Climate deniers' excuses falling apart

Comparison of two sea level reconstructions during the last 500 Ma. The scale of change during the last glacial/interglacial transition is indicated with a black bar. Note that over most of geologic history long-term average sea level has been significantly higher than today.

Sea level has changed over geologic time. As the graph shows, sea level today is very near the lowest level ever attained (the lowest level occurred at the Permian-Triassic boundary about 250 million years ago).

During the most recent ice age (at its maximum about 20,000 years ago) the world's sea level was about 130 m lower than today, due to the large amount of sea water that had evaporated and been deposited as snow and ice, mostly in the Laurentide ice sheet. Most of this had melted by about 10,000 years ago.

Hundreds of similar glacial cycles have occurred throughout the Earth's history. Geologists who study the positions of coastal sediment deposits through time have noted dozens of similar basinward shifts of shorelines associated with a later recovery. This results in sedimentary cycles which in some cases can be correlated around the world with great confidence. This relatively new branch of geological science linking eustatic sea level to sedimentary deposits is called sequence stratigraphy.

The most up-to-date chronology of sea level change through the Phanerozoic shows the following long-term trends:

·        Gradually rising sea level through the Cambrian

·        Relatively stable sea level in the Ordovician, with a large drop associated with the end-Ordovician glaciation

·        Relative stability at the lower level during the Silurian

·        A gradual fall through the Devonian, continuing through the Mississippian to long-term low at the Mississippian/Pennsylvanian boundary

·        A gradual rise until the start of the Permian, followed by a gentle decrease lasting until the Mesozoic.

Recent changes

For at least the last 100 years, sea level has been rising at an average rate of about 1.8 mm (0.1 in) per year.[14] Most of this rise can be attributed to the increase in temperature of the sea and the resulting slight thermal expansion of the upper 500 metres (1,640 feet) of sea water. Additional contributions, as much as one-quarter of the total, come from water sources on land, such as melting snow and glaciers and extraction of groundwater for irrigation and other agricultural and human needs.

Graph from NASA: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/

Lemmings will be lemmings. If this was 1970 they would believe in the coming ice age. The intellegentia that lead fellows like Poie and Basque also believed in:

1 Lobotomy

2 That eating pasta was the way to go to prevent heart disease

3 Dramatic cooling was inevitable

4 Internet stocks were fairly valued in 99

5 Ulcers were caused by diet

6 You could group mortgages in a bundle and didn't need to look at the undelying risks....just before the great crash of 2009.

7 All Arctic Ice would be gone by 2015

8 Hurricane seasons would get dramatically worse by 2010

9 That greater sun activity....the only thing that separates us from the minus 270 degrees Centigrade 100 kms above us...has  an effect of temperatures that can be ignored.

10 And now, with global warming absent to all intents and purposes for 30 years....that the missing heat is hahahahahahahaha....hiding in the oceans.

In every case the lemmings followed them over the cliff. Why would one want to be a lemming?

 Here is an example of some excellent early work by Lemmings....spotting the planet Vulcan.

"Vulcan was a planet that nineteenth century scientists believed to exist somewhere between Mercury and the Sun. The mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier first proposed its existence after he and many other scientists were unable to explain certain peculiarities about Mercury’s orbit. Scientists like Le Verrier argued that this had to be caused by some object, like a small planet or moon, acting as a gravitational force. La Verrier called his hypothetical planet Vulcan, after the Roman god of fire. Soon, amateur astronomers around Europe, eager to be a part of a scientific discovery, contacted Le Verrier and claimed to have witnessed the mysterious planet making its transit around the Sun . For years afterward, Vulcan sightings continued to pour in from around the globe, and when La Verrier died in 1877, he was still regarded as having discovered a new planet in the solar system."

·        Changes in Earth's atmosphere

There is considerable evidence that over the very recent period of the last 100–1000 years, the sharp increases in human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, has caused the parallel sharp and accelerating increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases which trap the sun's heat. The consensus theory of the scientific community is that the resulting greenhouse effect is a principal cause of the increase in global warming which has occurred over the same period, and a chief contributor to the accelerated melting of the remaining glaciers and polar ice. A 2012 investigation finds that dinosaurs released methane through digestion in a similar amount to humanity's current methane release, which "could have been a key factor" to the very warm climate 150 million years ago.[43]

There is evidence that greenhouse gas levels fell at the start of ice ages and rose during the retreat of the ice sheets, but it is difficult to establish cause and effect (see the notes above on the role of weathering). Greenhouse gas levels may also have been affected by other factors which have been proposed as causes of ice ages, such as the movement of continents and volcanism.

