Forward modelling in natural science is not so easy.

Now you see it, ....

 Click on the image 

  "Al Gore forgot to watch the compass

as it declined, to tell its tale

and so mistook an iceberg for a whale."

(from: The Ballard of the Devil's Gin , see above)

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My email is:  p.s.ravenscroft@gmail.com

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 Latest news

17 May 2009. See "Climate change for preschool kids." A serious map, worth thinking hard about, and some not-too-serious words to go with it. See here 

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12 May  2009. See the page called Bingo!!!! Not a nail in the coffin of  AGW.  Just a hand grenade.

(But, good news for Afs, that Angola-Zambia-Congo temperature hotspot went away again.) 

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 April 2009.  See the work of Jonathan Drake, at  

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jdrake/Questioning_Climate/userfiles/Ice-core_corrections_report_1.pdf

If he is right, we have to see this lad gets a Nobel Prize. He just sank AGW.

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An apology to all. There was a graph just here, now gone. It was total gibberish, entirely my blue, and the result of not being familiar with how Excel crimps data sets, when you pick the graphing version that does not allow them to cross.I have another graph, that I will post as a lame substitute, soon as it is quite done, with a far less impressive match. It does, I think, show some correlation between the Ap (magnetic) index in its major low runs, and the Southern Oscillation Index and the big El Ninos, but with nothing like the fit the nonsense one seemed to show. I got shot down in flames in about two days on Wattsupwiththat, with one commenter picking my problem, Excel inexperience, exactly. I have explained and apologised there.

Blunders are nothing new, have been a geologist for donkeys.

The upside is, who needs peer review? That would have taken months there. Scepticism is alive and well and this is a very vigorous debate. I have not  seen its match in science in 40 years 

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 This lot was properly explained in 2001 by a man in the Ukraine, and published in 2002. Tail-end Charlie here, after re-discovering the wheel with great excitement  has just found , or to be more accurately, been shown by his wife, the work of M. A. Nuzhdina, who tackled this one properly, and with the appropriate stats attached .

See: 

Nuzhdina, M. A., 2002, Connection between ENSO phenomena and solar and geomagnetic activity  by M A. Nuzhdina, Astronomical Observatory of Kiev National T. Shevchenko University, Kiev, Ukraine in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (2002) 2: 83–89. European Geophysical Society.

 Or go to:

 http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/30/15/64/PDF/nhess-2-83-2002.pdf

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 3 May 2008.

Re the new set of temperature maps, for those see yesterday's posting:

Something quite odd. The microwave  temperature map that fits the magnetic shifts maps best is that for the troposphere-stratosphere boundary microwave channel. The higher one, for the stratosphere, shows the same pattern but weaker. The troposphere down low shows no match at all. Maybe that says the heat is from solar protons and electrons that can and do get down to about 10 km overhead, without being deflected by the shielding magnetosphere, above those places where the terrestrial mag field has weakened most. Who knows?   

Next, a temperature high has appeared to the south and south south east of Madagascar, of all places. Not over-much industrial activity there either, but a whopping great mag anomaly has also developed there. However, there is now also a very large mag anomaly on the western side of the Atlantic, east and northeast of Brazil. But, there is only a very weak area of warming there, barely there. Maybe we can hazard a prediction here, That western Atlantic warming patch may intensify and grow. Next couple of years will show.

12 May 2008

Courtesy of Cbacba  at The Environmetsite.org Climate Change Forum,  where a minor discussion is under way re my posting on geomagnetism there, I have stuck uop a new page with a temperature map that almost matches the projection of the deep geomag changes map of Jeremy Bloxham, see just below. It is just that the one has Africa where the other has South America. Click the page called Satellite Microwave Temperature Map, at the head of this page. For the discussion at The Environmentsite, see http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/forum/climate-change-forum/12185-deep-geomagnetic-changes-may-driving-climate-change-not-fossil-fuels.html

13 April, 2008

The core of the greenhouse gas problem

An essay with a couple of graphs and a glossary of some terms used

If the deep Antarctic ice cores at Vostok and Dome C ever leaked carbon dioxide, (and why wouldn't they?) we do not know what past atmospheric CO2 levels were during interglacial peaks. This may be a perfectly normal one. If also, global magnetic and gravity field changes are driving or are at least linked to the ice ages and interglacials, as seems to be the case, our fossil fuel emissions are probably climatically trivial. Carbon levels in the atmosphere will not change the earth's magnetic field. If so, what price the greenhouse gas flap?

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Early in the nineteenth century, an old abonginal gentleman was sent to the Melbourne lockup, for breaking up a cart. He explained that he had needed the steel to make an axe, to cut down some trees to replace the poles that were holding up the sky, as the old ones were rotting.

 We are now cutting down trees to grow biofuel for rather larger carts, to once more save the sky. Ho hum.

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In the real world of science, there is nothing so unpopular as a radical new theory

 Summary:

 Major social delusions cost lives and treasure; see history. The mantra that burning fossil fuels is the main driver of global warming may be the latest such mind mirage. As many of its chanters want the price of energy pushed up, those least able to pay for food and transport will, as ever, be hardest hit. If the Antarctic deep ice cores from Vostok and Dome Concordia have leaked CO2,_, we do not know how high past CO2 levels in the atmosphere went. That is because the carbon dioxide levels measured in air bubbles from those cores are so far our only measure of its peak levels in the air in the past. If this one is in fact a perfectly normal interglacial peak, to understand climate change, we first need to know what causes glaciations. They are not the standard, over geological time and we as yet do not understand their causes, at all. If the anthropogenic greenhouse warming model of climate change is underpinned by poor or highly speculative science, we had better know it, asap. Given such considerable uncertainties, it seems rash to think we now understand climate change and can also stop it in its tracks.

It does seem that changes in the earth's magnetic field long precede glaciations, in a complex but orderly fashion. If so, forces way beyond our control are driving climate change, so reducing our fossil fuel emissions will not have much effect on global warming or cooling. That emission-curbing, is in my opinion, very well worth doing for other reasons, but if done with the wrong expectations, will cost almost all of us dearly, will be largely misdirected, will not achieve its ends and will bring widespread disillusion with both science and rational social planning. We have enough problems as a species, such as overpopulation, overrunning our resources, biodiversity loss, tree loss, the resulting widespread loss of enthusiasm for life in hominids, etc., that we perhaps should not waste our efforts on hopeless and pointless quests. There is plenty to do that is real. We may well be contributing to warming the planet, but if we are, I suspect it is largely because we have trashed, furniturized, or turned into cardboard boxes, billions of the trees that used to cool this planet, away from the polar regions. Since we started killing the trees for pasture, we have probably warmed the planet very directly. Trees transpire huge amounts of water, and the latent heat of vaporisation of water is exceptionally high, 540 calories per gram of evaporated water. When we clearfell yet another a forest, we have just trashed a very big and efficient air-conditioner; grassland and tractorland are damp rags in comparison.  

A caution. This essay rambles, without apology. If you prefer to get your science from newspaper headlines, (a sardonic line for which I thank Counterpoint on ABC Radio), go away now, so we can still be friends. If not, bash on, if so minded.

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Introduction

This essay concerns the unease of a long-time geologist, somewhat puzzled as to why we are in such a derivative stew, planet-wide, over the tentative interpretations of just two deep Antarctic ice drill cores, those at Vostok and Dome Concordia. Ask Wikipedia for their details, if you are on the net and they are not familiar. So far as I know, the recovered carbon dioxide gas from air bubbles in those two cores is our sole and only handle on how much carbon dioxide there was in this planet's atmosphere during the last eight interglacials. If I am wrong on that, I will be delighted to hear it.

There, to coin a pun, is the core of the problem. If the ice that ended up as those cores ever leaked or even internally diffused carbon dioxide, then we simply do not know how much of that gas was in the air when the original snow fell in Antarctica. Leakage from the oldest and deepest core sections in the Dome Concordia core (Vostok only goes back about half way) could have happened at any time in about 740,000 years. With younger core sections, it could have happened at any time between that later ice formation and the recording of the trapped gas levels in the lab.

