Rising carbon dioxide concentration stops the glacial/interglacial cycle
Posted by Ari Jokimäki on August 24, 2009
I have seen claims from denialists that the past records of temperature from Antarctic ice cores show that we are heading towards an ice age. The reason for this claim can be seen from the temperature reconstruction made from the Vostok ice core deuterium profile. Details are given here which is where I also got the data for the graph presented in Fig. 1.
Figure 1. Reconstructed temperature from Vostok ice core.
The claim suggests that the same is happening now that happened about 130000 years ago, and about 240000 years ago, and about 320000 years ago, that is, the temperature increased quickly and then also decreased quickly and it all happened seemingly in a cyclic process. However, the claim misses few things. First, let us see how high CO2 concentration was during the past 400000 years shown in Vostok temperature reconstruction. There’s also CO2 concentration measured from Vostok ice core. It is described here, and the data is also given there. I have made a graph out of the data, and it is presented in Fig. 2.
Figure 2. CO2 concentration from Vostok ice core.
We find out that CO2 concentration varied between 180 and 300 ppm during the last 400000 years when glacial/intarglacial cycles were going on. The thing that the claim misses is that currently, the CO2 concentration is getting close to 400 ppm which is far more than anything during the past 400000 years. But, does it matter? Here we arrive to the second thing the claim misses.
If we look further back in time than Vostok ice core, we find out that glacial/interglacial cycle has not been always functional. There has been times when global temperature was continuously high for long periods of time (millions of years) without any glacial periods. During those times, also CO2 concentration has been high, much higher than it is today. Based on the knowledge of those past times, Royer (2006) has suggested that glaciation starts only when CO2 concentration decreases below 500 ppm. However, Royer cannot give very accurate limit, but only says that it is below 500 ppm. Above we saw that the maximum value of CO2 concentration were quite consistently 280-300 ppm during interglacial periods of recent 400000 years. Based on this, I would say that it matters that current CO2 concentration is far above the normal interglacial maximum. I cannot say for sure that we have already reached the below 500 ppm threshold Royer suggests, but I also don’t see any reasons to assume that the next glacial would be about to begin. At least the situation is currently heading towards the threshold.
Also, at any case, to change climate, you always need forcings to be such that a change can occur. This is the third thing the claim misses. Currently, there’s no forcing in sight that could turn things around. As Hansen et al. (2008) show, greenhouse gases have always (well, at least the last 65 million years) been the determining factor of where climate goes. Other forcings have only minor roles as initiators. (However, albedo changes can be very strong feedback, but is not usually considered as an initiator of climate changes because there would have to be some pre-existing cause to change the albedo.) Note also that Hansen et al. succesfully explain the glacial/interglacial cycle by greenhouse gas forcing with Earth’s orbital changes acting as the initiator. So, to see when the next ice age is going to start, we only need to see which way the greenhouse gases are pointing.
Currently, greenhouse gases are pointing towards warmer climate.
AGW Observer 
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Jeff Glassman said
Ari Jokimaki,
What the so-called denialists seem to deny is not measurements, even flaky ones, but the validity of the GCMs, formerly Global Climate Models, now Global Circulation Models because they proved unable to predict climate. They also deny the alarmist claims of Hansen and the IPCC, by which the GCMs earned the name Global Catastrophe Models.
You rely on a government publication for the Vostok temperature record, and your own graph of the Vostok CO2 record, when these were IPCC evidence. See TAR, Figure 2.22, p. 137. IPCC there discusses problems this record places on the AGW model, problems which you ignore. The key one, of course, is that CO2 substantially (not entirely) lags the temperature. What lags cannot be the cause.
You ignore the published criticism of what IPCC has done with these records to repeat IPCC’s mistakes. Here’s a sampler.
The Vostok data were collected inside the southern of the two huge CO2 sinks. You compare this to the modern record, collected at Mauna Loa from within the time-varying, wind-modulated plume of the massive outgassing from the Eastern Equatorial Pacific. The IPCC does not recognize, much less explain, the large offset that should exist between these two sources records. Instead, IPCC “calibrates” (i.e., fudges) the data from different sources into agreement (as with TAR Figure 3.2a, p. 201), and then graphs ancient and modern records to create a false and necessarily man-made trend (as in 3.2b).
The Vostok record provides about 283 data points (CO2-temperature pairs) over 450,000 years. That’s a sample interval of about 1.3 millennia. The modern record is about a century long, and the Mauna Loa record half that. Detecting an event like the modern epoch within the Vostok record was quite unlikely. The modern record is unprecedented in the paleo record all right, but with a confidence level of about 3%. The AGW enthusiasts seem to play connect the dots with the samples to presume that what happened in between the samples must lie on the connecting lines. This is a tyro’s error.
The Vostok record data are low pass filtered. This occurs because the firn takes time to close, reportedly a century, plus or minus a few decades. The entire modern record averaged to a single data point corresponds to one ice core reduction. Low pass filtering reduces peak amplitudes, and the paleo CO2 is no exception.
