If you can’t see the condescension and open name calling in your comments to Monster, then our definitions of those terms are too far apart to even discuss the concept of character.

The new link you provided still offers no mechanism for ending an interglacial. It does, however, reiterate the well known assumption that the Milankovitch cycles don’t provide sufficient perturbations to cause glaciation cycles by themselves. Hence, CO2 is offered as an explanation for the missing forcing. But again, this is deemed insufficient, so the CO2 forcing is claimed to be magnified by a factor of at least 3, by largely undetermined “feedbacks.” As the magnitude of those feedbacks is determined primarily by subtracting subtracting delta t(calculated) from delta t(observed), they strike me as little more than a fudge factor. But assuming they have been properly measured, the net heating resulting from increased CO2 and it’s feedbacks, would appear to be several times greater than that directly resulting from the Milankovitch cycles. Such an imbalance would cause, as Hansen has repeatedly stated, a runaway feedback loop. The fact that we exist proves otherwise, though there appears to be no accepted mechanism to counteract those feedbacks.

Perhaps more importantly, the evidence supporting the idea that CO2 is responsible for the magnitude of glacial cycles, is largely based in the concept of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Even if that were a valid scientific concept, the fact that warming actually was post hoc, has little to no evidence supporting it. The best current evidence, though I’m very skeptical of it as well, is that temperature leads CO2 concentrations, as was Monster’s point. And a mechanism for a causal relationship in that direction is well understood, and entirely uncontroversial.

I neither stated, nor implied, that we should strive to waste resources. Truth be told, I, as a hard core CLASSICAL liberal, and an obvious “climate denier,” (presumably that means I deny there’s a climate) likely lead a “greener” life than anyone I know. I have no car, no heating/air conditioning, no gas hookups, and a $14 per month electric bill. But that’s because I’m opposed to pointless waste, not because I think we’re all going to die. In actual practice, are you willing to commute 30+ miles a day by bike, as I have for 13 years? Do you think your neighbors are? The simple fact is that our society will never voluntarily make the changes necessary to get anywhere near zero emissions, assuming that’s even desirable. The only practical ways to do it would be an unprecedentedly restrictive police state, or massive population reduction, on the order of several billion people disappearing. Taking such measures on the basis of poorly understood maybes, would be both amoral, and absurd. In either case, I see no reason to believe the worst case global warming scenario would be anywhere near as bad as the “solution.” It’s well known that massive doses of cyanide will kill cancerous tumors. But even after the existence of such a tumor is proven explicitly, no one ever opts for that treatment because it kills the patient. To kill the patient because computer models project that he’ll likely develop a tumor, eventually, is by no means a sound policy, regardless of how many people think those computers are “probably” right. The fact that there are missing variables in those models that are known to be quite large, is vital to assessing the predictive powers of said models, but still has little bearing on the actions that should be taken because of them.

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/ docs/ 1990/ 1990_Lorius_etal.pdf

This gives a much more technical discussion which partially touches on the glacial/interglacial periods and various factors affecting the transition. The fact that the transition was incompletely understood (at that time, probably still the case) in no way negates the known effects forcing effects of CO2. Of course we want to know more about all the factors causing the transitions, but this work suggests that it is a combination of orbital changes, changes in precession, plus amplifying feedbacks from CO2 and methane (to my understanding, anyway).

I don’t see how not fully understanding these long cycles has a significant effect on our concern about the risks entailed in the rapid changes we are making to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. In fact, I would argue that it is MORE risky, as we don’t really know the extent of the changes we may cause. Why would we want to risk putting the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere at a level that has no precedent (for at least 600,000 years, anyway)? It doesn’t make any sense to me.

Being a skeptic from a scientific standpoint (”we don’t really know all of the details”) is fine, but being a skeptic from the standpoint of public policy is sheer lunacy. The probabliity that the climatologists are right is just way too high. Even if there was only a 10-20% chance of catastrophic change, prudent risk management would require taking reasonable steps to avoid that possibility.

The phrase “educate yourself” is pointlessly condescending, and doesn’t appear to be based on anything Monster has written in this thread. He asked a valid question, for which you provided him a link to, presumably, an answer. The page at that link clearly agrees with Monster’s premise, but makes no attempt to answer his question. From that point, you could have chosen to have a civil discussion, as David and I have, you could have ignored him, or you could have simply mocked him for not agreeing with you. Having chosen the latter speaks volumes about your character. It also leaves the impression that your understanding of the subject is insufficient to answer his question.

MIS 11 was unusually long, but nowhere near the the 50,000 years predicted by Oerlemans and Van Der Veen, or the 80,000+ predicted by Ledley. Beyond that, MIS 11 had a very different shape than the Holocene. They both had rapid rises to near present day temperatures, but MIS 11 continued on a long, slower warming, to a considerably higher temperature, then cooled at a similar rate until an eventual rapid drop to glacial conditions. The Holocene, in contrast, has continued for ~10,000 years on an a plateau with apparently unprecedented stability. If that stability maintains itself as predicted, it’ll be the longest such stability since at least the birth of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.