This may be a perfectly normal interglacial. And just like the perfectly normal beasts that repeatedly appear out of nowhere, thunder across the plains and then vanish into thin air in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, we have no idea what drives them. We just know that interglacials behave even more erratically than one at least of Douglas Adams' better fantasies.

Many earnest folk think we are now seriously altering the planet's climate and carbon cycle, but personally I'm not overly impressed by our track record as agents of geological change. After our first couple of million years or so as a genus, all we had to show for our total effort was a few small stones, marginally damaged on the edges. Perhaps we also managed to see off some funny-looking furry things; probably only over-specialised evolutionary no-hopers like ourselves anyway. We have done a bit better in the last few thousand years and a few bits of broken concrete may turn up in the fossil record in the far future. But so far we have produced nothing to match the coal measures left behind by small swamp plants, a quarter of a billion years ago. To imagine that we are now changing both the climate and the carbon cycle, given that we have not the faintest idea how either of those actually works, seems to be hubris. Shouting at the gods, an old Greek crime, otherwise known as putting on airs and graces.

It is quite likely that history will look back on the first decade of the 21st century as a time of quaint scientific delusion concerning the world's climate. We will be seen as people who did not understand the vast natural forces driving the ice ages and so did not understand the underlying causes of climate change.  People of the future will be amused to read that much of the human race of our time came to believe that, if we merely reduced our emissions of carbon dioxide, we could stop the earth's climate from changing. They will smile to read that we were unaware also that it was precisely the dynamic and erratic shifting of the world's weather patterns that had allowed humans, originally a tropical rainforest ape, to become so overly-successful as a species in the first place. We of the second millennial nought-thought decade then set out to undo our own and our forebears' collective achievements. History may record that we did this with astonishing dedication. That, as an old Arabian fable has it, was like sending soldiers out into the desert to fight sandstorms. The national suicide of the ama-Xhosa looks rational in comparison.    

To be a little less flippant, on geological grounds I do suspect that fossil fuel burning is not the main driver of climate change. I hence also suspect that the current widespread belief that we can change the world's climate by curbing fossil-fuel emissions will prove spectacularly unsuccessful. It will also be very costly. Rapidly pushing up the price of power and transport and hence of food and everything else we produce, by curbs and new taxes such as carbon levies, will cost many poor people their lives and the poorer regions large parts of their economies. It will cost the rich some comfort and the rest of us quite some discomfort. It will also, a trivial point,  very plausibly open the floodgates to the biggest financial rorts in history. Here come the thin-air burial societies, aka the carbon sequestration men and women. You buried 500,000 tonnes of this colourless, tasteless odourless gas in concrete, somewhere off the coast of Sicily? Right, tick, Norbert, pay the gentleman in the dark suit. Next, please.

That said, we clearly should not waste fossil fuels nor burn them uncleanly. Coal and oil run most of our power and transport systems and their burning produces serious pollution and health problems for all of us, particularly for those of us who are frogs. I'm all for switching as rapidly and as far as possible to renewable and cleaner energy sources and to smaller and more efficient transport. I'm not for waste, but I'm not keen on grand delusions either. The notion that our fossil-fuel emissions are the main driver of current climate change is, I think, a rather dangerous grand delusion. Yes, we must curb our emissions but no, that will not bring back some past climatic nirvana. Bigger forces than we as a species and all our allies can either muster or oppose, are constantly changing the planetary climate. We do not understand them, but had better try.

I do not imagine that one essay has a snowball's hope in hell of stemming the intellectual, cultural and media juggernaut that the anthropogenic greenhouse warming model (AGW) has become. Still, we are often told that those with an interest in science do not speak up when they should. So I will pitch the snowball anyway.

A word of caution. This essay in its turn is a speculative one and so suffers all the defects of forward guessing by an ordinary muddled human, floundering in the complex fields of science. I do not "believe" in the points made below, not being generally of the believing class. I merely offer them for consideration. What follows is geological guesswork, not a set of contentions I hold to be incontrovertably true - facts are the currency of lawyers, not natural scientists. In case you are uneasy that I may be bending the rules, geology is generally guesswork - we just don't admit it in public. It deals largely with a past that cannot be visited for direct inspection, so that is incurable.

I am not in love with the peer review system of getting science across. This being an essay partly about science and partly about global culture, politics and economics, I (of course) think that the short grumpy rant marked * at the end of the essay is warranted. It is not compulsory, but this may be a good time to read it.

A short statement of my own philosophical, financial and tribal biases is perhaps also in order so you don't have to guess. No, I do not work for big oil or big coal. I did, some twenty years and more ago, work for both, in mineral and coal exploration, but I have not seen their money since and though I wish them no ill, I have exactly zip interest in either their profits or their corporate futures. As said, I would anyway dearly like to see the rate of coal, oil and gas burning and wastage much reduced and the emissions from those cleaned up. Yes, I did once organise the building of a giant plastic whale and camp next to it overnight, outside a Japanese embassy (Cape Town, 1973), being then a director of Friends of the Earth. I have not recanted. This lot is mere armchair theorising, but I live on and run a small organic subsistence farm, have built one-and-a half-electric bicycles so far and am building a house out of steel scrap. I still campaign sporadically for less wastage of all other resources and lifeforms, from copper and zinc to tuna and whales and Iraqi kids. I do this keyboard tapping baksheesh and sans funding, which may of course be a measure of its true value; many will doubtless think so.

I list those trivial points solely because the AGW folk have raised playing the man and not the ball to a fine art in this debate. I have described this new target in a spirit of fair play and sportsmanship, so they will know the precise dimensions of this substitute ball, with a view to selecting the perfect club to hit it with. At times, it seems to me, F4 United seems to concentrate more on its critics' green credentials or lack of them, than on their arguments. So, Al et al., you have a minor problem; this particular intellectual gadfly is so green it's off the rainbow. Not all your critics or the uneasy are corporate stooges, my friends. Conversely, I do not question your public spirit or your sincerity - just your judgement in matters geological.

On icy air bubbles holding carbon dioxide tight

The main weakness of AGW, it seems to me is that, sure, the world warmed rapidly from about 1830 to 1998. But, we have had several runs of very rapid major global warming in the past 740,000 years (the starts of the interglacials) and probably also in the million years before that. Those runs of warming continued for far longer and extended over a very much greater temperature range than the one now bothering so many people. They cannot be blamed on human activity, as humans existed in insignificant numbers and ran very few power stations before the present long run of warming, as this lot started about 20,000 years ago.

We also had sets of equally impressive glacials and interglacials very much further back in geological time (see the glossary for 'ice ages'). Those much earlier interglacial warming events were clearly not caused by humans burning fossil or any other kind of fuel either. Never mind us, dinosaurs and mammals did not exist that far back.

We do not yet know what causes ice ages. Most observers, except for the short-earth people, those who think the planet is no more than about 6,000 years old, accept that interglacial periods start with geologically very rapid and usually uninterrupted warming. Temperatures rise considerably. It is also generally accepted that these rises are accompanied, often after a slight delay of a few hundred to a few thousand years, by rapid, also uninterrupted increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane levels. My contention is that the present interglacial peak may be a perfectly normal one, just like the last eight or so we have been through in the past 740,000 years. The same deep ice borehole, Dome Concordia, on the data from which the carbon-storm troopers seem base their entire claim that present CO2 levels are the highest for hundreds of thousands of years, shows that this interglacial of ours peaked about 13,000 years ago. Below, I'll explain why I think it is not likely to peak again before the next ice age. That peak, you will notice, is beyond the time range of all the argument about Medieval Warm Periods, the Little Ice Age, sunspots recorded by the Chinese, eruptions at Santorini, and all the rest of the climate change debate from history. That is because the latest temperature peak predates the written word.  

