“The more interesting and potentially controversial result is that our data indicate surface water temperatures during a part of the Medieval Warm Period that are similar to today’s…”
“Although there are significant uncertainties with our own reconstruction, our work raises the idea that perhaps even the Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions need to be looked at more closely.”
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: News Release : New Temperature Reconstruction from Indo-Pacific Warm Pool
The First Word in an Unfolding Story
Media Relations Office
93 Water Street MS #16
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
A new 2,000 year long reconstruction of sea surface temperatures (SST) from the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) suggests that temperatures in the region may have been as warm during the Medieval Warm Period as they are today.
The IPWP is the largest body of warm water in the world, and, as a result, it is the largest source of heat and moisture to the global atmosphere, and an important component of the planet’s climate. Climate models suggest that global mean temperatures are particularly sensitive to sea surface temperatures in the IPWP. Understanding the past history of the region is of great importance for placing current warming trends in a global context.
The study is published in the journal Nature.
In a joint project with the Indonesian Ministry of Science and Technology (BPPT), the study’s authors, Delia Oppo, a paleo–oceanographer with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and her colleagues Yair Rosenthal of Rutgers State University and Braddock K. Linsley of the University at Albany-State University of New York, collected sediment cores along the continental margin of the Indonesian Seas and used chemical analyses to estimate water past temperatures and date the sediment. The cruise included 13 US and 14 Indonesian scientists.
“This is the first record from the region that has really modern sediments and a record of the last two millennia, allowing us to place recent trends in a larger framework,” notes Oppo.
Global temperature records are predominantly reconstructed from tree rings and ice cores. Very little ocean data are used to generate temperature reconstructions, and very little data from the tropics. “As palaeoclimatologists, we work to generate information from multiple sources to improve confidence in the global temperature reconstructions, and our study contributes to scientists’ efforts towards that goal,” adds Oppo.
Temperature reconstructions suggest that the Northern Hemisphere may have been slightly cooler (by about 0.5 degrees Celsius) during the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ (~AD 800-1300) than during the late-20th century. However, these temperature reconstructions are based on, in large part, data compiled from high latitude or high altitude terrestrial proxy records, such as tree rings and ice cores, from the Northern Hemisphere (NH). Little pre-historical temperature data from tropical regions like the IPWP has been incorporated into these analyses, and the global extent of warm temperatures during this interval is unclear. As a result, conclusions regarding past global temperatures still have some uncertainties.
Oppo comments, “Although there are significant uncertainties with our own reconstruction, our work raises the idea that perhaps even the Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions need to be looked at more closely.”
Comparisons
The marine-based IPWP temperature reconstruction is in many ways similar to land temperature reconstructions from the Northern Hemisphere (NH). Major trends observed in NH temperature reconstructions, including the cooling during the Little Ice Age (~1500-1850 AD) and the marked warming during the late twentieth century, are also observed in the IPWP.
“The more interesting and potentially controversial result is that our data indicate surface water temperatures during a part of the Medieval Warm Period that are similar to today’s,” says Oppo. NH temperature reconstructions also suggest that temperatures warmed during this time period between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1250, but they were not as warm as modern temperatures. Oppo emphasizes, “Our results for this time period are really in stark contrast to the Northern Hemisphere reconstructions.”
Reconstructing Historical Temperatures
Records of water temperature from instruments like thermometers are only available back to the 1850s. In order to reconstruct temperatures over the last 2,000 years, Oppo and her colleagues used a proxy for temperature collected from the skeletons of marine plankton in sediments in the Indo-Pacific Ocean. The ratio of magnesium to calcium in the hard outer shells of the planktonic foraminifera Globigerinoides ruber varies depending on the surface temperature of the water in which it grows. When the phytoplankton dies, it falls to the bottom of the ocean and accumulates in sediments, recording the sea surface temperature in which it lived.
“Marine sediments accumulate slowly in general — approximately 3 cm/yr — which makes it hard to overlap sediment record with instrumental record and compare that record to modern temperature records,” says Oppo. “That’s what is different about this study. The sediment accumulates fast enough in this region to give us enough material to sample and date to modern times.”
The team generated a composite 2000-year record by combining published data from a piston core in the area with the data they collected using a gravity corer and a multi-corer. Tubes on the bottom of the multi-corer collected the most recently deposited sediment, therefore enabling the comparison of sea surface temperature information recorded in the plankton shells to direct measurements from thermometers.
Oppo cautions that the reconstruction contains some uncertainties. Information from three different cores was compiled in order to reconstruct a 2,000-year-long record. In addition sediment data have an inherent uncertainty associated with accurately dating samples. The SST variations they have reconstructed are very small, near the limit of the Mg/Ca dating method. Even in light of these issues, the results from the reconstruction are of fundamental importance to the scientific community.
More Questions to Answer
The overall similarity in trend between the Northern Hemisphere and the IPWP reconstructions suggests that that Indonesian SST is well correlated to global SST and air temperature. On the other hand, the finding that IPWP SSTs seem to have been approximately the same as today in the past, at a time when average Northern Hemisphere temperature appear to have been cooler than today, suggests changes in the coupling between IPWP and Northern Hemisphere or global temperatures have occurred in the past, for reasons that are not yet understood. “This work points in the direction of questions that we have to ask,” Oppo says. “This is only the first word, not the last word.”
The US National Science Foundation and the WHOI Ocean and Climate Change Institute provided funding for this work.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, independent organization in Falmouth, Mass., dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, its primary mission is to understand the oceans and their interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the oceans’ role in the changing global environment.
h/t to WUWT reader Glenn
Heh.
I guess this means they don’t want a AGW ‘grant’ cookie?
There are things in life that make one unsure whether to laugh or cry or cheer or beat one’s head on the wall in frustration.
At last one of the major US scientific institutions (as I understand) has discovered that there was a Medieval Warm Period and that it was (no, sorry, MAY have been) as warm as today. Something that historians have known for years.
