Strong Evidence Points to Earth's Proximity to Sun as Ice Age Trigger (GW Update!)

Physorg.com ^ | August 27, 2007 | UCSD

[Ole Okie]

I think the answer is 7 trillion miles in my Toyota per google of an inch closer to the sun, but my calculations could be off.

Greg, I think you mean (1/googolplex) inches closer.

Of course, I could be wrong.

[Kevmo]

BMFLR

[Greg F]

I think the answer is 7 trillion miles in my Toyota per 1/googleplex of an inch closer to the sun, but my calculations could be off.

I’ll have to run the calculations again. I forgot how to multiply fractions.

[slowhandluke]

So we are going into an ice age according to your theory slowhandluke. Dang. I knew property in Florida would remain a good investment.

Not my theory - I thought I was clear I was clarifying the interpretation of the theory in the article.

If you bought shore-front property, it might not be a great investment. You'd have to have bought property currently under water to make a killing of an incipient ice age, as the current shore front property will end up 50 miles inland. I understand there used to be quite a market in Florida for such property. You've still got time to trade up.

[agere_contra]

When we switch from Ice Age to “Normal Mode”, or back again, there are two feedbacks that amplify the effect of the initial cooling or warming event.

One is a CO2 outgass/uptake from/back to the oceans. The other is an albedo feedback: more land covered with a few mm of ice means higher albedo and more cooling - and vice versa.

These feedbacks are of vital importance in the switch between Ice Age and Holocene - but both are subject to a ‘saturation’ effect beyond which there are sharply diminishing returns.

Our current CO2 level is such that *doubling* the CO2 would IIRC increase the CO2 greenhouse effect by only 10%. All the quick wins for increased CO2 already happened - at the end of the last Ice Age.

Similarly our current ice coverage is so situated (e.g. considering only the summer ice at/near sea-level, it’s only on bits that are at a high slant to the direction of insolation like Greenland or the Poles) that increased solar output isn’t going to make any more headway. Again all the quick wins on Albedo reduction (e.g. melting the ice across Europe) happened at the end of the last Ice Age.

[Greg F]

Tropical beachfront is the way to go in an ice age. You could end up with miles of property as the shore recedes.

[rottndog]

Um...Ok, I’ve had this idea, so I will lay it out....

I watched a PBS show a couple of years ago (sorry, I forget the name), about the theory that the Sun has a dead sister star, and that the 2 reach their closest proximity in their respective orbits every 25,000 years or so.

Ice Ages occur every 20-25k years. Could there be a connection?

Flame me if you must, as long as you think about the idea first.

[ConservativeMind]

When we switch from Ice Age to “Normal Mode”, or back again, there are two feedbacks that amplify the effect of the initial cooling or warming event.

One is a CO2 outgass/uptake from/back to the oceans. The other is an albedo feedback: more land covered with a few mm of ice means higher albedo and more cooling - and vice versa.

These feedbacks are of vital importance in the switch between Ice Age and Holocene - but both are subject to a ‘saturation’ effect beyond which there are sharply diminishing returns.

Our current CO2 level is such that *doubling* the CO2 would IIRC increase the CO2 greenhouse effect by only 10%. All the quick wins for increased CO2 already happened - at the end of the last Ice Age.

Similarly our current ice coverage is so situated (e.g. considering only the summer ice at/near sea-level, it’s only on bits that are at a high slant to the direction of insolation like Greenland or the Poles) that increased solar output isn’t going to make any more headway. Again all the quick wins on Albedo reduction (e.g. melting the ice across Europe) happened at the end of the last Ice Age.

Cog, do you have an insight on this post?

[sourcery]

Basic References:

• Hostages to a hoax
• Water Experts Find Earth’s Warming, Rainfall Linked to Sun
• Global Warming and Solar Radiation
• Milankovitch Cycles and Glaciation
• The Myth of Dangerous Human-Caused Climate Change (PDF)
• Up against the warming zealots
• When Physics Trumps Hysteria in Global Warming
• Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
• Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists versus Scientific Forecasts
• Geophysical, archeological and historical evidence support a solar-output model for climate change (PDF)
• Gamma rays and climate (PDF)
• Temperature vs. Cosmic Ray Flux
• Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development (PDF)
• Proof on Ice: Southern Greenland Was Once Green; Earth Warmer
• Global Warming and Nature's Thermostat
• The Past and Future of Climate (PDF)
• Global warming is not a crisis
• The Great Global Warming Swindle
• IceCap

Lawrence Solomon's "The Deniers" (a series of articles on the view of scientists who have been labelled "Global Warming Deniers"):

• Science, not politics
• Statistics needed
• The original denier: into the cold
• End the chill
• They call this a consensus?
• The limits of predictability
• Unsettled science
• Models trump measurements
• The ice-core man
• The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science
• Polar scientists on thin ice
• The sun moves climate change
• Bright sun, warm Earth. Coincidence?
• Look to Mars for the truth on global warming
• Read the sunspots
• Forget warming - beware the new ice age
• Little Ice Age is still with us
• Fighting climate 'fluff'

Other References:

• Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny
• The Global Warming Myth
• Global Warming: A Chilling Perspective
• Strong Evidence Points to Earth's Proximity to Sun as Ice Age Trigger
• THE NEXT ICE AGE - NOW!
• Father of Climatology Throws Up at the Thought of Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth'
• IPCC Scientists Challenge Al Gore’s View of Global Warming Consensus
• Swedish Scientist Accuses UN's IPCC of Falsifying Data and Destroying Evidence
• CO2 Science
• Global Warming and Climate Forcing by Recent Albedo Changes on Mars
• Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics
• The Real 'Inconvenient Truth'
• New findings indicate today's greenhouse gas levels not unusual
• Climate Change: Incorrect information on pre-industrial CO2
• Global Warming as a Religion
• I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train (By David Evans)
• Global Warming: it's not caused by greenhouse gases says academic
• Still Waiting for Greenhouse
• GREENIE WATCH
• Why Global Warming Would be Good for You
• Global Warming Primer (PDF)
• Global Warming: An Official Pseudoscience
• Sun's Output Increasing in Possible Trend Fueling Global Warming
• Fiddler On The Roof
• Debating Global Warming
• Climate Resistance

Antarctic Temperature Trend 1982-2004:

This map (left) shows key areas of Antarctica, including the vast East Antarctic ice sheet. The image on the right shows which areas of the continent's ice are thickening (coloured yellow and red) and thinning (coloured blue). © (Left)British Antarctic Survey, (Right)Science

[slowhandluke]

I suspect the there’s more variability within the Sun than such wide and aperiodic shifts in Earth’s orbit.

Aperiodic? The orbit of the Earth is nothing if not periodic, and predictable. Wide shift? The wider the shift, the more impact, which would argue more for the perihelion effect than against it. Or are you arguing that the periods of the Earth orbit don't match the periods of the ice ages?

[cogitator]

1998 was ~ 3 degrees Centigrade cooler than the warmest parts of the Mediaeval Warm Period,

What are you basing that statement on? And I will note that I probably know what you're basing it on. I'll be curious to see if I'm right.

[cogitator]

Our current CO2 level is such that *doubling* the CO2 would IIRC increase the CO2 greenhouse effect by only 10%. All the quick wins for increased CO2 already happened - at the end of the last Ice Age.

A Saturated Gassy Argument is a long explanation of why the above is incorrect.

Similarly our current ice coverage is so situated (e.g. considering only the summer ice at/near sea-level, it’s only on bits that are at a high slant to the direction of insolation like Greenland or the Poles) that increased solar output isn’t going to make any more headway. Again all the quick wins on Albedo reduction (e.g. melting the ice across Europe) happened at the end of the last Ice Age.

That seems right to me. Because there's so much less ice now than during continental glaciations, albedo changes due to ice are not a major effect. Cloud reflection might be, though.

[slowhandluke]

Not in the Northern Hemisphere. Summer time is when the earth is farthest from the sun, while in Winter, we are closest to the sun. It's the tilt of the planet that causes us to be warm in the summer and cold in the winter.

I think the point is that what you say is true today, but wasn't true 12,000 years ago, and won't be true 12,000 years from now. 12,000 years in either direction, and the earth will be closest to the sun in the Northern Hemisphere summer.

The tilt of the earth can change, but I think it's on a much longer schedule than 24,000 years.

[Old Professer]

And this is all caused by CO2 changes.

[Old Professer]

So then you take it to mean that the end of result of the tipping point is that we will have seen our last Ice Age and now the planet is on an ever warming path to a time when we enter our first Steam Age?

[Old Professer]

It would be easier to convince people of that if there were as strong a temperature record for those parts of the globe outside the U.S. and if we could be convinced that what data does exist hasn’t already been run through the adjustment mill.

[cogitator]

So then you take it to mean that the end of result of the tipping point is that we will have seen our last Ice Age and now the planet is on an ever warming path to a time when we enter our first Steam Age?

May I speculate? Thanks...

Based on something Wally Broecker said ages ago, if every bit of fossil fuel was burned and the CO2 ended up in the atmosphere, it would take about 10,000 years or so to get back to equilibrium, as natural processes removed the excess CO2 from the atmosphere. The main way this happens is ocean absorption and neutralization by marine calcium carbonate. It takes that long because the marine calcium carbonate is on the bottom and the water with the excess CO2 absorbed from the atmosphere has to get down there.

Based on Milankovitch forcing, the next likely glacial period isn't due for another 30,000 years after that. So the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere won't be a factor. And because we are a wet planet, not Venus, I'm not worried about a runaway greenhouse.

But an enhanced greenhouse, the path we're on now, has potential problems in the short-term, which for me is from now until 2200. Those problems have been, and are being, discussed at length elsewhere.

[cogitator]

It would be easier to convince people of that if there were as strong a temperature record for those parts of the globe outside the U.S. and if we could be convinced that what data does exist hasn’t already been run through the adjustment mill.

There's also observations of what's changing environmentally and biospherically, of course, independent of actual temperature measurements. I actually think those have stronger resonance.

[Old Professer]

But those are far more subjective in my opinion because the issue has now become so politicized as to be polarizing as we see accusations of advocacy and denial being made from two camps entrenching rather than collaborating.

While this part is business as usual here where we have a divided body politic the whole issue is largely ignored in those areas where daily survival among many peoples of different faiths, origins and class is the overwheming crux of the expense of energy, both personal and governmental.

[dangus]

You’re comparison doesn’t work very well. The Northern Hemisphere may not be at full heat by June 22, but neither does it take until June 22 for the Earth to begin heating up. According to what you write, we may not yet be in the coldest part of an ice age, but it would be starting to cool off. If such cycles were SO slow to initiate, they would simply blend together.