Soils give clean look at past carbon dioxide: It could take less of the greenhouse gas to reach a...

Nature News ^ | 30 December 2009 | Richard A. Lovett

[neverdem]

It could take less of the greenhouse gas to reach a particular level of warming.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels may have been lower in warm eras of the Earth's distant past than once believed, scientists reported this week.

The finding raises concern that carbon dioxide levels from fossil fuel burning may, in the near future, be closer to those associated with ancient hothouse climates.

More immediately, the work brings one line of palaeoclimate evidence — that deduced from ancient soils — into agreement with other techniques for studying past climate.

"It makes a major revision to one of the most popular methods for reconstructing palaeo-CO2," says Dana Royer, a palaeobotanist at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, who was not involved in the work. "This increases our confidence that we have a decent understanding of palaeo-CO2 patterns."

Dirty job In a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, Dan Breecker, a soil chemist from the University of Texas, Austin, and colleagues report studying modern soils from Saskatchewan to New Mexico2, to determine the conditions under which the mineral calcite forms.

Calcite occurs in limestone and can be produced by the action of carbon dioxide in arid soils. Scientists trying to puzzle out ancient climate conditions often use it as an indicator of amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Previous studies had concluded that calcite formation indicates atmospheric carbon dioxide levels as high as 3,000 to 4,000 parts per million. The new study, however, lowers the calcite-formation threshold in soil to about 1,000 parts per million.

--snip--

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising today, and the new finding suggests that climate might be considerably more sensitive to changes in carbon dioxide than previously thought...

[gleeaikin]

Now I have read links one and three. Three deals with the 55 million year old thermal maximum, and one mentions both the 34 and 55 million year ago data.

Both articles say that other, perhaps unknown factors also need to be taken into consideration. The third article expresses ignorance of other possible causes of the 55 mya maximum, but seems to me there is a rather strong suggestion that there was a major oceanic methane burp that may have been the culprit. Of course, if there was a huge methane release, what caused that—a huge boloid? We know that 74 thousand years ago Toba volcano had major climate influences.

The sad thing in science is that scientists get so specialized that the atmospheric people do not know what the vulcanolgists know, or the what the boloid trackers know. What can be done to get these people paying attention to each other?

[neverdem]

Happy New Year!

No Rise of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Fraction in Past 160 Years, New Research Finds The source links the abstract.

As the Nation’s Pulse Races, Obama Can’t Seem to Find His MoDo: “Heck of a job, Barry.”

Our Year of Obama Victor Davis Hanson

Obama and Our Post-Modern Race Problem Shelby Steele

Lying to ourselves: Blindness to Islam ties helps terrorists

Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.

[GeronL]

bump

[Blood of Tyrants]

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels may have been lower in warm eras of the Earth's distant past than once believed, scientists reported this week. --snip-- Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising today, and the new finding suggests that climate might be considerably more sensitive to changes in carbon dioxide than previously thought...

Or it could be that the two really have nothing to do with each other.

[neverdem]

I couldn’t find “Toms River meteor” on Yahoo or Google. What’s up?

[neverdem]

The sad thing in science is that scientists get so specialized that the atmospheric people do not know what the vulcanolgists know, or the what the boloid trackers know. What can be done to get these people paying attention to each other?

Grants for climate change models?

[redpoll]

>>>It could take...<<<

Or it could not. *sigh*

[Mike Darancette]

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels may have been lower in warm eras of the Earth's distant past than once believed, scientists reported this week.

The finding raises concern that carbon dioxide levels from fossil fuel burning may, in the near future, be closer to those associated with ancient hothouse climates.

Or it could mean that CO2 has nothing to do with past warming. =he finding of higher temperatures and lower CO2 concentrations is completely at odds with the models.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[cpdiii]

More immediately, the work brings one line of palaeoclimate evidence — that deduced from ancient soils — into agreement with other techniques for studying past climate.

The first thing you need to know is when a sentence is totally incomprehensible and subject and verb are a bit hard to define, the author is probably lying.

Calcite is a form of Calcium Carbonate. The formation of Calcite is dependent on many factors. Solubility, PH, Temperature, pressure. None of those factors were addressed.

[gleeaikin]

My source was the book Chesapeake Invader: Discovering America’s Giant Meteorite Crater, by C. Wylie Poag, 1999.

Actually what he was referring to was in Toms Canyon on the NJ continental shelf. Having lived in NJ, my thought was this was an extension of Toms River. “Page 44, Toms Canyon crater, one-fourth the size of the Chesapeake Bay crater, is buried near the head of Toms Canyon, 90 miles east of Atlantic City, NJ. This small crater and ejecta drilled within it and nearby boreholes are the same age as the Chesapeake Bay crater.”

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[Cacique]

Typical leftist approach to the sciences. State a hypothesis, look for evidence supporting it, reject what doesn’t fit the model and ignore it. Present a plethora of doctored evidence to support the initial hypothesis. As long as it justifies confiscation of property more state control and redistribution of destroyed wealth to the new ruling elites.

[JustDoItAlways]

The two Asteroid strikes at 35.3 million and 35.7 million years ago never left a signature in the Temperature record within the resolution of the data available of 15,000 years.

The glaciers in Antarctica started forming about 42 million years ago and the significant glaciation did not start until 33.6 million years ago.

So, the Asteroid strikes did not impact the long-term climate and a lag of 2 million years is not possible.