Read H H Lamb’s book ‘Climate, history and the modern world’.
I suppose we raise one small cheer, do we?
I’ll get this one in early –
DENIERS! How much were you paid by Shell and BP?
Besides, Wood’s Hole is just one insignificant little institute – who ever heard of any important oceanographic work coming from it? Anyway – there are ‘significant uncertainties’, and their findings are well within the error bars for the MWP temperatures defined by Mann and now accepted at the only correct concensus…
I am sure that Mann will try and find some way to discredit this study and its scientists. But that doesn’t erase the fact that more and more are coming out against the AGW dogma with peer-reviewed papers, and emprical data.
You can only “cry wolf” for so long.
A 2006 reconstruction of the IPWP had a similar result:
http://i35.tinypic.com/11rb3ae.jpg
That graph is part of my post on long-term SST reconstructions. And there are others that contradict the hockey stick:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/07/sst-reconstructions.html
Mann’s NINO3 reconstruction, red curve in following graph, contradicts the HS.
http://s5.tinypic.com/20b26p0.jpg
That Mann dataset was part of a post on low frequency ENSO oscillations:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/low-frequency-enso-oscillations.html
Whoops – sorry about spellings – I was too angry. in any case, Shell sells petrol in Indonesia, so you can’t believe a word of any research carried out within 500 miles of the place – don’t listen to them…
(falls off chair spluttering…)
Don’t worry Dr. Running says politics are where the action is at in the new climate change minor program at the University of Montana. See: http://www.montanakaimin.com/index.php/news/news_article/um_offers_unprecedented_climate_change_minor_this_semester/3847
Mann oh Mann is Mann ever going to be ticked off
I propose the following reality check on Mann’s (and others) proxy records which purport to show unprecedented modern warming. Mann is claiming that temps have roughly followed his hockey stick over the years, based on tree ring parameters (bigger tree rings = higher temps is the basic relationship I assume?). So if we have unprecedented temperatures recently, we should also have unprecedented tree rings recently. Is this the case? Has this simple verification check been performed? Are trees in large part statistically different now than they ever were before (in the last 1-2 thousand years)? And if so can this be contributed to a temperature signature?
I would love to see how they calibrate tree rings to temperature, and secondly how they decide which ancient tree sample is “good” for temperature analysis and which is bad…
Readers might like to know that Prof. Mann wrote to the London Sunday Telegraph last Sunday defending his position claiming the endorsement of the US Academy of Sciences quoting ‘Academy Affirms Hockey Stick Graph’, Nature, Jan 29, 2006.
I read an interesting paper yesterday:
“Late Holocene glacial and periglacial evolution in the upper Orco Valley, northwestern Italian Alps” by Carlo Giraudi
He says that at two times in the past, 200BC to 100AD and 5740-5600 years BP, soils developed in areas currently devoid of vegetation and with permafrost. Temperatures in those times were likely higher than they are now. He also says that during the 11th and 12th centuries AD, vegetation was able to colonize an area now littered with periglacial debris and void of vegetation. He also says that frost weathering was not active during that period and that the area was likely warmer than now for a long enough duration for it to be colonized by vegetation. This is backed up by pollen studies of an adjacent peat bog (Caramiello et al. 1994) shows increasing temperatures in the 11th-13th centuries
The longest retreat phase of glaciers of the Swiss glaciers was about 2000 years ago correlating with studies by Holzhauser et al. (2005) and Joerin et al. (2006). The glaciers reached their maximum extent of the second half of the Holocene during the LIA.
Most interesting is that climate has apparently become the most unstable of the Holocene over the past few thousand years. More oscillation between warm/cold periods. The MWP shows evidence of warmer temperatures than today but scant rainfall on the glaciers resulting in less overall retreat than today. The period most closely matching today’s combination of precipitation and temperatures is the Roman warm period of roughly 2000 years ago but the glaciers today have so far been reduced to a smaller size than during the RWP.
Actually, all the fossil fuels are not fossilized plant remains. What they are is a race of TNO inhabitants (Sedna is their capital planet) came and sequestered the majority of the Carbon compounds so that the planet could freeze over, and they could colonize. Most are in cyrogenic deep freeze somewhere in Antarctica & Greenland. They do this to wait out the Interglacials. A few remain on Sedna where they check up on Earth every 10,000 yrs. Problem is, man came along and started using fire. So, they sent Gore, Hansen & Mann on a mission from God.
Now you know the rest of the story.
It’s an interesting result. I would like to know how the proxies were calibrated and combined. That’s usually where things go right or wrong in a reconstruction. Most I’ve read are flat wrong mathematically. The various multivariate regressions almost universally suppress the historic signal in comparison to the calibration date range. So every time I read proxy, I think first — what was the proxy data, and second — how was it calibrated and combined.
Off topic–
I’ve got a well written guest post some may like from Dr. Weinstein on space based energy production. It’s a little different from the climate discussion which is actually nice sometimes.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/the-solution-to-future-energy-needs-and-global-pollution/
And my point to posting the above is that glacial advance and retreat is not always related to temperature but can also be related to amounts and nature of precipitation falling on them. If you have colder temperatures but decreased precipitation, or the precipitation falls mainly in the warmer months as rain, you get less growth. Warmer temperatures but less rain or more precipitation in winter months as snow could mean less glacial retreat. The “perfect storm” of warmer temperatures combined with increased precipitation as rain in the warmer months can mean dramatic glacial advance.
That, and to show that the warmer periods in Giraudi’s study seem to correspond to the Woods Hole conclusions. But if the MWP was dryer than today’s warm period, information from such things as tree ring studies and glacial boundaries could lead one to believe it was “cooler” then it actually was at that time. The MWP was apparently warmer but dryer than now according to data on river flooding draining the Swiss Alps.
Do the authors sound more than a little nervous that they won’t be invited back to the next dinner party to anyone else?
