[cogitator]

I can't tell from this if they're really fingering methane or CO2; there has been some concern about the present-day stability of ocean floor methane hydrate deposits.

[cogitator]

Hi. I thought you might like to read this, which I found while scanning my normal Web sites this morning. I'm busy today so I expect to reply to your previous postings on the "Rushing to Judgment" thread either late today or tomorrow.

[RussianConservative]

The study provides important backing for the climate models that scientists are using to predict the effects of the current rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide due to industrial emissions, Zachos said.

And think, industry of 55 million years ago so much cleaner then today. What about sea current changes? What about platonics and location of continents on effect of heating/cooling and again currents? Why not consider those questions?

[Don Corleone]

Damned paleolithic SUV's!

[ancient_geezer]

Scientists have filled in a key piece of the global climate picture for a period 55 million years ago that is considered one of the most abrupt and extreme episodes of global warming in Earth's history. The new results from an analysis of sediment cores from the ocean floor are consistent with theoretical predictions of how Earth's climate would respond to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Maybe we should look at a bit larger picture hmmm? Cherry pick your data like these folks have and you can "prove" global temperature decreases with increasing CO2 concentration.

 

Global Surface Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time 

Late Carboniferous to Early Permian time (315 mya -- 270 mya) is the only time period in the last 600 million years when both atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were as low as they are today (Quaternary Period ).

Temperature after C.R. Scotese
CO2 after R.A. Berner, 1994

•     There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today. For example, during the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 900 ppm or about 2.5 times higher than today. The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Ordovician Period, exceeding 6000 ppm -- more than 16 times higher than today.

•     The Carboniferous Period and the Ordovician Period were the only geological periods during the Paleozoic Era when global temperatures were as low as they are today.
  
  To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age, with CO2 concentrations nearly 15 times higher than today-- 5500 ppm. According to greenhouse theory, Earth should have been exceedingly hot. Instead, global temperatures were no warmer than today. Clearly, other factors besides atmospheric carbon influence earth temperatures and global warming.

 

Or look at the whole picture and for causal connections and it becomes obvious that there is little support for the idea that CO2 has very much to due with global climate at all in comparison with other factors.

 

CO2-Temperature Correlations

• "(1) correlation does not prove causation, (2) cause must precede effect, and (3) when attempting to evaluate claims of causal relationships between different parameters, it is important to have as much data as possible in order to weed out spurious correlations.
  
  ***
  
  Consider, for example, the study of Fischer et al. (1999), who examined trends of atmospheric CO2 and air temperature derived from Antarctic ice core data that extended back in time a quarter of a million years.  Over this extended period, the three most dramatic warming events experienced on earth were those associated with the terminations of the last three ice ages; and for each of these climatic transitions, earth's air temperature rose well in advance of any increase in atmospheric CO2.  In fact, the air's CO2 content did not begin to rise until 400 to 1,000 years after the planet began to warm.  Such findings have been corroborated by Mudelsee (2001), who examined the leads/lags of atmospheric CO2 concentration and air temperature over an even longer time period, finding that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration lagged behind variations in air temperature by 1,300 to 5,000 years over the past 420,000 years."

[ see also: Indermuhle et al. (2000), Monnin et al. (2001), Yokoyama et al. (2000), Clark and Mix (2000) ]

• "Other studies periodically demonstrate a complete uncoupling of CO2 and temperature "

[see: Petit et al. (1999), Staufer et al. (1998), Cheddadi et al., (1998), Raymo et al., 1998, Pagani et al. (1999), Pearson and Palmer (1999), Pearson and Palmer, (2000) ]

• "Considered in their entirety, these several results present a truly chaotic picture with respect to any possible effect that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have on global temperature.  Clearly, atmospheric CO2 is not the all-important driver of global climate change the climate alarmists make it out to be."

---

 

Global warming and global dioxide emission and concentration:
a Granger causality analysis

http://isi-eh.usc.es/trabajos/122_41_fullpaper.pdf

•  "We find, in opposition to previous studies, that there is no evidence of Granger causality from global carbon dioxide emission to global surface temperature. Further, we could not find robust empirical evidence for the causal nexus from global carbon dioxide concentration to global surface temperature."

---

Here Comes the Sun

"Carbon dioxide, the main culprit in the alleged greenhouse-gas warming, is not a "driver" of climate change at all. Indeed, in earlier research Jan Veizer, of the University of Ottawa and one of the co-authors of the GSA Today article, established that rather than forcing climate change, CO2 levels actually lag behind climatic temperatures, suggesting that global warming may cause carbon dioxide rather than the other way around."

***

"Veizer and Shaviv's greatest contribution is their time scale. They have examined the relationship of cosmic rays, solar activity and CO2, and climate change going back through thousands of major and minor coolings and warmings. They found a strong -- very strong -- correlation between cosmic rays, solar activity and climate change, but almost none between carbon dioxide and global temperature increases."

[Publius6961]

The ongoing acrimonious debate has never been whether global warming is a natural and common process, but whether it is anthropogenic.

What is the point of this article?
To mislead?
To deflect?

A red herring?

[arthurus]

There is no mention of any actual evidence for this supposed release of methane. They seem to have deduced that there was a temperature rise 55 million years ago and methane release is the explanation they theorized because these clathrates had been discovered and they could make a dandy explanation for the climate maximum.