The AGW model, so beloved by the scientists, policy makers and fans of the United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), depends largely on the contention that the present warm period, that is approximately the last 13,000 years, is not a normal interglacial peak. Present temperatures are not exceptional for such a peak and seem to have been surpassed several times in past. So it is not that. Most of the temperature peaks of the last 740,000 years did not have slightly cooler plateaus attached, but one did. So it is not that. We were not on active duty then.

The idea that this is not a normal interglacial peak seems to rely almost entirely on the belief that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are now higher than they were during any of the other interglacial peaks, going back for 740,000 years. It does not rely on temperatures being currently at their highest levels since the last glacial, as the deuterium ratio data from the two deep ice cores from which this entire debate derives clearly, if it can be trusted at all, shows higher temperatures in the past and within this inreglacial. The overall trend has been downwards since the temperature peak, about 13,000 years back, although there has been a minor rise in the last 180 years or so. There were very likely other similar minor rises, but the deuterium ice-core data does not have the resolution needed to see them. It would probably not see this last blip either, by the way, for exactly the same reason. This 180-year old warm blip would be represented by less than a single data point. It is shown because we know it is there, but the time it takes firn to close to the atmosphere will probably fudge it out, before too many centuries passed. It is this last small, undetectable-from-the-ice-cores temperature rise with which most observers and researchers and bystanders are fixated, because very often the individual's rear-view vision or data does not go back very far. If you are a medieval historian, your data and derivative views on climate change may shed very interesting light on the topic, but will fall well short of covering the time depth needed to comprehend the causes, or at least the trends and correlations, of the whole phenomenon.

If the single assumption, that no carbon dioxide has leaked from or diffused within the ice cores, is wrong, then AGW has no track record and hence no logical temporal basis. The current warming is then probably natural and the onus is on the fossil-fuel-frightened-folk (F4 United?) to prove otherwise.

Like all widespread popular myths, AGW will no doubt prove difficult to lay to rest. Its accepters, particularly scientists in academia, are not going to admit they have overlooked a fundamental flaw in their otherwise elegant and elaborate construct. Al Gore may have to refund the fare for his ride to the north pole in that nuclear sub. And the US navy may not take his carbon credits in payment.

Introducing faults into the model

 Ice is a brittle mineral that fractures and re-crystalizes easily, so en masse, continental icecaps, as they are not topographically flat, slowly and continually flow radially outwards under lithostatic pressure. That is, the ice moves laterally under the weight of overlying and (almost always) younger material. The icebergs to be seen floating any winter in the seas off the edges of the earth's two remaining continental icecaps show that those caps constantly fret away at their edges, where their glaciers reach the sea.  So faulting at all scales, from micro-faults splitting individual ice crystals, to massive flat faults many kilometres long, will be present within the icecaps. That large-scale faulting, incidentally, will account for some of the supposed very sudden changes in climate that have been inferred from the cores by some workers. Normal faults can remove strata without trace, giving the illusion of very rapid value shifts, where the changes have in fact happened at normal rates. Reverse faults duplicate strata and so do the opposite. Both types are probably common in the icecaps. They will also be impossible or almost impossible to detect, unless ashfall or distinctive dust layers can be traced across them. Icecaps are generally made almost entirely of ice, pure and simple, and it all looks pretty much the same after a few thousand years of burial and compaction.

Last minute leakage

It seems to me likely also, that some CO2 will have escaped at the last moment of core recovery, as the cores depressurized, near and at the surface. The recovered cores are kept cold and are raised under a column of dense drilling fluid, but that liquid column and the pressure it supplies diminish progresively as the cores are raised. The cores are not kept pressurized once they are on the surface. The CO2 from the deeper sections will go through two very rapid and possibly almost explosive phase shifts, from solid to liquid and then from liquid to gas, as the cores are raised. At three thousand metres of lithostatic pressure, the phase diagram of carbon dioxide shows that carbon dioxide will be a solid. On lifting that length of core in sections, the higher sections will sublimate from the solid directly to the gas, by-passing the liquid phase, probably also with gas loss to the drilling fluid and then to the surrounding ice. The deeper sections will shift from solid to liquid and then to the gas. That extra phase-change, for the deeper parts of the cores, may be why the older interglacials appear to show lower and broader carbon dioxide, methane and oxygen isotope peaks than the later ones. All of them may be under-reading at the interglacial peaks, for the same gas-diffusion reasons, but those shifting through the liquid phase, that is the deeper sections, may lose and diffuse most. All claims that present atmospheric CO2 levels are the highest for this or that many hundred thousand years, are hence highly suspect.

There is an additional problem causing gas loss, namely ice pressure melting. The Oxford Dictionary of earth Sciences (p.432) defines it as follows: "pressure melting. The melting of ice in response to stress. It comes about because the freezing temperature of water falls as pressure increases, at about 1 degree C for every 140 bars (140 x 10⁵ N/m^2). The term 'pressure melting point' refers to the temperature at which ice just begins to melt under a given pressure." The curve is given by the phase diagram for water.

I think it is hence a fairly safe bet that, so far, we do not know what past atmospheric CO2 levels actually were, but that the carbon dioxide levels at the interglacial peaks, as measured in those deep ice cores, will almost certainly under-read. The CO2 trapped then, being at far higher concentrations then at any other times, will have slowly diffused to some extent into the ice above or below.as the ice around it shifted under lateral and vertical pressure and faulting. That will seriously fudge the readings, even if the diffused CO2 did not escape back to the open air.

So, this one may be a perfectly normal interglacial, just like the last eight. Though not always the case, we think  that carbon dioxide levels, again going by those same two deep ice cores, several times rose very fast and far, a few hundred to three thousand years after the average global surface temperature appears to have risen, equally dramatically. So it does not seem that rising CO2 can be driving rising global temperatures, since cause is generally required to precede effect, as we have only the one arrow of time presently at our disposal.

An aside. After snow falls, firn, that is partly consolidated snow, takes about fifty years to become solid ice and close physically to the atmosphere. So all the atmospheric CO2 readings from Mauna Loa in Hawaii over the past half-century, our atmospheric CO2 standard, will be matched by merely one smudged reading from the deep ice cores. It would be impossible to spot past equivalents to or  overtoppings of the present steep rise in atmospheric CO2 levels You cannot detect a trend with one reading. 

As another aside, the Dome Concordia drillhole got back, at its deepest, to about 740,000 years b.p. Having been sited to cut the deepest Antarctic ice known, it seems to me likely that at the time of the last reversal of the earth's magnetic field, about 780,000 years ago, all the ice in Antarctica very likely melted away. So there may be no older ice to be found. Deep ice core drillers are still hoping to get beyond the million-year mark. I hope they do, but I do not fancy their chances.

People with long experience ….

If we are chasing Will o' the Wisp in trying to control the global climate, the scientific, social and economic consequences will be extensive. It is just possible that, in the current response to global warming, some rather bad, or perhaps more charitably, some very speculative earth science is driving a major international planning panic. A large part of the economic planning currently under way or about to get under way on this planet may be based on gross scientific error. I think that is very possible, despite the views of the hordes of eminent scientists, inside and outside the IPCC fold, who concur on the opposite view. Those good folk are doubtless very informed in their own fields but their views on the matter are all dependent on rather tenuous underlying deductions from the very new field of deep ice core interpretation. People with long experience in trying to make sense of long-past events from any sort of rock drill cores are few and far between in the global-warming debate. People with long experience in interpreting what the precise amounts of trace gases still trapped in deep ice cores can tell us about the past atmospheric levels of those gases, are non-existant on this planet. That is for the simple reason that so far we only have two really deep ice cores to consider, Vostok and Dome Concordia, both from Antarctica and both recently drilled. I have no wish to denigrate the excellent work of those such as Petit et al (1999), who have hazarded the best guesses they could muster regarding those cores. But for anyone to argue, on the basis of those interpretations, that we should trash a significant part of the planetary economy, to reduce trace greenhouse gas emissions in the hope of restoring some past climatic optimum, is perhaps a touch rash. As ever, the world's poor folk will wear the cost. Everyone will pass the costs on down the line till we get to the refugee kids in camps in the Sudan, for whom no surplus food will be available. That because the land that grew aid food in the past was needed for feel-good SUV biofuel plantations. Etc. 

