Guest post from Von Rudolf Kipp
Originally in German here, with some portions translated to English using the Google translator below.
[update–translation provided by poster EWCZ ~ ctm]
Google translator is largely imperfect, but to read the Google translation in English go here.
If anyone wishes to do a personal translation for the entire article, please leave a note in comments and I will replace it. Of great interest is the global graphic below, which shows that the MWP is a worldwide event, not just limited to portions of the Northern Hemisphere.
“ “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell, 1984
We live in an age of superlatives. When you turn on the TV nowadays, you get offered the choice of best films, the greatest hits or the dumbest opening lines of all time. And even with a detergent it is long ago not sufficient when it washes whiter than white. Again, the constant sale appeal to the consumer can be maintained only if the product is billed as “The best thing ever.”
Naturally, also the reporting on climate change must follow this trend. Therefore the upcoming conference in Copenhagen is optionally about the salvation of mankind, of whole ecosystems, or for those who like it even more bombastic, the salvation of the planet. To achieve this, we continue to learn, enormous changes in our economic and financial system are needed. Production companies and countries should put on bureaucratic manacles to control their CO2 emissions. Best with the help of worldwide dedicated government-like organizations.
What is the purpose of all this? You suspect or know it already. We are experiencing a warming, which has not existed in the history of mankind, or even in the history of the earth. And as a result we will experience the greatest disasters of all time. Honestly!
Medieval Warm Period thesis contradicts the unprecedented warming
However, one must mention that, already the first half of the statement, that about the unprecedented warming, elicits significant question marks in many climate scientists and even at many historians. Wasn’t there something like the medieval warm period? And in the opinion of many scientists, wasn’t it warmer during this period than today?
The idea of a medieval warm period was formulated for the first time in 1965 by the English climatologist Hubert H. Lamb [1]. Lamb, who founded the UK Climate Research Unit (CRU) in 1971, saw the peak of the warming period from 1000 to 1300, i.e. in the High Middle Ages. He estimated that temperatures then were 1-2 ° C above the normal period of 1931-1960. In the high North, it was even up to 4 degrees warmer. The regular voyages of the Vikings between Iceland and Greenland were rarely hindered by ice, and many burial places of the Vikings in Greenland still lie in the permafrost.
Glaciers were smaller than today
Also the global retreat of glaciers that occurred in the period between about 900 to 1300 [2] speaks for the existence of the Medieval Warm Period. An interesting detail is that many glaciers pulling back since 1850 reveal plant remnants from the Middle Ages, which is a clear proof that the extent of the glaciers at that time was lower than today [3].
Furthermore, historical traditions show evidence of unusual warmth at this time. Years around 1180 brought the warmest winter decade ever known. In January 1186/87, the trees were in bloom near Strasbourg. And even earlier you come across a longer heat phase, roughly between 1021 and 1040. The summer of 1130 was so dry that you could wade through the river Rhine. In 1135, the Danube flow was so low that people could cross it on foot. This fact has been exploited to create foundation stones for the bridge in Regensburg this year [4].
Clear evidence of the warm phase of the Middle Ages can also be found in the limits of crop cultivation. The treeline in the Alps climbed to 2000 meters, higher than current levels are [5]. Winery was possible in Germany at the Rhine and Mosel up to 200 meters above the present limits, in Pomerania, East Prussia, England and southern Scotland, and in southern Norway, therefore, much farther north than is the case today [6]. On the basis of pollen record there is evidence that during the Middle Ages, right up to Trondheim in Norway, wheat was grown and until nearly the 70th parallel/latitude barley was cultivated[4]. In many parts of the UK arable land reached heights that were never reached again later.
Also in Asia historical sources report that the margin of cultivation of citrus fruits was never as far north as in the 13th century. Accordingly, it must have been warmer at the time about 1 ° C than today [7].
Archeology and history confirm interglacial
Insects can also be used as historical markers for climate. The cold sensitive beetle Heterogaster urticae was detected during the Roman Optimum and during the Norman High Middle Age in York. Despite the warming of the 20th century, this beetle is found today only in sunny locations in the south of England [8].
During the medieval climate optimum, the population of Europe reached hitherto unknown highs. Many cities were founded at this very time with high-altitude valleys, high pastures and cultivated areas, which were at the beginning of the Little Ice Age again largely abandoned [9].
The Middle Ages was the era of high culture of the Vikings. In this period their expansion occurred into present-day Russia and the settlement of Iceland, Greenland and parts of Canada and Newfoundland. In Greenland even cereals were grown about this time.. With the end of the Medieval Warm Period the heyday of the Vikings ended. The settlements in Greenland had to be abandoned as well as in the home country of Norway, during this time, many northern communities located at higher altitudes [10]. The history of the Vikings also corresponds very well to the temperature reconstructions from Greenland, which were carried out using ice cores. According to the reconstructions, Greenland was at the time of the Vikings at least one degree warmer than in the modern warming period [11].
