Isotope issues on palaeo climate and carbon dating

[Andre]

The current understanding of palaeo climate is fundamental for the current views on climate mechanism. One important part in that is using the stable isotope ratios, mainly of 18O and 2H or deuterium. We have registered those in the ice cores of Greenland and Artarctica as well as in the oceanic sediment cores and we think we have a valid palaeo thermometer.

However, I think we have a good reason to start all over again about climate. I stumbled upon some overwhelming evidence that ice core isotopes tell a different story.

Any climatologists, quartenary specialists, glaciologists (oceanologists) out there or anybody else of course interested in a discussion?

Looking for peer reviewers.

 

[Andre]

Last week some climate issues have been brought to the attention. So Nereid asked me about palaeo climate. A good incentive to have a look into that area again. I have made some pertinent statements and I think it may be time again to explain why.

Basically I think that we over estimate our knowledge about palaeclimate and palaeo temperatures. To show that I would like to compare the history of carbon dating to the history of climate and isotope proxies, to pint out some remarkable differences in very similar processes

This for instance, is this true?
http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/graphics/large/2.jpg

What makes it that we put a temperature scale on the Y-axis of the lower graph? The simple assumption that isotopes are temperature. Okay some corrections account for local effects but the main idea is that the ratio of heavy and light atoms is mainly dependant on temperature. In this case here the temperature scale is an assumption based upon the ratio of normal hydrogen (H) and heavy hydrogen atoms (Deuterium - D), in the ice of the Vostok ice cores. The ratio is also indicated as “dD” or also “d2H”. So most of the time you find this graph with “dD”on the Y-axis. At least that’s correct.

Now here the carbon dating comes in, since carbon dating is also playing with isotopes, but what a problems it encountered. So let me explain first and then compare it to palaeo thermometry.

Carbon dating was developed in the 1950, here is how it http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/archaeology/carbondating_1.shtml . Just heavy radioactive 14C atoms that are produced in the air and that decay again with a half time of some 5700 years (normal –light- carbon is 12C). Live tissue has the same heavy 14C – 12C carbon ratio as the air, while dead tissue starts to loose the 14C, and the 14C – 12C ratio decreases. this can be used measuring it’s age.

In the early days, it was as simple as that. Just have a radioactivity geiger counter, count the ticks, assume that it is decaying 14C that you count. Do the math and there you are, the age of the thing. Well, in fact, the calculation brought anything but the correct age because numerous complications have been neglected. The large errors were mostly attributed to sample contamination but this is something that really doesn’t happen that often.

So what are the real problems exactly?
- radioactive noise
- Variation of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air, depending on the activity of sources and sinks with it’s own fractionation characterises, producing or reducing carbon dioxide concentration depleted of heavy isotopes or even enriched with heavy isotopes.
- Variation of radiogenic production of heavy 14C. The more cosmic activity, the more 14C
- The fractionation of heavy atoms during the growing of that particular tissue. Photo synthetic processes, predating and digestive processes, air breathing, or underwater elements etc. But these fractionation processes are equally dependant on temperature and relative humidity as the dD in Vostok ice cores.

These problems have been exposed numerous times by erratic results so they have been addressed in the recent past, finally resulting in more or less adequate solutions.

radioactive noise: counting 14C nowadays is done with a mass spectrometer, not with radioactivity anymore, just like all the other isotope counting procedures, a tremendous improvement.

Variation of carbon dioxide and all the processes that change the 14C concentration in the air are now adjusted by a calibration table that has been build by comparing carbon age with annual layer counting, annual layers of tree rings (dendrochronology) ice cores layers and lake sedimentation layers (varves). Differences up to 2500 years are normal in the ice age period.

Variation due fractionation processes with all its variables are dealt with by also counting the stable moderate heavy 13C atoms. As the 13C-12C ratio tells something about the fractionation of heavier 14C atoms, we can adjust the assumption of the original 14C ratio, just by multiplying 13C fractionation differences by 2. The 13C ratio (d13C) in a specific time frame could be derived from the CO2 in the ice cores, but I don’t think that we are that far yet, so for the moment I think we still assume a constant d13C for the CO2 in the air.

Since carbon dating is a very important instrument for basic dating we have put a lot of effort in correcting for all the errors, we could think of. Finally, we have a system with a reasonable degree of accuracy and trustworthiness.