Gassing the biosphere

One extra scare. Lots of folk want to bury lots of carbon dioxide underground. But oxygen-breathing life does not like breathing carbon dioxide. Recently, it was estimated that the bulk of the biosphere is microbes, living in pore spaces in rocks that have them, down to a few kilopmetres. So, garbage in, garbage out, very likely. We will gas the underground microbes above the water table and they will die and release their carbon as, you guessed, extra carbon dioxide, as soon as oxygen gets around to visiting again. When contact with the atmosphere is re-established, the original CO2 will of course also resurface. It is our old problem of dubious leak-proof containers for vast amounts of gas, extending to all rock types. At least on this planet. 

I once before raised this matter of the ice core CO2 levels probably under-reading during the last few interglacial peaks. I did so in an essay titled "The Woes of Tailpipe Charlie," published on the website www.oranicforum.org. Google may still find it. It raised some response on the forum but a deafening silence from academia, which doubtless never encountered it. But, as I am not into anonymous establishment censorship nor an enthusiast for copyright being gifted free to rich publishing houses,  here goes again. If others have said all this before, which is likely, my sincere apologies, I have missed your prior work. If not, here's the entirely new part.

 As argued, perhaps this is a perfectly normal interglacial. Maybe we aren't guilty and can relax. The id-strokers may soon be clogging the dole queues. But what does drive these interglacials and the attendant and far longer ice ages?

Both glacials and interglacials are distinct geological oddities. We have had a good few glacial epochs before, at erratic intervals of some hundreds of millions of years. They seem to last for between one and perhaps three or even five million years, and are definitely not the norm. The underlying cause is perhaps astronomical, with the slow rotation of the galaxy, about 250 million years per turn, possibly having something to do with it. That fits nicely with the time back to the Permian glaciation, but not with many others further back in time. Perhaps when we face back towards the source of the big bang, dust or other matter, or later radiation, catches up with us. Perhaps the gravitational constant changes, when we face towards the mass of most of the rest of the universe. Cosmology (Cosmopology?) is such fun, it permits even wilder guessing than geology. We have had to disown it, of course.

 Are there perhaps hidden magnets under the bonnet?

It appears that, during at least the last 740,000 years, the lowest points in the global temperature cycle, that is the depths of the ice ages, occured in delayed lockstep with and after long, cyclical and somewhat erratic changes in strength of the earth's magnetic field. Specifically, those lowest temperatures appear to move in delayed synch with inferred changes in the vertical axial dipole moment (VADM) of the earth. The VADM for earth is a unit that measures the vertical component of the strength of the earth's magnetic field at a given moment in time. Google explains it, badly. It is a single value for the whole planet at any one time, so its alterations can be easily time-graphed. See the upper section of the composite graph below.

 When that planetary VADM graph, going back 740,000 years, is put directly below a useful temperature proxy, that of the ratio of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) measured in the Dome Concordia deep ice core from from the same period, we get a rather extraordinary fit, see above. The lower trace is the VADM graph, the upper is the deuterium ratios temperature proxy trace for the same period.

 If you are used to data that correlates exactly, the correlations it shows (or that I have inferred, if you prefer) will probably not be much to your liking. In geology however, perfect fits are few and far between. As I think holds in this case, when there is a major cause with one or more secondary causes superimposed, the fits are not exactly perfect. I think in this case, though, that the dominant driver or at least the dominant linkage, can clearly be seen.

One fairly simple and significant thing can be seen straight off, from just one of the graphs, the upper one, the deuterium temperature proxy. Nine of the last ten major temperature peaks came straight after major and prolonged rises in temperature. Only one peak, and that one is seven rises and about 600,000 years back, has a plateau associated with it. Even so, the initial temperature achieved then was higher than any later ones on the plateau. The latest major temperature rise peaked, judging by the deuterium graph, about 13,660 years ago. Since then global temperatures have, overall, been falling. Those initial high temperatures have not been approached since and the overall trend since then is downwards. So, if nature has much consistency to its behavior, (which is dubious, but is anyway about the basic tenet of geology), it will get colder for the next few thousand years, not warmer, unless we or something else changes the pattern.

The carbon-storm troopers of course claim that we as a species, with our allies the cows, are energetic enough to change this vast pattern of events, and I'm saying I'm very sceptical and that they have no trustworthy evidence that it is happening. Four of the recent interglacial peaks occurred after the temperature graph went nearly straight up, to temperatures 2 to 4 degrees higher than any this time round. So this peak of ours is not only unlikely to go higher, it is somwhat unimpressive by past records. A fizzer, almost.

Now if you will be so kind, consider something of the relationship between the two graphs above.

Over the last 740,000 years, if one matches the apparent changes in global temperature, (using as a proxy the Dome Concordia deuterium ratio graph above, after Jouz el, et al. 2004) with the variation over the same time in the strength of the magnetic field of the planet (using the vertical axial dipole moment graph of Makinen and Wentworth, 2003) an interesting, albeit complex, picture emerges. There are some exceptions to the pattern described below, as noted on the graph by the time zones I've marked with question marks. Those exceptions may be real or may just be the result of all stratigraphic records being imperfect. They may stand up, in which case they need interpretation, or they may vanish, when more drillhole data is to hand. Also, there are time zones where the trend in the magnetic field is not clear or is short. I have left those white on the graph.

Given those qualifiers, repeatedly, when there is a long period of decline in the strength of the magnetic field of the earth (the time zones filled in red in the graph), the global temperature first rises for varying periods, but with an average about 10,000 years. It peaks and then declines, often sharply.

My guess is that the initial temperature rise is the result of the shielding effect of the earth's magnetic field diminishing, allowing more cosmic radiation, particularly protons from the sun, to enter the earth's atmosphere and warm it, the land and the oceans. (See Wikipedia, for some words and pretty graphics about the earth's magnetosphere.) Why it the temperature then declines, I do not know and can so far hazard no guesses. By my count, 16 out of the 18 temperature peaks of the last 740,000 years match that pattern, though I am willing to concede a few more exceptions to sceptics if I have to. More data may conversely improve my case; which I hope, of course. Whichever, the correlation in the two trends is very strong and is real.

When, conversely, the magnetic field increases (the time zones for those periods are in blue on the accompanying graph) in 17 out of the 19 cases for which there is matching data, the global temperature (judging again only by the deuterium ratios from this one drillhole), either does not rise or declines markedly. I would guess that is the result of the some of the incoming cosmic radiation then being blocked by the increased effectiveness of the newly restored magnetic shield around the planet. In only two cases, on the presently available data, did the temperature rise as the magnetic field rose. Those may be data errors, maybe not.

Global temperature changes hence do appear to be controlled by changes in the global magnetic field or at least to move in delayed lockstep with them. What is likely to be complicating the picture and causing it to deviate from uniformity, is that the sun is a variable output star, proved by the period of very low sunspot numbers from 1645 to 1715 (according to Eddy, 1976), the time known as the Maunder Minimum. That was the coldest period in a time of low temperatures anyway, the Little Ice Age. A guess is that a strong magnetic field shields the earth from incoming electrons and protons in the solar wind. Those, partcularly the protons, bring in a lot of energy, so if deflected away from earth by the magnetic bow wave of the planet (again, see Wikipedia), colder times than otherwise seem to result.

The magnetic field of the earth is thought, on mathematical grounds, to be about 90 percent the result of internal electrical currents in the earth's liquid core. The remaining 10 percent of the field may be coupled to the variations in the sun's magnetic field, but that and the observed variations in the strength of the field seem (to me, guessing) to more likely be controlled by variations in the earth's orbit. If basically correct, that leaves fossil-fuel-burning-induced climate change (AGW) about nowhere. Particularly if the present atmospheric CO2 levels and their rapid rise are not exceptional, as argued above.

