# The Defect in the "Climate Has Always Changed" Argument **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 19, 2017, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246 "2017-02-19T19:54:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/21 "2017-02-20T02:44:37Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **Weisshund** , there will surely eventually be another ice age (though when, I wouldn’t dare to say). But it won’t be a problem. Humans won’t need to do anything about it, because ice ages come on so gradually that we won’t even notice, and we’ll cope by just gradually migrating closer to the equator. The current human-caused climate change is too quick for that to work. That sounds great in theory, and if we were talking neanderthal man or even early homo sapiens sure, it would work, it did work. But modern man?, even in the face of a global glacial period, i can not see it working. I see war and mega famine and a big contribution to the modern fossil record due to a big reduction in the human population. Modern people can’t get along well enough to pull it off, except in movies. I could be wrong, sometimes people do amaze me, but usually not for good reasons. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/22 "2017-02-20T02:54:58Z")
> [@Cecil](#): > > Man has stopped the ice age cycle, YAY! > [@Weisshund](#): > > Unfortunately no > Man can only get to some of the carbon to free it, he cant get to all of it or most of it. Straw man, no one has said that, the point is that the amounts humans released and are releasing can not be denied to be changing the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, and then they warm the earth. … > [@Weisshund](#): > > Now when Earth is done doing that, the climate will be something else, what exactly i am not sure, Earth has done a lot of different climate schemes, and i dont know enough to guess what past scheme it might wish to repeat. > > And that my friend is not a fascinating pile of nonsense. Your post was nonsense and an argument from ignorance indeed. Since this is not magic, how the earth reacts to an increase of CO2 can be deduced by looking at several paleo records. > **[Just How Sensitive Is Earth's Climate to Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide?](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-sensitive-is-climate-to-carbon-dioxide/)** > > Two new studies look far back in geologic time to determine how sensitive the global climate is to atmospheric CO2 levels > [@](#): > > “Modern-day levels of carbon dioxide were last reached about 15 million years ago,” Tripati says, when sea levels were at least 25 meters higher and temperatures were at least 3 degrees C warmer on average. “During the middle Miocene, an [epoch] in Earth’s history when carbon dioxide levels were sustained at values similar to what they are today [330 to 500 ppm], the planet was much warmer, sea level was higher, there was substantially less ice at the poles, and the distribution of rainfall was very different.” > > Further, “at no time in the last 20 million years have levels of carbon dioxide increased as rapidly as at present,” Tripati adds; CO2 concentrations have climbed from 280 ppm to 387 ppm in the past 200 years. And “our work indicates that moderate changes in carbon dioxide levels of 100 to 200 parts per million were associated with major climate transitions and large changes in temperature”—indicative of a very sensitive climate. > > A nearly 400,000-year record of Ice Age transitions preserved in a stalagmite in the Sanbao and Linzhu caves of Hubei Province in China would seem to offer evidence in support of the sensitive climate scenario. The stalagmites, composed of calcium carbonate leached from dripping water, preserve a record of monsoon rainfall in the region by their composition. Paleoclimatologist Hai Cheng of the University of Minnesota and his colleagues then compared this record with climatic transitions, such as the shift into and out of an Ice Age. > > The rock record reveals that such rainfall changes occur at the same time as general alterations in the relative strength of sunlight hitting the planet thanks to periodic shifts in Earth’s orbit, known as Milankovitch cycles. At the same time as the solar heat increases, according to the monsoon record published in Science, CO2 levels also begin to rise. > > “Climate systems are well linked worldwide, such as sea-level, CO2, ice sheet[s], the Asian monsoon, regional temperature and precipitation,” Cheng says. “So a change in one of them could trigger changes in others.” And that might mean the climate is too sensitive to tolerate current levels of CO2 without changing the conditions that have allowed human civilization to flourish in the past 10,000 years. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/23 "2017-02-20T03:01:38Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > That sounds great in theory, and if we were talking neanderthal man or even early homo sapiens sure, it would work, it did work. > > But modern man?, even in the face of a global glacial period, i can not see it working. > I see war and mega famine and a big contribution to the modern fossil record due to a big reduction in the human population. > Modern people can’t get along well enough to pull it off, except in movies. > I could be wrong, sometimes people do amaze me, but usually not for good reasons. And those fears also exist when one goes to the other end, the warming observed is bound to also cause what you are fearing here, instead of Ice it will be the oceans rising and the growth of the deserts what will put a strain to the human population. Unless we prepare for it. Unfortunately in the USA, the current rulers do not think that there is a problem so nothing about preparing is to be expected. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/24 "2017-02-20T04:07:29Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Straw man I call you’re strawman and raise you one, because i did not say it wasn’t and that isnt what i said, and no i wont go reword it for you. > [@](#): > > Since this is not magic, how the earth reacts to an increase of CO2 can be deduced by looking at several paleo records. I am looking at some, in fact i mentioned some above and? Pretty much, you dont understand how i write something, and since i have no idea how you want to read it, i am not going to go rewrite it 20 different ways to mean the same thing. Maybe just try reading it at face value? And Cecil did not say anything? Why are you yelling at him? He did not even say what you quoted him as saying, I did. For the last post, we agree. maybe, it might be a mirage That situation exists for everything Global freeze, killing Global flood, Killing Plate tectonics reforms pangea, killing Anything that puts people in the same place together, killing Hell people get bored of peace, killing In the USA there arent any rulers, there are 318 million people that you cant get to agree on a single kind of toast to have for breakfast ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/25 "2017-02-20T04:18:44Z")
> [@igor\_frankensteen](#): > > The Defect in the “Climate Has Always Changed” Argument … [snip] The main defect with this argument is that it admits climate is changing … technically to be a Climate Change Denalist one must actually deny this change … for example the climate over the open ocean is Oceanic no matter a few degrees temperature difference … it’s just not going to not change … Unless we’re going to “destabilize major global climate systems” … which is the large-scale convective circulation cells … there’s really nothing about the current climate that will be changing … the wind blows from the West over Kansas and that pretty much defines its climate … and unless you can explain why there’s 6 convection cells right now (in 300 words or less) … it’s going to be hard to follow the logic on how this will become two cells … It all comes down to how we measure climate, only then can we define how it is changing … tropical or temperate, oceanic or continental … higher temperatures don’t matter … +20ºC on Antarctica and it will still be a desert … However … Fossil fuels are a _non_-renewable resource … that means they’ll run out and the climate will be the least of our worries … and we know this will happen someday … by all means we should be working to severely limit burning the foul stuff … we have better uses for it … Yeah … only a fool would go on this way without knowing … for sure … what the extra CO[sub]2[/sub] will do … and the alternative of nuclear power and electric railroads is something we have to do anyway … there’s a lot of other _very_ good reasons to convert our energy base over … ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/26 "2017-02-20T04:25:09Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > I call you’re strawman and raise you one, because i did not say it wasn’t and that isnt what i said, and no i wont go reword it for you. [looks up] Again, the straw man was that bit about “Man can only get to some of the carbon to free it, he cant get to all of it or most of it.” That is not what Cecil was referring to or dealing with, global warming is happening with no need to get all the carbon out. You had to mention an item that was not mentioned to undermine the main point. That humans are indeed changing the climate, \*\*and with no need to get all the carbon out or most of it. \*\* > [@Weisshund](#): > > I am looking at some, in fact i mentioned some above and? > Pretty much, you dont understand how i write something, and since i have no idea how you want to read it, i am not going to go rewrite it 20 different ways to mean the same thing. > Maybe just try reading it at face value? > > And Cecil did not say anything? Why are you yelling at him? > He did not even say what you quoted him as saying, I did. Just paraphrasing then, I can grant that I got confused because it looked like you did quote him. His quote was actually: “[Ice age stopped] Thanks to global warming (yay!)” In essence, that was what Cecil reported and you countered that with **NO**. With no evidence. The rest was snipped. ---
**Author:** ![bluezooky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e8c25b/32.png) [@bluezooky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bluezooky)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/27 "2017-02-20T04:54:58Z")
> [@igor\_frankensteen](#): > > It’s quite simple really. > And of course, that still wont deal with the question of what we should do about it, since most Climate Change By Man deniers oppose all actions to deal with it. > Thoughts? I personally don’t seperate the question of what we should do about it from the question of if climate change is real, we had an Australian Government which imposed a carbon tax on its citizens whist we exported ever increasing record amounts of greenhouse gas emitting coal overseas each year. Give me a plans that will work to fix the problem and I’ll start to admit climate change is real. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/28 "2017-02-20T06:06:07Z")
