It is disappointing to see articles like this. The main point of his article, which is summed up in the last sentence is perfectly valid. But why, oh why undermine entire thing with claims that are outright false (glaciers aren't retreating), dubious (the ice caps won't retreat), or irrelevant (biofuels).

How on earth can someone with such scant regard for the facts end up as a Professor of Geology? Maybe he is like Plimer and is near retirement, and has given up on his academic career to go on some quasi religious crusade about AGW.

Who is this Geologist who presumes to know so much about the accumulation of CarbonDioxide?

He is an apparently competent geologist who specialises in the investigation of oil and coal deposits in a number of locations around the world.

http://tiny.cc/lMDfq



<<<< Dr. Jutras has been doing research on the tectonostratigraphy of the Chaleur Bay area,the north-westernmost sector of the upper Paleozoic Maritimes Basin. His research has led to the identification of several previously unrecorded tectonic and sedimentary events
in that area. His perhaps most important contribution was the identification, within Carboniferous sediments, of a rare type of groundwater calcrete that had previously only been recognized within Quaternary deposits of Central Australia. These calcretes
seem to be genetically associated with the periphery of evaporitic basins, which are important targets for both the mining and petroleum industries.

His present work includes:

• The evolution of the Windsor Sea margins
during the Viséan (early Carboniferous).
• Sedimentology, tectonostratigraphy and
pan-Atlantic Canada correlation of conti-
nental units at the Viséan-Namurian
(early-mid-Carboniferous) boundary.
• Distribution, stratigraphic position and
petrology of thick and massive ground-
water calcretes within the Maritimes
Basin.
• Tectonic evolution of the Maritimes
Basin during the Late Devonian and
the Mississippian.
• Early Carboniferous mafic dykes and
associated peperites in southern Gaspésie.
• The petrology of siderite bands above
Pennsylvanian coal seams in Nova Scotia. >>>>

I applaud OLO for finally producing an article sceptical of climate change that has been written by someone other than journalists or British Lords. A shame however, when this sceptic turns out to be a geologist for the fossil fuel industry who claims to know more about climate than climatologists. Is this the best science that is available from the business-as-usual crowd?

Err, rstuart and severin. Both of your comments are light on facts and long on ad hominem. Can you please cite specific instances, with current, non-debunked references, that demonstrate that Pierre Jutras has made incorrect statements.

Good on OLO for allowing another side to the discussion. In fact, it would be interesting indeed to hear the comments of Andrew Glikson.

Errrr, Herbert

I have not cast any personal aspersions to Pierre Jutras, simply pointed out the FACT that he is a geologist who specialises in locating deposits of fossil fuels.

As for his belief that increasing levels of carbon dioxide are harmless, that is merely his opinion it is not based on the fact of ocean acidification:

http://ioc3.unesco.org/oanet/index.html

<<<< The ocean absorbs approximately one-fourth of the CO2 added to the atmosphere from human activities each year, greatly reducing the impact of this greenhouse gas on climate. When CO2 dissolves in seawater, carbonic acid is formed. This phenomenon, called ocean acidification, is decreasing the ability of many marine organisms to build their shells and skeletal structure. Field studies suggest that impacts of acidification on some major marine calcifiers may already be detectable, and naturally high-CO2 marine environments exhibit major shifts in marine ecosystems following trends expected from laboratory experiments. Yet the full impact of ocean acidification and how these impacts may propagate through marine ecosystems and affect fisheries remains largely unknown. >>>>

Nor is his blithe dismissal of arctic and antarctic melting as "melting glacier fronts are in fact not alarming at all, as glacier fronts are always experiencing melting" adequate explanation - again conjecture on his part.

Nasa observations find:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html

<<<< Gravity data collected from space using NASA's Grace satellite show that Antarctica has been losing more than a hundred cubic kilometers ... of ice each year since 2002. The latest data reveal that Antarctica is losing ice at an accelerating rate, too. How is it possible for surface melting to decrease, but for the continent to lose mass anyway? The answer boils down to the fact that ice can flow without melting. >>>>

Suggest further reading, Herbert

Herbert Stencil: "Can you please cite specific instances"

Sorry Herbert. I didn't realise there would be people reading my comments here that weren't as up to speed on the state of the planet. Just about everybody here who has been involved in the numerous discussions on OLO must to be. God knows, we have been over it enough.

