Since humans were not around then I blame AL Gore

Another great example of perverting logic to fit a preconceived theory, and selectively ignoring the previous 600 million years.

55 million years ago was the first time that atmospheric CO2 dropped below 500 ppm. For most of the previous 600 million years it averaged closer to 2500ppm.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide_png

Using the author's logic, earth should have turned into something like Venus long before life evolved on this planet.

Comments like "crocodiles in the Arctic" are what give AGW science a bad reputation. Crocodiles depend on maintaining very precise temperatures to breed and survive, which obviously can't happen in a place where the sun doesn't shine for three or four months a year. Even when atmospheric CO2 was 6000 ppm, the temperature was only ten degrees warmer. Given that it is -45C in the Arctic now, the earth would have to warm up 40 or 50 degrees for crocodiles to have a chance to survive, even without the sun problem.

"It's the continental drift, stupid."

Brett,
Thanks for your blog. I respect your perspective on this topic. You certainly have more education and study in this area than I do. I thought I would mention however that I feel it is a bit misleading for the article mentioned to present this theory as anything more than a "model" or someone's best guess. This can certainly not be labeled as science. Science depends upon observation and observations that estimate things in the range of 55 million years is "silly" at best.I know people like myself who assert that the Bible gives an explanation of how we got here are considered loony, but I would suggest that it takes far more faith to accept that the earth is millions of years old. Honest scientists have acknowledged that the evidence supports a relatively young earth (in the neighborhood of 6 - 14 thousand years old). One example is the amount of dust on the moon.
I am not someone who totally discounts any human-influenced problems with global warming. I do however get amused at the lengths that some scientists and Al Gore types go to construct models as fact to support this money-generating cause.
I do appreciate reading your blogs from time to time. Keep up the good work and have a great Christmas with your family.
Dan

http://ethomas.web.wesleyan.edu/SluijsPETM.pdf

Nature, the magazine, took a lot of liberties with the study

Looking back 55 million years and they can accurately tell what came first, the chicken or the egg
I don't think so.

http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache:sTMJAyVB0c0J:www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/19990208warming2.asp+dinosaurs+55+million&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

It's hard to say what lessons this ancient period of warming might have today, when scientists speculate that global warming will occur because of the accumulation of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere. Obviously, this earlier period was caused by natural forces, rather than from industrial pollution. But the time scales also are dramatically different, Wilf said,

noting that the changes he has recorded stretched over millions of years.

But fossil data from the Paleocene and Eocene provide an interesting retrospective test of the computer models that provide the basis for many of today's climate predictions. "The climate models aren't working quite right," Wilf observed,

noting that they consistently predict a cold winter climate for the Western United States during this ancient warm period. "The climate models can't predict a Rocky Mountain Eocene climate that matches what we see in the fossil record."

That's true, agreed Lisa Sloan, an authority on climate modeling at the University of California at Santa Cruz, at least in terms of regional predictions. The models make accurate global predictions, she maintained, but fall apart when looking at regional effects.

"'The models make accurate global predictions"'

LOL then design one that will work on tomorrow's weather or hurricanes

Article on global warming is speculative. Global temperatures have not changed in past decade. Less speculation and more science needed. What may have happened 55 million years is interesting.

The total amount of carbon input during the PETM, which is known to within an order of magnitude .... was about 4-8 times the anthropogenic carbon release from the start of the industrial era up to today ...

The authors are claiming that the accuracy is greater than their stated precision. A fundamental error which would cause them to fail first year engineering.

and comparable to that expected from gross anthropogenic emissions through the end of the 21st century

So the expected emissions over the next 90 years is 4-8X greater than the emissions since the start of the industrial era? That sounds absurd. Goes to show how shoddy the peer review process is.

I was just perusing the literature and found this interesting graph.

Apparently, there is no relation between spikes in CO2 concentrations and cool and warm periods over the past 500 or so million years. And I thought that CO2 was the only driver for temperature fluctuations according to the AGW zealots. So, now they find one little spike that, according to this graph, lasting only a short period of time and the temp increase is blamed solely on greenhouse gases. No other possible explanation considered.

I've also noticed that the article does not even hint at what these elevated greenhouse gas concentrations actually were, just elevated. Compared to what? From what I've read, they were still relatively low compared to Cretaceous and earlier CO2 concentrations (I'm not sure what methane concentrations were in the Cretaceous.).

We've also been told that volcanic emissions of CO2, etc aren't anyway near what the anthropogenic emissions are now. Yet, here we have volcanics producing massive amounts of CO2. I guess you can have your cake and eat it too in AGW world.

Any reasonable person would greet with considerable skepticism the claim that GCMs can correctly forecast global temperatures but not the regional temperatures that make them up. A more reasonable interpretation is it's considerably easier to tune GCMs to correctly hindcast a single global temperature record than to hindcast a bunch of regional records.

