The Point of No Return

http://bblmedia.com/sports/extreme_photorgapher_grand_canyon_jump.html

?Hans van de Vorst photo

Scientific American asks :

How Much Global Warming Is Guaranteed Even If We Stopped Building Coal-Fired Power Plants Today? ….

we are rapidly approaching a point of no return, cautions climate modeler Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University

Sounds scary. But the geologic record provides no support for his claim. During the late Ordovician, CO2 levels were 10X current values, and there was an ice age.

http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-18/dioxide_files/image002.gif

The real point of no return is when you can’t see past your own unsupportable belief system.



About Tony Heller

Just having fun
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7 Responses to The Point of No Return

  1. dorlomin says:

    But the geologic record provides no support for his claim. During the late Ordovician, CO2 levels were 10X current values, and there was an ice age.
    = = = = == = = =
    This has been explained to you before. The sun is producing more energy now. If you refuse to understand this or at least acknowledge it, it will remain an easy means of questioning your knowledge of the subject and even honesty to third parties.

    As you proclaim ourself a scientist you will not need to be told why but for the casual reader the physics is simple. The rate a star burns hydrogen is largely a function of the density of the core. As a star ages it burns hydrogen into helium and helium is much more dense than hydrogen so the stars rate of burning increases.

    As we go back through the past 540 million years we need an increasing greenhouse effect to prevent the earth from falling into a deep ice age.

    Why this graph is presented without this additional information will be for the author to explain.

  2. Mike says:

    The photograph you posted at the top of this entry is © Hans van de Vorst.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/hansvandevorst/216200392/in/set-72157594222213140/

    He’d probably appreciate the courtesy of a link and request for permission to republish his work.

    Mike

  3. Leon Brozyna says:

    Of course I tuned out when I got to the words “climate modeler”.

    A word about computer models/simulations.

    A few years ago I read a piece about the value of computer models/simulations by a person in the computer chips manufacturing business, where the models were fairly simple, involving what might happen in a closed system (chip manufacturing). Even there, where all the variables were known and controlled, he had written that the models were wrong about half the time.

    So, if a simple model for a closed system is barely better than a crap shoot, what does that say about attempts to model an open, wildly chaotic system such as the climate?

  4. Phil's Dad says:

    The last interglacial (Eemian) was about 5 C warmer than today – up to 8 C warmer at the poles. (Similar Sun factor to today Mr Dorlomin). That’s at the extream outside of predictions for AGW. But no run-away tipping point, no point of no return.

    In fact no such point ever.
    Not with higher temperatures.
    Not with higher CO2.
    Never.

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