astro_surf wrote on Jun 17^th, 2011 at 3:45pm:


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NO, because I haven't notcied maqqa using big fonts excessively.

astro_surf wrote on Jun 17^th, 2011 at 3:48pm:



What about those who don't bother reading maqqas threads because they are lame and boring?  They must be prettty blind too....

Look out for the Maunder Minimum - a once in 400 year event which caused the mini ice age. and it just happened again!!!

longweekend58 wrote on Jun 17^th, 2011 at 7:33pm:

Going by the length of the minimum, it looks like we have found our reason why there is no rush to fix CO2 levels. Giving that China will actually reduce CO2 level in the year ?? (please add year AGWer's) and their CO2 levels will be ?? (please add CO2 levels AGWer's) in that year compared to 2011 levels of ??, and by then we will still be in a cooling period.

Everything has some uncertainty, but the uncertainty in this case lies mostly in the timing, not in the essential result. Ice sheets are sensitive to warming somewhere in this vicinity of temperature change and the climate system will yield 2°C warming somewhere in the vicinity of 800–1000Gt of carbon emissions.

If the climate is a bit less sensitive than we think then we might have a little bit more wiggle room than the 250–450Gt allotment, but not much, and we’ll exceed that allotment very soon thereafter anyway.

We’re only a few decades away from a major tipping point, plus or minus only about a decade. The rate at which the ice sheets would melt is fairly uncertain, but not the result that says we are very close to a tipping point committing to such melt and breakdown.

If we were to keep remaining emissions inside the 250–450Gt carbon allocation, we would need to take account of the inertia in energy systems and infrastructure, which set some limits on the maximum rate that emissions can be reduced.

To stay within the budget, we can’t hope to emit 10Gt a year (the present emissions rate) for the next thirty years and then reduce emissions suddenly to zero. Rather, net emissions would need to be phased down to zero to stay within the budget.

The longer stringent emissions reductions are delayed, the more drastic they must be to stay within the 250–450Gt budget. With more than a small delay, the reductions needed are faster than can be achieved in turning over the stock of emitting infrastructure.

Thus, if we were to stay within this budget, dramatic emission reductions would have to begin now. Delayed action on stringent emissions reductions almost certainly implies overshooting the thresholds and locking in vast long term impacts.