Ice age deferred stymies David Middleton at WUWT

Anthony Watts has posted another ice age article at WUWT (archived here, cached here). This time, instread of it being an "ice age cometh" article, it's an "ice age isn't coming" article. The WUWT article is by David Middleton, who is one of Anthony's pet deniers. He was writing about a new paper in Nature about how we've deferred one and may possibly defer two major glaciations. We're certainly going to perceptibly affect the climate for more than 100,000 years ahead.

It's been known for some time that we've deferred major glaciations

The fact we've deferred at least one glaciation won't be news to anyone who's familiar with previous work on the subject. The fact we may have deferred two might well be news, although mathematician and astronomer Sir Robert Ball predicted it would take 200,000 years way back in 1906:

Speak no more of the glacial epoch as 80,000 years agone. The glacial epoch is ahead. Sir Robert Ball says that the next ice age is due in 200,000 years. In the course of long periods the earth's orbit round the sun changes from being nearly a circle, as it is now, to a long ellipse or oval, and in the last case the summer may be only 166 days long, while the winter lasts 199 days. There is a short hot summer, followed by a long, excessively cold winter, so that more ice is formed in the cold than can be melted in the warm season.

On purely astronomical grounds, even if geologists had not discovered the ice ages from the records of the globe's surface, astronomers would have demonstrated that ice ages must have happened. When the next chilly epoch arrives posterity may see all Northern Europe under an ice-cap that will o'ertop the highest mountains and last for many thousands of years. 

This new paper follows others that have discussed how we've deferred ice ages. In 2002, Berger and Loutre posited in a paper in Science that we've deferred one major glaciation by emitting so much CO2. In 2003 William Ruddiman suggested in a paper in Climatic Change that we started that deferral thousands of years ago, when we first began to change the landscape. These were followed by a 2005 paper by David Archer and Andrey Ganopolski (the lead author of the new paper), who also wrote how we've deferred the next ice age, and maybe more than one, depending on how much extra greenhouse gas we throw into the air. They wrote:

An anthropogenic release of 300 Gton C (as we have already done) has a relatively small impact on future climate evolution, postponing the next glacial termination 140 kyr from now by one precession cycle. Release of 1000 Gton C (blue lines, Figure 3c) is enough to decisively prevent glaciation in the next few thousand years, and given the long atmospheric lifetime of CO2, to prevent glaciation until 130 kyr from now. If the anthropogenic carbon release is 5000 Gton or more (red lines), the critical trigger insolation value exceeds 2 σ of the long-term mean for the next 100 kyr. This is a time of low insolation variability because of the Earth's nearly circular orbit. The anthrogenic CO2 forcing begins to decay toward natural conditions just as eccentricity (and hence insolation variability) reaches its next minimum 400 kyr from now. The model predicts the end of the glacial cycles, with stability of the interglacial for at least the next half million years (Figure 3c). 

By the way, if you want a more in-depth analysis of Milankovitch cycles, there was a perspective article in Science by Didier Paillard back in 2006, which is worth reading if you can get a copy. (I think it's paywalled, but I'm not sure.)

The point is, a small change in insolation can have a big impact. That's because of the feedbacks. When the forcing is because of slight changes in tilt or wobble it affects the ice cap, which warms or cools the world, which causes more or less CO2 from the ocean to the air and vice versa, which raises or drops the temperature more. The main feedback that causes the warming or cooling is the change in carbon dioxide. A change in atmospheric CO2 has its own feedbacks like water vapour. All these changes then act together to warm or cool the planet.

We may defer not one but two ice ages, even 100,000 years ahead

In this latest paper in Nature, the authors, A. Ganopolski, R. Winkelmann & H. J. Schellnhuber, are suggesting that if we keep going the way we are at present, even if we stop after emitting 1500 Gt of carbon (twice as much again as we've already added to the air), we'll still have a significant impact on climate one hundred thousand years into the future. We'll probably avoid completely the next ice age that would have been due, and significantly diminish if not avoid the one after that.

