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GLOBAL WARMING an hir series
Introduction Geologists
are historians: they look for buried clues about past eras with which to
reconstruct the story of the Earth. With patience, they examine accumulated layers
of sediments and then defend hypotheses about the kind of world that could
have produced such sediments. Those who reconstruct the evolving composition
of the atmosphere look to Antarctica for answers. Each time it snows
there, air bubbles are trapped, preserving information about the atmospheric
conditions of the time. Since nothing ever melts at such latitudes, by
drilling into the ice cap and extracting long ice cores, geologists can
reconstruct changes in the atmospheric conditions going back hundreds of
thousands of years. Not only can they reconstruct the various gas
concentrations of the atmosphere in different eras, but also the
temperatures, because these can be inferred from isotopes of certain gases
found in the air bubbles.[1] Matters can get blurry when geoscientists don’t have
sufficient detail. If one is making interpretations on the basis of broad
layers corresponding to blocks of hundreds of years, for example, this will
be too coarse for some purposes. It is much better to see in decadal
intervals. Even better: year by year. The gain in resolution is a bit like
looking at a mountain range from a distance and getting closer and closer in
your car. All sorts of things that were invisible when you were far away, or
that had blended into each other, become distinguishable as you approach.
Naturally, initial guesses about the objects of interest may be shown to be
false when you move in for a more intimate inspection. In the beginning, when Antarctic geologists first
studied the famous Vostok ice cores in order to
reconstruct (among other things) the history of planetary temperatures and
CO2 levels, their vision was blurry. Ian Plimer,
Australia’s most famous geologist, and a prominent skeptic of the man-made
(or ‘anthropogenic’) global warming hypothesis, explains: “The initial
analyses of the Vostok ice core used samples at
intervals of hundreds of years. The initial conclusions were that high CO2 in
the atmosphere led to high air temperatures.” Initially, in other words, geologists were looking
from ‘far away’—with “samples at intervals of hundreds of years”—so the
movements of CO2 and temperature blurred into each other and appeared to rise
and fall together. It was impossible to say with precision what was rising
first, whether CO2 or temperature. But the claim that humans are causing
global warming through CO2 production was already popular, so many people had
a bias to interpret this evidence as a confirmation of the anthropogenic
hypothesis’ most fundamental assumption: that higher atmospheric levels of
CO2 will cause higher planetary air temperatures. This is what the public was
told in a million news stories. But later, explains Plimer, “with far more
detailed measurements on the scale of decades... it was shown that
high air temperatures are followed some 400 to 1000 years later by a
high atmospheric CO2 content.1411, 1412 More recent work, using
argon isotopes in Antarctic ice cores of just one temperature rise, shows
that CO2 increased 200 to 800 years after that particular temperature
rise.1413 During the last 420,000 years there have been massive
temperature changes, and a rise in CO2 concentration follows air
temperature increase by about 800 years and it is only after a cooling
event that CO2 decreases. This is no surprise, as CO2 is more soluble in cold
water than warm water.”
[2] [my emphases] Plimer is
talking about a result known as the “CO2 lag” : in the geological record of
the Antarctic ice cores, going back 650,000 years, temperature invariably rises
first, and then, hundreds of years later rise the levels of CO2. Also,
when the planet cools, CO2 levels follow much later, sometimes more than a
thousand years later. Plimer’s
prose overflows with scientific references, which is why, halfway through his
book (this is only page 276 of 504) we are already on footnotes 1411, 1412,
and 1413. These refer us to the following studies: 1411
Fischer, H., Wahlen, M., Smith, J., Mastroianni, D., & Deck, B. (1999). Ice Core Records
of Atmospheric CO2 Around the Last Three Glacial Terminations. Science,
283, 1712 – 1714. 1412 Mudelsee, M. (2001).
The phase relations among atmospheric CO2 content, temperature and global ice
volume over the past 420 ka. Quaternary Science
Reviews, 20, 583-589. 1413 Caillon, N., Severinghaus, J., Jouzel, P., Barnola, J.-M., Kang, J., & Lipenkov,
V. Y. (2003). Timing of atmospheric C02 and Antarctic temperature changes
across Termination III. Science, 299, 1728-1731. The Fischer et al. (1999) from Science is
the paper we reproduced in full in the notes to Part 1. It was the first scientific study with sufficient
resolution to show which of the two variables of interest—temperature or
CO2—was rising first at the end of glacial periods, and it shows that
temperature rises first, and CO2
follows. The other two studies count as ‘replications’ of the same finding.
