Birdnow's Aviary

November 07, 2019

Low Carbon, Long Interglacials

Timothy Birdnow

Sometimes the science magazines get hoisted on their own petards. Take this a a prime example; the writer wants to use this to justify alarmist views of global warming, but the actual research largely argues against it.

For example:

We know that roughly 1 million years ago, the cycle of Earth's ice ages suddenly shifted, with deeper and longer freezes occurring only every 100,000 years, instead of once every 40,000 years.

Nothing in our planet's orbit could explain the 'abrupt' change, known as the Mid-Pleistocene transition(MPT), and with few other explanations, some hypothesised there must have been a long-term decline in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, cooling the planet to a new threshold.

Ancient air bubbles trapped in the Antarctic ice sheet have now revealed a somewhat different picture. Dating back roughly 1.5 million years, these tiny doses of our ancient atmosphere contain "amazingly low" CO2 levels, according to paleoclimatologist Yige Zhang from Texas A&M University, who was not involved in the study and who told Science Magazine he found the results "quite interesting".

Interesting; the argument is that LOW carbon dioxide levels increased the length of interglacials, and decreased the severity of ice ages. Funny; I thought co2 was a greenhouse gas that WARMED the planet, not cooled it.

So how does a dearth of co2 lead to warmer ice periods and lengthened interglacials?

This article is written in a rather confusing style, no doubt to obfuscate the facts.

Take this, for instance:

These are the first direct observations of atmospheric greenhouse gasesbefore the ice ages on Earth began to grow longer, and they suggest something other than a long-term decline in CO2 was at play to shift our planet's entire ice age cycle.

Notice how the author speaks about co2 "in play" but does not mention HOW it cooled the planet rather than warmed it. This is a sneaky way to try to promote global warming theory.

He continues:

...And the lower CO2 levels during ice ages are probably just a consequence of the shorter glacial periods that occurred before the MPT. (Mid Pleistocene Transition)

But this contradicts what was said earlier; the article specifically stated that after the MPT glacial periods:

the cycle of Earth's ice ages suddenly shifted, with deeper and longer freezes occurring only every 100,000 years, instead of once every 40,000 years.

Which means there are fewer ice periods and they are less intense.

So which is it?

The authors of the study found that co2 levels continued to drop and reached their nadir 40,000 AFTER the MPT.

Which is consistent with the notion that carbon dioxide tracks warming and cooling rather than proceeds it. If co2 were a primary driver of climate it would not follow the temperature curve.

I don't know if the author of this article had to hold his nose and write it, or if he just had a hard time expressing himself. But in the end this is actually quite damaging to the alarmist view of global warming.

To quote the article one last time:

Which is a careful way of saying carbon dioxide isn't that important to planetary temperatures.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:32 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 It is entirely possible that CO2 has a very minor role, if indeed any role at all, in long-term global temperatures. Years ago I read how it got involved at all. It seems that some "climate scientist" or other was trying to find a way to get their models to jive, and he experimentally plugged CO2 in, and WHAM, things balanced out. Forgetting (or perhaps ignoring) that correlation isn't necessarily causation, he trumpeted his discovery and bingo, CO2 became the devil. Because liberals are incapable of analysis, it stuck, and now we're stuck with it.

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at November 07, 2019 11:39 AM (qjogl)

2 Stuck is right, Dana! And liberals will never, ever admit they made a mistake.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at November 07, 2019 12:06 PM (+lHJ+)

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