"Where you get the idea that it's lurking round the corner somewhere and is going to jump out and get us I have no idea. :-)"


In the September Scientific American they mention the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago. Increased CO2, then increased temperature.

There was a more detailed article about a year ago.

But you've disputed these before so you know what I'm talking about.

"lurking round the corner somewhere and is going to jump out and get us" is just an attempt to trivialize this - hah hah hah...

This thread has been running for 4.5 years. I have actually read all 147 pages and have come to the unscientific conclusion that we do not know what we do not know.

Nick must be back from some trip

"I have actually read all 147 pages and have come to the unscientific conclusion that we do not know what we do not know."

But a very select few don't know that they don't know, else this thread would be about 145 pages shorter and the Earth would be a degree or two cooler. ;0)

Yeah I'm back. Actually did several long trips this summer.

This thread is like a LSD trip :)

Jerry says:
"lurking round the corner somewhere and is going to jump out and get us" is just an attempt to trivialize this - hah hah hah...

No. I'm genuinely interested to know where you think energy can be hiding in the system which has accumulated as a result of the action of additional co2. The 'heat in the pipeline'. The 'committed warming'.

I think these are fictions which have arisen as a result of poor understanding of thermodynamics by climate scientists who did more marine biology than statistical mechanics or fluid dynamics at college. I studied these numerical subjects as an engineer. I don't know much about the zoology of plankton, but I fully understand that 'the missing heat' is now somewhere past Alpha Centauri.

Yet these hobgoblins still infest the mind of the lay reader of popsci mags which sell copy by promoting climate pron like hockey stick graphs and vanishing glaciers, and mysterious longwave energies which can penetrate 700m of cooling upper ocean in direct contravention of the second law of thermodynamics.

Scientia weeps.

"No. I'm genuinely interested to know where you think energy can be hiding in the system which has accumulated as a result of the action of additional co2. The 'heat in the pipeline'. The 'committed warming'."

I think you're probably being paid per post to deny : )

It takes 1000 years for the water in the ocean to make one circuit, so there's 1000 years of pipeline.

From the analysis of the arctic and antarctic sedimentary layers from the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago, the CO2 increased approximately the same amount that we're increasing it today, and then over the next 1000 or so years the temperature increased.

Rog says, " ......and mysterious longwave energies which can penetrate 700m of cooling upper ocean in direct contravention of the second law of thermodynamics. "

Rog is still trying to convince us that we think longwave bounce-back is what is heating the oceans the most. No Rog, the oceans can't expell the heat they takes in from the sun's shortwave as quickly as they did not that long ago and what keeps that from happening also heats the atmosphere.

Rog, you kind of gave away your lack of qualifications away in your last post. My recommendation is to stay MUM about your over-achievements.

Rog said, "I think these are fictions which have arisen as a result of poor understanding of thermodynamics by climate scientists who did more marine biology than statistical mechanics or fluid dynamics at college. I studied these numerical subjects as an engineer. I don't know much about the zoology of plankton, but I fully understand that 'the missing heat' is now somewhere past Alpha Centauri. "

Since it is the shortwave that really heats the ocean, and since overall circulation systems certainly go below 700 meters, we can see that you are blowing smoke as usual.

Edited by wildlife on 09/18/2012 12:40:51 MDT.

Jerry says:
It takes 1000 years for the water in the ocean to make one circuit, so there's 1000 years of pipeline.

Well there you are, the anomalous warming is heat stored in the oceans a thousand years ago in the Medieval Warm Period coming back up. QED. ;-)

From the analysis of the arctic and antarctic sedimentary layers from the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago

Got a link to the actual scientific paper? I want to know which 55M yr old proxy tells them the co2 rose before the temperature. Funny we have to go back this far to find a time when it did eh? ;-)

Dan says:
No Rog, the oceans can't expell the heat they takes in from the sun's shortwave as quickly as they did not that long ago and what keeps that from happening also heats the atmosphere.

