Category Archives: Ice cores

The Ice Age’s combined horrors – intense cold, permanent drought and CO2 starvation

Posted on July 14, 2017 | Leave a comment

The New York Magazine posted, “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells. Some observers think that this posting is so bizarre that it must be a parody; meant to be something like a posting on the ONION.

I have been planning to discuss some information about CO2. When I read Part V of Mr. Wallace-Wells essay subtitled “Unbreathable Air”, I had to make it part of the discussion to illustrate why some consider the New York Magazine’s posting is a parody. Wallace-Wells notes:

“Our lungs need oxygen, but that is only a fraction of what we breathe. The fraction of carbon dioxide is growing: It just crossed 400 parts per million, and high-end estimates extrapolating from current trends suggest it will hit 1,000 ppm by 2100. At that concentration, compared to the air we breathe now, human cognitive ability declines by 21 percent.

Where is he getting his information? Let’s look at what experts have to say about CO2 .

CO2 is an asphyxiant gas and not classified as toxic or harmful. The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienist say that the TLV is 5,000 ppm. The Threshold Limit Value (TLV) is the level which a worker can be exposed to day after day for a lifetime without adverse effects. Concentrations up to 1% (10,000 ppm), will make some people feel drowsy according to some sources. Levels of 70,000 to 100,000 may cause suffocation. So, Wallace-Wells’ value of 1000ppm is truly a laughable statement. Perhaps anyone who reads the “Uninhabitable Earth” will experience a cognitive decline of 21%.

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Will The Global Temperature Begin To Cool Down In The Near Future?

Posted on May 22, 2017 | Leave a comment

The numbers of scientist predicting a drop in global temperature are becoming a large group— ready to challenge the mythical 97%. This blog has posted some of the predictions. The postings have demonstrated that there is not total unanimity as to reason why the temperature will drop. Maybe it is a combination of different things. That is refreshing in light of the warmer’s one size fits all theory that CO2 is essentially raising or will raise global temperature all by itself.

First some discussion that suggests that CO2 is not what the warmers claim.

The warmer’s theory says that atmospheric CO2 molecules intercept low-frequency IR waves radiated from Earth on their way back into space. The exchange warms the atmosphere a little and this causes water to evaporate and move into the atmosphere. Water vapor is a much more significant “greenhouse gas” than CO2. They say that the result is a 3 fold increase in temperature as a result. This is their so-called “climate sensitivity”. This is part of the GIGO that is put into the climate models that the warmers use to predict catastrophic in the future. Let us look and see how well this has turned out for them in the real world versus the computer world.

The chart above was made in June 2013 so it is a little out of date. Next chart will be the latest update.

The important things to know are the following

All those little hair-like lines represent the output from one of the 73 warmer computers. They are all over the place.
The heavy black line aggregates all of the 73 outputs into a single line which represents the “official forecast”.
The blue squares are the actual recorded global temperatures as measured by satellites.
The actual temperature as measured by the weather balloons are shown as black dots.
The balloons and the satellites essentially confirm each other and they are, again, actual measurements.
Every 4 or 5 years, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gathers and produces an analysis of the state of the climate. They then issue a technical report and a summary that is primarily for the politicians of the world. One of the features of the IPCC report is how confident they are that their predictions are spot on.
The red arrows show their level of confidence, at the time of the report, as to how sure they are that the forecasts are correct.
The first report said that they were “confident”. As each new report was issued, they got more confident of their forecasts. The last one being 95% certain. This is all happening as the spread between their forecast temperature readings and the actual temperature readings continued to diverge.

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Climate Hustle – The Movie

Posted on May 4, 2016 | Leave a comment

The new movie produced by Marc Morano, “Climate Hustle” was in theaters on May 2 all over the country. The movie shows the skeptics side of the argument about CO2 and global warming, aka Climate Change. Many notable skeptics are in the cast.

The target audience, as I see it, was for the relatively low information people that get their global warming news from the main stream media. If you are into this topic daily or often, most of it will be review. I think Morano did a very good job in assembling the topics and the players. So I recommend it. If there was something I would like to see expanded was the part where warmer predictions were examined. About 10 predictions were discussed briefly. I would like to have seen more emphasis.

As part of the film and as an “extra” was a panel that discussed current issues especially those of the current attempt to criminalize discussion of skeptic views. Bill Nye is feature in it and comes off looking pretty small minded. The panel moderator was Brett Bozell and the panel consisted of Sarah Palin, David Legates and Marc Morano. David Legates stood out.