If the deuterium-indicated temperature lows directly reflect ice ages, from the graph above we had them, going back in time from the present, 118,000 years ago, then 122,000, then 122,000, then 92,000, then 98,000, then 102,000, then 98,000, then 90,0000, and then 80,000 years ago. The last period is clearly the odd man out, but it did bracket the last full global magnetic reversal, at about 780,000 years b.p., which may be related. 

From a comparison of the two graphs, it is clearly not the case that each time the magnetic field reaches a significant low, we get an interglacial. However, almost every interglacial peak is associated with either a dropping, very low VADM, or with a VADM low. Almost none are associated with magnetic highs, or with periods when the VADM values have been rising for a considerable time. The single exception is noted just below. In several cases the temperature peak comes somewhat before the magnetically lowest point. That may indicate the temperature shift is causing the magnetic shift, but my guess is that that is not the case, as in almost every instance the temperature high comes after a long decline in the VADM values. The single exception is the interglacial peak just after the magnetic field reversal of 780,000 bp. That one coincides with a steeply rising magnetic field. At the rare times of magnetic reversals, a quite different set of rules seems to apply. Greek legend reports that even the gods get drunk occasionally.  

The time gaps between each of the magnetic highs and between each of the ice ages show a sort of order-of-magnitude regularity, but not overmuch beyond that. What is perhaps of interest, though, is the time between each magnetic high and the following coldest part of the next ice age. I have drawn a time-link line between each of the VADM or magnetic field peaks, and the depth or low point of the next glacial period. See the linked graphs below, Figure 2

The slopes of these link-lines, though not invariant, are still fairly consistent. That means that if these two are cause and effect, or are both caused by the same third effect, the overall rate of change of the temperature (including both the initial rise and the subsequent longer drop, and until the coldest point in the cycle is reached), is very similar for each event. In reality the fit could be even better than the graphs suggest, given that the marine deuterium-ratio data may very well have missed a cold spell or two. The forward-sloping red line links the minor magnetic peak after the one giving the most anomalous slope, to the same temperature low, and is the one I would have preferred to see. At a guess, maybe there is a data error. Very few sedimentary records, even composite ones such as this, are perfect.

I will try a rash prediction. Consider again the two graphs given in the figure above. The backward-sloping blue line passing through the present is an exact copy and a lateral translation of the one to the left, which gives the downward slope and length of a fairly typical temperature drop after an interglacial peak. The two upper horizontal black lines give the upper and lower temperature limits for glacial times. The green arrow shows the position of X, the point where the average time-link line should meet the typical dropping post-interglacial-peak temperature line. If it works, 8,888 years from now, expect the lowest point of a fairly mild glacial period. Let me know if you spot it on your rambles. There should be no high peaks until then, so take a warm jumper. Obviously, that sort of precision is totally unrealistic, as the slopes of the time-link lines do vary. But, you may get the idea and it may work, to within a couple of thousand years or so. Crystal ball-gazing aside, what I do think we can infer, if the above is even just basically correct, is that it is changes in the earth's magnetic field that are causing the ice ages. Or, some other phenomenon, so far unknown, is causing both.

Single protons (H+) and electrons are part of the building blocks of new water, H2O the rest being obviously oxygen, of which our atmosphere has plenty. So incoming solar protons and electrons seem likely to produce some new water, along with the extra heat of their kinetic energy. When they bond with oyxgen they will release bond energy, and then more again, when the water condenses or freezes. I think. Some of what falls on the icecaps may be snow from new water. Water is probably lost to compensate, when water high in the atmosphere is struck by incoming high energy cosmic radiation and the hydrogen is cannoned off into deep space or back to the sun. The textbook version of the planetary water cycle, so beloved by schools everywhere, will have to be re-written to include the sun and deep space.

Algy, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the fridge.

Now to quite another criticism of AGW. Global warming is basically a heat problem, so it would seem to make sense to see where on the planet's surface the new heat is being most concentrated. Heat disperses away from its source, by the laws of thermodynamics. Very oddly and at total variance with AGW, the greatest heating on the planet's surface, in terms of annual temperature shifts, is presently occuring on and around the Antarctic Peninsula. There are very few factories, power stations or SUV's there, as far as I know.  The greatest actual area of warming is in the north of the northern hemisphere and shifts about somewhat, mainly east-west, but has often been concentrated north of the Gobi Desert, where the same sad lack of human activity is also rather evident. Those areas, however, do happen to be where or very close to where at the vertical component planet's magnetic field is currently varying most. The greatest change in the vertical component of earth's magnetic field, in the southern hemisphere is, I think, happening somewhat to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula. But from there, the West Wind Drift (aka the Circum Polar Current) flows ceaselessly towards the choke point of that peninsula. So the warming there would seem to be initially magnetically and then secondarily, ocean current-induced. The water is warming, then flowing eastwards, is my guess. What is warming it is the question. Is it increased incoming cosmic radiation, or is it a warmer sea bed, somehow related to the diminished internal magnetic field of the earth at those points. The fact that the hot spot moves longitudinally with such rapidity in the northern hemisphere, and also thaty the one near the Antarctic Peninsula seems also to shift, being now on one coast and now on the other, seems to me to argue for cosmic radiation being the cause.

The wrangle of the angle

To repeat, by the laws of thermodynamics, heat dissipates away from its source. That gives AGW a further problem. AGW depends on solar radiation reaching the ground having its wavelength lengthened and then being reflected back up into the atmosphere from the earth's surface. In the atmosphere it is then partly trapped by greenhouse gases, such as CO2. How then will it produce its greatest heating near the poles? It does not help a jot that the pathway down, through the atmosphere, is longer near the poles than at the equator. This radiation, coming off complex and irregular snow, wave and ground surfaces, is not reflected neatly like light, with the angle of reflection being equal to the angle of incidence. When re-radiated, it goes in all upward directions, but the resulting main vector is straight up. The surface of the planet is not a perfectly flat mirror.

Less is more, in bubblespeak

What counts in generating greenhouse atmospheric heating is the area of the surface being heated by a given amount of radiation. The reason that we have summer and winter and that the poles are colder than the equator, as every schoolkid on this planet is taught, is that a given amount of solar radiation must warm a far greater area of surface near the poles than at the equator. So, as there is less radiation getting to the ground in high latitudes, there will be even less reflected. The greatest warming would not be happening in high latitudes, at and around the narrow Antarctic Peninsula, and south of the shoreline of the Arctic Ocean.  Atmospheric greenhouse heating will not miraculously reconcentrate itself to somehow cause maximum heating nearly as far from the main heat source, the seasonal heat equator, as you can get. It does not matter how helpful Hadley Cells or ocean currents or anything else tries to be. You can gloss over these basic constraints in computer models, only because people cannot easily read those models.

All our theory so far says that, for mathematical reasons, by far the greatest part of the earth's magnetic field is internally generated and it clearly varies over long cycles. We can of course do exactly nothing to change that. If changes in the earth's magnetic field are the primary driver of climate change, at least during glacial epochs, goodbye global fossil fuel guilt trip and goodbye AGW. We are innocents and all the carbon emmision reductions in the world will probably not change the cycle. We can stop selling each other carbon indulgences, so goodbye also to the nascent thin-air burial societies that some have seen as their easy ticket to fortune.