> [@bluezooky](#): > > I personally don’t seperate the question of what we should do about it from the question of if climate change is real […] > Give me a plans that will work to fix the problem and I’ll start to admit climate change is real. 😕 Do you generally conflate the reality of a problem with the feasibility of its solution like this? If, say, the doctor doesn’t know why you’re coughing up blood, do you refuse to admit it’s happening at all? If the mechanic can’t figure out how to fix your failing brakes, do you insist that therefore your brakes are fine? Does that seem like a good approach in general to dealing with problems that are difficult to fix? I don’t disagree that trying to solve the problems of anthropogenic climate change is a very complicated and frustrating process. But I don’t think it will be made any easier by simply refusing to admit that the problem even exists until an effective and practical solution is found for it. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/29 "2017-02-20T08:00:19Z")
The defect in the argument is the assumption that it makes a difference whether the extent to which the climate has changed, and appears to be changing, is solely due to human activity. Whether or not human activity is responsible for making things change, we do know it will make things worse, and how it will do so. Either we change or the climate changes in ways we cannot easily adapt to: it may do so anyway, of course, but is that an argument for simply sitting back and waiting for trouble to come to us? ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/30 "2017-02-20T08:50:24Z")
The Earth’s climate is extremely fragile. Past changes have dwarfed what we are seeing now. For example, the closing of the Panama isthmus by routine tectonic activity a few million years ago separated the world’s two great oceans; this lead to much higher surface salinity in the Atlantic, which in turn eventually provoked ice formation in the far north! Thus, it may have been the closure at Panama that provoked the Pleistocene Ice Ages. On a shorter time scale, it is now generally agreed I think that the astronomical Milankovitch cycles led to the warm/cold fluctuations during the Pleistocene. Note that these cycles have almost no effect on net insolation; they just affect whether slightly more of the insolation goes to the land-rich Northern Hemisphere rather than the ocean-rich Southern Hemisphere, or vice versa. Yet these tiny changes led to the growth and retreat of glaciers around the world. _The Earth’s climate is extremely fragile_. Those using this to argue against the dangers of AGW have their thinking quite backwards. Once a change in temperature is forced (as mankind is doing now), there are positive feedback loops that can amplify the change. > [@Weisshund](#): > > No, not true > And, we are actually still in an ice age, we are in one of the in between stages. > So while we humans might in fact warm the planet some, for a geologically short period of time, mother nature still has a deep freeze party planned, that will over ride our tropical beach party. > > And she is not having the freezer party due to some calamitous event. > > Funny part is i can see humanity screaming for someone to actually induce global warming at that point, kind of ironic i guess… I think **GIGObuster** busted this. AFAIK, nobody’s predicting how many millenia the next major glaciation has been delayed — or if it can even be expected at all — but the next few centuries will be critical for human civilization which, like the climate, is very fragile. Civilization is dependent on high-tech low-diversity agriculture, water flows, and much low-lying land. It’s a long-shot to “hope” that these short-term dangers be solved by a super-volcano or an asteroid collision. > [@aldiboronti](#): > > I’m quite willing to accept that the scientists may be right about climate change but I do wonder how some of them can make such authoritative predictions about conditions 50, 100, or 200 years from now when meteorologists can’t even predict the weather for next week with any accuracy. I expect there’s a good answer though. I think this confusion would go away with a good analogy. Perhaps: the Allies couldn’t predict the result of each battle, but were confident that they would prevail against Germany. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/31 "2017-02-20T13:58:23Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > Pile of nonsense? your source of said pile of antinonsense? > [http://sites.gsu.edu/geog1112](http://sites.gsu.edu/geog1112) > [http://www.antarcticglaciers.org](http://www.antarcticglaciers.org) > those are 2 pretty good sites that are not wikipedia Those links do nothing to support your nonsensical argument and it’s not clear why you think they’re even relevant to the discussion. It’s almost like you just posted them at random without reading them first. I’ll repeat my statement below, but first, let’s get past some more incorrect information that you posted: > [@Weisshund](#): > > You ask about CO2? > Well if you look at the info they got out of the ice cores (Volstok), i will assume its fairly close since they are scientists and i am not, 325,000 years ago, we have a CO2 rise and spike at 375ppm, an interglacial followed, the Hox something or other, i forget. > Obviously that interglacial ended and the cycle began again, and an amazing thing happened, the CO2 tanked to under 200ppm, and if you look, it did it very very quickly. False. Until the industrial era, CO2 never reached anywhere even close to 375 ppm, not 325,000 years ago or at any other time in the past million+ years of glaciation. In fact it’s been remarkably constant in its variation between a typical glacial minimum of around 180 ppm to a typical maximum of about 280 ppm, and never about 