gizmo_2655 wrote on Aug 1^st, 2010 at 7:42pm:


Ah - so now we're talking about the mid Pliocene. I thought you were talking about the Eemian before.

The Eemian was about 1-2 degrees warmer than current, and is supposed to be very similar to the projected climate around mid-century, if not slightly milder. Below the Alps, the temperature was about the same as current. The sea levels for this period were about 6 metres above today's sea level.

You're probably quoting Plimer I'd say, or quoting somebody who is quoting "Heaven and Earth"

The mid Pliocene was about 3.5 million years ago, and that was over 30 glaciations ago.  

I know my hominids, and that is indeed the period when hominids were starting to evolve.

Yeah - it was warmer then, but not 10-20 degrees warmer (maybe around 2 degrees).  The atmospheric CO2 was a tad higher too - around 450ppm.

What's your point? There were no CO2 spikes similar to today's during the mid Pliocene. It all happened very very slowly.

Actually, that link you gave me just confirmed what I said:
Quote:

Quote:


You know me better than that. My point was that the situation was very different from today. Today we have almost 7 billion people clinging on for survival. Back then, there were no human beings.

Don't you find it strange that your original text quotes temperatures 10-20 degrees warmer than present, yet the paper it links to says 2-3 degrees?

Are you not starting to smell a rat? Is your BS meter starting to alarm.

Plimer's book is full of such inconsistencies.

The majority of workers consider that the medieval warm period was a local warming, not a global event.  The proxies tend to support that. All this came about as a result of some work that was submitted to the first IPCC report in 1999. It was all that was available at the time. Since then there has been a plethora of studies that confirm that the Medieval Warm period was local in scope.

All I ask you to do is to read both sides of the account, and if you have more than a rudimentary grasp of science, it will become obvious who's lying.

A number of people have dissected Plimer's book, not from the perspective of Anthropogenic Global Warming advocacy, but because of the shoddy science and downright lies involved.


Kurt Lambeck, earth scientist and president of the Australian Academy of Science says this:
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I think we saw an example of that in your earlier post.

OK I see it now, and I misread your original post. Context is everything. A simple thing like presence or absence of a polar ice cap can make all the difference to high latitude temperatures, and it's a good indication of what temperatures in these latitudes are likely to be like mid century. Think about air blowing off a polar ice cap, then think about what happens to the temperature of that air when the ice cap is no longer there.

This is borne out by the fact that temperature rises near the poles have risen far more than anywhere else. For a while, this was not explainable, but paleoclimate studies like this one help to explain how this happens and improve our models for high latitude climates.

Global temperatures however were 2-3 degrees higher than current during the Mid Pliocene.  

Do you notice the title of the paper?

It's Pliocene Role in Assessing Future Climate Impacts

If we  go back far enough in time to an age when CO2 levels were higher, we can get some ideas about the likely future climate.

The issue is not about whether life on Earth survived under warmer conditions in the past.

It's all about the impacts of  global warming on the world population. For example, a 2 degree global warming will drop rice production and wheat production yields dramatically.

It's all very well to say - just move the growing areas further North, but high latitude soils are generally very thin and lacking in humus. If we had more time, we probably could adapt. Again, it's the rate of change that will be an issue, and the effects of permanent glaciers reducing in size until the annual melt water is too low to sustain current agricultural production.

The fact that temperatures were higher 3-4 million years ago is cold comfort.

Now which one CAME first, again?

Was it the chicken or the egg?

Or, perhaps, it was that pesky Rooster?

In any event, I do see some correlations between -
Population
GHG Emissions
& Temperature

muso wrote on Aug 2^nd, 2010 at 4:00pm:


It is often argueable, what is cause & what is effect or what is the Chicken & what is the Egg.

However, in the current case, the Global Fertility rate actually started to pick up during the Great Depression (around 1933) and then the Great Humpfest exploded after WW2, Peaked around 1956, before officially ending in 1964.

So, the Population Growth actually started first, then after another 8 years WW2 began in 1941 and Western countries deficits went thru the roof, to fund the war effort.

After WW2, Deficits & Debt slowly came under control, as the Fertility Humpfest went into overdrive and the Baby Boomer BOOM had started, but it was not until the 1960's that the Global Economy really started to fire up, as the increasing Boomer numbers started to spur Demand .

It would take until 2005 for the Baby Boomer Boom, to then go BUST, as the Boomer initiated Demand Growth, started to weaken!  

I think someone else on this board may have claimed that Innovation/Technology is born in & of iddleness, but I believe it would be more correct to say that the Baby Boomer Boom was born in & of the iddleness, of the Great Depression.

In fact, it could be said that it was the Great Depression, which begat the Great Baby Boomer BOOM, which finally begat the Great Boomer BUST!  

Btw, I haven't got a more current graph readily available, but I think it was just over a thousand ton increase in Fossil Carbon Emissions, per 1 Billion increase in Human Population.

muso wrote on Aug 1^st, 2010 at 7:55pm:


In truth...the LAST time the Co2 levels were similar to what they are now was just before the last 'true glaciation'....Icing of the earth...
Before the last freezing event( i.e Massive Ice sheets covering Europe and America)...The Pliocene Freezing etc...

muso wrote on Aug 2^nd, 2010 at 4:42pm:


There are always rules & exceptions!

Land clearing is certainly one aspect of what has been/is happening that can be sourced back to Population increase, but it is not the only one and land clearing also interacts with other issues, such as the usage of Energy (Oil & other fossil fuels), both in Growth & decline, which in turn interacts with Human Population Growth & Decline.

Whilst China's Population is not in decline, just yet, the rate of Growth has slowed considerably and is continuing to do so. It may start to actually decline sometime in the next 20 years or so?

However, they (the Chinese) had other issues influencing the Economic situation for many years, namely the Communist Party & doctrine, which they started to peel away from, about the time that the Russian Wall came crashing down.

Whether we like, agree or disagree with the Communist doctrine, it may have inadvertently saved us & our system, from an earlier collapse, purely by "virtue" of the fact that they were there and in power for some 90 years in the case of Russia & 60 years in the case of China.

If both of these powers had gone to "Capitalism" (the Dark Side ?) instead of Communism, then we may well have hit the Economic, Population & Energy Wall, 20 years earlier.

Can you imagine what effects that their combined Population of over 1.5 Billion, would already have had, after having been striving for the American dream of Consuming everything in sight & out of sight, for say the last fifty years, instead of just the last 20 years.

Oil & in fact, all forms of Energy would already have been in terminal decline for some years, reversing the Food & Population Growth rates, the Greatest Depression would already be in full swing, but the GHG emission rates would also be in a long term decline, as the Global Economy trends downward.

Everything, really is inter-connected, the Gaia principle is alive & well, stitting next to the Butterfly Effect, but where it will all lead, in the longer term particularly, is far from certain!

gizmo_2655 wrote on Aug 2^nd, 2010 at 6:27pm:


Which part do you have a problem with Gizmo and why?

That said, I think I already have a fair idea!