IPCC made the same claim you repeat here: the modern record is unprecedented. TAR, p. 185. Therefore, it must be due to man. This story doesn’t hold water, in any phase.
You downplay the significance of the previous warm epochs in the Vostok record. They provide a simple, powerful and even essential (in the sense of being undeniable) means by which one might predict climate. The present climate has about 1ºC to 3ºC to go to match the previous four peaks covering a half million years. That record also shows a floor of about -9ºC below the present. The GCMs cannot account for this record. IPCC initializes its models in “equilibrium”, nulling the on-going warming and CO2 growth in 1750, and then per force attributes the subsequent growth to man. The AGW model does not exclude the paleo record, it just zeroes it. Thus AGW, once a conjecture (too incomplete to be a hypothesis and having made no validated prediction, far removed from a theory), is now invalid.
In the opening paragraph, Hansen’s paper you cite refers to “long-lived human-made greenhouse gases”. Some day I’ll have to read the rest. CO2 is not long-lived in any reasonable sense, even though that assumption is necessary to make MLO data global. IPCC admits the CO2 has detectable gradients in longitude, and that they are an order of magnitude greater in latitude. CO2 does not accumulate in the atmosphere, as implied by the long-lived assumption. IPCC’s own data shows 90 GtC/yr emitted by the ocean and 92 GtC/yr absorbed by the ocean, yet claims only 50% of man-made CO2 is absorbed per year. IPCC has natural CO2 decreasing and anthropogenic CO2 increasing. IPCC says it relied on a mass balance computation, which is essential, but it provides neither the computation nor a citation.
IPCC ignores Henry’s Law of solubility, instead shifting the phenomenon onto the phantom and failed Revelle factor. As a result, IPCC implies that the solubility of man-made CO2 is different than that of natural CO2. To be sure, IPCC attributes a tiny difference in molecular weight to the two species, and that should have an effect on solubility, but it has to be far down the scale of solubility parameters, following temperature, pressure, and even salinity. The effect would be unmeasurably small; lost in the noise. What IPCC claims doesn’t jibe with established physics.
For more on this so-called denialist heresy, don’t bother with peer-reviewed journals. See instead http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com, for example.
Ari Jokimäki said
Denialists deny also the measurements when they see it fitting to their agenda, surface temperature record is a good example of that. (Some seem also to deny carbon dioxide concentration measurements.) On climate model predictions:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/weather-forecasts-vs-climate-models-predictions.htm
Where’s the research article that proves the GCM’s are unable to predict climate?
TAR being the IPCC third assessment report, and here’s the link to the figure 2.22 and the texts related to it:
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/072.htm#fig222
I don’t see any problems stated there, but perhaps you could highlight them (additional to the “CO2 lags” thing) for me, as it seems that your idea of a “problem for AGW” seems to be rather different than mine, based on your mention of this standard claim of “CO2 lags so it can’t lead”. Here is to that argument:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
Oh, and if you claim that I am ignoring things, here’s what you ignored from that TAR text you cited: “However, considering the large uncertainty in the ages of the CO2 and ice (1,000 years or more if we consider the ice accumulation rate uncertainty), Petit et al. (1999) felt it premature to ascertain the sign of the phase relationship between CO2 and Antarctic temperature at the initiation of the terminations.”
If CO2 causes warming (and we know it does based on 150 years of laboratory and atmospheric measurements) it doesn’t matter how it gets to the atmosphere first if it then starts to cause warming. In past climate changes, Earth orbital changes caused initial warming which caused CO2 concentration to rise which then amplified the warming (the TAR text you cited also mentions this amplification). Today we have been pushing more CO2 to the atmosphere, and it is causing warming.
https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/papers-on-changes-in-dlr/
https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/papers-on-changes-in-olr-due-to-ghgs/
(Why are we using TAR anyway, as fourth IPCC report exists?)
And why do you think that the presence of CO2 sinks would affect the atmospheric CO2 concentration? Surely you don’t think that the sinks somehow concentrate the atmospheric CO2 around these sinks? You could also offer reference for this claim, and show that the effect there is high enough to cause an offset of dozens of ppm.
I haven’s said anything about Mauna Loa. There are many other records of CO2 in addition to Mauna Loa, see here:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/contents.htm
As you can see, there’s measurements being done in Antarctica too:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/csiro/csiro-mawson.html
As you can see, the Antarctica measurements give very similar values as Mauna Loa and others. But they must then be “fudged” too, right?
Well, how does IPCC do this? They must be magicians, as the data (some of it anyway) existed well before IPCC was even founded.
From now on, if you really wish to discuss with me here, please leave the conspiracy theories to yourself and concentrate on the science.
Jeff Glassman said
Ari Jokimäki,
What I said was carefully couched in what denialists (from your first post) SEEM to be saying. Your statement is about what denialists DO say. Considering your position that
as a legal statement, which would mean SOME denialists deny what you say, is acceptable for argument’s sake. As a scientific statement, meaning ALL denialists deny what you say, it is too improbable to be plausible or provable. That comment, like consensuses and the entire subject of denialists vs. believers , is subjective and no part of science.
