That would also show up in the record as an abrupt jump in dates. We would know there was a gap of X many years where the average temperatures were above freezing.
How would we know there was a gap? Are they carbon-dating each ice layer? I was under the impression that they basically count the layers. It seems to me if layers are missing, you might be able to tell, but you'd have no idea
how many were missing.
TZrider are we going to hear your thoughts on the answers coors and I gave you or should we just assume radio silence?
Coors gave me a name; the web site for that researcher doesn't address the question. I haven't emailed the researcher.
Coors also stated the ice cores correlate to tree rings, showing the relationship of temperature increase to CO2. It wasn't obvious to me whether he feels this tells us anything about the possibility of "missing ice." The oldest living tree is ~4,000 years; not much time. If he is also including dated fossilized trees, this could extend the record farther back, but I don't know if he was including this. You'd have to go back about 125,000 years to find the previous peak CO2 levels in the record. I doubt we have the means to establish a reliable, uninterrupted tree ring record back that far.
Coors' other commentary was interesting, but not really related to whether we're missing ice that would have shown higher concentrations of CO2 than what we can see in the record.
In any case, I have plenty of respect for what he says and the manner in which he says it.
I don't recall you giving an answer, other than an interactive page. Tight correlation between CO2 levels and temperature; the other correlations vary somewhat.
The sedimentary data in that tool is measuring completely different things than did the ANDRILL cores, which were showing a change in deposition, driven by a change in meltwater flows. They are localized to southern Antarctica and show there have been vast melts in the past that are about 8x higher than previously thought. The researchers' takeaway is that a large melt may be ahead of us, one that could dramatically affect worldwide sea levels. They don't speculate about the implications of past melts on the ice record.
It has always seemed to me to be an obvious question. It's almost like it gets left out of the conversation on purpose.
Maybe it's obvious, but this isn't anywhere near my field. At the same time, I've taken a couple of trips to the High Arctic and observed receding glaciers first-hand. I've walked on miles of dry granite that were under hundreds of feet of ice just ten years prior. I've examined Inuit ruins from different periods, whose construction indicates different climate (it actually having been warmer 4,000 years ago than 1,000 years ago). I also visited with a researcher on the ground who was conducting experiments on plots of tundra, some out in the open, some with reflectors mounted to expose the ground to more sunlight. He was trying to establish differences in plant sizes under different temperature ranges to be able to better interpret what they were finding in the fossil record. All of this is to say I have more than a passing interest in the subject.
On one level, it should just be common sense that we need to reduce pollution for lots of reasons. Before climate change was even being discussed, I was camping in the winter in mountains, seeing a brown haze between the peaks where there had been clear skies a decade earlier. I'm not a stranger to being concerned about the environment. What's tangible to me is that we currently have an annual snowpack with high levels of soot, 80% of which has blown over from Asia and which causes an acid surge in our streams every spring.
It's relatively easy to see the effects of particulate pollution. It's harder for me to tell how much our CO2 and other gaseous emissions are affecting climate. Many of the remediation efforts will benefit us anyway; reducing particulates, possibly allowing greater energy independence and so on. They may or may not impact climate noticeably.