Here is an alternative source for the extra heat we are seeing on the planet's surface. From the speed of seismic waves and other sources, the maximum temperature of the earth's core is believed to be about 5,000°C. The rocks of the mantle, just below the bottom edge of the crust, are by definition molten, and basalt on surface is molten at about 900°C.  The greatest warming on surface, on the Antarctic Peninsula, is no more than a 5°C rise above the 1950 baseline. If you picture the earth in 2D as the size of a soccer ball, the crust will be represented by a rather thin pencil line on a rather large piece of paper. When we know from volcanoes, hotspots and continental drift that the inside is not peaceful, to imagine that this slow internal turmoil, with its attendant irregularly distributed heat loss, is not capable of changing surface temperatures 5°C over sixty years, is a little rash. It is particularly so when the temperatures of the areas of interest are relatively so low to start with. New crustal hotspots may be driving the climate change we are seeing, all on their own. The heat flow from the mantle to the surface is not constrained to be the same in total over time. If vast new masses of hot mantle plume up, the heat flow from the interior will increase. There have been times of very active plate tectonics and quieter times. One old geological theory has the ice ages being driven by periods of mountain building. Those, with the theory geologically updated and extended, follow active continental drift sessions, times of active plate tectonics, and are driven by hotspot migrations. Perhaps the interglacials are linked to short bursts of the more active times.

The pulsing nature of the glacials, if internally heat driven, may relate to nuclear reactions deep down, perhaps as deep down as the centre of the core, perhaps higher, starting up and shutting down. It has been suggested that, uranium being among the heaviest of elements, the very centre of the core may be of radioactive uranium. That would explain the constant flow over geological time of interior heat, otherwise not easy to do, according to some geophysicists. Whether so or not, the heat close to the surface is known to be partly radioactivity-generated. Continental granites, relatively radioactive rocks, for instance, are favorite targets for geothermal power, as of course are warm places on oceanic crust such as Iceland.  Whatever the central core is composed of and does, internal heat flow shifts might explain the deep electrical currrent and the magnetic field changes. If that is so, it also leaves AGW high and.dry. 

The oceans hold about fifty tmes as much carbon dioxide as the atmosphere, and about 6.000 times more carbon than we produce as pollution in a year. I suaspect they are buffering the planet's atmospheric CO2 evels chemically and that our contribution to the current rise in CO2 levels is a bit, or almost entirely, irrelevant. The earth's magnetic field last peaked about 14,000 years ago (see Figure 1), so if the above is correct, hold your breath, it is not going to get hotter but we will be in the depths of a glacial period about 9,000 years from now. We can in all relax for a bit and then calmly start knitting those warm jumpers.

To power politics.

I am all for trashing or fixing all the dirty coal-fired power stations on the planet, but that is merely the arrogance of a comfortable first-worlder - half the people of Dar es Salaam have no water supply, never mind reliable power supplies. I have anyway a vague sort of hope that the good folk of industrial China, who send us here in Australia so many fine things, will then be able to breathe real air again. We comfortable folk are also contemplating junking a good part of the world's rural economy so that we can, with clean consciences, run our elephant cars on fuels grown on fields that used to feed the poor of the world. Are we trying to cut down carbon dioxide emissions, or to cut down the poor? Perhaps now we do not have to do either. 

What's to do overall?

Adapt. We, being lifeforms, are good at it. I think that, instead of wringing our hands and selling each other indulgences for greenhouse emmisions, we should concentrate on reducing our numbers and so give the rest of the biosphere (and ourselves) a chance to survive. We burrowing apes are currently in plague proportions. We should restore the forests, our most effective continent-cooling systems. We should reduce our dependency on grass (wheat, rice, sugar, beef, mutton, etc) at the same time, by planting food trees in particular and trees in general. We should, perhaps a new thought for some, stop wasting irreplaceable assets such as all the high-grade metal deposits on the surface of the planet. Those, in aggregate, took about 4 billion years to accumulate. The biosphere is fairly tough and adaptable and will recover, when we are merely an unlamented fossil. New oil and coal may even form again, but the formation of most high-grade surface ore deposits will not be repeated in the life of this planet. We have many trillions of tons of coal in the ground, enough to junk the oxygen atmosphere, but maybe not much oil left. Oil companies do not drill dud wells for fun, as they are a bit expensive. They have been drilling a lot of duds for years now. All our vehicles should be lighter and electric where possible, preferably solar electric, (see Google for the magical Vees from Montreal). We need to wake up. Human growth economies are, in my view, the skin cancers of the planet. We need to replace them with stable systems.

Charlie Darwin got one thing slightly wrong. In evolution, survival does not go to the fittest species, in some sort of macho gymnastic contest. It goes to the species that fits in best. We presently fit in with the biosphere, as my grandfather might have said, like a kak-handed udmidud on a fashion catwalk. A left-handed scarecrow, in most other English dialects.

We should stop tilting desparingly at very large windmills, it takes the fun out of life. Communal guilt is an ecological niche already fully occupied by those who believe the universe is controlled by a giant, homicidal sky spook. The rest of us should be very grateful and leave them to enjoy it.

Cheers, all. Have fun.

Peter Ravenscroft.

Closeburn, Queensland,

April, 2008.

PO Box 108, Samford, 4520, Queensland, Australia. P.S.Ravenscroft@gmail.com. Phone 07 3289 4470.

A Closeburn Signal Station report. This essay is in the public domain. Bend, spindle or mutilate to your heart's content, claim you wrote it, or use it for any purpose. Thank you for your time and interest. And, good luck and have fun, one and all.

References:

Eddy, J.A. 1976. The Maunder Minimum. Science, vol 192, no. 4245, pp.1189-1202. 18 June 1976. D.O.I.: 1126/science.192.4245.1189.

Jouz el J. et al, 2004. EPICA Dome C Ice Cores Deuterium Data. IGBP Pages, World Data Centre for Climatology.Data Contribution Series 2004-038. NOAA-NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder, Co. USA

Petit, J.R, J.Jouzel, B. Raynaud, N.J. Barkov, J-M Barnola, I. Basile, M. Bender, J. Chappellaz, M. Davis, G. Delaygue, M. Delmotte, V.M. Kotlyakov, M. Legrande, V.Y. Lipenkov, C. Lorius, L. Pepin, C. Ritz, E. Saltzman, and M. Stievenard. 1999. Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from Vostok ice cores, Antarctica. Nature, vol 399, 429-436. (3rd June, 1999). D.O.I.

  10,1038/20859; received 20 January, 1999, accepted 14 April, 1999.  

* The promised rant: The academic peer review system of publication is the only form of communication F4U will accept as legitimate. In my cynical personal opinion, peer review is a self-serving system of secret censorship, run by the establishment in any given field of science, mainly for their own security. Oppose the consensus and you do not get published. If you have them, you can in time also lose your tenure or your income, because you threaten those of so many others. This intellectual herding is carefully shepherded by large publishing houses whose main focus is profit, so they jealously guard copyright. (Would you believe that microsoft's spell checker wants that spelled with a capital "c" - and microsoft spelled with a capital "m," - just to prove the point?). Anyway, as a result, the ordinary public almost never gets to see original science papers in full, as few can afford the cost. Science is sinking into half-forgotten obscurity, is one result. The effect is much like keeping the Christian Bible entirely in Latin. Darwin would never have got his work published under the peer review system. Its language conventions, particularly the obligatory use of the third person, are also more than slightly dishonest. Exponents write "it is so" or "it is believed that" where they should write; "it seems to me." Peer review publication promotes unchallengeable group-think, across academia, to an alarming degree. It does not serve the wider human community well in issues of major policy import, such as climate change.

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Short glossary, courtesy mainly of the Oxford Dictionary of earth Sciences, 2003, and other sources as noted. If you do not believe a word of the essay above, good for you. Start here and then go work it all out for yourself.

ama-Xhosa. A bantu-speaking tribe of South Africa's east coast who, in the early nineteenth century, slaughtered almost all their cattle on the strength of a young girl's dream that a wind would then blow the white man into the sea. They are doing fine now and more or less run the country.

"atmospheric window. The range of wavelengths (about 8.5 - 11 μm) at which radiaton is only slightly absorbed by water vapour. Terrestrial radiation within this range may escape into space unless it is absorbed by cloud (water droplets can absorb in this range). See also GREENHOUSE EFFECT and TERRESTRIAL RADIATION."

