PARIS — The possibility of controlling the Earth’s temperature has long led to various experiments by inquisitive scientists, but without great results. Now a recent study found proof for the first time ever of a natural thermostat that helps regulate the planet during extreme temperature swings.
British scientists say they’ve discovered that the preeminent mechanism that allows the Earth to recover from global cooling events is linked to the weathering of rocks. Rocks dissolve by rain and river water during the weathering process, and carbon dioxide is taken from the atmosphere to carbon-rich rocks in nearby waterways. When weathering runs its course, there’s a decrease in carbon dioxide on our planet.
The researchers examined rocks from about 445 million years ago, which matches out to the second largest extinction period in the planet’s history. Using samples from Canada and Scotland, the rocks showed that the global chemical weathering rate declined, which meant less carbon dioxide was removed and the climate was able to recover from the cool temperature.
“From looking at the relative abundance of lithium isotopes in ocean-derived rocks, we were able to confirm that chemical weathering is the driver of the Earth’s natural thermostat,” explains lead scientist, Dr. Philip Pogge von Strandmann, in a news release. “When there is a warmer climate, there is more weathering, and when it is cooler there is less weathering: this is what you would expect, given that chemical reactions go faster with increasing temperature.”
The researchers had discovered evidence in earlier studies that showed weathering played a significant part in the Earth cooling down during periods of extreme heat, but the latest study proved just the opposite — when the planet experiences major cold spells, weathering slows and the “natural thermostat” allows the world to warm back up.
“This is the process that has allowed life to survive on Earth for around 4 billion years,” says Pogge von Strandman.
This study’s findings were published in the June 2017 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters.
Well, the fanatics are going to go crazy over this and try to influence it.
Yabbutt the planet has a fever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
. . . and the only prescription is more cowbell!
You win the internet!
Ice the patient down…check
Take two aspirin and call me in the morning. (sarc)
This would only moderate the climate is you buy in to the idea that CO2 causes warming.
You are correct sir.
Alternative studies (not widely made mainstream) higher CO2 readings, after longterm increased global temps.
Indicating increased CO2 levels because of increased temps. Not high temps because of increased CO2.
Heavier global vegetative growth vs cooler unpredictable growth patterns. I’ll double down on growth.
CO2 is a negligible component of the atmosphere… There is simply no way CO2 can have a predominating effect on climate, especially when the solar input is so massive to any other input.
Yet they have been able to sell it.
Humans generally want to be accepted. We’re a social species. Scientists have sold themselves for profit, fame or acceptance. Those in research and entry level need the stability of a job.
Questioning the narrative not a wise career move. Become vocal and your shunned and lose acceptance.
Sad when those most motivated to learn the game trump the smartest.
Face it. Religious leaders, scientists, and politicians make their living convincing a gullible public that they KNOW the unknowable….hell, the gullible public seeks them out! They have their own Constitutional Amendments!
Whadda crock. Yet Another “al gore.acle” driven wagon-load of utter tail-waggin’-the-dog Horsesh*t. Water vapor holds a significantly higher percentage as an atmosheric component, yet it’s only crickets that anyone hears about that as an impact.
I concur with you Flippy. Amazing that the intelligencia marginalize the influence imparted by that raging perpetual nuclear furnace that is the sun…
as I like to say, “It’s the sun stupid!!”
The rooster crows…the sun comes up….same mechanism. Guess he over-looked the world’s oceans and the Earth’s aquifers….and that pesky specific heat of water. But he got his 15 minutes of fame…and he got to introduce the world to his religion….which rocks.
and ice cores show temps leading CO2, you’re right, this rock theory is predicated on CO2 being a major driver.
This weathering feedback is not a new idea. It does nothing to explain why the recent warming started over a century ago, long before CO2 emissions could have affected the atmosphere.
In one way of thinking, perhaps without some kind of natural thermostat, life wouldn’t be possible, since climate extremes would wipe it out (such as snowball earth).