Below is a chart from their paper, showing what their modeling experiments indicate, that even if we restrict CO2 emissions to a total of 1000 Gt, there will be a lot less ice even after 100,000 years than if we hadn't added any. If we keep going and emit another 1000 Gt on top of the 500 Gt or so we've already added, then the next two ice ages that would otherwise be due will be barely felt, compared to what they would have been without us changing the climate. Click the chart to enlarge it:

The next glacial inception. The top panel shows the temporal evolution of the maximum summer insolation at 65° N. The middle panel shows the simulated CO2 concentration during the next 100,000 years for different cumulative CO2 emission scenarios: 0 Gt C anthropogenic emissions (blue), 500 Gt C (orange), 1,000 Gt C (red) and 1,500 Gt C (dark red line). The bottom panel shows simulated ice volume corresponding to the different CO2 emission scenarios. Individual simulations are shown for the 1,500 Gt C scenario; for the other scenarios, the range is given as shading.  Source: Ganopolski16

From the paper (my emphasis):

Owing to the extremely long lifetime of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere, past and future anthropogenic CO2 emissions will have a strong impact on the timing of the next glacial inception....

Under three scenarios with cumulative emissions of 500 gigatonnes of carbon (Gt C), 1,000 Gt C and 1,500 Gt C, we simulate the ice volume on the Northern Hemisphere for the next 100,000 years. Even for a total of 500 Gt C cumulative emissions, which is only slightly above the present-day value, the evolution of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets is affected over tens of thousands of years (Fig. 4). In the 1,000 Gt C scenario, the probability of glacial inception during the next 100,000 years is notably reduced, and under cumulative emissions of 1,500 Gt C, glacial inception is very unlikely within the entire 100,000 years.

David Middleton says words have failed him

Back to David Middleton at the climate conspiracy blog WUWT. He posted a slab of text from an article about the paper, written by Alex Morales at Bloomberg, then he wrote:

Words fail me.  I won’t even bother to point out that we are living in an Ice Age which began back in the Oligocene…

Unlike most people, including those at WUWT, David doesn't like the colloquial use of ice age, and insists on using the term in the geological sense. That won't please all the WUWT-ers who normally use the term in the popular sense when they voice their alarm that we are about to head into a new ice age ... any day now.

His nitpick notwithstanding, it's not yet clear why words failed him to the extent that he couldn't write any of his own and had to copy large slabs from other people.

Now there are a few things odd about David Middleton's article. One is that he references charts copied or derived from scientific papers, and clearly accepts the charts, but doesn't accept what is written in the papers. For example, David's first chart is shown below. Despite the label, his chart isn't directly from the paper identified, Zachos01, though it does look to be based on the same data as that in the paper's version. Here's WUWT version:

The box in the lower right of the chart indicates it is from Zachos et al (2001). It isn't, but it's based on the same data. Here is the version shown in the paper itself for comparison. You can click on the image to enlarge it. The part on the left is what is shown in the WUWT chart, except it's shown vertically, the δ¹⁸O(%) is used as an indicator of temperature over the past 70 million years.

Humans only occupy the period to the first mark on the left hand side. Not the 10 but the very first mark indicating 2 million years ago. We are used to a cooler world than that experienced by species that emerged ahead of us. The reason David put it up was apparently because he wanted to point out that we are still in the ice age that's been here for the past 36 million years or so.

David then went and posted another chart, this time labelled "after Royer and Beerling (2011), which looks to be modified from Beerling and Royer (2011). The chart from the paper (not from WUWT) is shown below:

Earth’s Cenozoic atmospheric CO2 history by proxy. Deep-sea temperatures3  (upper panel) generally track the estimates of atmospheric CO2 (lower panel) reconstructed from terrestrial and marine proxies following recent revisions (see Supplementary Information). Errors represent reported uncertainties. Symbols with arrows indicate either upper or lower limits. The vertical grey bar on the right axis indicates glacial–interglacial CO2 range from ice cores. The top blue bar indicates approximate timing of ice-sheet development on Antarctica. Horizontal dashed line indicates the present-day atmospheric CO2 concentration (390 ppm).  Source: Beerling and Royer (2011)

The reason David posted the chart was to point out that in aggregate past CO2 levels derived from different sources and particularly those going back twenty million years or so are noisy. This time he contradicted himself, writing:

Nor will I bother to point out that the current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide doesn’t even break out of the Cenozoic noise level…

Now you know and I know that there are good estimates of CO2 going back 800,000 years from ice cores. They show that we already exceed those levels by a wide margin.