Here’s the question: Can CO2 be the cause of planetary temperatures if
it rises after increases and falls after decreases in planetary
temperatures? Obviously not. This result is about as fundamental a challenge
to the anthropogenic hypothesis as can be had. Why
isn’t the public aware of this? One reason has to do with the activities of
geoscientist Jeff Severinghaus. You will notice he
is the second author in the last of the three papers listed above, so he is
one of the scientists responsible for documenting the CO2 lag. Despite this, Severinghaus has written an opinion defending the view
that the CO2 lag does not matter; according to him, the IPCC is still right:
CO2 causes global warming. To the average journalist, Severinghaus’s
views on this point carry all the authority of a scientist responsible for
documenting the CO2 lag. If these journalists were inclined (or were told) to
defend the anthropogenic hypothesis, they will look no further than Severinghaus’ statements and quote them, because he is
the expert. Severinghaus’s arguments on this point
were published not in a scientific peer-reviewed publication but in a
high-profile blog called RealClimate, whose
announced purpose is to educate journalists about ‘global warming.’ As we demonstrated in Part 2, RealClimate achieves its
educational mission surpassingly well: such influential publications as Newsweek
and The Economist give RealClimate all sorts
of free publicity and defend it as a trustworthy source of information. And
so what the public learns is that Al Gore and the IPCC are right, never mind
the CO2 lag (assuming you were even aware of it). But as I showed in Part 1, Severinghaus’s RealClimate contribution flies in the face of the most
elementary logic. It is not merely through influential blogs that the
CO2 lag has been swept under the rug. Let us take a look at the scientific
journal Nature, more prestigious than any other, worldwide. If there is trouble here, there will be trouble elsewhere. ___________________________________________________________ What
happened to the peer-review process at Nature? As mentioned above, in the March 1999 issue of Science,
the Fischer et al. paper demolished the most fundamental
assumption of the anthropogenic hypothesis when it reported that important
changes in CO2 levels always follow the great temperature changes.
Just two months later—that is to say, with the publishing speed of
lightning—Nature showcased a paper by Petit et al. with the
following for final, concluding paragraph: “…As judged
from the Vostok record, the long, stable Holocene
is a unique feature of climate during the past 420 kyr
[420,000 years], with possibly profound implications for evolution and the
development of civilizations. Finally, CO2 and CH4 [methane] concentrations
are strongly correlated with Antarctic temperatures; this is because,
overall, our results support the idea that greenhouse gases have contributed
significantly to the glacial–interglacial change. This correlation, together
with the uniquely elevated concentrations of these gases today, is of
relevance with respect to the continuing debate on the future of Earth’s
climate.”[3] Now, the paper itself is perfectly illegible to
non-specialists. But the above conclusion, and especially the portion I
highlighted, is by comparison quite easy to follow. My hypothesis is that the
conclusion was carefully written so it could be quoted in support of the
anthropogenic hypothesis. I will therefore be taking a close look at this bit
of text (you may compare my analysis to that of CO2Science.) Let us begin with the first part of Petit et. al.’s conclusion. They tell us, first: “…As judged
from the Vostok record, the long, stable Holocene
is a unique feature of climate during the past 420 kyr
[420,000 years], with possibly profound implications for evolution and the
development of civilizations.” The Holocene (the geologic era that we are still
inhabiting) has indeed been climatically quite stable, and sure enough—not “possibly”
but definitely (and also quite obviously)—this has “profound implications for
evolution and the development of civilizations.” Why are the authors making
such a big fuss about this hardly novel point: that civilization developed
because the Holocene has been stable? Because of the subtle implication: to
preserve civilization we must protect the current climatic stability: climate change is the enemy of
civilization. Carefully omitted, however, is the point that Holocene stability has been warm
(one cannot easily preserve a civilization in an ice age, much less develop
one from scratch.) Why did the authors leave this out? Are they worried some
readers might wonder that perhaps a warm planet is not such a terrible thing?
