The Feedback mechanism

[pottyprof]

It has certainly been used to help explain why we have had ice ages in the past and so would form an obvious part in any modeling of 'Global Climate' for the future. Maybe they just don't mention the 'obvious' stuff Pit?

Maybe they don't want a natural cycle to be part of the tax system?? Perhaps its easier to blame the whole warming thing on an oil based system?? Tax for what you use. tax again for the "saleable" offset??

The more I think about what the oil based system represents, the more I think that there is a link between the governments and their insistence that we are made to believe that we are causing ALL the heating when we arn't...

GW. "obvious" stuff.. Light a fire and then place your hand close to it. 5 seconds, then remove it for 25 seconds. place your hand close to it for 10 seconds, remove it for 20 seconds. Place your hand close to it for 15 seconds.. etc.. Tell me what you observe..

I'll tell you what you'll observe.. your hand would not recover its resistance to the heat that you observed originally. Heat will build up in the air around and in your hand and eventually it will become unbearable. Due to the elliptical orbit of the earth, you have a similar feedback mechanism that has been building up on earth for a few thousand years..

Regarding Devs post about the explanation being slow. As with all proposed feedback mechanisms, It isn't an on/off switch.. A point has to be reached where the balance tips and things accelerate, as you would expect from a body that wobbles from a circular orbit into an elliptical one, more so with a body that likes to hug the sun at one end of the ellipse. This is currently our winter.

The poles also wobble. Currently our North pole is facing sunwards more, meaning the Arctic icecap is melting. This conversely means that the Antarctic cap is growing as it is getting summer at the furthest point of the ellipse orbit and the pole is pointing away more from the sun...

Also explains some aspect of the wobble on the magnetic pole, considering the fluid mechanisms involved...

[Mr Sleet]

Rather vague I must say, PP. "closer to the sun than we have been for a while" how much time is a pottyproff 'while'? It is simplistic to say being closer to the sun warm us if the amount is trivial - both distance and temperature. You've given no figures so I have to assume you have none? So it's not obvious - it is, as those who have the figure would say, not the explanation for recent warming. How come you know better?

Likewise with CO2 lags temps in the ice cores stuff. Yes it might well have, but so what? In the past CO2 feedback to a warming push, atm we're bypassing that push and just pouring it into the atmosphere and how CO2 gets to the atmosphere doesn't alter it's ghg properties...So, again, not obvious.

Well it is important because the CO2 increase is/may be due to the warmer temps today, not as a result of. Warmer seas means less solubility of CO2, hence more in the atmosphere.

[parmenides3]

It's nice to see that so many people are engaging with the science, here. Ignoring the intransigently irrational denial of AGW, there's the interesting question of whether isostatic rebound (the earth shifting because the ice has gone) might have an impact. Not as much as you might think, is one plausible answer. The Arctic is wet, remember, so the pressure differential from ice melt is less than it would be over a land mass. However, the sort of shifts in mass-balance we are talking about could, plausibly, have an effect - a climate feedback - though what this might be, and how strong it might be, are highly speculative. We just don't know the specific numbers. I will point out, though, there there has been no change in volcanicity observed in the past thirty year's to match the change in climate, so we might just be barking up the wrong tree, here.

:)P