You actually want a research article to prove that the GCMs are unable to predict climate? Is this from the believers’ creed? All we need is an example of a novel, nontrivial prediction made by a GCM. What would be even better is such a prediction that has been validated. Of course, you must rule out the ultimate prediction of the global warming catastrophe because the objective is to qualify to model to make such a prediction.
In my view of science, a model advances from a conjecture to a hypothesis by making one or more novel, nontrivial predictions, and it advances next to a theory when at least one of those predictions has been validated by measurements. Scientists don’t do research to prove that models have not met such criteria. I wouldn’t expect to find what you seek in the literature.
I admit that I ignored lots of things in the TAR in my post, and you are partly correct with respect amplification, based on the following bizarre rationalization:
Why was Fischer et al. important? Why did Petit et al. try to minimize what Fisher reported? Why did IPCC use the word parallels instead of leads or lags to compare the CO2 and temperature records? Why did it use the word amplifying instead of causing? The answer is the certain knowledge that Fisher et al.’s finding upsets causality in the AGW conjecture. Cause and effect have an implied temporal relationship. And scientific models are cause and effect relationships with predictive power. The fact that CO2 substantially lags temperature reverses IPCC’s desired cause and effect relationship — that CO2 can cause disastrous global warming.
In the last sentence from ¶2.4.1, the greenhouse gases appear out of nowhere — causeless. Instead, we know greenhouse gases are released by the ocean, and in some proportion to temperature. IPCC’s amplification conjecture is an unstable model, a rare finding in nature. In fact, the entire concept mechanized in GCMs is unstable.
Petit et al. may have thought in 1999 that assigning a phase was premature, but then they didn’t have the advantage of The Acquittal of Carbon Dioxide published in 2006. The Petit premise is little more than the fact that all measurements have noise. As shown in the Acquittal, proper statistical analysis can minimize such effects to reveal important patterns. The argument of Petit et al. would have merit if they meant to suggest not that the measurements were noisy, but that they were biased. If so, then someone needed to create new ice core reductions corrected for the bias. They haven’t, leaving the CO2 lag as real, and admitted to exist by IPCC, the leader of the AGW movement. In fact as of 2001, IPCC admits the lag might be far larger, as much as two to four millennia, and more than is evident in the Vostok record. TAR ¶3.3.2 Variations in Atmospheric CO2 during Glacial/interglacial Cycles, p. 203.
IPCC also said,
In other words, orbital forcing has a role in simple models, but not in GCMs. And the observed warming can be attributed to man. The secondary implication is that the human influences are sufficient.
The important amplification is not the CO2 amplification of the orbital forcing, which is not even simulated in GCMs, but the water vapor feedback in response to the CO2 warming, which is simulated and essential for the desired effect: 1.2ºC rise due to CO2 is too small, so we make water vapor amplify it to a threatening average of 3ºC:
You ask why use the Third Assessment Report when the Fourth is available. The answer is that the TAR was comprehensive, while AR4 was not. The Fourth extends and updates the Third; it does not replace the former.
You ask,
Concentration is maximum around sources and minimum around sinks, not the reverse. Constructing gradient lines to show such flow patterns is a rather standard procedure. If you really need an authority for this most elementary concept, try this:
The ice caps sit inside the pools of CO2 laden sea water that descend to depth to outgas a millennium later. Mauna Loa sits inside the plume of the massive Eastern Equatorial Pacific outgassing. An in case you doubt this claim, consider:
One factor IPCC overlooks is the added weight of CO2 as the surface currents move poleward. The added CO2 weight has the same sign and is the same order of magnitude as the salt.
You say,
Yes, they do exist. But the coming catastrophe is predicted by IPCC from the data IPCC used. It could not have more effusive about the role of the MLO record:
With regard to fudged data by calibration, you asked,
I assume you are not asking a question about the meaning of calibration, which is the how. The why gets into motivation, honesty, and competency, and the eye on the prize.
Data records don’t just happen to merge as neatly as IPCC shows in the Figures 3.2, above. The records are by IPCC’s admission calibrated into agreement. As the citation shows, it’s not magic. The practice dates back at least two decades, apparently is accepted practice in climatology, and is on-going.
You close with
This is empty, disrespectful, arrogant, and out of place outside some of the prominent political blogs, even if you happen to be the moderator here.
Ari Jokimäki said
Ah, sorry, perhaps I should have explained what the term denialist means when I use it. There is a group of people who are spreading all kinds of nonsense against AGW due to their political, religious, or other motives. They don’t care about the science or truth on the matter. I don’t want to call such people “skeptics” because there are also honestly skeptical people and I don’t want to confuse them with that bunch. Calling those people “skeptics” would be the same as calling creationists “skeptics”. So, in my use of the “denialist”, they do deny practically everything what mainstream climate science says, except when mainstream climate science sayings fit their agenda.