Isotope Paleo thermometry is still in the 1950’s of the carbon dating. Isotope ratios = temperature, it’s as simple as that. We assume a basic ratio of the source like standard sea water (SMOW) and we assume basic fractionation processes like evaporating and condensing. We are not triggered to look into more detail of these processes, since the ice cores seem to reflect exactly what we think we know about palaeo climates of the ice age (unaware of many circular reasonings). So obviously there seem to be no errors that would trigger us to investigate the problems of variation of isotope ratios of sources and variations and complications of fractionation processes. So why make it more complicated? Unfortunately Occams Razor does not work that way and we have miles to go before we sleep. The bottom graph is wrong, we do not see temperatures, we see isotopes as a result of many processes, nothing more, no climate.

 

[Andre]

I think that this thread would have a more accurate place under one of the Phylosophy threads, I post here since this is where you would expect global warming talk.

Anyway, after scolding Björn Lomborg for some refreshing thoughts, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law]Godwin's[/PLAIN] law has been applied once more to global warming:

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=52&id=512592005

THE advance of global warming is a greater threat than was the rise of Hitler in the 1940s,...cont´d

I tend to agree. It is. The cool and objective scientific way of thinking is quickly replaced by terror of fear, the scientific method is replaced by consensus and prediction models. Those who are reluctant to accept that, are pushed into the public enemy nr1 corner, the Exxon lobby. This used to be called a `witch hunt`. So where communism failed to bring the big brother culture (1984) global warming appears to get successful in killing free thoughts and that may well be the worst that could happen to mankind. So he is right, indeed:

THE advance of global warming is a greater threat than was the rise of Hitler in the 1940s

 

[Andre]

If you happen to be around and don't mind a little Dutch you could peek at:

http://www.wesselknoops.nl

and go sub "lezingen" in the left hand panel (no hot downlink here, I'm afraid).

Now this more or less translates to:

Abstract of the presentation on Tuesday 12 September 2006

The extinction of the mammoth and the Clathrate canon

Andre Bijkerk and Dick Mol

After about two centuries of research and study, our ignorance about the climate of the ice ages, mammoths and extinctions has been elevated to substantial higher levels. Many steps have been made, but what is the right direction? However, when the collection of riddles merely increases, it could be useful to go back to the beginning and start again following new road signs, which were not available for the pioneers of the paleoclimate research.

The end of the Pleistocene Ice ages about 10,000 years ago corresponds with large-scale extinctions of mega fauna species of the Northern Hemisphere. Amongst these, woolly rhinos, mastodonts, cave bears, steppe lion but especially the woolly mammoth, with the dubious honor of being the poster child victim. Rather than over hunting, it’s the climate change, which is increasingly associated as being causal for these events. Despite its high visibility, the link with climate changes appears to be a posteriori and it’s very rare event that these animals appear in paleoclimate publications about the termination of the ice ages of the Pleistocene. We intend to rectify this omission.

The biotope of the megafauna towards the end of the last ice ages is a dry, likely cold steppe that extended over large parts of the northern hemisphere, including Europe, North Siberia, Alaska and the present United States. Rather than large temperature changes it appears that startling precipitation changes transformed the extensive mammoth steppes into marshes and swamps, completely unfit for large grazers. The demise of the biotope often implied the extinction of the species.

We attempt to replicate the dramatic event and we demonstrate that the large scale precipitation changes can be related to large shifts in oceanic flow patterns. We investigate if these could have been related to the destabilization of two huge methane hydrate fields on the ocean floor, the (double barreled) Clathrate gun. The evidence suggests that such a scenario could be feasible.

Since our hypothesis challenges current paradigms it requires a thorough analysis of weak and strong points and we encounter several contradictions and shortcomings. In short when we walk the paths again but now with mammoths on the road signs we appear to progress much further.

Non calor sed umor, it’s not the heat it’s the humidity

 

[Andre]

That's tonite. Reason why I have to postpone long postings for a while, rehearsing the presentation.

See:

http://www.wesselknoops.nl/

the abstract:

http://www.wesselknoops.nl/wk_lezingen.htm

and the translation:

The extinction of the mammoth and the Clathrate canon

Andre Bijkerk and Dick Mol

After about two centuries of research and study, our ignorance about the climate of the ice ages, mammoths and extinctions has been elevated to substantial higher levels. Many steps have been made, but what is the right direction? However, when the collection of riddles merely increases, it could be useful to go back to the beginning and start again following new road signs, which were not available for the pioneers of the paleoclimate research.