But dan, the Outgoing Longwave Radiation INCREASED since 1948. So this extra co2 isn't doing much to 'trap heat' is it?

Your problem is you prefer alarmist theory to measured reality.

.

"Got a link to the actual scientific paper?"

July 2011 Scientific American "The Last Great Global Warming"

They reference two scientific articles:

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: A Perturbation of Carbon Cycle, Climate,
and Biosphere with Implications for the Future. Francesca A. McInerney and Scott L.
Wing in Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Vol. 39, pages 489–516; May 2011.

America’s Climate Choices. Committee on America’s Climate Choices, National Research
Council of the National Academies. The National Academies Press, 2011.
Slow Release of Fossil Carbon during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Ying
Cui et al. in Nature Geoscience (in press).

Rog, your graph is not very convincing, especially considering your supposed super solar activity of that time period. The grapgh does not even go to 1948.

My main problem is that I like disecting your baloney, like you trying to claim a couple posts ago that we believe the oceans are primarily heated by longwave radiation. Keep talking.

On the contrary Dan, the fact that OLR increased while the surface temperature increased is a good clue that the forcing was external, think about it.

Here's the graph from 1948

So explain to me how the extra co2 'trapped heat' trying to escape from the ocean through the atmosphere to space, and yet OLR increased while the ocean warmed from at least 1956 according to the Ocean Heat Content measurements.

A simple hypothesis which fits all the facts is that high levels of solar activity were amplified by a reduction in low cloud cover over the tropics, allowing more solar shortwave into the oceans, and more heat to escape from the heated ocean to space.

As I keep telling you, even the IPCC knows the extra co2 can't do much on its own. It need a positive water vapour feedback, because water vapour is the big daddy of greenhouse gases. But this positive feedback, which is still coded into the models, has not been observed in reality. A slight increase nearer the surface has been matched by a fall at higher altitude, for a near zero overall gain.

You won't take my word for it, so seek out the data for yourself. or are you afraid you'll find I'm right? Come on Dan, show us you're not all mouth and no trousers. Man up and check the data, and report it here.

Hi Jerry,
Thanks for the cites.
I tracked down the sci-am piece by co-author Kump, and it's full of the usual weasel words, like maybe, possibly, and apparently. I'll see how well it holds up against the actual paper when I track down a copy. I won't be paying Nature Geoscience for it, because the omens are not good, going by the vague assumptions of the sci-am article.

With an increase in shortwave it's entirely possible to have increases in longwave escaping for a period, but what is important is the relationship there, relative to what the ratio would have been without extra CO2.

I know your side likes to harp on the IPCC regarding the positive water vapor feedback predictions, but I am one that believes we certainly have experienced increases in negative H2O feedbacks, and this does not alleviate the CO2 'problem'. We get both negative and positive feedback from CO2.

Global Warming has been adjusted to Climate Change in case you have not noticed. This is a much better name for the full reality of what is really going on (warming AND change), but you go ahead and keep clinging to Global Warming so that you can keep BSing people more easily. It's all certainly more complex than all straight line postive feedbacks.

Edited by wildlife on 09/18/2012 15:38:08 MDT.

"I want to know which 55M yr old proxy tells them the co2 rose before the temperature."

They used a benthic-foraminifera-derived temperature proxy

"Funny we have to go back this far to find a time when it did eh? ;-)"

Your point being?

"Funny we have to go back this far to find a time when it did eh? ;-)"

Large increases in CO2 are rare, that's why you have to go back 55 million years, the last known case of increased CO2.

And since it's 55 million years ago, it's difficult to figure out what happened, which is why there is uncertainty.

Rog said, " So explain to me how the extra co2 'trapped heat' trying to escape from the ocean through the atmosphere to space, and yet OLR increased while the ocean warmed from at least 1956 according to the Ocean Heat Content measurements.

A simple hypothesis which fits all the facts is that high levels of solar activity were amplified by a reduction in low cloud cover over the tropics, allowing more solar shortwave into the oceans, and more heat to escape from the heated ocean to space."

