From news.com.au this “stunning” development citing lake sediment and some midges “proves” everything. Glad that’s settled. See thoughts at the end.
This is the title of the story at news.com.au, link to story here
…
But here is the University of Colorado press release that started it all. Note that in no place in the release do they use the word “proof”.
Arctic Lake Sediment Record Shows Warming, Unique Ecological Changes in Recent Decades
October 19, 2009
An analysis of sediment cores indicates that biological and chemical changes occurring at a remote Arctic lake are unprecedented over the past 200,000 years and likely are the result of human-caused climate change, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.
While environmental changes at the lake over the past millennia have been shown to be tightly linked with natural causes of climate change — like periodic, well-understood wobbles in Earth’s orbit — changes seen in the sediment cores since about 1950 indicate expected climate cooling is being overridden by human activity like greenhouse gas emissions. The research team reconstructed past climate and environmental changes at the lake on Baffin Island using indicators that included algae, fossil insects and geochemistry preserved in sediment cores that extend back 200,000 years.
“The past few decades have been unique in the past 200,000 years in terms of the changes we see in the biology and chemistry recorded in the cores,” said lead study author Yarrow Axford of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. “We see clear evidence for warming in one of the most remote places on Earth at a time when the Arctic should be cooling because of natural processes.”
The study was published Oct. 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study included researchers from CU-Boulder, the State University of New York’s University at Buffalo, the University of Alberta, the University of Massachusetts and Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
The sediment cores were extracted from the bottom of a roughly 100-acre, 30-foot-deep lake near the village of Clyde River on the east coast of Baffin Island, which is several hundred miles west of Greenland. The lake sediment cores go back in time 80,000 years beyond the oldest reliable ice cores from Greenland and capture the environmental conditions of two previous ice ages and three interglacial periods.
The sediment cores showed that several types of mosquito-like midges that flourish in very cold climates have been abundant at the lake for the past several thousand years. But the cold-adapted midge species abruptly began declining in about 1950, matching their lowest abundances of the last 200,000 years. Two of the midge species adapted to the coldest temperatures have completely disappeared from the lake region, said Axford.
In addition, a species of diatom, a lake algae that was relatively rare at the site before the 20th century, has undergone unprecedented increases in recent decades, possibly in response to declining ice cover on the Baffin Island lake.
“Our results show that the human footprint is overpowering long-standing natural processes even in remote Arctic regions,” said co-author John Smol of Queen’s University. “This historical record shows that we are dramatically affecting the ecosystems on which we depend.”
The ancient lake sediment cores are the oldest ever recovered from glaciated parts of Canada or Greenland. Massive ice sheets during ice ages generally scour the underlying bedrock and remove previous sediments.
“What is unique about these sediment cores is that even though glaciers covered this lake, for various reasons they did not erode it,” said study co-author Jason Briner of the University at Buffalo. The result is that we have a really long sequence of sediment that has survived Arctic glaciations.”
Axford emphasized the multiyear research project required expertise from each of the five institutions involved in the PNAS study. “This was a team effort all the way around, and each of the institutions has a unique set of skills that allowed us to carry out this study,” she said. “We needed people who understood algae, insects, glaciers and geochemistry, not to mention how to drive snowmobiles and extract the cores.”
The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Geological Society of America.
A study published in Science magazine last month that involved CU-Boulder researchers and reconstructed past temperatures in the Arctic using ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments concluded that recent warming around the Arctic is overriding a cooling trend caused by Earth’s periodic wobble. Earth is now about 0.6 million miles further from the sun during the Northern Hemisphere summer solstice than it was in 1 B.C. — a trend that has caused overall cooling in the Arctic until recently.
INSTAAR researcher and CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Gifford Miller was a co-author on both the PNAS study and the recent Science study.
A scientist on a mailing list I subscribe to put it in perspective this way:
1. “several types of mosquito-like midges that for many thousands of years thrived in cold climate surrounding the lake suddenly began declining at around 1950” — Have they accounted for the use of DDT, then? Seems to me that DDT on Baffin Island could have been very popular among trappers and the military in the 50s. Possibly pertinent too:
- DDT and its breakdown products are transported from warmer regions of the world to the Arctic by the phenomenon of global distillation, where they then accumulate in the region’s food web
- http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/DDT
Thus there might be a human impact on this parameter, but of another kind.
Beyond that, though, if the authors are suggesting that CO2 has caused a mosquito or midge shortage up north, they should consult caribou herds, whose route of wandering is traceable to wind direction, so desperate are these animals to escape the floating bloodsuckers.
- In the Canadian Arctic, researchers who bared their arms, legs, and torsos in an experiment reported as many as 9,000 [mosquito] bites per minute.
- http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/Fall02/Mosquitoes.html
Who knows, then? Changing wind patterns and a consequent shift of caribou migration (the supporting host) or DDT usage might account for the decline of midge bodies in this particular study of Ayr Lake. But CO2?
2. “The Earth is now some 600,000 miles (966,000 kilometers) further from the sun during the Northern Hemisphere summer solstice than it was at the time of Jesus Christ” — A sad example of allegation that’s already become a repeated “fact” simply because no one’s bothered to investigate it. I have, and find no indication that this million km claim is true.
– Alan
Just a note on DDT from Wikipedia:
First synthesized in 1874, DDT’s insecticidal properties were not discovered until 1939. In the second half of World War II, it was used with great effect to control mosquitoes spreading malaria and lice transmitting typhus among civilians and troops, resulting in dramatic reductions in the incidence of both diseases. The Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 “for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods.” After the war, DDT was made available for use as an agricultural insecticide, and soon its production and use skyrocketed.
Here’ s a 2008 study on DDT in penguins that sums it up pretty well:
POPs (Persistent organic pollutants) accumulate in the Antarctic and Arctic via repeated cycles of evaporation and condensation as they move poleward through the atmosphere from the tropical and temperate zones where most are released.
Or how about this one:
Seabird Droppings Raising DDT, Mercury Levels in Arctic: Canadian Study
2005 TORONTO (CP) – Seabird droppings are leaving more than a foul mess in the Arctic – they’re contaminating northern lakes and ponds with extremely high levels of mercury and DDT, Canadian researchers have found.
Concentrations of the chemicals were found to be as much as 60 times higher in bodies of water on Devon Island, Nunavut, than in other Arctic areas, says a study to be published Friday in the journal Science.
No, no it couldn’t be DDT killing those midges, it has to be global warming since 1950.
Journalism is dead, science may not be far behind.
I don’t think it is a matter of mosquitos at all. I have never heard of anyone using mosquitos for paleoclimate. It is much more likely chironomids, i e non-bloodsucking midges, which are excellent temperature indicators.
Press-release science for dummies as usual.
“Journalism is dead, science may not be far behind.”
See; “Science Journalist”
Discovery Canada has a program called “Daily Propaganda” (Er, I mean Daily Planet) Hosted by a loon named Jay (pronounced Jane) Ingram and his sidekick Madame Ziya Tong. Jane replaced David Suzuki as host of a “science” program on the Canadian Broadcorping Castration’s radio one called “Quirks and Quarts”. That gig didn’t afford him the opportunity to smirk visibly, so he went on TV. He even wrote a book once. Madame Tong (formerly of the Gang of Four fame) was seemingly hired for her ability to flounce and giggle, which she does frequently and to great effect. Madame Tong (all hail) recently announced with big round eyes that the Catlin Survey found less ice than can possibly be imagined!, and that things are looking up for an ice free arctic at some point in the distant future.
Did I say that she flounces wonderfully?
I can’t stand it anymore… This is driving me sane.
