I Answered A Subscriber's Question On The Great Freeze

A warm reception as the Daily Beagle gets gassy

In the article “Will We See The Great Freeze?”, commentator boscohorowitz asks:

[…] will greenhouse atmospheric warming make it worse or mitigate it?

Great question! I will directly answer this question, but I have to establish a few key points for my answer to make any sense. Just be aware this is just my opinion of the situation, and there’s no way for someone to truly know the cause-and-effect of the future, that said, I will do my best to answer this question.

Earth Is A Self-Stabilising System

It is my view that Earth is a self-stabilising system, and will attempt to naturally 'right' any instabilities, a bit like a see-saw, because without this self-stabilising attribute, Earth would have done run-away temperatures in one direction or another long ago, and there would have been no life.

For example, increased heat leads to greater evaporation, called the obscuring jargon term “indirect aerosol forcing”. Satellites are not capable of accurately measuring this, and it leaves predictions on impact of ‘greenhouse gases’ (which I am going to be honest, I am not of the view is a thing, but I will run with the assumption) uncertain and difficult to predict, namely because more of the cloud cover is from other sources:

Our results show that 45 per cent of the variance of aerosol forcing since about 1750 arises from uncertainties in natural emissions of volcanic sulphur dioxide, marine dimethylsulphide, biogenic volatile organic carbon, biomass burning and sea spray. Only 34 per cent of the variance is associated with anthropogenic emissions.

‘biomass burning’ is a fancy way of saying ‘wood burning’, and what is meant there is forest fires, the naturally occurring kind. Not that some chuck has a woodstove burning giant ash clouds all night (because they’d be an anthropogenic source).

Most of the ‘climate change’ models don’t factor in clouds particularly well:

[…] providing tighter constraints on how much carbon may be emitted based on the TCRE [Transient Climate Response to cumulative carbon Emissions] requires providing tighter bounds for estimates of the physical climate feedbacks, particularly from clouds, as well as to a lesser extent for the other contributions from the rate of ocean heat uptake, and the terrestrial and ocean cycling of carbon.

This means, more heat, more clouds, more reflectivity of sunlight back into space. Less heat, fewer clouds, more sunlight permitted back onto Earth to warm it up. A balance.

Enter Quasi-Biennial Oscillation

In-fact, there’s even a name for this sort of effect in weather: “Quasi-Biennial Oscillation”, or QBO for short.

Quasi basically means ‘sort of’, Bi meaning ‘two’, ‘Biennial’ meaning ‘two yearly’, and oscillation basically meaning a type of alternation. A ‘sort of two yearly alternation’. Every 2 years, winds go one way, then they go the other.

It isn’t exactly every two years, but the take away is the weather undergoes a see-saw effect spanning 2 years. As winds adjust the Jet Stream, and the Jet Stream adjusts the weather. QBO experienced a disruption back in 2016.

Why am I talking about QBO? Well, it turns out (emphasis added)…

[…] it can trigger sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) events. SSW events can initiate the breakdown or weakening of the polar vortex, forcing the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations into a negative phase.

Why is this important? If you cast your mind back to the Great Freeze article, it remarked…

Phys.org commented sudden stratospheric heating would lead to the freezing we saw back in 2021. With a heatwave this intense, could it occur again?

So roughly every two years there’s a ‘peak phase’ that, effectively, optimises for winter conditions, as heat and cooling causes changes in wind. But that’s not the only variable to impact. Now we address the core of your question about gases.

Life Is Also A Self-Stabilising System

Cylindrospermum sp (AKA Cyanobacteria) under magnification

Life itself also acts in a self-stabilising mechanism in harmony with Earth. Cyanobacteria converted a Carbon Dioxide Earth into an Oxygen rich one in what was known as the “Great Oxidation Event”.

You might know Cyanobacteria by their other name: blue-green algae (cyan, Greek for ‘blue’, although we mostly see cyan as blue-green in the modern era).

The excess oxygen from Cyanobacteria resulted in a mass die-off of Carbon Dioxide consuming lifeforms, including Cyanobacteria itself, and led to the growth of Oxygen consuming lifeforms.

This in turn led to a few “oceanic anoxic events”, which is fancy talk for saying the ocean’s Oxygen was severely depleted post-Great Oxidation. This happened on at least two separate occasions, notably after the Cambrian period, which is when a large multitude of life - primarily Oxygen consuming life - is to said to have appeared during the ‘Cambrian explosion’ (which isn’t a literal explosion, just a large diversity of life suddenly appeared in a short space of time).

This tells us two things: one, even if Oxygen is wholly depleted, the type of lifeforms on Earth will change to adapt. Low Oxygen and high Carbon Oxide leads to high numbers of Carbon Oxide consumers who produce Oxygen, low Carbon Dioxide with high Oxygen leads to high numbers of lifeforms who consume Oxygen and produce Carbon Dioxide.

And two: Earth - and life on Earth - automatically self-stabilises. It is a naturally occurring ‘supply-and-demand’. The more supply there is, the greater the demand from the increasing number of consumers.