Dodgy Geezer (08:56:04) :
I’ll get this one in early –
DENIERS! How much were you paid by Shell and BP?
___________________________________________________
Slightly OT, but I think Beyond Petroleum has much more important things to do than worry about funding skeptics:
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/09/02/bp-finds-a-huge-oil-deposit-in-the-gulf-of-mexico/
I don’t see the typical patented AGW-disclaimer anywhere….
rbateman (09:29:05) :So, they sent Gore, Hansen & Mann on a mission…
You have not mentioned the most important of the four “Horsemen of the Apocalypse”…. But, really, poor of them, I think there are, instead, the Three stooges 🙂
The story presented Mann’s information as “data.” I thought his work was the results of computer modeling showing probabilities, not data. I remember a strong argument against the AGW promoters was their propensity to present computer model results as data.
This is very interesting news, on top of the other items out of NCAR this week that identify much broader impacts of solar variations on the Earth’s climate. Both were highlighted on Science Daily this week. Links:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090716113358.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090827141349.htm
Next I suppose all of this will be tossed aside by the mainstream media in favor of some claim about the Antarctic or Arctic being “overwhelmed” by GHG influences.
Oh, and did anyone else see the article and video, also on Science Daily this week (under “breaking news”), in which a physicist “discovered” that higher CO2 levels now are making plants grow faster? The scientist thought it was “weird”. The article also indicated that it was “unexpected” and “unforeseen”. Really?!?!?! If so, why have commercial greenhouses used elevated CO2 levels to help plants grow for so many years???
Anthony, thanks for highlighting this gem!
Dodgy Geezer (08:56:04) :
I’ll get this one in early -DENIERS!
How much were you paid by Shell and BP?
Besides, Wood’s Hole is just one insignificant little little institute
You forgot to mention: Delia Oppo is a paleo–oceanographer! What do paleo-oceanographers know about climate? You might as well just be reading a blog post from some electrical engineer.
Dodgy Geezer (08:56:04) :
philincalifornia (09:48:23) :
Actually, Shell and BP are heavily invested in renewables, not questioning alarm.
Even Exxon is backing away from questioning this business, to the extent that they ever did. The power of intimidation is striking.
For those who haven’t seen Bishop Hill’s exposé of the Mann Hockey Stick, this is a great summary of the shenanigans that go on behind the scenes of the corrupt climate peer review process: click
Actually, the 2008 Loehle and McCulloch reconstruction includes several tropical and near-tropical proxies, including some sea sediment cores like the one cited. See map on linked page.
But it’s nice to see a new study confirming our results. Perhaps Craig will include it in any update of his 07 study.
It’s unfortunate the new study gives so much prominence to the Mann 2008 reconstruction, instead of just reporting their own results. Perhaps Mann was a Nature referee and insisted on this.
I wonder how this compares with the reconstructions derived from Sargasso Sea cores?
The Vikings of the turn of the millennium would be proud that people have rediscovered why they went to Greenland in 900 AD.
CAPT CHARLES : Methinks the Woods Hole jar runneth over with AGW cookies already . Maybe they decided to blow some of them on real science , for a change .
Also, I expect a meltdown at Reallywrong Climate in three….two…..one……
Andrew (10:01:09) :
Dodgy Geezer (08:56:04) :
philincalifornia (09:48:23) :
Actually, Shell and BP are heavily invested in renewables, not questioning alarm.
Even Exxon is backing away from questioning this business, to the extent that they ever did. The power of intimidation is striking.
_________________________________________
Yeah, I’ve actually worked on one of the above projects – paid by an oil company, ironically, to save the planet !!
My impression is that it is more bet-hedging than intimidation.
3cm/yr is a screaming fast sedimentation rate. 3cm per thousand years or less is typical for most of the ocean. Bio-turbation of the sediment only extends about 10-20 centimeters in oxygenated bottom waters so the forams can’t be mixed too badly. No doubt there are other microfossils to sample and chemistry that can be done to check these results. Like treerings there are ecological issues that can muddy a signal but these look like golden cores and lots more useful data can come out of them.
I don’t understand all the excitement over this paper. Maybe I’m missing something. Aren’t the authors merely saying their SST reconstruction closely follows Mann’s except for a 250-year period from 1000 – 1250 AD? And even then I don’t see the “stark contrast” they refer to. I can envision Mann and his supporters claiming that this study actually reaffirms Mann (2008) because it follows it so closely overall despite using entirely different methodology.
In any case, our understanding of the study is based on a PR-generating press release. Maybe someone qualified to evaluate it (not me) should read the actual study and tell us what it means.
[snip -ad hom]
I would expect that the proposed(unproven but recorded) destruction of Krakatoa in AD 535, separating the islands of Sumatra and Java into two separate islands, might have changed water flow. Before that, might not the ocean between SumatraJava and Borneo gotten even warmer?
The damage to the credibiilty of science in general is what concerns me most. I am also involved in the (anti)evolution wars – anti-evolutionists are continually making heavy water about evolutionary theory being nothing more than an article of faith, a belief system, in the same way relgion is. Once it is seen by the general populace that so-called AGW science IS nothing more than a belief system with no real underpinnings of science, expect a new spate of anti-evolution activity in your schools.
I have been trying to make sense to some of the bloggers on evolution for years to not tie the two topics together – people like P.G. Myers are wont to make statements such as “People who don’t accept evolution also don’t accept global warming” It’s an idiotic and sanctimonious attitude for a sicentist, but they have tied the two together – once one is determined to be a belief system…..
There should now be a very high level of confidence that recent temperature rate of increase as well as levels are not un-precedented.
It seems clear that the MWP was good in Greenland and Europe.
Did it have particularly adverse effects anyplace else? Africa? Asia? Oz?
