Excuse me, but the idea that the puny output of carbon dioxide that our civilization is currently emmitting will effect the global climate for tens of thousands of years is totally outrageous and the fact that anyone is seriously considering it is unbelievable to me.

"But she agreed that we might never find out what would have happened naturally, due to human-caused global warming. "

I would guess she wouldn't considering we are talking 10,000 to 100,000 years from now.

This particular study seems like a terrible waste of time. I hope they kept their carbon footprint really low coming up with this study and article.

So, the take home from this is ....

"We need to reduce CO2 to save the impending glaciation"?

I love it, first the researchers predict the most SEVERE ice age in a million years, then they state that if you factor in the HUGE amounts of CO2 emitted by us BAD humans, it will be prevented.

And then, if you already couldn't get humorous enough, we are told that more tests are needed to see if their "prediction" is correct.

Now, how in the HE "double Mann temp graphs" do you conduct a test for your prediction for something humans have NEVER seen, a mere 10,000 to 100,000 years in the future?

And beyond that, WHO GIVES A FLYING BAT CRAP ABOUT THIS?

I'll tell you who, those who have an AGENDA and need to come up with REALLY scary statements and completely unprovable predictions to continue their funding.

Tell you what, after the next 5 years where the reality of weather will be colder temps and higher fuel costs because of it, let me know how the study on the prevention of glaciation is doing in the ole arena of public opinion.

And yes, that is a prediction that I stand by and have a chance of verifying in our time. One catch though, you can't use GISS temps for verification. Those things are always wrong.

Models, Models, and More Models.....ad nauseam..

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/11/16/hottest-october-on-record-was-really-a-september/Hottest October on record , was really a September

NASA"s Hansen Lied About October Warming

Excerpt: The main statistical facility for global-warming activists compounded error with folly and have undermined their credibility entirely. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies announced that last month was the warmest October on record, surprising meteorologists who had seen colder temperatures and unseasonal snowstorms and wondered where all the heat originated:

GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious 'hockey stick' graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new 'hotspot' in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

When outside analysts showed that GISS used September temperatures in Russia for its conclusions about October, GISS admitted that it has no quality control over the numbers is uses for its analysis:

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

And Dr. James Hansen, one of Al Gore's chief allies on his global-warming crusade, has cooked the books before, as have his associates:

Reply from Brett: Steve, I just covered this story a couple days ago. BTW, the story shows that Hansen did not lie. There was a mistake. October was still actually quite mild compared to normal in Russia with the corrected data.

I don't understand this at all. I was under the impression that CO2 in the atmosphere lasts 100 or so years. In a couple of hundred years we will have used up the world's coal and oil supply, presumably moving on to nuclear. Let say it takes another couple of hundred years to wash out all the coal and oil based CO2. Then what possible impact would there be for this man-made CO2 to have on an ice age that starts in 10,000 or more years?

I'm one of those skeptics about global warming. There are a lot of assumptions that are made in order to support conclusions. For example, this appeared on the Accuweather web site blog today...("Current greenhouse gas concentrations are probably similar to those that occurred three million years ago and are high enough to prevent an ice age for hundreds of thousands of years," said Lorraine Lisieck, a prehistoric climate expert from the University of California, Santa Barbara.) How can anyone determine what the conditions were 3 million years ago? Just because she used the word "probably", I'm not going to buy her assumptions. Time may be linear, but not all things move at a constant rate, and how do you determine the variable rate of change millions of years ago?

If current levels of green house gases are going to delay the next ice age for hundreds of thousand of years, isn't that a good thing?

I'm not a scientist, but I do follow science. Help me to see it your way. I'm open minded, but, as I said earlier, skeptical.

Off Topic. Sorry.
Good Cause... Donate if you can.

http://www.noteviljustwrong.com/

Bret,
I sincerely hope that you personally don't believe that crap.It is all hockypock.
The earth has it's on way of dealing with things.Nomatter what the situation is ;the Earth will respond in such a manner that will shock most of the dreaming Global Warmers.
In 1998 [challenge you to look into it] the Earth was as close to the sun as it has been in 40,000 years. One might expect warming in that kind of climate.One might also expect as the Earth gets farther away from the sun it will cool .
Think about liquid motion and apply it to the current cercomstances with the knowledge that the Earth is moving farther away from the sun each year. thank for letting me comment and hope all is understood as it is much more simple then the complicated means in whitch it will get there .
Alabama
C. Stout

During the Ordovician, earth had an ice age with CO2 levels ten times higher than present.

if this aint a picture of a massively cooling world I don't know what it is..
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.11.17.2008.gif

Reply from Brett: This is a one day snapshot of sea surface temperature anomalies. I don't see how you can come to that conclusion based on that one image.

