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Solar Variation and Vostok Ice Cores

In this climate change post, I’ll briefly outline why blaming solar variation for recent warming is incorrect, interpret the Vostok Ice Cores, and then tell you the political part of my position.

sunspot_numbers.pngThat big nuclear furnace in the sky is the ultimate source of all energy on Earth, so it would make sense if recent warming was due to the sun being a bit brighter. However, observations show that in recent years, solar output has been steady at 1366 watts per square metre. Maximum variation up or down from this figure is 0.7 watts. Variations in total solar output are so slight that they were barely detectable until satellites were invented.

Variation in solar output has affected Earth’s climate – witness the Maunder Minimum – but in general, changes in solar output over the past 400 years are unlikely to have played a major part in global warming. Solar output is a factor in determining the climate, but solar variation is far too small to account for recent climate change.

epica_do18_plot.pngI want to tackle one last point from The Great Global Warming Swindle before putting the scientific side of climate change aside. Swindle uses Antarctic ice cores – the best record of historic temperature vs carbon dioxide – and points out that most of the time, temperature change starts before carbon dioxide increases. In fact, it looks like temperature increases cause CO2 increases!

This is absolutely correct. And the thing is, this is what we’d expect to see. In Earth’s history, warming is usually going to occur for non-CO2 reasons – a major cause being Milankovitch cycles (orbital variations which bring Earth closer to the Sun) which occur over tens of thousands of years. When these natural causes warm the oceans, they release carbon dioxide, which in turn induces additional warming. Carbon dioxide-related warming is usually a consequence of other natural sources of warming.

But in the last century, we’ve had an unnatural carbon dioxide increase. Humans extracting and burning fossil fuel essentially form a naked CO2 source, unrelated to other climate events. Carbon dioxide is suddenly disconnected from the carbon cycle equilibrium. This has almost never happened before. Humans are the anomaly here.

160658main2_ozone_large_350.jpgSo why do some find it so hard to believe that humans could affect the climate?

I believe humans can – and have – affected the climate of this planet. But I don’t believe the hype of 20-foot sea level changes drowning poor island nations.

Remember Chernobyl and how terrible it was? Of course it was a terrible accident, and I’m not trying to deny that. But remember the stories we were told of the tens of thousands of predicted cancer deaths, and the mental images we had of mutated animals glowing in the dark? It turns out that the number of cancer deaths was massively overestimated, and the untouched countryside around Chernobyl is a veritable nature haven. The darkest predictions were wrong. Things got better because the biosphere is adaptable.

And Y2K! The millenial disaster. What a fizzer that one was. Let’s face it, we’re pretty bad at predicting disasters. Even Hurricane Katrina wasn’t a disaster because of the wind, rain and rising sea levels – it was a disaster because some silly people didn’t evacuate when they should have, and governmental response – surprise, surprise – was slow, incompetent and racist.

I believe humans are affecting the climate of our planet, and we will may see a few changes. But I don’t believe in disaster scenarios. Give humans more credit. We can survive hurricanes and floods. Heck, we survived the Cold War! A bit of climate change will be a piece of cake. Give the environment more credit, too. Its been here for a few billion years, and it isn’t going anywhere.

So, Al Gore and Co., you can take your food mile taxes and ‘sustainability focus’ and just bugger off. A bit of climate change doesn’t scare me, and neither do your catastrophic fairy tales. We’re going to be just fine.

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Posted by Luke H on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 2:20 pm.

6 Responses to “Solar Variation and Vostok Ice Cores”

We also get a small amount of energy from the tides: this ultimately comes from slowing the rotation of the Earth.

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Left by Stephen on March 21st, 2007

Thats correct Stephen. There is also a small amount of energy from undersea vents, powered by the heat of the planet’s core. Small ecosystems at these undersea vents are fascinating.

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Left by Luke on March 22nd, 2007

Two points.

First, arguments for or against variations in the sun causing all or some of the variations in surface temperatures are directly relevant to the arguments for and against AGW, but in any case you appear to dismiss without reason even the possibility of ‘some.’ And I stress, “without reason.”

Second, you seem to rest your entire argument for AGW on the rise in CO2 in the latter part of the last century (and on the difference between CO2 levels in the twentioeth as compared to the nineteenth century), but you ignore at least two things. The first is that by the UN’s own figures, the rise in temperature from 1880 to 1940 preceded the charted growth in CO2 output, which began from 1950 on, at which point the surface temperatures began cooling for three decades.

The second sub-point regards the purported difference between CO2 levels in the twentieth as compared to the nineteenth century, or indeed to any century. There are scientists, in particular Zbignieuw Jaworowski of Warsaw University, who suggest that the UN’s figures for the nineteenth century are derived from flawed analysis, and that the average atmospheric concentration for this century was 335ppmv.

Other work by Dutch scientists studying Holocene era deposits suggests CO2 concentration nearly 10,000 years ago was around 350ppmv, or about the same as in 1987. The authors of the paper that produced these results say, “Our results contradict the concept of relatively stabilised Holocene CO2 concentrations of 270 to 280 ppmv until the industrial revolution.”

It’s also worth pointing out, as Jaworowski did to a US Senate hearing in 2004, that fifty million years ago the CO2 concentration of 2000ppmv was almost six times higher than it is today but the air temperature was only 1.5 degrees higher. As Russell Lewis says in a recent report, “This rather disposes of the green propagandists’ scare about a runaway greenhouse effect.”

And it would seem then that twentieth century CO2 concentrations, on which your claims from proven AGW are based, are neither sui generis, nor cataclysmic.

The final point to make here is that even if you ignore all of this, you’re still making the post hoc error — even if you could show correlation, and neither you nor Al Gore has been able to, then you still you haven’t shown causality.