That oil in the Gulf of Mexico does not exist. I know this because I fed all of the rock solid assumptions of the peak oil set into my model, and the output showed no oil there.
hmmmm (09:03:16) – I think that Mann claims that recent tree rings have changed and can no longer be used to measure climate. Thus he claims that you can’t compare last year’s tree rings to last year’s temperature, so it’s impossible to disprove his claims about past ring-to-temperature relationships.
I have been reading 1066-the year of the conquest-about one of my direct
ancestors-William the Conqueror.TheAuthor is David Howarth-the Howarth
family are made up of Sailors and yachtsmen, so the flavor of this book tends to be a bit ah nautical.One of the themes repeated in the book was how warm and
comfortable things were in the Northern Europe-and the rest of the world at that time.
A sub theme is about the inepitidue of King Harold and the way the English
handled the defense of the homeland.Willian and the Normans were so despised that Norman rule was done within two generations,and set the stage for Agincourt-Three hundred years or so later…
Sargasso sea reconstruction was pretty the same:
http://blog.sme.sk/blog/560/186850/sargasso.jpg
In general, sea surface reconstruction is quite a good proxy for global temperature. If you compare HadSST with UAH since 1978, it is almost identical:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1978/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1978
So much for claim that MWP was localized in Europe only, as Wiki still boldly claims :-/
Dodgy Geezer– No need to blame Shell and BP. Just look at “Indonesia Ministry of Science” as a co-sponsor, and do a little research on Indonesia’s coal production and exports. . . . Impugning motives is rarely very difficult to come up with something.
This piece in the conclusion suggests that they accept Mann’s view of recent temperatures:
” On the other hand, the finding that IPWP SSTs seem to have been approximately the same as today in the past, at a time when average Northern Hemisphere temperature appear to have been cooler than today, suggests changes in the coupling between IPWP and Northern Hemisphere or global temperatures have occurred in the past, for reasons that are not yet understood.”
They do say questions need to be asked, but whether of their own work or Mann’s is unclear. However “Changes in the coupling” suggests acceptance of Mann’s picture, despite their results. So don’t expect explosions from the Team.
TJA (11:18:52) :
That oil in the Gulf of Mexico does not exist. I know this because I fed all of the rock solid assumptions of the peak oil set into my model, and the output showed no oil there.
___________________________________
See, models do work. When BP’s imaginary oil is burned up in automobiles, the imaginary CO2 will not cause any global warming.
This fits nicely with the AGW politician’s model – inventing a global problem and not solving it, thereby doing absolutely nothing except collecting lots of taxes.
…. and they all lived happily everafter.
we sure could have saved alot of time and money by studying the archaeological data we already have. in 1990 archaeologists DUG THROUGH PERMAFROST to unearth a viking colony that THRIVED for 200 years in greenland (you know, the place north of iceland). they raised cattle and crops and were self sufficient. this could not be accomplished in today’s climate, not because it is warmer, but because it is now COLDER than it was during the medieval warm period. tree rings and bug skeletons? this is science, but it aint rocket science.
“Something that historians have known for years.”
I agree. Lamm and his progeny make a compelling case. The warmists get around it by claiming that the medieval warm period was conveniently limited to areas in which historical records were kept.
Fundamentally, this is the same (in my opinion) as television psychics who argue that their powers don’t work when skeptics are around.
A few weeks ago there was a thread here to which my-and others- response was; ‘ But I was taught that at school decades ago.’
This study falls into the same category. You would have to have a very great belief in your own infallibility to believe that your hockey stick was more reliable than the knowledge we have accumulated over the years.
tonyb
Whilst I have no problem with dendrochronology per-se, I do have difficulty with the idea that tree-ring thickness variations can tell us much about past temperatures.
The most cursory inspection of any felled tree-stump will show enormous radial variations in the thickness of annual growth-rings. And, these variations change in orientation over time, presumably with changes in all sorts of factors such as changes in prevailing local wind, shade, proximity to other trees, etc. So unless one measures the total area of each growth-ring, to measure the tree’s total yearly conversion of co2 and h20 into biomass, and thus a proxy for local temperature, It is clearly not enough to use a single radial core-sample.
So, how do they do it?
Anybody got a link to the methodology of tree-ring/temperature divination?
AGW is a fraud, but even though this paper would assume to prove how poor AGW science is (and it is), it is just more unverifiable junk science chasing junk science:
There are no verified temperature proxies. NOT one proxy for thermometers has been verified to be associated with temperature in an engineering style test. Ice cores, speleothum, tree ring widths, tree ring latewood density, boreholes, pollen, sediments, mollusk shells or historic records. They are un-calibrated and completely unverified and several may be completely unrelated.
Source: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/ten-unprecedented-points/
According to Auntie Beeb it matters not a damn what happened before or however warm it has been. It is now too warm for coral, and that’s official!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8233632.stm
In Jasper Kirkby’s “Cosmic Rays and Climate,” the graph on page 3, Figure 2(c), shows how the Venezuelan tropical glaciers have now retreated to where they were during the Medieval Warm Period.
By the way, the advance and retreat of those glaciers parallel the change in the Galactic cosmic ray count and northern hemisphere temperature (Fig. 2 a&b). The Mann hockey stick is shown by way of contrast to scientific reconstruction of temperature.
http://aps.arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.1938v1.pdf
Crosspatch (09:40:18) :
“And my point to posting the above is that glacial advance and retreat is not always related to temperature but can also be related to amounts and nature of precipitation falling on them.”
This is exactly what is happening in the Southern Alps. On the west side of the ranges around Mt Cook, glaciers such as the Fox and Franz Josef are advancing quite rapidly, whereas literally over the hill, on the eastern side, the Tasman and Mueller are retreating significantly.
Andrew said..
———-
Actually, Shell and BP are heavily invested in renewables, not questioning alarm.
Even Exxon is backing away from questioning this business, to the extent that they ever did. The power of intimidation is striking.
