Trapped in the vortex of climate chaos

TORONTO SUN ^ | JANUARY 17, 2014 | JOHN ROBSON

[rickmichaels]

During the “polar vortex,” some of us taunted frostbitten global warming alarmists who snapped back that isolated extreme weather events don’t indicate long-term trends.

Good. Because if they can remember that during heat waves and storms, we can actually look at long-term trends.

Really long. Geologically long. Back to when simple animals appeared in the “Cambrian explosion” about 542 million years ago.

Google it and you’ll find a chart of global temperature and carbon dioxide in the air from which two things will jump out at you right away.

First, atmospheric CO2 does not drive temperature. It hit 7000 ppm around 540 million years ago, over 20 times today’s level, plunged to current levels around 330 million B.C., shot up six-fold just as the Triassic was starting, bounced up again in the Jurassic then fell steadily back to just under 300 ppm.

Nobody knows why. But it doesn’t map onto temperature. Because the other really obvious thing is for about 450 of the past 540 million years the Earth has been roughly 22 degrees Celsius average, around 10 degrees warmer than now.

Three times it plunged dramatically to roughly today’s average temperature: about 440 million years ago, 310 million years ago and (more slowly) 30 million years ago. And once, between the Jurassic and Cretaceous, it dropped about five degrees then rebounded.

So Earth is normally warmer than today. But sometimes it cools suddenly, stays cold for a bit then heats up again.

In short, Earth’s climate is the province of once-fashionable “chaos theory” dealing with things too complex, too “Sensitively Dependent on Initial Conditions” or SDIC, to be modeled and predicted in computers.

That doesn’t mean it’s random. It does settle into what chaoticians call “strange attractors,” broadly stable states within which it moves around unpredictably… and then suddenly and unpredictably tips into other broadly stable states.

There’s one “strange attractor” around 22 degrees where any prolonged heating trend does something complicated to plants, the air, oceans and so on that provokes a contrary cooling trend and vice versa. However, for SDIC reasons, a period of heating, or maybe cooling, at just the wrong speed or time, or cooling, triggers a sudden dramatic 10-degree drop that lasts a few million years then suddenly tips back.

Now if the Earth has been around 22 degrees 90% of the time since animals appeared, for reasons man didn’t cause, it’s probably headed back that way sometime soon for reasons man isn’t causing.

Fortunately “soon” in geological terms means probably in thousands or millions of years - not while you’re waiting for the bus.

Unfortunately chaos is chaotic, with smaller “strange attractors” nestled inside bigger ones. For instance the “interglacials” within the Ice Age we’ve been in for about 2.5 million years, where glaciers leave Missouri alone and go pester the poles.

Over the last 800,000 years alone, we’ve seen roughly eight glacial temperature valleys and nine interglacial peaks including the current one where we invented agriculture. Which could end suddenly with another glaciation, go the other way, or not.

We could be heading back up to 22 degrees or back down to 10 or even 5. Or not. And of course it matters a lot. But we can’t tell.

Because the picture is unbearably complex, short-term trends tell us nothing. And while we know roughly what Earth normally does, and what it normally does when it’s not doing what it normally does, we don’t know what tips it from one state to the other or when or why except it’s not carbon dioxide.

So I’ll stop jeering about the polar vortex if you’ll shut up about the Australian outback and tropical storms. And we’ll just keep our parkas handy, our sunscreen nearby, and our fingers crossed.

[DannyTN]

It’ll be a polar vortex in Hell before I believe in Global Warming!

[bunkerhill7]

I wuz tryn`to get my GF to do a polar vortex
but I had to warm her globes up first.

[KSCITYBOY]

btt

[elteemike]

Great article and thank you...

Some other factors that may account for most of the climate variability:

http://www.sciencecourseware.org/eec/GlobalWarming/Tutorials/Milankovitch/

And the fact our Sun is a variable star:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/solar.htm

[Bernard Marx]

Bump

[Democrat_media]

1.Global warming is a hoax

2. factories have been emitting co2 for the past 200 years

3. there is zero sea level rise for those co2 emissions in 200 years

4. if their marxist AGW global warming theory were true sea levels would have risen 60 feet in those 200 years of co2 emissions because of melting ice caps

5.There is no warming , no sea level rise, no melting of ice caps at all in the past 200 years. and of course not at the level that would have happened if global warming were true
6. global warming is just another way to advance socialism(government power and control). notice they demonize capitalism(emissions from factories etc)
7. almost all democrat voters and most Americans believe in global warming . they even believe the news media's recent lies that the recent cooling (polar vortex crap) etc. is caused by global warming. we are living in the matrix created by the evil news media
8.government banned lightbulbs for this hoax. they mean to enslave us using this hoax.
9. all these thousands of gov funded scientist are corrupt idiots. I a non-scientist , a little average man from Louisiana am smarter than any of these corrupt marxist arrogant scientists IDIOTS. they believe in their hoax global warming , they believe socialism works , and they think they are fooling us they think we are dumb and will believe what they and the news media say just because they are scientists and news people.

10.it's not getting warmer now . it's getting colder. look at the Sun's solar cycles. this is the first cold year of colder years to come than even this one.
11. they can't fool me because I am from Louisiana and I am a Republican

[LibLieSlayer]

100,000 years from now, the current time will be known as the Bullshitarassic Era.

[central_va]

Green is the new Red. Easier said.

[Democrat_media]

We’re living in the Matrix, an alternate false reality created by the evil news media. in this false reality socialism works and capitalism is the cause of every problem as in the global warming hoax

the media are democrats, part of the democrat party, so is hollywood , unions, academia, gov funded science etc. etc. etc.

[LibLieSlayer]

Perfectly stated.

[what's up]

they believe in their hoax global warming ,

I wonder how many actually do NOT believe it but need to keep the money flowing so they push it anyway.

Did you hear about the Beale guy? Highest paid position in EPA, he helped to steer passage of the Clean Air Act and often negotiates deal with China, Brazil etc. on air levels.

Well, the pathological liar was finally caught and now sits in prison. He had been telling the Secy of EPA he was a CIA agent and had to take time off for months at a time. Then he would ride his bike, read books all day. I say this to demonstrate what liars ALL global warming officials are.