Mostly agree with you, Mike. One aspect which should be pointed out is that ice core studies show increases in atmospheric CO2 follows global warning. In other words, warming causes increased CO2, ( not the other way as the alarmist would have us believe). Sun & galactic cycles have the utmost effect on our planet for warming & cooling. Variations in CO2 are, predominantly, a result of these. BTW, nice to meet you & your family last weekend.
There’s a lot of politics involved in marketting that’s for certain. There’s also a whole litany of shenanigans surrounding Mann and his refusal to release the underlying data.
I grew tired of Disney manufactured boy bands in sustainability long long ago. We need useful data more than media and bot created informational noise in these changing times?
if history books tell us the Mediterranean Sea froze over in 860 and again in 1234 maybe other times why have the Global Warning media not "warned" us of "normal" bad weather we might be facing coming back around and we might prepare for?
Underlying it all is a suble issue I can't quite shake. If I could only select one variable to control most of human acitivity, could I chose something better than CO2?
This is a great piece. I cannot speak for the data but I trust the author :).
Pretty remarkable stuff which suggests that climate change may be less “our fault” than we realize. It doesn’t change my general thesis that, to the extent possible, we should be looking to move past fossil fuel energy sources.
But again, we are already doing this: With each “energy revolution” from wood, to coal, to oil, to natural gas, we 1) Improve the efficiency of energy utilization and 2) Reduce pollutants (including CO2) for a given unit of energy.
The data is solid. I’ve been poking at this argument for over a decade because I found it compelling but hte more I poked, the more crazy rates of change I found elsewhere.
Humans do have a history of constantly becoming more efficient. When you look at crop yields, land utilization, and housing density for a couple non fuel related things you see incredible efficiency improvements. Energy is just one more.
I felt the argument about rates was solid until I ran into the Younger Dryas period at the end of the last iceage. The Comet Impact hypothesis notwithstanding, something crazy happened at the end of the last ice age. Then the more I dug the more oscillations I found.
The thing I still can’t reconcile at all is that plantlife is optimized for 1200ppm of CO2 and at 250ppm they go into starvation mode. We just crossed 400ppm or 1/3 of their optimized rate and only 150 above starvation and plant death.
If we are focusing on the petroleum industry, it would be nice to discuss toxins released into the environment — mercury, arsenic, cadmium, sulfur, aromatic hydrocarbons — and the damage to plant and animal life.
That's certainly a topic to discuss but, alas, out of scope for this essay. There's just too many layers to poke at. I'm really curious to compare those compounds in fossil fuel compared to natural emissions from things like volcanos. For instance, volcanoes emit ozone depleting chemicals in a large volume, much more than the brief history of human CFCs for example.
What I'm showing is that the warming isn't very quick when you consider the FO event cycles as described.
Your fact check also agrees with the essay where is states
"This modern temperature reconstruction, combined with observational records over the past century, shows that current temperatures in Greenland are warmer than any period in the past 2,000 years. That said, they are likely still cooler than during the early part of the current geological epoch – the Holocene – which started around 11,000 years ago"
If you only look for the past 2k years as I also quoted in the essay, you see almost half a dozen ups and downs.
So there really isn't a quick change and the change we do have is still significantly cooler than much of the past and your link supports that finding.
The second to last graph ("Greenland temperatures over the past 12,000 years with observations and future climate model projections at the locations of the ice cores") doesn't convince me that Greenland sees / will see a magnitude of change that has existed before in the last millennia...
Maybe more importantly though:
we're still looking at Greenland only, not a global average...
You'll never find a global average in history because the proxies aren't in the tropics. The bigger issue is that you currently don't have a global average now. Anything that tries to average a massive and dynamic system with seasonal varriation, volcanoes, and more will never work right. Right now they use models based on their own regional proxy data and extrapolate those models world wide.
Worse, showing an increase based observed temperature is always going to be off because of the encroachment on the urban heat island effect and the subsequent elimination of rural measurement stations forced a false warming into the mix. Our current global average of rife with mismeasurment
Here's one on the challenges with global measurements:
Based on my reading on this topic, I agree that the current changes have happened several times and will happen again. I believe we are moving into the same phase, and there will be consequences if we do not adapt and figure out ways to reduce the factors causing this change. However, no single factor (such as greenhouse gases) causes this change; there are always more than a few things in a complex system, such as nature, and trying to control only a few factors may create a new situation or unintended consequences.
However, reducing the greenhouse gases in the environment may not be wrong, but the solutions may create unintended consequences, which may or may not be seen for decades. A complex problem like climate change necessitates a multifaceted approach. We also need to invest in research and technology to better understand the potential ramifications of our actions. World politics will play a massive role in where we go from here and demand international collaboration and political will to implement sustainable solutions.