Of course, as you mention, the major assumption here is CO2 has this profound influence on earth temperatures. That is yet to be demonstrated.
Also, perhaps there are other natural mechanisms that keep the earth’s climate moderate. Perhaps these have yet to be discovered.
I can just hear the “Global Warming” nuts now. “Man is destroying the earth’s Natural Thermostat”. Bill Nye and Al Gore will both claim that they predicted it. In fact, Al Gore will take credit for inventing it!
well, he did invent the internet.
Stupid bastard doesn’t even know how it works.
BS I turned a few bolts when we turned on the internet and Al Gore wasn’t present.
He also invented global warming.
Now THAT is true. LOL
So he says, McB ! That claim will allow him to feel relevant. 🙂
They’re all communists whose end goal is federal government control ‘the means of production’ ala Marx.
AKA Fascism
The Earth has it all worked out…just like ALWAYS. There’s no catastrophe on the horizon. NOW LEAVE US ALONE!!
Dang . . All the taxes to curb “Climate Change” were a waste of money? Say it ain’t so . . After all, AWG is a bigger concern than terrorists to Liberaks.
You mean AGW.
Terrorists are their allies. Listen to them on TV wringing their hands bemoaning Tea Party types provoking terrorism.
Utter rubbish.
CO2 has a very weak logarithmic forcing effect which is only capable of contributing around 0.6C of global warming per doubling.
Natural cloud cover is the natural control mechanism which keeps global temps within a very narrow range.
Solar activity, ENSO, PDO/AMO 30-yr warm/cool cycles and Milankovitch cycles are what can cause medium/long-term climatic swings.
CO2 is a very minor variable of earth’s climate. but is an essential compound for plants and all life to exist. on earth.
Well said and pithy!
The funny thing is that IF the temperature increased as gore says it would….it would shift the climate from Crystal City, Texas ALL THE WAY to Lubbock, Texas. Best I can tell, nobody would really notice unless you pointed it out to them. Oh, the humanity…..
> CO2 is a very minor variable of earth’s climate. but is an essential compound for plants and all life to exist. on earth.
CO2 is a very minor variable of earth’s climate, but is an essential element to thousands of Climate Science priests and missionaries livelihoods. And the Climate Alarmists income too.
So true.
It sure seems like scientists are getting dumber by the day. The results of this study are marginal at best. It would have very little if any effect on temperature extremes.
The scientists are smart in that they keep filling their pockets with “research dollars” to come up with results to support the anti-capitalists who want to destroy the major economies around the world. They did the same thing in the ’70’s and ’80’s with the dire warnings by the consensus of scientists of the “coming ice age”. When that proved false, they flipped 180 degrees to claim global warming.
So earth is a Nest. Well that’ll cut into Algore’s profit margin…
There are also other natural mechanisms which moderate Earth’s climate/temperatures, this is probably just one of them. What passes for “climate science” today is far too simplistic and unpersuasive to true independent thinking people in its claim that CO2 is the most important “greenhouse” gas which is presently driving rising temperatures (btw, this “temperature rise” is far more moderate than so-called climate scientists pretend it to be given their extremely flawed climate models to date).
In ages/eons past, the Earth’s atmosphere contained anywhere from 1800 parts per million of CO2 all the way up to 8000 ppm and yet there was no “runaway greenhouse effect” nor anything like what their flawed climate models are predicting today with a mere 440 ppm to 480 ppm in Earth’s present atmosphere.
Also, Sol’s variable radiation output and its various long-term cycles have been way underestimated as well as the impact of Earth’s cloud cover and it’s very long term variability which has the property of reflecting significant amounts of solar radiation back into space. In turn, a rainier climate can act as a thermostat of sorts and also the role of long-term water vapor levels (water vapor has far more impact on temperatures than CO2 has) has similarly been pooh-poohed and misrepresented by the modern Church of Climatology. Yet these so-called “climate scientists” claim they can account for these cycles and natural variations/rhythms going back centuries when indeed in most cases there were no accurate or even standard means of gathering such data on many of these processes 200, 300 or even 3000 years ago. A complete sham based on arrogant assumption with an anal retentive focus on CO2. In fact, just as good of an argument can be made that CO2 levels actually follow warming trends! Go to YouTube and watch “Blue Beats Green.” Though not comprehensive, there are certain inconvenient truths contained therein which challenged the reckless assumptions of the disciples of the Church of Climatology and their climate apocalypse dogmas.
