bit of a problem?

Yeah - those temperature increases seem to force up the CO2 levels
All we need to do is decrease the earths temp and the CO2 should follow, thus saving the planet

[pjclarke]

Ah, the cherry-picked short period again. The paper was talking about variations on glacial timescales



Do you think we might have a teeny bit of a problem?

[BlasterBates]

Yeah you're right the temperature is swinging up and down like a yo yo

[pjclarke]

1.The 'default' state of Earth's climate is ice age, and we are currently living in an interglacial - a brief 'holiday' between the last ice age and the next.

Good. You're getting it. Almost.

Human civilisation has indeed flourished in a historically unusual interglacial period of climatic stability - the Holocene. It would have lasted tens of thousands of years longer, there is no prospect of a 'frozen starving death'.

Sadly, we blew it. Let us bypass the Daily Mail and go to the academic literature...

Earth's climate is remarkably sensitive to forcings, i.e. imposed changes of the planet's energy balance. Both fast and slow feedbacks turn out to be predominately positive. As a result, our climate has the potential for large rapid fluctuations. Indeed, the Earth, and the creatures struggling to exist on the planet, have been repeatedly whipsawed between climate states. No doubt this rough ride has driven progression of life via changing stresses, extinctions and species evolution. But civilization developed, and constructed extensive infrastructure, during a period of unusual climate stability, the Holocene, now almost 12 000 years in duration. That period is about to end.

And not in a good way.

Climate change and trace gases Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society

[KimberleyChris]

Also, the Politicians, busy with collecting golden goose eggs from all this, seem to assume that everybody thinks global warming is a bad thing.

Given that:
1.The 'default' state of Earth's climate is ice age, and we are currently living in an interglacial - a brief 'holiday' between the last ice age and the next.

2.The heat-retaining blanket from the trace of CO2 in the atmosphere is all that stands between most of us and a frozen starving death.

Should we worry instead about what mankind is going to do when the fossil fuels finally run out?

[pjclarke]

Read the paper DP. The increase in the UHI effect on radiative imbalance is small, understood and well-accounted for.

Does Urban Heat Island effect exaggerate global warming trends?

While the increasing radiative imbalance caused by accumulating CO2 etc is also well-understood, and many times larger.