IF this lake is near a town, did anyone investigate whether the area was sprayed with DDT during it’s heyday to control mosquito populations. When I was a kid aerial spraying for insect control was common, and my area had nothing like the insect problem the far north has.
So this is another fragile flagstone for paving the way to Copenhagen?
Thanks for posting this Anthony. See my take on it here.
Cheers,
Simon
Australian Climate Madness
I’ve read the full paper now. That press-release is a real work of art. When you read it you would think that it says that the late 20th century warming is unprecedented, no?
Far from it, the chironomids (not mosquitos, please note) indicate that summer water temperatures have risen from 6 to 7.5 degrees centigrade, which is indeed the highest for about 4000 years. However it was as high as 12 degrees during the Holocene optimum 8000-10,000 years ago and during the previous interglacial about 120,000 years ago, and the most sthenoterm chironomids were periodically gone from the lake at those times too.
So what is unprecedented? The diatom species assemblage is different from earlier warm periods. However the reason for this is not difficult to find. Diatoms are very sensitive to pH, and the species composition indicate a current pH just under 6.0, i. e. mildly acid while the pH during earlier warm period has been about or slightly over 7.0, i. e. neutral or very slightly alkaline. Now it is well-known phenomenon at higher latitudes that the environment tends to get more and more acid during the course of an interglacial, as the fresh mineral soils created by glaciations get weathered and humic acids and other acid organics accumulate. During this interglacial this has been exacerbated by human acidification, which may have affected the Canadian Arctic too.
So this is what is unprecedented. During the last interglacial pH didn’t drop this low until cooling into the MIS 5d stadial had already started, and inhibited biological activity in the lake. Now this could very well be due to human influence speeding up acidification, or it could be due to the current interglacial having lasted slightly longer than the last.
And, no Anthony I don’t think DDT has anything to do with this.
Did they allow for lake fertilization from all the “nitrogen pollution” and “sulphate particulates” that are supposed to be falling all over the wilderness? Not that I’d expect that to cause a “bloom” of “lake algae” … /sarcoff>
I want a grant to study the AGW induced fuzzy thinking in people with college degrees. Clearly the warming is causing their brains to curdle…
I’d be interested in knowing if they did any plant nutrient profiles on those lake sediments to show changes over time. Heck, just putting a village near it (“near the village of Clyde River”) can put a load more nutrients into a lake. (What, you’ve never been at a lake drinking beer and needed to, um, er, splash tinkle…)
Began around 1950? Isn’t that when the post-war cooling kicked in? And didn’t that global cooling persist till the late seventies? If these midges could survive the heat of the 1930’s, why would they decline in a known cooler period?
Its well known that DDT spraying was done all over the north American continent post war, huge quanities were used in Canada near Army/Airforce training bases to eradicate the mosquito plague during the summer months, the Alaska road running from Canada into Alaska that was constructed to bring war materials to the shipping ports had construction bases along its route and they were sprayed with hundreds of tonnes of the stuff.
The research seems to be just another badly made up desperate attempt to provide ammo for the political classes at Copenhagen.
It would be very interesting to see if there was a WW2 camp in the area, even more interesting to gather a sample of the sediment to check for DDT residue/fingerprint, although if the researchers are anything like Mr one tree Briffa it will be years before the samples are made availible.
The diatom figures are interesting. These little plants are normally, AFAIK, limited by the availability of dissolved silica in the water. If there has been an increased dustfall into the lake — wind change, agricultural changes further off — then silica levels may have been raised.
As they are the primary producers of the ecosystem then I would expect changes at diatom level would propagate up to effect the chironomids. Cart and horse?
No doubt the cores have been preserved for further research. All we need now is someone to devise a test to see if silica levels in the lake changed at the appropriate time. I look forward to the paper.
Incidentally, diatoms use a less discriminatory carbon fixation system so they pull down an unexpectedly large amount of heavy carbon. This means they leave the atmosphere with a low carbon isotope signal which, if you were a naive scientist, you might interpret as the smoking gun of anthropogenic carbon release.
Is there a change in dissolved silica levels in the oceans since 1850?
JF
Not even the IPCC ‘Policymakers’ claim that human greenhouse gases contributed in any way to the global averaged temperature prior to c1950.
The DDT arguement is extremely plausible. Mosquitos that survive & thrive in very cold climates? Surely not. It thus contradicts the claim that signs of warming by AGW Eco-Nazis (WGII?) are evidenced by mosquitos & their lavae being found at higher & (therefore colder) altitudes, is utter tosh. Prof Paul Reiter come back all is forgiven. They can’t have it both ways, somebody tell them please!
We here in Disneyla….., err sorry, that should be the UK, are now almost daily being bombarded with this crap from guess who? A fine example of ratchet reporting. Yes that once great national institution that was a beacon to the world for its highest standards of Broadcasting, now sadly somewhere stuck in the mire of mediocraty that is today’s sloppy eco-journalism.
AtB the denier!
You want your 15 minutes of fame? Simple. Find something in the biosphere that has experienced a change in the last half-century, liberally sprinkle in magic- dust words like probably, unprecedented, worse than we thought etc, to link with AGW/ACC!
Hey presto- look Ma! That’s me got published again.
Reply: I got a lot older. Does that count? ~ ctm
In the Gold Rush to the Klondike and the Yukon in the late 1890’s, malaria struck there too.
My wife was rather miffed when I told her about it, but after she looked it up she understood.
http://canadianhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/victorian_order_of_nurses_during_yukon_gold_rush
Yes, they have mosquitos for every imaginable climactic condition.
A study published in Science magazine last month that involved CU-Boulder researchers and reconstructed past temperatures in the Arctic using ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments concluded that recent warming around the Arctic is overriding a cooling trend caused by Earth’s periodic wobble.
But Baffin Island hasn’t a tree on it. Leanord Nimoy reported that on In Search Of in the 1970’s. Sounds like a job for a Yamal Super Tree.
And yet more proof “Proof” that the Australian media is full of AGW believers emotionally unable to report objectively. Despite the venal attempts of the MSM to suppress the news, the collapse of the “science” of AGW will become common knowledge. I wonder what face Virginia Trioli will be pulling then.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26234478-421,00.html
Washington Post buries coldest day in 138 years!
http://www.globalwarming.org/2009/10/19/washpost-buries-coldest-day-in-138-years/
tty:
Good informative post, thanks.
Humans have nothing to do with “plastic soup”, either. I mean, we mesh seamlessly into the environment and everything will fix itself. My dying red oaks on my 2 acres mean nothing, it’s normal. They were seventy years old but that doesn’t mean a thing. And my tulip magnolia is sprouting its spring leaves….six months early, and that must be normal too.
Be sure to delete this. You don’t want to change your mind or learn any science or anything like that. I am wasting my time here.
http://www.oskarlewis.com/weblog/about/plastic-soup
On a similar theme and only slightly off topic, ITV 1, which is the biggest channel after the BBC in the UK, had a feature on last evening’s news about a massive pipeline which is being built in China to carry water from the south to the drought affected Beijing plane in the north of the country.
Naturally the reason for reporting this project was to highlight how climate change was causing the drought in the region. The article showed a village which had all but been abandoned because all the boreholes were dry. I prefer the explanation from the link below which puts the blame on the demands of imperial Beijing and more especially from the industrialisation and commercialisation of the Beijing plane making much grater demands on the water table. The report even had the temerity to show massive city building projects and then the stupidity to acknowledge that the pipeline project had been in the planning for 50 years. What a climate visionary must Chairman Mao have been!
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/international-news/portfolio/2008/06/16/Chinas-Growing-Drought-Problem/
Perhaps there could be a section on the web site to report journalistic abuse of climate issue stories. It might make journalists think twice before making some of their more outrageous claims.