The end of the Pleistocene Ice ages about 10,000 years ago corresponds with large-scale extinctions of mega fauna species of the Northern Hemisphere. Amongst these, woolly rhinos, mastodonts, cave bears, steppe lion but especially the woolly mammoth, with the dubious honor of being the poster child victim. Rather than over hunting, it’s the climate change, which is increasingly associated as being causal for these events. Despite its high visibility, the link with climate changes appears to be a posteriori and it’s very rare event that these animals appear in paleoclimate publications about the termination of the ice ages of the Pleistocene. We intend to rectify this omission.

The biotope of the megafauna towards the end of the last ice ages is a dry, likely cold steppe that extended over large parts of the northern hemisphere, including Europe, North Siberia, Alaska and the present United States. Rather than large temperature changes it appears that startling precipitation changes transformed the extensive mammoth steppes into marshes and swamps, completely unfit for large grazers. The demise of the biotope often implied the extinction of the species.

We attempt to replicate the dramatic event and we demonstrate that the large scale precipitation changes can be related to large shifts in oceanic flow patterns. We investigate if these could have been related to the destabilization of two huge methane hydrate fields on the ocean floor, the (double barreled) Clathrate gun. The evidence suggests that such a scenario could be feasible.

Since our hypothesis challenges current paradigms it requires a thorough analysis of weak and strong points and we encounter several contradictions and shortcomings. In short when we walk the paths again but now with mammoths on the road signs we appear to progress much further.

Non calor sed umor, it’s not the heat it’s the humidity

 

[Andre]

was introduced here:

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200612240910.htm

note again the subjective emotional and hostile tone:

'We need, very urgently, to discuss what to do now to mitigate the effects of climate change,' he said. 'Yet a handful of scientists, politicians and writers are still claiming humans are not responsible at all. We have got to kill off this notion so we can get on with the real work: protecting ourselves from future climate change. That is why I am challenging these deniers. I want them to outline their case so that it can be judged by scientists. That is something these people have been reluctant to do so far.'

none of it is correct. 80+ signers of the Toronto review request of kyoto is not a hand full. "Deniers" and "these people" ruffle my neckhairs. And he seriously underestimates the climate science, anyway 65 posts already.

http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/consult/debate/debate.aspx?did=1&pg=1&f=

Mine are a sequence of posts nr: 30, 31, 37, 38, 40, 54, 55 and a few in between.

 

[Andre]

Anybody happen to have a meteo station in the middle of the desert? and if you do, do you still have all the hourly weather reports of, say the last thirty years?

If so, we could empirically quantify the effect of the increasing greenhouse effect and fill in the blanks of this imaginary study:

Global Warming quantified

Abstract
Night time cooling rates under stable no wind, clear sky and arid conditions are mainly controlled by radiation processes. Back radiation due to greenhouse gasses would tend to slow down the cooling rate. Therefore it would be possible to judge the quantitive effect of increased greenhouse gasses empirically by observing changes in cooling rate as a function of time and carbon dioxide concentrations. We have investigated night time cooling rates in the desert stations X, Y and Z under strictly restrained stable meteorologic conditions during the period 19xx - to 200x, correcting for discontinuities and water vapor effects. Our empirical results show an average decrease in diurnal cooling rate of xx per decade, which would translate to a climate sensitivity to CO2 greenhouse effect of xx +/- y degrees celcius per doubling CO2

But I really wonder why it does not exist already.

 

[Andre]

I wrote this to some friends who keep discussing posteriorities.

***
Black Swans; an essay about global warming refutation logic

By Andre

About the strikingly successful proofs of Einstein’s “risky” or “counter-intuitive” predictions based on the relativity theorems, Karl Popper observed:

“Now the impressive thing about this case is the risk involved in a prediction of this kind. If observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted. The theory is incompatible with certain possible results of observation, in fact with results which everybody before Einstein would have expected. This is quite different from the situation I have previously described, when it turned out that the theories in question were compatible with the most divergent human behavior, so that it was practically impossible to describe any human behavior that might not be claimed to be a verification of these theories.

These considerations led me in the winter of 1919-20 to conclusions which I may now reformulate as follows.

1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory - if we look for confirmations.

2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory - an event which would have refuted the theory.

3. Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.

4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.

6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence.")

7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers - for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a "conventionalist twist" or a "conventionalist stratagem.")

One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.”

So let’s project these ideas on global warming. It is clear that confirming evidence is difficult to obtain for a risk less hypothesis, if we assume that greenhouse effect exists. Proving global warming as in excessive –dangerous-, due to natural positive feedbacks and caused by anthropogenic CO2 is a bit more challenging. This is as close as it can get to Poppers second observation about risky predictions. Non natural experimental models however “sophisticated” or the mere observation that the temperatures and the CO2 are rising together on occasions however, would not pass Poppers criteria for convincing evidence for that prediction.

Neither proof -of course- would be the ignorance fallacy or the fallacy of the restricted choice: “Global warming can either be caused by higher solar output or more greenhouse effect. The solar output is not higher, so it must be greenhouse effect, what else can it be?”

Nevertheless, the natural reaction of testing the hypothesis nowadays (as in attempting falsification) appears to be opening the restricted choice and focussing on presenting alternative mechanisms for the atmospheric warming in the past decades: It could also be solar particles, variation in cloudiness, land use, aviation, direct heat anthropogenic sources and UHI, natural weather patterns. Alternatively, one could challenge the “anthropogenic” element by questioning the fraction of human C2 production against natural sources. All those cases have been made with considerable efforts. However, those elements are not in the refutation criteria of Karl Popper and the result is having competing ideas, mutually vulnerable for refutation, and triggering both sites onto the seventh observation of Karl Popper, destroying the idea by an attempt to make it invulnerable for refutation.

A classic popular illustration of refutation mechanism (does not work in Australia) is the all-swans-are-white hypothesis, since millions are; but the hypothesis crumbles, if we find a single black one. Global warming has many white swans. The ice is melting - white swan. It's getting warmer - white swan, CO2 and temperatures have both risen roughly between 1975 and 1998, white swan. Ice cores white, Venus white, Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) white; there is a body of white swan evidence in the IPCC reports. Oh occasionally there are incidents. Somebody found a grey goose and painted it white and it was called the hockeystick. The animal has been cleaned and it’s a grey goose again, proving nor disproving anything except for the determination to find white swans for some reasons.

How about real black swans? It appears that we need only one single occasion where the CO2 positive feedback on CO2 rise -the mainstay of the global warming hypothesis- is not present, while it should have.

Such a process has been demonstrated by Olavi Kärner and the missing positive feedback in the atmospheric processes. This could be considered a real black swan,

http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/2001JD002024u.pdf

But it is beyond me why this swan only exists scantily at the webpage of its owner, whereas it should have been paragraph one of the IPCC summary for policy makers. Therefore it is recommended to testers of the global warming hypothesis, not to focus on proving competing hypotheses but concentrate on finding black swans and explain to the public why those destroy the catastrophic global warming idea. Suitable areas could be the empiric observations of the role of water vapour in climate modification compared in continental and maritime climates. Efforts are underway to demonstrate that the ice cores do not show positive feedback behaviour, as propagated, to explain the Pleistocene glaciation cycles.

Those black swans are needed first and only if they have done the job, then the scientifically sound searches for new hypotheses explaining the current warming, ice ages, the PETM, Venus, etc can be resumed

 

[Andre]

At random intervals, the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum of about 55 million years ago pops up in these threads like this.

I have been arguing here that following big tectonic events, the oceans may have dramatically redistrubuted, causing massive sea floor methane hydrate release events.

I should have payed better attention to the publications, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;316/5824/587 has been around quite a while:

Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum and the Opening of the Northeast Atlantic
Michael Storey, Robert A. Duncan, Carl C. Swisher,

...The relative age of Danish Ash-17 thus places the PETM onset after the beginning of massive flood basalt volcanism at 56.1 ± 0.4 million years ago but within error of the estimated continental breakup time of 55.5 ± 0.3 million years ago, marked by the eruption of mid-ocean ridge basalt–like flows...

Hence the tectonic element is covered now.

More recently http://www.science.usyd.edu.au/news/pdf/whittaker.pdf popped up:

Press Release 9/10/07
By Joanne Whittaker and Dietmar Müller, School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney

APEC countries share common geological history
A previously unknown geological connection between Australia, Antarctica and the Pacific rim has been revealed by an international team led by a University of Sydney group. Joanne Whittaker, PhD student, A/Prof Dietmar Müller, of the School of Geosciences, and colleagues have written of the discovery in the Science magazine.