———
These corporations are simply investing in Corporate Relations, they invest some money in R&D and to meet the ethanol mandates for blending. It is a go with the flow attitude and wait until the world comes to its senses.
They are demonized enough, so this just smoothes the waters and costs them really nothing compared to all advertising and lobbying efforts. This is a war that their participation in would arm the enemy.
Go Along to get along. This will not hurt revenue.
How about
Gore, Hansen, Mann & Monbiot
The Four Horsemen of the Thermocalypse
(I thought that we needed a bit more of an international flavor)
“So much for claim that MWP was localized in Europe only, as Wiki still boldly claims.”
You could possibly tell that to the Dorset people … if they were still alive. The Inuit and Thule drove them out of the Arctic into oblivion when the climate warmed during the MWP.
P Walker (10:19:20) :
CAPT CHARLES : Methinks the Woods Hole jar runneth over with AGW cookies already . Maybe they decided to blow some of them on real science , for a change .
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a scientific institute on Cape Cod. http://www.whoi.edu/
Woods Hole Research Center is an activist organization, arguably created to trade off the name-recognition of WHOI and certainly to promote AGW hysteria.
Plenty of mainstream journalists give the impression of not knowing the difference between the two…
On the other hand, WHOI’s 2007 report included the following gem:
Particularly noteworthy is Hal Caswell’s contribution to the
International Polar Bear Study Team for the U.S. Department of
the Interior. Caswell and colleague Christine Hunter of the University
of Alaska (a former postdoctoral scientist at WHOI) took
data collected by the U.S. Geological Survey on polar bear mortality
rates, birth rates, life cycle characteristics, and habitats and
incorporated it into mathematical models. By linking their models
with projections of sea ice conditions in the Arctic, they were able
to demonstrate the critical importance of sea ice and climate
change to the population success of the polar bear. Recently the
Department of Interior listed the polar bear as threatened with
extinction because of the decline in sea ice, making it the first species
to be so designated as a result of global warming.
— Judith E. McDowell, Department Chair
Nonetheless, WHOI is the more scientific of the two institutions, and generally less likely to create AGW alarmist headlines for sport.
Tom G(ologist) (11:16:25) :
The damage to the credibiilty of science in general is what concerns me most. I am also involved in the (anti)evolution wars – anti-evolutionists are continually making heavy water about evolutionary theory being nothing more than an article of faith, a belief system, in the same way relgion is. Once it is seen by the general populace that so-called AGW science IS nothing more than a belief system with no real underpinnings of science, expect a new spate of anti-evolution activity in your schools.
I have been trying to make sense to some of the bloggers on evolution for years to not tie the two topics together – people like P.G. Myers are wont to make statements such as “People who don’t accept evolution also don’t accept global warming” It’s an idiotic and sanctimonious attitude for a sicentist, but they have tied the two together – once one is determined to be a belief system…..
Anti-evolution is a backlash against those who claim that evolution negates any Creator. This is incorrect, as science is agnostic, not atheistic.
Anti-evolution shows how the world’s education system has failed. People don’t understand the difference between faith and science. Are the two compatible? Many of the greatest scientific minds in history were people of faith. Evolution and faith or only incompatible to those who take their religious texts literally or to those who don’t understand the difference.
Anti-evolutionists know several criticisms of evolution and do not consider the response to those criticisms. They are blind to explaination, debunking and facts that contradict their closely held beliefs. It’s very hard to *prove* macro evolution, which only adds fuel to the fire.
Fanatical AGW apologists incorrectly disparage skeptics as anti-evolutionists, not realizing that they are the ones with closed minds and dogmatic beliefs.
“”” Craig Moore (09:00:26) :
Don’t worry Dr. Running says politics are where the action is at in the new climate change minor program at the University of Montana. See: http://www.montanakaimin.com/index.php/news/news_article/um_offers_unprecedented “””
I had some e-exchanges with Prof Steve Running; about some fooishness that said that trees in the arctic caused global warming by replacing snow that would increase albedo; whereas the trees would absorb the solar energy, and so heat the previously snowy regions.
I pointed out that the trees actually convert the absorbed solar energy (along with some CO2 into wood, instead of “heat”. The thesis was proposed by some otherwise unemployed people at Stanford, and also Lawrence Livermore National labs; maybe even under Nobellist Steve Chu’s tutelage.
Our new energy Czar (Tsar) believes that microbes and yeasts are the energy source of the future, converting wood and hay (cellulose) into gasoline.
Talk about employing the most underpaid workers; but does anybody else besides me see this scheme (scam) as another form of solar energy; free, green, renewable, clean; and consuming oodles of land area.
The September issue of OPN (Optics & Photonics News) carries an article by a Blair L. Unger on Concentrated PhotoVoltaics; which is a polite way of saying that you use cheap optics to replace expensive PhotoVoltaic cells, and concentrate the sunlight into a smaller space (and less solar cell area).
I know a thing or two about Optics, and I don’t know of any way of sucking in solar energy from an extended area that is larger than the aperture of the “cheap”optics. The article has a photo of Solar Power Panels near Albuquerque New Mexico. The panels are tilted up so that each one is face on to the sun. Gee wouldn’t you know it; when you do that, each panel casts a shadow, that blocks a much larger area of the ground, where you can’t put another panel since it would collect no energy. The result is that the dedicated land area is very much larger than the actual collector area, whether it is concentrator Optics or not.
I’m all in favor of the concentrator cell approach, if the optics is cheaper than the solar cells.
When you tip up the cell arrays to face the sun, the obscured area is the same, whether you tilt up a one square km panel, or a one square metre panel. It seems to me, that the larger you make the panels, the more expansive it is to tilt them up, and protect them from 150 year storm winds.
Some people don’t get it; the earth/sun orbital geometry determines the Watts/m^2 of solar power arriving on earth; and using microbes to do the work of making gasoline out of that, doesn’t alter the fundamental areqal inefficiency of the scheme;a nd I somehow doubt the conversion efficiency from bugs to gas is very high; besides somebody has to feed those bugs with somethign else besides wood chips or hay.