Of course. That’s how it is done in science. You do some research on GCMs ability to predict climate, and then you publish a research article about it. I don’t see how you could otherwise say that they have been proven unable to predict climate. I also asked for the research article especially because your description of the matter had an implied timeline, and it seemed that you were discussing some specific event, further suggesting that there would be a document describing this.
Scientists look for holes from their theories all the time. You claimed that GCMs have been proven unable to predict climate. Surely you must have something to show for it before you can make a claim like that. I must say that I’m constantly amazed, when discussing with people who go against AGW, by the amount of fight one must sometimes put in order to get a reference for their claims.
Why are you trying to assign dishonest motives on people? Here is the Petit et al.:
Click to access 1999.pdf
They were just pointing out that there is a larger uncertainty in the ages than the suggested lag. This is the same point you used when you claimed that “detecting an event like the modern epoch within the Vostok record was quite unlikely”. Are you saying that Vostok record is not accurate enough to determine that modern CO2 concentration is higher than anything in the Vostok record, but it is accurate enough to determine if it leads or lags temperature, even with the quoted >1000 years uncertainty?
Oh, and what about those ice cores that show the modern rise in carbon dioxide too? Are they also fudged?
No it doesn’t. CO2 is a powerful feedback to any initial warming, see the Hansen et al. (2008) linked above.
Everybody accepts the lag is real, and it has a rational explanation which still leaves the CO2 as powerful greenhouse gas causing warming whenever it is being put to the atmosphere.
Your quote didn’t say anything about GCMs. Unfortunately, TAR seems to be unavailable at the IPCC website at the moment, so I can’t check it more carefully. However, Park & Oglesby (1991), for example, already modelled orbital forcing with a GCM. Do you think they forgot how to do it after that?
Well, I checked the AR4 front matter, they don’t say anything about AR4 just being an extension or an update. But at any case, arguing against climate models or some paleoclimate issues based on a non-scientific text that was written almost 10 years ago seems rather pointless, as the state of knowledge in both has increased remarkable after that.
Fair enough. However, you still need to show that the difference is so remarkable (at least about 80 ppm) that it washes away the observed trend. Also, why would such a thing even cause an apparent trend, wouldn’t it just basically be an offset? And, as I pointed out, there are modern measurements being done in Antarctica too.
You are missing the point. IPCC was founded in 1988. CO2 measurements had been published already before that. Here’s an example: “Precise and continuous measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentration were first begun in 1958 and show a clear increase from 315 parts per million by volume (p.p.m.v.)1 then to 345 p.p.m.v. now”, from the abstract of Neftel et al. (1985). So, how did the IPCC fudge this data published before IPCC was founded? When measurements are being made, it is a standard procedure to calibrate the measurements. If you think there’s something fishy about that, you should show where the calibration goes wrong, instead of just showing that they calibrate the measurements and then yell conspiracy.
Well, I just think that people shouldn’t start throwing dishonesty accusations around without rock solid proof that there actually is dishonesty involved. You haven’t shown any proof of that and yet continue to accuse IPCC of all kinds of things. Isn’t that disrespectful?
Jeff Glassman said
Ari Jokimäki,
You say,
I concede such people exist, but seeing them as a group is a stretch. Do they meet then to conspire against the good works of the believers? Does Senator Inhofe with his list of over 700 scientists comprise such a group? We may presume the Senator to be politically motivated, personally and patriotically, and also concerned about economics. However I would point out that Inhofe is a key policymaker to whom IPCC addresses its work, and from whom criticism is impliedly invited and dutifully expected.
Perhaps you include Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, called “contrarians”, (Wall Street Journal vs. The Scientific Consensus, 6/22/05), “tilter[s]-against-windmills-and-hockey-sticks”, and of the “denialist camp” (Fraser Institute fires off a damp squib, 2/3/07) by the believers at realclimate.org. IPCC had relied on Mann’s hockey stick construction before it got that name (TAR ¶2.3.3 Was there a “Little Ice Age” and a “Medieval Warm Period”. Figure 2.20, p. 134, “based on Mann et al. (1999)”, p. 133) to conclude,
IPCC boasted of Mann’s reduction of “global networks of ‘multi-proxy’ data”, (TAR ¶2.3 Is the Recent Warming Unusual, ¶2.3.1 Introduction, p. 130), that
IPCC’s conclusion gave merit to two distinct notions underlying its AGW conjecture: (1) that the present warming due to CO2 was unprecedented in the last millennium, and (2) that Earth was in radiation balance as of 1750, the point and state at which it initializes its GCMs.
