Featured Arctic Sea Ice Freefall is Mirror Image of Carbon Dioxide Ascent

Good questions Brother James. This is something I studied in graduate school and will try to explain.

First let me say I have no problem with a young earth. That is not a matter of science it is a matter of faith. If you believe in an all powerful God, and I do, then he could have made the earth yesterday if he wanted to, complete with tall trees that have rings if you cut them down and fully grown men and women with memories. IF he wanted to. Ultimately we have a choice of believing what he has revealed to us in the Bible or not. But as we look at the earth there is an apparent age we can measure through many sources.

With all of these sources the systematic error increases with time and there are assumptions that must be made. Carbon Dating, as many know, is problematic because it assumes a constant background radiation.

So how do we measure what the climate may have looked like hundreds of thousands of years ago? Obviously we were not there to take measurements. Climate scientists use many sources to estimate past conditions, or at least the record of past conditions that God has created for us. Two of these sources are marine sedimentation and ice cores.

Back in high school chemistry class you studied the Periodic Table of Elements. From that table you learned that Oxygen has an atomic weight of 16 (15.999 but who is counting). But the truth is that all Oxygen atoms are not O16. There are stable Oxygen isotopes that exist as O18 and O17. O17 is extremely rare, but O18 fairly common. Studies of sea water show that 1 out of every 499 molecules of water contains an O18 or deuterium atom instead of a regular 016 oxygen atom. Furthermore, as we heat water up or cool it down we can see that the ration of O16 to O18 follows a linear correlation to the temperature. As the average temperature of the oceans increases, for every degree C the amount of O18 increases about 0.7 parts per thousand. Using this ratio we can look at ice cores drilled in Antarctica and by measuring the O16 to O18 ratio in the water of each layer we can estimate the average temperature of the sea water that formed it. Remember, the ice was not formed from sea water, it was formed from rain or snow that fell on the surface of Antarctica. The water molecule first evaporated from the surface of the oceans so we can use the ratio to calculate the average temperature of the oceans.

Of course this does not happen with just the oxygen, it happens with the hydrogen also. Most of the Hydrogen atoms are normal H1 atoms, but a few are H2 or deuterium atoms. About 1 in every 6422 hydrogen atoms is a deuterium atom. As we raise the temperature of our sea water that ration increases just like the oxygen did (more heat, more energy, more different isotopes). As the average sea temperature raises the amount of H2 increases about 6 parts per million.

Going back to our ice core sample, we can measure the ration of H1 and H2 and use that to also calculate the average mean temperature of the oceans.

Then comes the exciting part. When we put our graphs of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes together, it matches!

Now ice core samples can take us back in history about 400,000 years. Prior to that we have to shift to ocean sediment cores. These can go back about twice as far as the ice cores, about 800,000 years. This gets a little more complex. Within the sediment layers we can find the calcite shells of micro organisms. Like shellfish, but tiny. Primarily we use singe cell eukaryotes that have shells and live deep in the ocean. Because these shells are formed in sea water, we can look at the H1/H2 and O16/O18 ratios inside those shells and can use that to estimate the average temperature of the sea water. Using the ocean sediment cores is not as reliable as the ice cores because there might be localized temperature changes, but the top 400,000 years of the ocean cores match the ice cores.

Of course as we move further and further back up the sediment record the reliability and variability increase so we cannot be as precise.

So that gives us the temperature record, so how do we correlate that to the CO2 level? Another great question. We can do it the same way, but instead of oxygen or hydrogen isotopes we have to look at carbon and strontium isotopes found in carbon deposits (old dead stuff). Because these isotopes are sensitive to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere we can develop a history of CO2 levels.

Again, the really interesting part comes when we put these two graphs together and we look at the CO2 level vs the Temperature and see the correlation.

