Re: [asa] CO2 content

I think I found the fraud/massive error. The graph misidentifies the
early/mid Eocene boundary. It takes literally two data measurements at 52
mya and 51 mya and labels it after the mid Eocene boundary! While this graph
shows the years a graph that shows temperature only has the epoch labels.
The cooling referenced happens at 47 mya. Even though the timing is
separated by four million years by labelling both as the early/mid Eocene
boundary the author fraudulently claims a connection. In addition to this,
time for these measurements have up to 1.5 million year spread and the high
CO2 value of the "trend" has a 1300 ppm spread for CO2. In fact, the error
bars for time completely overlap so you cannot even say which one was
earlier than another.

Here's the "coincidence" that is being argued. PETM produces Azolla which
sequensters a whole lot of CO2 which in turn causes cooling. To refresh
people's memories here's the original graph:

http://picasaweb.google.com/rich.blinne/IcehouseTransistion/photo#5238856573398081538

I've include the graphs from two of the three studies referenced that give
CO2 estimates. Here's the timeline. First look at this:

http://picasaweb.google.com/rich.blinne/IcehouseTransistion/photo#5238856573154931234

See the error bars and see that the period before the 3500-->600 is anything
but flat.

PETM: 55.8 mya
The literally two-point trend (the climate change denier's friend): 51.02
mya (50.8 - 52.3) during the Eocene Optimum!
First glaciation?: 47 mya in the possible early mid Eocene Cooling

Did the CO2 go down and stay down as implied by the fraudulent graph? Nope.
See the following that was one of the refenced papers!

http://picasaweb.google.com/rich.blinne/IcehouseTransistion/photo#5238856576800539682

See how the CO2 goes down rougly linearly and then drops off like a cliff
along with temperature at 34 mya.

There was three papers mentioned in the presentation. What was the third?
Here's from the abstract:

*The transition from the extreme global warmth of the early Eocene
> 'greenhouse' climate [image: approx]55 million years ago to the present
> glaciated state is one of the most prominent changes in Earth's climatic
> evolution. It is widely accepted that large ice sheets first appeared on
> Antarctica [image: approx]34 million years ago, coincident with decreasing
> atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and a deepening of the calcite
> compensation depth in the world's oceans, and that glaciation in the
> Northern Hemisphere began much later, between 10 and 6 million years ago.
> *Here we present records of sediment and foraminiferal geochemistry
> covering the greenhouse–icehouse climate transition. We report evidence for
> synchronous deepening and subsequent oscillations in the calcite
> compensation depth in the tropical Pacific and South Atlantic oceans from [image:
> approx]42 million years ago, with a permanent deepening 34 million years
> ago. The most prominent variations in the calcite compensation depth
> coincide with changes in seawater oxygen isotope ratios of up to 1.5 per
> mil, suggesting a lowering of global sea level through significant storage
> of ice in both hemispheres by at least 100 to 125 metres. Variations in
> benthic carbon isotope ratios of up to [image: approx]1.4 per mil occurred
> at the same time, indicating large changes in carbon cycling. *We suggest
> that the greenhouse–icehouse transition was closely coupled to the evolution
> of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and that negative carbon cycle feedbacks may
> have prevented the permanent establishment of large ice sheets earlier than
> 34 million years ago.*
>

So, we have a coincidence for a probable cause and effect separated by
roughly 22 million years between PETM and the *real* greenhouse/icehouse
transition. Yeah, right. Oh I forgot. The graph shows the Miocene having
concentrations well over 600 ppm when they never went over 500 ppm.

Rich Blinne
Member ASA

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 7:31 AM, j burg <hossradbourne@gmail.com> wrote:

> The gentleman who sent the graph to me stands by it. He adds these
> additional comments:
>
> "The graph is from that Azolla presentation. ... you can find the
> original at the link on the
> bottom of http://www.hgs.org/en/cev/838
>
> Slide 80 (where the graph is from) has 3 other sources. I suspect that
> the bottom of the
> picture cropped off the other sources which are listed on slide 80. The
> presentation is quite interesting and shows that feed back loops will
> eventually remove the CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere. Our change is
> a pimple in a small hole."
>
> Burgy
>
>
> On 8/25/08, David Campbell <pleuronaia@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The other big problem with the claim is that it's not any particular
> > CO2 level, temperature, etc. that is ideal. The problem of modern
> > global warming and associated changes is that they are happening too
> > fast for many organisms to keep up, and also fall into that
> > inconvenient interval for humans of too slow to be immediately obvious
> > but fast enough that it will affect us over periods of years to
> > decades. CO2 levels have been higher in the past. Crocodiles have
> > lived in the Canadian Arctic at a similar latitude to its present
> > position. We aren't prepared to have crocodiles in Churchill, and
> > neither are the crocodiles, polar bears, Inuit, etc.
> >
> > Higher global temperatures would probably in the long term produce
> > more warm, shallow seas and thus a higher diversity of mollusks, which
> > sounds good to me. However, it takes several million years for the
> > biological diversity to reach a new equilibrium level after a
> > disturbance.
> >
> > --
> > Dr. David Campbell
> > 425 Scientific Collections
> > University of Alabama
> > "I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
> >
> > To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
> > "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
> >
>
>
> --
> Burgy
>
> www.burgy.50megs.com
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
> "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
>

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Received on Tue Aug 26 14:01:15 2008