IPCC reported on a little controversy arising out of the criticism by McIntyre and McKitrick, itself applying the disparaging name of the hockey stick construction. IPCC said of these critics last response, “The latter may have some theoretical foundation,” but that “the impact … is very small”. AR4 ¶ 6.6.1.1 What Do Reconstructions Based on Paleoclimatic Proxies Show?, p. 466. Nevertheless, IPCC discarded the hockey stick in favor first of a reconstruction of proxy data from twelve sources, including Mann’s. AR4 Figure 6.10 p. 467. One of these reconstructions labeled ECS2002 has rehabilitated the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.
Next IPCC tries to analyze the hockey stick era of the last millennium using a dozen climate models. The models are listed in Table 6.2, p. 476, and the results graphed collectively at AR4 ¶ 6.6.3.1 Solar Forcing, Figure 6.13 (d), p. 477. The Medieval Warm Period is still evident, though attenuated, and the Little Ice Age requires imagination to locate. Regardless, based on the ink IPCC now spends on the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, they are fairly rehabilitated. However, the credibility IPCC gave to the notions of the unprecedented warming and the energy balance as of 1750 appears to have succumbed without a death notice.
You didn’t like to hear that orbital forcing had a role only in simple models but not GCMs. You asked,
If IPCC had intended to say both simple models and GCMs replicate orbital forcing, it would not have said only that simple models do. This is ordinary, careful and scientific use of language. A reasonable question about Park & Oglesby is why wasn’t their work reported by IPCC? It discusses many attempts to include orbital forcing, and as of the TAR a decade after P&O, IPCC deemed none of them successful. Apparently P&O did indeed lose the formula. More importantly, IPCC says the catastrophe is coming without relying on orbital forcing.
IPCC has divided the domain of its climate models in two, one for geological time scales and another for “shorter time scales”. The former requires simulation of orbital parameters, the latter, which covers the current climate, includes human activities. AR4, ¶7.6, Concluding Remarks, p. 566. The GCMs are of the second type. IPCC reports that its GCMs could reproduce the broad features of temperature and precipitation patterns, for the last ice age (21 ka), implying by omission that they could not reproduce the CO2 effects. It reports that the models could simulate “mid-latitude warming and enhanced monsoons” for the mid-Holocene (6 ka). AR4, TS, p. 58. This damning by faint praise shows that the GCMs, which provide the ultimate prediction of catastrophe, fail to predict the climate of the distant past. Lacking objective criteria by which to restrict their domain, AGW is invalid for the GCMs failure to predict the geological data.
IPCC rationalizes the inability of its GCMs to model orbital effects successfully by proclaiming that while orbital forcing is important in modeling the last ice age and the mid-Holocene, these do not include the current climate (AR4, TS, p. 58, above), and that orbital considerations won’t be important for the “next tens of thousand years”. 4AR, ¶6.4.1.8 When Will the Current Interglacial End? pp. 453-4.
IPCC says,
GCMs fail Number 1: they cannot account for orbital effects. They fail Number 2: they do not simulate dynamic cloud cover. They fail Number 3: they cannot account for the most important greenhouse gas, water vapor.
You said,
Here it is:
With respect to global CO2 gradients, you wrote,
The lack of CO2 gradients, the notion that CO2 is long-lived in the atmosphere, the global nature assumed for MLO data, the attribution of seasonal variations to biochemical processes, the alleged build-up of anthropogenic CO2, and, of course, the coming catastrophe are all related and crucial to the AGW model. This is not a simple matter of trend lines. I don’t think any burden of proof falls on the critic in general; the burden conventionally, and perhaps always, is on the modeler to provide supporting evidence. Regardless, we have the following confession of this modeler:
You asked,
Yes. Once upon a time, AGW was a conjecture. Normally, it would have been raised to a hypothesis by adding a nontrivial prediction. Hindcasting the geological record would have been sufficient for a large audience. Then the model should have been validated through measurements within the claimed accuracy of the prediction. Now it would have qualified as a theory. I believe that promoting a scientific model for public policy is ethical only if the model has achieved the quality of a theory. What IPCC has done is not only unethical, but technically wrong. The errors in its exposition invalidate AGW, moving the model down from a conjecture into the realm of non-science. AGW shares this honor with frauds like astrology, phrenology, cold fusion, and Piltdown man.
Respect need not be earned, for it is normally extended to a stranger. Disrespect is earned, and IPCC has earned it.
Ari Jokimäki said
I missed your answer to my question about the point you were pressing: “So, how did the IPCC fudge this data published before IPCC was founded?”
Jeff Glassman said
Ari Jokimäki,
You seem to have missed what you quoted:
I didn’t say anything as nonsensical as you suggest, i.e., that IPCC originated data fudging, even limited to the field of climatology. I would suppose that most of what IPCC reports it adopted from the climate literature, and too frequently obfuscated with useless, obtuse references. However, IPCC earns credit for everything it endorses.
No one literate in science could object to performing such calibrations. It is a perfectly valid technique in data analysis. However, IPCC demonstrates that records made from different times, places and conditions, using different techniques (from proxies to modern instruments), filtered (smoothed or averaged) differently, and with different sample rates form can be calibrated to form contiguous or tightly overlapping records. In this, it commits scientific fraud. It does so with both CO2 and temperature.