Dr Running seemed like a reasonable chap to me; don’t really know why he went in the tank for the greenies. The folks who would wipe out trees for snow, eventually were forced to tone down their silliness.
George
brazil84 (12:22:24) :
The warmists get around it by claiming that the medieval warm period was conveniently limited to areas in which historical records were kept.
That is strangely familiar. The world was once confined to Western Eurasia and N. Africa, flat, and beyond it lay monsters and the sides of the pit to hell.
Such reasoning is devolving back into mythology.
It also is reminiscent of the thinking that Earth lay at the center of the universe, and the Western World alone was civilized.
“”” Steve Schaper (11:15:41) :
I would expect that the proposed(unproven but recorded) destruction of Krakatoa in AD 535, separating the islands of Sumatra and Java into two separate islands, might have changed water flow. Before that, might not the ocean between SumatraJava and Borneo gotten even warmer? “””
You say that Java and Borneo were once one island; My maps say Java is at least 200 miles from Borneo,a dn I somehow doubt that Krakatoa is in between them.
Now Java and Sumatra might easily have been joined at one time, and are now separated by the Sunda Straits. That fictional movie Krakatoa, East of Java, had it all wrong too, since Krakatoa is certainly not East of Java; at least it wasn’t when last I looked.
Time for some geography revisionist history.
George
I am yet to be convinced that taking proxy temperatures, whether by measuring tree rings or compositions of calcium in sediment, is significantly better than reading tea leaves. Indeed it may be a lot worse, since it carries a veneer of scientific credibility that tea leafs do not.
I note that these proxies tell us that the NH MWP was 0.5C cooler than today. That’s a whopping great lot and is contrary to all historical evidence of a period that was warmer than today. If you take the graph at the SST graph seriously, you are forced to conclude that there is something unnatural about the late twentieth century warming by the way it spikes up.
Also, it relates to SST. What about land temperatures? That isn’t mentioned at all.
Harold Ambler : (13:35:23)
Thanks – my bad . Actually , I was confused as I had been under the impression that WHOI was affliated with a university and not privately funded . Certainly WHOI is the “legit” one .
Of course there was a MWP. How can you have Ice Ages, Little Ice Ages and interglacials but not Warm Periods? The ice has to melt sometimes, and that means it gets warmer. Duh. It took the better part of 20,000 years to get rid of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, without which a lot of Ice Blue popsickle mummies would be getting dug up…like the guy they found in the Alps.
And it freezes fast, too. Otherwise we wouldn’t be finding Wolly Mammoths with a bellyful of fresh green grass preserved in Ice.
“Now Java and Sumatra might easily have been joined at one time, and are now separated by the Sunda Straits. ”
Yes, it was Java and Sumatra that became separated by the caldera forming eruption in 535. The impact of the eruption was global. You can read more here about the results of this eruption.
The Moche people in South America saw the end of their civilization at about this time. Life would have been very difficult everywhere but today it would be horrendous. Imagine no grain crops from Canada, the Northern plains of the US or the Eurasian Steppes. Summer frosts across most of North America and Northern Europe. Extremely dry conditions due to greatly reduced solar driven evaporation from the oceans. And billions more mouths to feed. It would be an absolute calamity.
Still on the banging the head off the wall theme … we are now being told by the great Moon (as opposed to the great moon-bat) that the Arctic is melting “even faster than previously thought” (a phrase which in my view should render its user subject to some very immediate and permanent disfigurement).
I seem to have noticed that there are two links on the sidebar of this very site that prove this not to be the case. How are we supposed to win an argument, or even engage seriously, with people who are either fools or knaves when it comes to climatology?
Photosynthesis is an endothermic reaction. It causes a reduction in temperature (as opposed to an exothermic reaction such as the oxidation of sugars in our bodies).
Well, yes and no. All things being equal, the proxies from the MWP would seem to indicate a lower temperature. But what they are really showing is less optimal growing conditions. If, as has been shown from studies of European river sediments, the MWP was warm but dry, the reduction in tree growth could be from lack of water, and not lack of warmth. Based on pollen samples from the period and high alpine altitudes, temperatures were warmer then because certain plants were growing at altitudes where they can not grow today. But if there was prolonged drought, we would see reduced tree ring width even with the warmer temperatures.
What we are seeing today is apparently a very nice period of warm weather AND considerable rainfall across the entire NH. The lakes in the Sierra Nevada, for example, are well (tens of meters) above levels seen fairly recently in this interglacial.
“Global Warming BY Dummies”, by Elizabeth May
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53387
Apparently it’s more of a political book than the science behind Climate Change.
Sam the Skeptic (15:17:29) :
Actually, Sam, it’s freezing up in the Arctic faster than they predicted it would be melting away. I call to everyone’s attention what happened last year when the Arctic Sun set. Our first N. Pacific storm is expected to clip us in NW Calif. on Saturday.
We shall soon have a taste of what another full year of very low Solar Activity has prepared for us.
Something in the post caught my attention. Are the AGW folks basing their position on physical data only in the Northern Hemisphere?
“However, these temperature reconstructions are based on, in large part, data compiled from high latitude or high altitude terrestrial proxy records, such as tree rings and ice cores, from the Northern Hemisphere (NH).”
What about the rest of the world. Are they examining tree rings in Africa, and South America?
You all fail to understand the way Mann’s mind works. He will simply issue a statement claiming that “this research confirms his earlier work as well as the work of his colleagues more recently which has given even more confirmation to his original research”.
He will make no mention of the fact that he confirmed in an interview in 2005 for Scientific American that I wrote about on Climate Audit at the time, that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age never happened as global climatic events.