“Today’s AGW global warming spew is a complete sham based on arrogant assumptions with an anal retentive focus on CO2.”
Or as Martin Armstrong would put it, people look for a single cause, illustrating linear thinking, when really nature (and financial markets) are dynamic. AGW is all about $ and control.
I think the Sun has something to do with it as well.
I suppose that theory is as good as the one where god is looking after our weather.
And this will be the loop hole that get science out of the mess they have talked themselves into. They got us into this mess with smoke and mirrors and now they want to get out from under the lie with smoke and mirrors.
I call bullshit. One volcano and it will emit more particulates than 10 Million years of weathering effects. These so called scientists have their head up their a**.
The output of volcanoes, along with all of the gases and particulates that issues like the California wild fires, or the massive forest fires in the western US, Cana, and Alaska this past Summer are not measured by climateers who want to do whatever they can to destroy the economies of first world nations.
Actually, the biggest emitter of CO2 is Mother Nature via natural processes…decay of organic material. Rotting plants and animals.
95% of total annual emissions, versus human’s 5%.
Yeah… Almost. Now if we can get the disciples of AGW to understand that CO2 isn’t the motivating factor in warming trends. CO2 levels *follow* global heating/cooling trends, not the other way around.
If you convince them they will merely soil themselves and come up with another “reason” that man causes warming and cooling.
Al Gore and the socialist UN criminals will change their Carbon Credit Tax Scam narrative from “climate change” to “thermostat change”.
All AGW worshippers and their followers should be required to live at the North Pole.
I guess I don’t get it. The hotter it gets the more rock weathering produces more CO? The idiot Al Gore claims increased CO2 makes it even hotter.
Next they’ll tell us Al didn’t invent the internet !!
Also, the oceans serve as a CO2 sink, where CO2 is absorbed when temperatures are colder, and released when temperatures get warmer. Again, the chicken or the egg? Carbon dioxide does not cause warming, warming CAUSES higher CO2 levels.
The antidiluvian clay rich soil that commonly carries a high affinium isotope count has been the gold standard for determining global temperature averages for any period the soil was at the surface of the Earth. Using this method scientists (and I use that in a derogatory fashion) have determined that the computer algorithms in every major “climate modeling” software system is, quite frankly, bunk. The affinium isotope has also been used successfully to show that Algore is a bombastic punk of the highest order. The methodology used in this latter case was take Algore and place him in a coffin half filled with the antidiluvian soil and then fill the rest of the coffin with the same soil. Of course, because we “scientists” aren’t a cruel bunch (except to anyone who cast any doubt on our conclusions even though we won’t release our data sets or our methodology) so we inserted a straw into each of Algore’s nostrils so he can continue to breathe. Then the lid of the coffin was shut and the whole thing placed into a commercial oven and heated to 23 degrees Celsius for one hour. One the hour had elapsed Algore was removed from the soil and a quorum of five hundred Buddhist monks who were steeped in the ancient art of reading the minute impressions that soil compressed onto human skin were allowed to examine Algores epidermis. The completely above board, all data and methodology fully published here so others can duplicate the procedure, results are that Earth is just fine and can take care of itself without any assistance by the UN, politicians and any taxes associated with human activity.
Al Gore and the Pope are surely disappointed to learn they have no power or influence over Mother Nature.
Is the Pope Catholic?
He’s a commie, so, no.
Does that make God a commie?
Is God?
Worst. Pope. EVER.
He lectures Trump about walls while living behind one with his jewels and crowns.