As to IR sidebands, CO2 only affects a few of them. The peak at ~2.7 microns is totally dominated by water, and the peaks at ~2 and 14 microns are greatly diminished by it. The only large section fully open to CO2 absorption is around 4.3 microns. CO2 is basically transparent to all other IR spectra.

But none of that addresses my actual point. Every previous interglacial period has ended. Additionally, every interglacial has hit roughly the same upper boundary, beyond which the temperature stopped rising. My point is that such an upper boundary seems incredibly unlikely to be mere coincidence. There is very strong circumstantial evidence to support the existence of a cooling influence that is yet to be discovered.

Any system with net positive feedbacks is inherently unstable. Upon perturbation, such a system will quickly, and invariably, decay to it’s next stable point. Our climatic system appears to have strongly reinforcing feedbacks between 2 points of relative stability. And the upper point appears to be both less traversable, and less sustainable. As the current CO2 dominated climate models would suggest no such upper limit, and an unbalanced warming feedback pushing it, I don’t see how they can be capable of accurate hindcasting. And a model that can’t “predict” the past, is very unconvincing for the future.

As to me directing you to “the section which has caused (me) some confusion,” I can’t help you with that. I’m not confused. I’m fully aware of the possibility that I may be wrong, but that’s a very different concept. I think I’ve already demonstrated a solid understanding of the subject. That my understanding differs from yours, doesn’t necessarily make either of us confused. And as there are still large gaps in the scientific knowledge on this subject, our differing understandings don’t even necessarily make either of us wrong. The best I can do is ask where YOU think I’m confused. My only question to this point has been about the causative forces required to end the interglacial periods. If you can point me to any research in that area, I’d be happy to read it. And if you can point me to any research that invalidates what I’ve written, I’ll read that too. But of course, specificity would be immensely helpful. The link you provided yesterday is painfully vague, and not really technical enough to change opinions. What I’ve read there so far is basically discussion, as opposed to hard science.

Monster, the only thing I “believe” in here is the scientific method and the huge body of evidence from published, peer-reviewed studies suporting AGW. I would suggest reading the IPCC AR4 summary:

http://www.ipcc.ch/

as well as Joe Romm’s book, “Hell and High Water”

plus the latest work from James Hansen, one of the top climate researchers in the U.S.:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/

This is a good way to educate yourself, assuming you are truly interested. If you want to challenge the findings of the researchers (which I suspect is your true motive), you are certainly free to do your own research and get it published in the same peer-reviewed journals (assuming, of course, that your research meets their standards).

No, there are essentially an unlimited supply of IR sidebands available, for all intensive purposes. (Obviously there is some fintie limit, this being the real world. But it doesn’t matter.) You are correct that the radiative forcing (or response, pre-anthropocene) is logarithmic in the concentration, to first approximation.

Sometimes Weart’s explainations aren’t as clear ass they should be. I have to send him a e-mail about a flat-out error regarding D-O events and if you’ll direct me to the section which has caused you some confustion, I’ll read it over. [This atmospheric physics aspect of climatology is the part I find the most difficult.]

I’m also aware that the most recent research suggests that our current interglacial period should remain largely stable, outside of human interference, for tens of millennia. But clearly that has not been the pattern for at least the last 3 million years. That projection is merely a statement that one of two possibilities is true. Either this interglacial is substantially unlike any previous one, or we’ve yet to discover the mechanism by which interglacial periods end. If the former is true, we’re in uncharted territory, and all evidence before the Holocene is irrelevant. That, of course, leads to the question of what changed. Either way, we’ve missed a very important climate forcing.

As to the lack of any upper limit to CO2 forcings, you’re simply incorrect. The energy reaching the earth is finite. CO2 is only capable of reflecting specific wavelengths back to the surface. Beyond that, the additional energy reflected deteriorates exponentially with increasing CO2 concentrations. That’s why we talk of the change associated with a doubling of CO2, as opposed to the change associated with an arithmetic increase. Any doubling, theoretically, will produce the same effect, regardless of the actual concentrations. And of course, at some point, ALL energy in the appropriate wavelengths will be reflected, making any further increase irrelevant to temperature. That’s analogous to the more well known exponential decay, that of radioactive elements. As the amount gets smaller, the radiation decreases. At some point, you eventually get down to the last atom. When that one fisses, there’s nothing left.

The website you sent me to routinely mentions this saturation, though the authors repeatedly insist that we haven’t reached it. I also didn’t say we’ve reached it, only that a limit exists. I sincerely don’t know if we’re there. But that’s a very different position from stating that there is no such limit.

The current interglacial will continue for at least another 20,000 years (IPCC says 30,000).

There is no upper limit for CO2 increasing temperatures; this is extremely well established physics. You can begin learning the history by reading “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html

http://www.nature.com/ ngeo/ journal/ v1/ n8/ abs/ ngeo263.html;jsessionid=0DB2FA487A40F3D8F5A4D3C7B7810E50