“Ron de Haan (02:41:21) :
Washington Post buries coldest day in 138 years!
http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.globalwarming.org%2F2009%2F10%2F19%2Fwashpost-buries-coldest-day-in-138-years%2F”
Notice how these (Cold) “weather” events are being surreptitiously reported now, along without the usual post a comment feature.
I am just waiting for the Copenhagen Conference to be held in a howling blizzard. Bit silly of them to choose the winter to hold the conference.
.
Come on guys, you think that’s bad? I just read an article in The Telegraph stating that toxic algae killed off the Dinosaurs, not a big asteroid or comet. And of course, the research states that:
I know that clouds of mosquitoes appear in the forests of Finnland, even though they are over permafrost , the minute there is some heat. I was there a June 21st.
OT but there were teams with red cross badges combing this forest for fallen down drunk people from the celebration of the longest day. They piled them like logs in a shed. If they were left on the ground, because of the permafrost, they would die.
There’s a long-running GISS station at Clyde which shows a slight downward trend from the 50s until the 90s:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=403710900006&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1
(I chose the version where you see all the station changes, I guess the most recent station is at the small airport…)
Across the strait, Greenland’s Nuuk was warmer in the 30s and 40s than from the 50s:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431042500000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
“Proof” that media is hyping AGW shamelessly”
It is enevitable, there are too many billions riding on AGW becoming law. The economic inertia is too large for facts to stop it, unless it is something huge, like the Thames freezing over . (or the reality of a long term economic depression)
Sue: ‘Humans have nothing to do with “plastic soup”, either.’
Of course they have. That’s a real pollution issue. One of my main concerns with the CO2 mania is that if it turns out that the speculative claims of global warming disaster were wrong, it may severely damage future work to protect our environment from real dangers (and also severely damage the esteem of science, especially environmental studies).
Hey Ralph,
My feelings too. Copenhagen airport icebound. Please God!
Sue (02:52:40)
You are not necessarily wasting your time here. Are humans responsible for “plastic soup”? Absolutely. Massive aerosol particulate pollution in the developing world? Certainly. Should we be using fossil fuels in the wasteful way we do at present? Probably not. I feel it would be reasonable to claim that most people posting at this site are opposed to pollution, they just do not agree that CO2 is in any way a dangerous pollutant. The empirical evidence for the AGW hypothesis simply does not exist.
The question you might ask yourself is why a non car owning environmentally conscious person like myself would be a CO2 skeptic. One answer is that I am afraid the baby is going to be thrown out with the bath water. What do you think is going to happen to the environmental movement when the hoax of AGW becomes common knowledge? I think many people posting at this site know that the longer it takes for those supporting the AGW hoax to admit error, the worse the damage to the environmental movement and science is going to be.
>>Sue (02:52:40) :
>>>Humans have nothing to do with “plastic soup”, either. I mean,
>>>we mesh seamlessly into the environment and everything will fix itself.
Sue. If you want to reduce the pressure on the environment from human populations, then you need to reduce the number of humans in each country and on the planet in general.
But the Green movement “”has never and will never campaign on population issues”” as Greenpeace has informed me.
Instead we get unlimited immigration and no effort whatsoever to prevent Third World overpopulation. The West, without immigration, would be naturally reducing its population right now, to more sustainable levels. But no, the Greens and most Left-leaning governments do not want this at all, and Britain’s population is now at record levels.
So the Greens will not tackle the one primary issue affecting the environment. And if they will not do that, then how can we take them seriously on any other issue?
.
Hi Konrad
I don’t know if you are Australian but I am. Our public broadcaster here is very pro AGW. Do you think it is worse than the rest of the world? We have a journalist on it called Tony Jones. He did his utmost to discredit TGGWS by attacking Durkin’s creditability. Another great intellect is a science reporter called Robin Williams but he is also a joke. He reckons the sea will rise a 100 metres soon.
From: http://www.pinetreeline.org/misc/other/misc16c.html
In 1953, like all other bases and sites in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ernest Harmon became a part of the Northeast Air Command. Its mission was to participate in the supply and servicing of all US Installations in NEAC, including American bases in Greenland and Baffin Island. Ernest Harmon retained its importance as the first major overseas stop for military aircraft flying the North Atlantic to Greenland, England and Europe. The Strategic Air Command (SAC) operated out of Harmon from 1953 to 1958.
Here is her paper: http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~axford/axford_et_al_QR_2009_CF8.pdf
These are the locations of the US bases in Baffin Island:
http://www.pinetreeline.org/maps/frobis3.jpg
We just posted information about another high North Canadian lake 2009 study that found Medieval Warming higher than current temps.
Can be found here:
http://www.c3headlines.com/
C3H Editor
Funny thing, as soon as I started reading this article, I thought “DDT”. Then Anthony, mentioned it at the bottom.
Really, are they seriously expecting anyone to believe that the arctic is warmer now than at any time in the last 200,000 years? Utter tosh!
The only serious note to come out of the whole report, is their claim that the earth is in a cooling trend that we humans have interrupted. Hmm. Cooling = Bad. Interrupted Cooling = Good.
One more: This is from the USAF documents (1955) http://www.pinetreeline.org/other/other17/other17p.html
“An evaluation of the insect control problem, mainly that of mosquito control, was accomplished in June. Areas away from the site were treated with an oil surface layer and the areas in the immediate vicinity of the site were sprayed with DDT. These areas were kept under strict surveillance. Further, screen doors were installed on outside entrances to the mess hall and the garbage loading dock was sprayed daily.”
Rules of scientific publishing:
1. Always amplify the differences – start by making sure the start of the y-axis is not zero. It makes a 5% change look like a 50% change.
2. Always amplify the interpretations.
3. Highlight the need for further research.
4. Butter up all your colleagues who will also be looking for further research funding and especially those who sit on the committees that dole it out.
5. Get your institution publicity by attracting the interests of journalists.
6. Seek to influence Government policy to attract long-term stable funding to your research area.
You’ll note that none of those are compatible with the conclusion: there’s nothing really wrong, so we don’t need to spend so much money on this any more.
p.s. the study was not based on mosquitoes … she was looking at chironomids.
Ah, well. I’m sure somebody got a bonus anyway.
(Copenhagen 48 days and counting)
Sue (02:52:40) : “Humans have nothing to do with “plastic soup”, either. I mean, we mesh seamlessly into the environment and everything will fix itself”
Sue, you have just confirmed why many sceptics, such as myself, take the position that the spending of billions of dollars to try to influence climate are wasted when they would be better spent on real pollution problems. That is the tragedy of the AGW scare. But then fixing the environment is not the real intention of the green movement, it’s economic and political control.
“Sue” said:
Humans have nothing to do with “plastic soup”, either. I mean, we mesh seamlessly into the environment and everything will fix itself. My dying red oaks on my 2 acres mean nothing, it’s normal. They were seventy years old but that doesn’t mean a thing. And my tulip magnolia is sprouting its spring leaves….six months early, and that must be normal too.
Be sure to delete this. You don’t want to change your mind or learn any science or anything like that. I am wasting my time here.
What does “plastic soup” (undoubtedly a very real issue, unlike manmade warming), dying red oaks and tulip magnolias supposedly sprouting 6 months early have to do with the topic at hand? Absolutely nothing, of course. It was nothing but an emotional outburst by someone who clearly has no interest in science, or of learning anything, and who is indeed just “wasting her time here.”