Their climate models show that a rise in "greenhouse gases" would produce a temperature rise which proves that methane clathrates were the cause of the maximum 55 mega years ago.

Climatology is a science of circular deduction, a new superior form of logic that proves all of the politically correct suppositions that just have to be right.

And gigatons would be billions of tons, not trillions, a trifling error.

[from occupied ga]

More utter and absolute horse sh!t from the global warming crowd. Their "scientific" method runs something like this:

• I absolutely and completely believe in global warming. It is my religion. I accept it as a matter of faith.
• There is no valid physical evidence for global warming tied to greenhouse gasses although there is evidence for warmer and cooler periods i earth's distant past.
• This causes a conflict in those mean old conservatives who want facts and evidence before they will believe in my religion (global warming)
• I am a scientist. I have my Ph. D. in political correctness to and my job working for the government prove it.
• Since I am a scientist then those who are lesser beings than I am should believe me when I claim those periods of climatic differences in the past are evidence of CO₂ cause global warming.
• Therefore I will sidestep the real issue and say that evidence of different temperatures in the past supports my religion that "greenhouse gasses" cause global warming.

This is how I attempt to make converts to my religion.

[Publius6961]

The study provides important backing for the climate models that scientists are using to predict the effects of the current rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide due to industrial emissions, Zachos said.

Some scientists deserve respect, others don't.
This statement suggests that the worst possible opinion of this scientist impersonator may be too mild.

That statement is pure politics, zero science.
When current computer simulations can take input from known climatic data from, say, between 1850 and 1950, and accurately predict the known record between 1950 and 2003, then that statement can become a scientific statement as opposed to pure unadulterated political bullsh**.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

For real time political chat - Radio Free Republic chat room
And you won't miss a thread on FR because e-bot will keep you informed.

[Carry_Okie]

I can't tell from this if they're really fingering methane or CO2; there has been some concern about the present-day stability of ocean floor methane hydrate deposits.

ROTFLMAO! You really fell for that one! That "concern" is all about making money on methane hydrate by subsidizing it with Kyoto price fixing, or do really think that Julie and Susan Packard are competent energy investors? Yup, just sprinkle a few grants into the academic maw and they'll get the old whispering campaign going. Maybe there's a reason Susan's husband is the chief scientist in charge of spending the $130 million they (along with Exxon/Mobil) sunk into a federally subsidized public private research partnership at Stanford on that very topic?

What might happen if they disturb more than they recover and that hydrate bubbles to the surface? After sinking in all that money will they just pack up and go home to save the environment? Will they be subject to ANY oversight or liability?

Not a chance! They're members in good standing of the NRDC, and put a few dollars into protection money with a fat donation to The Energy Foundation. That means they enjoy the exemption from ALL liability pursuant to Clinton EO 12986 which indemnified the IUCN from any environmental liability. Seeing as they don't know how to run Hewlett Packard, perhaps Susan and Julie had to find (fund) a safe way to stay in clover? There's nothing quite like enviroracketeering for a safe investment!

[Publius6961]

If you glued 18 quadrillion dollar bills end to end, they would stretch way past Pluto.

The hucksters, the scam artists, once again bullshi****g the ignorant the clueless.
Lots of heat (pun intended) but no light whatsoever!

First of all, let me be among the first to suggest that the world's total economic output for the next 600 years be used to solve the "problem".

It's for the children!

99.999% of people have no concept whatsoever of how far it is from the Sun to Pluto. None. Zero. Zilch.
I've always been of the opinion that one of the greatest aids to teaching science would be to build several "Solar Systems" across the United States (of necessity limited to wide open areas). Build them to scale, and start with the "Sun" being a meter in diameter. How far away would Pluto be? What size? Anyone?

[razorback-bert]

I know for certain that it was the fault of White European Males.

[JasonC]

"A large and rapid warming event 55 million years ago, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), raised the temperature of the high latitudes by 10°C and of the deep ocean by 5°C."

Note - nothing in this actual study is addressed to a particle of this. It is taken as established by previous studies.

"Its effect on the low-latitude surface ocean has remained unresolved due to the absence of reliable sea surface temperature (SST) records from the tropics."

Meaning, no reliable data. No data? No reliable data, anyway.

"Zachos et al. now present an SST reconstruction based on a sediment core from the tropical Pacific Ocean."

55 million years ago. India is an island, Australia is part of Antarctica, etc.

"After measuring both oxygen isotopes and Mg/Ca in the skeletons of long-dead surface-dwelling foraminifera, they produced a record of temperature and salinity and found that SSTs rose by approximately 5°C"

Science Express abstract rather than journalist spin.

The whole ocean, including deep ocean, supposedly got 5 C warmer. The cold surfaces in the upper lattitudes supposedly got more than proportionally warmer. For which the measurements are...

That the temperatures seen by these people in their cores matched the whole ocean numbers.

And the reason to believe the upper lattitude figure, twice as high, is? Not in this study.

Connection of any of the above to the cause of the past warming? Nothing in this study. To scale of effects traceable to greenhouse. Nothing in this study.

The great success of the climate models is supposed to be that they say "if'n it gets a whole lot warmer, that chilly icewater up 'round Greenland won't be so chilly. Meanwhile, warm tropical waters will be warm and tropical."

Therefore, anything a global warming modeler says about anything must be true. You heard it here.

[MonroeDNA]

How do they explain how the earth cooled after that? I thought it was irreversible.