BRETT!!! We are all family here! Lol, I mean we always listen to what each other have to say and then we FIGHT ABOUT IT... lol just kidding

Happy Holidays to you and everyone else... Im heading up to Stowe Vermont to do some snowboarding!

Paul,

About 97% of CO2 emissions are from natural sources. See figure 2
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html

And more proof that New Jersey is not part of the globe. New Jersey forgot to warm up over the last 100 years. Slackers, no doubt.
http://climate.rutgers.edu/stateclim_v1/climreportcard/station_pages.php?station=som

IPCC lead author Dr. John Christy strikes back with an excellent Bali parody.
http://www.ecoenquirer.com/Bali-global-warming-2027.

(Bali - Dec. 18, 2027) Twenty years after the first Bali global warming conference, delegates from around the world attending the tenth Bali conference (Bali-X) today put the finishing touches on a new agreement to negotiate future reductions in manmade greenhouse gas emissions. According to all UN-certified scientists, those emissions are predicted to once again cause global warming, just as was experienced thirty years ago.

The United Nations Earth Czar, Al Gore, hailed the Bali-X agreement as a critical step in global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "Today, we have continued the long tradition of cooperation that has maintained agreements enabling negotiations which provide a basis for future talks", announced His Excellency. "We have renewed hope that the difficult, but historic, scientific consensus that was reached almost twenty years ago will not have been in vain."

As in previous years, the U.N. conference was the target of some criticism for neglecting mounting scientific evidence that climate change is a largely natural phenomenon. A minority of non-UN-certified climate scientists once again pointed to global temperatures that have continued their slow decline for the past thirty years. All of these comments were made anonymously due to their illegality under anti-green hate speech laws.

"Yes, global temperatures have fallen", admitted Mr. Gore in private, "but as we all know, this spurious cooling trend will suddenly change to rapid warming - possibly as early as next month. I am told by our UN scientists that we now have less than ten years to avert a global inferno of cataclysmic proportions."

Man Produces 5% of all the CO2 Emitted into to Atmosphere. Man Made Global warming is a Money Making Lie!!!!

A relative rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. So what were the CO2 concentrations? I didnt see it mentioned in the article.

"and comparable to that expected from gross anthropogenic emissions through the end of the 21st century"

Oleg said:
"So the expected emissions over the next 90 years is 4-8X greater than the emissions since the start of the industrial era? That sounds absurd. Goes to show how shoddy the peer review process is."

Actually Oleg, the peer review process is a lot more shoddy than that.

Anthropogenic CO2 is such a small part of total CO2, that in order for anthropogenic CO2 to increase total that much, they are predicting ACO2 to be magnitudes higher.

.

I couldn't agree with you more Mr. Mlagenovich!!
ha!

Ken Mlagenovich:
Since humans were not around then I blame AL Gore

Posted by Ken Mlagenovich | December 23, 2007 6:04 PM

Hi all - I'd like to point out that Antarctic wasn't at the South Pole 55 million years ago.
I you move Antarctica then the ocean's circulation is vastly different resulting in warm poles.
If you google continental drift there are many sights with info on this time period / subject & some are animated.
Not only were the continents moving about but they looked vastly different with the Appalachians much higher than the current relics, the latest phase of west coast mountain building was just getting going, the Colorado plateau would be near sea level & the Grand Canyon was not to get grand for 50 million years or so.
Change is the only constant!

Rick.

Hi Guys,

Hey Patrick the real thing missing here is that CO2 is logarithmic is its ability to absorb and radiate heat. It needs a secondary partner to bounce that heat off of like water vapor. Now Roger Pielke Sr. has shown another nail in the AGW coffin. Water vapor is not increasing which CO2 needs if it is to cause further warming. It seems as the water vapor increases the precipitation increases to balance it. Here is his study on it.
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/12/18/climate-metric-reality-check-3-evidence-for-a-lack-of-water-vapor-feedback-on-the-regional-scale/
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/12/19/follow-up-to-reality-check-3/
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/12/21/second-follow-up-to-climate-metric-reality-check-3-evidence-for-a-lack-of-water-vapor-feedback-on-the-regional-scale/

This study leaves out the sun's role, asteroids and changes in the earths orbit and rotation not to mention continental drift.

An interesting article which is intended to fuel the argument that accelerated warming can occur via certain feedback mechanisms, such as release of marine methane. The trigger of the cycle, at least in part and not exclusive of Sun storms was intense volcanic activity present during that period. The volcanic activity was likely far greater than modern activity and released tremendous amounts of heat and gas into the air.
The correlation with today, is that humans, via fossil fuels, release consistent and large amounts of CO2 gas, methane and heat into the atmosphere, the threshold crossed by adding China and other developing countries to the mix. Although a natural cycle could be occurring, the changes are too rapid.
Again, as argued before, I have no ideology here. Neither does Al Gore. The other side argues as if it is ideological dogma to oppose Man's contribution.