Yes, Sue, we know man affects the environment, and real pollution (which doesn’t include C02) is an important issue. If you really cared about the environment though, you would see that it is wealth that is the friend of the environment, while poverty is the enemy. Punishing C02, a completely beneficial gas is the way to decreased wealth, and to increased poverty. But you don’t want to hear that, do you, having already made up your mind and all?
“I have, and find no indication that this million km claim is true.”
Not sure about that Anthony. The values I have for perihelion and aphelion are
aphelion distance = 94,511,989m
perihelion = 91,405,436m
———
3,107,553 miles
If the solstice moves with the earth’s precession which makes a complete cycle in 24,000 years, then in 12,000 the winter solstice would be at the opposite end of the orbit. 2,000 years is 1 sixth of this. 1 sixth of the difference between perihelion and aphelion is about 520,000 miles. Of course, the distance doesn’t change linearly but I would say their figure of 600,000 miles is roughly in the ballpark I would expect.
tty, many thanks. Very informative post.
We see clear evidence for warming in one of the most remote places on Earth at a time when the Arctic should be cooling because of natural processes.”
But the arctic was cooling in ~1950 – at ~0.3 deg per decade according to GISS. It carried on cooling for the next 2 decades.
They’ve not really thought this through have they?
“I know that clouds of mosquitoes appear in the forests of Finnland, even though they are over permafrost , the minute there is some heat. I was there a June 21st.”
Sounds very much like the woods outside of Fairbanks, AK in the middle of June. I remember Jersey mosquitos fifty years ago. Q: What is the state bird of New Jersey? A. The mosquito.
But the classic Meadowlands Anopheles was a wimp compared to his Yukon valley cousin on steroids.
I await correction on this sentiment, but simply from the viewpoint of evolutionary biology, wouldn’t an increase in the numbers of a species, e.g. homo sapiens, be a sign of success?
As has been pointed out before, bad theories like AGW act to lower the intelligence of its believers.
This study is a perfect example of the credulity and lack of critical thinking characteristic of faith based beliefs.
Sue,
Does plastic mean AGW hysteria is true?
Has one person here denied plastic soup?
If we were not wasting so many billions on AGW, we could be resolving real problems.
AGW policies make real environmental problems worse.
That is only one of the many negatives the current obsession with incorrect climate models causes.
I think tty (00:57:38) has it as right as I can understand this issue right now. Regarding DDT, while it is definitely true that DDT can end up in the Arctic — volatilized in the warmest climates, it is carried in the atmosphere until the cold of the Arctic reconverts it to a solid, where it falls — the amounts aren’t nearly enough to actually inhibit mosquitos, I wouldn’t think. Midges, as several have pointed out, aren’t mosquitos, but I doubt it would be any different for them. The DDT is in trace amounts.
It does seem possible that Baffin Island has warmed since 1950. However, given the many ways and cases in which the official science world has changed into a publicity machine for global warming, violently trashing those who, like Roger Pielke Jr., publish excellent science that turns out to be correct but which doesn’t fit the narrative, I cannot take the stated implications of an article like this at face value. I need replication, especially by those without an axe to grind. That is why I value tty’s post — he suggests a reasonable alternative that the scientists may not be aware of, than acidity drops as an interglacial lengthens.
He also suggest that perhaps acidity from CO2 — in a small, shallow lake, not an ocean which can dilute the CO2 — might have contributed to the acidity, thus making it more hospitable to the diatoms (and less so for the midges??? tty?). Suppose that in a small lake this is the case — then it isn’t the warming that is at fault.
Yet, tty does indicate that summer water temps are the highest they have been in 4,000 years. That would mean higher than the MWP. This might indicate generalized Arctic warming, or it could have something to do with local conditions, which might include the relative intensity of modern settlement in some way.
I’d like to hear tty again on this, if he has more to say.
If algae has increased, couldn’t that be in response to an increase in CO2??? Of course it doesn’t mean MAN is the cause of the rising CO2, but it would be a natural response of the algae, just like all the other trees and plants responding to increased CO2. Correlation does not prove causation…
Despite living in New Hampshire, and haven’t driven a snowmobile since I was in high school in the 1960s, I wouldn’t really associate the skills involved with those benefiting from Phd-level study. Perhaps she is just being all-inclusive, but then I’d wonder why she left off the cooks and dishwashers. An army of scientists travels on its stomach as the phrase goes. Umm, that’s the right phrase I think….
Its probably a very interesting core if one ignores the hype. A 200,000 year core probably shows a lot of interesting things – anyone know where the data is?
It seems there has been some warming in the far Arctic since the 1950s (but it was also warmer in the early 1940s which were probably close to today’s temps). So you can pick your start period to coincide with what you want to show.
There has been a reduction in solar energy/insolation (and summer solar energy) in the far north due to the Milankovitch Cycles starting about 10,000 years ago (although much of the far north solar energy would have just been reflected off the ice back then and I don’t think many midges lived on the glaciers then either).
In the very worst case it proved that there has been some warming at that location since 1950. It doesn’t prove what caused it. why is that so difficult to grasp.
As Professor Khabibulo Abudsamatov would say: “That´s Hollywood science”, or media science. Don´t forget Boulder, Colorado, is the Rome of the Global Warming Church.
This is no worse than what Seth Borenstein (AP) or Sharon Begley (Newsweek) publish regularly.
Today’s journalists are lazy and very susceptible to group think They rarely bother to check the original sources, or ask critical questions. They will simply reprint the same nonsense over and over again, happily oblivious to the facts.
Sue (2:52:40) typifies the problem: she mindlessly believes whatever she reads.
But the actual facts are not nearly so alarming:
http://politicalpen.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/plastic-vortex
The implication is that the U.S. is the problem, when in fact the U.S. is the cleanest country on Earth on a per capita basis. Yet the enviro lobby, tightly controlled by anti-American interests, gives China — the most polluted country on Earth — a free pass.
More than one-third of all atmospheric pollution in the western U.S. comes directly from China. But the enviro lobby turns a blind eye to that uncomfortable fact.
Sue (02:52:40) :
Sue, if your Magnolias are sprouting six MONTHS early, you might want to check your hemisphere. And if your trees are dying, methinks it won’t be due to an increase in life giving C02. Have you tried watering? 🙂
Sue (02:52:40) :
My dying red oaks on my 2 acres mean nothing, it’s normal.
Your oaks are dying from an infestation of red oak borer, which was caused by humans. No, not CO2. Misguided forest management. Your budding magnolias are a natural phenomenon. It happens periodically. Go to the U of A and talk to the ecologist there. He’ll set you straight. As for plastic soup, go to the farmers market and buy fresh vegetables and make your own. I do.
To summarize: you have absolutely no idea whether ddt could or not be involved, due to a supposed diffusion of ddt all over the world, but nevertheless prefer to blame observations on that than admit it could be due to AGW? Is your position so desperate? Have you even tried to evaluate the amount of ddt that was released?
This may be another case of incorrect use of statistical techniques to relate two proxie variables for temperature that result in another hocky stick. Please read my presentation at http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf and come to your own conclusions.
Rob Vermeulen (06:27:58),
AGW is completely unproven. It is media hype, parroting speculation based on computer models — not on empirical data.
There may be a slight effect from the “A” part of AGW — and then again, there might not be. We simply do not know at this point.
The past century’s natural warming amounts to only about 0.7°C, hardly enough to cause the effects being claimed. Anthony is right to question the assertion that humans cause global warming. It is mere speculation at this point. Skeptics question, to the consternation of alarmists, who can not credibly answer them.
But if you have any real world data showing an actual measurement of the effect of human activity on temperature, by all means post it here. You will be the first to be able to do so.
Rob Vermeulen
“To summarize: you have absolutely no idea whether ddt could or not be involved, due to a supposed diffusion of ddt all over the world, but nevertheless prefer to blame observations on that than admit it could be due to AGW?”
