Chapters 1-3
This page will contain most of the illustrations in the book in Chapters 1-3.
Chapter 2:
Illustration 1: Annual Temperature of the Earth and the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The average temperature of the Earth is different for each month of the year.
Illustration 2: (Green) Average Monthly Temperature (Brown) Actual Monthly Temperature (Purple) The monthly anomaly.
This was made by taking the blended temperature anomaly data and applying it to the monthly average from Illustration 1. This is not a single source of data. Blended temperature is covered later.
Illustration 3: The Earth's tilt causes the seasons. Picture from NOAA Online School.
Illustration 4: Winter Solstice. Notice that the Arctic gets almost no sunlight while the Antarctic is in sun 24 hours a day.
Illustration 5: Summer Solstice. Now the Arctic is in sunlight 24 hours a day while the Antarctic gets none.
Illustration 6: Much of the Northern Hemisphere is covered by land.
Illustration 7: Southern Hemisphere is mostly open ocean.
Illustration 11: The station methods are generally warmer than the satellite methods.
Illustration 12: Using a single set for most usages is useful and incorporates more information than any single set.
Chapter 3:
Illustration 13: The Earth 50 Million Years Ago. This is the period known as the early Eocene. Sea levels were more than 150m(500ft) higher than they are today as there were no permanent ice sheets anywhere on the Earth.
Illustration 15: Temperature was determined by calibrating stable isotope to temperatures of the recent glacials. Epochs of the Cenozoic are also shown. (Zachos, 2008)
Zachos, J., et al. 2008.
Cenozoic Global Deep-Sea Stable Isotope Data.
IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology
Data Contribution Series # 2008-098.
NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA.
Illustration 16: Drake Passage was closed in the early Cenozoic. The opening of the passage altered the Earth's climate.
Illustration 17: Changing geography plays a major role in changes to the Earth's climate. (Zachos, 2008)
Illustration 18: Antarctica has experienced wildly variable climate in the past. This included periods of rapidly advancing glaciers and also rapidly retreating glaciers. (Zachos, 2008)
Illustration 19: The last 1 million years has been the coldest period of the past 65 million years. Same temperature calibration to benthic stable isotope. See science content for details. (Zachos, 2008)
Illustration 20: Temperature history of the last 3 million years. Different source and slightly different calibration. Each time the temperature goes up on this chart is the start of an interglacial. Each time the temperature drops that is the start of a glacial. (Raymo, 2005)
L. E., and M. E. Raymo (2005), A Pliocene-
Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic d18O records,
Paleoceanography,20, PA1003, doi:10.1029/2004PA001071.
Illustration 21: Eemian temperature reconstruction from the EPICA ice core. This is the temperature reconstruction of the last interglacial the Earth experienced. This is the last summer that the current interglacial should be compared to.
EPICA Dome C Ice Cores Deuterium Data.
IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology
Data Contribution Series # 2004-038.
NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA.
Illustration 22: Two different sources of the benthic stable oxygen isotope data that is used to reconstruct the Earth's temperature for the past 1,000,000 years.
Excellent work! This is just the extended context I’ve been seeking. The current debate centers too much on the last 100 years or less with no benchmark comparison. Hopefully, you will post on the topic of CO2 and temperature correlation and address the issue of causality. Keep up the work.
The end of the Little Ice Age was about 1850 according to most srceuos I read. This temperature source is from direct temperature measurements around the world at the same stations over time. 1880 is the starting date because it is the date from which enough temperature stations were collecting data to be able to generate reliable temperature anomaly data. It’s a statistical reason.If you a different method the warming since 1880 is clearly above that 1000 year average.
This is more of a question than a comment. I have seen various graphs of CO2 levels and temperature charts and the general consensus, at least appears to be, increasing CO2 means increasing temperature: cause and effect, but to my mind it can be the other way around increasing temperature causes increasing CO2 because the oceans will more readily give off CO2. The other thing that comes to mind is that in many northern hemisphere countries tend to put vast quantities of salt and other things on the roads to reduce ice forming. This salt is generally mined and eventually ends up in the sea, increasing salinity will also cause the oceans to give off more CO2, but I have seen no data on changing salinity of the oceans – perhaps I have not looked hard enough.