Climate scientists want to eliminate contradictions
Until about the mid-90s of last century the Medieval Warm Period was for climate researchers an undisputed fact. Therefore in the first progress report of the IPCC from 1990 on page 202, there was the graphics 7c [12], in which the Medieval Warm Period was portrayed as clearly warmer than the present. However, the existence of this warm period became quickly a thorn in the side for the scientists responsible. When in 12th century without human influence the climate has been even warmer than at the height of industrialization, why should the current warming have non-natural causes?
Thus, the Medieval Warm Period was soon declared an odious affair. Meanwhile, an e-mail is legendary, which was sent to a U.S. climate researcher David Deming [13] in 1995. This scientist published an article in the prestigious journal Science in which he had presented research on climate change in North America based on cores [14].
With this publication, he was immediately known among climate researchers, and some of them obviously thought that he was toeing their line [13, 15]:
“With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I would be one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. So one of them dropped his guard. An important person working in the field of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email with the words: ‘We must get rid of the Medieval Warm Period’. ”
Meanwhile, the climate machinery for the eradication of the Medieval Warm Period has already started. In 1995, the English climatologist Keith Briffa published in the journal Nature a study with sensational results. According to his studies of tree rings in the Siberian Polar-Ural, there had never been a Medieval Warm Period and the 20th century, suddenly appeared as the warmest of the last 1000 years [16]. The real breakthrough was the thesis of 20th Century experience as the warmest of the millennium, but not until three years later, and that with the release of Michael Mann’s infamous Hockeystick [17, 18].
Warm period is extinguished
In this diagram that became the icon of human-induced global warming in the 3rd IPCC Assessment Report, the Medieval Warm Period has now been completely eradicated. However, this curve was quickly under attack, mainly because the Canadian mathematician Steven McIntyre had serious doubts about the correctness of the representation and those pursued with the meticulousness of an auditor [19]. McIntyre showed not only that Mann had used an algorithm that resulted in 90 percent of the cases to a hockey stick, but found also serious errors in the selection of the data and the location of places, as well as the use of incorrect data [20].
Of course, the Mann’s gang could not let these allegations unanswered. In response, Realclimate.com was founded, a name intended to suggest the truth, but somehow reminiscent of the Real Ghostbusters, a poorly made copy of the genuine, which in contrast to the original only pretends to be the right thing. This webpage was henceforth used for accusations and slanders against the non-“believers” [21]. It took also increasingly care not to call McIntyre, in the meantime identified as the main enemy, by his name.
Following the publication of Michel Mann’s hockey stick and the criticism, whole series of further studies was published to demonstrate that the results of Mann’s actually represented the real temperatures over the last 1000 years. The highpoint of the debate was the forced disclosure of the raw data from tree ring studies long held under lock and key, which served as one of the principal witnesses for the correctness of the thesis of the unusually warm 20th century. It turned out that clearly the data were selected intently to get the desired result [22].
Conflicting data
Regardless of the debate over the proper or improper use of proxy data like tree rings to determine the temperature history, mainstream climate researchers, however, are still struggling with a whole series of problems. What was with all the archaeological data, the records of weather events in church records and historical facts, which clearly documented that in the Middle Ages, there was an unusually warm period? Quite simply, the attempts to refute these arguments were made based on claims that all these phenomena indeed existed, but only as geographically limited events [23]. If the Middle Ages was warmer somewhere than today, then maybe it was only in England, the Alps, Greenland or North America. Globally, however, as shown in the many hockey stick charts, it has been colder than at the end of the 20th century.
If one, however, provides an overview of the literature on the subject of Medieval Warm Period, which has been published in recent years, there will be a completely different picture. There are now quite a number of studies from around the world, showing all one thing. And indeed, that the High Middle Ages were warmer than today. An excellent overview can be found on the website CO2 Science, which has set up a whole section for studies of this kind [24]. There are now 765 different scientists from 453 research institutes listed that have worked on the medieval warm period. A small portion of these studies is shown in the figure below [Click 25] (by the graph, you get a larger image where you can select individual work).
This survey shows one thing quite clearly. At the time of the Middle Ages, that is, from 1000 to 1300 it was almost everywhere in the world warmer than today. There have been periods of warming, that exceeded 0.6 degree Celsius rise in temperature in the 20th century and totally without the man-made increased emissions of the supposed “climate killer” of CO2. The statements, that there has not been any Medieval Warm Period, or it was merely a localized phenomenon, can safely be regarded as untenable.