And any attempt to point this out on RealClimate will be summarily deleted with prejudice. Guaranteed.
so even though we have been in a 10+ year solar cool ctcle ocean temps are as warm as they were back then Gee I wonder what is causing it to get so warm ??
I have been swimming and snorkelling in the waters off Bougainville Island (near New Guinea) an area that often shows up on temperature maps as the warmest ocean water in the world. It was a little strange, the sensation was like a warm bath. Even though the sun and humidity there are fierce, going for a swm is only marginally refreshing. Interesting also that the coral reefs there are thriving and beautiful (at temperatures above 33 degrees Celsius). This is worth remembering whenever you hear claims that global warming will destroy the world’s coral reefs. There is no ocean water in the world that is too warm for coral reefs, but there are vast areas that are too cool.
Clearly the NH and IPWP have diverged because of AGW. After all, it happened suddenly when evil humans started AGW.
Actually, maybe yes. Mannmade warming (the Menn are in Asheville, Columbia (the University, not the Cocaine Republic), and East Anglia.) results in a sudden disconnect between the real data and the adjusted data.
How convenient.
“”” George E. Smith (14:16:12) :
“”” Steve Schaper (11:15:41) :
I would expect that the proposed(unproven but recorded) destruction of Krakatoa in AD 535, separating the islands of Sumatra and Java into two separate islands, might have changed water flow. Before that, might not the ocean between SumatraJava and Borneo gotten even warmer? “””
You say that Java and Borneo were once one island; My maps say Java is at least 200 miles from Borneo,a dn I somehow doubt that Krakatoa is in between them.
Now Java and Sumatra might easily have been joined at one time, and are now separated by the Sunda Straits. That fictional movie Krakatoa, East of Java, had it all wrong too, since Krakatoa is certainly not East of Java; at least it wasn’t when last I looked.
Time for some geography revisionist history.
George “””
Am I going nuts or something; or is it the Alzheimers setting in. I would have bet my Wife’s credit card debts, that when I pasted this, the word Sumatra appeared nowhere in it; let alone in the form of Sumatra-Java; it simply said Java and Borneo; i even got up and went to the world map on the wall, just to refresh my memory that Java and Borneo are not even close to each other.
So how did Java suddenly become sumatra/Java, and turn me into a blithering idiot; not only in my cut and paste, but also in the original. Do we have post publication revision here or something ?
George; going daft or something.
Jeff Id-Don’t the reviewers (as Nature is a very very high profile and high impact journal) examine the way proxies have been evaluated? Surely they would, wouldn’t they?
John A-any attempt to get it mentioned on tamino’s open mind will also meet the same “deletion with prejudice”
Ian (17:13:05) : Nature is a high profile and impact journal but it’s reputation is far from deserved these days. And peer review is so passe. The internet is kicking it’s ass. Take for example:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=473
Yup, you read correctly. A scientific journal published an essentially fraudulent stem cell paper. Peer review didn’t expose it. Blogs did!
Nature=FAIL.
There are 2 other proxy records that go against Manns work, They are solar activity proxies that some say might be linked to climate. But what people dont seem to be paying attention to is that now both proxy records confirm each other. The detail records of both Carbon 14 and Beryllium 10 (14C & 10Be) can now be compared and the result is beyond doubt.
Full story here:
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/51
Coral off the coast of Oregon would be nice, but only in your dreams. That water is friggin cold even in its WARM phase! In contrast, my first dive into waters surrounding the South side of Jamaica was a startling experience! Crystal clear, as clear as Clear Lake in the Cascades but at completely opposite ends of the thermometer. Bathtub warm. And definitely NOT refreshing. But then no one in their right mind would frolic in Clear Lake either. Equally not refreshing, even on the hottest day of the year.
The other think I noticed was that the Oregon coast has murky waters filled with tiny food that entices whales close in. I have stood on the rocky coast near the end of a shelf and eyeballed a whale while the whale eyeballed me! The Jamaican waters just don’t have floating food. There is food but it is attached to the bottom. Instead of whales the size of a ranch house, I came nose to nose with fishbowl fish. They looked like butterflies only underwater. It was only later when I found out that in Jamaica, sewer water is dumped untreated right into its shoreline nearby. Yuck.
And by the way, anybody who lives near a coastline, any coastline, knows from birth that what the seas do, predicts what the weather will be out the back door just a couple days later.
Pamela Gray (19:06:21) :
And by the way, anybody who lives near a coastline, any coastline, knows from birth that what the seas do, predicts what the weather will be out the back door just a couple days later.
Yep, give me an old Port Orford Crabber or Charleston Troller’s prediction any day.
I lived on the coast 25 years sailed some, but I could never quite read the sea they way those old men did…
John Ryan (16:05:51) :
so even though we have been in a 10+ year solar cool ctcle ocean temps are as warm as they were back then Gee I wonder what is causing it to get so warm ??
————-
Wow, John! You make your point so cogently! I bet more than a few of us will be taking up arms against CARBON now. Is it recorded how those knights of yore subdued the dreaded Warmth? So much Ancient Wisdom has been lost in our pursuit of pleasure and prosperity!
“Oppo cautions that the reconstruction contains some uncertainties.”
When was the last time you heard Mann, Hansen, or Gore say anything like this?
Mike Abbott (11:06:20) :
I don’t understand all the excitement over this paper. Maybe I’m missing something. Aren’t the authors merely saying their SST reconstruction closely follows Mann’s except for a 250-year period from 1000 – 1250 AD? And even then I don’t see the “stark contrast” they refer to. I can envision Mann and his supporters claiming that this study actually reaffirms Mann (2008) because it follows it so closely overall despite using entirely different methodology
I’m with you on this. If anything, the Mann reconstructon shows a greater range between MWP and LIA. Between 0-1000 AD, SST seems to be more or less flat which makes it nigh on impossible to define the start of MWP.
Perhaps we’re both “missing something”.