"carbon cycle. The movement of carbon through the surface, interior and atmosphere of the earth. Carbon exists in atmospheric gases, in dissolved ions in the hydrosphere and in solids as a major component of organic matter and sedimentary rocksand is widely distributed. Inorganic exchange is mainly between the atmosphere and the hydrosphere. The major movement of carbon results from photosynthesis and respiration, with exchange between with exchange between the biosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere. Rates of exchange are very small, but over geologic time they have concentrated large amounts of carbon in the lithosphere, mainly as limestones and fossil fuels. This carbon was probably present as CO2 in the primordial atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels and the release of CO2 from soil air through the clearance of tropical forests may eventually change the balance of the carbon cycle, although the climatic effects may be partly mitigated by the buffering action of the oceans. (Huh! I thought I had come up with that particular phrase and notion - PSR); it is estimated that about 200 billion tonnes of CO2 have been added to the atmosphere in this way since 1850

this way since 1850. See GREENHOUSE EFFECT. 

"cosmic radiation. Ionizing radiation from space, comprised principally of protons, alpha particles, and 1-2% heavier atomic nucleii, as well as some high-energy protons and electrons. On encountering the earth's atmosphere, secondary radiation is produced, mainly gamma rays, electrons, pions and muons. Three sources are identified: (a) galactic cosmic rays, from outside the solar system, with energies in the range 1-10 GeV (Giga electron volts - PSR) per nucleon (b) solar cosmic rays, mainly associated with solar flares, with energies in the range 1-100 MeV per nucleon: and (c) solar wind, with energies of about 1000eV per nucleon."

Galactic cosmic rays, you will notice, have 2 to 3 orders of magnitude more energy than the rays from solar flares. The Maunder Minimum was a very cold snap from 1645 to 1715 approx. when sunspots, that is solar flares and their rays, were at a very low minimum. So by analogy, maybe in glacial times such as the Pleistocene (the last 1.8 million years), we have been getting far less galactic cosmic rays than our usual dose. Maybe the slow rotation of the galaxy, about 250 million years per cycle, is currently putting the rest of the galaxy between us and "it," "it" being some major and so far unknown source of such rays, with the last time this happened being the Permian-Carboniferous glaciation, one spin back. The older glaciations, that do not fit this neat time scale, may have had different sources, or the same source, but with the galaxy then rotating at a different pace. Sort of "Maxi Maunder Minima." Or if you prefer, an apparently spotless universe, one go per spin, pollution free, the Clean Dreamtime, or Cleantime. Not just a small star maundering, but the whole side of a galaxy - comatose. I get a bit carried away this late at night, sorry. 

"geomagnetic field. The earth's magnetic field shows variability on all timescales, ranging from nanoseconds to millions of years. Most transient variations are of external origin, reflecting interactions between the solar wind and the earth's atmosphere. Longer-term changes, called secular variations, are of internal origin. The average annual field has been closely defined by satellite observations for 1980. Previous annual patterns were based on geomorphic observatories, supplemented by field surveys and corrected to some particular time on the basis of observed secular variation in the preceding years. The intensity of the field varies from about 30μT (micro teslas - PSR) near the equator to 60μT near the observed geomagnetic poles at 73°N 100°W and 68°S 143°E. Most of the field (80%) can be accounted for mathematically by a single microgeocentric pole inclined at 11.3° to the earth's rotation pole, known as the geomagnetic dipole, with a magnetic moment of 8.01 x 10²² A/m² (Amps per square metre - PSR). The remaining field, the micro-non-dipole field, forms 12 main areas, varying by +/-1.5 μT. An improved mathematical fit to the observed field was obtained using an inclined dipole offset from the geocentre by 340 km. During this century, the pattern of the field shows a tendency to drift westwards at about 0.2°/year, but this is not considered to be persistant on archaeological timescales. The field shows an ability to reverse polarity on a geologic timescale, with three polarity changes per million years during the last 60 million years, but long periods, of about 50 million years, of constant polarity are also known. The geomagnetic field is generally attributed to fluid motions within the outer core; these carry magnetic lines of force with them (see 'magnetohydrodynamics'), creating a coupled self-exciting dynamo that allows polarity reversals." 

 "greenhouse effect. The effect of heat retention in the lower atmosphere as a result of absorbtion and reradiation by clouds and gases (e.g. water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons) of long wave (more than 4μm). (microns - PSR). terrestrial radiation. The insulating effect is analogous to that of greenhouse glass (i.e. it is transparent to the incoming short-wave radiation but partly opaque to the re-radiated long-wave radition) and alters the balance of incoming and outgoing radiation in the earth's energy budget. Marked increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, generated for example by the combustion of fossil fuels, could result in a global increase of atmosphric temperatures, if not offset by other (perhaps natural) changes. See also ATMOSPHERIC WINDOW."

"ice. 1. Water which has frozen into a crystal lattice. Pure water freezes at 0 ^°C at 1013.24 mb pressure. The presence of salts in solution depresses the freezing point of water. Liquid water has its maximum density at 4^°C in consequence of which ice floats on water. With increasing pressure, a series of denser polymorphs of ice forms, each designated by a Roman numeral, ordinary ice being ice I. 2. Several properties and varieties of ice are important in geomorphological processes. Expansion on freezing (9.05% in specific volume) generates very high pressures. In an enclosed space in the laboratory the pressure reaches 216 MPa (megapascals) at -22^°C. but reaches only about 10% of this when unenclosed, as in nature. The stresses are, however, sufficient to bring about frost wedging. Such ice I converts into the denser ice III at lower temperatures, but the pressure exerted by it changes little. 'Ground ice' forms when interstitial water freezes and this may bring about heaving as well as frost wedging. (This may go a fair way to explain why, when glaciers start to melt on their surfaces, they collapse so relatively rapidly. Melt water desends into any cracks and then wedges the glacier apart, with very considerable force, when it refreezes. - PSR). 

'Glacier ice is a relatively opaque mass of interlocking crystals and has a density of 0.85 - 0.93 gm/cm³. Regelation ice is relatively clear and is formed by the freezing of of meltwater below a temperate glacier. 3. In planetary geology …" (This part of the definition deals with extra-terrestrial ices - PSR).

"ice ages. Periods when ice has accumulated at the poles and the continents have been glaciated repeatedly. Exactly why glaciation occurred is not clear. There are suggestions of a middle Precambrian glaciation about 2300 Ma. (million years - PSR) in N. America, S. Africa, India and Australia. More information exists to suggest that the earth was glaciated between 950 and 615 Ma. and there are at least two glacial horizons in Africa, Australia, and Europe. There is good evidence for glaciation at the end of the Ordovician (about 439 Ma. - PSR*) in N. Africa, but glacial deposits described from elsewhere at this period are problematical, so the extent of the glaciation is not known. The Permo-Carboniferous (about 290 Ma. - PSR) glaciation of S. America, S. Africa, India and Australia was widespread and is well documented. There is no evidence for further glaciation until the Quaternary (1.8 Ma. - PSR). Suggestions have been made for other ice ages during the Paleozoic but evidence for them is sparse. The Pleistocene ice age (same as the Quartenary, above - PSR) is the best documented but there is undoubted evidence of earlier glaciation in the geologic record."  (* The dates I have added are from the same dictionary, Appendix B, Time Scales. - PSR)

"magnetohydrodynamics. The science of relating magnetic fields, mainly mathematically, within a moving conducting medium. It is mainly applicable to the earth's core, where the geomagnetic field is generated by the motion of magnetic lines of force which are 'frozen' within a moving electrically conducting medium, but it is also applicable to all systems involving the fluid motion of electrically conducting materials within a magnetic field."