It is therefore not surprising that there are influences on the climate, which can by far exceed the CO2 as a driver of climate variability. This hypothesis is massively supported by the observations made during the last 10 years. Finally, we have been experiencing no increase since 2002, the temperatures have dropped slightly [26]. And that even though the emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels in exactly the same period increased to previously unmatched dimensions.
Google translation in English of the full article is here.
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I am a warmist. All of us warmists should mount a two part scientific expedition to explore historical proof that global warming is happening.The facts we will discover will prove our religion to be the one true belief.
First we need to discover where the ark landed after the great flood. More floods are proof/effect of warming. The ark needs to be found, put through a battery of scientific tests, and find out whether that flood was a normal flood or maybe the start of a worrying trend.
Second, we need to find the iceberg that sunk the titanic. Apparantly, with warming goes more icebergs… So if we can scrutinise the titanic iceberg we may find the right answers. Though if found it may have criminal charges of multiple homicide brought against it and the csi teams may interrupt our data collection.
Geomagnetic data are available since 1590. Geomagnetic cumulative graph representing three critical areas that may affect flow of the Arctic Ocean currents, shows sudden deep coinciding with the Little Ice age, and from then steady rise up to present day
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NA-GMFh.gif
with additional graph (with more detail for the 1900-2010 period
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NA-GMF.gif
How inconvenient. The warm period can be removed with tweeking the fortran code.
For those who have trouble with the image size, here is a low-res (1024×768) version:
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod1024x768.html
Here’s a thought. Perhaps we have just begun to enter the “MWP”. After all “Medieval” is a fairly subjective term that in the future may refer to our time period. 😉 All depends on one’s point of reference, does it not?
This page looks at the leaked CRU emails in terms of the Medieval Warm Period: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/UnprecedentedWarming.htm
Anthony,
many thanks for posting this here. I can provide the translation, I will post it on my blog and leave you a note when it’s ready.
All the best from Germany,
Rudolf
It’s amazing that all of this data is coming out within a couple of weeks of the leak. Why such the free flow of data now and where was this info for the past decade?
I can’t do a translation, but the grammar of the heading is wrong; it should read: The Medieval Warm Period – a global phenonmenon, unprecedented warming, or unprecedented data manipulation?
[Fixed, thanx. ~dbs, mod.]
I wonder what Gavin at Real Climate will have to say about this?
Ha! Here’s a little bit of harmonic convergence – turns out RealClimate is *not* an independent blog after all. They are a front for Fenton Communications, a PR firm which was responsble for the Alar scare.
http://www.activistcash.com/biography.cfm?bid=2807
And here we thought they were actually an independent and honest blog!!!
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/11/the_warmist_pr_con_job.html
Most excellent!!!
This does a good job presenting the evidence in a graphical way that curious and literate person can get a precis of the science.
CO2 Science has a good database of the literature, but the graphic here is great.
Martha Stewart went to jail for much less than that…
Not trying to high jack this post, but I completed a reasonable analysis of some of the CRU data graphs and, in my opinion, they show there as been little to no significant warming.
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11582
Wish I had real data instead of eyeballing PDF charts. Comments welcomed at my site.
Peter (12:59:09) :
Sorry Pete, I had that cube in my last vodka 3 years ago and still have a titanic headache!
IPCC graph from 1990
http://www.climatedata.info/Temperature/assets/00-Alternative%20temperature%20reconstructions.gif
H. Lamb and J. Eddy reconstruction
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LIA.gif
>>wws (13:28:05) :
>>I wonder what Gavin at Real Climate will have to say about this?
>>Ha! Here’s a little bit of harmonic convergence – turns out RealClimate is *not* an independent blog after all. They are a front for Fenton Communications, a PR firm which was responsble for the Alar scare.
You’re getting warmer (pun intended).
Fenton’s list of clients is a who’s who of far left organizations including the UN (for which they have done climate alarmism), OSI (Soros), Tides (more Soros), WWF, Sierra Club and on and on and on. All of these organizations have a very big dog in the man made climate change argument.
It’s pretty easy to reach a consensus when all your clients are signing from the same playbook.
A striking graph. The public and journalist don’t know such information exist. One question is, how many people in the scientific community would be shocked by this graph. Discussing the short comings of the Hockey Stick is difficult. But discussing why the IPCC and Al Gore put so much weight on it starts to become obvious. It puts RealClimate in perspective as well.
Also if someone created an interactive website with just this info it would be visited by millions of people. I could imagine clicking through and getting links to all the research papers, teams of scientist etc. A picture says a thousand words.
Honest to God.. I just figured out while I was writing this that you could actually drag your mouse over and enlarge the graph. I’m betting 10 million hits for that page in a week. Somebody let us know.