I don’t think Prof Wei-Chyung Wang of SUNYA would be happy with Braddock K. Linsley’s co-authourship.
Sam the Skeptic (08:51:47) :
Sam, you are correct. Lamb’s book is a great read, simply a must for any student of climate and history.
Gene L (09:58:48) : “…did anyone else see the article and video, also on Science Daily this week (under “breaking news”), in which a physicist “discovered” that higher CO2 levels now are making plants grow faster?”
I’d like to follow up on that, Gene, but the only links I can find (to very similar stories) are Science Daily (1998) and INFOWARS.COM (2008). Nothing for this week.
Andrew (10:01:09) :
It makes perfect sense on the part of an oil company to let environmental issues raise energy prices: more revenue from existing oil fields. Higher energy prices means higher oil prices. Also, prices at the pump can be raised and the blame fixed on environmentalist and politicians.
Those guys at Exxon are dumb like foxes.
Douglas DC & Pamela:
Ditto for old farmers on predicting the weather.
Vincent (14:16:14) and crosspatch (15:19:46)
Something that strikes me about these studies based on phytoplankton is that extra CO2 would itself make these organisms more productive by stimulating photosynthesis.
The blurb above says the study is based on the observation that “The ratio of magnesium to calcium in the hard outer shells of the planktonic foraminifera Globigerinoides ruber varies depending on the surface temperature of the water in which it grows.”
Googling, one can find papers showing that higher temperatures correspond to higher productivity. But other papers also show higher CO2 contributes to productivity of these types of organisms and the exact mechanisms “are not well understood”.
One wonders if the authors of this study appropriately corrected for the direct “aerial fertilizer” effect of CO2 in the last century. If not, the last century is going to look artificially warm relative to the MWP when CO2 levels were lower.
John Ryan (16:05:51) :
The same processes that caused the Medieval Warming Period?
Roger Carr:
See if this link gets you such a story with a short video. My apologies: this is actually a “recycled” story from June 2007, and I did not catch the date until I looked at it again.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0603-can_carbon_dioxide_be_a_good_thing.htm
Sorry I did not provide the link earlier… If it doesn’t work, search for the researcher by name: Scott Denning, Ph.D., a physicist from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado
Here’s the first paragraph:
Mr. Smith, I was reporting from a PBS show that stated those things. Indonesian royal records record the event, and the separation of the two islands, which as I wrote, was Sumatra and Java, NOT Java and Borneo. Borneo only came in as the ocean between Sumatra/Java and Borneo would have had even less circulation with the outside Pacific potentially allowing it to warm even more. The subject of the show was actually the 535 sudden dramatic cooling event (“The Wasteland” in the Arthurian cycles), the likelihood (not certainty) that it was a catastrophic eruption, and the search for the “smoking caldera”, with Krakatoa being thought the likely spot. If you had read what I had written this confusion could have been avoided.
Hey Steve, I believe you. As I noted in my second post, either I was going nuts, or I just didn’t read closely enough; which is not my nature. I certainly wouldn’t have pasted your post; if I had actually seen the Sumatra-Java part. My apologies; green flag, no foul sail on.
George.
And Mr Smith was my father.
crosspatch (15:08:56) : Yes, it was Java and Sumatra that became separated by the caldera forming eruption in 535. The impact of the eruption was global. You can read more here [URL] about the results of this eruption.
Stunning info crosspatch, thanks.
Ray (15:25:07) : “Global Warming BY Dummies”, by Elizabeth May
Yes, indeed, BY dummies and FOR dummies – the level of science is appalling. Now I’ve been encouraged to write a real “Climate Science for Dummies” telling it like it is, drawing on my online Primer and other research (click my name). Haven’t got there so far – I’d still rather see a skeptics’ Climate Science wiki – starting with a wiki-led powerpoint presentation we can perfect to take around and show folk.
Much as I love WUWT, I’m always nervous of the “preaching to the converted” energy rising too high; moreover, I long to see an accessible consolidation of the real climate science that has been developing – I mean real climate science, not the mockery of RealClimate science.
>> FerdinandAkin (10:00:57) :
You might as well just be reading a blog post from some electrical engineer. <<
I agree. Stay away from those other guys. We electrical engineers are the only ones who make cents (and dollars) from current (and voltage) thinking.
Jim
“Interesting also that the coral reefs there are thriving and beautiful (at temperatures above 33 degrees Celsius). This is worth remembering whenever you hear claims that global warming will destroy the world’s coral reefs. There is no ocean water in the world that is too warm for coral reefs ….”
So, if the coral organisms from Bougainville were transplanted to the reefs now in trouble, they’d recover (?). Why doesn’t somebody try it on a test patch or two?
“”” Roger Knights (16:03:43) :
“Interesting also that the coral reefs there are thriving and beautiful (at temperatures above 33 degrees Celsius). This is worth remembering whenever you hear claims that global warming will destroy the world’s coral reefs. There is no ocean water in the world that is too warm for coral reefs ….”
So, if the coral organisms from Bougainville were transplanted to the reefs now in trouble, they’d recover (?). Why doesn’t somebody try it on a test patch or two? “””
Nobody said that the same species can thrive anywhere; they choose their own niche; just like any other species. When corals spawn; the offspring can be carried to the 8 corners of the globe, and thrive anywhere they settle that suits them; so if Bouganville species liked Glacier Bay temperatures better, they would go there eventually.
George E Smith
You are quire right, coral species thrive in their appropriate location and those locations may cover a much wider spread of ocean than may be generally imagined.
These are the corals off the coast in Lyme Bay South Devon UK. My house overlooks this coast .
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/outdoors/nature/2003/lyme_coral.shtml
The sea temperature immediately around the coast is around 16C today, in a normal summer perhaps a degree or so warmer. Out in the Bay you can take a few degrees off that. In winter the temperature goes down to around 8C.
So corals appear to thrive over a wider temperature range than may be imagined.
tonyb