Your knee jerked so fast it nearly hit me on the chin. We have NO idea. That is exactly the POINT.
The point about DDT is not that “it was DDT wot dun it”. No, not at all. All people are saying is that there now exists some doubt. It may be DDT or any number of things, but none of these have been considered. It was a direct flight to “warmest in 200,000 years”. Such a bold claim requires bold evidence, don’t you know.
That is all. You can put your knee down now.
Here in Colorado we have a mountain pass called “Mosquito Pass” that sits above Leadville Colorado at an altitude of 13,185 feet above sea level. It is near arctic tundra conditions, and it has that name for a very good reason. In the spring, when the thaw comes, if you look closely you can see the tail numbers on the Mosquitos, as they closely resemble WWII bombers.
Larry
Rob Vermeulen: Check my GISS-links above. I also downloaded the available data from GISS and checked the June/July/August temperatures. They show no trend for the whole period, and a downwards trend from about 1950-~1980. So why would there be a change from 1950 when in fact Clyde had at least 25 years of gradually cooling summers from 1950 on?
Rob Vermeulen (06:27:58) :
To summarize: you have absolutely no idea whether ddt could or not be involved, due to a supposed diffusion of ddt all over the world, but nevertheless prefer to blame observations on that than admit it could be due to AGW? Is your position so desperate? Have you even tried to evaluate the amount of ddt that was released?
Didya bother to read all the comments? DDT is a moot point when there’s no warming:
Espen (03:40:05) :
There’s a long-running GISS station at Clyde which shows a slight downward trend from the 50s until the 90s:
http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdata.giss.nasa.gov%2Fcgi-bin%2Fgistemp%2Fgistemp_station.py%3Fid%3D403710900006%26data_set%3D0%26num_neighbors%3D1
(I chose the version where you see all the station changes, I guess the most recent station is at the small airport…)
Across the strait, Greenland’s Nuuk was warmer in the 30s and 40s than from the 50s:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431042500000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
If we weren’t wasting money and energy flogging CO2, perhaps some enterprising person could develop a ship to “Mine” the plastic soup, and convert it back to the fossil fuel it was made from. Unfortunately that would emit CO2 so it will not happen, but the technology already exists to convert that plastic to fuel.
None of us here”deny” that there are huge pollution problems! In fact many of us are extremely offended by that sort of situation, and would prefer to focus world resources on cleaning that sort of mess up, rather than making an even bigger mess through poor allocation or resources and funding to solve a non-existent problem, invented by scam artists to line their own pockets with our tax money.
The assumption implicit in your comment is that because we do not believe AGW is a significant issue and that we believe the science on that subject is appallingly bad, that we also do not believe all other environmental issues are bogus.
That is not only false but is insulting! You really need to understand that a skeptical view of AGW has absolutely nothing to do with other pollution issues.
Many on this forum are ardent supporters of a clean environment, the only issue we have is we insist on intelligent action, based on good science, that actually solves the problems rather than feel good solutions that sound good but are based on crappy research, which will likely cause more harm than good and are really a screen for another agenda.
Larry
Let me jump on the Sue bandwagon:
She’s an excellent example of what Konrad was pointing out. Instead focusing on what is really wrong with her red oaks, she jumps to the AGW/CO2 bandwagon and turns to gov’t to solve her problem. Meanwhile, the real problem, goes undiscovered, (except by perhaps Tim) and continues to manifest itself. Sue refuses to listen to Tim because, it is in all the papers and all the experts say it is Global Warming and Tim is in the pay of big oil. After all, his detractors said so. Sue ends up not enjoying her red oaks because they die. Don’t worry Sue, more than likely the only thing that may save your trees, is DDT and it is banned too. (other than the last line and Tim being in the pay of big oil, I’m serious)
Regarding the magnolia, Sue gets to enjoy her magnolia for 6 more months longer than “normal” and this is bad?!?. Pretty soon, it will be sprouting it’s spring leaves 12 months earlier than normal.
This is one possible scenario we’re setting ourselves up for:
1. The public focuses on the false pretense,
2. Regulatory bodies establish regulations to fund the “problem” solvers
3. Real problems, operating behind the scenes continue to go unnoticed by a few
4. The public finally realizes what a colossal waste of money the money for solutions are (this step is has the weakest potential for realization)
5. Real environmentalists are tainted with the bad apple
6. Real environmental problems continue to fester
7. The funding of the “problem” solvers never goes away.
8. Amazingly, they need more money from the public to “solve” other, this time we really mean it, problems.
John Galt: Is the name a reference? If so, I like it.
Rob Vermeulen: DDT seems logical, at least. The point, which you obviously missed is that, as usual, they automatically jump to the conclusion that the cause of some as-yet undiscovered phenomenon is their favorite bogeyman, manmade warming/climate change. It doesn’t even occur to them to ask if it might be something else, because of their belief in AGW/CC. Their Belief clouds their judgement, their rationality, and is a destroyer of both science and the truth.
It is the AGWers, actually, who are the desperate ones, sadly and desperately clinging to a Belief which is falling apart.
Peter aked: IF this lake is near a town, did anyone investigate whether the area was sprayed with DDT during it’s heyday to control mosquito populations. When I was a kid aerial spraying for insect control was common, and my area had nothing like the insect problem the far north has.
I can’t speak for this area, having only spent summer months around James Bay in spring and summer, but I remember extensive aerial spraying in and around Moosonee (as well as Timmins, Cochrane, etc.) to fight all manner of aerial beasts (moose flys, black flies, mosquitos, you name it) that blanketed the area. Spraying was intense over the many lakes and bogs around the towns in the late 60s as I recall.
Rob Vermeulen,
The point is not whether the skeptics know there is or is not DDT involved in the midge population.
The point is that the AGW promoters have not excluded other, reasonable, variables.
The skeptic job is to point out wekanesses in a scientific study.
The researcher’s job is to deal with weaknesses.
At least in real science.
Briffa’s strategy, in dealing with the weaknesses of his tree ring proxy based hockey sticks, was to simply hide the data. that kept him from having to defend the wrongness of his techniques, his use of the data, and his conclusion for ten years. Perhaps the Baffin island study should emulate that tactic as well?
Is AGW real science?
Arctic region is not homogeneous. It is a very complex one. In a simple manner, we can say that the Central Arctic (including North Greenland) export cold air and the surroundings import warm (moist). This is the atmospheric circulation general due the temperature gradient between poles and tropics. So, Baffin Island is located in the surroundings that are warming like the Barents Sea. If the study were made in the Central Arctic the conclusions were completely different.
Well, Rob makes a good point (that has been answered I think). The first thing that came into my head, Rob, is that I don’t trust a single figure in any of the AGW’ers papers any more, especially when they attempt to link `whatever’ study with man-made CO2. Call it a severe loss in my trust of the integrity of the Scientific Process. But anyway, Scientists are supposed to be sceptics, so criticism is all good. It’s just a shame that the criticism isn’t happening in the journals any more.
Seems like a perfect place to prove the existence of the MWP.
Does the midge population profile support it?
When I read that article a light went of in my head! DDT! Which is still useful,but it will save too many dark skinned people,so it is evil.When I continued further, there it was:DDT! great post, Anthony…
Back in my undergrad days I wrote a paper on the control of certain insect species
with DDT-and there are still people who won’t talk to me 40 years later….
Had those idi*ts check arctic temperature station records, maybe they should had been surprised that temperatures in 40ties was the same as today.