What we have there is a see-saw effect. A see-saw effect that, like normal see-saws with entropic decay, slowly runs out of power alternating between peaks. Currently, we have a state of approximate balance, where we have a mix of both Oxygen consumers who produce Carbon Dioxide, and Carbon Dioxide consumers who produce oxygen.

Taking the greenhouse gases argument on face value - assuming Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in a ‘runaway’ scenario - it would have been impossible for any life to survive in a Carbon Dioxide Earth. It reportedly had an atmosphere consisting of between 25% to 50%. Our current atmosphere reportedly has 0.04% Carbon Dioxide.

In-fact, during this period of high Carbon Dioxide, it was actually cooler. Two counter-arguments were put forward:

The first, by NASA, very recently insists no such high Carbon Dioxide atmosphere even existed in the first place and everybody is wrong (they’d need to explain the recorded anoxic events, source for the oxygen etc etc, which they haven’t done).

The second counter-argument was that it was cooler due to less nitrogen causing lower atmosphere pressure - although this argument seems speculative as no proof of low nitrogen is supplied - what makes up the other 75-50%? (emphasis on the if added):

With so much carbon dioxide, the Earth should have been warmer, but evidence shows it was not. In fact, it was partly covered by glaciers. That can be explained, however, if there was less nitrogen than today. That would cause lower atmospheric pressure, which then could allow for both higher carbon dioxide levels and cooler temperatures

Regardless of which argument you take, if you indeed take any - that loads of scientists are wrong about Carbon Dioxide Earth, or lower atmospheric pressure somehow produces a cooler Earth - the balancing mechanism still remains. Even NASA have to admit Carbon Dioxide is greening Earth.

More Carbon Dioxide consumers grow in response to more Carbon Dioxide. The usual counter-argument is a (single) plant can only consume so much - but this assumes a size limit, growth limit, and ignores the ability for a plant to produce more plants. Indeed, as most people know, plants get the Carbon to build their cells from Carbon Dioxide.

Why This Relates To The Great Frost - And The Question

Firstly, it suggests Carbon Dioxide is not the primary driver for heat, in-fact, it shows there is a multivariate form of factors too complex to possibly analyse.

Secondly, the balancing effect - as well as comparable percentages between CO2 Earth and current day Earth - shows current Carbon Dioxide levels are going to have negligible impact on weather events or temperature, or, if history of CO2 Earth is to be believed… may actually cool temperatures.

I have always been baffled by the experiments showing CO2 blocks infrared as proof it allows infrared to get trapped in Earth, because it would also imply it blocks it from entering Earth in the first place.

Reflections, Blocking - Same Difference

The closest comparison we can draw on freezing is the “Year Without Summer” - the year 1816. It is exactly the kind of disaster you likely envisage, with heavy snow during the peak of June. It was attributed to the eruption of Mount Tambora:

Over the following four months the volcano exploded - the largest volcanic explosion in recorded history. Many people close to the volcano lost their lives in the event. Mount Tambora ejected so much ash and aerosols into the atmosphere that the sky darkened and the Sun was blocked from view.

It seems ‘Captain Obvious’, but anything that blocks out or reduces sunlight or heat from sunlight - be it ash particles or cloud cover or CO2 - would result in the temperature dropping.

Of course, I’m overlooking the biggest driver of heat production - the Sun itself. Most people will think of Solar Minimums, or the ‘Grand Solar Minimum’ and attribute the word ‘minimum’ with the concept of cold.

However, the “Grindelwald Fluctuation” mentioned in the Great Frost article, ended in 1630, and the last Grand Solar Minimum - the Maunder Minimum - did not start until 1645 and ended in 1715 which was after the Great Frost in Britain in 1616, and ended before the Great Frost fair in 1814.

So actually we should infer the opposite - that solar maximums indicate cooler temperatures. As it currently stands, we’re actually moving towards a solar maximum, set to reportedly hit in 2025.

So, returning back to the question:

[…] will greenhouse atmospheric warming make it worse or mitigate it

I’m aware there are many types of gases, but assuming they’re all classified as greenhouse using the same properties as CO2, I am not convinced they would ‘trap’ infrared heat, so much as block it from entering in the first place, which would leading to a cooling trend, so it’d make it worse.

However, there is so little CO2 - 0.04% - that would not be the main driver, and evidence suggests other naturally occurring sources are more abundant for heat reflection, such as forest fires

Further, even if we assume this property of blocking or reflection doesn’t exist, the natural inclination towards balance on Earth means it isn’t likely to be the primary driver for cooling.

It is likely solar activity will be the primary driver for cooling - assuming there isn’t a major volcanic eruption or some serious event, say, nuclear war, that causes the sky to become filled with particulate matter. The secondary drivers are likely the dimethylsulphide being produced by plankton in the ocean (given Earth’s surface is 2/3rds ocean), and naturally occurring forest fires producing smoke that obscures the sun.

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