What is certain is the effect of the omission on those readers: they
will gravitate to the thought that preserving Holocene stability means avoiding
heat, because Al Gore and the IPCC have already received a Nobel Peace
Prize for saying that the planet “has a fever.” Then they write: “Finally, [in
the Vostok ice-core record,] CO2... concentrations
are strongly correlated with Antarctic temperatures; this is because,
overall, our results support the idea that greenhouse gases have contributed
significantly to the glacial–interglacial change.” There are very serious problems with this sentence,
and they bear a close examination. It is true, as the authors write, that CO2 and
temperature are strongly correlated on the scale of hundreds of years.
However, when we take decades as our units of time, what do we find rising
first, CO2 or temperature? The temperature. But Petit et al. do not
mention this. Neither do they
mention it elsewhere in their (eminently quotable) concluding paragraph.
That is interesting, because any mention of the CO2 lag would render quite obviously false that “greenhouse gases have contributed significantly to
the glacial–interglacial change [i.e. planetary warmings].”
Is this why they left it out? Now let us pay close attention to the structure of
the above sentence—most crucially the location of the word “because.” Petit et
al. are saying that CO2 is strongly correlated with temperature
because “our results support the
[CO2-drives-temperature] idea” or hypothesis. This is exactly upside down. In
science, the correctness of a hypothesis cannot produce a fact of nature;
rather, a fact of nature may support or falsify a hypothesis. To say that a
presumed fact of nature is ‘correct’ because it agrees with a hypothesis is ideology.
So the structure of the prose is quite revealing. The ideology in question is obvious from the last
line of their concluding paragraph: “This
correlation, together with the uniquely elevated concentrations of these gases
today, is of relevance with respect to the continuing debate on the future of
Earth’s climate.” My translation: Since Al Gore and the IPCC are
right about CO2 and temperature, we are best advised to follow their policy
recommendations. The most elementary peer review, let alone the
famously savage peer-review practiced at Nature, should have
eliminated—long before press time—a concluding paragraph so riddled with
illogic and bias as we have examined above. Models
But on what basis do Petit et al. assert that
CO2 has anything to do with raising the planetary temperature? Buried in
their paper is the following passage: “Results from
various climate simulations make it reasonable to assume
that greenhouse gases have, at a global scale, contributed significantly
(possibly about half, that is, 2–3ºC) to the globally averaged
glacial–interglacial temperature change.” So it is not the Vostok
evidence, take note, that in any way supports their view that CO2 drives
temperature. It is the computer models. IPCC scientists have produced models where the
simulated CO2 makes the simulated Earth’s temperature rise in the computer,
so Petit et al. conclude it is “reasonable to assume” that this is
also what happens in the real world. This was also Jeff Severinghaus’s
argument when he defended the anthropogenic hypothesis from the ice core
embarrassment (Part 1). But as pointed out in Part 1, CO2 makes temperature rise in the computer models
because of the assumptions the programmers make. So what Petit et
al. are saying is basically this: It is
reasonable to assume that CO2 drives temperature because we have assumed that
CO2 drives temperature. More colloquially: Al Gore and the IPCC are right
because they are right. That’s called tautology or ‘circular reasoning.’ Why can’t the peer-review process at Nature catch
such famously elementary errors of logic?
Now let us consider an obvious question: Did Petit et
al. have anything to say about the Fischer et al., which
only two months earlier had shown in Science that CO2 always lags
temperature? Yes. Buried in a paragraph elsewhere in the paper, they (quite
hurriedly) commented as follows: “In a recent
paper, Fischer et al. present a CO2 record, from Vostok
core, spanning the past three glacial terminations. They conclude that CO2
concentration increases lagged Antarctic warmings
by 600 ± 400 years. However, considering the large gas-age/ice-age
uncertainty (1,000 years, or even more if we consider the accumulation-rate
uncertainty), we feel that it is premature to infer the sign of the phase
relationship between CO2 and temperature at the start of terminations.” A translation of the main message would be as
follows: Fischer et al. conclude that CO2 lags temperature every single
time, but there is “uncertainty,” and so they might be wrong. Of course, anybody could be wrong. Petit et al.
could also be wrong. So could Al Gore. So could the IPCC. The point remains,
however, that when Petit et al. published their paper, the only study
with sufficient resolution to determine whether CO2 or temperature rose first
concluded that at glacial terminations temperature always rises first.
