Will Global Warming Prevent a Disastrous Ice Age?

[Jonathan]

The data is pretty clear that every 100,000 years
the Earth plunges into a long, cold and life killing
ice age. With brief warm interglacials like now.

According to the historical data another very
long and cold ice age could happen at any
time, which could be a disaster for life
on Earth like few others.

Are we so sure of our science that we can
say with certainty that attempting to
artificially maintain the existing patterns
of change will lead to benefits for humanity?

Or will it only allow the oncoming ice age to
devastate life on Earth?


Global Warming:
A Chilling Perspective

Except for two relatively brief interglacial episodes, one peaking
about 125,000 years ago (Eemian Interglacial), and the other
beginning about 18,000 years ago (Present Interglacial), the Earth
has been under siege of ice for the last 160,000 years.

Earth Temps Over Last 160,000 Years

As illustrated in this final graph, over the past 800,000 years
the Earth has undergone major swings in warming and cooling
at approximately 100,000 year intervals, interrupted by minor
warming cycles at shorter intervals. This represents periods
of glacial expansion, separated by distinct but relatively
short-lived periods of glacial retreat.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html



100,000 year ice age cycle linked to orbital periods and
sea ice
Anthony Watts / January 27, 2017
From BROWN UNIVERSITY


PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Earth is currently in
what climatologists call an interglacial period, a warm pulse
between long, cold ice ages when glaciers dominate our
planet’s higher latitudes.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/27/100000-year-ice-age-cycle-linked-to-orbital-periods-and-sea-ice/




s

[Peter Nyikos]

Fascinating, as Mr. Spock used to say.

The post to which I am replying a month later was made while
a thread on global warming that was going great guns -- six and
a half pages (at 25 posts per page) in the week before, and the
two weeks after, this post was made. That thread was,

Reality check: volcanic CO2 emissions

and the first page was:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/talk.origins/yjk2Gm2cZKQ[1-25]


In stunning contrast, mine is only the SECOND post on THIS thread.

The discrepancy may be attributable to two things: Jonathan is somewhat
of a pariah on talk.origins, and he did not choose the excerpts from
the scientific articles for maximum (or even major) effect.

Readers, scroll down to the end of this page for a real eye-popping quote,
if you are short on time. Otherwise, you might get some additional
information of interest to you.

On Saturday, June 24, 2017 at 7:29:52 PM UTC-4, Jonathan wrote:

> The data is pretty clear that every 100,000 years
> the Earth plunges into a long, cold and life killing
> ice age. With brief warm interglacials like now.
>
> According to the historical data another very
> long and cold ice age could happen at any
> time, which could be a disaster for life
> on Earth like few others.

Well, Jonathan, nobody can deny you were being provocative here,
but you "could happen at any time" is overdoing it. And some
people might not have read any further than this.

> Are we so sure of our science that we can
> say with certainty that attempting to
> artificially maintain the existing patterns
> of change will lead to benefits for humanity?

Here you are already talking as though only continued pouring
of CO2 and other promoters of global warming can stave off
the inevitable ice age. Not a good move.

> Or will it only allow the oncoming ice age to
> devastate life on Earth?

I'm not sure how this is supposed to relate to what you wrote before.

Even when you turn to scientific data, you do not put your best
foot forward. The following is old hat to most readers, its
relevance rendered obsolete in the minds of most of the people here
by the ascendancy of Homo sapiens since the last Ice Age.

>
> Global Warming:
> A Chilling Perspective
>
> Except for two relatively brief interglacial episodes, one peaking
> about 125,000 years ago (Eemian Interglacial), and the other
> beginning about 18,000 years ago (Present Interglacial), the Earth
> has been under siege of ice for the last 160,000 years.
>
> Earth Temps Over Last 160,000 Years
>
> As illustrated in this final graph, over the past 800,000 years
> the Earth has undergone major swings in warming and cooling
> at approximately 100,000 year intervals, interrupted by minor
> warming cycles at shorter intervals. This represents periods
> of glacial expansion, separated by distinct but relatively
> short-lived periods of glacial retreat.
> http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

It is your next article that really should have made people
sit up and take notice, but you pulled your punches badly:

> 100,000 year ice age cycle linked to orbital periods and
> sea ice
> Anthony Watts / January 27, 2017
> From BROWN UNIVERSITY

In case anyone reading this does not know: Brown University is
one of the top (20?) (10?) universities in the USA as far
as prestige goes.

>
> PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Earth is currently in
> what climatologists call an interglacial period, a warm pulse
> between long, cold ice ages when glaciers dominate our
> planet’s higher latitudes.
> https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/27/100000-year-ice-age-cycle-linked-to-orbital-periods-and-sea-ice/

Except for the "s" at the end, your post ends here. You should have
quoted the closing paragraph of the article.


<drum roll>

As for the future of the glacial cycle, that remains unclear, Lee says.
It’s difficult at this point to predict how human contributions to
Earth’s greenhouse gas concentrations might alter the future of Earth’s
ice ages.

"unclear"? "difficult to predict"? To hear the scientific community,
and the Nobel Peace Prize committee, and Nobel Laureate Al Gore talk,
you'd think this was a done deal. Once the global temperature reaches
"the tipping point," we will have a greenhouse
effect unlike that seen since the late Paleocene, so goes the
conventional wisdom.

And the conventional wisdom says that unless something drastic is
done, that tipping point will be reached well before we run
out of fossil fuels to burn, and quite possibly before the
end of the 21st century.

Maybe even within my lifetime if, as I hope, I will live in
good health for two more decades. Some t.o. regulars are
saying we can't even dare wait ten years, and one even wrote,
"The earth is screaming" on that other thread.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of S. Carolina

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, June 24, 2017 at 7:29:52 PM UTC-4, Jonathan wrote:

I was misled by the innocuous quote you gave in this first cited article,
and the fact that its provenance is unclear [as opposed to the
Brown University provenance of the other] into ignoring its contents
until now.

> Global Warming:
> A Chilling Perspective
>
> Except for two relatively brief interglacial episodes, one peaking
> about 125,000 years ago (Eemian Interglacial), and the other
> beginning about 18,000 years ago (Present Interglacial), the Earth
> has been under siege of ice for the last 160,000 years.
>
> Earth Temps Over Last 160,000 Years
>
> As illustrated in this final graph, over the past 800,000 years
> the Earth has undergone major swings in warming and cooling
> at approximately 100,000 year intervals, interrupted by minor
> warming cycles at shorter intervals. This represents periods
> of glacial expansion, separated by distinct but relatively
> short-lived periods of glacial retreat.
> http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

Wow, you sure know how to pull your punches, Jonathan! you could
have flooded post after post with challenges that this webpage
gives to the Conventional Wisdom on global warming!

In fact, you might even have spawned a lot of *ad hominem* activity
alleging bias of the author. The real question is how much solid
data they would have given to counter the mass of data presented
by the article.


But, knowing their usual propensities, I will not quote scientific
information from it today.


Instead, I will give some quotes that might cause them to salivate
"quote mine" and "cherry picking" all over their keyboards,
Pavlov-dog style.

Here are just a few of those kinds of quotes, taken directly
from the webpage:

"We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic
statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have.
Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being
effective and being honest."

Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory)
(in interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989)

****

Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem.
Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an
over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global
warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to
what the solutions are...

former Vice President Al Gore
(now, chairman and co-founder of Generation Investment Management--
a London-based business that sells carbon credits)
(in interview with Grist Magazine May 9, 2006, concerning his book, An
Inconvenient Truth)

****

"Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract
great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public . . .
and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous
than they really are."

Petr Chylek
(Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University,
Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Commenting on reports by other researchers that Greenland's glaciers are
melting. (Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001) (8)

****

"Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right
thing -- in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."

Tim Wirth , while U.S. Senator, Colorado.
After a short stint as United Nations Under-Secretary for Global Affairs
(4) he now serves as President, U.N. Foundation, created by Ted Turner
and his $1 billion "gift"

****

"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental
benefits.... Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about
justice and equality in the world."

Christine Stewart, former Minister of the Environment of Canada
quote from the Calgary Herald, 1999

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Tue, 25 Jul 2017 06:41:07 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:


<snip noise to focus on alleged "eye-popping quote">

While it's reasonable to say AGW may have uncertain effects on
Interglacial cycles, it should go without saying that said comment
says nothing about the documented increased atmospheric CO2 and its
effects on global warming. Based on the cited article, Brown
University is wise enough to not conflate these two separate issues.
If only the same could be said about all of the faculty of U. of S.
Carolina.

>Peter Nyikos
>Professor, Dept. of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
>U. of S. Carolina

--
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Attributed to Voltaire

[Peter Nyikos]

There may be some readers who thank you for belaboring the
obvious, but I'm certainly not making any bets on that.

Obvious, that is, except for YOUR uselessly vague claim about
"its effects on global warming" not backed by any statistics.

> Based on the cited article, Brown
> University is wise enough to not conflate these two separate issues.

Vague use of the word "conflate" noted.

> If only the same could be said about all of the faculty of U. of S.
> Carolina.

Perhaps, if you told us which definition of "conflate" you were using,
it would turn out that the same CAN be said about me.

One think should be hauntingly obvious to everyone: you had absolutely
nothing to say about the contents of my closing paragraph. Did my
use of the word "Paleocene" send up red flags of "this is out of my
depth" in your mind?

After all, once one gets into the remote past, one starts to become
relevant to what this newsgroup is ostensibly about: the debate
between science and creationism, especially YEC creationism.

As well as the MOEC (Modestly Old Earth Creationism) of Ray Martinez.

And heaven forbid that you should discuss anything remotely like that
with me. :-)

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, July 25, 2017 at 3:25:05 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> One thin[g] should be hauntingly obvious to everyone: you had absolutely

> nothing to say about the contents of my closing paragraph.

Make that "paragraphs": my mention of the word "Paleocene" came in
the first of three.

> Did my
> use of the word "Paleocene" send up red flags of "this is out of my
> depth" in your mind?

Peter Nyikos
Professor of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of S. Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[John Bode]

On Saturday, June 24, 2017 at 6:29:52 PM UTC-5, Jonathan wrote:
> The data is pretty clear that every 100,000 years
> the Earth plunges into a long, cold and life killing
> ice age. With brief warm interglacials like now.
>

Not *too* life-killing, obviously.

> According to the historical data another very
> long and cold ice age could happen at any
> time, which could be a disaster for life
> on Earth like few others.
>

We've managed to put that off for a while now. We *were* heading into
an extended cooling period until about a hundred years ago.

> Are we so sure of our science that we can
> say with certainty that attempting to
> artificially maintain the existing patterns
> of change will lead to benefits for humanity?
>

Compared to the likely outcomes of the *extremely rapid* warming trend
we're currently experiencing? Yes.

We didn't exactly *plunge* into ice ages - they came on gradually, such
that most populations could adapt or move. By contrast, we're expected
to warm the Earth by 2 degrees in the span of a century and a half,
which is *orders of magnitude* faster than past climate changes.

> Or will it only allow the oncoming ice age to
> devastate life on Earth?

Again, plenty of plants and animals (including humans!) survived past
ice ages. It's not an automatic death sentence any more than a warming
climate is an automatic death sentence - again, it's the *rate* at
which the climate changes that matters.

[snip remainder]

[jillery]

On Tue, 25 Jul 2017 12:23:07 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos

You now say I belabor the obvious, but your previous post suggests you
never even thought of it as obvious before now.

>Obvious, that is, except for YOUR uselessly vague claim about
>"its effects on global warming" not backed by any statistics.

I and others have posted statistics galore, all to be dismissed out of
hand by AGW deniers, just like anti-evolutionists. Your comments
about me elsethread shows you would do likewise with anything I
posted.

>> Based on the cited article, Brown
>> University is wise enough to not conflate these two separate issues.
>
>Vague use of the word "conflate" noted.

Nope. Instead it's almost certain you think it's vague because of
your inability to comprehend written English.

>> If only the same could be said about all of the faculty of U. of S.
>> Carolina.
>
>Perhaps, if you told us which definition of "conflate" you were using,
>it would turn out that the same CAN be said about me.
>
>One think should be hauntingly obvious to everyone: you had absolutely
>nothing to say about the contents of my closing paragraph. Did my
>use of the word "Paleocene" send up red flags of "this is out of my
>depth" in your mind?

What do you think is vague about "Paleocene"?

>After all, once one gets into the remote past, one starts to become
>relevant to what this newsgroup is ostensibly about: the debate
>between science and creationism, especially YEC creationism.
>
>As well as the MOEC (Modestly Old Earth Creationism) of Ray Martinez.
>
>And heaven forbid that you should discuss anything remotely like that
>with me. :-)

Stop ejaculating your repetitive irrelevant spew from your puckered
sphincter, like your comments above, so I don't have to wade through
it in a vain hope of finding a coherent comment, and I might consider
it. Otherwise, continue to stew in your own spew.

>Peter Nyikos
>Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>University of South Carolina
>http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

Do you deduct from your salary your time trolling Usenet?

[rolf.a...@gmail.com]

"Peter Nyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:5bec2613-dfa7-4beb...@googlegroups.com...

>> PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - Earth is currently in

The end is near:
http://tinyurl.com/yd8nfy8r

Rolf

[Peter Nyikos]

The photographs tell a story of all kinds of reckless mismanagement
and exploitation of the earth's resources, only a small fraction
relevant to what I wrote about in the three paragraphs above.

And even that has no relevance to what "The end is near" means. It could
be as near as what the conventional wisdom claims, or it could be as
far away in time as "the Holocene Maximum" of ca. 8000-4000 years ago or
even the Eemian Interglacial of ca. 125,000 years ago.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

IMHO, the other abuses that your linked pictures graphically portray--
some already familiar centuries ago -- will put an end to
our level of civilization before then. In a satire on other matters,
I "predicted" an economic collapse around 2200 which was the
culmination of three centuries of this kind of behavior, followed
by massive social and political upheavals leading to "dark ages"
at least as bad as the ones that goes by that name today.

If that does happen, at whatever time, civilization will take thousands
of years to recover due to the inaccessibility of many minerals, including
fossil fuels, that result from the wasteful, shortsighted
exploitation of the easily accessible ones. My satire was set in the
60th century, when recovery had only reached a level attained about three
centuries ago.

I posted it in reply to Greg Guarino, on the thread
"OT: Same-Sex Marriage in the Light of Reason" somewhere
around the middle of June. The satire had to do with some simplistic
ideas Guarino had on a topic far removed from environmentalism.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, July 25, 2017 at 6:20:05 PM UTC-4, John Bode wrote:
> On Saturday, June 24, 2017 at 6:29:52 PM UTC-5, Jonathan wrote:
> > The data is pretty clear that every 100,000 years
> > the Earth plunges into a long, cold and life killing
> > ice age. With brief warm interglacials like now.
> >
>
> Not *too* life-killing, obviously.