In terms of this study, trying to use ancient soils to estimate CO2 in the past - this method has huge errors/variability and produces Zero ppm estimates very often (ie no plants, no life). The author of the study, Royer, is desperate to rewrite the historical CO2 estimates so that it matches the historical temperature records better. This is just another example.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks gleeaikin and neverdem!

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[JustDoItAlways]

Sorry, when I saw Royer’s name, I assumed he was involved in this, but I guess he wasn’t. The method, however, is not reliable.

[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks gleeaikin and neverdem. Snapshot Of Past Climate Reveals No Ice In Antarctica Millions Of Years Ago ScienceDaily July 29, 2008 A snapshot of New Zealand's climate 40 million years ago reveals a greenhouse Earth, with warmer seas and little or no ice in Antarctica, according to research recently published in the journal Geology. The study suggests that Antarctica at that time was yet to develop extensive ice sheets. Back then, New Zealand was about 1100 km further south, at the same latitude as the southern tip of South America -- so was closer to Antarctica -- but the researchers found that the water temperature was 23-25°C at the sea surface and 11-13°C at the bottom. "This is too warm to be the Antarctic water we know today," said Dr Catherine (Cat) Burgess from Cardiff University and lead-author of the paper. "And the seawater chemistry shows there was little or no ice on the planet." These new insights come from the chemical analysis of exceptionally well preserved fossils of marine micro-organisms called foraminifers, discovered in marine rocks from New Zealand. The researchers tested the calcium carbonate shells from these fossils, which were found in 40 million-year-old sediments on a cliff face at Hampden Beach, South Island... "Our work provides another piece of evidence that, in a time period with relatively high carbon dioxide levels, temperatures were higher and ice sheets were much smaller and likely to have been completely absent." The rock sequence from the cliff face covers a time span of 70,000 years and shows cyclical temperature variations with a period of about 18,000 years. The temperature oscillation is likely to be related to the Earth's orbital patterns. All About the Antarctic Ice Sheet Glacier webpages Rice University ...Parts of Antarctica probably have been covered by ice constantly for the last 40 million years! Our knowledge about glaciations is most detailed for those that have been recent, geologically speaking. The most recent ice ages in the Northern Hemisphere started about two and a half million years ago... Antarctica has been located near the South Pole for about the last 300 million years! ...The most recent phase of glaciation on Antarctica began about 40 million years ago as the other continents slowly separated from Antarctica... Shift of the plates away from Antarctica (modified from Lawver et al., 1992). During the Cretaceous (110 million years ago). During the Oligocene (30 million years ago). Through time, Antarctica has been left behind at the South Pole and the ocean currents around the Southern Continent have strengthened to keep warmer waters from intruding. This has helped to maintain ice sheets on the continent for the last 40 million years... Tectonic changes can cause changes in atmospheric circulation and oceanic circulation... A tectonic shift is believed to have happened about 3.5 million years ago, when the Isthmus of Panama formed... The Antarctic Ice Sheet has been in place for the last 40 million years, but it has grown and diminished in size several times since it's initiation. The Palæogeographical Relations of Antarctica by Charles Hedley (1912) ...Among early Tertiary vegetation brought from Seymour Island in the Antarctic by Dr. Nordenskjöld's expedition, Dusén has recognised a species of Fagus and an Araucaria like A. brasiliensis (Schwedische Sudpolar. Exp., Bd. iii. Lief 3, 1908). In the light of this discovery the range of the living species of these genera acquires an importance for the student of the Antarctic hypothesis. The distribution of the beech trees is a particularly interesting one, for on the principle of Antarctic extension it is simple and intelligible, but without it is complicated and inexplicable. This genus Fagus, sensu latu, has two representatives in Europe, one in North America, and several in China and Japan. But in South America there are eleven, in New Zealand seven, and in Tasmania with Australia three. The northern forms are deciduous, but with one or two exceptions the southern are evergreen. The genus being a natural one is certainly not of polyphyletic origin, and the question before us is, from what centre of migration has it spread? Did the southern species radiate from the south or converge from the north? It is a strong argument for a southern origin that the bulk of the species are southern. Again, the evergreen state is primitive, the deciduous derived, and this indicates that the northerners are offshoots from an evergreen stock. Thirdly, the southern species more closely resemble each other than any northern does any southern form. Even, as Mr. Rodway (Proc. Austr. Assoc. Adv. Sci. 1912) points out, the same parasite afflicts Tasmanian and South American trees. This agrees better with radiation from the south than with convergence from the north. Ancient moss, insects found in Antarctica by Randolph E. Schmid August 4, 2008 Mosses once grew and insects crawled in what are now barren valleys in Antarctica, according to scientists who have recovered remains of life from that frozen continent. Fourteen million years ago the now lifeless valleys were tundra, similar to parts of Alaska, Canada and Siberia -- cold but able to support life, researchers report. Science Frontiers No. 75 by William R. Corliss May-June 1991 In Antarctica, heaps of 3- million-year-old fossil leaves have been found within 400 kilometers of the South Pole. (Francis, Jane E.; "Arctic Eden," Natural History, 100:57, January 1991. Also: Peterson, Christian; "Leafing through Antarctica's Balmy Past," New Scientist, p. 20, February 9, 1991.) To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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[palmer]

Nature was led like a poodle into AGW by Mann and his scamster cohorts, they’re still in deep.

Led? No Nature and the others were the enablers and allowed Mann and the rest to get away with scientific murder.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Bunch of new ones coming for 2010.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

JoNova website:

Is there any evidence?

***************EXCERPT*******************

The all important question that rises above and before ALL other questions is the one of evidence.

Is there any evidence that carbon dioxide causes major warming?