Our “recent” (geologically speaking) temperature history:
By Lawrence Solomon in the Financial Post
Thank your lucky stars to be alive on Earth at this time. Our planet is usually in a deep freeze. The last million years have cycled through Ice Ages that last about 100,000 years each, with warmer slivers of about 10,000 years in between.
We are in-betweeners, and just barely — we live in (gasp!) year 10,000 or so after the end of the last ice age. But for our good fortune, we might have been born in the next Ice Age.
Our luck is even better than that. Those 10,000-year warm spells aren’t all cosy-warm. They include brutal Little Ice Ages such as the 500-year-long Little Ice Age that started about 600 years ago. Fortunately, we weren’t around during its fiercest periods when Finland lost one-third of its population, Iceland half, and most of Canada became uninhabitable — even the Inuit fled. While the cold spells within the 10,000 year warm spells aren’t as brutal as a Little Ice Age, they can nevertheless make us huddle in gloom, such as the period in history from about 400 AD to 900 AD, which we know as the Dark Ages. We’ve lucked out twice, escaping the cold spells within the warm spells, making us inbetweeners within the inbetween periods. How good is that?
We aren’t alone in having been blessed by good weather. About 2000 years ago, around the time of Caesar and Christ, temperatures were also gloriously warm, some say much warmer than those we’ve experienced in recent decades. That period — the centuries immediately before and after Caesar and Christ — are known as the Roman Warm Period, a time of wealth and accomplishment when the warmer weather filled granaries and extended grape and olive growing regions to lands that had previously been unarable.
Another period of unusual warmth came about 1000 years after the Roman Warm Period, during the centuries before and after the year 1000, in what is known as the Medieval Warm Period. In this period, again warmer than the present time, the world shucked off the insularity of the Dark Ages to allow civilization to once again blossom. England, then positively balmy, became a grape-growing region. In the North Atlantic, the Arctic sea ice released its grip over Greenland, making this vast island hospitable for Viking settlers. In the Canadian Rockies, majestic forests — trees larger than those of today — thrived before their decimation by the glaciers that came in with the Little Ice Age.
Another 1000 years and we come to our time, known to climatologists as the Modern Warm Period. What a great time of technological and cultural advancement we’ve known, one of unprecedented prosperity, human longevity, and human comfort. For a brief period in the 1970s it appeared to some scientists that the climate that had abetted our prosperity had turned — this was the fear of global cooling that then made headlines. Though many now mock those fears of climate cooling, the scientists were eminent and the science was sound — after all, given Earth’s history through the eons, and the passage of 10,000 years since the last ice age, it was hardly outlandish to believe that time of warmth was up.
It wasn’t then — the decades after the 1970s have been about as good as it gets. But it could be now. In fact, some of the same scientists who in the 1970s warned of a new cold spell still believe it could be imminent. Other eminent scientists with compelling new evidence have recently joined them in predicting the end of our Modern Warm Period. They and others note that the warming of the planet stopped 11 years ago and that the planet has begun to cool.
If a new Dark Age does come, it could be rapid, marked by plunging temperatures and extreme weather events. Such was the transition from the Roman Warm Period to the Dark Ages and from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age. To date, we have seen no plunging temperatures, no uncharacteristically extreme weather.
If we are living on borrowed time, as the history of the world would suggest, this reprieve would be but one more blessing to count. We should enjoy the warmth while we can, and hope that it persists so that the world our children and grandchildren inherit will be no less warm and welcoming.
Financial Post
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Sounds like we may soon need a Cap and Trade bill to encourage the release of C02 into the atmosphere.
I believe the author once called himself a “warmist” but did investigations of the “deniers” out of curiosity. He wrote a book by that name. It is a good read.
This is a great post.
How sad that the jokers in Copenhagen will not take this on board.
The Fairbridge Curve of sea level variation (in Science 191 (4225) 353-359 1976) covers the same period and is remarkably similar. It was deduced from other sources, not oxygen isotopes. The Fairbridge sea level curve looks like a smoothed representation of the temperature in Carter’s graph. Such climate proxies based on empirical evidence are much better than computer models.
Carter’s graph also puts a fine point on the Sunda pyroclastic event of 535AD. To read more about the social and political history of a sudden cooling period, read David Keyes’ book, Catastrophe.
Awakened to a warm house and a cup of coffee.Civilization.Cap’n Tax will not like that,
only Algore and Senator Boxer will have such luxuries.The west could be the first
civilization to commit both Ecocide and Econocide …
Got Coal?
We may be just in the beginning of an exceptionally long interglacial, though. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InsolationSummerSolstice65N.png – the oscillations are currently less extreme than they have been for some hundred thousand years.
Here’s an article behind a paywall that I haven’t read, but the summary suggests that regardless of changes induced by humans, the current interglacial may last another 50000 years: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/297/5585/1287
Still, we may of course face another “small ice age” any time now.
It’s not all bad. The industrial revolution began during the LIA.
This article should be in every newspaper around the world.
Certainly a different viewpoint from AGW. I worry more about the cooling viewpoint than the warming viewpoint. I worry more about government being in charge and doing exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. An energy policy based on providing energy to citizens would be worthwhile. No nuclear , no drilling and the idea to skyrocket the price of coal based electricity is bad policy no matter what the time.
An excellent article, would it be possible for the axes of the graph to be labelled and their magnitudes made easier to read or at least the ranges spelled out?