“The cause of a major change in the motion of the Pacific plate has long puzzled scientists. We have found that the destruction of an entire mid-ocean ridge, known as the Izanagi Ridge, 50 million years ago in the Pacific Ocean initiated a chain reaction of geological events from Hawaii to Antarctica”...cont'd

Since an earlier date for that event was estimated 43 million years ago, it could be that the age estimate is rather uncertain. Hence I have asked ms Whittaker if the estimated date could also be 55-56 million years ago. That would make things fall into place.

 

[Andre]

It may be known that there is evidence of rather strange events in the oceans during interglacial transitions like for instance:

http://www.whoi.edu/cms/files/Eltgroth_paleo_2006_21692.pdf

Our record of Younger Dryas intermediate-depth seawater D14C from North Atlantic deep-sea corals supports a link between abrupt climate change and intermediate ocean variability. Our data show that northern source intermediate water (~1700 m) was partially replaced by 14C-depleted southern source water at the onset of the event, consistent with a reduction in the rate of North Atlantic Deep Water formation. This transition requires the existence of large, mobile gradients of D14C in the ocean during the Younger Dryas.

or

http://www.whoi.edu/cms/files/Robinson_Science_2005_21687.pdf

We present a detailed history of glacial to Holocene radiocarbon in the deep western North Atlantic from deep-sea corals and paired benthic-planktonic foraminifera. The deglaciation is marked by switches between radiocarbon enriched. and -depleted waters, leading to large radiocarbon gradients in the water column. These changes played an important role in modulating atmospheric radiocarbon. The deep-ocean record supports the notion of a bipolar seesaw with increasedNorthern-source deep-water formation linked to Northern Hemisphere warming and the reverse. In contrast, the more frequent radiocarbon variations in the intermediate/deep ocean are associated with roughly synchronous changes at the poles...

Unless somebody can explain how atmospheric temperature changes can set the deep ocean into motion, we have to go for other causes, which may probably be also the cause of the enigmatic 100,000 years cycle of ice ages and interglacials

Well, perhaps this is getting us a bit further:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/uota-iws063008.php

A class of powerful, invisible waves hidden beneath the surface of the ocean can shape the underwater edges of continents and contribute to ocean mixing and climate, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin have found.

The scientists simulated ocean conditions in a laboratory aquarium and found that "internal waves" generate intense currents when traveling at the same angle as that of the continental slope. The continental slope is the region where the relatively shallow continental shelf slants down to meet the deep ocean floor...cont'd

 

[Andre]

Earlier this year there was some speculation that the North Pole would melt this year, as discussed in this thread.

In Science magazine VOL 322, 3 October 2008, two articles are announced explaining the cause of the rather excessive ice melts at the poles the last few years, bringing unusual warm water to the ice environment.

See page 33
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;322/5898/33

Winds, Not Just Global Warming, Eating Away at the Ice Sheets

Richard Kerr

The surge of glaciers draining both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets has alarmed scientists and the public alike. Global warming appeared to be taking an early toll on the planet’s largest stores of ice while accelerating the rise of sea level. But two new studies point to random, wind-induced circulation changes in the ocean—not global warming—as the dominant cause of the recent ice losses through those glaciers...cont'd

 

[Andre]

It was the Discovery channel feature "Raising the Mammoth", about the discovery and excarvation of the Jarkov Mammoth mummy, in northernmost Siberia, world news in 2000 that let me drop all other hobbies. Here was a riddle that begged for a solution.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/fit/images/fig15_1.jpg
The excarvated block ice and soil containing the Jarkov mammoth, lifted from its finding place



Now, this was to be an important find for a further boost of understanding the paleo climate during the ice ages and we would be informed about the progress of the research. However, then it became silent and mammoths are out now.

The much more stunning discovery of the Yukagir mammoth did not make it to the interest of Discovery Channel at all and even the exposure of mummy at the EXPO 2005 in Japan barely reached the press and it did not trigger any climate insight expectations at all. Why would that be?

http://www.yakutiatoday.com/images/region/yukagir_01.jpg
The Yukagir mammoth on the EXPO 2005

In this thread I intend to demonstrate that the difficulty to fit in the mammots in the paleoclimate picture is main reason why they have been banned to the background.