All the stuff I talked can be looked up on Wikipedia. I suggest you take the trouble to look it up there yourself before asking for references.

Wikipedia is not a reference source itself of course, but most articles list of them at the bottom and give a pretty good overview of the current state of play as well. So if you want to read "specific, current, non-debunked references" go to the bottom of the pages I give below. I am assuming by "debunked" you scientifically debunked, as in there haven't been a host of peer reviewed papers published claiming the contrary.

Glacial retreat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850 Clearly, the glaciers are retreating.

Ice caps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_ice_packs The issue here is the Arctic ice cap has been shrinking by about 7.7% per decade, although some say it may have accelerated from 2007. In the face of the fact that the Arctic ice cap *is* shrinking, the claim by Jutras that the ice caps won't shrink seems odd.

Biofuels: I questioned its relevance. Obviously their uptake wasn't triggered by AGW, as it happened during the highest price spike in history in the thing the replace - petroleum.

It is good idea to google any claims you see on OLO, whether they be in articles or the comments. What Jutras has done here is not at all uncommon. For example, I heard Monckton on the radio the other day. To my utter surprise what he said made sense. This was in stark contrast to the near hysterical article he published on OLO. People say the oddest things on OLO. Maybe they think the word "opinion" in its name grants them a poetic licence.

Come on rstuart, you can't quote wikipedia, & then complain about others giving unsubstantiated opinions. Deffinately not now that we have learned of the rorts that have been going on there.

Good ol rstuart and severin! Your faith has you bound to the IPCC doctrine. The IPCC calls CO@ a pollutant so stop breathing it out. Try stopping breathing for thirty seconds every minute.
If anyone does not believe the faith as you believe the faith they have to be wrong!
If anyone works for the oil & gas industry or a power generator their research is automatically flawed!
Obviously you believe that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and support the IPCC Report. If you ever grow up enough to look at both sides of an argument google the NIPCC Report.
It is written by scientists who are just as qualified as your idols but being retired scientists they don't have to grovel for the research grants and give their masters the reults that are asked for. You did that? Now google Lysenkoism by Prof Cliff Ollie. Then research Eugenics and wonder why you believe what you believe.
I'm sceptical? Better than gullible.

Emotive argument, assertion and ideology are no substitutes for rigorously researched science. Prof Jutras should be commended for pouring cold water on the unfounded assertion that CO2 is the climate-changing villain. On the other hand, if anyone has irrefutable scientific evidence that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are the driver of global warming, then he/she should table that evidence for all to see. Climate change ideologists automatically disqualify themselves.

The article glosses over the fact there have been extinction events in the Earth's past that cannot be attributed to volcanic or astronomical factors. The planet Venus (second brightest object in the night sky) got hot and stayed hot. To state the bleedin' obvious the Earth never before had such a high maintenance species. To their credit the dinosaurs never dug up the coal, oil and gas that had built up over eons, but they died anyway. The 6.8 bn H. sapiens are merrily using up that endowment, breeding like crazy and failing to develop or pass on knowledge to live without it. We're also talking climate change speeds of decades, not hundreds of thousands of years.

Another thing; since climate change models don't predict the dinosaur period how about geological models predict next week's weather?

"Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is, in fact, the “greenest” gas in our atmosphere, and the most essential ingredient for life itself."

Wrong. _Every_ plant nutrient is essential for the existence of life. Take away the nitrogen (in the form of nitrates), sulphur, phosphorus and various trace elements and life simply would not exist. If Jutras can't even get basic high school biology right, why should I trust his understanding of the much more complex areas of meteorology and atmospheric physics?

Folks
This is the geologists three card trick. Pretend that AGW is about CO2.
and then prove that C02 is natural and necessary.