And to say, as you say with yoru ozone and acid rain red herrings, “Oh, we’ve affected stuff before,” is nothing more than childish nonsense, which is perhaps the best way to describe those two “problems.”

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Left by Peter Cresswell on March 23rd, 2007

Sorry, that first paragraph should read: “First, arguments for or against variations in the sun causing all or some of the variations in surface temperatures are NOT directly relevant…”

In other words, even if you’re right and the sun worshippers are wrong, which I doubt, that doesn’t prove 100% AGW.

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Left by Peter Cresswell on March 23rd, 2007

PC,

“arguments for or against variations in the sun causing all or some of the variations in surface temperatures are NOT directly relevant to the arguments for and against AGW, but in any case you appear to dismiss without reason even the possibility of ’some.’”

I mention solar variation simply because it was the main alternative warming explanation put forward by Swindle, which has been the focus of many recent posts about climate change on both Not PC and PE. And PC, I did not dismiss ‘even the possibility of some’ solar-induced climate change. I believe my exact statement was that solar variation was “unlikely to have played a major part in global warming”. I’m denying that solar variation is a good alternative explanation for recent climate change, not denying that solar variation affects the climate at all (because it does).

Now for your second point, that I “seem to rest [my] entire argument for AGW on the rise in CO2 in the latter part of the last century”. Of course I do! The argument for AGW can be summed up thus: human CO2 release has increased global surface temperatures since the industrial revolution. So its not surprising that the ‘entire case’ rests on CO2 emissions. The good news for AGW deniers is, if you can disprove any of the logical links in the humans-CO2-warming hypothesis, you’ve won.

You suggest “the rise in temperature from 1880 to 1940 preceded the charted growth in CO2 output, which began from 1950 on”
Well, abbsolutely – climate change models suggest that the temperature rise at this time was indeed due largely to natural factors (as I’m sure you’re attempting to argue) but that temperature after 1970 is largely human-induced. What’s your point?

I disagree with your claims that carbon dioxide levels were high in the 1800s. Ice cores and other evidence tell a completely different story.

Also, your assertion of 2000ppm CO2 levels back when dinosaur were around has no bearing on the current debate. Conditions were completely different back then.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas; increases in its concentration will warm the Earth. It’s that simple.

Finally, you describe my “ozone and acid rain” statements as “red herrings” and “nothing more than childish nonsense”. I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. Are you denying human-induced ozone depletion and acid rain? Because if you are – and those would be fairly audacious claims – you’ll need a much better argument than the simple ad hominem you provide here.

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Left by Luke on March 23rd, 2007

Audacious? Ad hominem? Not a bit of it. You’ve been sucked in by the PR. Read ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’ on both of these if you want a succinct summary.

In any case, you say. “I mention solar variation simply because it was the main alternative warming explanation put forward by Swindle, which has been the focus of many recent posts about climate change on both Not PC and PE.”

Well, not at Not PC you haven’t.

Regarding your arguments on CO2, you seem to spend a lot of effort begging the question, that is, relying on the very argument you are trying to prove (for example “that temperature after 1970 is largely human-induced” you assert as part part of an argument, rather than as your conclusion), while ignoring uncomfortable facts — facts which I mentioned and you ignored, and that ,a href=”http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=1VV3VUXGCXQQ3QFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/03/18/ngreen218.xml”>Martin Durkin summarises in his rejoinder to his film’s critics:

“The remarkable thing is not that I was attacked. But that the attacks have been so feeble. The ice-core data was the jewel in the global-warming crown, cited again and again as evidence that carbon dioxide ‘drives’ the earth’s climate. In fact, as its advocates have been forced to admit, the ice-core data says the opposite. Temperature change always precedes changes in CO2 by several hundred years. Temperature drives CO2, not the other way round. The global-warmers do not deny this. They cannot.

“During the post-war economic boom, while industrial emissions of CO2 went up, the temperature went down (hence the great global-cooling scare in the 1970s). Why? They say maybe the cooling was caused by SO2 (sulphur dioxide) produced by industry. But they say it mumbling under their breath, because they know it makes no sense. Thanks to China and the rest, SO2 levels are far, far higher now than they were back then. Why isn’t it perishing cold?”

You can’t state a 20thC causal connection between CO2 and temperature without addressing that 1940-79 dive in temperatures — and in fact I see in any case that there’s still no causal connection offered.

““I disagree with your claims that carbon dioxide levels were high in the 1800s.” Disagree all you like, but take up your disagreement with Mr Jawaworski since he’s the scientist whose work you suggest we ignore.

““Also, your assertion of 2000ppm CO2 levels back when dinosaur were around has no bearing on the current debate. Conditions were completely different back then.”

Not my assertions, Mr Jawaworski’s. Pray tell why a time when CO2 concentrations of six times today’s levels — back when birds and early mammals were appearing (and dinosaurs had gone) — yet with temperatures only 1.5 degrees higher than today’s conveniently has “no bearing on the current debate”? Did causality operate differently back then?

I’ll conclude here with another point made by Russell Lewis in an excellent report from the UK Institute of Economic Affairs (I don’t think it’s online yet): “Let’s get this [CO2 argument] in perspective: The amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere each year: natural 169 billion tons (ocean: 106bn., land: 63 bn.) man-made 6bn. [and ,a href="http://pc.blogspot.com/2006/12/daily-india-carbon-emissions-have.html">the majority of this in the last decade produced by burning of charcoal in the third world, where they're screaming out for power plants] — hardly dominant! In any case, it is equally plausible to argue that the oceans have been warmed by the sun, or the earth’s core and in consequence have released most of the greenhouse gas increase over the last 250 years. This would mean most of the growth of greenhouse gas is natural and not due to human activity.“

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Left by PC on March 24th, 2007

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