But grim enough, according to the following webpage,
the url to which you snipped at the end.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

Excerpt:
What did not lay beneath ice was a largely cold and desolate desert
landscape, due in large part to the colder, less-humid atmospheric
conditions that prevailed.

During the Ice Age summers were short and winters were brutal.
Animal life and especially plant life had a very tough time of it.
Thanks to global warming, that has all now changed, at least temporarily.

> > According to the historical data another very
> > long and cold ice age could happen at any
> > time, which could be a disaster for life
> > on Earth like few others.
> >
>
> We've managed to put that off for a while now. We *were* heading into
> an extended cooling period until about a hundred years ago.

Yes.

> > Are we so sure of our science that we can
> > say with certainty that attempting to
> > artificially maintain the existing patterns
> > of change will lead to benefits for humanity?
> >
>
> Compared to the likely outcomes of the *extremely rapid* warming trend
> we're currently experiencing? Yes.

Jonathan did say "existing patterns of change". It's hard to make
sense of what you are saying in reply to this.

> We didn't exactly *plunge* into ice ages - they came on gradually, such
> that most populations could adapt or move.

"gradually" cries out for quantification. One scenario is that large tracts
of the Arctic experienced cooler summers and resulting failure of surface
ice and snow to melt. Animals might have adapted to this *in situ* by
burrowing and digging, until it became too late for them to move out
of the now-vast snow/ice fields without starving to death.

> By contrast, we're expected
> to warm the Earth by 2 degrees in the span of a century and a half,
> which is *orders of magnitude* faster than past climate changes.

True, but we humans are quite capable of transporting animals to
more hospitable habitats, thereby avoiding the sort of disaster
that I outlined just now.

For instance, there are low-relief islands like the Maldives that
will go under, barring a big dike-building project, but the
animals involved, assuming they include endemic species, can be relocated.

> > Or will it only allow the oncoming ice age to
> > devastate life on Earth?
>
> Again, plenty of plants and animals (including humans!) survived past
> ice ages. It's not an automatic death sentence any more than a warming
> climate is an automatic death sentence - again, it's the *rate* at
> which the climate changes that matters.

To what? Continental shelves will be inundated on a huge scale,
whatever the rate, if the conventional wisdom of today is correct.
OTOH they will grow about as much if another
ice age comes. To take just one example: almost all of the North Sea
would become dry land, as it was during the last ice age.

Besides, at the rate we have been making animals extinct in very
different ways, the resulting extinctions might pale in comparison.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[John Bode]

On Wednesday, July 26, 2017 at 8:45:05 AM UTC-5, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 25, 2017 at 6:20:05 PM UTC-4, John Bode wrote:
> > On Saturday, June 24, 2017 at 6:29:52 PM UTC-5, Jonathan wrote:
> > > The data is pretty clear that every 100,000 years
> > > the Earth plunges into a long, cold and life killing
> > > ice age. With brief warm interglacials like now.
> > >
> >
> > Not *too* life-killing, obviously.
>
> But grim enough, according to the following webpage,
> the url to which you snipped at the end.
>
> http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
>
> Excerpt:
> What did not lay beneath ice was a largely cold and desolate desert
> landscape, due in large part to the colder, less-humid atmospheric
> conditions that prevailed.
>
> During the Ice Age summers were short and winters were brutal.
> Animal life and especially plant life had a very tough time of it.
> Thanks to global warming, that has all now changed, at least temporarily.
>

Not saying another ice age would be a picnic. But just like rising
temperatures don't spell DOOOOOM for the entire planet, neither would
falling temperatures.

>
>
> > > According to the historical data another very
> > > long and cold ice age could happen at any
> > > time, which could be a disaster for life
> > > on Earth like few others.
> > >
> >
> > We've managed to put that off for a while now. We *were* heading into
> > an extended cooling period until about a hundred years ago.
>
> Yes.
>
> > > Are we so sure of our science that we can
> > > say with certainty that attempting to
> > > artificially maintain the existing patterns
> > > of change will lead to benefits for humanity?
> > >
> >
> > Compared to the likely outcomes of the *extremely rapid* warming trend
> > we're currently experiencing? Yes.
>
> Jonathan did say "existing patterns of change". It's hard to make
> sense of what you are saying in reply to this.
>

"Maintaining existing pattern of change" depends on what "existing" means;
if we mean to maintain the gradual cooling trend that was in effect before
the 20th century, then that would definitely be more beneficial than
allowing the current warming trend to proceed at its current pace.

If "existing" means maintaining the *rapid* warming trend? No, we *don't*
want to maintain that.

>
> > We didn't exactly *plunge* into ice ages - they came on gradually, such
> > that most populations could adapt or move.
>
> "gradually" cries out for quantification.

The height of the Eemian was rougly 120 kya, when temps were about +1 deg
C over current. The last Glacial Maximum was around 22 kya, when temps
were between -3 deg C and -5 deg C under current (we'll call it -4).

So, it took roughly 100 ky to cool about 5 deg C, or ~ -1 deg C / 20 ky.

From the LGM to beginning of the 20th century, we've warmed about 4 deg C,
or ~ +1 deg C / 5 ky.

The current warming trend is on the order of +1 deg C per 150 years.

So, the cooling took place over (very roughly) 5000 human generations (not
that anatomically modern humans were around yet); warming on the other side
took around 1000. We're on pace to accomplish a similar level of warming in
about 10 generations.

> One scenario is that large tracts
> of the Arctic experienced cooler summers and resulting failure of surface
> ice and snow to melt. Animals might have adapted to this *in situ* by
> burrowing and digging, until it became too late for them to move out
> of the now-vast snow/ice fields without starving to death.
>
> > By contrast, we're expected
> > to warm the Earth by 2 degrees in the span of a century and a half,
> > which is *orders of magnitude* faster than past climate changes.
>
> True, but we humans are quite capable of transporting animals to
> more hospitable habitats, thereby avoiding the sort of disaster
> that I outlined just now.
>

It's not just animals we need to move. Arctic tundra is a poor replacement
for farmland.

> For instance, there are low-relief islands like the Maldives that
> will go under, barring a big dike-building project, but the
> animals involved, assuming they include endemic species, can be relocated.
>

You'll need to migrate the plants they depend on as well.

>
> > > Or will it only allow the oncoming ice age to
> > > devastate life on Earth?
> >
> > Again, plenty of plants and animals (including humans!) survived past
> > ice ages. It's not an automatic death sentence any more than a warming
> > climate is an automatic death sentence - again, it's the *rate* at
> > which the climate changes that matters.
>
> To what?

To the ability of populations (especially of longer-lived species) to adapt.

> Continental shelves will be inundated on a huge scale,
> whatever the rate, if the conventional wisdom of today is correct.
> OTOH they will grow about as much if another
> ice age comes. To take just one example: almost all of the North Sea
> would become dry land, as it was during the last ice age.
>
> Besides, at the rate we have been making animals extinct in very
> different ways, the resulting extinctions might pale in comparison.
>

Not arguing that point at all. Just saying that we're making things a lot
harder than they would have been under a non-warming scenario.

[William Hyde]

On Tuesday, July 25, 2017 at 9:45:04 AM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> Fascinating, as Mr. Spock used to say.

Peter,

I did think of replying to Jonathan, but did not, principally as I was ill and trying to keep my responses short.

I am not feeling at my best even now, so let me make a few brief points, after which you can ask any questions you like.

(I've actually co-written a speculative paper on global warming and possible distant future climate change:

"Transient nature of late Pleistocene climate variability

Thomas J. Crowley & William T. Hyde

Nature 456, 226-230 (13 November 2008)"

It was cited by "skeptics" at the time as supporting the view Jonathan gave, though we explicitly said in the paper it did not. We were talking about a potential severe climate change which could not happen for at least another 50,000 years. An eternity in human terms.)


(1) Rate of change.

In the 100,000 year ice age cycle global temperatures drop about four degrees C (some sources argue for 5 - note that I am talking about global average temperatures, not Vostok or Epica - quite a few graphs accessible via google say "global", but if you look at the source it is an ice core).

Let us take the larger number, and assume all the drop occurred in the first 10,000 years (the early cooling is the fastest). That is a rate of cooling of .05 degrees per century. If we take a very conservative view of global warming forecasts, the temperature between 2000 and 2100 will increase one degree. Twenty times as fast. It is clear which is the immediate problem.

Even if we take one quarter of a degree to be the likely warming in this century - consistent with some skeptical estimates - it is five times the ice age cooling. So it seems that an ice age would be easy to fend off, if we needed to.

(2) Uncertainty in timing.

Statements like "Ice ages last 100,000 years, interglacials last 10,000" are at best approximations. It is not reasonable to use such approximate numbers to imply an ice age is coming *now*. An error of 1000 years is small compared to the actual uncertainty, but is a huge time in human history. A thousand years ago Cnut had just taken over England, Basil the Bulgar-slayer ruled in Constantinople.

(3) Interglacials.

Not only are all interglacials not 10,000 years, one at least extended to 30,000 years. Geochemist Warren Ruddiman has an interesting if controversial theory as to why this interglacial is proving to be a long one (early human agriculture and elevated CH4 levels).

(4) Orbital forcing. Ice ages are driven by variations in the earth's orbit. According to the late Dr Thomas Crowley, the best orbital configuration for glaciation that we are going to see for several millennia occurred about 800 years ago. In a sense we missed the on ramp for the next ice age, and must wait for the next one.

I'd like to comment on one of the quotes given. I was a professor at Dalhousie at the same time as Petr Chylek. He is a superb scientist and a natural skeptic (not just on scientific topics). He is a firm hater of anything smelling remotely of a bandwagon, and has bent over backwards to give a forum to GW skeptics, even organizing two conferences on the subject we are discussing.

I have huge respect for him, and I hope that is clear.
But in this particular case his comment was at best beside the point. The report of increasing mass loss in Greenland in 2001 was sound. Greenland has continued to melt since 2001, 2002 was a year of record melting, and the melt has both continued and accelerated.

Perhaps these points were not so brief. Ah, well.

William Hyde

[jillery]

Based on your comments above, the claim that a future ice age has
anything to do with current AGW, said claim lacks quantification.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, July 26, 2017 at 7:30:05 PM UTC-4, William Hyde wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 25, 2017 at 9:45:04 AM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > Fascinating, as Mr. Spock used to say.
>
>
> Peter,
>
> I did think of replying to Jonathan, but did not, principally as I was ill and trying to keep my responses short.
>
> I am not feeling at my best even now, so let me make a few brief points, after which you can ask any questions you like.

I hope you don't mind my interspersing questions and comments below.
I put them where I thought they best fit your narrative.

> (I've actually co-written a speculative paper on global warming and possible distant future climate change:
>
> "Transient nature of late Pleistocene climate variability
>
> Thomas J. Crowley & William T. Hyde
>
> Nature 456, 226-230 (13 November 2008)"

Wow, I'm impressed. It is seldom that someone of your stature
in the physical sciences posts to talk.origins. The only others
I know of are Steven Carlip and Mike Dworetsky.

> It was cited by "skeptics" at the time as supporting the view Jonathan gave, though we explicitly said in the paper it did not. We were talking about a potential severe climate change which could not happen for at least another 50,000 years. An eternity in human terms.)
>
>
> (1) Rate of change.
>
> In the 100,000 year ice age cycle global temperatures drop about four degrees C (some sources argue for 5 - note that I am talking about global average temperatures, not Vostok or Epica - quite a few graphs accessible via google say "global", but if you look at the source it is an ice core).

What kind of data do you use to come to the conclusions below?

> Let us take the larger number, and assume all the drop occurred in the first 10,000 years (the early cooling is the fastest). That is a rate of cooling of .05 degrees per century. If we take a very conservative view of global warming forecasts, the temperature between 2000 and 2100 will increase one degree.

How reliable are these forecasts? What is the basis for them?

> Twenty times as fast. It is clear which is the immediate problem.
>
> Even if we take one quarter of a degree to be the likely warming in this century - consistent with some skeptical estimates - it is five times the ice age cooling. So it seems that an ice age would be easy to fend off, if we needed to.

There was a theory back in the 1960's that the ice ages were brought on
by increased snowfall due to the Arctic Ocean being open water and
connected to the Atlantic between Greenland and Europe. We are making
it open water a lot faster than it was in past ages, are we not?

Did you consider this now-forgotten (or so it seems) theory in making
your estimates?

> (2) Uncertainty in timing.
>
> Statements like "Ice ages last 100,000 years, interglacials last 10,000" are at best approximations. It is not reasonable to use such approximate numbers to imply an ice age is coming *now*. An error of 1000 years is small compared to the actual uncertainty, but is a huge time in human history. A thousand years ago Cnut had just taken over England, Basil the Bulgar-slayer ruled in Constantinople.

No argument here--this kind of prediction is extremely naive.

> (3) Interglacials.
>
> Not only are all interglacials not 10,000 years, one at least extended to 30,000 years. Geochemist Warren Ruddiman has an interesting if controversial theory as to why this interglacial is proving to be a long one (early human agriculture and elevated CH4 levels).

What, didn't he make elevated CO2 levels part of his analysis?!?

> (4) Orbital forcing. Ice ages are driven by variations in the earth's orbit. According to the late Dr Thomas Crowley, the best orbital configuration for glaciation that we are going to see for several millennia occurred about 800 years ago.

Fascinating. That was about a century before the Little Ice Age began.
Could the time lag be explained by various factors?

> In a sense we missed the on ramp for the next ice age, and must wait for the next one.

"must" may be overdoing it. Closely allied with that 1960's theory
is a much more recent one: the Gulf Stream will wither and die
without sufficient cold to make the waters sink where they are
now sinking, in the vicinity of Iceland IIRC. This would bring
much colder winters AND summers to Western Europe, retarding
snow melt and thus increasing the earth's albedo in a positive
feedback reaction.

Whether this would be enough to bring on a genuine ice age, or
just a repeat of the Little Ice age, I have no idea. Do you?

>
> I'd like to comment on one of the quotes given. I was a professor at Dalhousie at the same time as Petr Chylek. He is a superb scientist and a natural skeptic (not just on scientific topics). He is a firm hater of anything smelling remotely of a bandwagon, and has bent over backwards to give a forum to GW skeptics, even organizing two conferences on the subject we are discussing.
>
> I have huge respect for him, and I hope that is clear.
> But in this particular case his comment was at best beside the point. The report of increasing mass loss in Greenland in 2001 was sound. Greenland has continued to melt since 2001, 2002 was a year of record melting, and the melt has both continued and accelerated.

I've seen a report that the snow and ice cover in Greenlad has increased
this past year, especially in the southeast. Was that "fake news"?