Experience with real data from the natural world suggests that the MLO and South Pole data should not overlay one another but should have a significant and interesting difference, that ice core proxy data should not smoothly transition into the modern instrument data, and that the modern record sampled for less than a century cannot be deemed unprecedented within another record sampled less than once per millennium. IPCC is ethically obliged to publish its calibrations, and to justify by analysis every claim with respect to different records.
IPCC’s fraudulent manipulation of data does not end with these two records. It claims that δ13C “decreases at a predictable rate consistent with emissions of CO2 from fossil origin.” AR4, ¶2.3.1, p. 139. This, it says, is the “isotopic signature of fossil fuel” to “confirm that the recent and continuing increase of atmospheric CO2 content is caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions – most importantly anthropogenic CO2 emissions.” TAR, ¶3.1, p. 187. IPCC’s manufactured evidence for the consistent rate is supplied later as AR4 ¶2.3.1 Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, Figure 2.3(b). Here IPCC co-plots ACO2 emissions for 1970 through 2005 and the atmospheric isotopic fraction δ13C for 1981 through 2002. It changes the sign of δ13C and shifts its baseline, which are not themselves objectionable techniques. But at the same time it arbitrarily chooses a scale factor for δ13C to make its graph as parallel as possible to that of the ACO2 emissions. This wouldn’t fool a real scientist, so one must conclude IPCC intended to take advantage of its vulnerable audience: believers and policymakers.
Ari Jokimäki said
Yes, you did. You said this:
You clearly say there that the IPCC is the one that fudges the data. I pointed out that the trend you claimed was false and created by IPCC already existed before IPCC was even founded.
Jeff Glassman said
Ari Jokimäki,
To establish your point, you need to supply a pre-1988 data reduction that supports the results of IPCC’s graph in which MLO data is a smooth continuation of several coincident ice core reductions, TAR Figure 3.2 (b), which I doubted. In the caption, IPCC says:
None of these references pre-dates IPCC. Also the passive voice (“are shown”) conceals who graphed the MLO data on top of the ice core reductions. IPCC passively takes credit for it.
You might find the following attributed to IPCC author Dr. Curtis Covey informative. He’s discussing why and who shifted different ice core records by 30, 58, or 83 years.
Quoting from post #33 by Mark Rostron, 11/27/05. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/650000-years-of-greenhouse-gas-concentrations/. Be sure to read Gavin Schmidt’s rationale counter to Covey’s argument why the physics of sealing does justify shifting data into agreement.
The 83 year shift of the Siple data is 60% more than the length of the entire MLO record, which is quite resolvable on the Figure 3.2(b). If you remove the shifts from the ice core records, the MLO record will not lie on top.
Did IPCC stop shifting these data before or after preparing the Figure? Had IPCC previously shifted the data so that the MLO did NOT lie on top, found their error, and upon correcting it discovered, lo! why MLO is just a perfect continuation of the ice core data? Covey says that IPCC corrected its calibration error but not the conclusion drawn from it.
Now all IPCC’s calibrations for the ordinate, CO2 concentration, need to be vetted.
Ari Jokimäki said
Well, actually the one that makes the claim should provide the evidence, but as this is simple enough to check, here goes:
Pre-IPCC values given in Neftel et al. (1985):
1958 – 315 ppm
1985 – 345 ppm
Here is a graph of Mauna Loa CO2 data, as it is currently:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2
Let’s see closer what years 1958 and 1985 show. Here:s 1958:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/to:1959
I’d say it averages to about 315 ppm.
Here’s 1985:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1985/to:1986
Seems to be about 345.5.
So, the values published before IPCC match very well with current values, where the fudging done by IPCC shows up?
You try to shift the focus to ice cores. Here’s Neftel et al. (1985) ice core data (from Siple station):
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/siple2.013
As you can see, their numbers agree with the measured values rather well (1954-1976 value being 318 and 1962-1983 value being 328), and you can see a clear rising trend starting from middle 1800’s.
Jeff Glassman said
Ari Jokimäki,
The woodfortrees.org plot you recommended was produced after the Fourth Assessment Report, and not before IPCC was founded. Aren’t the data exactly the same as IPCC used, as one might suspect?
Your Siple data are dated September, 1994, presented in two tables, one attributed entirely to Neftel et al. (1985) and the other to Friedli et al. (1986). What is the significance of the September, 1994 date? Were the original data recalibrated?
The two sets of data do not agree. Neftel data lead Friedli data and the IPCC data of Figure 2.3(b) by about 85 years, discussed in my last post, using the same abscissa data: ice age. The IPCC data comprise 44 data points, Neftel 12, and Friedli 22, so IPCC appears to have a dozen data points from another source. The IPCC Siple data and the Friedli data overlap closely.
IPCC appears to have shifted the Neftel data by an arbitrary 85 years for the most recent years, but 95 years for the oldest. IPCC appears to have transformed the Neftel data to make them fit the MLO data, and to make them steeper.
