During question time toward the end of the recording (55min 15sec) he says:
Just a historical note, the guy who started this was a Swedish chemist whose lab I used to work at Stockholm by the name of Arrhenius. He won the Nobel Prize for chemistry and for his understanding of the temperature dependence of chemical reactions he got the Nobel Prize. He got into this and he started the whole global warming thing because he was actually trying to explain ice ages and he saw CO2 varied and temperature varied and he figured maybe CO2 caused the Ice Age. Now I don’t think anyone believes that anymore …
In other words, the whole idea that global warming is caused by CO2 came out of the need to explain what caused the Ice Age—a mystery that still eludes modern scientists.
In the Wikipedia entry on Arrhenius it says:
He was the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes would cause global warming. Arrhenius clearly believed that a warmer world would be a positive change. From that, the hot-house theory gained more attention. Nevertheless, until about 1960, most scientists dismissed the hot-house / greenhouse effect as implausible for the cause of ice ages as Milutin Milankovitch had presented a mechanism using orbital changes of the earth (Milankovitch cycles). Nowadays, the accepted explanation is that orbital forcing sets the timing for ice ages with CO2 acting as an essential amplifying feedback.
Note the term “amplifying feedback”. This means that Milankovitch cycles are not enough to explain the Ice Ages, which is understandable considering the relatively small variations in orbital parameters for the earth. So, they added a positive feedback mechanism from CO2. A positive feedback means the system is unstable, which explains why many scientists today are concerned about global warming and the earth reaching an unstable tipping point.
The problem is that these scientists have ignored the huge climate catastrophe of Noah’s Flood. By ignoring the Flood they cannot explain the post-Flood (Pleistocene) Ice Age. The Ice Age was the earth’s thermal response to the massive climate shock caused by the biblical Flood. It was largely the volcanic activity during that year-long event that produced the necessary conditions—warm oceans and volcanic dust high in the atmosphere. But the earth returned to equilibrium in about 700 years, demonstrating that it is a stable system. The biblical Flood provides the only explanation for the Ice Age.
See how a wrong understanding of the true history of the earth leads to a misunderstanding of what is happening in the present. And a wrong understanding will lead to wrong decisions about what we need to do.
Related Resources
Evolutionary ice age theories still don’t work
Astronomical troubles for the astronomical hypothesis of ice ages
The Ice Age
The Ice Age: Only the Bible Explains It DVD
telson
The Flood has often been regarded as a mere legend. Especially those people who believe in the theory of evolution do not believe that the Flood has ever taken place. It is impossible for them to think that it has ever occurred on Earth.
However, we should ask ourselves whether the Flood really took place. If we make practical observations based on what has been found in the ground, the fossils and traditional folklore, they quite often refer to the Flood. These indicate that a large mass destruction took place in the immediate past. The following paragraphs will deal with these different sources of information, referring to the Flood.
Chapter 1 – The mass graves of animals and fossils
Chapter 2 – Marine creatures discoveries on mountains and dry land
Chapter 3 – Carbon and Oil
Chapter 4 – The devastation of dinosaurs
The whole article is here: http://www.jariiivanainen.net/theflood.html
Kent Powderly
I’ve often wondered at the mention of 4 contrasts in Genesis 8:22 instead of 3–Are “cold and heat” and “winter and summer” redundant comparisons, or do they refer to two entirely different cycles, given that the immediate post-Flood generations could live in excess of 460 years–capable of observing a “mini ice age”?
Ge 8:22 “While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, Cold and heat, Winter and summer, And day and night Shall not cease.”
I’d appreciate your take on an idea that perhaps there were several radical post-Deluge mini-ice age/warm age cycles that decreased in intensity as the globe recovered its plant life and ability to process co2 into o2, and as tectonic plates stabilized over time.
Volcanism releases not only ash, but large amounts of co2. After driving a short ice age, the ash might be filtered out of the atmosphere in a few decades to a century or so by heavy precipitation, leaving still high levels of green-house gasses to create a warm dry spell until the next isostatic adjustment in the crust produced another round of intense volcanism.
A span of 700 to 1400 years of 2 or 3 radical cold-heat mini-age cycles would drop off to the gentle temperature peaks and valleys across several centuries observed in recent centuries. As forests returned and volcanism decreased, the atmosphere as well as the lithosphere would thereby stabilize.
Any comment on this scenario, supportive or shooting it down (if it doen’t really hold water) would be appreciated. Thanks.