Northern Siberia:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222206740006&data_set=1&num_neighbors=5
R Pearse … if you look back at my earlier posting you will see that DDT was indeed sprayed in the southern part of Baffin Island in the 50’s by the USAF!
This is another hockey stick study where ONE lake has all the weight and we are asked to forget about the rest of the world and history (i.e. the Vikings in Greenland during the MWP).
The use and global-distillation of DDT is the best hypothesis to explain this discrepancy since before the 20th Century DDT did not exist in nature.
“Sue” sounds like she has SODS – sudden Oak death syndrome – widely spreading in Marin County, CA. Most likely brought to Marin via contaminated hiking boots, and/or mountain bike tires.
As a “Denier”, and having lived in Marin County, (not that “Sue” does), I can tell you that the wailing and gnashing of teeth over SODS, quieted when “Industrial Pollution” wasn’t the culprit. Funny how when it’s “just nature” the bitching goes away.
I too am appalled at the plastic sea, mercury in fish, and all other easily avoided pollution problems. Let’s work on them together, Sue.
Near the lake in study there where a cold-war era Norad radar station in 1950s:
http://tinyurl.com/ygkbjba
Mosquitoes where quite annoying in such places and DDT was available… Makes we wonder why the number of mosquitoes went down in 1950s.
The paper (sorry, press release) raises more questions than it answers.
Just off the top of my head:
1. Are the midge populations sensitive to small differences in temperature? That ought to be easy enough to test. Or is it the all too common circular reasoning, i.e. midge populations have dropped therefore the temperature must have increased therefore the midge populations dropped?
2. Do the population numbers correlate well with the local historical temperature records (assuming there are any)?
3. Were all the other possible reasons for a decrease in midge populations considered?
How do you get from midge population decrease to “We see clear evidence for warming in one of the most remote places on Earth at a time when the Arctic should be cooling because of natural processes.” Why should the Artic be cooling?
Does anyone have access to the paper yet?
Article from 1998, “DDT in the Dirt”… “DDT is one of the Persistent Organic Pollutant’s (POP’s), also known as the “irty dozen,” up for a worldwide ban by the UN treaty in December of this year. They can be found almost everywhere on the planet. In addition, because they spontaneously migrate towards the colder regions of the planet, these pollutants pose a critical threat to northern indigenous people, whose survival health and well-being depend on their traditional relationship with the ecosystem and the food it provides. Some of the most highly exposed populations are indigenous people living in polar regions far from major POPs sources. For example, the Inuit living in Baffin Island carry seven times as many contaminants in their bodies as people living in lower latitudes.
Yarmy … I posted this earlier:
Here is her paper: http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~axford/axford_et_al_QR_2009_CF8.pdf
There has been a plethora of cogent responses to Sue, so I hesitate to pile on. Yet I would like to add one more nuance. There seems to be a belief amongst my AGW friends that if pass the Waxman bill, then we need not worry about a whole host of environmental problems. The bee population will recover, spruces will stop dying in the Rockies, mosquitoes will retreat – indeed AGW pessimists seem to believe that the Plains will no longer have tornadoes and the coasts will no longer suffer hurricanes. (Okay, the last two claims are exaggerations, but not much.) As has been pointed out, passing the Waxman bill – or even achieving AGW’s dream treaty in Copenhagen — will not help the bees, the spruce, or Sue’s maple trees. We take focus away from what causes the problem, using AGW as a convenient excuse.
The bees most likely are suffering from a mite infection that is unaffected by AGW treaties.
My green friend built a cabin in the mountains, storing firewood – infected with Mountain Pine Beetle and Western Spruce Budworm – next to his cabin. The warmth of the cabin enabled those pests to survive the winter and ravage the spruce the following summer.
In our area, mosquito populations have been larger in the last 2 decades, and I would point to the windmills that were installed twenty years ago. The windmills are quite an efficient killer of birds and bats; the latter would consume many mosquitoes in their diet.
Out in the Pacific Ocean, the Maldives and Tuvalu suffer flooding problems because of coral reef extraction and imprudent freshwater management. No AGW treaty will overcome those problems.
The list goes on. Meanwhile, real environmental problems are not solved because of the attention and resources being given to AGW.
Sue seems to have caused a fair amount of reflex didacticism among the learned gentry. Try putting “sarcon” before the first sentence of the post and “sarcoff” after the last. Methinks Sue was attempting irony; you know, like when your wife says: “That was a particularly charming lamp shade you wore home from the party last night.” I could be wrong, somebody did do a song about a boy named Sue.
John Finn (05:20:14) :
They surely do not think things through, John. These are marketing driven statements they make, and they mean to sell something, whether it’s a philosophy or a carbon credit. They are trying to drive the support for thier need-based product enough to avoid the semblance of being an outright coup. So, if you boil the essence of what’s dear to them down, you end up with concepts not unlike “futuristic”, “moral high ground”, and “everybody’s doing it”.
Sue (02:52:40) :
Plastic soup is man’ invention. Before all this big AGW distraction, we were making good strides towards cleaning up toxins, and we should dump the AGW and go back to doing that.
As for the double-growth season, we see that too on the opposite side of the continent. Things grew in the spring and again in the fall, and it’s sun-angle dependant. We saw some plants get ‘sunburned’ on cool days. Not all plants did well, and not all trees did well. But some trees, plants & weeds thrived. What do you suppose is the common thread?
Add “Arctic Lake” to the list of things affected by global warming:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
BTW, notice how they are slipping in the assertion ‘over riding an otherwise cooling trend’?
This is a new dodge they are using to explain why there has in reality been so little temp change.
This is almost as good as the ten tree hockey stick data. They find fewer dead bugs on the bottom of a lake with an area of about 1/8 square mile and that proves the entire planet is getting warmer and that it’s our fault. Give me a break!
The press release is the new form of misleading spin in this country for alarmists. So I am not surprised by this. But anything that does in biting insects, whether they are called mosquitoes or chironomids, can’t be all bad.
Sue: The plastic pollution problem …
1. is real
2. can be halted fairly easily, and
3. can be cleaned up.
None of those are true for CO2.
ralph (04:11:38) :
‘But the Green movement “”has never and will never campaign on population issues”” as Greenpeace has informed me.
Instead we get unlimited immigration and no effort whatsoever to prevent Third World overpopulation. The West, without immigration, would be naturally reducing its population right now, to more sustainable levels. But no, the Greens and most Left-leaning governments do not want this at all, and Britain’s population is now at record levels.
So the Greens will not tackle the one primary issue affecting the environment. And if they will not do that, then how can we take them seriously on any other issue?’
So ralph-I agree that the route of all enviromental issue is population growth, but I think your criticism here to be a little misdirected. Why do you suppose Greenpeace does not take up the population issue directly? The furor that would ensue from the right charging “death panels”, eugenics, etc etc would be overwhelming. I see no mention of the Catholic Church in your post. Hardly green and hardly leftist yet probably the single biggest advocate for unlimited population growth that there is. I mean, if you’re looking for someone or something to blame, that is.
This is a comman statement
“and likely are the result of human-caused climate change”
No evidence required, LIKELY to be used to justify the next grant.
Espen (03:40:05) :
“There’s a long-running GISS station at Clyde which shows a slight downward trend from the 50s until the 90s:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=403710900006&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1”
Espen makes an excellent point. The instrument record shows the area was cooling from 1950 until 1995.