300 ppm. Cite: [The highest pre-industrial value recorded in 800,000 years of ice-core record was 298.6 ppmv, in the Vostok core, around 330,000 years ago.](http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/ice_core_co2.html) These regular cycles can clearly be seen in the Vostok or EPICA Dome C records [like this one](http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/presentations/html/sustainabledata/climate/HiRes/BBC2a.eps.png). Which are all the more remarkable [when juxtaposed with the post-industrial CO2 spike](https://www.co2.earth/images/figures/sks/sks_co2_400kyr_850.jpg). It’s a vivid illustration of the geologic-scale abnormality of post-industrial elevated CO2. I’ll say it again: Over the past million years, ice ages have occurred only when absorption of atmospheric CO2 by carbon sinks has reduced atmospheric levels by about 100 ppm from typical interglacial maxima of about 280 ppm down towards the ice age levels of about 180 ppm, a process that takes many tens of thousands of years. So again, my question was this: Kindly explain how levels can drop to 180 ppm and an ice age can occur when CO2 is presently soaring to 400 ppm due to industrial emissions of mostly just the last hundred years, a level unprecedented in the million years of geologically modern glaciation cycles. This carbon is coming from fossil fuel deposits releasing carbon that has been sequestered for hundreds of millions of years, carbon that has not been in the atmosphere since dinosaurs roamed the earth. [And furthermore, CO2 levels continue to rise rapidly with each passing year.] Please explain how we can have an ice age with that huge CO2 spike shown in the second graph I linked, when ice ages are associated with CO2 levels down around 180 ppm. The Milankovitch cycles that seem to be the triggers for ice ages are subtle influences that are completely overwhelmed by this massive CO2 injection. It requires the oceans to start cooling and acting as massive carbon sinks taking up more CO2; instead, the oceans are warming, reducing their carbon uptake, and already becoming acidified as they saturate with net new CO2 that we’re extracting from the Cretaceous period and beyond. Meanwhile Arctic ice is disappearing (and big chunks of the Antarctic, too) creating albedo feedbacks, methane emissions, and other feedbacks, accelerating the warming still further. In short, your claims are complete nonsense and reflect a lack of scientific knowledge about climate. The only way to claim that we’re soon going to be overwhelmed by an ice age is to invoke magic. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/32 "2017-02-20T14:08:14Z")
I was just reading this piece about a new Arctic research effort: it’s not impossible that overall global warming will create perturbations that will cause other parts of the northern hemisphere to be colder, possibly much colder, than we have been used to. But if that happens, it won’t be a global ice age, and it won’t negate the existence of global warming overall, nor the different sorts of catastrophic consequences elsewhere in the world. If we think the current migration pressures are causing problems for the most developed countries - well, we ain’t seen nothing yet. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/20/scientists-to-repeat-19th-century-fram-ships-crossing-of-polar-ice-cap](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/20/scientists-to-repeat-19th-century-fram-ships-crossing-of-polar-ice-cap) ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/33 "2017-02-20T14:51:09Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#): > > I was just reading this piece about a new Arctic research effort: it’s not impossible that overall global warming will create perturbations that will cause other parts of the northern hemisphere to be colder, possibly much colder, than we have been used to. But if that happens, it won’t be a global ice age, and it won’t negate the existence of global warming overall, nor the different sorts of catastrophic consequences elsewhere in the world. If we think the current migration pressures are causing problems for the most developed countries - well, we ain’t seen nothing yet. > > [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/20/scientists-to-repeat-19th-century-fram-ships-crossing-of-polar-ice-cap](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/20/scientists-to-repeat-19th-century-fram-ships-crossing-of-polar-ice-cap) Regional climate changes are complex phenomena, and there are several different dimensions to them. Arctic amplification – wherein the Arctic is warming much faster than more southerly latitudes – is a powerful climate influence that has been responsible for _ **some** _ colder than normal winters in some temperate regions at some times due to unusual behavior of the polar vortex or the jet stream, even as the global average temperature continues to rise. To the extent that this may be due to factors like snow cover increases in some areas, as **GIGO** mentioned above, some theorize that these may be short-term transition phases that eventually disappear. OTOH, there’s no doubt that the kind of rapid climate change we’re experiencing has the potential to induce long-term changes to local and global atmosphere and ocean circulation systems, so that effectively permanent regional climate changes will be inevitable in some areas, with respect to things like average temperature or significant changes to the precipitation norms. This is quite worrisome in terms of food crop vulnerability and the ability of local ecosystems to adapt. These sorts of regional changes are among the key threats of anthropogenic climate change, along with extreme weather, sea level rise, and changes in ocean chemistry. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/34 "2017-02-20T14:57:59Z")