It would be interesting to see a graph of sunspots superimposed on this.
We should enjoy the warmth while we can, and hope that it persists so that the world our children and grandchildren inherit will be no less warm and welcoming.
And while also taking precautions that we not create a true man-made disaster by applying an alleged AGW “cure” worse than the alleged “disease”.
Many people who have made careful studies of climate and its impact on civilization (Lamb being but one) have noted how the human race suffers during cold periods, and prospers during the warm ones. Take a careful look at the history of Scotland, for example. Even now, our major risks come from weather (or perhaps from climate excursion) that is too cold.
Solomon has been one of the few journalists to present another view on the science and politics of climate change. I love the paleo stuff, mainly because it flies in the face of everything promoters of CAGW claim. We can not let them rewrite history.
Great article and the chart should result in blood pressure changes in the pro-AGW set.
Look at the DMI Polar Temperature chart on the right side-bar.
The blue line is the ice age tipping point line and we are not far from it.
M White (08:27:37) :
It’s not all bad. The industrial revolution began during the LIA.
Suggesting cause and effect? On that hypothesis the Inuit ought to be the most industrially advanced people on Earth.
Goreacle’s advance here:
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/weathermaps/?ref=canoe_en_p_text_weathermaps
I suggest we take advantage of the lull before the next Fimbulwinter descends on us, to industrialise rapidly and colonise the solar system, thus taking at least some of our eggs out of the one basket.
“Climate economist says he was ‘gagged’
A SENIOR CSIRO environmental economist has gone public to accuse the science body of trying to gag his report attacking the Federal Government’s climate change policies.
The paper, by Clive Spash, criticises the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and argues that direct legislation or a tax on carbon is needed…
Dr. Spash also wrote that the economic theory underpinning emissions trading schemes was far removed from the reality …
He said trading schemes were ineffective …
He claims the CSIRO had tried to block the publication of the report, despite it being internationally peer reviewed and accepted by the journal New Political Economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2375890/posts
If I were a meteorologist tasked with giving a weather forecast for the next million years here in the UK the summary would be cold, with occasional warm spells.
For a bit more detail I would add that the M1 and M5 roads to the north would be icy for long periods. Indeed the ice would be many tens of feet thick.
This forecast would be given on the time honoured basis of most weather foecasts – looking at the patterns of the past and projecting them into the future. Despite all the Petaflops available to todays meteorologists, this is probably still the most accurate way of forecasting.
Kevin Kilty (08:52:40) :
M White (08:27:37) :
It’s not all bad. The industrial revolution began during the LIA.
Suggesting cause and effect? On that hypothesis the Inuit ought to be the most industrially advanced people on Earth.
The point being life goes on. The humane race(homo sapiens) left Africa and colonised and adapted to most of the world during the last glacial period not after it.
Thank you wuwt. You bring sanity to a knee-jerk, ‘We are God’s of Weather’ society we reside in.
I worked at the South Pole in the weather department for an Austral Summer and continue to get weekly weather updates. Here’s the latest:
Weekly Climate Summary for 24 October 2009 through 30 October 2009 UTC
South Pole Station, Antarctica
Temperature:
Average temp… -44.5°C / -48.1°F
Maximum temp… -38.2°C / -36.8°F on day 26
Minimum temp… -51.2°C / -60.2°F on day 25
Wind:
Average wind speed………. 14.4 mph or 12.5 knots
Prevailing wind direction… Grid Northeast
Maximum wind speed………. 29 mph or 25 knots on day 26
Maximum wind direction…… Grid Northeast
Average vectored wind……. 050 degrees at 11.8 knots
Station Pressure:
Average pressure… 674.8 mb
Highest pressure… 681.8 mb on day 25
Lowest pressure…. 665.8 mb on day 27
Physio-altitude:
Average physio-alt = 10825 ft/ 3299 m
Highest physio-alt = 11168 ft/ 3404 m on day 27
Lowest physio-alt = 10560 ft/ 3219 m on day 25
Sky Cover:
Average cloud cover (8ths)… 5
Days clear………………. 0
Days partly cloudy……….. 6
Days cloudy……………… 1
Sunshine:
Sunset on 22 March 2010
Average hours per day… 23.0
Percent of possible….. 96
Visibility:
0 days with visibility of 1/4 mile or less.
Balloon flight data:
Number of soundings for the week….. 14
Average height of soundings………. 39.3 mb, or 25019 meters
Highest sounding………………… 4.0 mb, or 36682 meters
on day 26/12Z flight
0 soundings were missed.
**RECORDS**
No records were tied or broken this week.
-If interested in receiving the data, email contact at the South Pole: Met@usap.gov
~Cheers
Compelling. I still don’t know what will happen with the future climate, but I’m still pretty sure human emissions don’t have much to do with it. I wonder if technology makes us better prepared to deal with sudden cooling than with sudden warming. Will we be piping “greenhouse emissions” into real greenhouses in the near future?
Although I’m not a big fan of proxies, at least this agrees with historical accounts. And if one were to engage in a no-no called extrapolation …. brrrrrrr.
It makes sense, when we don’t have to struggle against the cold we are more productive. It’s also why older people like warmer climates.
It would be interesting to see what effect colder temps would have on the great plains of the U.S. I remember reading that prairie grass grew to such a height that you could lose sight of the rest of you wagon train if you weren’t careful. That was 100 years ago, possibly more moisture back then.