Data source: EPICA Dome C Ice Core 800KYr Carbon Dioxide Data, Luthi, D., et al.. 2008

Now David Middleton and other deniers might not be concerned that we have entered unknown territory. It's virtually certain that never since humans evolved has the earth had greenhouse gases at these levels. It's likely that never in at least multiple millions of years has the pace of heating been this fast. There's really no period in history that mimics what's happening today. Sure it was hotter in the past than it will get in the next few decades, but there was a lot that was different back then. Not least of which was there were no people, no agriculture, no global trade - and even the continents were in different places.

Does David Middleton pick cherries?

Sorry for the diversion. I said that there were some oddities in David's article. One thing is that David seems to be arguing something or other about the science being suspect. I can only guess that, because he doesn't say what he is arguing anywhere that I can see. Thing is, that both the above charts that he draws on are by scientists who understand what drives climate.

For example, from Zachos01, the authors whose work his first chart is based upon introduce their paper with a description of what causes climate change in the long term, including the concentrations of greenhouse gases:

Much of the higher frequency change in climate (10⁴ to 10⁵ years) is generated by periodic and quasi-periodic oscillations in Earth's orbital parameters of eccentricity, obliquity, and precession that affect the distribution and amount of incident solar energy (Fig. 1) (1). Whereas eccentricity affects climate by modulating the amplitude of precession and thus influencing the total annual/seasonal solar energy budget, obliquity changes the latitudinal distribution of insolation. Because the orbital parameters vary with distinct tempos that remain stable for tens of millions of years (2), they provide a steady and, hence, predictable pacing of climate.

The orbitally related rhythms, in turn, oscillate about a climatic mean that is constantly drifting in response to gradual changes in Earth's major boundary conditions. These include continental geography and topography, oceanic gateway locations and bathymetry, and the concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases (3).

The question is, does David Middleton accept the above or does he only pick the bits out of the paper that he likes and rejects the rest?

Below is the first sentence from the paper written by the authors of the other chart David used, Beerling and Royer:

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is clearly a primary driver of global temperature change1 , but efforts to slow anthropogenic emissions from fossil fuel burning and land use change are failing 

Again I ask, does David Middleton accept the above or does he only pick the bits out of the paper that he likes and rejects the rest?

In any event, David Middleton doesn't clearly say whether or not he goes along with this new paper or not. He's being very coy. Perhaps a clue is in his last paragraph, where he mysteriously wrote:

So, it’s actually “worse than we thought”… Earth is naturally delicately balanced between a Late Pleistocene glacial stage and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.  So, no matter what we do, George Carlin was right…

What he wrote bore no relation to the segment he pasted immediately before it, which was:

They basically developed a model relating insolation to atmospheric CO2.  If I am reading it correctly, they are asserting that insolation drives changes in atmospheric CO2 which then drives the glacial-interglacial stages.

Then they go on to say “that under natural conditions alone the Earth system would be expected to remain in the present delicately balanced interglacial climate state, steering clear of both large-scale glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere and its complete deglaciation, for an unusually long time.”  

Can anyone see what David Middleton is trying to argue? I can't. He is reading the science correctly. What he thinks "they are asserting" is old science. It's not new. It's the Milankovitch theory, which you are probably familiar with, and which was even hinted at by Sir Robert Ball back in 1906 (before Milankovitch), and is described in the passage above from Zachos01.

From the WUWT comments

As you can imagine, the dullards at WUWT have various conspiracy theories about all this, and are full of the usual denialist contradictions.