OP is not correct to say only “calamitous” events can cause climate change. But “climate is changing because it always changes” or “because it’s cyclical” is a bogus statement, because it’s not actually an explanation. It’s like saying “it’s hot in summer because the weather is cyclical.” No, it’s hot in summer because there is more sunlight. Whenever the climate changes, _something_ is causing it to change. And it’s not always the same thing that causes it to change. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/35 "2017-02-20T15:20:39Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#): > > I was just reading this piece about a new Arctic research effort: it’s not impossible that overall global warming will create perturbations that will cause other parts of the northern hemisphere to be colder, possibly much colder, than we have been used to. But if that happens, it won’t be a global ice age, and it won’t negate the existence of global warming overall, nor the different sorts of catastrophic consequences elsewhere in the world. If we think the current migration pressures are causing problems for the most developed countries - well, we ain’t seen nothing yet. > > [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/20/scientists-to-repeat-19th-century-fram-ships-crossing-of-polar-ice-cap](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/20/scientists-to-repeat-19th-century-fram-ships-crossing-of-polar-ice-cap) Interesting they should make that claim _before_ they do the research … > [@](#): > > The teams will investigate how rapid warming in the Arctic is altering the polar vortex. Scientists anticipate that as the temperature contrast between low and high latitudes reduces, strong circular winds around the pole will shift to lighter, more meandering patterns. This will allow “more frequent and cold air outbreaks from the Arctic”, causing extreme cold spells on the east coast of the US and parts of Europe. They are correct in noting that the forces involve would be reduced when temperature differences become less … but this also means less force to cause turbulence, the wind patterns would meander less … and less force to push polar air south into the USA or Europe … the data is thin, perhaps too thin to draw any conclusions either way … I’m glad someone will be up there collecting more and better data … the polar vortex is a feature of the Arctic oscillation, and just because we can’t make the connection to global warming today doesn’t mean there’s no connection at all … This comes across as wild speculation … what is the probability of cold air outbreaks today and what will be the probability of cold air outbreaks in the future … without these numbers we’re left with subjective words like “more frequent” … which could mean 0.000001% more often … an extra polar air surge every million years isn’t catastrophic … all this before they’ve even started their research … Higher temperatures will cause lower temperatures? … that’s not the _most_ probable outcome … ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/36 "2017-02-20T15:23:59Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > This is the key. In the past, on rare occasions like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the climate has changed relatively fast due to some cataclysmic event. More often, climate change takes hundreds of thousands or millions of years, and the speed of the present man-made changes are dangerous because of the extent to which they destabilize major global climate systems and greatly exceed the ability of the natural ecosystem to adapt. The result will be catastrophically destructive climate events and loss of biodiversity and major risks to food crops, especially in the most vulnerable regions in the third world. Even at that, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was something that occurred over thousands of years, not 150, like the current event. The fact that we can look at when the industrial revolution took off, and see a REALLY strong correlation to average temperature rises, as well as not be able to easily identify a natural mechanism to explain it tend to make me look at any explanation that isn’t caused by humans with a really cocked eye. I mean, something with enough… oomph(?) to affect the Earth’s climate is unlikely to be something that skates in under the radar- it should be something we can measure in some way and quantify, just as we have measured the temperature changes. And the only candidate at the moment that I’m aware of is fossil fuel use. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/37 "2017-02-20T16:02:42Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > I’m quite willing to accept that the scientists may be right about climate change but I do wonder how some of them can make such authoritative predictions about conditions 50, 100, or 200 years from now when meteorologists can’t even predict the weather for next week with any accuracy. I expect there’s a good answer though. Climate is not weather. Weather is what we experience from day to day, and it is influenced by movements of heat from one place to another. Climate is a super-ordinate category. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/38 "2017-02-20T16:25:51Z")
