While Bishop Hill and Climate Audit have this week been nitpicking over the police statement released after bringing the investigation into the hacking of the Climategate emails to a close, and Chiefio otherwise pre-occupied, at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/21/some-thoughts-on-radiative-transfe… … there is a guest post by Reed Coray who explores the idea of co2 in the atmosphere and what might be happening as far as temperature is concerned. The models, and the supporting data, are saying temperatures are increasing – because it must increase as that is what co2 and methane do when levels in the atmosphere increase, as they know that energy that would usually escape into space is absorbed by those molecules, thus heating the atmosphere. Coray has a novel angle – he compares the atmosphere with a car engine where heat builds up on the surface of the metal casing etc.
At http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/21/ocean-seawater-chemistry-linked-wi… … is a report from the Universityh of Toronto with the title, 'Scientists connect seawater chemistry with climate change and evolution' … which is not content with one big smack but tries to glue another one to the masthead. Nice if you can manage it but as always, lots of assumptions from starters. It begins with the idea there has been a genuine cooling trend over the last 45 million years. This is derived from the fact it was warmer at the Poles, much warmer, than it is today – prior to 45 million years ago (and for some time afterwards, hence the cooling trend). Another take on this might be that the Poles have been moving away from the warmth over 45 million years – eventually reaching their current position. However, even continental drift appears to have been abandoned and something else must be to blame. The researchers have plumped for the collision that brought India into contact with Asia, which is thought to have involved the uplift of the Himalayas (among other things). This collision, in turn, it thought to have resulted in enhanced dissolution of water soluble gypsum, a belt of which lies between Oman and Pakistan, some of which is exposed in the Zagros Mountains. This system, it is proposed, changed the sulfate content of the oceans and in turn affected the amount of sulfate concentrations in ocean water and this, it claims, correlates with global cooling, and likewise they say times of low concentration appear to correspond with greenhouse periods. In other words, they are blaming a gypsum layer in land to the north of the Indian Ocean not just for a cooling event but a gradual cooling event over millions of years that progressively got worser still and in the end caused the Ice Ages – and influenced even evolution of species globally. A bit ambitious in the extreme. The data was sifted and did throw up one interesting finding – the ocean record is characterised by long phases of stasis punctuated by short intervals of rapid change. Sounds catastrophic – or along those lines.
At http://notrickszone.com/2012/07/21/french-study-mediterranean-storm-acti… … is also somewhat strained as it pulls a lot of palaeo-climate data together and assumes Bond cycles are real and that sort of thing. The Mediterranean basin is famous for its squalls but it seems in warmer periods, such as the modern one, they are few and far between – but in the Little Ice Age there was a lot of stormy weather there. The proof of the pudding shoul be in the present when solar activity has slowed – but the paper is more concerned with earlier cooling events of the Holocene when it is assumed the Sun was quiet as that is what is said to cause the Bond events per the consensus view. The fact that these cooling events cluster at low tree ring growth events prior to 3000BC and between 2400 and 2000BC says it all – what caused those events is still open to question. Low solar activity is one option of several.