Our greatest Scientific Blunder

For the past thirty years the accelerating pace of warming in the northern hemisphere has been associated with human activity. This has at least led to reconsideration of our very bad policy of burning hydrocarbons and not sequestering CO2. The brutal truth is that all the available geological hydrocarbons are going to be burned sooner or later. The only question remaining is how much later. We few have at least redesigned an historically proven agricultural protocol to correct this problem. That still leaves us with the global warming problem.

My consideration of the mathematics of sea ice melting has shown me that we are very likely dead wrong about the principal cause of global warming. And everybody has got it totally backwards.

Atmospheric variation is principally moderated by the massive heat sink represented by the oceans and their currents. It is not the other way around, spectacular as atmospheric effects are. We are confusing cause and effect.

Returning to the Northern sea ice we know with certainty that solar energy is delivered at the same constant rate each year. We know that a trivial amount of southern heat energy is also delivered by the atmosphere, more reflecting the seasonal solar regime than anything else.

The real surplus is arriving year after year by way of the gulf stream and is exactly why we do not have a real polar ice cap(apologies to Greenland) This heat pump has been very steady for the past 500 years as it has slowly but surely reversed the effects of the onset of the little ice age.

On average, over the centuries, a slight overage of heat is consistently been delivered to the Arctic. It was almost in balance. We have now entered the final phase of this great melting process. The present acceleration is merely a mathematical artifact of this steady persistent pressure. And yes, it will be mostly over by 2020.

We are returning to the full climate regime experienced throughout the Bronze Age and before the onslaught of the little ice age and intermittently in between.

Humanity is doing plenty to screw up our planet that needs to be corrected and I have been actively showing my readers how. Nothing humanity does pulls me up short. The little ice age does. There is nothing we can do to stop that freight train and I very much suspect that that is what is really brewing in the southern hemisphere. There the winter sea ice is apparently expanding. A major one time diversion of cold polar water into the south Atlantic would drop the temperature of the gulf stream very nicely, and we now know for sure that it would take 500 years to correct the problem. However it happens, it is not a tall order and the current systems are in place.

It could well be that the planet uses this corrective measure much more often and that it actually varies all over the place. The hard evidence points to a long cycle between climate disasters, but there is no reason to think that smaller events are not happening in between.

We now have a very important working hypothesis. Peak warming in the arctic is reversed by an increase in the Benguela current bringing cold water into the equatorial seas lowering the heat content of the Gulf Stream. This can actually do the dirty work and it scares me S*tless.

It is our bad luck that the maximization of modern civilization is coinciding with this event, but that was also inevitable even if we were living in the Bronze age. That was the apparent drill every other time this happened. this nature's way of playing whack a monkey.

Cold Water on Global Warming

After alluding to the role of Antarctica yesterday, I think it is appropriate to add this article from 2001.

The climate of the northern hemisphere has experienced several major swings in climatic conditions over the past 10,000 years. The bronze age in particular appears to have been hotter that it is now as was the period before 1500 and the little ice age. The current hot spell seems to be doing no more than restoring those conditions. I also point out that these warm spells were very stable, while the sudden onset of a cold climate was abrupt. I posit that the only way it is possible to have such a shift is if the surface waters of the ocean itself was abruptly chilled by perhaps a degree.

And then the question is how? We have been blithely blaming the sun. I suspect that may well be rubbish. On the other hand we have a mechanism large enough in the southern hemisphere capable of doing this. And particularly doing this to the closed off Atlantic.

What would it take? There we do not know. Perhaps a build up of sea ice, or perhaps a decline in sea ice? That is the one thing capable of a long cycle of variation with periodic discharges into the Pacific and South Atlantic.

A discharge of cold water into the Atlantic would certainly impact on the whole of the Atlantic very quickly. It is also totally believable and I hope, unlikely to happen for a few centuries. At least enough time to get the permafrost out of the soil in Greenland and to reestablish the dairy industry there.

Here is the article:


http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20010917seaice.html

September 18, 2001 - (date of web publication)

El Niño, La Niña Rearrange South Pole Sea Ice

Scientists have been mystified by observations that when sea ice on one side of the South Pole recedes, it advances farther out on the other side. New findings from NASA's Office of Polar Programs suggests for the first time that this is the result of El Niños and La Niñas driving changes in the subtropical jet stream, which then alter the path of storms that move sea ice around the South Pole.