Francisco gets a bit excited and writes:

January 13, 2016 at 1:53 pm
An underhanded way to support the establishment’s scam. This is ludicrous!!
We prevented the ice age (during an ice age) with a puny amount of carbon dioxide!! We are super heroes!! SuperCO2!! 

Jay Hope doesn't know about the greenhouse effect and wonders:

January 13, 2016 at 3:07 pm
They never say the ice age will delay the warming. Wonder why? 

skeohane has finally noticed what scientists have been telling him for decades:

January 13, 2016 at 2:00 pm
Ever notice how CO2 is at its peak just prior to re-glaciating, during each inter-glacial period?

ferdberple hasn't heard of Milankovitch cycle, and CO2 might lag temperature when it's a feedback instead of a forcing, but not by as much as he thinks:

January 13, 2016 at 3:49 pm
So how come in your graph, if high CO2 levels lead to high temperatures, please explain why temperatures drop from 130 to 110 KYA, when CO2 levels are at their highest?
Talk about a Pause!! Forget 20 years, we a talking about 20 thousand years of dropping temperatures with high CO2 levels!!

willhaas is playing "stupid", a favourite pastime at WUWT.

January 13, 2016 at 2:02 pm
Forget the science. The Paris Climate Agreement abolishes all forms of climate change, extreme weather events, and sea level rise for now and for all time and we here in the USA do not have to pay for it because we are a poor nation with a large national debt, trade deficit, and unfunded liabilities. Apparently the powers that be have found some way to intimidate the sun and the oceans into providing the ideal climate for everyone, everywhere, all the time.

richardscourtney could be playing the same game of "stupid", or he might have donned his disinforamation hat. Does he really think that CO2 levels are back to 280 ppm? OCO-2 shows CO2 levels around 400 ppm. Richard is dreaming or deluded.

January 14, 2016 at 1:32 am
Brandon Gates: With typical arrogance you assert with no supporting evidence
“In typical terrestrial temperatures, water precipitates out of the atmosphere after a short residence time. CO2 does not.

Nonsense! The OCO-2 data indicates a CO2 residence time of less than a year.

And that is supported by the sequestration rate of the pulse of additional CO2 inserted from phytoplankton into the atmosphere in 1989 which was sequestered in three years: a ‘half-life’ of 6 months removes 98% in three years.

Richard 

There were a couple of people who had faulty memories or misleading text books way back in the good ol' days when they were just nippers. Bloke down the pub said:

January 13, 2016 at 2:04 pm
I remember reading a book about ice ages while I was still at school back in the 70’s. In it there was a theory that the Earth had to get warmer first in order to increase humidity, before extra snow cover triggered the ice age.

While Steve Reddish remembers it this way:

January 13, 2016 at 6:42 pm
Bloke, the theory, as I remember it, was that warming would continue until the Arctic Ocean lost its ice cover, and then the exposed sea surface would provide water vapor to supply sufficient snowfall on the surrounding land to last through the cloudy summers. The Earth would then cool due to the increasing albedo caused by the ever increasing and spreading southward ice sheets.
The residual heat in the oceans would provide several thousand years of of heavy snowfall before loosing enough heat to allow the arctic to ice over again. This would stop the southward advance of the ice sheets and the Earth would slowly recover from this ice age until the Arctic ice thawed again…
SR

u.k(us) is like me, and can't figure out what David Middleton is trying to say. (No-one else at WUWT seems to care. As usual, they just view WUWT as a notice board for conspiracy theorists, on which to post their random thoughts. The article is almost irrelevant for their purpose.)

January 13, 2016 at 7:01 pm
Just a few clips from your post David Middleton:
“Words fail me.”
“I won’t even bother to point out…..”
“Nor will I bother to point out…….”
“By “ice age,” the author probably means …”
==============================
I know you got something to say, but you are not saying it.
What is the worst that can happen ?
You get picked apart by all the lurkers, and then your post lives forever on the internet.
So what, at least you spoke up. 