>
> Perhaps these points were not so brief. Ah, well.
>
> William Hyde

Best wishes for improved health,

Peter Nyikos

Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[William Hyde]

On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 12:35:05 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 26, 2017 at 7:30:05 PM UTC-4, William Hyde wrote:

> >
> > I am not feeling at my best even now, so let me make a few brief points, after which you can ask any questions you like.
>
>
> I hope you don't mind my interspersing questions and comments below.
> I put them where I thought they best fit your narrative.
>
>
> > (I've actually co-written a speculative paper on global warming and possible distant future climate change:
> >
> > "Transient nature of late Pleistocene climate variability
> >
> > Thomas J. Crowley & William T. Hyde
> >
> > Nature 456, 226-230 (13 November 2008)"
>
> Wow, I'm impressed.

Well, I am retired. Fully retired. And this was my second last paper.

> > (1) Rate of change.
> >
> > In the 100,000 year ice age cycle global temperatures drop about four degrees C (some sources argue for 5 - note that I am talking about global average temperatures, not Vostok or Epica - quite a few graphs accessible via google say "global", but if you look at the source it is an ice core).
>
>
> What kind of data do you use to come to the conclusions below?

The estimated global temperature change between the last glacial maximum and today is mostly due to isotopic evidence from sea cores supplemented by other proxies such as ice cores (Vostok et al), speleothems, and so on.

The oceanic evidence (originally CLIMAP) is well distributed in space and it argues for about four degrees of cooling, some of the speleothem and other evidence argues for more. The ice cores give more, but that evidence is restricted to very high latitudes, a small fraction of the earth's surface so it is not heavily weighted.

Climate model simulations are not evidence, and given that interactive oceans were not a feature of models in the 1980s, it was no surprise that early model studies (1980s) gave about 3.5 degrees of cooling (Hansen et al) to about 4.2 (British met office, I think) as they used CLIMAP ocean data. It is reassuring, though, that more recent studies with far superior models give about the same result.

Our very simple model gave 2.2 as the effect of the high albedo of the ice sheets alone. Such a model is not able to account for changes in, e.g. CO2 or clouds (hence the low value) but it is independent of CLIMAP.
An ad hoc addition of CO2 change to the model gave, IIRC, 3.8 degrees.

All that said, if it turns out 25 years from now that the final verdict (to the extent that such a thing can exist) is six degrees I wouldn't be utterly shocked. But I suspect the result will be in the range of 3.5-5.5.

> > Let us take the larger number, and assume all the drop occurred in the first 10,000 years (the early cooling is the fastest). That is a rate of cooling of .05 degrees per century. If we take a very conservative view of global warming forecasts, the temperature between 2000 and 2100 will increase one degree.
>
>
> How reliable are these forecasts? What is the basis for them?

Utterly reliable, say some few, utter trash, say others.

Fairly reliable, say I and many others, including those who actually create the models.

Even the early versions of these models made a number of qualitatively accurate predictions. Manabe did the first such study that I am aware of, in the mid 1960s with a simple radiative-convective model. This model predicted that the lower atmosphere would warm, but also that the stratosphere would cool.

The first prediction, of course, has come true. But the second, which has also come true, is more interesting as it is counter intuitive. After all, if this is just a conspiracy, as our friend Eri maintains, why go out on such a limb? Why lie about something that is a priori unlikely to happen? (A review of upper atmosphere changes was published in Science, in somewhere around November 2006.)

And remember, these predictions were made 50 years ago.

Manabe and his colleagues moved on to more complicated models, early General Circulation Models. Without fully interactive oceans these models were distinctly handicapped, but they revealed another feature, polar amplification, which is evident today.

Models have also predicted that the warming would be greater in winter than summer, night than day. As observed.

So the models have predicted a number of features of the warming, some unexpected, they do a reasonable job of simulating past climates (not only the most recent ice age) and the warming we see today is well within the range of model predictions.

As the number I quoted above is only half of the ensemble model prediction for the 21st century, I'm rather sure we will warm at least that much.

> > Twenty times as fast. It is clear which is the immediate problem.
> >
> > Even if we take one quarter of a degree to be the likely warming in this century - consistent with some skeptical estimates - it is five times the ice age cooling. So it seems that an ice age would be easy to fend off, if we needed to.
>
>
> There was a theory back in the 1960's that the ice ages were brought on
> by increased snowfall due to the Arctic Ocean being open water and
> connected to the Atlantic between Greenland and Europe. We are making
> it open water a lot faster than it was in past ages, are we not?

That was the Ewing and Donn theory. I recall that the science classroom in my middle school had an article on this posted.

Ewing and Donn were respected scientists, to say the least (I've conversed with Donn, but not Ewing) but this was a strictly conceptual model. Conceptual models are highly valuable, and at one time they were all we had. But quantitatively this model does not work. Snowfall rates, ice flow, heat transport into the Arctic (an important part of the theory), none of it adds up to an ice age.

When I met Donn in 1982, he wasn't pushing it.

> Did you consider this now-forgotten (or so it seems) theory in making
> your estimates?

Well, for a start the temperature estimates I used for rates of cooling come from data, not theory. This conceptual theory, for that matter, would not provide any quantitative estimate I could use.

I don't know much about the history of mathematics. But is it not the case that interesting conjectures are made, but eventually shown to be false? If your field is like mine, even the disproof might lead to advances in the field.

Wally Broeker, one of the great geoscientists of the time, credits this theory with getting the scientific community more interested in ice ages:

"Donn would go around and give lectures that made everybody mad. But in getting mad, they'd really get into the subject" (Quote from memory and hence approximate, original in Weart's "The Discovery of Global Warming").


I see via a brief google that the Ewing and Donn theory is being promoted on skeptical websites, which is no surprise. But it has been dead scientifically for decades - though not forgotten.

There have been many theories of the ice ages (detailed in part in the book "Ice Ages - Solving the Mystery" by Imbrie and Imbrie which I recommended to Eri some months ago). Only the Milankovitch framework (the timing of ice ages is controlled by changes in the earth's orbit) has quantitative explanatory power.

>
> > (2) Uncertainty in timing.
> >
> > Statements like "Ice ages last 100,000 years, interglacials last 10,000" are at best approximations. It is not reasonable to use such approximate numbers to imply an ice age is coming *now*. An error of 1000 years is small compared to the actual uncertainty, but is a huge time in human history. A thousand years ago Cnut had just taken over England, Basil the Bulgar-slayer ruled in Constantinople.
>
> No argument here--this kind of prediction is extremely naive.
>
> > (3) Interglacials.
> >
> > Not only are all interglacials not 10,000 years, one at least extended to 30,000 years. Geochemist Warren Ruddiman

William Ruddiman, that is.

has an interesting if controversial theory as to why this interglacial is proving to be a long one (early human agriculture and elevated CH4 levels).
>
>
> What, didn't he make elevated CO2 levels part of his analysis?!?

Well, he's talking about greater warmth, compared to other interglacials, in pre-industrual times. But aside from CH4 he does consider CO2 N2O and other gases on which a farming economy can have an effect. But IIRC CH4 in this case dominates. Even if he is wrong, like Ewing and Donn he has opened up a new area for research.

> > (4) Orbital forcing. Ice ages are driven by variations in the earth's orbit. According to the late Dr Thomas Crowley, the best orbital configuration for glaciation that we are going to see for several millennia occurred about 800 years ago.
>
>
> Fascinating. That was about a century before the Little Ice Age began.
> Could the time lag be explained by various factors?
>

No, the orbital signal is too weak to produce so rapid a cooling as the little ice age.

The ice age and little ice age are very different events. If the Milankovitch theory is correct, the very early years of a new ice age see summer cooling, in mid and high latitudes but little cooling in winter, perhaps even warming, while the LIA was noted for very cold winters.

The causes of the LIA are far from resolved, but there was clearly a very significant volcanic component, the solar component was real (though to my mind often overestimated) and there were small changes in greenhouse gases - not an exclusive list. None of these effects are believed to be causal for a real ice age. (Though GHG changes are a positive feedback and an ice age already incipient might be hastened along by volcanic or solar change.)

>
> > In a sense we missed the on ramp for the next ice age, and must wait for the next one.
>
> "must" may be overdoing it.

Well, to extend the metaphor, we are still pretty close to the on ramp. If we did something a little illegal we might be able to get on.

Closely allied with that 1960's theory
> is a much more recent one: the Gulf Stream will wither and die
> without sufficient cold to make the waters sink where they are
> now sinking, in the vicinity of Iceland IIRC. This would bring
> much colder winters AND summers to Western Europe, retarding
> snow melt and thus increasing the earth's albedo in a positive
> feedback reaction.

Possible changes in the gulf stream are indeed a worry. For a long time even ocean modellers themselves felt that the tendency of the gulf stream to collapse in their models was a model failure. But this feature seems robust (note, I am not an oceanographer so this is second or third hand) and is being taken more seriously than it was in 1990.

Quantitatively it is not at all clear (to say the least) that it would lead to an ice age, particularly given the CO2 warming we are experiencing. If a weaker gulf stream cools Europe, that might not be a bad thing in a generally warmer world.

The Gulf stream does indeed change utterly in an ice age, flowing directly east at about 40 N. But despite this the ice sheets go much farther south in North America, and glaciation begins there.

>
> Whether this would be enough to bring on a genuine ice age, or
> just a repeat of the Little Ice age,

Or neither.

>I have no idea. Do you?

If anybody tells you exactly what will happen in such a case, they either know a lot more than I do or are lying to you. As I said above, the "little ice age" is not really a weaker version of the actual ice age, it is cooling for very different reasons. But if I could live long enough to collect, I would put a lot of money on weakness in the gulf stream *not* causing a new ice age or a new LIA, particularly when accompanied by GHG induced global warming.

We were all taught as children that "the gulf stream is the reason Europe is not as cold as Labrador". We were all taught wrong.

> > I'd like to comment on one of the quotes given. I was a professor at Dalhousie at the same time as Petr Chylek. He is a superb scientist and a natural skeptic (not just on scientific topics). He is a firm hater of anything smelling remotely of a bandwagon, and has bent over backwards to give a forum to GW skeptics, even organizing two conferences on the subject we are discussing.
> >
> > I have huge respect for him, and I hope that is clear.
> > But in this particular case his comment was at best beside the point. The report of increasing mass loss in Greenland in 2001 was sound. Greenland has continued to melt since 2001, 2002 was a year of record melting, and the melt has both continued and accelerated.
>
> I've seen a report that the snow and ice cover in Greenlad has increased
> this past year, especially in the southeast. Was that "fake news"?

Without looking anything up, I will assume this to be true because it fits a pattern. There is an implicit assumption that things are not getting worse unless every climate variable gets worse year over year. So any reversal is heralded as a sign that there is no problem after all.

But that is not the way the world works. There is a lot of "noise" in the system, so after a poor year the next may well be "better", but it does not mean the problem is going away or even getting less severe. It is what is expected - especially after record bad years like 2007 for arctic sea ice. The skeptics made a meal of it when 2008 was not so bad! But, as predicted, arctic sea ice extent has continued to shrink.


Now let me check. Yes, 2016 was a poor year (tenth worst on record), this year is showing less melt than any year since 2009. There's no reason to assume the trend is changing.

Surface melt does not of itself tell us how much mass the ice sheet is losing. More of it is worse, in general, but where and when the melt happens can be crucial, as some of the melt refreezes before it reaches the sea. And of course, the main mass loss actually occurs where the ice sheet meets the sea.

Total ice mass is measured by the GRACE experiment. Figure 3.4 here:

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2016/ArtMID/5022/ArticleID/277/Greenland-Ice-Sheet

shows how it has been changing.

Anthropogenic greenhouse gases are estimated to produce a warming over this century of .02C per year. This is an order of magnitude lower than the changes of shorter acting climate events such as ENSO, tropical vulcanism, and so on. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that a combination of such events could produce a decade of distinct cooling.

Such a cooling would not be evidence that global warming is not happening (though of course it would be endlessly cited as such). Any more than evidence of a lower bank balance as you send your children to university implies that you've had a pay cut.

> Best wishes for improved health,

Thanks. It's just a persistent bug. I spent the winter disease-free so I must be punished in summer.

William Hyde

[William Hyde]

On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 12:25:03 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jul 2017 16:26:32 -0700 (PDT), William Hyde

>

> Based on your comments above, the claim that a future ice age has
> anything to do with current AGW, said claim lacks quantification.

If I've understood you, yes.

There will be a future ice age (1) - unless we choose to stop it. But because of the time scales involved this is utterly irrelevant to the issue of AGW. We could have a massive AGW event, and in a few thousand years when the sediments had absorbed the excess CO2, have an ice age more or less on schedule.

(1) Technically we are in an ice age. I am using the phrase in the colloquial sense.

William Hyde

[jillery]

On Thu, 27 Jul 2017 14:45:51 -0700 (PDT), William Hyde
<wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 12:25:03 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Wed, 26 Jul 2017 16:26:32 -0700 (PDT), William Hyde
>
>>
>> Based on your comments above, the claim that a future ice age has
>> anything to do with current AGW, said claim lacks quantification.
>
>If I've understood you, yes.

It seems to me that you have. The issue of a future ice age was
raised in this topic because some people think it illuminates the
debate over AGW generally and CO2's contribution to AGW specifically.
Your comments show that's not the case.

The person to whom you replied criticized others for lacking
quantification. Your post shows that quantification doesn't support
his claims about AGW.

>There will be a future ice age (1) - unless we choose to stop it. But because of the time scales involved this is utterly irrelevant to the issue of AGW. We could have a massive AGW event, and in a few thousand years when the sediments had absorbed the excess CO2, have an ice age more or less on schedule.
>
>(1) Technically we are in an ice age. I am using the phrase in the colloquial sense.
>
>William Hyde

Of course, I use the phrase "future ice age" in the same sense as the
posters who raised the question, to refer to a time when temperatures
become significantly colder than present, and ice sheets and glaciers
grow instead of shrink.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 5:40:05 PM UTC-4, William Hyde wrote:
> On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 12:35:05 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Wednesday, July 26, 2017 at 7:30:05 PM UTC-4, William Hyde wrote:

First off, William, let me thank you for your immensely
informative and helpful reply. It will give me a great deal
to think of for the next month, when I will be taking a posting
break from talk.origins beginning some time today.

But I will be "lurking" on this thread from time to time,
and if you write anything more on the subject of climate
that brings big questions to my mind, I might pop in and
ask them, and will be awaiting the answers eagerly.

One reason I am taking the break, and one reason I might make
an exception for you, is that we will have house guests during
almost the whole month, and one of them is keenly interested in
all kinds of scientific issues. He may even have some burning
questions of his own, and if so I will relay them to you if
I cannot answer them myself.

> > >
> > > I am not feeling at my best even now, so let me make a few brief points, after which you can ask any questions you like.
> >
> >
> > I hope you don't mind my interspersing questions and comments below.
> > I put them where I thought they best fit your narrative.
> >
> >
> > > (I've actually co-written a speculative paper on global warming and possible distant future climate change:
> > >
> > > "Transient nature of late Pleistocene climate variability
> > >
> > > Thomas J. Crowley & William T. Hyde
> > >
> > > Nature 456, 226-230 (13 November 2008)"

I do plan to read this one during the next month.

