Sorry, I'm going to have to call "Bullshit" on this one for a couple of reasons. First just a minor one about heat vs. radiation. The sun's surface is currently approximately 5780K. A cursory google readily provides us with a 4.5 billion year increase of 300K (science's best guess - they could, of course be wrong). This is an increase of about 5%. From the birth of the sun.
OK, that was sloppy language use on my part. I am trying to balance accuracy and accessibility and making mistakes as I do so. I should have said total solar irradiance (TSI) which is now about 30% greater than it was 4.5 billion years ago (and here). Taken from the "birth of the Sun" - "Very roughly, the total insolation change over the Sun's approximately 8 billion years on the main sequence will be from about 75% of current to about 135% of current."quoting Raimund Muscheler For the full explanation and range see his article.
However, he seems to also be suggesting that the increase is uniform. It's not. Scientists have shown that the sun's output changes in cycles. And we've been in a warm up phase.
Yes there are cycles, but those cycles occur against a background of steady increase as per the reference above.
It also has Earth's oceans boiling away several times afterward due to impacts from giant comets.
Totally boiled away? reference please ... particularly when
We had a decent number of ice ages since then - many of which have frozen or nearly frozen the earth's oceans solid.
The oceans were totally frozen? really? as with the comets, please provide geological dates and your reference please.
Of course multi-cellular life did not evolve until about 1.1 billion years ago and the early primitive prokaryotes and other life forms were pretty hardy, but even so the oceans totally boiling away in that time seems a bit extreme.
If we are looking at overall geological temperatures being colder in the ancient past, it could easily be postulated that average geological temperatures WERE colder back then.
No, they were hotter even though TSI was much lower. "In fact temperatures were probably very high, over 70 degrees C (158 degrees F), until some 2.7 billion years ago." Yes there were cycles, but again they occur against a background trend of cooling up until quite recently.
Today's climate is NOT based on a gradual, linear increase of solar radiation over 4 billion years.
Obviously, in fact the climate has been cooling despite that increase.
That would be equivalent to predicting tomorrows weather based on the trends from 50 million years ago.
Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you really not understand that there are overall long term trends as well as short term variation? For example, as I age my body is gradually but surely deteriorating even though during periods when I make an effort to exercise, eat well, etc. my general health improves. No matter how ardently I pursue good habits the background progressive deterioration will continue. The opposite occurs when I am ill, ie the short term rate of deterioration excedes the background rate.
If we choose to look at the time Dinosaurs came into being ... primary solar heating is negligible.
i) the point is the total change over time, not the incremental changes. For e.g. I can lose 100 ml of my blood and it will not affect me in any significant way. If I lose 100 ml/hr (about half a gallon/day) it will not be long before I am dead.
ii) "negligable" is contextual. On the scale of the Sun "negligable" can be huge from our perspective.
iii) the whole point was given within the context of your claim that the fact that Mars is warming was somehow evidence that anthropogenic climate change could not be a result of CO2 increases in the atmosphere. My response was that yes Mars is warming and has been all along because the the TSI is increasing, but over the same time (4 billion years) earth has been cooling.
My points stand and the incremental argument is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant.
This is a big sticking point with even mainstream climatologists. ... and never did - adequately predict cloud cover.
True up to a point. It is certainly true that cloud cover is one of the uncertainties involved in climate modeling hence the models all will offer a range of predictions based on different assumptions. Not simply predictions about cloud cover, but for other variables as well,. So this is covered by the models even if there is no precise prediction.
Note there is a difference between precise and accurate. To say that I will die some day is accurate, but not precise. To say that I died at 21:37:53 on Dec 12th 1924 is extremely precise, and completely inaccurate. Mr MacIntyre seems to be asking for precision, I favour accuracy.
Note also that a cloud cover density sufficient to compensate for climate change is enough to create a global catastrophe of a slightly different sort due to the collapse of the biosphere.
I was SO tempted to leave Hermann's "98% CO2" figure as it stood
As you should have ... Of course the original atmosphere was primarily helium and hydrogen, and the second atmosphere of about 4.5 billion years ago was almost completely CO2 just as Venus' current atmosphere is 96.5% CO2. As Venus never evolved life there has been no biosphere to remove the carbon.
(the actual temperature at the time we are looking at was 30K cooler - the difference between then and now is, of course, due to solar radiation increases).
As explained and documented above this is simply false.
Of course, The earth's primordial atmosphere was not likely 98% CO2. ... So how much CO2 WAS in the atmosphere? No one knows.
No one "knows" , but as explained and documented above we have a pretty good idea. Ninety eight? ninety six? ninety two? I'm not going to argue; anything remotely near the reasonable limits of uncertainty still supports my point.
The problem with this ... it has, in fact, been the other way around. Changes in temperature have historically led to increases in levels of carbon dioxide.
Why do you not reference any of your wild claims? Could it be that the reference for this particular piece of nonsense is actually the Sunday Telegraph oh, circa Nov 5th 2006? Either reference your claim with a valid scientific source, or acknowledge that is it total and utter, as you put it so nicely, "Bullshit".
Somehow Climate scientists have forgotten that correlation is NOT equivalent to causation and basic scientific principals like rigorous testing, the value of skepticism and the necessity of attempting to fully evaluate all alternatives until hard proof - not scientific consensus - removes all cause for doubt.
And what do you suppose caused this mysterious, simultaneous failure among scientists worldwide? Elvis? Aliens? A second shooter on the grassy knoll? A conspiracy of the Elders of Zion? The Illuminati?
Or could it be that they did not forget anything, that they pursued their work with all their usual standards and rigour in their research facilities all over the world, that there is no mysterious, coordinated failure?
Could it actually be that the problem is that a lone journalist with pretensions to competence publishing in a Fleet St tabloid might be wrong? Could that possibly be it?
Talk about "theories with problems" ... the "conspiracy of climatologists" beats anything I have heard yet.
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I wouldn't waste my time, unless of course you are trying to drum up site visits. Then comment away!
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