Maybe the poor bugs froze to death.
tty (00:57:38) : “Far from it, the chironomids (not mosquitos, please note) indicate that summer water temperatures have risen from 6 to 7.5 degrees centigrade, which is indeed the highest for about 4000 years. However it was as high as 12 degrees during the Holocene optimum 8000-10,000 years ago and during the previous interglacial about 120,000 years ago, and the most sthenoterm chironomids were periodically gone from the lake at those times too.”
tty, thanks for reading and summarizing the paper. Apparently they missed the Medieval and Roman warm periods, and don’t see the local cooling trend recorded (according to WUWT posters) at nearby temperature stations, but their method may not have that kind of resolution. I’m guessing they didn’t (or couldn’t) do a Briffa-type “calibration” against modern temperature records.
This paper would seem to belong with the body of evidence indicating modern temps are NOT unprecedented.
This is a lot like the claim I saw the Lake Champlain stopped freezing over reliably right around 1970. Year round ice-breaking ferries were introduced in 1968.
Hey Sue,
This isn’t a lefty blog like RealClimate. You are welcome to post here as much as you like, if you can stay away from baseless accusations and ad hominems.
Konrad said: “What do you think is going to happen to the environmental movement when the hoax of AGW becomes common knowledge?”
That may be the least of our worries. What do you think will happen to the entire reputation of “Science”? We’ve already got a situation where more people believe in daily horoscopes than believe in the moon landings. How do Evolutionists think this will impact the debate over Creationism, when all some Elmer Gantry preacher will have to say is, “yeah, well, you sure got that Global Warming thing right, didn’t you?”
>>>Why do you suppose Greenpeace does not take up the
>>>population issue directly? The furor that would ensue from
>>>the right charging “death panels”, eugenics, etc etc would
>>>be overwhelming.
I know that Greenpeace will not campaign on population issues, because they told me so:
Quote:
From: Lisa Weatherley
Subject: RE: Population increase
Date: 13 March 2006 17:22:42 CET
To: Ellis Ralph
Hello Ralph,
Thanks for your e-mail. Greenpeace works, as our name suggests, on
environmental and peace issues. We have never campaigned on the issue
of human population and have no plans to do so. …………
Best wishes,
Lisa Weatherley
Supporter Services, Greenpeace UK
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk
Endquote.
As to charges of eugenics, well that is the battle-cry of the Left, rather than the Right. But you are right that this is the reason that Greenpeace and the Left will not talk about population controls. They have thrown accusations of racism and eugenics about so freely, that they are petrified of being accused of this themselves.
The Catholic Church? Yes, there is an anomaly here, I suppose, as conservative Catholicism is generally Right wing. But I would suggest that the Church has always had an alternate, egocentric reason for their opposition to population reduction. They realise, as do most religious sects, that their future growth depends on promoting as many offspring among their membership – for it is far easier to make converts of Catholic children than evangelising among adults.
But the net result of all this opposition is that we have overpopulated the Earth, and are running out of resources. For example – we had much hand-wringing and appeals for charity because of famine in Ethiopia in the 1960s and 70s, when their population was some 25 million. But now we have yet more hand-wringing and appeals for charity because of famine in Ethiopia in the 2000s; and it is implied that it is our (the West’s) fault that Ethiopia is still ravaged by famine. But their population has increased from 25 million to more than 70 million in this time! So whose fault is this famine? Whose fault is this ravage of the Earth’s resources?
http://www.un.org/popin/regional/africa/ethiopia/index.htm
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1413&fuseaction=topics.event_summary&event_id=121044
.
>>>Sue (02:52:40) :
>> My dying red oaks on my 2 acres mean nothing, it’s
>>normal. They were seventy years old but that doesn’t
>>mean a thing.
This was meant to be sarcastic, I presume.
But Sue, you should understand that 99.9999% of all trees in the history of this planet have died, long before we came along.
.
A clarification. It is not a matter of midges “disappearing”, it is a matter of changing species composition. Different midge (chironomid) species larvae have different temperature requirements and the species composition is therefore an excellent “thermometer”. This is a temperature proxy for summer water temperatures that has been used for a long time.
Some people have raised the matter of the Medieval Warm Period. This study cannot say anything about that, because that time period is missing. There are two different cores involved, one long core going back into the Pleistocene and a very short one covering the most recent period. This is nothing unusual by itself. To get a long core you have to use rather violent methods, usually a percussion corer, which will usually destroy the unconsolidated surface layer. As far as I can see from the diagrams the last 1000 years or so is missing from the long core while the short core only covers the period c. 1750-2009. Consequently the period c. 1000-1750 AD (including most of both the MWP and the LIA) was not sampled, or at least not reported on.
However I must say I have some misgivings about the short core. There is unfortunately no information on how long it was, but from the long core it is obvious that sedimentation is rather slow, on the order of 1 cm per century once the sediment has been compacted. As far as I can see they have up to 16 or 17 data points over about 250 years (though only 5 for temperatures). Even with uncompacted sediment this is extremely dense sampling, probably only a few millimetres apart. Such close sampling only give valid results if there is absolutely bioturbation or bottom currents.
“The sediment cores showed that several types of mosquito-like midges that flourish in very cold climates have been abundant at the lake for the past several thousand years. But the cold-adapted midge species abruptly began declining in about 1950, matching their lowest abundances of the last 200,000 years. Two of the midge species adapted to the coldest temperatures have completely disappeared from the lake region, said Axford.”
So, we are to believe the midges died of heat prostration?
OH, THE HUMIDGITY!
“The sediment cores showed that several types of mosquito-like midges that flourish in very cold climates have been abundant at the lake for the past several thousand years.”
The adaptability of mosquito type insects is a frightening subject. Some may not be aware of the Wetlands Creation project, but up here in the Northwestern U S, the State of Oregon spends tax money that should rightfully go to road construction and maintenance and actually builds swamps. water.usgs.gov has info on swamp creation as a gov’t policy.
It is interesting that the same governments who have found it their business to build wetlands are also working to restrict the types of mosquito control that keep us safe from malaria, for example.
Here is a map of potential malaria vectors in the US:
http://www.cdc.gov/Malaria/images/features/malaria_map_enlarged.jpg
Mosquito-borne diseases also include West NIle Virus, yellow fever, dengue, and encephalitis. It is interesting to keep an eye on the environmental restrictions imposed on mosquito and vector control districts.
Zeke the Sneak (12:36:34) : The author of that sensational idea of making swamps for breeding mosquitoes deserves the Nobel prize.
tty:
Couldn’t acidity also be due to acid rain?
Isn’t “no” before bioturbation missing in you r post?
Zeke the Sneak and others.
THIS IS NOT, REPEAT NOT, A MATTER OF MOSQUITOS.
The study is about chironomids, non-stinging relatives of midges, they do not suck blood, they do not spread diseases.
And Zeke the Sneak and Adolfo Giurfa. Malaria is extinct in the United States, as in all developed countries. This happened in the early twentieth century, and it won’t come back unless the US reverts to third world housing and living coditions. If that happens it will come back whether there are wetlands about or not.
Any study performed by scientists from The Peoples Republic Of Boulder, should receive a healthy dose of scrutiny.
So changes occurring over the last 200,000 years are unprecedented, and are due to humans.
Well I dare say that the entire history of the universe is unprecedented; in that nothing ever repeats.
And just how were humans affecting Canadian Climate 200,000 years ago, if they didn’t arrive in the new world till maybe 30,000 or so years ago.
What about all of the other now long dead or extinct critters that evidently inhabited the Americas during that 200,000 years. Is there some new miracle proof that they didn’t alter the climate; after all; just the buffalow, and the passenger pigeons existed in such vast numbers that they blocked out the sun, and caused minor earth tremors when they ran in huge herds.
Ah yes I can see how the lake bottom mud could pin the blame on that chap in Tajikistan whose descendents colonized the Americas.