<big snip for the sake of brevity -- but ONLY for the sake of brevity>

> Even the early versions of these models made a number of qualitatively accurate predictions. Manabe did the first such study that I am aware of, in the mid 1960s with a simple radiative-convective model. This model predicted that the lower atmosphere would warm, but also that the stratosphere would cool.

I'd be very interested in how this works, with up to date
information of course. I have recently refreshed my memory
about the way in which atmospheric temperature works in the
various layers [as we ascend, it alternates cooling with heating
in the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere and thermosphere]
and it would be nice to know how changes in each relate to surface
temperatures.

One question: is the observed cooling in the stratosphere attributable
to the depletion of the ozone layer near the top?

> The first prediction, of course, has come true. But the second, which has also come true, is more interesting as it is counter intuitive. After all, if this is just a conspiracy, as our friend Eri maintains, why go out on such a limb? Why lie about something that is a priori unlikely to happen? (A review of upper atmosphere changes was published in Science, in somewhere around November 2006.)
>
> And remember, these predictions were made 50 years ago.
>
> Manabe and his colleagues moved on to more complicated models, early General Circulation Models. Without fully interactive oceans these models were distinctly handicapped, but they revealed another feature, polar amplification, which is evident today.
>
> Models have also predicted that the warming would be greater in winter than summer, night than day. As observed.
>
> So the models have predicted a number of features of the warming, some unexpected, they do a reasonable job of simulating past climates (not only the most recent ice age) and the warming we see today is well within the range of model predictions.

<snip, as before; thanks for giving me the lowdown on the Donn-Ewing theory>

> Well, for a start the temperature estimates I used for rates of cooling come from data, not theory. This conceptual theory, for that matter, would not provide any quantitative estimate I could use.
>
> I don't know much about the history of mathematics. But is it not the case that interesting conjectures are made, but eventually shown to be false?

Absolutely. I've refuted some interesting conjectures myself, giving
rise to new theories. My doctoral thesis was one such example.

> If your field is like mine, even the disproof might lead to advances in the field.

Yes, but there is a difference: pure mathematics does not usually rely on
data of the usual sort, but is often purely qualitative -- conceptual,
if you will.

>
> Wally Broeker, one of the great geoscientists of the time, credits this theory with getting the scientific community more interested in ice ages:
>
> "Donn would go around and give lectures that made everybody mad. But in getting mad, they'd really get into the subject" (Quote from memory and hence approximate, original in Weart's "The Discovery of Global Warming").

In my field, the best of that sort was Erik van Douwen. He could be
extremely irritating at times, but everyone had to admire his breadth and
depth of scholarship and research.

Alas, he died of a heart attack in his sleep, aged a mere 41. I can
hardly imagine where my field, set theoretic and general topology,
would be were he still alive today, three decades later. We've lost
some world-class minds at a young age, especially Urysohn while still
in his twenties of drowning in 1924. [He is a household word among all
topologists for Urysohn's Lemma, the Tietze-Urysohn extension theorem,
the Urysohn metrization theorem, and many other things.]

>
> I see via a brief google that the Ewing and Donn theory is being promoted on skeptical websites, which is no surprise. But it has been dead scientifically for decades - though not forgotten.
>
> There have been many theories of the ice ages (detailed in part in the book "Ice Ages - Solving the Mystery" by Imbrie and Imbrie which I recommended to Eri some months ago). Only the Milankovitch framework (the timing of ice ages is controlled by changes in the earth's orbit) has quantitative explanatory power.

I've caught some flak on that other climate change thread for
bemoaning the lack of quantification by most participants there,
but that doesn't bother me. John Bode and I have made a very
modest beginning over there at supplying some crude estimates.

<snip as before>

> > > (4) Orbital forcing. Ice ages are driven by variations in the earth's orbit. According to the late Dr Thomas Crowley, the best orbital configuration for glaciation that we are going to see for several millennia occurred about 800 years ago.

In what respect? precession of equinoxes, orbital eccentricity,
tilt of earth...?


<snip as before>

> We were all taught as children that "the gulf stream is the reason Europe is not as cold as Labrador". We were all taught wrong.

How about "the gulf stream is the reason the contour lines of
temperature go from west to east, more than north to south, in Europe"?

>
> > > I'd like to comment on one of the quotes given. I was a professor at Dalhousie at the same time as Petr Chylek. He is a superb scientist and a natural skeptic (not just on scientific topics). He is a firm hater of anything smelling remotely of a bandwagon,

As am I, and that is responsible for a great deal of animosity
against me here. Talk.origins is full of politically driven
people, as well as True Believers in various fads in biological
systematics, like the abandonment of all hope of ever calling
Hyracotherium ("Eohippus") a prime candidate for ancestry to
Equus or any other genus in the horse family, let alone a direct
ancestor.

> and has bent over backwards to give a forum to GW skeptics, even organizing two conferences on the subject we are discussing.
> > >
> > > I have huge respect for him, and I hope that is clear.

Would that the same were true of people who attack me for
being "out of date" (e.g. on that horse ancestry issue)
without giving any plausible reason for the fads I refuse to go
along with, while dismissing all my reasons for not going along
with them.

<snip as before>

> Surface melt does not of itself tell us how much mass the ice sheet is losing. More of it is worse, in general, but where and when the melt happens can be crucial, as some of the melt refreezes before it reaches the sea. And of course, the main mass loss actually occurs where the ice sheet meets the sea.
>
> Total ice mass is measured by the GRACE experiment. Figure 3.4 here:
>
> http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2016/ArtMID/5022/ArticleID/277/Greenland-Ice-Sheet
>
> shows how it has been changing.

Thanks, I'll check it out. But while total ice mass does contribute
to rising ocean levels, it is the surface area that governs albedo,
which in turn is one thing that affects surface temperature.

On the other hand, as you said in the part I snipped, the ice melt
in the ocean may more than offset additional snow cover on land.

> Anthropogenic greenhouse gases are estimated to produce a warming over this century of .02C per year. This is an order of magnitude lower than the changes of shorter acting climate events such as ENSO, tropical vulcanism, and so on. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that a combination of such events could produce a decade of distinct cooling.

What about changes in solar output? what trends do you think there will
be there in the next decade or so?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 5:50:04 PM UTC-4, William Hyde wrote:
> On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 12:25:03 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> > On Wed, 26 Jul 2017 16:26:32 -0700 (PDT), William Hyde
>
> >
> > Based on your comments above, the claim that a future ice age has
> > anything to do with current AGW, said claim lacks quantification.
>
> If I've understood you, yes.
>
> There will be a future ice age (1) - unless we choose to stop it. But because of the time scales involved this is utterly irrelevant to the issue of AGW. We could have a massive AGW event, and in a few thousand years when the sediments had absorbed the excess CO2, have an ice age more or less on schedule.

What if AGW reaches "the tipping point," which I take to mean the onset
of a positive feedback effect that does not stop until almost all the
ice in Antarctica is gone?

Jillery, to whom you are replying, once brought up the issue
of clathrates of CH4 deep in the ocean possibly contributing
to the positive feedback effect as they release a tremendous
amount of CH4 to the atmosphere. One might think that global
temperatures could be driven up to a point not seen since the
early Miocene, before glaciers started forming in Antarctica.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[William Hyde]

On Friday, July 28, 2017 at 2:20:05 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 5:50:04 PM UTC-4, William Hyde wrote:
> > On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 12:25:03 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> > > On Wed, 26 Jul 2017 16:26:32 -0700 (PDT), William Hyde
> >
> > >
> > > Based on your comments above, the claim that a future ice age has
> > > anything to do with current AGW, said claim lacks quantification.
> >
> > If I've understood you, yes.
> >
> > There will be a future ice age (1) - unless we choose to stop it. But because of the time scales involved this is utterly irrelevant to the issue of AGW. We could have a massive AGW event, and in a few thousand years when the sediments had absorbed the excess CO2, have an ice age more or less on schedule.
>
> What if AGW reaches "the tipping point," which I take to mean the onset
> of a positive feedback effect that does not stop until almost all the
> ice in Antarctica is gone?

Excellent question. For a given set of inputs, there can be more than one equilibrium climate (for a simple analytically solvable model illustrating this, see:

http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~shen/Sam_Papers_pdf/shen_camqu_1999.pdf

which refers to the model published here:

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0469%281975%29032%3C2033%3ATOEBCM%3E2.0.CO%3B2

So it is at least conceivable that a sufficient forcing could tip us into a different, ice free, equilibrium climate. In which case my comment above would be wrong - there would be no ice age for a long time, perhaps millions of years. I generally (perhaps too optimistically) assume that won't happen, but see below.

I don't know where that tipping point is, and I am not sure anyone does. We can look at paleoclimatic data to see what things were like before Antarctica became glaciated but:

(1) Australia was then closer to Antarctica, which may have influenced things like the strength of the seasonal cycle and a strong seasonal cycle inhibits ice sheet growth.

(2) Although climate changes all the time, it is usually not that far from an equilibrium. With our rapid addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere we are much farther from equilibrium, and getting farther by the year. Which makes it difficult to apply paleo-analogs.

(3) The East Antarctic ice sheet is generally very stable. I am unaware of any recent studies, but I don't think we will lose it at 500ppm. West Antarctica is very unstable. My opinion is that its demise is now inevitable. I would expect at least half of it to go over the next couple of centuries, raising sea level two or three meters. Or it could happen a lot faster, again, our equilibrium models may not properly handle an ice sheet in severe disequilibrium.

>
> Jillery, to whom you are replying, once brought up the issue
> of clathrates of CH4 deep in the ocean possibly contributing
> to the positive feedback effect as they release a tremendous
> amount of CH4 to the atmosphere. One might think that global
> temperatures could be driven up to a point not seen since the
> early Miocene, before glaciers started forming in Antarctica.

Yes, if we get a huge methane pulse from Clathrates, we might well go back even to Oligocene or Eocene warmth, with no trace of permanent ice on the planet.


In the shorter term I am much more worried about loss of methane and CO2 from arctic soils, which is happening now. Permafrost holds ten times the carbon held in the tropics. Until recently, it was isolated from the atmosphere, locked in ice. Less so now, bacteria eat it, emit methane and CO2.

Just another unintended consequence.

William Hyde

[William Hyde]

On Friday, July 28, 2017 at 12:45:05 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 5:40:05 PM UTC-4, William Hyde wrote:
> > On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 12:35:05 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, July 26, 2017 at 7:30:05 PM UTC-4, William Hyde wrote:
>
> First off, William, let me thank you for your immensely
> informative and helpful reply. It will give me a great deal
> to think of for the next month, when I will be taking a posting
> break from talk.origins beginning some time today.

Thank you. For me it's been a bit like coming up for air, after months of thinking (if I can even call it that) about less interesting things.

> But I will be "lurking" on this thread from time to time,
> and if you write anything more on the subject of climate
> that brings big questions to my mind, I might pop in and
> ask them, and will be awaiting the answers eagerly.
>
> One reason I am taking the break, and one reason I might make
> an exception for you, is that we will have house guests during
> almost the whole month,

Quite a coincidence. So will I, starting early in the month.

and one of them is keenly interested in
> all kinds of scientific issues. He may even have some burning
> questions of his own, and if so I will relay them to you if
> I cannot answer them myself.

> > > > "Transient nature of late Pleistocene climate variability
> > > >
> > > > Thomas J. Crowley & William T. Hyde
> > > >
> > > > Nature 456, 226-230 (13 November 2008)"
>
> I do plan to read this one during the next month.

Well, it was highly controversial. I don't think you will find a lot of people who agree with our (tentative) conclusions and that is reasonable. There's vastly more information available in the Imbrie and Imbrie book.

>
> <big snip for the sake of brevity -- but ONLY for the sake of brevity>
>
> > Even the early versions of these models made a number of qualitatively accurate predictions. Manabe did the first such study that I am aware of, in the mid 1960s with a simple radiative-convective model. This model predicted that the lower atmosphere would warm, but also that the stratosphere would cool.
>
> I'd be very interested in how this works, with up to date
> information of course.

I've seen knowledgeable people get tied up in knots over this one. So I will keep it simple, with the danger of keeping it simplistic.

As you know, the Stratosphere is warm only because of ozone, which absorbs short ultraviolet. CO2 (and H2O, which also increases in the Stratosphere as the troposphere warms), are not just absorbers of IR but also emitters - with the emission rate rising with temperature, but the absorption rate not. Since the stratosphere is warmer than it would be if heated only by IR, emission dominates over absorption, and extra CO2 and H2O cool the stratosphere.

Or to phrase it another way, O3 absorbs highly energetic photons emitted by a surface at 6000K, while CO2 is absorbing photons emitted at about 255. So the warming effect of CO2 here is small compared to the cooling effect.

If there were no ozone, the greenhouse effect would warm the stratosphere.

I have recently refreshed my memory
> about the way in which atmospheric temperature works in the
> various layers [as we ascend, it alternates cooling with heating
> in the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere and thermosphere]
> and it would be nice to know how changes in each relate to surface
> temperatures.
>
> One question: is the observed cooling in the stratosphere attributable
> to the depletion of the ozone layer near the top?

Manabe was working before ozone depletion was an issue, and his model assumed constant O3.

The latest work includes changes in O3, CO2, H2O and aerosols. I don't have a copy of this paper:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5803/1253.full

which IIRC discusses the effects of each change alone and in combination. But changes in CO2 and H2O are responsible for much of the cooling, as Manabe predicted.

>
> > The first prediction, of course, has come true. But the second, which has also come true, is more interesting as it is counter intuitive. After all, if this is just a conspiracy, as our friend Eri maintains, why go out on such a limb? Why lie about something that is a priori unlikely to happen? (A review of upper atmosphere changes was published in Science, in somewhere around November 2006.)
> >
> > And remember, these predictions were made 50 years ago.
> >
> > Manabe and his colleagues moved on to more complicated models, early General Circulation Models. Without fully interactive oceans these models were distinctly handicapped, but they revealed another feature, polar amplification, which is evident today.
> >
> > Models have also predicted that the warming would be greater in winter than summer, night than day. As observed.
> >
> > So the models have predicted a number of features of the warming, some unexpected, they do a reasonable job of simulating past climates (not only the most recent ice age) and the warming we see today is well within the range of model predictions.
>
> <snip, as before; thanks for giving me the lowdown on the Donn-Ewing theory>
>
>
> > Well, for a start the temperature estimates I used for rates of cooling come from data, not theory. This conceptual theory, for that matter, would not provide any quantitative estimate I could use.
> >
> > I don't know much about the history of mathematics. But is it not the case that interesting conjectures are made, but eventually shown to be false?
>
> Absolutely. I've refuted some interesting conjectures myself, giving
> rise to new theories. My doctoral thesis was one such example.
>
>
> > If your field is like mine, even the disproof might lead to advances in the field.
>
> Yes, but there is a difference: pure mathematics does not usually rely on
> data of the usual sort, but is often purely qualitative -- conceptual,
> if you will.

