Home now so happy again. J
In theory if you have enough of a sample of wood in a particular area then you can get an absolutely accurate date. Basically all the trees in a region sharing similar climatic conditions should exhibit similar growth patterns each year depending on the annual changes in temperature, rainfall, light and whatever else affects growth.
So within the
We use dendro dates to calibrate Radio carbon (RC dates) as the amount of carbon of the various isotopes in the atmosphere is not as fixed as people first thought when the system was devised. As a rule if you see a date that has a small ‘bc’ it will be an uncalibrated RC date and if it has a big ‘BC’ then it is a calibrated date. This can be very useful to know when looking at dates for stuff as it is often not made clear by authors which dates they are using.
The question of CO2 levels and its relationship to temperature is not quite as clear as you set out. No one seriously denies that CO2 levels affect change. That is not where the controversy lies (except perhaps amongst the creationists who deny everything scientific). The question of impact is primarily concerning feedback mechanisms and whether the positive feedback mechanisms outweigh negative feedback mechanisms. That is where the modelling arguments come in and where the real controversies lie.
Personally I am a bit of a sad greenie and old hippy on most things. I kind of like the idea of us all living in a pre-industrial age but with all the benefits we have today J. But my own concerns about the line being taken by some (though not all) AGW advocates came about when some prominent voices decided that many of the events I had studied in depth for much of my life such as the Bronze Age, Roman and Medieval Warming periods simply hadn’t happened. Once they were challenged on this they then changed their position and claimed that they had happened but had not been worldwide and so didn’t count. Now we are finding that they were indeed worldwide it needs some reassessment of their positions. I don’t think this necessarily changes much in the overall picture and doesn’t prove or disprove anything but it certainly gave me serious pause for thought about the honesty of some of the people concerned when it appeared they were trying to railroad events out of existence to improve their arguments.
Richard
From:
Sent: 19 August 2013 23:35
To:
Subject: [Geology2] Re: your opinions
Hi, Richard,
Hope you've had a good trip so far. I'm staying at home and keeping out of the heat except to take my great white husky to the dog park. He only lasts about 30 minutes until his tongue is hanging out about a foot long and he heads for the exit.
Your dating project in the
I was wondering how accurately you can date the wood that old. Is the date you estimate a particular year, with plus and minus values, like radiocarbon dating? I see that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a repository for a great deal of information on this subject and there is a world wide network of local sources to calibrate the ring data for different areas. Interesting work.
As for the global temperatures, wouldn't it be great if is just started going down and stabilized at about 1970s levels? I would love to see the problem go away, but it doesn't look quite like it - yet.
The average surface temperatures have gone down slightly over the decade but when the monthly data are plotted out back to 1970 the current decade still fits in not far off the trend line. The detailed data plot is jagged and irregular enough that variations like this are not that far off track but if it continues this way another decade it will become a real issue. I can't find any rush to revise the thinking on this in the sites I visit.
From what I read a lot of the variation from the trend comes from the interaction between the oceans, which absorb a great deal of the heat, and the atmosphere. It just isn't a rhythmic process, and during some periods the oceans absorb more heat or release more heat to the atmosphere. When the heat in both the atmosphere and the oceans is considered together it shows that during the last decade the warming trend has continued as it did before (http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-intermediate.htm)
In the long run, I don't see how the global temperatures can do anything but continue to go up as the amount of CO2 increases. Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation - it can be easily demonstrated in the lab by shining a beam through a CO2-filled container and measuring how much of the infrared passes through. It is established science. So the question for me has always been, how can the atmosphere not heat up as CO2 levels rise?
--- In
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> Evening Fossrme.
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> I am travelling at the moment and hate doing long replies on my phone so apologies for being brief.
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> The cooling trend over the last decade is pretty well established now and is accepted by both sides of the argument. The discussion has now moved on to causes and implications as it is certainly not the case that it 'proves' anything one way or another.
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> On the subject of tree ring dating I suspect that a sliver of the cross would be too small to get an accurate date. You would need probably at least a decade or so represented in the rings to start yo get a pattern. Several years ago I was involved in a dating project in the
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> Richard
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> To:
> From: fossrme@...
> Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 18:24:07 +0000
> Subject: [Geology2] Re: your opinions
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> Thanks for all the info. No, I had not heard about all the problems with IPCC etc. That got me to do a search on the subject and there seem to be plenty of people complaining, and the issues they are talking about are important ones. It's hard to tell, though, because if you search for problems on any subject it will always come back with many of them.
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> I'm sure that there have been times in the past when CO2 levels were higher and the atmospheric temperatures were lower than today - that is to be expected because irradiance from the sun and other factors influence those temperatures, but over the short span we are looking at they have been relatively constant while temperatures were rising along with CO2 concentrations.
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> Re the Ethiopian rift vent. I think it is going to take a lot more than that to get anyone seriously worried.