The Snowball Earth hypothesis maintains that the severe freezing in the late Proterozoic was ended by an increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere, and some supporters of Snowball Earth argue that it was caused by a reduction in atmospheric CO2. The hypothesis also warns of future Snowball Earths.

In 2009, further evidence was provided that changes in solar insolation provide the initial trigger for the earth to warm after an Ice Age, with secondary factors like increases in greenhouse gases accounting for the magnitude of the change.[44]

William Ruddiman has proposed the early anthropocene hypothesis, according to which the anthropocene era, as some people call the most recent period in the earth's history when the activities of the human species first began to have a significant global impact on the earth's climate and ecosystems, did not begin in the 18th century with the advent of the Industrial Era, but dates back to 8,000 years ago, due to intense farming activities of our early agrarian ancestors. It was at that time that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations stopped following the periodic pattern of the Milankovitch cycles. In his overdue-glaciation hypothesis Ruddiman states that an incipient glacial would probably have begun several thousand years ago, but the arrival of that scheduled glacial was forestalled by the activities of early farmers.[45]

At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (December 17, 2008), scientists detailed evidence in support of the controversial idea that the introduction of large-scale rice agriculture in Asia, coupled with extensive deforestation in Europe began to alter world climate by pumping significant amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the last 1,000 years. In turn, a warmer atmosphere heated the oceans making them much less efficient storehouses of carbon dioxide and reinforcing global warming, possibly forestalling the onset of a new glacial age.[46]

·        Position of the continents

The geological record appears to show that ice ages start when the continents are in positions which block or reduce the flow of warm water from the equator to the poles and thus allow ice sheets to form. The ice sheets increase Earth's reflectivity and thus reduce the absorption of solar radiation. With less radiation absorbed the atmosphere cools; the cooling allows the ice sheets to grow, which further increases reflectivity in a positive feedback loop. The ice age continues until the reduction in weathering causes an increase in the greenhouse effect.

There are three known configurations of the continents which block or reduce the flow of warm water from the equator to the poles:[citation needed]

·        A continent sits on top of a pole, as Antarctica does today.

·        A polar sea is almost land-locked, as the Arctic Ocean is today.

·        A supercontinent covers most of the equator, as Rodinia did during the Cryogenian period.

Since today's Earth has a continent over the South Pole and an almost land-locked ocean over the North Pole, geologists believe that Earth will continue to experience glacial periods in the geologically near future.

Some scientists believe that the Himalayas are a major factor in the current ice age, because these mountains have increased Earth's total rainfall and therefore the rate at which carbon dioxide is washed out of the atmosphere, decreasing the greenhouse effect.[42] The Himalayas' formation started about 70 million years ago when the Indo-Australian Plate collided with the Eurasian Plate, and the Himalayas are still rising by about 5 mm per year because the Indo-Australian plate is still moving at 67 mm/year. The history of the Himalayas broadly fits the long-term decrease in Earth's average temperature since the mid-Eocene, 40 million years ago.

·        Fluctuations in ocean currents

Another important contribution to ancient climate regimes is the variation of ocean currents, which are modified by continent position, sea levels and salinity, as well as other factors. They have the ability to cool (e.g. aiding the creation of Antarctic ice) and the ability to warm (e.g. giving the British Isles a temperate as opposed to a boreal climate). The closing of the Isthmus of Panama about million years ago may have ushered in the present period of strong glaciation over North America by ending the exchange of water between the tropical Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.[47]

The catatastrophe when it comes, will be because of lack of oil...not because we have oil to burn. We are totally, utterly dependent on oil with our vast human edifice hooked on mechanised farming.

The notion that we could cut back is naive in the extreme. The best we can hope for is efficiencies and some sensible conservation, which I totally support.

But so far we mostly have energy negative "good fuel" projects that line the pockets of clever exploiters of nutters like Basque.

1. The Basque Country in Spain or SouthernBasque Country (Spanish: País Vasco y Navarra, Basque: Hegoalde) includes two main regions: the Basque Autonomous Community (capital: Vitoria-Gasteiz) and the Chartered Commu nity of Navarre (capital:Pamplona).

1. The Basque Country in Spain or SouthernBasque Country (Spanish: País Vasco y Navarra, Basque: Hegoalde) includes two main regions: the Basque Autonomous Community (capital: Vitoria-Gasteiz) and the Chartered Commu nity of Navarre (capital:Pamplona).

We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads,
on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.

In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/ reflecting heat source.

It would appear that these oaks are almost as dishonest as evolution hoaxers!!

Its really disgusting how folk try to win arguments with lies!

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Climate always changes you dope.....or did you think it was all a flat line?

"Damn we are dropping like flies, if only it would get a little warmer"