Conceptual but rigorous, I assume. Our conceptual models can't alas be rigorous. Though simple mathematical approximations to them can be, I suppose.

>
>
> >
> > Wally Broeker, one of the great geoscientists of the time, credits this theory with getting the scientific community more interested in ice ages:
> >
> > "Donn would go around and give lectures that made everybody mad. But in getting mad, they'd really get into the subject" (Quote from memory and hence approximate, original in Weart's "The Discovery of Global Warming").
>
> In my field, the best of that sort was Erik van Douwen. He could be
> extremely irritating at times, but everyone had to admire his breadth and
> depth of scholarship and research.
>
> Alas, he died of a heart attack in his sleep, aged a mere 41. I can
> hardly imagine where my field, set theoretic and general topology,
> would be were he still alive today, three decades later. We've lost
> some world-class minds at a young age, especially Urysohn while still
> in his twenties of drowning in 1924. [He is a household word among all
> topologists for Urysohn's Lemma, the Tietze-Urysohn extension theorem,
> the Urysohn metrization theorem, and many other things.]
>
> >
> > I see via a brief google that the Ewing and Donn theory is being promoted on skeptical websites, which is no surprise. But it has been dead scientifically for decades - though not forgotten.
> >
> > There have been many theories of the ice ages (detailed in part in the book "Ice Ages - Solving the Mystery" by Imbrie and Imbrie which I recommended to Eri some months ago). Only the Milankovitch framework (the timing of ice ages is controlled by changes in the earth's orbit) has quantitative explanatory power.
>
> I've caught some flak on that other climate change thread for
> bemoaning the lack of quantification by most participants there,
> but that doesn't bother me. John Bode and I have made a very
> modest beginning over there at supplying some crude estimates.
>
> <snip as before>
>
> > > > (4) Orbital forcing. Ice ages are driven by variations in the earth's orbit. According to the late Dr Thomas Crowley, the best orbital configuration for glaciation that we are going to see for several millennia occurred about 800 years ago.
>
> In what respect? precession of equinoxes, orbital eccentricity,
> tilt of earth...?

All of the above. The ideal condition for the inception of ice sheets is to have moderate seasons. Cool summers in particular are essential to preserve snow for the next winter.

The optimum for this is to have the lowest possible obliquity, highest possible eccentricity, and Perihelion in early winter so that we can be as far from the sun as possible in Northern Hemisphere summer.

At the moment obliquity is moderate (but dropping), eccentricity is quite low (and changes very slowly) while the time of Perihelion is a bit past the optimal point. As I understand it, the summer insolation curve for 65 north (considered crucial for ice sheet growth) had a local minimum about 800 years ago.

Models, of course, use the insolation changes at all latitudes, but for simple analytic work 65 North is preferred.

> <snip as before>
>
> > We were all taught as children that "the gulf stream is the reason Europe is not as cold as Labrador". We were all taught wrong.
>
> How about "the gulf stream is the reason the contour lines of
> temperature go from west to east, more than north to south, in Europe"?

What was ignored in our lessons, understandably, was the fact that Labrador in winter gets winds that come from the heart of a continent which, with low heat capacity, gets very cold in winter, while Europe is downwind of an ocean, which better retains the heat it got in summer.

Goose Bay, Labrador, is a couple of degrees North of London, but has similar maximum temperatures in summer (and it is cooled by the Labrador current!). It is, however, massively colder in winter.

The Gulf Stream is hugely important, but much of what keeps Europe's climate acceptable is the simple moderating effect of having an ocean upwind.

I truly don't know. But I do know that the current warming shows no sign of a solar signature, and that changes have been small.

William Hyde

[eridanus]

On Tuesday, July 25, 2017 at 11:20:05 PM UTC+1, John Bode wrote:
> On Saturday, June 24, 2017 at 6:29:52 PM UTC-5, Jonathan wrote:
> > The data is pretty clear that every 100,000 years
> > the Earth plunges into a long, cold and life killing
> > ice age. With brief warm interglacials like now.
> >
>
> Not *too* life-killing, obviously.
>
> > According to the historical data another very
> > long and cold ice age could happen at any
> > time, which could be a disaster for life
> > on Earth like few others.
> >
>
> We've managed to put that off for a while now. We *were* heading into
> an extended cooling period until about a hundred years ago.
>
> > Are we so sure of our science that we can
> > say with certainty that attempting to
> > artificially maintain the existing patterns
> > of change will lead to benefits for humanity?
> >
>
> Compared to the likely outcomes of the *extremely rapid* warming trend
> we're currently experiencing? Yes.
>
> We didn't exactly *plunge* into ice ages - they came on gradually, such
> that most populations could adapt or move. By contrast, we're expected
> to warm the Earth by 2 degrees in the span of a century and a half,
> which is *orders of magnitude* faster than past climate changes.

In case this argument is true, and not exaggerated, or distorted.
Cooling or warming is a relative concept and it depends also on which
latitude we speaking of. Some super volcanoes, like Phlegraean Fields
that explode some 39,500 years ago caused probably the extinction of
Neanderthals and a lot of modern humans as well, for the simple reason
of living within their murder range. It is estimated to have expelled 10
cubic km. of tephra. Recent studies about this volcano had found tefra
as far off as Crimea and some parts of Russia close to the Urals.
But this volcano was not unique for this period, you must add as well
another one close in time to this one,named Uzon Geizemaya in Kamchatka that
spew some 1,700 cubic Km of tephra.
I have some graphs about climate and dust for this period and the extreme
cold, both volcanoes put the temperature on lower range of the last 100,000 years except Toba 2 that cause a little more cold.
The period of cold lasted some 1,500 years. All humans and probably animals living over some 40 degrees of latitude north would had been killed. Then
the temperatures rose some 10 C degrees, lasting more than 2,000 years.
A period long as to plants and animals to start invading the desert lands once again. Then a number of new volcanoes from Japan and Kamchatka pushed down
the temperatures again to very low levels, but for a shorter time; like 800
years. Then, for the period that goes from 75,000 to 25,000 years ago, the
temperatures were going up and down like a yo-yo. I had been able to present
a volcano or several of great power to each time the temperatures dropped in
a severe degree.

> > Or will it only allow the oncoming ice age to
> > devastate life on Earth?
>
> Again, plenty of plants and animals (including humans!) survived past
> ice ages. It's not an automatic death sentence any more than a warming
> climate is an automatic death sentence - again, it's the *rate* at
> which the climate changes that matters.

If a bullet crashes on your brain you are dead meat. If a huge volcano gets
you near you are dead meat also. If a volcano or a number of them explode
in close temporal proximity, it would cause a volcanic winter that would
kill all plants and animal above some latitude.
But are rare the periods of extreme cold in higher latitudes lasting more
than a thousand years. Toba 2 lasted 1,800 years at the lowest temperature
in the last 100,000 years. It is not like the refrigeration of the whole
planet but only the refrigeration of higher latitudes.
It amazes me that a person that probably did a collage or other advance graduation would present me this stupid argument, that humans and animals
survived the glacial age. Of course they did. They did not come from any
other planets or other galaxies.
You must simply think about who could live above 40 or 50 degrees of latitude
if temperatures were 15 C degrees lower than at present.

Then, the story of humanity as well the story of most plants and animals
living in higher latitudes was a history of periodic extermination. During
the periods when climate improved, plants and animals moved to the north.
But when a cataclysmic volcano explode it was a case of extermination. The
fossils we can find of Neanderthals and modern humans pertain to moments
when those humans and those animals were living there, obviously.

Any human living on the range of action of a powerful volcano was dead meat.
And all those farther afield from the volcano died of hunger. And even those living around some equatorial belt survived with great loses to hunger.
All that I am telling is based on objective data and good sense.

Eri
>
> [snip remainder]

[Peter Nyikos]

Hi, eri,

This time we seem to be like ships that pass in the night. This
week was my one "warm period" of posting between two "ice ages"
devoid of posts each lasting a month. I will go on the second
one an hour or two from now. And alas, I do not have the
time to give your post here the attention it deserves.

But this thread is in good hands, far better than mine, as long
as William Hyde is around, and I urge you to try and get all the
benefit you can from the knowledge he has. I told him why I
am going on this second break. When I return a month from now,
I hope you and I can actually have a discussion.

Best wishes,

Peter Nyikos

[Jonathan]

On 7/25/2017 9:41 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:


> Fascinating, as Mr. Spock used to say.
>
> The post to which I am replying a month later was made while
> a thread on global warming that was going great guns

My post was a simple attempt to start a conversation
not about whether global warming is happening
and man-made, the evidence is pretty clear
on both counts.

But to question the assumption that such change is
automatically a bad thing.

I refuse to accept another assumption most have that
man-made change is somehow unnatural.

Mass extinctions may tug at our heart strings, but
should we cry for the life devastated from the
emergence of say, photosynthesis?

If our societies become naturally evolving systems
the problem will take care of itself, a top down
or man-made command decision such as setting
a single number the world must evolve around
to arrest the present rate of change is what
could lead to disaster.

Just as as top down or dictatorial control systems always
lead to a boom and bust tragedy.

-- six and
> a half pages (at 25 posts per page) in the week before, and the
> two weeks after, this post was made. That thread was,
> > Reality check: volcanic CO2 emissions
>
> and the first page was:
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/talk.origins/yjk2Gm2cZKQ[1-25]
>
>
> In stunning contrast, mine is only the SECOND post on THIS thread.
>
> The discrepancy may be attributable to two things: Jonathan is somewhat
> of a pariah on talk.origins,

Eh hum, and only because I preach a mathematics you
and most others here don't understand, won't learn
and find highly upsetting to your objective minded
Dark Age myopia.

I preach complexity science, and I bet you can't
even define the word complexity as used by
this science. I've dared others here to try
and the one or two that tried failed
miserably.

Once you understand the term, it's significance
becomes clear, as it means the entirety of the
scientific world has to start over from scratch
from a frame of reference they can't even
fathom right now.

I'm daring you to define the term, else admit
your ignorance of my hobby and of nature itself
as this science has redefined evolutionary thought.

I'm daring someone that professes a knowledge
of calculus to define the integral.

I'm daring someone that professes a knowledge
of physics to define F=MA.

THAT IS HOW BASIC the definition of complexity
is to complexity science, and you and no one
else here has demonstrated even this sub-101
understanding of a science that is revolutionizing
the totality of science.

I realize my exposing the ignorance of this ng
over how nature really works can be annoying
but I don't care. If even one grasps this world
changing concept I can rest easy.

Complexity science renders physical reality but
a simple example of an evolving system. In short
complexity science has taken what was Darwinian
evolution, and turned it into an abstract
universal concept that applies not just to life
but the universe and everything else even
ideas.

But you wouldn't know that, you can't even define
the title of the science. I have a math degree
from one of the better math depts in the nation
and I can mathematically debate you into the ground
on this subject.

I dare you~

You won't though, it's too much of a discovery
all at once. That everything you thought you
knew is backwards.

Dark Age backwards. Listen to Emily, she knows.





Tell all the Truth but tell it slant -
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind

> and he did not choose the excerpts from
> the scientific articles for maximum (or even major) effect.
>
> Readers, scroll down to the end of this page for a real eye-popping quote,
> if you are short on time. Otherwise, you might get some additional
> information of interest to you.
>
>
> On Saturday, June 24, 2017 at 7:29:52 PM UTC-4, Jonathan wrote:
>
>> The data is pretty clear that every 100,000 years
>> the Earth plunges into a long, cold and life killing
>> ice age. With brief warm interglacials like now.
>>
>> According to the historical data another very
>> long and cold ice age could happen at any
>> time, which could be a disaster for life
>> on Earth like few others.
>
> Well, Jonathan, nobody can deny you were being provocative here,
> but you "could happen at any time" is overdoing it. And some
> people might not have read any further than this.
>

So this is a critique on form and style, not substance
then?

>
>> Are we so sure of our science that we can
>> say with certainty that attempting to
>> artificially maintain the existing patterns
>> of change will lead to benefits for humanity?
>
> Here you are already talking as though only continued pouring
> of CO2 and other promoters of global warming can stave off
> the inevitable ice age. Not a good move.
>

Not at all, I'm saying we can't predict the future
so well. A war could come along tomorrow and
blow away all our climate predictions.
Or a disease, or some new technology.

If you knew a whit about the complexity science
I preach you'd realize that the future is mostly
dependent upon trifles as small as a butterfly
wings.

For instance, this one picture so disturbed
hundreds of millions of people that an entire
continent changed their views overnight, causing
Europe to open it's borders to millions of
Syrian immigrants.

And most of Europe is still reeling from that
picture, from Brexit to the rise of fascism and
powerful new social movements that are far
from played out.

Look!

http://bit.ly/2v5zGfp


Can you explain the mathematics behind how
this picture went 'viral' and ended up
changing the world?

I can. And the future is highly dependent on
such seemingly minor disturbances. Yet science
professes an ability to predict the distant
future.

We need to stop predicting and start building
a world that mimics nature, letting nature
find the solution instead of trying to
predict and mandate from upon high.

Since our reality can be dramatically altered by
even a single person, we should enjoy every day
as if it's our last.

[Jonathan]

The issue of whether global warming is happening
and is mostly man-made is settled, the evidence
is clear both assertions are true.

My point is that predicting the future from
those trends isn't so clear cut.

A war could come along tomorrow and overwhelm
any current trends, or a disease, new technologies
or social movements etc and entirely alter the
future wrt climate change.

The current thinking appears to be that if
we could only remove the effects of humanity
as in stabilizing C02 emissions then the
historical or 'natural' patterns will
continue and all will be well with the
future of the biosphere.

But that would mean the current ice age cycles
would also play out as they have, and the planet
is inevitably facing a deep, long life-killing
ice-age.

It could also be the rapid pace of change would only
force an ice age sooner rather than later.

There's no way to know as the future path of
evolving systems are chock full of tipping points
where the future could diverge dramatically
at any time.

The long term future of an evolving system, like
any open system, is not very predictable.

However there is another way to predict the future
of evolving systems, and that is to determine
whether a given system is a healthy evolving
system, or not.

By determining whether the system at hand has the
general properties of a naturally evolving system, or
has the properties of a 'man-made' system.

And I should point out now that whether the components
of any given system is made of humans, or say trees, is
not at all relevant to this determination.

But how the system at hand BEHAVES is the question
not what the parts are made of.

A 'man-made system' is where the future or output is
designed in advance, and the parts are manipulated
as needed to achieve that goal or pre-planned future.

In a 'man-made system' the future is predictable, however
such a system can't adapt, leading to short-term order
but long-term disorder or disaster. As in a commercial
forest left to itself.