And this contradicts the CO2-drives-temperature hypothesis. Since this was
the state of the art when Petit et al. published their paper, it was
dishonest for them to conclude as though Al Gore and the IPCC were necessarily
right because Fischer et al. might be wrong! The laziest
peer-review process should have caught this on first inspection. Now, but what specific arguments are Petit et al.
putting forth to say that Fischer et al. might be wrong? They point to
“the large gas-age/ice-age uncertainty (1,000 years, or even more if we
consider the accumulation-rate uncertainty).” Since this uncertainty is so
large, they say, it is “premature” to conclude that CO2 lags temperature. What is the “gas-age/ice-age uncertainty,” also
known as the gas-age/ice-age difference? Imagine snow falling on the surface of the Antarctic
on 8 August 2010. As it falls, it traps air, right? Not quite. Or not yet.
Air will not be trapped until a lot more snow falls on top,
because the snowflakes are not initially sufficiently compressed to prevent
air circulation. Once there is enough weight above, then this
particular spot closes. So ice that fell in the form of snowflakes on 8
August 2010 will end up trapping air from a later date, because air
circulation continues for a while. So, in general, air in the Antarctic ice
cores is trapped in ice that is older. How much older depends on a number of
things (it may be hundreds of years older).[4] This raises problems for our efforts to date
precisely events such as the onset and termination of glaciations. But is this a problem for deciding
whether temperature rises before or after CO2? It cannot see
how. You see, both the temperatures and the concentrations of
CO2 are estimated from the air bubbles, not from the ice. As far as I
can tell, it makes no difference to the CO2-lag result if someone eliminates
the gas-age/ice-age uncertainty. Fischer et al. made a
reference in their paper to this very point: “The dating uncertainty (on the order of 10,000 years for termination
III) is considerable; however, the absolute time scale is not so important as
long as we consistently compare Vostok CO2 with the
Vostok isotope temperature record.” In other words, our inability to determine how many
years ago, exactly, a given ice age ended does not affect our ability to
determine whether, at this termination, the CO2 or the temperature rises
first. For this problem, the “absolute time scale” is irrelevant, and we need
merely to “compare Vostok CO2 with the Vostok isotope temperature record,” both of them inferred
from the air bubbles, not the ice. Shouldn’t this be obvious? What has happened to the peer-review process at Nature? Why can’t the world’s premier science journal
identify and reject so many elementary problems of reasoning when the topic
is evidence relevant to the IPCC’s CO2-drives-temperature hypothesis? And why
do Petit et al commit such errors of reasoning in the first
place? Here is one hypothesis: as we saw in Part 2, scientists may be tempted to toe the
Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change’s (the IPCC’s) line, because then
they receive 2,632 times more money from the governments organized in
the IPCC than do skeptics. And climate science is expensive.
In the year 2003, J.-M. Barnola,
D. Raynaud, C. Lorius, and N.I. Barkov,
all of them co-authors of the Petit et al. (1999) in Nature,
authored a report where they state the following: “at the
beginning of the deglaciations, the CO2 increase
either was in phase or lagged by less than ~1000 years with respect to the Antarctic
temperature, whereas it clearly lagged behind the temperature at the onset of
the glaciations.”[7] Translation: In periods of global warming, CO2
either travels together with temperature or else lags behind temperature,
and in periods of global cooling, CO2 always lags behind temperature. These co-authors of Petit are no longer comfortable
saying that Fischer et al. might be wrong: in 2003 they now agreed
that CO2 never rises before the temperature. Apparently they tried to
soften the lag by stating that in periods of global warming sometimes CO2 and
temperature are “in phase” (i.e. they rise together). Even should we grant
this—that sometimes CO2 and temperature rise at the same time—this
still means that CO2 never causes temperature increases (because that
would require that CO2 rise first). So Jean-Robert Petit’s
co-authors are now agreeing that the Antarctic ice core record contradicts
the CO2-drives-temperature hypothesis (the Al Gore/IPCC hypothesis). Why haven’t you seen this on the front page of the New
York Times? ___________________________________________________________ Petit
unrepentant In February 2007, Science Watch interviewed
Dr. Jean-Robert Petit, first author of the 1999 paper in Nature, about
that very paper. The magazine begins by explaining that “According to
Essential Science Indicators, this paper has been cited 967 times to date,”
which is truly astronomical, “and is currently ranked at #3 among Geosciences
papers published in the past decade.” So the Petit et al. has done
well, and in so doing has benefited the Al Gore/IPCC juggernaut, despite the
quiet about-face of some of its authors (examined above). Here follows an excerpt of the interview with Petit: [Quote from
the Science Watch interview begins here] What was the
significance of this [Nature 1999] paper for your field? PETIT:
...the greenhouse gases, by capturing the infrared waves emitted by earth,
prevent cooling and will play the role of amplifier in the climate system.