The book on this topic is “Under a White Sky” (https://tinyurl.com/2bdh86c3). It discusses our past intervention to control nature and its unintended consequences. The last chapter discusses some of the ideas discussed to reduce global warming.
Agree and I'll have to check out that book. I'm still not convinced warming and increased CO2 is bad if we are willing to adapt. From a while earth perspective it seems to thrive better when it's warmer.
We just don't like change because it requires us to change and shows how silly things like geopolitical boundaries are.
I also think CO2 is bad and needs to be reduced. However, as I said, we should not focus only on one factor and create a new situation with our solutions.
You are correct. Change is hard in every aspect of work and life as it forces us to do things differently, which is not what we want. However, we will change if there is no other way out, as we have previously done.
CO2 is a weird one because plant life is optimized for 1200ppm of CO2. Plants go into starvation mode at 250ppm. We are just over 400ppm right now so closer to plant starvation than plant optimization.
For whole planet health, 1200 ppm seems like the optimal level and has been the average level for as long as plants have been around.
That was a great read. I'm still wondering why plant life is optimized for 1200ppm of CO2 and we think we need to sequester it.
We've got a brain lock that low CO2 and Temperature are good for the planet when it really might not be true. I explored these two in more detail here:
My opinion is the math should include sub-sea volcanoes, because we don't see or measure (we guess), with vast majority of meaningful vulcanism emissions to the water vs air?
Our models are terrible at that measurement and we often conflate that as ‘natural.’ and somehow the emissions of humans as ‘unnatural.’ Which then begs the question, if we aren’t natural, does that make us supernatural?
Our models do a poor job with water cycles, we should maybe take that as a hint of model utility in the real world vs SimCity sustainability and energy theory?
Mostly agree with you, Mike. One aspect which should be pointed out is that ice core studies show increases in atmospheric CO2 follows global warning. In other words, warming causes increased CO2, ( not the other way as the alarmist would have us believe). Sun & galactic cycles have the utmost effect on our planet for warming & cooling. Variations in CO2 are, predominantly, a result of these. BTW, nice to meet you & your family last weekend.
I have seen that and it makes sense. CO2 is actually a terrible greenhouse gas.
I thought Hamaker published the hockey stick viz in 1982, somewhat earlier than Mann? Why did media give Mann credit?
https://soilandhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/01aglibrary/010146tsoc.pdf
There’s a lot of politics involved in marketting that’s for certain. There’s also a whole litany of shenanigans surrounding Mann and his refusal to release the underlying data.
I grew tired of Disney manufactured boy bands in sustainability long long ago. We need useful data more than media and bot created informational noise in these changing times?
100% agree. The one that drives me nuts is the idea o f97% consensus.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/10/climate-change-no-its-not-97-percent-consensus-ian-tuttle/
if history books tell us the Mediterranean Sea froze over in 860 and again in 1234 maybe other times why have the Global Warning media not "warned" us of "normal" bad weather we might be facing coming back around and we might prepare for?
Underlying it all is a suble issue I can't quite shake. If I could only select one variable to control most of human acitivity, could I chose something better than CO2?
absent CO2 the Earth has no metabolism, so good place to tax life at the basics.
This is a great piece. I cannot speak for the data but I trust the author :).
Pretty remarkable stuff which suggests that climate change may be less “our fault” than we realize. It doesn’t change my general thesis that, to the extent possible, we should be looking to move past fossil fuel energy sources.
But again, we are already doing this: With each “energy revolution” from wood, to coal, to oil, to natural gas, we 1) Improve the efficiency of energy utilization and 2) Reduce pollutants (including CO2) for a given unit of energy.
The data is solid. I’ve been poking at this argument for over a decade because I found it compelling but hte more I poked, the more crazy rates of change I found elsewhere.
Humans do have a history of constantly becoming more efficient. When you look at crop yields, land utilization, and housing density for a couple non fuel related things you see incredible efficiency improvements. Energy is just one more.
These rates of change is indeed crazy. I don't know why I haven't heard of this until now.
I felt the argument about rates was solid until I ran into the Younger Dryas period at the end of the last iceage. The Comet Impact hypothesis notwithstanding, something crazy happened at the end of the last ice age. Then the more I dug the more oscillations I found.
The thing I still can’t reconcile at all is that plantlife is optimized for 1200ppm of CO2 and at 250ppm they go into starvation mode. We just crossed 400ppm or 1/3 of their optimized rate and only 150 above starvation and plant death.
That's really weird...
If we are focusing on the petroleum industry, it would be nice to discuss toxins released into the environment — mercury, arsenic, cadmium, sulfur, aromatic hydrocarbons — and the damage to plant and animal life.