Looking at Morano’s blog, “Climate Depot”, the attendance was good, nation-wide. I went over to Delaware and my estimate was that about 50 people were in the theater.

This was a one night showing and I am not sure what the plans are for this movie. It may see a general release or perhaps be available in places like Netflix.

cbdakota

Ice Cores and Global Climate Part 3–CO2 Follows Temperature

Posted on February 22, 2016 | 2 comments

The previous posting showed that the temperatures in the past have exceeded the current temperature rise giving lie to the assertion that the year 2015 was the hottest year ever.

A cursory examination indicates that the warmers do not dispute the temperature records derived from the ice cores. But looking at the relationship of carbon dioxide (CO2) and temperature rise and fall as indicated by the ice core record, some warmers do not agree with the idea that CO2 follows temperature rise and fall rather than leads. First a look at graphical representations of the ice core data:

To understand this chart, remember, time flow to the right from the past to the present. When examining the blue, temperature, and the red, CO2, the line to the right is later. For example, look at the blue and the red line beginning about 140,000 years ago. The red line is very close to the blue line but it is to the right of the blue line meaning that it is lagging the rise in temperature shown by the blue line. The difference is more apparent if you click on the chart to enlarge it. Note that the thickness of a line on this chart may be the equivalent of 1,000years. The creators of this chart meant to show the CO2 lagging the temperature because that is what their data told them.

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Posted in AGW, Antartica, Climate Alarmism, CO2, glaciers, Greenland, Ice cores, Interglacial periods

Ice Cores and Global Climate Part 2. Are Current Temperatures Highest Ever?

Posted on February 20, 2016 | 5 comments

As discussed in the previous posting, examination of ice cores can provide high quality data about the Earth’s climate from thousands of years in the past. Antarctica’s ice cores cannot be surpassed for the longest age records. Let us look once again at the Vostok ice core drilling. (Click on all the charts to enlarge.)

This illustration reverses the direction of time flow from that of the previous posting’s chart. It does expand the data from about 120,000 years ago to the present.

The chart blue line is the ice core temperature data referenced to the global temperature. The flat red line is the average of global annual temperature means for the period 1998 to 2008. This provides a reference with which to compare the past temperatures. And lastly, the green is the annual mean temperature for 2008. Several things are obvious. First, recent temperatures are not as warm as previous temperatures at their peak. Second, the globe began to exit the last glacial period about 15,000 years ago, and the temperature increased fairly rapidly (of course rapidly on this chart may be several thousand of years). It is not possible to attribute this rise nor really any other rise shown on this chart to something that man has done. The current period has been relatively stable.

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Posted in AGW, Antartica, Climate Alarmism, CO2, glaciers, Global Temperatures, Greenland, Ice cores, Interglacial periods, IPCC, The Pause

Ice Cores And What They Tell Us About Global Climate

Posted on February 18, 2016 | 2 comments

Ice cores provide information about the climate in the past and this allows us to compare it with the current climate to determine how it stacks up. While some of the readers may know a lot about ice cores, this posting provides general knowledge for those of you that are not so familiar with ice cores. The next posting will discuss the results of the information gather at two sites in the Antarctic.

The Vostok location, one of many places where ice cores are drilled, is part of the Antarctic ice cap. At this location the snow falls each year and the temperature doesn’t rise above freezing. In fact this location is called the coldest place on Earth.

This is how the ice sheets are formed. The surface layer of snow contains gaps between the snowflakes containing air. As subsequent season’s experience snow falls, the older snow begins to compress. The compression forms a grainy material (firn) said to resemble the texture of granulated sugar. As the snow above continues to accumulate, the firn eventually densifies and closes off the pores and the air is firmly trapped. The ice sheet now has inclusions which can be analyzed. When the ice is cored out of this ice sheet, large amounts of information can be obtained for analysis. Wiki has this to say about the ice core samples:

“Ice cores contain an abundance of information about climate. Inclusions in the snow of each year remain in the ice, such as wind-blown dust, ash, pollen, bubbles of atmospheric gas and radioactive substances. The variety of climatic proxies is greater than in any other natural recorder of climate, such as tree rings or sediment layers. These include (proxies for) temperature, ocean volume, precipitation, chemistry and gas composition of the lower atmosphere, volcanic eruptions, solar variability, sea-surface productivity, desert extent and forest fires.

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Posted in AGW, Antartica, CO2, Environment, Global Temperatures, Ice cores, Interglacial periods