...CO2 is an important actor in the climate system. In this paper,
one of your concluding remarks is that "Present-day atmospheric burdens
of these two important greenhouse gases [carbon dioxide and methane] seem to
have been unprecedented during the past 420,000 years." Would you please
elaborate on the implications of this statement? PETIT:
With industrial development and anthropologic activity, massive burning of
fossil carbon as well as intensification of agriculture released exponential
amounts of CO2 and CH4 over the last 150 years. Present atmospheric
composition well surpasses all maximum concentrations from the ice records
over the last 420 kyrs (30% more CO2, 300% more
CH4). This makes a
permanent atmospheric cover over the globe which prevents the natural cooling
of the earth’s surface and making it so the heat is always "on." A
new climate equilibrium is expected but we have no analog from the past
climate (except maybe at the time of the dinosaurs!). This raises questions
for the future climate and the consequences.[8] [Quote from
the Science Watch interview ends here] What Jean-Robert Petit says in this interview is simply
amazing. His research has in no way, shape, or form—least of all the Petit et
al. (1999) paper in Nature—supported
the view that “greenhouse gases” are an important “amplifier in the climate
system” and “prevents the natural cooling of the earth’s surface and making
it so the heat is always ‘on.’ ” If any such claim had a chance of being
true, then we should see in the Vostok data that
temperature levels go down after the CO2 levels decrease. What in fact
happens is that CO2 levels fall centuries after the temperatures.
It is precisely because Jean-Robert Petit’s research has not contributed one iota of evidence
to support the CO2-drives-temperature hypothesis that in his 1999 paper, the
one cited 967 times, his reason for claiming that CO2 acts as an amplifier
was not the Vostok evidence he was reporting but
the IPCC computer models, as shown earlier. These computer simulations have
absolutely nothing to do with Petit’s research,
which is empirical research on the Vostok ice
cores. And the simulations are hypotheses,
so they can only be correct if data about our real world—such as the Vostok ice core evidence—support them. The Vostok data refute the simulations.
___________________________________________________________ Footnotes
and Further Reading [1] Caillon, N., Severinghaus,
J. P., Barnola, J.-M., Chapellaz,
J. J., & Parrenin, F. (2001). Estimation of temparature change and of gas age-ice age difference, 108
kyr B.P., at Vostok, Antartica. Journal of Geophysical Research, 106,
31,893-31,901. [2] Plimer,
I. (2009). Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science. New
York: Taylor Trade Publishing. (p. ¿?) [3] Petit, J. R., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Barkov,
N. I., Barnola, J.-M., Basile,
I., Bender, M., Chappellaz, J., Davisk,
M., Delaygue, G., Delmotte,
M., Kotlyakov, V. M., Legrand,
M., Lipenkov, V. Y., Lorius,
C., Pépin, L., Ritz, C., Saltzmank,
E., & Stievenard, M. (1999). Climate and
atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok
ice core, Antarctica. Nature, 399, 429-436. [4] Ice core |
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [ Consulted 8 August 2010] “The surface layer is snow in various forms, with air
gaps between snowflakes. As snow continues to accumulate, the buried snow is
compressed and forms firn, a grainy material with a
texture similar to granulated sugar. Air gaps remain, and some circulation of
air continues. As snow accumulates above, the firn
continues to densify, and at some point the pores
close off and the air is trapped. Because the air continues to circulate
until then, the ice age and the age of the gas enclosed are not the same, and
may differ by hundreds of years.” [7] Barnola,
J.-M., Raynaud, D., Lorius, C., & Barkov, N. I. (2003). Historical CO2 record from the Vostok ice core. In Trends: A Compendium of Data on
Global Change: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A. [8] http://in-cites.com/papers/Jean-RobertPetit.html |
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