"magnetosphere. The space around a planet in which ionized particles are affected by the planet's magnetic field. The earth's magnetosphere reaches far beyond the atmosphere. In the magnetosphere, charged particles are concentrated at altitudes of about 3,000 km to 16,000 km. The charged particles oscillate between the northern and southern hemispheres. The outer boundary of the magnetosphere is sharp and well-defined, extending to about 10 earth radii on the sunlit side of the earth, to perhaps 40 earth radii on the dark side; but the boundary changes its position in response to solar activity, being depressed by the solar wind. See also EXOSPHERE  and IONOSPHERE." (Here, I suggest you buy this splendid book. Otherwise, we will end up cross-hopping our way through most of it. - PSR)

"melting temperature of the earth's mantle and core.. Reinhard Boehler, Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie, Mainz, 55020 Germany. Abstract. Although the temperature at the top of the lower mantle is well constrained by phase equilibrium data for the transformation of transition zone minerals to the denser perovskite polymorphs, the temperature distribution in the lower mantle is poorly known. Models depend strongly on the assumptions of the amount of internal heating and the viscosity profile. New melting data on iron to pressures of the outer core (2 Mbar) and the observed strong decrease of eutectic melting depression in the Fe-FeO-FeS system with increasing pressure, however, tightly constrain the temperature at the inner-core boundary to slightly less than 5000 K. This estimate can be reconciled with all recent static melting measurements on iron and lays within the uncertainty of shock temperature measurements. The resulting temperature at the core-mantle boundary of about 4000 K then requires a large temperature gradient at the bottom of the lower mantle of about 1500 K. Recent findings of the very high melting temperatures of the major lower-mantle materials Mg-Si-perovskite and magnesiowüstite indicate that this increase in temperature does not cause melting in the lower mantle."

"solar wind. General term for the stream of high-energy particles, mainly protons, electrons and alpha particles, emitted by the Sun. The particles have velocities of hundreds of kilometres per second and 'wind' strength is thought to be greatest during periods of maximum solar activity. In the neighbourhood of the earth, the solar wind has velocities in the range of 300-500 km/sec and an average density of 10⁷ ions/m². See also COSMIC RADIATION.

.

or nearly. One last kick.

fPublished ABC Pool, 09.06.09, revised 22.6.2009

Where is all the water crop
long time pissing?
Gone to oceans, every drop
when will we ever learn?

Slight exaggeration "every drop," but read on.

If this lot below is correct, then the contribution to sea level rise from our irrigation pumps is about four times that from all the melting glaciers on the planet. Why do we never hear of this?

I will be delighted if competent people would read this. Any incompetents out here, it’s OK, I am one of you, so you can read it also. Right, lads and lassies, lets get to it.

Those 50 million water pumps are officilly estimated to be shifting somewhere between 600 and 1,000 cubic kilometres of groundwater a year and an unknown but large proportion of that is not going back. A whole lot gets to the sea. Do the sums, a guess at the proportion, surface area of the oceans, etc. Compaction and low recharge rates in low rainfall areas makes a lot of groundwater extraction a one-way street. The water tables are dropping below most major irrigated croplands. Go do your own homework on Google, that way I am not steering you towards pet papers and reports.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation, the FAO, estimates that on this planet there are 1.5 billion hectares of cropland in total and that 17% of that lot is irrigated, which gives 255 million hectares irrigated, if my calculator knows its job. Round that to a neat 250 million hectares of irrigated lands.  Some estimates give 400 million, but we will stick with the FAO here, to be conservative. .

Now, to do any good when irrigating, you have to put on a fair drop. Maize, not a terribly thirsty crop, takes about 500 mm of irrigation per year, in low rainfall areas. I think, based on figures from Turkey. At 500mm per year, that gives 1,250 cubic kilometres of groundwater pumped annually. That figure is a lot higher than the estimates currently in favour for groundwater pumping, which are dated, but range from 600 cubic kilometres to 1,000 cubic kilometres of water pumped each year. The higher figure includes water pumped from river and lakes, is why.

Here, in working out what goes to the sea and how fast, it does not matter if the water is from underground, from a river or from a lake. It is all water that is not now in the sea, but shortly will be. You may wish to argue that river water is on its way to the sea, which is perfectly true, but rivers hold a certain amount of water out of the sea at any time and when you pump them out they immediately hold that much less. It goes into crops and then, by evapo-transporation, and much faster than the river can cart it to the sea or evaporate it en route, it evaporates or transpires into the air. And then, on a global average, two thirds of it rains into the sea, based on two thirds of the planet being ocean, a bit crude, cause mountain ranges stop a fair bit of rain, but still a fair first estimate, since deserts don't. And it gets there at the sped of the prevailing offshore winds, a lot faster than flowing there, via dams, creeks and breweries. . .

If half is not recharged, a fair estimate I think, since most irrigation is in dry regions, where underground recharge rates are only about 100mm per year (the generally accepted figure) that is, one fifth of drawdown.

Greenland ice loss, figures from NASA.

From 1996 to 2000, widespread glacial acceleration was found at latitudes below 66 degrees north. This acceleration extended to 70 degrees north by 2005. The researchers estimated the ice mass loss resulting from enhanced glacier flow increased from 63 cubic kilometres in 1996 to 162 cubic kilometres in 2005. Combined with the increase in ice melt and in snow accumulation over that same time period, they determined the total ice loss from the ice sheet increased from 96 cubic kilometres in 1996 to 220 cubic kilometres in 2005.

As Antarctica is sucking water out of the sea, by the evidence of 1.3 million satellite readings and the solemn testimony of NASA and folk from the Royal Society of London, Greenland and a small damp patch on Kilimanjaro are all the carbonists have left, with which to explain the 2mm per year extra sea level rise. That is, the rise over the 1 mm pa isostatic rebound that we are all comfortable with, from the continents lifting after icecap unloading. That extra 2 mm per year terrifies them.

But it will stop soon, when we run out of groundwater. And may be stopping already, as sea-level rise has been tapering off since 2003.food may be a problem, but that is trivial in comparison to the seat at the Sydney Opera house getting damp or infested with small fishes. 

I am not saying sea level cannot go higher. It has in the past, nd I supect got into my pdok here, 50 metres above where it plays now, and 30 kms by kayk away. . . I am simply saying there is about four times more water coming from our centrifugal pumps than from melting glaciers.

Go do your own sums.Publish a peer-reviewed paper and get famous. This is public domain, I will cheer and not complain. This debate is sort-of-mildly important

Add the water lost from soils, courtesy of more millions of tractors, dozers and chainsaws, exposing the soil to the sun annually, where before there were standing plants year round. Carbon is also lost from the soil and that used to trap moisture. The soil carbon incidentally oxidises and then goes where? You get fifteen guesses.

Then take the uncomfortable fact, for AGW that overall, the ice caps are growing, not shrinking. West Antarctica and Greenland and low latitude snow losses nowhere near compensate for East Antarctic increases, as some 1.3 million  satellite observations have shown. Go talk to ESA, not NASA, the latter screwed up their algorithms and have now tardily admitted it.

The present sea level increase, about 3 mm per year, is partly isostatic rebound, about 1 mm per year. The rest is most likely groundwater. If the oceans are warming overall, likely but uncertain, suits me, that will raise sea levels also. If the atmosphere is warming, that will take up a lot of water, ditto for me and the rest of the carbon sceptics. Am not, by the way, even remotely sceptical that the climate is changing. Of course it flipping is, this is the peak of an interglacial, for Murphy's sake. 

Would someone like to explain, with as little invective as possible, why I am drivelling? I have this fragile sense of self, see, and I do so tend to sulk, if people are unkind. KISS. Keep it sensitive, sweethearts?

Love all you AGW folk dearly,

Peter.

P.S: Science is scepticism. Certainty is the camp site of the other mob.

PPS: Use new, cheaper, Anthropogenic Groundwater Depletion, AGD, in the fliptop box, instead of boring old Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming, AGW, if you have seas to raise and a busy lifestyle. 50 million centrifugal pumps can't be idle! Let them work for you

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