Rog, it seems like from what you say above that there is an effective energy balance going on with plenty of longwave getting back to space yet you use this same period of C20 solar activity to explain why things are warm now and gradually cooling. You can't have it both ways.

"I want to know which 55M yr old proxy tells them the co2 rose before the temperature."

Lynn replies
They used a benthic-foraminifera-derived temperature proxy

Thanks for the non-sequiteur. So they've got a temperature proxy. Does this help them determine if the rise in co2 came before or after the rise in temperature?

Answer, no it doesn't.

The relevant part of the abstract to the Ying-Kump paper is this:

"The warming was accompanied by a rapid shift in the isotopic signature of sedimentary carbonates, suggesting that the event was triggered by a massive release of carbon to the ocean–atmosphere system. However, the source, rate of emission and total amount of carbon involved remain poorly constrained."

See the weasel word 'suggesting' there? I've italicised it for you. "remain poorly constrained" is science speak for "We don't know".

Let's look at a time period we know a bit more about:



This graph shows that from 25,000 to 5000 years ago, temperature followed along behind the changing amount of solar radiation hitting the Northern Hemisphere, followed thousands of years later by the consequent change in co2 levels.

Are you lot still having trouble with cause and effect? Let me summarise:

CAUSE PRECEDES EFFECT.

How long until the penny drops?

Temperature changes PRECEDE changes in co2 levels at all timescales. Annual, decadal, centennial, millenial, glacial/interglacial. As I've shown you again and again and again throughout this thread. The reason it runs to 147 pages and Nick Gatel feels like he's on an acid trip is because the warmies here are in denial of basic physical facts and keep repeating the same fallacies.

Lynn for one ought to know better.

Edited by tallbloke on 09/19/2012 02:23:15 MDT.

Jerry says:
Large increases in CO2 are rare, that's why you have to go back 55 million years, the last known case of increased CO2.

And since it's 55 million years ago, it's difficult to figure out what happened, which is why there is uncertainty.

Thank you Jerry, this is progress.
Lets take a different tack on the Eocene Thermal Maximum.
Was it good news or bad news for life that the temperature rose 3-5C in the tropical waters?

Science 12 November 2010:
Vol. 330 no. 6006 pp. 957-961
DOI: 10.1126/science.1193833
REPORT
Effects of Rapid Global Warming at the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary on Neotropical Vegetation
Carlos Jaramillo (and 24 other scientists)

ABSTRACT
"Temperatures in tropical regions are estimated to have increased by 3° to 5°C, compared with Late Paleocene values, during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, 56.3 million years ago) event. We investigated the tropical forest response to this rapid warming by evaluating the palynological record of three stratigraphic sections in eastern Colombia and western Venezuela. We observed a rapid and distinct increase in plant diversity and origination rates, with a set of new taxa, mostly angiosperms, added to the existing stock of low-diversity Paleocene flora. There is no evidence for enhanced aridity in the northern Neotropics. The tropical rainforest was able to persist under elevated temperatures and high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, in contrast to speculations that tropical ecosystems were severely compromised by heat stress."

Here's the graph which shows biodiversity by comparing extinctions to new species:

.

See how many more species were originated in the Eocene Thermal Optimum than went extinct?

All the wailing and gnashing of teeth about more warmth causing mass extinction is just BALONEY. And before you start telling me how much faster the current rise is, let me remind you that the East Pacific hasn't warmed in 30 years as I showed you last week. It's also worth pointing out that a 0.8C rise globally over a century is well within natural variation. Such a short timescale can't be extrapolated to 5C 10C rises in the next 50-200 years on the back of dodgy theories about co2 driving temperature as Kump claims.

It's also worth noting that the temperature of the ocean can't exceed 30C anyway, because it's maximum surface temperature is dictated by evaporation rates.

Relax and enjoy what's left of the warmth Jerry.