A 'naturally evolving' system is where the future is
allowed to emerge as it will, from the highly
unconstrained interaction of the parts following
simple rules of operation.

In such a system the future is not predictable, but
the system is highly adaptive and creative, short-term
disorder but combined with long-term order and stability.

If the societies of our planet are dominated by
the later, naturally evolving as in a proper
free market democracy, the future will take
care of itself, no predictions and imposed
restrictions are needed.

If the planet is dominated by 'man-made' systems
such as autocracies, dictatorships whether
military, religious or corrupt economic systems
the future is predictable, but it's a bleak future
disastrous for humanity.

The emergence of humanity appears certain
to have effects that easily overwhelm
what came before.

And which future is to become reality depends
mainly on how our societies are designed, to
mimic nature, or man-made top down control.

Not on Co2 concentrations.

Adaptive and able to handle just about any
changes that come along. Or unable to adapt
and bleak, regardless of our deterministic
plans.

Point being if we wish to solve the global warming
problem, we need to spread freedom and democracy
and let nature take care of itself.

Human activity, if within naturally evolving societies
will overwhelm all previous patterns and generate a
future where humanity swims in beauty.

[Jonathan]

The ice age cycles appear to be dependent upon
very delicate changes.

As with any naturally evolving system is constantly residing
at tipping points where the flap of a butterfly can cause
the system to diverge to dramatically different futures.

From the Brown Univ article.


“What we were able to show is the importance of sea ice
in the Southern Hemisphere along with orbital forcings
in setting the pace for the glacial-interglacial cycle.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/27/100000-year-ice-age-cycle-linked-to-orbital-periods-and-sea-ice/


However, given the huge rise in Co2 of late, but also
things like the mass extinctions associated with the
rise of humanity, it should be obvious there is
NOTHING DELICATE about the effects of humanity
on this planet.

In other words humanity easily overwhelms the delicate
interrelationships of the past.

Whether our future is an ice age that wipes out most
of humanity and it's accomplishments, or whether we
swim in natural beauty is up to us now.

Not our orbit, sea ice or Co2 etc.

And which future is to become reality is easy to predict.

If our planet is dominated by societies that mimic
naturally evolving systems, such as proper free market
democracies, our future is wondrous.

But if unnatural or 'man-made' systems dominate
such as autocracies, dictatorship whether military,
religious or corrupt economic systems, then our
future is bleak and disastrous. Unable to adapt
or create timely solutions to any problems
that come along.

The long term future of any open, or evolving system, is
not predictable from a quantitative perspective.

But the future of a naturally evolving system is
predictable from a qualitative view.

We need to base our predictions of the future
on how closely our societal structures mimic nature
or mimic man-made systems.

Whether the planet is dominated by evolving or
command societies determines if the future of
humanity is to swim in beauty, or suffers
one horror after another.

Not things like Co2 concentrations.



Jonathan

[jillery]

On Sat, 29 Jul 2017 09:09:29 -0400, Jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
wrote:

IIUC your argument above is that natural cooling climate cycles will
ultimately wipe out the effects of AGW. And that's almost certainly
correct, on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years cited in the
OP article. As you say, civilization necessarily will either learn to
accommodate nature, or be destroyed by its own willful ignorance. IMO
that's the takeaway lesson about AGW.

On the scale of hundreds of years, the return of climate which causes
continent-spanning glaciers, like some naturalistic cavalry galloping
over the hill at the last minute to rescue humanity from its own
folly, would be an unprecedented event. Far more likely would be the
relatively short and regional little ice ages, as described here:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age>

***************************************************
The NASA Earth Observatory notes three particularly cold intervals:
one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850,
all separated by intervals of slight warming.
***************************************************

Even if such cooling were to occur right now, AIUI its effects would
not negate the global warming already built-in to climate from
existing atmospheric CO2. Even the most aggressive (draconian?)
CO2-reduction schemes only slow down projected CO2 increase.

[Jonathan]

On 7/26/2017 7:26 PM, William Hyde wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 25, 2017 at 9:45:04 AM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> Fascinating, as Mr. Spock used to say.
>
>
> Peter,
>
> I did think of replying to Jonathan, but did not, principally as I was ill and trying to keep my responses short.
>
> I am not feeling at my best even now, so let me make a few brief points, after which you can ask any questions you like.
>
> (I've actually co-written a speculative paper on global warming and possible distant future climate change:
>
> "Transient nature of late Pleistocene climate variability
>
> Thomas J. Crowley & William T. Hyde
>
> Nature 456, 226-230 (13 November 2008)"
>
> It was cited by "skeptics" at the time as supporting the view Jonathan gave, though we explicitly said in the paper it did not. We were talking about a potential severe climate change which could not happen for at least another 50,000 years. An eternity in human terms.)
>
>
> (1) Rate of change.
>
> In the 100,000 year ice age cycle global temperatures drop about four degrees C (some sources argue for 5 - note that I am talking about global average temperatures, not Vostok or Epica - quite a few graphs accessible via google say "global", but if you look at the source it is an ice core).
>
> Let us take the larger number, and assume all the drop occurred in the first 10,000 years (the early cooling is the fastest). That is a rate of cooling of .05 degrees per century. If we take a very conservative view of global warming forecasts, the temperature between 2000 and 2100 will increase one degree. Twenty times as fast. It is clear which is the immediate problem.
>
> Even if we take one quarter of a degree to be the likely warming in this century - consistent with some skeptical estimates - it is five times the ice age cooling. So it seems that an ice age would be easy to fend off, if we needed to.
>
> (2) Uncertainty in timing.
>
> Statements like "Ice ages last 100,000 years, interglacials last 10,000" are at best approximations. It is not reasonable to use such approximate numbers to imply an ice age is coming *now*. An error of 1000 years is small compared to the actual uncertainty, but is a huge time in human history. A thousand years ago Cnut had just taken over England, Basil the Bulgar-slayer ruled in Constantinople.
>

You're quite correct the next ice age could be a hundred years
or a thousand, there's no way to know from looking at the /past/
which was my point.

But I can argue below that their are only two possibilities.
Either an ice age comes very soon and unexpectedly in decades
not centuries, or it will be delayed indefinitely, and why.

But it's not a short discussion~



Any naturally evolving system resides persistently near
or at an internal tipping point. While it remains
near such a phase transition state, it evolves and
problem solves, or self-organizes. That is a property
of 'complex' systems as defined by complexity science.

But if a self-organized, or complex system, is disturbed
/hard enough/ it can easily be forced to fall into one
or the other of it's possible 'simple' opposing states.

Analogous to a 'complex' cloud that is forced into
becoming either it's relatively 'simple' opposing states
of vapor or water by some disturbance to it's delicate
internal relationship.

Once the threshold of change is reached, the change in state
is /sudden and massive/.

A cloud instantly becomes water or vapor.

The opposites in possibility for our biosphere is not
water or vapor, but an persistent interglacial or
a long ice-age.

I'm saying the /dramatic/ disturbance caused by human
activity could force the planet to fall into
one of those opposing futures and soon.

Whether our future is a sudden onset of an ice age
or a persistent interglacial depends on the character
of the disturbance.

Change which is the result of naturally evolving systems
is gradual enough that the whole will adapt and remain
at or near it's internal tipping point, and continue
to self-organize and evolve. It remains a complex and
evolving 'cloud'.

So a world dominated by proper free market democracies, which
best mimics nature, will will tend to stabilize and perpetuate
the current interglacial.

HOWEVER, change that is the result of unnatural systems, such as
dictatorships or corrupt economies bring such rapid and massive
spikes in change such as large wars, diseases or unconstrained
burning of coal and so on, that the system is overwhelmed
and quickly devolves into one or the other possible 'simple'
extremes.

The cloud almost instantly is forced into becoming
either water or vapor, our biosphere is forced
into either a long interglacial or a sudden and
unexpected onset of an ice-age.

We are currently at such a decision point.

If fascism or dictatorships continue to spread with their
massive disturbances, an ice age could be upon us in
decades, not centuries.

If freedom and democracy dominate, the interglacial
should continue indefinitely.

In short, our future is on our hands now, not dependent
upon orbits, or sea-ice trends, as human effects are easily
overwhelming those past and delicate relationships.

> (3) Interglacials.
>
> Not only are all interglacials not 10,000 years, one at least extended to 30,000 years. Geochemist Warren Ruddiman has an interesting if controversial theory as to why this interglacial is proving to be a long one (early human agriculture and elevated CH4 levels).
>
> (4) Orbital forcing. Ice ages are driven by variations in the earth's orbit. According to the late Dr Thomas Crowley, the best orbital configuration for glaciation that we are going to see for several millennia occurred about 800 years ago. In a sense we missed the on ramp for the next ice age, and must wait for the next one.
>

But basing predictions of the next ice age, or lack thereof, on
/past/ interrelationships is flawed in many ways.

First of all interrelationships between variables such or orbital
forcing, sea ice and atmospheric changes are rather delicate
as in the delicate state of a cloud.

But there is nothing delicate about the effects of human activity
on the biosphere. The sudden and dramatic change in Co2 in
the last thirty years, and the massive extinction event now
taking place testify that human activity and the countless
and wholly unpredictable unintended consequences such large
and sudden changes bring grossly overwhelms those past and
delicate interrelationships.

Our future biosphere is determined by how human societies
behave.

I spend a lot of time looking at the state of
democracy world wide, in general the top down or
dictatorial societal structures are a bit more
dominate than proper democracies.

Which side wins, natural systems or unnatural, currently
hangs in the balance as does the future of our
biosphere.



Freedom in the World 2017

Key Findings

"With populist and nationalist forces making significant gains
in democratic states, 2016 marked the 11th consecutive year
of decline in global freedom."
http://bit.ly/2uMktxk



The current trend is that democracy is slowly losing the battle.

Whether our future is a long interglacial or a sudden ice-age
depends on things like the war in Syria, whether China becomes
a democracy or the military takes over, whether Trump gets
a second term, North Korea nukes someone, or the EU or NATO
continues to fall apart.

If such things suddenly spins ouy of control
we could, WE SHOULD, have an ice age in our
life times.

One of the big lessons of complexity science is
that our current reality could be wiped out
at any time, and by a trifle.

By the flap of a butterfly wing. By a nervous
dictator, a coup or an election. Even a simple
image that goes viral can bring the world to
it's knees or create a global garden.

So enjoy what we have now, as being alive and aware
defines the pinnacle of existence in the entirety
of the known universe.

Which means this is Heaven!

Good, bad or indifferent this is what Heaven is like
and every day we have is another step in The Garden.




"Heaven is so far of the Mind
That were the Mind dissolved
The Site -- of it -- by Architect
Could not again be proved

'Tis vast -- as our Capacity
As fair -- as our idea
To Him of adequate desire
No further 'tis, than Here"

> I'd like to comment on one of the quotes given. I was a professor at Dalhousie at the same time as Petr Chylek. He is a superb scientist and a natural skeptic (not just on scientific topics). He is a firm hater of anything smelling remotely of a bandwagon, and has bent over backwards to give a forum to GW skeptics, even organizing two conferences on the subject we are discussing.
>
> I have huge respect for him, and I hope that is clear.
> But in this particular case his comment was at best beside the point. The report of increasing mass loss in Greenland in 2001 was sound. Greenland has continued to melt since 2001, 2002 was a year of record melting, and the melt has both continued and accelerated.
>
> Perhaps these points were not so brief. Ah, well.
>

This isn't a short subject~



a






> William Hyde
>
>
>
>

[Jonathan]

I have no problem with the models and their conclusions. What I have
a problem with is the idea they can predict the future.

Let me ask you a few questions about the validity of those predictions.
Just a few of the more obvious questions.

Will you answer these questions?



1) If a new ground-breaking energy technology is developed what
are the predictions then?

2) If a nuclear war breaks out, say, next year, how does that effect
the predictions?

3) If it's a limited or general nuclear war, what are the predictions?

4) How do the predictions change depending on what happens in
Venezuela today, with it's second largest oil reserves in
the world hanging in the balance?

5) Europe just passed a law banning all gasoline and diesel cars
by 2040, how does that law change the predictions?

6) What if China is taken over by it's military and the turmoil
forces them to, say, double the amount of coal they're burning?

7) What if a social movement springs up over environmental damage
and dozens of nations commit massive new resources to reduce
their carbon footprint?

8) What if a conventional superpower war breaks out over Syria?

9) What if our next president makes Trump look like a genius
how would that effect the predictions?

10) What if a really good poem were written that changes opinions
around the world over war, pollution or say morality?


How would the models account for such future events?


The notion the past determines the future of any open system
which all evolving systems are, is fatally flawed.

An ecosystem dominated by the various variables examined in
those models is NOT the same ecosystem which is now dominated
by human activity.

Apples and oranges.

The future of our biosphere, and the answer to the above questions
is best revealed by whether our societal structures mimic
(naturally) evolving systems, or mimic simple authoritarian
(man-made) systems.

The spread of freedom and democracy, or lack thereof, is what
determines the future of our biosphere. A world dominated
by dictators and the wars and despair they always bring means
either a dramatic warming or sudden ice-age is upon us.

The victory of democracy means the past trends should continue.

Predicting the future of our biosphere is no more difficult
that predicting the future of any passing cloud.

If the disturbance is large and sudden enough, it's destroyed.

If gradual and subtle it might remains a complex adaptive system
a little longer with all the wondrous properties we normally give
to such natural systems, such as adaptability, resilience
and creativity.

It's our societal structures that determine which future
will evolve.



Jonathan




"The Future -- never spoke
Nor will He -- like the Dumb
Reveal by sign -- a syllable
Of His Profound To Come

But when the News be ripe
Presents it -- in the Act
Forestalling Preparation
Escape -- or Substitute



s

[Jonathan]

My point is almost the opposite, that the effects of human
activity are so dominant they will overwhelm the past cycles.
So we can't predict the future based on those historic
trends, but on what humanity does next.

The big evolutionary steps tend to emerge when an
ecosystem is on the brink, when it can't handle
any more life or another large disturbance.

I think the distinct changes in sea ice is a sign
we're near such a tipping point. But unfortunately
the current trends around the world are worrisome
to say the least.

The world has a massive oil glut, we're pumping more
every year, oil prices are low and likely to go lower.
Democracy and freedom is steadily declining for the
last decade, almost poetically mirroring the loss
of sea ice.

Both China and Russia are becoming increasingly
distressed due to their corrupt governments and
they could collapse at any time, generating
unintended consequences no one can predict
but are sure to be dramatic.

And that's almost certainly
> correct, on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years cited in the
> OP article. As you say, civilization necessarily will either learn to
> accommodate nature, or be destroyed by its own willful ignorance. IMO
> that's the takeaway lesson about AGW.
>

I think the world will have to collectively learn those
lessons in the next twenty or thirty years or so if
a dramatic change in climate, either way, is to be
prevented.