I guess you noticed, Brett, that this scientist blows up the theory that it�s human activity that causes global warming? See where he says:

Current greenhouse gas concentrations are probably similar to those that occurred three million years ago.

Hey, how many humans were on the earth then? As some scientists correctly say, these are cycles, and such cycles are far, far beyond what we puny humans can do--or not do--to this enormous globe.

Postpond??? Prevented??? Nah! Can't have that. After all, The President will be lowering the sea level for the sake of mankind. Because he can! I mean, the earth has fever. We can't postpone the next ice age! Oh, by the by, speaking of Ice Ages: 26 degrees this morning with snow on the ground. And it's not even December yet. THE EARTH IS NOT WARMING!!!!!!

DENY DENY DENY THE GLO-BULL WARMING LIE!!!!!!

Wow!
Wild speculation based on predictions centuries into the future by GCM's with no predictive skill.
Interesting.
Sure. Let's throw a few million $ at this one.

Brett: I think you and I would have a problem posting the other 32 pictures that led to the one I posted above today SST hint:its a trend

No one denies that Climate Change has not been happening previously. The earth heats up and cools down for many reasons. The difference now is we have introduced additional CO2 in to the equation, CO2 that would not have found its way back even through the interglacial cycles.

This additional CO2 is affecting the climate - it acts as a green house gas and causes the surface temp to go up. There is not really much debate about this physics. What now appears to be happening is the temp rise is causing the release of more green house gases and other tipping mechanisms and we are getting a feedback system where the temp will rapidly rise.

Global Temperature Record
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/

There are other causes for warming than CO2 buildup. one is the 500 million or so CO2 producers that have an eng. temp of 260 to 380 degrees F and about half of these are running all the time. This is very wish e washie , the stuff I've been reading says the 20 billion degrees in temp the earth has gained(every square inch of the planet, the oceans, the mountains and the artic ice packs, also) have gone up 1 & 1/2 degree F in the last 100 or so years This could could trigger an Ice age as the earth's weather tries to realign it's self or other things.
One of the things that make this warming so dangerous is the speed at which we did it, other warming peroids took THOUSANDS OF YEARS.
The weather has changed so much in just my life time that I believe that the warming will trigger a re-alignments that could change the weather in parts of the globe radicacly either for better or worse.
I live in the carribean and it is getting colder here in the winter (2007 was coldest winter on record in Mexico) and this looks to be the cooldest winter yet.

Willie T.

“A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with.”

There is an old adage that say’s, “Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me!”
Just how many times can this man and his colleagues’ produce garbage using our money before even the most devote AGW is embarrassed by their mistakes? The man has no shame and we already know his science training is non-existent. With the world tottering on financial collapse why is anybody listening to his nonsense and fraudulent data?
Is this what science has come too in this century? Where are the checks and balances? Where is the verifiable data? Where is their integrity? How can he continue to be allowed to work in this field? His entire department is untrustworthy and possibly dishonest.
Everybody with a brain should now realize that these folks have NO idea what they are talking about or what a field of science is supposed to be. Maybe Hansen can get away with this in ASTROPHYSICS but when he is playing with the world’s wallet, lifestyle and finances he is traveling a very dangerous road.
At the very least this shows you how sloppy their work actually is. At most the worst kind of fraud is being committed on a global scale.
One thing is certain! You can believe nothing they say. When you read how they adjusted older records, only an idiot or a mindless zealot could believe it’s about the science and not an agenda masquerading as science.
I deplore and am outraged by this field’s work and integrity. They are not scientists but a bunch of folks using expensive equipment that always seems to need adjustment.
These guys are either complete fools with No integrity or scam artists who should be in jail.
In either case to believe their work now requires a zealot’s belief in the omnipotent power of faith because there is no verifiable science to their ideas.
This is nonsense and the Hanson should be made to resign. I have only utter contempt for him and his department. As world citizens we should be outraged by his entire departments’ behavior.
They are giving all science fields a bad name for their shoddy behavior.