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> If you have time for a few more questions:
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> 1) You said that we have come to the possibility of global "cooling"? Can you tell us who says that and why? Someone (maybe Plimer) claims there is a cooling trend, which he can justify only by picking the highest starting temperature point he can find in the last decade.
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> 2) I've been talking with a historian of early Christianity whose specialty is dating events around the time of Jesus. There was an article in the papers a few weeks ago about a relic from an early Christian church that was supposedly a piece of the crucifixion cross. Just a chunk of wood with a cross carved in it. What are the chances that it could be dated from the tree rings, and can you give a guess as to what kind of accuracy might be expected?
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> > Let me firstly say that my comments on what it would take to become a climate expert was simply commentary on the scope of personal effort given the magnitude of articles to research. I didn't perceive anything anyone has said to be a challenge. The major theme of my reply was that I felt the focus was off kilter if CO2 was the sole focus.
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> > Climatology is a moving train to keep abreast of valid science-based research that presents findings without bias. I don't know if you are aware of the scandals throughout the scientific community as a whole regarding: falsified data, peer review which did no fact checking but simply read the abstract, excluding alternate POV reviewers in order expedite getting published. Without going into detail, I was trying to express that the debate is full of scandal and cheating so research can't be taken at face value-nor can the thousands of bloggs out there pro or con-- nor the media reports which attribute every unusual weather event as "global warming"--WRONG it is weather --not climate. I just saw an article by a "science writer" that said that 2012 broke several "climate" records when what she meant was "weather" records. This is lost on most of the public
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> > > From: fossrme fossrme@
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> > >> One caution to your volcano contribution disclaimer.  Modern times have not seen the volcanism of the Southwest US and Middle East  20Kybp, Nor the
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> > >C: It certainly would. We would be toast. From what I have read, that takes a while to get to full swing - thousands of years, so is not an immediate concern and as far as I know there are not any signs of it beginning now.
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> > >R: Actually-- within the past 5-6 years a rift vent opened in Ethiopia overnight as in less than 24 hours-- which was several dozen miles long(80?) and a portion of it immediately filled with magma/lava( 12miles±?). Nothing about this rift is different at the surface from the Triassic rift(190-200mybp) which extruded 1000± feet of basalt up an down the
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> > >Only in the past 10 years have we started inventorying underwater volcanoes and black smokers.
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> > >C: I don't have any data on emissions. I was referring to the information in the citation from Skeptical Science and something contained in the Plimer interview saying that it came from a recent USGS study, and that it included undersea emissions.R: Fair enough-- it is a moving train and I no longer keep up with the details like I used to--however we are finding more smoker fields weekly.
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> > >> I do stand corrected regarding my assessment that it "seems about right" Â and may I suggest that you'll wade through the several 10s of millions of articles on the net and decide which ones you believe or do not believe. Â
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> > >C: Ididn't challenge your statement. There is nothing wrong with saying "it seems about right", I do it all the time. If we can't make off the cuff WAGs during conversation what a bore it would be. But if I were writing an article making as controversial and argumentative a statement as Plimer did I would realize, as any reputable scientist does, that it should depend on facts that are presented at the time.
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> > >R: Agreed
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> > >Not that I would place any confidence in anyone's climate model, as so far there have been what 78(?) attempted Climate Prediction models and NONE of them has proved accurate when past climatological data was run back through them to check for validation. Some one pointed out that climate is not uniform and extreme highs and extreme lows of whatever is being measured make the scene look "average".  Super computers coming on line each day will help isolate regional climates forcing on adjacent and ultimately world climate.  Part of that will be identifying the true heat budget of the globe and how it moves about the environment.C:Good info. I'm wondering what you mean when you say none of the climate models has proved accurate. Accuracy is a matter of degree.
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> > >R: Ha Ha Punny...degrees--get it? Accuracy is more than "degrees" but well defined statistical measures on whether to accept or reject a model. What I mean is that no model so far has captured reality with enough "fit" to be endorsed as suitable for forecasting the future. Keep in mind that a 5% generic error this decade can become a 10% error -- just arithmetically but curves usually follow algebraically. No model captures the majority of the 60-70 plus known climate forcing cycles ( solar output, precession, wind and current migration etc.) And more are being discovered monthly. I am skeptical that any chart you've seen on model suitability isn't skullduggery. If you know the history of the first IPCC model used to predict Al Gore's figures was tweaked until it got the numbers the IPCC staffers wanted. The whole model was fiction used to back up a predetermined outcome. That is NOT a valid predictive model.
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> > >C: I've seen a graph comparing several model predictions with observed temperatures where they matched pretty well. Can you give us a rundown on that?
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> > >R: The last summation I recall (which was recent) was that none of the climate models fell within the confidence interval any better than chance. None of them predicted the cooling trend of the past 2 decades. See my original comment below.