In reality it isn't CO2 it's *too Bloody* much of the stuff. The point is these individuals are out of their element .
The other glaring problem with this mans article is that the specific Tibetan glaciers that provide 60% of the fresh water for the four main rivers for China, India, Bangladesh are retreating for 80 years.
(upward of 300 MILLION people are threatened by this + the sea rise). There are before and after photos, the ice that is melting was laid down over 1000's of years....it isn't temporary thing. The ice on that end of the Tibetan plateau is disappearing it is turning intro the Gobi.
They don't want to accept that Glacier gate was only over the 35 yr time line not the fact they're retreating.
http://asiasociety.org/onthinnerice
http://sites.asiasociety.org/chinagreen/icimod-for-mountains-and-people/http://sites.asiasociety.org/chinagreen/ sideshows and videos
http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/nocs/news.php?action=display_news&idx=707
This last post show that geologists have underestimated the length of the last glacier /ice melt it didn't bounce back for between 2-2.5 1000years.

They also ignore the obvious differences between then and now 6.? Billion people.

In short geologists are simply out of depth.

Well rstuart,put your money where your mouth is.How about a bet,say $10,000.00 that the earth will not warm as much a as Al Gore says it will in the next 5 years.

I'm with you Raycom.

Eminently sensible to ask for us to be able to see undiluted or tamperless evidence of anthropogenic global warming.

I think what Prof Jutras is asking is even more relevant. ie. Why is Global Warming a bad thing?

All you alarmists should tell us why Global Warming is bad for us. Oh and give evidence to back your assertions otherwise you'll be, quicker than a lightening flash, lumped in with the likes of Al Gore, Phil Jones and Rajendra Pachauri.

"It is very likely that tropical storms would subside as well, as they are also the products of excessive heat in the dry, sub-tropical latitudes, whereas equatorial areas are devoid of them."

This too is false. To check that my own understanding of tropical storm formation was accurate, I did a bit of research which turned up three standard accounts of tropical storm formation which all agree that tropical storm formation requires warm water and moist warm air. Their energy comes not from excessive heat in dry latitudes but energy released when the water vapour in the air condenses to form raindrops.

This guy is a joke.

My only criticism of an excellent article is the lack of a question mark or two after the article header, Public Enemy No1. I thought 'You must be joking', but the header did not do justice to the article which was a joy to read after the vilification which has been heaped onto a trace gas which is essential to life on earth. I trust geologists who have a track record in forensically analysing the 'bones' of this wonderful old earth. Geologists who have studied 'fossil' fuels (more correctly called carbon fuels as there is evidence that methane from within the earth is a major source of the fuels on which mankind depends - there weren't enough decomposing dinosaurs to make all that black stuff) are better qualified than anyone to comment on climate change. Meteorologists admit they can't get their weather projections right outside of about 10 days. Climatologists with their models and prejudices, predicting 20 or more years ahead have yet to earn their spurs and may never live to prove their projections.

Jutras is really throwing some big numbers around and some people soak it in as if it all happened yesterday. Ian Plimer does it, so does Bob Carter – but that’s what geologists do.

Obviously, not a lot of people here can get their head around ‘geologic’ time – millions and millions and millions of years, people.

When a geologist looks at the stratigraphy of ocean sediments, or the rock layering in the Simpson Desert, or the potential for oil in an ice free Arctic, or whatever ... what resolution do you think they can nail a particular event to?

35,385,642 years ago? Or more like 35 million years ago?

What do you think could happen in the intervening 385,642 years?

How long has the human species been on this planet ... give or take tens and tens of thousands of years?

What was humanity doing only 1 thousand years ago? What was happening 385 thousand years ago?

Are you trying to compare what happened 35 million years ago to what has happened in the past 200 years ... since the population explosion, or since the exponential burst in burning stuff that has been 'locked' up for and millions millions of years?

In the following link, under “Earth Sciences”, see what the institutions representing geologists have to say about AGW.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Earth_sciences

Have they got it wrong, too?

Compared to geologists like those aforementioned, quite a few scientists actually study stuff in ‘real time’ – you know, like what is actually happening 'now'.

Look, there will always be a dichotomy between geologists and climatologists, much like that between engineers and scientists. What’s important is that they put their disdain for each other aside and focus on the issues. The scientific academies and institutions across the planet do that, despite their differences.

It is so bleeding obvious that some people here treat the author as some kind of messiah to refute AGW when they don't have any concept of the science. As though he is pontificating from the pulpit and the religious followers (no, not sceptics) are salivating at his every word.