Dan in MS | November 17, 2008 10:42 PM --- One place to start is by reading "The Discovery of Global Warming" by Spencer Weart:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html

Review of above:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E7DF153DF936A35753C1A9659C8B63

and given your questions, a good book on paleoclimate. I suggest beginning with W.F. Ruddiman's "Eartyh's Climate: Past and Future".

Patrick Henry | November 18, 2008 12:06 AM --- Completely irrelevant. You have heard of the Faint Young Sun, have you not?

Brett: Sorry, my bad. I was out all last week on sunny Hilton Head and should have looked back before posting. Thanks, srr

Brett: Just a follow up on that post above. If these 'excerpts' are too long, just let me know.
srr

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/11/17/lorne-gunter-global-warming-numbers-get-a-little-help-from-their-friends.aspx

Lorne Gunter: Global warming numbers get a little help from their friends
Posted: November 17, 2008, 9:13 AM by Kelly McParland
Lorne Gunter, Full Commeny

Excerpt:
Last week, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies , one of four agencies responsible for monitoring the global temperatures used by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , released its statistics for October. According to the GISS figures, last month was the warmest October on record around the world.

This struck some observers as odd. There had been no reports of autumn heat waves in the international press and there is almost always blanket coverage of any unusually warm weather since it fits into the widespread media bias that climate catastrophe lies just ahead. In fact, quite the opposite had occurred; there had been plenty of stories about unseasonably cool weather.....

So the GISS claim that October was the warmest ever seemed counterintuitive, to say the least.

Thanks, though, to Steve McIntyre, the Toronto computer analyst who maintains the blog climateaudit.org, and Anthony Watts, the American meteorologist who runs wattsupwiththat.com, we did not have to wait long to find out the cause of the GISS's startling statistics: Data-entry error.

October wasn't the warmest October ever, it was only the 70th warmest in the past 114 years ' in the bottom half of all Octobers, not at the top of the list. So why the massive discrepancy between the published GISS numbers and the correct ones?

Um, some guy , not at Goddard, a GISS spokesman was quick to point out as he toed the ground and gazed downward sheepishly , had supplied the NASA branch with September figures for much of the globe, rather than October ones. September being typically a much warmer month than October (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), when the September temps had been entered into the October report they produced , heh, heh , an unprecedented spike upwards in last month's temperature.

Yeah, no kidding, like when Santa's bathroom scale readings are inadvertently entered into Paris Hilton's weight diary and they produce an unprecedented upward tonnage.

I truly think there was simply a case of garbage in, garbage out......Frankly, I don't think it's that nefarious. Still, I think a bigger problem, unscientific bias at GISS and elsewhere in the global-warming community, has been exposed by this incident......

Brett: maybe they did not lie, but obviously for them, a 'lie' is relative.

I don't understand this at all. I was under the impression that CO2 in the atmosphere lasts 100 or so years.

The "atmospheric lifetime" seems to be fairly difficult to pin down for certain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Dioxide

OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

Predicting the next ice age from 10 to 100 THOUSAND years from now? More study needed to see if the prediction "seems" right?

Please tell these guys to give it a rest.

Aaron

We need to make a decision.

If we believe the "Peak Oil" guys, we are going to have declining oil and natural gas fossil fuels starting in a handful of years and will probably generally run out of oil at anything close to the rate of our current usage within a hundred years. How will that impact the climate 10,000 to 100,000 years from now?

On the other hand, assuming Peak Oil is wrong plus we through in oodles and oodles of coal we might have enough fuel for, say 500 years. How will that impact the climate 10,000 to 100,000 years from now?

I find it amusing though that mankind's biggest problem may be that we run out of fossil fuels so that we will stop emitting greenhouse gases which in turn will allow for a new Ice Age to return. I think we have a new direction that all of our climate change buddies can go in now.

This could be fun to watch - TV keeps putting on shows based on the 70s; we are currently getting to experience "Stagflation" from the 70s; now it looks like we are getting a chance to revisit the 1970s "Global Cooling" magazine covers too.

rd | November 20, 2008 12:30 PM --- According to the orbital forcing hypothesis, the next attempt to form a stade (massive ice sheets) won't be for 20,000 years from now. We may have already added enough fossil carbon to the active carbon cycle to avoid that attempt.

The next attempt is about 50,000 years from now. About 25% of the excess CO2 will still be around, so possibly that attempt will fail as well.