But so much of the world is in turmoil where such
considerations as climate change, carbon footprint
and such aren't even a consideration. The world needs
to come together and begin working much harder to
stabilize the various failed states and soon.

> On the scale of hundreds of years, the return of climate which causes
> continent-spanning glaciers, like some naturalistic cavalry galloping
> over the hill at the last minute to rescue humanity from its own
> folly, would be an unprecedented event. Far more likely would be the
> relatively short and regional little ice ages, as described here:
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age>
>
> ***************************************************
> The NASA Earth Observatory notes three particularly cold intervals:
> one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850,
> all separated by intervals of slight warming.
> ***************************************************
>
> Even if such cooling were to occur right now, AIUI its effects would
> not negate the global warming already built-in to climate from
> existing atmospheric CO2. Even the most aggressive (draconian?)
> CO2-reduction schemes only slow down projected CO2 increase.
>

Right, the more likely scenario is the world will become more
turbulent in the near term and Co2 emissions will dramatically
increase.

The rise of authoritarian and corrupt governments means
pollution controls and new technologies are often tossed
aside in favor of more immediate needs.

For instance everyone seems to champion the rise of massive
China economically speaking, which has been true and if
continued could be a boon to reducing emissions.

But a closer look at the internal politics and economy
of China show it's top down control structure and
inherent corruption has produced a massive house of cards
that's brittle and bursting at the seems. China could
collapse at any time and turn into half a dozen new nations.

And who knows what that might bring?

[jillery]

On Sun, 30 Jul 2017 09:07:45 -0400, Jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
wrote:

The way predictive models work is they say "Given X, the results will
be Y". Said models don't take into account unpredictable events, as
they fall outside of X, by definition. It should go without saying
that said predictions remain useful despite that limitation.

Of course it's a truism that as time goes by, unpredictable events
happen. That's why most people understand that predictions are less
accurate as time between X and Y increases. But said unpredictable
events are as likely to aggravate problems as to mitigate them, and so
including them in predictions is pointless.

Competent planners will take advantage of fortuitous events as they
occur, but to depend on them in advance is equivalent to saying "God
will provide". If that were the case, there would be no need for
planning or planners at all.

[jillery]

On Sun, 30 Jul 2017 09:28:32 -0400, Jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>

If that was your point, it contradicts what you wrote above: "There's
no way to know". You also wrote above that said dominant results are
contingent on human activity falling "within naturally evolving
societies", which contradicts your statement there's no way to know
*and* human effects would necessarily overwhelm past cycles.

But you regularly contradict yourself, so I'll go along with what you
say is your point *at this time*.

My reply to your currently claimed point, is to remind you that the
Anthropic part of AGW is relevant only on human timescales. The era
of humans burning fuels which eject enough CO2 into the atmosphere to
affect climate is but a blip on geologic and cosmological timescales.
One way or another, such pollution will cease, and then the natural
processes we know remove CO2 from the atmosphere inevitably will again
dominate the carbon cycle.

The relevant questions here are *how long* and *how severe* the
consequences of AGW will effect the planet. We have no precise
estimates for them.

AGW is a problem regardless of the consequences of human politics. The
chaos to which you refer only makes it more difficult to deal with it.

Exactly, and that includes you.

[Burkhard]

I wonder if he ever payed into a pension fund or took out insurance,
or booked a holiday more than 2 days in advance - after all we might all
be dead tomorrow after a nuclear catastrophe...

[William Hyde]

On Sunday, July 30, 2017 at 9:10:05 AM UTC-4, Jonathan wrote:
> On 7/27/2017 5:39 PM, William Hyde wrote:
> > On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 12:35:05 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> On Wednesday, July 26, 2017 at 7:30:05 PM UTC-4, William Hyde wrote:
> >
> >>

> >>
> >> How reliable are these forecasts? What is the basis for them?
> >
> > Utterly reliable, say some few, utter trash, say others.
> >
> > Fairly reliable, say I and many others, including those who actually create the models.
> >
>
>
>
> I have no problem with the models and their conclusions. What I have
> a problem with is the idea they can predict the future.
>
> Let me ask you a few questions about the validity of those predictions.
> Just a few of the more obvious questions.
>
> Will you answer these questions?

You are correct, Jonathan. As a sometime modeller I misunderstood Peter's question and replied about the validity of the models.

But of course the models are driven by GHG scenarios, which are clearly not in the province of physics or meteorology to predict. So yes, even if the models are perfect (which nobody would claim) the future climate forecasts are strongly dependent on the GHG scenarios.

Which is why IPCC uses a variety of scenarios in its analysis, from green-future scenarios in which we get control of GHG emissions pretty quickly to worst case scenarios in which first and second world emissions grow slightly, and third world emissions grow rapidly.

The prediction of a two degree warming in the 21st century arises from several plausible if slightly optimistic scenarios. The worst case is a couple of degrees more, the best case, I think, about 1.5 degrees (it's not a linear system, of course).

The scenarios are put together by economists, engineers, political scientists, and so forth. IPCC discusses how this was done.

I'm fairly comfortable with them myself, though I hope that clean technology (or even a great poem, as you suggest) can steer us into one of the better scenarios, or something even better.

Well, comfortable except for the outgassing of CH4 and CO2 from arctic soils. I'm more than a bit worried about that.

William Hyde

[Jonathan]

On 7/30/2017 4:42 PM, William Hyde wrote:
> On Sunday, July 30, 2017 at 9:10:05 AM UTC-4, Jonathan wrote:
>> On 7/27/2017 5:39 PM, William Hyde wrote:
>>> On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 12:35:05 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>> On Wednesday, July 26, 2017 at 7:30:05 PM UTC-4, William Hyde wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>
>>>>
>>>> How reliable are these forecasts? What is the basis for them?
>>>
>>> Utterly reliable, say some few, utter trash, say others.
>>>
>>> Fairly reliable, say I and many others, including those who actually create the models.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I have no problem with the models and their conclusions. What I have
>> a problem with is the idea they can predict the future.
>>
>> Let me ask you a few questions about the validity of those predictions.
>> Just a few of the more obvious questions.
>>
>> Will you answer these questions?
>
>
> You are correct, Jonathan. As a sometime modeller I misunderstood Peter's question and replied about the validity of the models.
>
> But of course the models are driven by GHG scenarios, which are clearly not in the province of physics or meteorology to predict. So yes, even if the models are perfect (which nobody would claim) the future climate forecasts are strongly dependent on the GHG scenarios.
>
> Which is why IPCC uses a variety of scenarios in its analysis, from green-future scenarios in which we get control of GHG emissions pretty quickly to worst case scenarios in which first and second world emissions grow slightly, and third world emissions grow rapidly.
>
> The prediction of a two degree warming in the 21st century arises from several plausible if slightly optimistic scenarios.

Thanks for replying.

About those predictions to the year 2100 which the IPCC seems to
center around. If someone in 1917 were to make detailed predictions
of what society or the biosphere would look like in the year 2000
how accurate do you think they would be?

How many of the key world changing events, from wars to technology
and so on, were predictable?

My problem with the IPCC report is that in classical objective
fashion they make these grand long term predictions, then
list a hundred different mitigation suggestions.

But in the IPCC summary of some 30 pages, they use the term 'adaptation'
.....105 times.

https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf


Clearly they are counting on the ability of govts and societies
to adapt to the warming and create green solutions on the fly to
mitigate the negative effects and reduce future emissions.

Problem is, what determines the adaptability of a govt or economy
is the level of their free market democracies, which best mimic
a naturally evolving system. While autocracies and dictatorships
of all kinds are the opposite of adaptive, and in fact generate
more harm than good in so many other ways.

Yet NOT ONCE did the term 'democracy' show up in the IPCC report
summary. And in the entire voluminous IPCC study the term democracy
shows up about a dozen times but only in lone references buried
in long lists of citations.


Search the IPCC report
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/


Strengthening free market democracies should be the FIRST line
of the summary.

Instead they list countless suggestions to reduce emissions
many of which would greatly throttle the economies which
are currently the most adaptive.

The scientific world needs to insist that the world rally around
what could truly solve this problem. Which is a world chock full
of proper free market democracies which adapt as a matter
of course, and do so very well.

The scientific world is dropping the ball by not advocating
the most effective solution to not just global warming, but
to wars, disease, famines and injustice.

Freedom and democracy!

Science should no longer hide their head in the sand and claim
politics is not the realm of science.

With the new complexity sciences, it most certainly is.



Complexity Politics: Some Preliminary Ideas
https://dartthrowingchimp.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/complexity-politics-some-preliminary-ideas/



THE SOUND CONDUCT OF SCIENCE AND THE SOUND CONDUCT OF DEMOCRACY
BOTH DEPEND ON THE SAME SHARED VALUES.
The Essential Parallel Between Science and Democracy
D.C. SCIENCE / BY SHEILA JASANOFF /

"All through the 20th century, grand attempts to
remake nations and societies failed.:

In rejecting “the specialness of science,” and in accepting
the essential parallelism between scientific learning and
democratic learning, science in the new administration
will find its rightful place.

— Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and
Technology Studies at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy
School of Government.
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_essential_parallel_between_science_and_democracy/

>The worst case is a couple of degrees more, the best case, I think, about 1.5 degrees (it's not a linear system, of >course).
>

Right, and in any non-linear system the output feeds back into the input
and once pushed far enough from equilibrium can easily spin out of control.

In stock trading I try to find stock charts the display
self organization and emergent behavior. The nice thing
about the stock market in trying to model complex systems
is that the stock market is essentially 10,000 complex
adaptive systems, highly complex systems as the parts
are well educated humans, running each and every day
with all the data charted out in every conceivable
way and in real time

Why try to run a simulation when the real thing
is so easily available?

I've found what when a dynamic system is pushed far from
equilibrium to it's tipping or critical point by some
disturbance, what determines whether it self organizes
and begins displaying universal emergent behavior for
a time, or merely boom and busts is the character
of the force for change.

If the disturbance is from outside, say an inaccurate rumor
or an event from a close competitor, the change is so
brutal and swift the system is pushed quickly past
it's critical point and it just boom and busts.

But if the disturbance flows from within the system, maybe
news of a successful new product or other positive
internal development, it has a chance of reaching the tipping
point and being held there for a time, where emergent
or universal behavior can set in.

For the planet, external or unnatural forces for change
would be dictatorships of any kind, top down control
structures.

Internal or natural forces for change would be democracy.

And for the last decade democracy has been steadily losing
with no end in sight.

> The scenarios are put together by economists, engineers, political scientists, and so forth. IPCC discusses how this was done.
>
> I'm fairly comfortable with them myself, though I hope that clean technology (or even a great poem, as you suggest) >can steer us into one of the better scenarios, or something even better.
>
> Well, comfortable except for the outgassing of CH4 and CO2 from arctic soils. I'm more than a bit worried about that.
>

And in a non-linear system those hard to predict unintended
consequences, or when the 'other shoe' drops can be
game-changing.




> William Hyde
>

[Peter Nyikos]

I didn't think I would pop in here again so soon, William, but after seeing
how you may be going on a posting break early this month, I thought
I'd play it safe.

It is your last paragraph that interests me, William. Current temperature
levels have not been around nearly as long as during the Medieval Warm
Period, when Greenland was a lot greener than it is now -- although we
seem to be getting there. Was the permafrost in better shape then, than
it is now, despite that?

And that in turn was many times shorter than during the Holocene Maximum,
when there was lots of vegetation in the Sahara where there is none.

Also the previous interglacial, the Eemian, saw high temperatures lasting
about as long. Are there cores around 65 north latitude that can tell
of what shape arctic soils were in back then, or during the Holocene
Maximum?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Jonathan]

I wasn't very clear, I was trying to make a distinction
between predicting the future based on the past and
predicting the future based on the nature of our
societies.

The classical objective approach is to gather reams of
data and use them to make predictions of what should
happen in the future. Then try to find a solution to
bring about the desired future.

I'm saying that approach is flawed due to the simple
fact that those extrapolations can't possibly know
how the world will change in the future.

There's no way to know what the future will bring
from an objective frame of reference based on
the past.

But if our societies were built to mimic naturally
evolving systems there's no need to make such
predictions, as we know the general properties
and adaptability of a healthy evolving system.

Nature will take care of itself and so will the
future if we spend our efforts spreading freedom
and democracy instead of flawed predictions of
gloom and doom

> But you regularly contradict yourself, so I'll go along with what you
> say is your point *at this time*.
>
> My reply to your currently claimed point, is to remind you that the
> Anthropic part of AGW is relevant only on human timescales. The era
> of humans burning fuels which eject enough CO2 into the atmosphere to
> affect climate is but a blip on geologic and cosmological timescales.
> One way or another, such pollution will cease, and then the natural
> processes we know remove CO2 from the atmosphere inevitably will again
> dominate the carbon cycle.
>

But the above statement shows a poor understanding of
how self organized systems work. Evolving systems
are persistently pushed far from equilibrium and
live near their tipping points. That's the dynamic
state that gives life to evolution.

If such a system is pushed hard and fast past their
tipping points, it's analogous to a cloud that's
had the temperature of pressure changed to the
point it suddenly becomes either a puddle or vapor.

The system as we knew it is immediately destroyed.

But if the force for change is natural, the system
will continue evolving and adapting to the change.

If the force for change is unnatural, the change
is so abrupt and massive the system is destroyed.

> The relevant questions here are *how long* and *how severe* the
> consequences of AGW will effect the planet. We have no precise
> estimates for them.
>

Since a little more that half the planet is dominated
by top down or dictatorial systems, unnatural systems
whether global warming is manageable or disastrous
depends on whether democracies, adaptive systems, or
dictatorships, man made systems, win the current
competition between the two.

That remains to be seen, point being science should
spend it's efforts espousing adaptive systems, or
espousing democracy as a primary solution.

They are not. That's a huge mistake.

Not if democracy, adaptive systems, win the day. It can be
everything to our future if that happens. Politics is
most certainly relevant, in fact crucial to our future
on almost every level. Wars and recessions and so on
most certainly effect emissions.

Adaptive systems, democracy, helps stabilize the biosphere
in more ways then we can count.

In an ng that is devoted to evolution and all of it's
wondrous properties, to believe a world dominated
by naturally evolving systems is the path to a
beautiful future should be rather obvious.

And a world dominated by man made or unnatural top down
systems brings a disastrous future should be just
as obvious.

My point about China was that such a collapse would
entirely invalidate the classic objective method
of predicting the future based on the past.

[Jonathan]

That's a linear equation, where the input and output are directly
related in some way. Cause then effect.

All evolving systems are non-linear where the output is fed back
into the input repeatedly, where a slight error in each step
can result in entirely different outputs even if each cycle
uses the very same simple deterministic relationships.

Cause then effect then cause then effect endlessly.



Nonlinear system
From Wiki

"In mathematics and physical sciences, a nonlinear system
is a system in which the change of the output is not
proportional to the change of the input..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_system


http://fractalfoundation.org/resources/what-is-chaos-theory/



The real world works more like this, a rickety fifteen foot
boat starts sinking off the coast of Miami, and sets off
a chain of events that leads to America invading Iraq.