No argument has been shift here. To support your claims you need to show that data REDUCED (calibrated, “fudged”) no later than 1988 showed that South Pole CO2 plotted on top of MLO CO2 (Figure 3.2(a)), and showed that the ice core data smoothly transition into the MLO data (Figure 3.2(b)). Your evidence can have neither data nor a revision post 1988, and you must have MLO data as reduced in 1988 or earlier for both claims.
This is all a rather pointless attribution exercise. Even if you could prove your claims, that would take nothing from the fact that IPCC’s data, for which it must take full responsibility, appear to be fudged. And that fudging is corroborated by physics.
Ari Jokimäki said
First, I gave values that Neftel et al. (1985) gave – these represented the values before IPCC was founded. Next, I gave woodfortrees plots showing current values, which you suggest are “fudged” by IPCC. As you see, pre-IPCC values and current values are exact match, so there has been no fudging on those values at least.
Well, why don’t you just get your hands on the original Neftel et al. paper and find out? We are sorting out your claims here, but I don’t see you doing any work on this, just posting random claims and vague quotes from here and there.
No, I don’t need to show anything. You need to show that the fudging has been done, as it is you who is claiming that. Others are not responsible for disproving your claims. It would be same if would claim that you are just posting lies here, and then I would start claiming that it is you have to shw that you aren’t posting lies here, which, I assume you would agree, is absurd. Pre-IPCC data exists, there are lot of papers published before 1988 on carbon dioxide concentrations, so this is easy thing to check for yourself, if for some reason you still refuse to accept the check I already made. And, this next quote of yours speaks volumes about that:
Jeff Glassman said
Ari Jokimäki,
This most tedious thread might actually evolve into something useful!
You wrote,
and
The full Neftel report is $32: science for sale. IPCC reports are chock full of such references for sale, many of no value whatsoever. Building a library of support data for those reports might cost upwards of $50 thousand. If you have the report, simply quote what you need of it. That’s free and legal.
However, since your latest post, I found the Neftel abstract. It supports your claim. So, you have met your burden to show that if any fudging was done on the MLO CO2 data, it began before IPCC was founded. Note, too, that IPCC did nothing to ease concerns about the too-pat MLO CO2 record, nor to cease questionable reductions as it has in other instances (e.g., the hockey stick reduction, the ice core data shifting).
Still, Neftel et al. 1985 is hugely important. IPCC says,
How did this 1985 paper show that CO2 rose roughly exponentially 14 years after it was published? It must have invented one powerful data reduction technique. An exponential fit to the Neftel data predicts 340 ppmv using all the data. That’s 39 ppmv shy out of a full scale data set spanning 49 ppmv. Using only the last 7 data points in search of a valid forecast, the 1999 prediction rises to 363 ppmv, and with the last 6 points, 372 ppmv. Shifting the Neftel data makes the prediction much worse: 321 ppmv in 1999 using all the data. The Friedli data predicts 315 ppmv, and only 336 ppmv using the last two, the best it can do. The IPCC data attributed to Siple predicts 318 ppmv by 1999, and at most 365 ppmv by using only the last two data points. Conclusion: the Siple data had to rise far faster than exponentially to match into the MLO data.
Re
For a bunch of my work on climate, see http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com .
The great good news is that we have developed the seeds of a dialog here on the substance of one little part of the science of climate. This is a principal purpose for which the Internet was invented. If peer review lives, look to the Internet.
Re
You, not I, claimed that whatever was done to the data predates the founding of IPCC. We all inherit a burden to support our own claims.
Re
I agree. For supporting detail on the fudging of the Siple data, see Jaworowski, Z, “Climate Change: Incorrect information on pre-industrial CO2”, 3/19/04. http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/. For a more legible copy, see his 1997 paper. http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/IceCoreSprg97.pdf . At either link, you’ll find some graphs (which aren’t easily inserted into commentary) and discussion that well–illustrates the fudging. He calls it “improper manipulation of data etc.” He claims, IPCC used a “falsified ‘Siple curve’”, and more. For an update, see his 3/16/07 paper, which I have yet to read. http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/zjmar07.pdf
Since I choose to refer you to Jaworowski, I need to point out several articles that claim to debunk Jaworowski. Realclimate.org provides a reading list. http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Zbignew_Jaworowski
But here’s how Real Climate explains its disagreement with Jaworowski:
and
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/lindzen-point-by-point/comment-page-3/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/cnn-is-spun-right-round-baby-right-round/comment-page-5/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/g8-summit-declaration/comment-page-4/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/betting-on-climate-change/
These vacuous, arrogant, ad hominem attacks, believers pointing gnarled fingers at skeptics, are what passes today for the sum total of debunking. And for peer review in journals, where one must subscribe to the dogma, with pro forma citations, relevant or not, to show respect for those who preceded you and those high priests of the doctrine. IPCC, the journals and realclimate.org are run by cowards, little men behind the curtain, who, as shown above, refuse to come forward to defend their position on scientific grounds. They engage in dialog only within the shelter of professional journal peer review.