Most scientists will admit that warming oceans release more CO2 into the atmosphere, but then many of them will say that a feedback mechanism kicks in that provides the additional warming. I disagree that the feedback is significant in any way.
The amount of salt that is used by mankind is ~0 since most of it comes from the oceans directly or indirectly. We will not alter the salinity of the oceans through the use of salting roads.
“This book and its author have not yet attracted any hateful smears or personal attacks. Other “deniers” have, usually from trolls who have not read the book other than snippets from the preview here on Amazon. Perhaps the trolls are not up to the task of trashing this book. It is difficult reading, appropriate for an introductory college course on the subject. It is heavy on facts and technical explanations, complete with diagrams and graphs. It is just what we would expect from an engineer, which the author is by profession. The first half of the book explains the “Climate Cycle” or, as most of us know it, the ice age cycle. It is also called the Milankovitch Cycle after the man who first explained it. It is caused not by CO2 or other greenhouse gasses, but by approximately 100,000 year cycles in the earth’s orbit around the sun. Consider a spinning top or toy gyroscope; in addition to its smooth “orbit” we can see wobbles. Such wobbles in the earth’s orbit result in more or less solar energy reaching the earth; the technical term is “insolation.” The author points out that we are actually in a cooling period, going into another ice age. Of course, the trend one sees depends on the time interval one studies. Sure, over the last 200 years there has been a slight warming trend. However, next to the 100,000 year ice age cycle 200 years is rather insignificant. “Oh, but if present trends continue….” Present trends will NOT continue because the strongest trend of them all is the ice age cycle; we are not just on the cliff, we are over the cliff falling down into another ice age. The author is too serious and too professional to say so, but go ahead and drive your SUV. Let’s build all the coal-fired electric plants we can. We will NEED a good greenhouse gas in the millennia to come. Actually, the second half of the book shows that CO2 is not even much of a greenhouse gas anyway. Water vapor has about six times the greenhouse effect that CO2 does in the present atmosphere. The global warming theorists claim positive feedback. That is, a slight increase in CO2 will warm the atmosphere a bit; that warming will put more water vapor into the atmosphere, causing further warming. At some “tipping point” the warming supposedly becomes irreversible. Except it did not happen. Remember, there have been many ice age cycles. The warming cycles between ice ages have never prevented a subsequent ice age. What about CO2? Well, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere FOLLOWS temperature. That is, temperature goes up, FOLLOWED by CO2. That observation argues against human-caused or “anthropogenic global warming” or AGW. The author is willing to concede maybe a degree of global warming over the last hundred years, as long as we keep it in proper perspective next to the coming ice age. Not that it should need saying but ice ages, with a mile of ice over Canada and the northern US, are much less pleasant than global warming. One suspects that if the ice age cycle finds its way into academic conversation the “solution” to the coming ice age will be exactly the same as the “solution” to AGW. That is, let’s give up modern technological society. We who do not buy it are called “deniers” after “Holocaust Deniers” who are sent to prison in many countries. It was said of Stalin and his henchmen that they aimed their arguments not at your mind but at your skull. The same could be said of all totalitarians. It is easy to imagine that the global warming crowd would answer this author and others like him with the same skull-based “arguments” if only they had the power. Global warmers tell us “the science is settled…” The science is “settled” in the same sense that kidnapping settles child custody. The science is hijacked and being held hostage. None of the arguments in this book could be made in any of the “peer reviewed” journals controlled by the warmers. Even the ice age cycle, believe it or not, is explained away by CO2. Academic fraud is alive and well, as alive and well as financial fraud on Wall Street.” review of “The Inconvenient Skeptic,” left by Richard Carpenter on Amazon