There still remains much dispute as to whether warming causes higher greenhouse gas concentrations, or if more greenhouse gas concentrations lead to warming. We can all recall Al Gore standing near his temperature reconstruction in AIT misleading his viewers into thinking that CO2 comes first, and then the warming.
Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) released a report about two weeks ago that sheds more light on this. The complete press release can be read here in English.
40,000 years ago there was a rapid temperature increase accompanied by a rapid methane increase. What came first? Alarmists will have you believe that GHG is the driver. The Alfred Wegener Institute and others have looked into this. What have they found? Here are the main findings:
1. 40,000 years ago rapid warming led to an increase in methane concentration.
2. Climate researchers from the Universities in Bern and Copenhagen and from the Alfred Wegener Institute now conclude that the methane increase at that time was largely due to higher methane emissions from wetlands.
3. These natural methane sources produced more methane especially in high northern latitudes in response to the warming.
4. This result refutes the theory that large amounts of methane were released from the ocean sediment and led to higher atmospheric methane concentrations and thus to rapid climate warming.
You can’t get any clearer than that. But now enter German politics.
Still, contrary to their own findings, the government-funded AWI goes on to insist their results do not imply that methane or other greenhouse gases play no role for climate change. And so they depart from science and start smacking for funding by adding the obligatory:
Our study reflects natural climate conditions during the last ice age, long before mankind affected global climate by emitting greenhouse gases. At that time climate warming caused an increase in methane concentration, generating in turn a more substantial greenhouse effect.
Of course they don’t offer proof for this last statement.
Now if this were true, you’d enter a vicious circle that would eventually spiral out of control. Yet, this has never happened in the history of the planet, let alone the last 100,000 years. Every time some other mechanism (one that many charlatan climate scientists refuse to acknowledge) always prevented the dreaded irreversible tipping point.
Does it really take a rocket scientist to tell you that climate conditions today, since 10,00 years, are relatively very stable? Look at the above chart. Looks awfully stable to me. 0.5°C is not unstable.
Weren’t climate conditions far more unstable during the ice age? Did the climate ever spiral out of control in one direction or another, meaning to an unbearble hothouse or a frozen solid ice ball? The answer is of course: no.
Conclusion: It takes a “climate scientist” (quack), not a rocket scientist, to tell you that today’s climate is unstable and spiralling out of control due to man.
A climatologist is a jerk/Jack of all sciences/trades, master of none.
Brian,
I guess that makes me a Climatologist. Now do I laugh or cry.
Bit by bit, piece by piece, the deliberate falsehoods of AGW ideology must be brought to book. Yet again, here in UK, another sham ‘enquiry’ throws up an entirely predictable result. World governments and effete politico’s – hang your heads in shame.