IPCC Reports are not peer reviewed. They are self-reviewed. And IPCC addresses its Reports not to the scientific community, but to government policymakers. Its Reports comprise a grant pitch, and a pitch for political power. But nonetheless, the believers castigate any policymaker for doubting AGW, or IPCC’s lack of scientific skepticism, or IPCC’s disrespect for scientific principles. And that castigation extends to the “horse he rode in on”, as the old saying goes: e.g., Senator Inhofe and his growing list of scientists who still practice skepticism, including Jaworowski and the undersigned. Read about how Inhofe had the gall in 2005 to criticize IPCC’s 2001 hockey stick reduction, a fudging on which it relied to declare the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age obsolete concepts, a position IPCC was obliged to reverse in 2007. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/senator-inhofe/
Taking nothing from Jaworowski’s science, I rely on him here just for his presentation on one key point: IPCC fudged the Siple data to make it look like it fed smoothly into the MLO CO2 data, whatever secret processing went into the latter and whatever IPCC’s motives. That Jaworowski was correct on this point is supported by your self-contradictory Siple data posted on this thread.
As I’ve said before, our ultimate point is reinforced by the physics. South Pole and ice core CO2 concentrations should not match into MLO data because the former sit inside a massive CO2 sink while the latter sit inside the plume of the massive Eastern Equatorial Pacific outgassing. Charles Keeling himself warned not to mix such sources.
IPCC resists these observations by insisting that CO2 is one of the long-lived, well-mixed GHGs. However, IPCC contradicts these notions of its own in at least two ways. (1) It provides a residence time formula in its Report glossaries, a formula never used in the main bodies. With IPCC’s own data, the residence time of CO2 is just a few years, not many centuries or millennia. And (2), IPCC admits that a measurable East-West CO2 gradient exists, and the North-South gradient is an order of magnitude greater.
Comment #19 by Ray Pierrehumbert (raypierre), an IPCC contributing author. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/how-not-to-write-a-press-release/
Another believer relies on proof by consensus. This is not science. One error or one new model from one man, even an outsider, regularly does indeed trump the conventional. It is the ultimate model, here AGW, which must be beyond reproach, and certainly not the probing skepticism. Believers must answer every challenge — scientists only need doubt.
Jeff Glassman said
Ari Jokimäki,
Errata to my last post: Where I said the Neftel exponential fit was 39 ppmv shy of IPCC’s claim for 1999, I erroneously used the 2005 goal. The short fall for 1999 is 27 ppmv.
michel said
Lets see the data, and lets see the code. Start with Mann’s algorithm, and Thompson’s ice core data, all of it. And the CRU raw data, unadjusted, and their code too.
After we get that in the public domain, we can start having a conversation. Until then, this is just a sales pitch with no product. Lots of pictures of it, but no product. I’m not buying till I see a demo of a real product. If its so great, and if they are rolling off the production lines every day, just bring one in and show me.
How many trillions was it we needed to spend?
Ari Jokimäki said
I don’t have the report. Abstract gave sufficient information for me in this case.
You quoted IPCC report:
Then you said:
Actually, as your quoted sentence from IPCC report reads, they gave two other references for those numbers, latest being IPCC, 2001a. You need to check those too. I haven’t check them, but I’m certain that they didn’t derive the 1999 number from Neftel et al., they just used it as one reference that supports the notion.
As someone who both holds a high respect for the scientists and has written a peer-reviewed paper, I take these kind of statements as personal insults.
Jeff Glassman said
Ari Jokimäki,
Neftel is your source, not mine. The two companion citations by IPCC are no help. Etheridge et al. 1996 is for sale ($9), so not freely available to the public. Its abstract is available, however, and the abstract says nothing about exponential growth, nor about a 1999 forecast, nor about 367 ppm (MLO data points), which IPCC implied was established. Etheridge was an IPCC contributing author, his name has to be salted into the Reports whether he has made a contribution or not.
The third reference you will recognize simply as IPCC’s Third Assessment Report where IPCC fudged data to make the ice core data appear to feed into the MLO data to create the “Human Fingerprint” on climate.
Your resentment is unsupported, too. The breakdown in the peer-review system has nothing to do with people who respect scientists, nor with people who write peer-reviewed papers. My comments addressed certain people who run the peer-review process and hide behind it. Insulted or not, they should be embarrassed.
However, my criticism out of context can be taken too far. I didn’t intend to attack everyone who runs a peer-review process. Here’s an example of someone who has risen above the fray. Richard Horton, editor of the British medical journal The Lance, wrote the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review, citing from http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/172_04_210200/horton/horton.html .
Five of Einstein’s key papers were not peer reviewed. Watson & Crick refused to go through peer-review on their seminal DNA paper.
Peer-review is a tenet of academic science, but it is not essential to the scientific method.