OK,all you AGW lovers.I'm taking bets on Al Gore's predictions.Put your money where your collective alarmist propaganda eminates.Cold hard cash for Al Whore's scare mongering.

Arjjay, Al Gore is a politician.

Maaate, you've got rocks in your head if you think anybody is going to place bets on what a politician says.

Another one!
The collective knowledge of decades of work is surpassed by an industry hack with nice simple theories, easily explained.
Once again a whole profession is wrong, misguided or corrupt...their subject "too complex"...and yet the hacks can confidently say they are wrong. Pity Bankers weren't treated like this!
Plenty of "truthiness" but it aint science.

Yes the biosphere is in no trouble at all...in the long term.
Humans however have occupied every continent and are rapidly using all the cheap resources. Sure, the desertification of Victoria will be balanced by more rainfall elsewhere...but it takes many decades for soil to grow (its a living thing) and nutrient cycles to be established. We have this little problem that human food is on about to 30 day lead time...ecosystems are more like 30 years.
Don't be fooled by red herrings.
BTW. I believe we have to adapt: almost too late for mitigation now.

Gee I would like to see Pierre and Arjay and the rest of the team sealed in a room with just CO2! If its that "harmless" a gas they might not notice that to live they need oxygen and all of the other gases that make up the atmosphere.

Guys it is about the balance of each gas as to how effective or detrimental any one component is to the ecosphere! Nitrogen occurs naturally in the atmosphere and is inert and harmless but ask any diver what happens to their internal ecosystem with excessive quantity.

It is demonstrable and reproducible SCIENCE that increased CO2 in an atmosphere (laboratory controlled environment) increases heat absorption. Therefore quite a justifiable conclusion that an increase of CO2 in the "free range" climate is going to have an effect.

Perhaps Arjay and Pierre could explain to the Olympics organizers in Vancouver that the fact that they have no snow for the first time in living history at this time of the year is just part of the "natural cycle" and nothing to do with GW

Sorry I forgot...the IPCC has conspired to ruin the Winter Olympics just to prove their point and further create alarmist reaction :)

Peter King makes the absolutely simplistic assumption that a CO2 experiment conducted in a laboratory is proof that anthropogenic CO2 is the main driver of global warming, if any. The world's atmosphere is subjected to far more influences (solar and oceanic for starters, and some yet to be identified) than that of a controlled laboratory. The IPCC has been unable to validate its climate models as being representative of actual climate change. Satellite temperature measurements, proxy temperature data, and reviews of IPCC surface temperature data after the Climategate scandal, reveal that there has been no man-made global warming, let alone any measurable global warming since 1970, despite CO2 emissions continuing to increase over that period.

It's disappointing that an associate professor of anything could write such drivel. The impacts of climate change over the next decades and century on arable land, food security and ecosystems can't be passed over and ignored for the sake of arable lands, food security and ecosystems in thousands and tens of thousands of years time, even if Pierre Jutras could convincingly show that adding lot's of CO2 to the atmosphere now would have a beneficial impacts so far in the future.

Where much denialist misdirection is based around very short term changes and trying to pretend they represent real climate trends, this author attempts to direct attention to very large changes that occured in the deep geological past and to make what's occurring now seem insignificant or even essential in the far future.

This is pure denialist distraction. CO2 is necessary, essential to the climatic balance as well as to life on Earth, but rapidly increasing the amounts of it to levels not seen for 500,000,000 years will have seriously damaging consequences. That's the conclusion of all the institutions that study climate, conclusions supported by every peak science body on the planet.

I can't believe Pierre can even take himself seriously on this.

Arjay: "earth will not warm as much a as Al Gore says it will in the next 5 years."

I wasn't aware Al Gore had made an exact prediction on what the temperature would be in 5 years. Maybe you can provide a link to it? It is a bit much to ask people here to place a bet if we don't know what we are betting on, after all.

rstuart: "Wikipedia is not a reference source itself of course, but most articles a list of [references] at the bottom"
Hasbeen: "Come on rstuart, you can't quote wikipedia, & then complain about others giving unsubstantiated opinions"

Wrong three times in one sentence. Impressive effort. Herbert Stencil asked for references, I directed him to those at the bottom of Wikipedia articles, not the article itself. Wikipedia isn't unsubstantiated - it cites references and lots of them, which is why I directed Herbert there. And finally I didn't quote a single word from Wikipedia.

rstuart: "The main point of his article, which is summed up in the last sentence is perfectly valid."
phoenix94: "Your faith has you bound to the IPCC doctrine."

