Ashley, my Nobel Prize nomination is not for recognizing albedo effects, which was nothing new at all, but the very rapid transition for one state to the other due to the burial of plants by snow, and the reflection from ice [on land and sea] and clouds.
Also for recognizing that Earth is NOT in an analogue of homeostasis, but is on a one way trip from hot and molten to cold, crystallized and frozen, with the ecosystem stripping carbon out of the ecosphere and permanently burying it as limestone, coal, oil/bitumens/shale and gas as just one aspect of that freezing and crystallisation process. DNA is just another crystal, albeit of a complex form.
<no one is currently presenting evidence that the earth's climate is cooling. >
The transition in the million year average is slow over eons, and from any one decade to another, or one century to the other, the change is infinitesimal and far outweighed by the huge variations in transient climate states, just like the stock market long run average is increasing in price, but viewed over a 3 year period or even 10 year period, the variation both up and down is enormous.
What seems to be a steady state in the stock market, with balancing feedback mechanisms, is not just variation around a median/average - there is a teleological trend resulting from the devaluation of fiat currencies. In the long run, stock markets increase in nominal value. Similarly, in the long run, Earth is cooling.
In the same way that measuring brain cancer from superposition of background near-ionizing radiation and the low energy microwaves from cyberphones, it takes a lot of data to find the effect of global cooling or warming. A quick look at 100 or even 1000 brain cancer patients won't show the effect.
Global cooling and global warming proponents are both looking for small detail in a naturally widely varying data base.
I don't think the ice-bergs around NZ show global cooling. But they are certainly coincident with a very chilly local condition over the past 6 months and especially the bleak previous 3 months. I suspect they are nothing more than coincidental with a major glacial float off and break up, which obviously goes on always as the snow accumulating in Antarctica slides along in vast glacial flows across the continent, oozing off into surrounding oceans. It can't just permanently get deeper - ice flows downhill. But it's fun to blame the ice-bergs on the incipient ice age, in the same way that everything untoward is normally blamed on The Greenhouse Effect. Got warts? It's the greenhouse effect. Hot somewhere? It's the greenhouse effect. Flood somewhere? It's the greenhouse effect. Ice-berg somewhere? It's the greenhouse effect. Putting on weight? It's the greenhouse effect.
As you say, from looking at the graph of CO2 you linked, it looks like a straight line heading up, [ignoring seasonal variation]. But at least it's not accelerating, even though fossil fuel production continues to increase, which shows that when peak oil is reached, [or peak carbon production], then CO2 levels will drop. I can't recall where I saw graphs with a rounding top.
What's interesting about the seasonal variation, is the increase in volatility of CO2 levels. Which means when CO2 levels are dropping, there's a lot more CO2 being stripped out than in earlier decades, also, when it increases, it increases further than in earlier decades. Which means there's more gobbling of CO2 going on during plant growth, which bears out my theory that overall [exceptions of nutrition limitation aside] plants like to eat more if it's available.
When there was less CO2 in the atmosphere, plants had to work harder to get some so the drop in CO2 levels during the growing season was less than now. Or maybe there is a lot more green on Earth. Given the purported increasing desertification, that's surprising.
Interesting for you to have spent quite a lot of time with David Keeling.
Nice that we have another point of agreement here:
<I'm not saying that an iceage isn't a concern. Anytime you disturb an unstable dynamic system, you can't be sure where the new equilibrium will lie. > Looking at the historical record, the greater risk was the continuation of the ice age. Supposedly, [according to both you and me] we have reduced the prospect of another ice-up. But we can't be sure that's the result of increased CO2 from burning carbon. Even though we all seem to agree that's what should happen. Maybe increased CO2 will counter-intuitively cause global cooling [and I don't mean just the Gulf Stream coming to a halt].
There doesn't seem to have ever been equilibrium, just periods of more or less rapid change, with broad trends at various times. <you can't be sure where the new equilibrium will lie. >
Mqurice |