[snip] > [@watchwolf49](#): > > … all this before they’ve even started their research … > > Higher temperatures will cause lower temperatures? … that’s not the _most_ probable outcome … Well, that is why one should look at what Cohen and Francis said. I grant that it is a long video but you should really look at what Jennifer Frances said. In a warming world their previous research showed that the circulation in the poles and high latitudes the jet stream and other winds are meandering more and their patters becoming more persistent. While the planet is warming the warmth is causing the meanders to stick around longer than before and then a lot of precipitation (in the form of snow) concentrates in a few areas creating snowmageddons. Still in areas were the meanders do not stick around the warming is still there and the whole system continues to get warmer while in some areas the cold coming from polar regions moves further south and sticks around longer in some areas. What they found before has been confirmed by others, but as usual scientists still have to investigate to become more accurate and to see if other factors will change that observed state of affairs. Hence the point that they expect to find what they noticed early (but they will look for more local factors that modify the overall picture), it is not a weird statement at all because the record and observations using more remote tools have told the scientists what (generally speaking) is taking place. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/39 "2017-02-20T16:28:22Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I mean, something with enough… oomph(?) to affect the Earth’s climate is unlikely to be something that skates in under the radar- it should be something we can measure in some way and quantify, just as we have measured the temperature changes. And the only candidate at the moment that I’m aware of is fossil fuel use. Right. Which is why those with little understanding of the facts tend to blindly fall back on ice age cycles as a supposed indicator of such powerful natural forces. After all (goes the implied logic) during the depths of an ice age much of the North American continent was covered with an ice sheet a mile thick, and now in an interglacial much of that area is a warm temperate zone. Must be some powerful stuff at work to make that happen! Indeed there is, and [this graph](https://www.co2.earth/images/figures/sks/sks_co2_400kyr_850.jpg) shows it pretty clearly. The driving force between a mile-thick continental ice sheet and a hospitable temperate climate is the approximately 100 ppm of CO2 that separates glacial minima from interglacial maxima, inducing a climate forcing that operates over tens of thousands of years. The interesting and extremely pertinent and worrisome fact is that _ **we have already added more CO2 than that** _ to the present interglacial level as shown by the huge spike on the extreme right – about 115 ppm higher than any previous interglacial peak and rising further every year (rising so fast that this chart is already out of date). We have thus just barely started the slow process of raising the global temperature to a new equilibrium unprecedented in the period of modern glaciation cycles; we have acidified the oceans, and started to melt the Arctic and parts of massive land glaciers in Greenland and the Antarctic. We are, in fact, in a completely new climate era outside the realm of the familiar glaciation cycles, a period that some have referred to as the anthropocene that is unlike anything that came before, a name derived from the anthropogenic nature of the forces driving it. As a harbinger of future climate, the old glaciation cycles are now about as obsolete as the natural carbon cycle that we’ve so severely disrupted. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2017, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246/40 "2017-02-21T01:50:07Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Indeed there is, and [this graph](https://www.co2.earth/images/figures/sks/sks_co2_400kyr_850.jpg) shows it pretty clearly. The driving force between a mile-thick continental ice sheet and a hospitable temperate climate is the approximately 100 ppm of CO2 that separates glacial minima from interglacial maxima, inducing a climate forcing that operates over tens of thousands of years. To be fair, I think it is about 1/3 of the driving force that is provided by CO2, with the rest provided by the albedo changes due to changes in the ice sheets and vegetation [the growth or shrinkage of which is triggered by orbital variations that do not provide much net global forcing themselves], and lesser amounts due to other greenhouse gases and changes in aerosol loading in the atmosphere. CO2 and the other greenhouse gases are also thought to play an important role in synchronizing the two hemispheres, since the albedo changes due to orbital variations would otherwise tend to be out-of-synch, more like a see-saw between hemispheres. Of course, for our current “little experiment”, albedo changes due to changing ice and snow will be a feedback that will tend to magnify the affects of CO2 (although there is less ice around to melt…and hence less albedo change…than in the glacial times). And, this brings us to one important point that I haven’t seen explicitly made here: The fact that climate has changed in the past in response to various forcings is what allows us to (admittedly imperfectly) determine how sensitive the climate is to a certain magnitude of forcing (measured in W/m^2)…And, the forcing due increases in greenhouse gases is quite accurately known, say within 10 or 15%. Namely, a doubling of CO2 results in about 4 W/m^2 of forcing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-defect-in-the-climate-has-always-changed-argument/780246.md?page=3)