I'm not certain about the first comment since it may have been tongue in cheek, but the following eight are the usual parade of ignorance, confusion and deception. Is the object to try to ensure that nobody can actually use the comments to learn anything about the science?

Brett, regarding the volcanoes, as we saw with Mt. Pinatubo the ash doesn't remain in the atmosphere for very long. Reply: Very true, when you are looking at the big picture. By contrast, any CO2 emitted persists in the atmosphere for centuries. It seems plausible that there could easily have been a cooling effect during the early stages of the PETM eruptions, with the CO2-induced warming becoming dominant later on, although I don't know whether the geologic record would allow detection of such a thing. Also bear in mind that over the course of millions of years the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes varies considerably depending on how much carbonate rock is made available to them via subduction. It is thought that at the moment we are at a very low ebb in that regard and that is a major cause of the present "icehouse" era (only the third such in the last half billion years). I haven't read any research on this point, but I would speculate that the fact that the climate was already very warm at the start of the PETM would have meant that the associated vulcanism put a lot more CO2 into the atmosphere than we would see with an equal amount of vulcanism today.

One of the denialists above quoted something about the difficulty of getting GCMs to replicate regional climates adequately. Interestingly, one place where that's the case is the Arctic, which is now warming very rapidly and also happens to be where the largest quantity of shallow-depth methane hydrate deposits are located. Recall that recently the GCMs fell down on the Arctic sea ice decline in particular. Interestingly the U.S. Navy *regional climate model* (RCM) that seems to have nailed the trend predicts an ice-free summer by about 2013. After that the Arctic Ocean will begin to warm rapidly (since open water retains solar heat much better than sea ice, and there's a lot of solar heat available in the Arctic during the summer), although I have no idea if anyone has a handle on how quickly that could proceed.

I fully believe that the rise in CO2 55M years ago was caused Santa's reindeer training academy and the exhaust from all the reindeer. The records of 55M years ago just reflect how destructive to the atmosphere flying reindeer can be when there numbers are not controlled.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL

UHI in Barrow, Alaska. I was looking at the Weather Underground Google map of Barrow this morning and noticed that the temperatures in Barrow are about 7-8 degrees warmer than the surrounding areas. This surprised me, so I googled 'urban heat island barrow' and came up with a ton of information. Here is a good link from the Royal Meteorological Society
http://www.geography.uc.edu/~kenhinke/uhi/HinkelEA-IJOC-03.pdf
Table I shows UHI greater than two degrees during all four seasons.

It would appear that UHI accounts for more than two-thirds of the warming seen in Barrow since 1977. Half of the cities in Alaska have actually cooled over the last 30 years.
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/7706Change.html

Barrow is a favorite poster child for AGW, yet the warming may have a much simpler explanation.

We are having a very snowy day in Colorado, and the kids will be up soon and the house will be transformed into a pile of wrapping paper! Merry Christmas to Brett and everyone else.

Thank you very much for your insight into the problem. I think we could all do much more to help our environment. I am not one that thinks that the world will come to an end because of green houses gases. We are in much more danger from people that change the playing field every time a new study comes out. Let's face it, EVERY study has a profit behind it for someone. The one and only true GOD should be given credit. Oh by the way nothing in the Bible has ever been proven false. Beleivers don't have to change the report from time to time.

Off and on subject

At a Christmas party I had long chat with a geo-engineer. His work is mainly concerned with extracting oil and gas deposits from the carbon captured 55 million years ago. The conversation naturally turned to geosequestering co2 waste from his industry and the dependant associated energy users. He was very positive about pumping co2 back into the wells, but as compressed gas from onsite sources rather than liquefied and transported by pipeline from city based energy suppliers.
Co2 is present in a natural mixture with methane underground anyway, so separation must occur at the wellhead along with any additional amounts caused intentionally by wellhead flare off. This has always been a negative part of the operation. However recent environmental obligations have encouraged operators to capture and reinject the co2 from whence it came which also helps to maintain the pressure underground helping to extract more gas or oil and the new process will be further helped along in response to tabled carbon credit programs yet be introduced.

I asked his thoughts on geosequestering in the area of clean coal technologies and he thought the idea was absurd. In this the energy industry is encouraged by governments who are jointly exploring the possibility of liquefying co2 waste from power plants and transporting said waste by specially built pipe lines thousand of miles to the nearest exhausted gas or oil fields. Where the liquid will be pumped underground and flashed into sandstone in below ground reservoirs.
I asked if this may cause earth quakes or at the very least cause ruptures in the rocks allowing the co2 to escape though fissures eventually making their way back to the surface. At first he said that such an event would be unlikely, informing me that at least 2 miles separated the surface from the reservoir. I reminded him that the natural pressure of gas is far less than that of liquefied man made co2. He corrected m