I am not a global warming alarmist. But Crabby is correct when he states there is a correlation between global average temperatures and CO2 levels in our atmosphere. It is also true that the CO2 level in our atmosphere has gone up in the last 200 years and is at a historic high. As of January 9, 2014 it stands at 396.81 ppm. This is an increase from about 315 ppm in the late 1950s.

 

There is a lot of opinion on this thread and a lot of facts as well, but we need to keep in mind which are which.

Global warming does appear to be happening. Yes, the last 30 years may have leveled off, and perhaps we have plateaued out, but we are not going back down yet.

There is a connection between warming and co2 levels. Not necessarily cause and effect, but there does seem to be a connection.

Global warming, if it occurs, will have both good and bad effects. Looking at our historical climate changes, the little ice age and the medieval warming period, warm temperatures usually mean better conditions for a majority of the human race.

A 1-2 degree change in the average temperature does not mean much on most days. The difference between 67 and 69 is not much. But the difference between 31 and 33 is snow and ice vs rain. A change of just a degree or two changes the latitudes where crops and livestock can be economically raised. If the temperature raises and cropland in Texas gets too hot to grow corn, other land in Canada and Russia becomes farmable. Most studies show that an increase in the 1-3 degree range will increase world food production. An increase of 5 degrees or more would take that away.

The biggest thing with global warming, and this is the key behind the political push to control it, is that there will be a great shift in wealth from those who have it now to those who don’t. The medieval warming period made the Vikings masters of the sea. Sheep were raised on Greenland. Crops were grown in Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, in places where they cannot be grown today. The empires of the Middle East, in the lower latitudes failed, and the empires of northern Europe grew.

So if global warming occurs and if it occurs to the point we can observe it in our lifetimes the only real guarantee is change.

 

Another good question I skipped over with my earlier post, thanks James.

I am not really sure, that would take some major speculation on my part.

If the layers of stratification we see in the ice cores were not annual seasons of snow but were instead waves of a global flood freezing it would change it considerably. First of all, the change in isotopes we see would be impossible. Also, the ice would be salty, which it is not. The ice cores drilled in Antarctica are fresh water. The ice accumulates from precipitation, not flooding. Now if something caused the weather to change so that we had layers of ice due to something other than summer and winter seasons I guess that could alter our results.

One important thing to remember is that the sediment record on the sea floor matches the ice core data seasons of warmth and growth followed by seasons of cold and ice. According to the ice and sediment record we have been having seasons for a long time.

 

An expert on this subject will be speaking tomorrow night in the House. The common people, who are rabble and trash, will have to be continued to be attacked by the War on Coal and the demand for Ethanol, for example, which not only inflicts suffering on the poor but it makes the farmers richer and richer. We cannot allow drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico or on the federal lands west of the Mississippi. George Bush took steps to lower temperatures by abolishing the Edison light bulb, which the rabble and trash were still using. True, we will have to destroy what is left of our industrial economy in order to protect the universe and restore the Garden of Eden but it can be done if only the best and brightest, the most intellectual, are allowed to lead. If you went to the ivy league and your family has old money, you are a natural leader, assuming you have stopped your ears to the cries of the poor, who are rabble and trash, discarded by Europe, home of the educated and sophisticated. Yes, the expert on the subject will be speaking at length about this subject tomorrow night in the House.

 

It doesn't matter that the earth has warmed, (although who can tell since they claimed it was cooling in the 70's), it doesn't matter that c02 levels have changed. Climate changes it is an every day part of life.

Wealth will be re-distributed only if these dishonest nutcases get their way and are able to use this as an excuse to shift America's money to third world countries.

There is caring for this world and then there is worshiping it. The climate change agenda is born out of worship of the creation rather than the creator.

 

Exactly right! The Democrats have destroyed the middle class but they don't care. The War on Coal, Ethanol and its harmful effects on the environment, and the refusal to produce oil domestically have destroyed the middle class deliberately.

The global warming crowd should go to the Super Bowl just to prove that it is actually quite warm in their eyes.