HOW CARBON GASES ‘HAVE SAVED US FROM A NEW ICE AGE’

express.co.uk ^ | March 11,2010 | Donna Bowater

[neverdem]

Man-made carbon emissions: But it is bad news for the polar bears

MAN-MADE carbon emissions are staving off a new ice age, says a leading environmental scientist.

Climate-change expert Dr James Lovelock says the greenhouse gases that have warmed the planet are likely to prevent a big freeze that could last millions of years.

In a talk at London’s Science Museum Dr Lovelock said the balance of nature was in charge of the environment.

He said: “We’re just fiddling around. It is worth thinking that what we are doing in creating all these carbon emissions, far from being something frightful, is stopping the onset of a new ice age.

“If we hadn’t appeared on the earth, it would be due to go through another ice age and we can look at our part as holding that up.

“I hate all this business about feeling guilty about what we’re doing.

“We’re not guilty, we never intended to pump CO2 into the atmosphere, it’s just something we did.”

Dr Lovelock’s comments come in the wake of the scandal at the University of East Anglia where leaked emails suggested climate change data had been manipulated.

The 90-year-old British scientist, who has worked for Nasa and paved the way for the detection of man-made aerosol and refrigerant gases in the atmosphere, called for greater caution in climate research.

He compared the recent controversy to the “wildly inaccurate” early work on aerosol gases and their alleged role in depletion of the ozone layer.

He said: “Quite often, observations done by hand are accurate but all the theoretical stuff in between tends to be very dodgy and I think they are seeing this with climate change. We haven’t learned the lessons of the ozone-hole debate. It’s important to know just how much you have got to be careful.”

According to Dr Lovelock’s Gaia theory, the earth is capable of curing itself. “A planet that is effectively alive can regulate itself and its composition and climate,” he said.

Thomas Crowley, professor of geoscience at Edinburgh University, responded: “People have thought about the possibility of an ice age but it wouldn’t be for many thousands of years.

“Dr Lovelock might be right in the abstract but this does not necessarily mean that CO2 is good now.”

[muawiyah]

The big meltdown was about 15,000 years ago. Later on there was the "younger dryas event" which has been demonstrated to have been an anomaly caused by a comet that hit the residual Laurentide ice sheet.

You count your "end of ice age" time from the biggest meltdown that raises the ocean level the highest. You no longer count from the "younger dryas event".

[SteamShovel]

"backed by powerful simulations on the world's most advanced computer climate models"...that will tell you anything you want them to tell you...GIGO.

[SteamShovel]

the radical idea that human-induced climate change began not 200 years ago, but thousands of years ago with the onset of large-scale agriculture in Asia and extensive deforestation in Europe

Suggesting.....

.....It is NOT caused by CO2

.....It is NOT the Americans fault

.....There is nothing we can do about it short of 100% homicide.

These people are forced off their story by cooling for 10 years (a a plateau or trend against their previous theory) and now their new theories don't mesh with the old ones.

[aruanan]

Later on there was the "younger dryas event" which has been demonstrated to have been an anomaly caused by a comet that hit the residual Laurentide ice sheet.

From what I've read, it didn't actually hit because there's no sign of a direct impact, but was a very close encounter. It was supposed to have been extraterrestrial because the nanodiamonds found there could have been formed only through the extreme temperatures and pressures in something like an asteroid or comet impact. But the nanodiamond formation could just as likely have been the result of a long-lived, high-powered, auroral event with heavy arcing that occurred around that time. There exists considerable archeological evidence worldwide of this event.

In the illustration below, are you saying that the initial warm-up and, therefore, beginning of the current interglacial, is that little rise in temperature right above the "st" in "Last" and not the large increase after that?

[muawiyah]

Just keep your eyes on ocean levels. There are several. We get a rise from an Antarctic meltdown as well as a North American/Eurasian meltdown.

There's a refreeze in the Northern Hemisphere called the "younger dryas". That lasts about 1500 years and then we get another, but smaller meltdown.

The "comet" definitely made a splashdown ~ and there are a number of other indicators, e.g. Canadian gold deposits in unglaciated Southern Indiana hills.

[Sherman Logan]

From a long term geological perspective the planet Earth has spent more time as an ice cube than being warm.

Actually, that would be from a short to mid term geological perspective.

The earth is about 4 billion years old. Of this time, at most 700 to 800 million years have been in "ice ages," with the rest of the time there being no permanent ice caps except possibly at high altitudes.

This number is actually high, since the interglacials, such as we are presently in, within the larger span ice ages are included. The presence of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps today means we are classified as still being in an Ice Age.

OTOH, of the last 2M years, we've spent about 85% in periods with large continental glaciers, glacial periods, what is commonly meant when the term "ice age" is used.

[bray]

There is no such thing as Greenhouse gasses and I want my freon and aerosol cans back.

Pray for America

[Brad from Tennessee]

Dr. Roger A. Pielke Sr. at University of Colorado ( http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/ ) has always pointed to an accumulation of local “land use changes”—turning forests into cropland, turning cropland into residential neighborhoods, draining swamps, diverting rivers and irrigating arrid areas, etc.—as the reason behind any man-made climate change. He says these surface alterations, which have gone on for thousands of years, are more profound than mankind's emissions.

If Pielke is correct the U.S. and other developed societies began moving toward countering these effects a century ago with the creation of parks, sanctuaries and reservations, reforestation, urban landscaping, restoration of water sheds and estuaries, improved farming methods, etc.

[The Truth Will Make You Free]

In La Grange, Illinois which is about 20 miles west of Chicago, there's a ridge that resulted from glaciers melting. It's clear a certain amount of global warming occurred without man's intervention, and that is was a good thing.

[El Gato]

"If it happens again, people in those states will have to start drinking Molson, Eh?"

Yah, shur, you betcha.

[El Gato]

It’s an ice age we are doomed.

It'll be an ice age, since those are cyclical and we are towards the end of the "warm" part of the cycle. But that doesn't mean we're doomed. Just means we have to adapt and overcome, as we always have. Those in the north will likely have to move, and probably shoot and communicate too.

[mikrofon]

That would be something -- central American countries complaining about immigration...

[Brad from Tennessee]

MILANKOVIC CYCLES and Climate Change (Wikipedia)

Milankovitch Theory describes the collective effects of changes in the Earth's movements upon its climate, named after Serbian civil engineer and mathematician Milutin Milankovic. Milankovic mathematically theorized that variations in eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit determined climatic patterns on Earth.

The Earth's axis completes one full cycle of precession approximately every 26,000 years. At the same time, the elliptical orbit rotates, more slowly, leading to a 23,000-year cycle between the seasons and the orbit. In addition, the angle between Earth's rotational axis and the normal to the plane of its orbit moves from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees and back again on a 41,000-year cycle; currently, this angle is 23.44 degrees and is decreasing.

Other astronomical theories were advanced by Joseph Adhemar, James Croll and others, but verification was difficult due to the absence of reliably dated evidence and doubts as to exactly which periods were important. Not until the advent of deep-ocean cores and a seminal paper by Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton, “Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages”, in Science, 1976,[1] did the Milankovic theory attain its present state.

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

[GOPJ]

Thanks for the ping.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!