	Image 1

The results have important implications for understanding global climate change better because sea ice contributes to the Earth's energy balance. The presence of sea ice, which is generated around each pole when the water gets cold enough to freeze, reflects solar energy back out to space, cooling the planet. When there is less sea ice, the ocean absorbs the sun's heat and that amplifies climate warming.

By looking at the relationship between temperature changes in the ocean, atmospheric winds, storms, and sea ice, the new study pinpoints causes for retreating and advancing ice in the Atlantic and Pacific ocean basins on either side of the South Pole, called the "Antarctic dipole."

	Image 2

"El Niños and La Niñas appear to be the originating agents for helping generate the sea ice dipole observed in the ocean basins around the Antarctic," said David Rind, lead author of the study and a senior climate researcher at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The study appears in the September 17 issue of Journal of Geophysical Research.

During El Niño years, when the waters of the Eastern Pacific heat up, warm air rises. As the air rises it starts to move toward the South Pole, but the earth's rotation turns the winds eastward. The Earth's rotation is just strong enough to cause this rising air to strengthen the subtropical jet stream, a band of atmospheric wind near the equator that also blows eastward.

When the subtropical jet stream gets stronger over the Pacific basin, it diverts storms away from the Pacific side of the South Pole. Since there are fewer storms near the Pacific-Antarctic region during El Niño years, there are less winds to blow sea ice farther out into the ocean, and ice stays close to shore.

At the same time, the air in the tropical Atlantic basin sinks instead of rising. That sinking air weakens the subtropical jet stream over the Atlantic, guiding storms towards the South Pole. The storms, which intensify as they meet the cooler Antarctic air, then blow sea ice away from the pole farther into the Atlantic.

During La Niña years, when the Eastern and central Pacific waters cool, there is an opposite effect, where sea ice subsides on the Atlantic side, and advances on the Pacific side.

The study is important because the amount of sea ice that extends out into the ocean plays a key role in amplifying or decreasing the warming effects of the sun on our climate. Also, the study explains causes of the Antarctic sea ice dipole for the first time, and provides researchers with a greater understanding of the effects of El Niño and La Niña on sea ice.

Scientists may use these findings in global climate models to gauge past, present and future climate changes.

"Understanding how changes in the temperature in the different ocean basins will affect sea ice is an important part of the puzzle in understanding climate sensitivity," Rind said.

Bronze age global warming

Few people understand that for 2000 years, Europe was several degrees warmer than today. And that is the most compelling reason to be distrustful of the linkage between global warming and the CO2 in the atmosphere.

What this means is that although there is absolute certainty in blaming ourselves for the CO2 in the atmosphere, The same is a long way from been true regarding the global temperature. What this does suggest is that global warming is not a real issue and I suspect may even be welcomed in the long term. Recall that the decline in temperature at the end of the Bronze age (2000 BCE) and also at the end of the fifteenth century (1500 AD) was hugely disruptive as populations were forced out of their livelihoods. The reverse should be just as true as warmer soils become way more productive.

I have just completed reading the recent book by Felice Vinci, titled The Baltic Origins of Homer's Epic Tales. For those of you who have taken the trouble of reading these works in translation, you will discover that these complex descriptions of a bronze age civilization maps cleanly onto a Baltic geography. There is really no doubt left.

I am more than pleased because it supports my own conclusions regarding the antiquity and richness of the European Bronze age for which a great deal of the copper came out of Lake Superior.

What is described is a culture based primarily on cattle raising which we knew already. However, grapes were reported growing in Sweden at this time and that is also supported by the archaeological record. The climate was clearly warmer but still miserable in a way that was never true in the Mediterranean.

In any event, this shows that the public panic over global warming could well be premature. What is not premature is our concern over the CO2 content of the atmosphere. The Biosphere has not been able to keep up with our capacity to produce CO2 and this can be dangerous in any number of ways. It is culturally prudent to help the biosphere adsorb this overage and to do it in such a way that our agriculture and woodlands achieve maximum productivity through best practice.

Maybe global warming is the fire lit under our butts in order to do the right thing by mother nature. That certainly is my objective and I think that I am well down the right road.