Re: When London is submerged and New York is awash...

From: Guy Macon (_see.web.page__at__www.guymacon.com_)
Date: 01/14/05 

Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 11:10:57 +0000

John Larkin wrote:

>If you were to take some nice measurable parameter, say mean world
>temperature or percent surface glaciation or sea level or something
>like that, and graph it over the last million years maybe, the
>variations would be stunning. I'd think that covering half of North
>America with glaciers for a few millenia qualifies as "climate" as
>opposed to "weather." We even had a mini-ice-age around 1700.
>
>Thinking of such a measurable parameter as a signal, there's no
>distinction between weather and climate but the observer's time scale.
>The overall signal is noisy and chaotic, perhaps fractal on time,
>perhaps having numerous periodicities.
>
>It's obvious that the predictability of weather drops radically with
>the prediction time, hitting zero in something like a week or so. You
>conjecture that predictability somehow returns at longer time scales.
>That sort if thing is certainly possible, but it assumes a signal that
>has high-frequency noise but predictable slow behavior; I don't think
>the geological record indicates anything like that. I also don't trust
>dynamic simulations of chaotic systems that are untested and
>untestable and politically divisive.

Add to the above the fact that the solution proposed just happens
to be less capitalism and more government control, then add the
general attitude of the Global Warming True Believers - very much
like the attitude of religious zealots fighting heretics, and it
becomes pretty obvious what is going on.

>So, tell me, what caused the mini ice age? What caused the *big* ice
>ages? What would be the natural trend NOW without human effects? Is
>the conjectured human-caused warming aiding or bucking the natural
>trend?

Well, since you asked...

Climate change is mostly controlled by variations in the sun's
energy output and by cyclical eccentricities in Earth's rotation
and orbit.

"Greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere also influence Climate change
but in a much smaller way. Human additions to total greenhouse
gases play a still smaller role.

Major Causes of Global Temperature Shifts:

Astronomical Causes:

11 year and 206 year cycles: Cycles of solar variability.
Variations in sun activity are generally proportional
to both variations in atmospheric CO2 and atmospheric
temperature.

21,000 year cycle: Earth's combined tilt and elliptical
orbit around the Sun ( precession of the equinoxes )

41,000 year cycle: Cycle of the +/- 1.5° wobble in
Earth's orbit ( tilt )

100,000 year cycle: Variations in the shape of Earth's
elliptical orbit ( cycle of eccentricity )

 
Tectonic Causes:

Landmass distribution: Shifting continents (continental drift)
causing changes in circulatory patterns of ocean currents.
It seems that whenever there is a large land mass at one of
the Earth's poles, either the north pole or south pole,
there are ice ages.

Undersea ridge activity: "Sea floor spreading" (associated
with continental drift) causing variations in ocean
displacement.

Atmospheric Causes:

Solar reflectivity: Due to white clouds, volcanic dust,
polar ice caps

Heat retention: Due to atmospheric gases, mostly gaseous
water vapor (not droplets), also carbon dioxide, methane,
and a few other miscellaneous gases -- the "greenhouse effect"
 
CO2 in our atmosphere has been increasing steadily for the
last 18,000 years -- long before humans invented smokestacks.
Unless you count campfires and intestinal gas, man played
no role in the pre-industrial increases.

CO2 concentrations in earth's atmosphere move with
temperature. Both temperatures and CO2 have been steadily
increasing for 18,000 years. Earth's temperature and CO2
levels today have reached levels similar to a previous
interglacial cycle of 120,000 - 140,000 years ago. From
beginning to end this cycle lasted about 20,000 years.
This is known as the Eemian Interglacial Period and
the earth returned to a full-fledged ice age immediately
afterward.
 
Total human contributions to greenhouse gases account for
only about 0.28% of the "greenhouse effect." . Anthropogenic
(man-made) carbon dioxide (CO2) comprises about 0.117% of
this total, and man-made sources of other gases ( methane,
nitrous oxide (NOX), other misc. gases) contributes another
0.163%.

Approximately 99.72% of the "greenhouse effect" is due
to natural causes -- mostly water vapor and traces of other
gases, which we can do nothing at all about. Eliminating
human activity altogether would have little impact on
climate change.
 
Source:
Global Warming: A Chilling Perspective
A Brief History of Ice Ages and Warming
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

Also see:
http://www.junkscience.com/news/jonker.htm

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