Is there someone out there with special expertise in climate who can say with a definitive air, and proof, just what extended period in the earth’s 4.5 or thereabouts existence was characterized by NO CHANGE in climate; that we can use as a reliable base line for what we should be striving to return the earth to.
Was it in the last million years; or maybe ten million, 100 million years ago ? When was that period of no climate change, that has us all worked up about today.
DDT wasn’t used to kill the midges. It would have been used to kill the biting flies, a scourge of the Arctic, and the midges would have been collateral damage.
Oh alright, that was a nutty rabbit trail, but a Nobel Prize–you shouldn’t have! 🙂
Now I certainly did not say that any breeding was taking place. But I do not have to like the use of taxes to build swamps, within city limits quite often.
And between the creation of mosquito habitats and the ever increasing limitations of pesticide use, I hope it is plain enough to see there is a potential for governmental ineptitude. In fact, the availability of vaccines, disease surveillance and immigration control or lack thereof are all areas in a complicated subject in which we rely on gov’t competence to some extent or another. Then again, I may have some irrational phobia epidemics, so I ask you to have me excused. It is a besetting weakness…
I will leave you with a cheerful thought. Any disease can come into this country at anytime.
“CDC received reports of 1,505 cases of malaria among persons in the United States, including one transfusion-related case and one fatal case, with onset of symptoms in 2007; 1,564 cases were reported for 2006
I swear I never flame-gunned them all with my lighter- only some.
ralph (11:27:28) : “But the net result of all this opposition is that we have overpopulated the Earth, and are running out of resources.”
FYI we’re not running out of resources. Read The Ultimate Resource II by economist Julian Simon, or The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg. For a shorter overview of the non-problem, check out
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff
Maybe there are more frogs in and around that lake since 1950.
Jon, that paper you linked to at rintintin.cu was not the one this thread is about.
Here is a webpage showing the earths orbit around the sun. The difference in distrance from the sun is several million km at various times of the year. It is plausible that the earth is almost a million km further away from the sun at summer solstice than it was 2000 years ago.
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/6h.html
I found this page on my first google search, so his search could not have been exhausting.
I have just read the paper and what astonishes me is that the time between the 19th century back to about 1000 before Christ is not mentioned at all. neither in the graphs, nor in the paper. Is it not possible to get boreholes aout of that timeframe? Or would the roman optimum and the medieval warm period have disturbed the findings of the paper?
Ray … you are right … her publications are listed on her website:
http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~axford/pubs.html
Her latest paper is not available on pdf yet.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1ftZeYFGaYoC&pg=PA211&lpg=PA211&dq=baffin+island+ddt&source=bl&ots=Vk4t96DbzO&sig=9maMwm54kRMvOeCgaq1NZ99BWOs&hl=en&ei=uh3fStGKKILLjAf25K2lBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=baffin%20island%20ddt&f=false
“Blood and fatty tissue samples taken from Inuit in southern Baffin island … showed … high levels of DDT”
>>FYI we’re not running out of resources. Read The Ultimate
>>Resource II by economist Julian Simon
>>http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff
I don’t believe a word of this – it even claims that desalination is cheaper than rain!!
Even if more fossil fuels are discovered, you can bet that they will be in unsavoury locations, that we should not be trading with. Most of our global political problems are cause by oil being under the Middle East, and us paying good money for it.
The ideology and the resourced that toppled the World Trade Center was all paid for with your petro-dollars.
,
ralph (08:23:03) : “I don’t believe a word of this – it even claims that desalination is cheaper than rain!!”
I believe ralph was confused by this statement about improved desalination technology: “Thanks to this device, it is now cheaper to make fresh water along the coast of California rather than to put a dam in the mountains and a pipeline to carry it to a city near the shore.”
Not quite the same thing, is it? Note that rain isn’t “free” when the state has to build new dams, create new reservoirs, and construct new pipelines to take the rain from where it falls (if it falls at all) to where it doesn’t. BTW, is California even building any new dams right now? The state is building desalination plants:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124708765072714061.html
About the wobble, err the Milankovitch cycles (precession, obliquity, and eccentricity) have the respective cycle time of 25K, 41K, and 100K years.
So this moron who suggests that in 1 BC – 2 K years ago – that the earth’s orbit was 600,000 miles further from the Sun. That would mean that the earth moves 300 miles further from the sun every year.
Now let’s see. 300 mile per year over a cycle of 100,000 years that means that the earth move away for 50,000 years. So that calculates to an orbit that is 1.5 million miles bigger in radius….. OOPS it isn’t a circle its an elipse, DAMN it. That means that the earth is closer during one season and further during the opposing season.
Let see: What did Milankovitch say about the glaciations and the cycles: the Milankovitch theory, when the eccentricity is small, the obliquity is low, and precession is such that the northern hemisphere is furthest from the sun during the summer, then glaciers and snow cover should expand, and in turn reflect more insolation in the polar regions leading to colder and colder temperatures. Damn it to hell, again! Today the earth’s eccentricity is 0.0167 and getting smaller, the obliquity is 23.4 degrees and headed lower, and the northern hemisphere is furthest from the sun during the summer months. So the oval is becoming more circular and therefore the furthest distance on the oval is moving closer to the foci (sun)…
That would mean that the earth is actually getting closer to the sun during the summer solstice not further away. Oh and the precession yeah , forgot to figure that in….
Copenhagen here we come, like good little commies.
God help us all.
Seems Anthony has uncovered a can of worms, or rather a can of warmologists.
Axford, Briner (authors of the peek into lake CF8 just out of the town of Clyde River)
banded together in an article recently published in Science that included the likes of Caspar Ammann and Keith Briffa. There’s discussion about the below article at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7005
http://www.climateaudit.org/?paged=3
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/325/5945/1236
“The cooling trend was reversed during the 20th century, with four of the five warmest decades of our 2000-year-long reconstruction occurring between 1950 and 2000.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=global-warming-reverses-arctic-cooling
The idea apparently is to push the fantasy, er, inference that the earth should be cooling, but has been drastically warming for the last 50 years.
It *is* curious that none of the journal articles that use support from lake CF8 to evidence global warming even mention in passing that any tests were done on contaminants that could affect midge populations, since it does seem a valid consideration. Several of the above authors who participated in several of these articles did study lead concentrations in lake CF8. Lead, as well as mercury and other chemicals existed or were used in some form in inseccticides and larvicides. Lead was also present in fuels used in the Arctic from the ’40s to the ’70s. No mention of possible effects on midges in the abstract.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19665172
“Despite widespread reductions in industrial Pb emissions since the 1970s, there is no evidence for attendant reductions of pollution Pb at Lake CF8.”
A picture of the DEW radar base a few miles out of Clyde River (scroll down):
http://jproc.ca/hyperbolic/loran_a.html
“This is all that remains of the Canadian Loran A station at Cape Christian”
Anthony,
it’s not the warming, it’s not the DDT IMO. It’s in Fig. 3 of the paper and in the SI:
“Raw data were averaged over 10-cm intervals of the long record and 0.5- to
1.5-cm intervals of the surface core to reduce all proxies to a maximum common resolution.”
So approximately the Holocene samples give ~1000 year means, the Eem samples giive 2000 year means and the most recent samples give 30…40 year means.
Thus to make samples and their variablility comparable to the present samples time span, in Fig. 3A each green triangle just marks the mean of a whole cloud of (imaginary) samples. But Axford et. al. preferred not to show these clouds or estimate their size.
Wolfgang Flame,
Thats how you produce hockey stick handles and reduce the effects of shorter term cycles such MWP and the Little Ice Age.
“expected climate cooling is being overridden by human activity like greenhouse gas emissions”
While I doubt this is true I fail to see how not freezing to death is a bad thing