Michael C sums up WUWT "science" but doesn't know it. He and his fellow deniers do have all the tools, 'yet the same ignorance and lack of common sense prevails' at WUWT:

January 13, 2016 at 11:42 pm
“Humans now effectively control the climate of the planet”

I did not bother reading past that sentence

These guys were trained in science?

In 50 years time how will lecturers describe this era? For weeks I have been trying to describe it in a nutshell. I am gobsmacked. When passion and warped agenda drives pragmatic thought and conclusion anything can result

The medieval inquisitions were no more shameful. We have all the tools to know so much better yet the same ignorance and lack of common sense prevails 

James at 48 is scared he's going to be sent to a fascist camp to be deprogrammed.

January 13, 2016 at 8:58 pm
Some of the more extreme warmistas contemplate fascist states that would put skeptics in camps, “de-program” them or even execute them as punishment for AGW. Well, that knife can cut both ways. Imagine the pitchfork carrying mobs if after proclaiming impossibility of the end of the interglacial, the end was reached either on a “natural” time frame or perhaps one hastened by “AGW mitigation?” Yes, that knife can cut both ways. 

ralfellis has his own unique version of the "facts", including - it's anything but CO2:

January 14, 2016 at 1:38 am (excerpt)
Complete nonsense. Here are the facts.
...c. If man is beginning to effect the climate, it is more to do with industrial soot on the ice sheets (and possibly farming dust, when the fields are bare all winter). It is dust-ice albedo that controls the feedback of ice ages and interglacials, not CO2. So this proposal is wrong at all levels. 

Keith Willshaw read the headline in the Bloomberg article up the top of David Middleton's article, which read: The Good News on Global Warming: We've Delayed the Next Ice Age, and, being contrarian, translated it as follows:

January 14, 2016 at 2:24 am (excerpt)
What amuses me is the assumption that deferring a new ice age is a BAD thing.

References and further reading

A. Ganopolski, R. Winkelmann & H. J. Schellnhuber. "Critical insolation–CO2 relation for diagnosing past and future glacial inception." Nature 529, 200–203 (14 January 2016) doi:10.1038/nature16494

A. Berger and M. F. Loutre. "An Exceptionally Long Interglacial Ahead?" Science  23 Aug 2002: Vol. 297, Issue 5585, pp. 1287-1288 DOI: 10.1126/science.1076120 (pdf here)

Paillard, Didier. "What drives the Ice Age cycle?." Science 313, no. 5786 (2006): 455-456. DOI: 10.1126/science.1131297

Beerling, David J., and Dana L. Royer. "Convergent cenozoic CO2 history." Nature Geoscience 4, no. 7 (2011): 418-420. doi:10.1038/ngeo1186 (pdf here)

Zachos, James, Mark Pagani, Lisa Sloan, Ellen Thomas, and Katharina Billups. "Trends, rhythms, and aberrations in global climate 65 Ma to present." Science 292, no. 5517 (2001): 686-693. DOI: 10.1126/science.1059412 (pdf here)

Ruddiman, William F. "The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago." Climatic Change 61, no. 3 (2003): 261-293. doi:10.1023/B:CLIM.0000004577.17928.fa (pdf here)

The Good News on Global Warming: We've Delayed the Next Ice Age - article by Alex Morales at Bloomberg

Scientists say human greenhouse gas emissions have canceled the next ice age - article by Chris Mooney in the Washington Post

Human emissions will delay next ice age by 50,000 years, study says - article by Robert McSweeney at the Carbon Brief

From the HotWhopper archives

• Flashback to 1906 - another ice age coming...  An article in the The North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times, Tasmania, Australia - Saturday 18 August 1906 - in which Sir Robert Stawell Ball FRS predicted another ice age in 200,000 years.
• CO2 didn't lag as much as deniers think - from an article back in August last year
• The mechanics of ice formation and retreat in an ice age - including a video on how ice forms and melts with ice ages  August 2013
• Climate disinformer Patrick Moore talks to deniers at the GWPF - including some on CO2, lags and Milankovitch with Richard Alley
• How David Middleton mixes up his lizards at WUWT: hot vs cold climates, eggs vs live birth - July 2015