That's certainly a topic to discuss but, alas, out of scope for this essay. There's just too many layers to poke at. I'm really curious to compare those compounds in fossil fuel compared to natural emissions from things like volcanos. For instance, volcanoes emit ozone depleting chemicals in a large volume, much more than the brief history of human CFCs for example.
https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2017/08/how-future-volcanic-eruptions-will-impact-earths-ozone-layer
Nice article. Thanks for sharing!
Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the feedsback.
Are you saying the quick _global_ change is normal, because it happened in Greenland before?
I now looked into this a little bit and apparently, the referenced charts are not even correct in the first place: https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-what-greenland-ice-cores-say-about-past-and-present-climate-change/
What I'm showing is that the warming isn't very quick when you consider the FO event cycles as described.
Your fact check also agrees with the essay where is states
"This modern temperature reconstruction, combined with observational records over the past century, shows that current temperatures in Greenland are warmer than any period in the past 2,000 years. That said, they are likely still cooler than during the early part of the current geological epoch – the Holocene – which started around 11,000 years ago"
If you only look for the past 2k years as I also quoted in the essay, you see almost half a dozen ups and downs.
So there really isn't a quick change and the change we do have is still significantly cooler than much of the past and your link supports that finding.
The second to last graph ("Greenland temperatures over the past 12,000 years with observations and future climate model projections at the locations of the ice cores") doesn't convince me that Greenland sees / will see a magnitude of change that has existed before in the last millennia...
Maybe more importantly though:
we're still looking at Greenland only, not a global average...
You'll never find a global average in history because the proxies aren't in the tropics. The bigger issue is that you currently don't have a global average now. Anything that tries to average a massive and dynamic system with seasonal varriation, volcanoes, and more will never work right. Right now they use models based on their own regional proxy data and extrapolate those models world wide.
Worse, showing an increase based observed temperature is always going to be off because of the encroachment on the urban heat island effect and the subsequent elimination of rural measurement stations forced a false warming into the mix. Our current global average of rife with mismeasurment
Here's one on the challenges with global measurements:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/climate-models-local-climate/
Based on my reading on this topic, I agree that the current changes have happened several times and will happen again. I believe we are moving into the same phase, and there will be consequences if we do not adapt and figure out ways to reduce the factors causing this change. However, no single factor (such as greenhouse gases) causes this change; there are always more than a few things in a complex system, such as nature, and trying to control only a few factors may create a new situation or unintended consequences.
However, reducing the greenhouse gases in the environment may not be wrong, but the solutions may create unintended consequences, which may or may not be seen for decades. A complex problem like climate change necessitates a multifaceted approach. We also need to invest in research and technology to better understand the potential ramifications of our actions. World politics will play a massive role in where we go from here and demand international collaboration and political will to implement sustainable solutions.
The book on this topic is “Under a White Sky” (https://tinyurl.com/2bdh86c3). It discusses our past intervention to control nature and its unintended consequences. The last chapter discusses some of the ideas discussed to reduce global warming.
Agree and I'll have to check out that book. I'm still not convinced warming and increased CO2 is bad if we are willing to adapt. From a while earth perspective it seems to thrive better when it's warmer.
We just don't like change because it requires us to change and shows how silly things like geopolitical boundaries are.
I also think CO2 is bad and needs to be reduced. However, as I said, we should not focus only on one factor and create a new situation with our solutions.
You are correct. Change is hard in every aspect of work and life as it forces us to do things differently, which is not what we want. However, we will change if there is no other way out, as we have previously done.
CO2 is a weird one because plant life is optimized for 1200ppm of CO2. Plants go into starvation mode at 250ppm. We are just over 400ppm right now so closer to plant starvation than plant optimization.
For whole planet health, 1200 ppm seems like the optimal level and has been the average level for as long as plants have been around.
Have you read the article below?
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/olivine-weathering/
That was a great read. I'm still wondering why plant life is optimized for 1200ppm of CO2 and we think we need to sequester it.
We've got a brain lock that low CO2 and Temperature are good for the planet when it really might not be true. I explored these two in more detail here:
https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/the-climate-is-changing
My opinion is the math should include sub-sea volcanoes, because we don't see or measure (we guess), with vast majority of meaningful vulcanism emissions to the water vs air?
Our models are terrible at that measurement and we often conflate that as ‘natural.’ and somehow the emissions of humans as ‘unnatural.’ Which then begs the question, if we aren’t natural, does that make us supernatural?
https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/are-humans-natural-or-supernatural
Our models do a poor job with water cycles, we should maybe take that as a hint of model utility in the real world vs SimCity sustainability and energy theory?