What? That conclusion of the article was if anything against the IPCC doctrine, and I agreed with it. The point I was trying to make is in using spin and miss information to bolster his argument, the author has done the reverse - weakened it. He has also undermined whatever credibility the title of "Associate Professor" might of given him. Obviously, I didn't do a very good job of making my point as you, and for that matter Hasbeen went and did exactly the same thing.

For what it is worth, Taswegian nailed problem with the article. It is perfectly true that earth has had more extreme climates in the past. The geologists in particular seem very keen on pointing this out. What they omit to say is those climates would wipe our current civilisation out. So the point, while true is irrelevant. I don't know why they keep raising it.

Raycom,

I was not suggesting that a lab experiment proved AGW but in the context of this article to blithely claim that CO2 is "good" and doesn't cause warming is simply not true.

I note you don't address the visual and tangible evidence of Vancouver...nor of the record unprecedented blizzards inundating the US only a little further south. This is exactly the WEATHER response predicted by "real" climatologists to AGW.

I don't know what you guys need for proof; seems that scientific facts are not enough...perhaps as we are approaching Easter there might be a papal epiphany that you can all agree with!

Looks like the same old same old. As soon as someone, even a Professor of Geology comes out with a paper that debunks AGW the alarmsists just go crazy. They cannot bear an opinion that goes against their belief.

Why should a geologist looking at the past not give an opinion? There is so much that has been learned by geologists looking at past climate and changes. These people are looking at far longer periods of time. They should be as well respected as any other academics giving their opinions. They should at least be accorded as much respect as those who work for the IPCC and have computer modelled their findings over the past few hundred years.

Wikipedia as we all know can be changed. People can't surely be going to Wikipedia for actual and accurate information? You don't find the real truth on Wikipedia.

In my previous comment I meant levels of CO2 not seen for 500,000 years, but the point's the same. Also, given that prior natural periods of warming resulted in the release of large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, a professor of geology ought to be concerned that we'll see that occur again, making concetrations far stronger and the situation far worse. Warming will also see the release of greater amounts of methane, potentially very large amounts - and it's an even more potent greenhouse gas - on time scales that will strongly impact the world over the lifetimes of people now living.

We dismiss and ignore what the scientists who study climate now know at our peril. Misleading people by using the obvious and uncontested fact that CO2 is, in the right measure, essential and beneficial, to imply that massively increasing it's concentration is not merely harmless, but a positive good is denialist mischief of the worst kind. This article is an appalling abuse of a professor's scientific credentials and position.

Apart from the predictable confirmation-bias produced by this rather silly article, there is some awfully ill-informed opining about carbon dioxide.

Numerous posters have asserted that CO2 is a more or less benign 'trace element' that is required for life; perhaps so, but it appears that their logic is severely impaired, for the next stage in their reasoning is that it must therefore be harmless, perhaps even good for us, no matter the quantity in the atmosphere. They are also nearly 200 years behind what Joseph Fourier already understood in the 1820s about how gases in the atmosphere might trap the heat from the sun. Tyndall's later experiments in the 1850s showed that the amount of 'trace' CO2 could affect the degree of heat radiation in the atmosphere. The Swedes Arrhenius and Hogbom calculated the warming effect of man-made CO2 at the 1896 level of industrial development; their research had begun as an attempt to explain the beginning of the Ice Age.

More about these steps and the work of Angstrom, Callendar, Pless, Revelle and others up to the late 20th century can be read in Spencer Weart's very readable (for the lay person) 'The Discovery of Global Warming' at

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

Statements like 'vilification which has been heaped onto a trace gas which is essential to life', 'carbon dioxide is not a pollutant' and so on are completely meaningless; I'm astounded by how vacuous these statements are. It's a bit like clinging to the belief that the earth is flat or that smoking tobacco is harmless to one's health. Their authors are ignorant of the most fundamental knowledge behind the accumulation of scientific evidence for AGW. They should acquaint themselves with some facts about the ability of the oceans to absorb CO2, and the process of acidification.