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> > >> Water and methane have been more or less in balance because we are not adding them directly to the atmosphere in significant quantities, so they aren't causing much temperature change. It is the CO2 that is going up and as it increases it forces increases in these other gases which are multiplyers of the CO2 increases. If we stabilize the CO2 we stabilize the temperature.
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> > >R1: Humm seems like we are again focusing on CO2 and the point of my previous comments was that that way too simplistic. Somewhere in the bowels of academia is a study which showed CO2 levels to be several times today's levels yet the global temperature was lower than today. Again without understanding all the forcers and how they feedback, focus on CO2 alone is misplaced effort and If I may say so--wasted karma.
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> > >R2: We humans may not be but weather cycles are-- note droughts and variation in snowfall and hurricanes. (I think cattle are a major methane generator. I am not going to fact check cattle population changes) An expressed concern with rising ocean temperatures the methane hydrate deposits--which are held in place largely by pressure are there in a fragile balance and subject to sublimation.
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> > >I've no inclination to debate the "un-debatable"-- true unbiased research is buried in millions of pages of uninformed/parroted opinions so underpinning comments with "references" is futile more or less but I understand the obligation to do so If I were taking sides. Â I do know from my climate studies that CO2 in the environment doesn't behave simplistically like it does in the lab owing to unaccounted for feed backs/forcers. Â I've said before that we are only now getting the computing power to model the atmosphere GHGs--Of which water vapor and methane are far larger players than CO2. Â Once again is the issue stabilizing CO2 or is it stabilizing global temperatures and therefore climate specifically sea levels? Â Suppose we cut Atmospheric CO2 in half and we find ourselves under ice caps in 30 years or we find all the ice caps have still melted and
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> > >> Human selfish interests and skepticism over bad science have tainted the "effort" and nothing effective will be developed in the next 50 years which will control "CO2 levels". period. Â While plants are "greener" and temperate regions are greening more (pro) ocean acidification is endangering coral reef communities( some of us think)( con). Â I think the biggest threat finding solutions is the "tunnel vision focus"- on CO2 for it stifles finding out how it really behaves in the environment--not simply the atmosphere -or lab or in the computer etc. Â Take a simple survey with all the pro or con AGW proponents by asking them just what is the mechanism of the "green house effect" and 99% of them will give you a wrong answer. Â ( Hint 99% of CO2's heat conversion contribution is within 3 -4 meters of the ground). Â Oceanic CO2 is an almost entirely different player but owing to the exchange of gas to and from the hydrosphere it has to be factored in.
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> > Â This is one of the reasons one cannot make a one on one calculation of a heat gradient attributable to atmospheric CO2.>C: Why does the fact that heat conversion is within 3-4 meters of the gound mean it is not a problem? That process happens continually during the day and the hot air rises so there is a continual circulation of that heat through the atmosphere.
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> > >R: I didn't say it was or wasn't. I was illustrating a point.
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> > >C: What is the correct answer to the question of what it the mechanism for the greenhouse effect?R: I am sure it can be found on the net and I'll leave it to those who are so inclined to hit the science books. It would take more time than I have and others have covered the topic in more depth than I could.
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> > >> My next to final thought is do your own research on research--that after you give up your day job, pay $10's of thousands for journal subscriptions and devote 24/7 to sorting through the noise-- pro or con and then you can speak with bonafide authority.I can't speak with "bonafide" authority, on climate change but I know a little about it and can ask about things that don't make sense to me and point out the problems that I see. I'm trying to learn something. If you are going to take every question I have on what you say to be a challenge to your authority then we are going to have a rough time because I'm not going to stop. I don't have to agree with you - you are only one voice and there are many others with your credentials who have different opinions than yours. That is the nature of science.
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> > >R:I've not really expressed an opinion on climate change/global cooling/warming per se. I've only cautioned against believing that the science was settled. This has come to fruition as fraud and game play has been discovered, Much of the justification used in the original IPCC report has been found faked, fudged or outright wrong. We have in just ten years gone from Global Warming to Oops Climate Change now to Ahhh Global Cooling-- We might see and Ice Age return in 30 years. I don't know which if any will lay out in my life time. I do have a belief--I think that real science following scientific principles has taken a back seat to politics. I know that the EU has wholesale abandoned the Green Agenda owing to all the scandal and yet again there is major disruption to the energy infrastructure as the EU finds themselves pulling the plug on alternate energy after pulling the plug on fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. One result is that
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> > > I have tried to share some of the unresolved issues which make taking sides a bit like judging the
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> > outcome of movie before intermission. Ok I will make a prediction--all this climate debate will be overcome by intervening events which no model can anticipate and we will all here be dead by the time the debate plays out.
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> > >Eman
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> > >PS: That said--I am really up to my behind here in real life issues and I can't respond nor can I look through my files for citations on things I have mentioned. If it is important to anyone Google will have to be your research assistant. Best of Luck Choose wisely!
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