No one can predict that small hole in a creaky boat
would change the future is such a massive way.
But it did.

That's the butterfly effects and that's the nature of
our reality, change or the future is not knowable in
advance unless it's designed in advance, a man made
system.

A natural system will go where it will, however, as
a natural system we can be sure that in the end
it will produce the kind of beauty and creativity
we normally give to nature.

This leads to the paradox most objective minded
people like you will never even entertain let alone
accept.


If you can accurately predict the future of some
system it is NOT self organizing or evolving
and it's future is certain to be disastrous.

If a system is naturally evolving one can't possibly
predict what will emerge next.

Our instinct is to want to know our future and thus
be able to control our fate. But that instinct
for control leads us to self destructive methods
such as planned or controlled societies that
the last century showed only brings one massive
war, famine and horror after another.

> Said models don't take into account unpredictable events, as
> they fall outside of X, by definition. It should go without saying
> that said predictions remain useful despite that limitation.
>

They are useful for simplified systems, the more simplified
the more accurate and the less it models a natural or
real world system. The attempt to be extremely accurate
with all the initial conditions in order to predict
is a fundamentally flawed concept.

It's great for building things, but not for the real live
adaptive world.

> Of course it's a truism that as time goes by, unpredictable events
> happen. That's why most people understand that predictions are less
> accurate as time between X and Y increases. But said unpredictable
> events are as likely to aggravate problems as to mitigate them, and so
> including them in predictions is pointless.
>

Unpredictable events do not cancel each other out.
World War 2 did not leave the world on the same
path as it had before, not even close. Neither
has the Internet, even one person, say Ghandi
or Trump can turn the world upside down and
leave it forever changed.

> Competent planners will take advantage of fortuitous events as they
> occur, but to depend on them in advance is equivalent to saying "God
> will provide". If that were the case, there would be no need for
> planning or planners at all.
>

The point being natural and man made top down systems
have entirely different behaviors and entirely
different futures.

And you entirely miss the point, and as an objective
minded will never accept, is that one of the fundamental
discoveries is that the initial conditions to a
self organizing systems DON'T MATTER A WHIT.

As the ideal initial conditions for self organizing
is disorder, a self organizing systems takes
disorder and turns it into order.

And once it has, the initial conditions couldn't
matter in the least.

For instance, that rickety sinking boat off the
coast of Miami, whether the hole was small, medium
or large doesn't matter a bit. It sank is all
that matters, and each next step could care less
how big that hole was.

Evolving systems erase the evidence of their initial
conditions once they've become established which
is WHY CREATION WILL NEVER BE OBJECTIVELY SOLVED.

It can't be solved objectively.

[jillery]

On Tue, 1 Aug 2017 19:43:24 -0400, Jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[...]

>> The way predictive models work is they say "Given X, the results will
>> be Y".
>
>
>
>That's a linear equation, where the input and output are directly
>related in some way. Cause then effect.

Incorrect. Some predictive models use linear equations, others use
nonlinear equations, others uses equations with feedback. The kinds
of equations models use are independent of their being predictive.

>All evolving systems are non-linear where the output is fed back
>into the input repeatedly,

Incorrect. As your own cite below says, non-linear simply means the
change in input isn't proportional to change in output. What you
describe above is feedback or closed-loop systems. Non-linear systems
may be either open- or closed- loop.

>where a slight error in each step
>can result in entirely different outputs even if each cycle
>uses the very same simple deterministic relationships.
>
>Cause then effect then cause then effect endlessly.
>
>
>
>Nonlinear system
> From Wiki
>
>"In mathematics and physical sciences, a nonlinear system
>is a system in which the change of the output is not
>proportional to the change of the input..."
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_system
>
>
>http://fractalfoundation.org/resources/what-is-chaos-theory/
>
>
>
>The real world works more like this, a rickety fifteen foot
>boat starts sinking off the coast of Miami, and sets off
>a chain of events that leads to America invading Iraq.
>
>No one can predict that small hole in a creaky boat
>would change the future is such a massive way.
>But it did.

What you describe here is chaos theory. That's one reason why
predictive models lose accuracy over time. Most people who design
predictive models understand that already, and use methods for
quantifying it.

Of course some unpredictable events mitigate problems, others
aggravate problems. Your blanket statement above is absurd.

>World War 2 did not leave the world on the same
>path as it had before, not even close. Neither
>has the Internet, even one person, say Ghandi
>or Trump can turn the world upside down and
>leave it forever changed.

The relevant question is not change, but instead is the direction of
change. Ex. global depression was a major problem in the 1930s,
eliminated as WWII approached.

>> Competent planners will take advantage of fortuitous events as they
>> occur, but to depend on them in advance is equivalent to saying "God
>> will provide". If that were the case, there would be no need for
>> planning or planners at all.
>>
>
>
>
>The point being natural and man made top down systems
>have entirely different behaviors and entirely
>different futures.
>
>And you entirely miss the point, and as an objective
>minded will never accept, is that one of the fundamental
>discoveries is that the initial conditions to a
>self organizing systems DON'T MATTER A WHIT.

Once again, you're arguing with your reflection in a mirror. Let me
know who wins.

>As the ideal initial conditions for self organizing
>is disorder, a self organizing systems takes
>disorder and turns it into order.
>
>And once it has, the initial conditions couldn't
>matter in the least.
>
>For instance, that rickety sinking boat off the
>coast of Miami, whether the hole was small, medium
>or large doesn't matter a bit. It sank is all
>that matters, and each next step could care less
>how big that hole was.
>
>Evolving systems erase the evidence of their initial
>conditions once they've become established which
>is WHY CREATION WILL NEVER BE OBJECTIVELY SOLVED.
>
>It can't be solved objectively.

Of course when one assumes nothing can be solved, then one doesn't
even try to do anything, a self-fulfilling assumption.

[Jonathan]

On 7/30/2017 12:10 PM, jillery wrote:

> The way predictive models work is they say "Given X, the results will
> be Y".



That's a linear equation, where the input and output are directly

related in some way. Cause then effect. We live in a non-linear
world.

There are two ways of predicting the future, your way where
the initial conditions are detailed and extrapolations made.

BUT there's another way, a better way, where one builds an
evolving system and lets nature take it's course with the
Faith that a naturally evolving process will produce a future
of wonders.

All evolving systems are non-linear where the output is fed back

into the input repeatedly, where a slight error in each step

can result in entirely different outputs even if each cycle

uses the very same deterministic relationships.

Cause then effect then cause then effect endlessly.



Nonlinear system
From Wiki

"In mathematics and physical sciences, a nonlinear system
is a system in which the change of the output is not
proportional to the change of the input..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_system

http://fractalfoundation.org/resources/what-is-chaos-theory/



The real world works more like this, a rickety fifteen foot
boat starts sinking off the coast of Miami, and sets off

a chain of events that ends up with America invading Iraq.

That is called sensitivity to initial conditions, the
butterfly effect, if the little hole in that boat is, say
half an inch, America doesn't invade Iraq, but if 3/4th
of an inch the leak swamps the boat and half a million
Muslims die.

That's the world we live in.

No one can predict that small hole in a creaky boat

would change the future in such a massive way.
But it did.

A system that is predictable has a horrible future.
An evolving system can't be predicted but has a
wondrous future.

The above is a fact about our reality the objective
minded like you will never accept.

We instinctively want to simplify nature so we can
predict it and control our fate, but that's a
delusion.

> Said models don't take into account unpredictable events, as
> they fall outside of X, by definition. It should go without saying
> that said predictions remain useful despite that limitation.
>



They are useful for simplified systems, the more simplified

the more accurate but the less it models a natural or
real world system.

> Of course it's a truism that as time goes by, unpredictable events
> happen. That's why most people understand that predictions are less
> accurate as time between X and Y increases. But said unpredictable
> events are as likely to aggravate problems as to mitigate them, and so
> including them in predictions is pointless.
>



Unpredictable events do not cancel each other out.

World War 2 did not leave the world on the same
path as it had before, not even close. Neither
has the Internet, even one person, say Ghandi
or Trump can turn the world upside down and
leave it forever changed.

> Competent planners will take advantage of fortuitous events as they
> occur, but to depend on them in advance is equivalent to saying "God
> will provide". If that were the case, there would be no need for
> planning or planners at all.
>

And an objective minded will never accept that one

of the fundamental discoveries is that the
initial conditions to a self organizing systems
DON'T MATTER A WHIT.

As the ideal initial conditions for self organizing
is disorder, a self organizing systems takes
disorder and turns it into order.

And once it has, the initial conditions couldn't
matter in the least.

Evolving systems erase the evidence of their initial
conditions once they've become established which
is WHY CREATION WILL NEVER BE OBJECTIVELY SOLVED.

Just as a singularity would erase all evidence of
what existed before.

Which is why the search for the ultimate details
of initial conditions is futile for any evolving
systems, it's called scientific folly.

[jillery]

On Wed, 2 Aug 2017 19:42:35 -0400, Jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
wrote:

déją vu all over again? This appears to be almost identical to a post
I replied to here:

*******************************************
<5123octkriao5gicr...@4ax.com>

On Wed, 02 Aug 2017 04:10:36 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:
*******************************************

[William Hyde]

On Tuesday, August 1, 2017 at 5:10:05 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> > Well, comfortable except for the outgassing of CH4 and CO2 from arctic soils. I'm more than a bit worried about that.
> >
> > William Hyde
>
> It is your last paragraph that interests me, William. Current temperature
> levels have not been around nearly as long as during the Medieval Warm
> Period, when Greenland was a lot greener than it is now -- although we
> seem to be getting there.

The rate of outgassing we see today is, I think, not a serious problem (or at least it wasn't ten years ago). But the rate is increasing and will continue to increase at some rate whatever we do.

The MWP may not be a good analogy, though. At least one MWP reconstruction I've seen puts the greatest anomalous warmth in the far North Atlantic, with less warmth or even relative cooling over much of the Northern Hemisphere's permafrost.

Was the permafrost in better shape then, than
> it is now, despite that?

I do not know. Most methane reconstructions show a small rise from 1000 to 1200, but that - in my inexpert opinion - doesn't tell us much. CH4 changes due to human agricultural changes at the time could be on the same scale.

> And that in turn was many times shorter than during the Holocene Maximum,
> when there was lots of vegetation in the Sahara where there is none.
>
> Also the previous interglacial, the Eemian, saw high temperatures lasting
> about as long.

I think the answer to these is, again, speed of change. As summers get warmer in the Eemian and Holocene, permafrost retreats, but slowly, and gives up its CH4 and CO2 at a rate that the biosphere can handle. Also remember that these warm periods are seasonal - warmer summers but cooler winters which limit the loss of permafrost.

Are there cores around 65 north latitude that can tell
> of what shape arctic soils were in back then, or during the Holocene
> Maximum?

There certainly should be, but this is not an area with which I am very familiar. I do recall a model hindcast which called for a serious reduction of permafrost in the Eemian. That was long ago, but I suspect that more recent simulations will have the same feature.


On a semi-related topic: An excellent book on the Viking settlements in Greenland is "The Frozen Echo" by Kirsten Seaver.

It's dense, and climate is not her main focus, but I found that much of what I thought I knew was wrong. Always the sign of a good book.

William Hyde

[Jonathan]

On 8/3/2017 1:12 AM, jillery wrote:

> On Wed, 2 Aug 2017 19:42:35 -0400, Jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>

> déjà vu all over again? This appears to be almost identical to a post
> I replied to here:
>



Yep, there was an empty reply of mine above, so I thought
this reply didn't make it and I reposted it with some
editing.

But the whole point I'm trying to make is this.
Do you have any opinions on the following?

There are two ways of predicting the future, the classic
way you're defending where the initial conditions are
detailed and extrapolations made.

But there's another way, a better way, where one builds an
evolving world, full of proper democracies, that relentlessly
adapt and create solutions all by themselves. And let nature

take it's course with the Faith that a naturally evolving process

will produce a future where humanity swims in beauty.

The reason I believe the solution to climate change
doesn't lie in the debate over the scope and possible
solutions is that any self organized or evolving system
has the same logical relationship between initial
conditions and it's organized state as a simple
stable orbit.

Once a stable orbit, or cyclic behavior, is established
all evidence of it's prior paths and especially it's
ultimate starting point, it's initial conditions, are
forever erased.

That is why Creation is not going to be objectively
solved, ever.

Yet reductionist science heavily relies on initial conditions
to predict the future of an evolving planet.

Only simple, non adaptive systems, can be predicted accurately.
Naturally evolving systems will produce emergent behavior
that can't be predicted.

The Catch-22 of prediction.

If you want a wonderful future one must focus on the present
state of our ecosystems, and turn them into adaptive systems
and let the future take care of itself.



Jonathan



s

[jillery]

On Thu, 3 Aug 2017 18:59:30 -0400, Jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
wrote:

I didn't "defend" the so-called "classic way", but merely pointed out
that's what predictive models do. That you dismiss them on principle
doesn't alter the fact that they work surprisingly well within their
known limitations.

Also, you conflate "evolving" with "self-organizing". All systems
"evolve" in the sense their entropy changes over time, but only a
select few are self-organizing in the sense they switch from an
out-of-equilibrium state to a metastable organized state.

Also, you imply above that said more-organized states necessarily are
human-friendly; the phrase you used above is "a future where humanity
swims in beauty". To the contrary, given all the possible states, and
the select few which are even tolerable to humans, that can't be the
case.

Also, you suggest that democracies are more likely to result in
human-friendly states. My impression is the very opposite, that
ideologically-driven democracies tend to chaotic positive-feedback
loops, ex.Arab Spring of 2010, where the "will of the people" replaced
repressive governments with even more repressive governments.

Finally, as applied to AGW, SOS doesn't help, as the actions of
humanity tend to force conditions out of equilibrium. By analogy,
imagine a home aquarium. From experience, I know it's *possible* to
set up a metastable system, where the amount of light and filtration
encourages just the right amount of microflora to feed just the right
amount of display fish, which in turn prevent algal blooms, with only
minimal intervention, ex. to restore water lost from evaporation. In
practice, most people think such aquaria are empty and boring, and so
add too many fish, which pushes the system out of equilibrium.

The Earth can be thought of as an aquarium. AGW is a necessary
consequence of too many people living unsustainable lifestyles. The
Earth's natural systems can sustain lots of people living low-impact
lifestyles *or* relatively few people living irresponsible lifestyles,
but not *both*. Where to set the balance is a *political* decision,
a matter of opinion. The consequences of political decisions is a
scientific issue, a matter of fact. And of course, what qualifies as
"unsustainable" depends on applied technology.

Where to set the balance is a political decision, and everybody's
opinions count. The consequences of said political decisions are a
matter of scientific facts. You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're *not* entitled to your own facts.