Well that’s it! The science is settled! Actually, I am amazed at the divergences in temperature peaks for data being plotted – from whatever proxies – even from sites in close geographical proximity. At least they all show warmer periods in the years A.D. 800-1350 than Gavin et al will admit. It would be interesting to see some of the graphs from proximate regions superimposed – although this would involve reversing the position of the x-axis in some cases.
Grrr phenomenON. PhenomenA is the plural.
“from Greek phainomenon appearing, present participle of phainesthai to appear.” (Chambers)
@Eddie
There exist a lot of data and grphosc f.e. fom Mangini, researching stalagmites.
He had very bad “notes” from our all “friend” Rahmstorf who didn’t accept Mangini’s opinion.
For the datas look here:
Medieval Warm Period Project
and here
dated spelothems archives of the paleoenvironment “DAPHNE”
sorry for “typoes”
Q: What’s the different between AGW and Young Earth Creationism?
A: Young Earth Creationism looks back at least 4,000 years more than AGW.
Until Climategate I was someone who was unfamiliar the details, but in general I supported Cap and Trade/Copenhagen as I trusted that the science was being conducted both honestly as well as competently. Now that all this has come out, I’m rather appalled. The specific thing that shifted me over was the RC explanation of “hide the decline” (a portion of it was posted on DKos) – their answer excusing what had been done actually sounded like a violation of the scientific method and that caused me to dig into it more and more.
Among the things that have gotten me the most is how AGW talks about geological matters, but yet deals in matters of years/decades/centuries and usually at most goes back 2000 years and then using that to make big pronouncements about the future of the whole planet. I can’t really take the AGW theories seriously unless and until they deal in geologic time with long term trends, not piddly 2000 year data looking for decade-long trends as that isn’t remotely statistically significant in geologic time. I hear AGW claims of statistical significance, but it relates to what I consider the short term period. If there is something serious going on that is going to result in another mass extinction (in this case the mass extinction would be us), it should be statistically significant and unusual when looked at from geologic time. It just blows me away that YEC deal in a larger timeframe than AGW and the YECs are supposed to be the nutters while the scientists are supposed to be the rational ones, yet AGW makes YEC look more sane by comparison.
Oh, regarding Soros. I remember one of the first things said in response to the leak was that the leak didn’t show any connection with Soros – it was one of the first excuses made. Now we see that RC was the outside astoturfer, so there was no reason for CRU et al to have that connection…actually by having RC supposedly being neutral and objective all the better for them to be ones getting paid the astroturfing cash.
wws (13:28:05) :
Exactly the same, what they said about the Loehle paper.
What you learn quite quickly when discussing with AGW believers is, that hundreds of local measurements from all over the globe will always be local. To show global warming on the other hand, some North American Bristlecone Pines or even one single tree in Siberia is more than sufficient to represent the global temperature .(here)
@Eddie (13:23:30) :
It’s amazing that all of this data is coming out within a couple of weeks of the leak. Why such the free flow of data now and where was this info for the past decade?
It’s been in the crock pot, slowly cooking.
Is there any “global stalagmite” out there ?
🙂
Dave – good to hear your story and insight. I at times have been taken in by organized media and government pushes for one issue or another. But the pattern for me is becoming pretty clear of nearly universal corruption in all fields, especially when it comes to control of society.
When I first started trying to track down IPCC deception it was on this MWP issue, and I realized my own government gleefully bought in to the deception, printing the hockey stick on one of their environmental sites. An original graph presented at IPCC did include the MWP, but thankfully Mann came along and ‘corrected’ it for them.
Regarding the hockey stick, here’s Monckton’s long paper describing the shenanigans behind protecting it from criticism and “verifying” it, followed (pages 16-29) by summaries of 21 published papers that provide evidence of warming during the MWP. (Ten papers deal with Europe and the North Atlantic, eleven scientific papers address the period elsewhere on the planet.) Each summary occupies about half a page and contains a graph that illustrates key data points.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/monckton_what_hockey_stick.pdf
This is kind of a subtle point, but while the MWP contradicts “unprecedented warming”, the big reason why that’s so important is that it contradicts “tipping points” and “runaway greenhouse”. Surprisingly, a lot of people are convinced that it’s already too late, and we’re all doomed to become another Venus. That’s why they fought so hard to disappear the MWP.
I think this is an astoundingly good piece of work. Thank you. Yes
“a picture is worth 1000 words”.
This is one item that, with a few others of like calibre, someone here could collect into an agreed “gallery” to refer newcomers, doubters, confuseds to, to just soak up, enjoy, and learn from the diamonds that are coming off our beleaguered skeptic presses. We have the education for the future IMHO! There are classics appearing at present, like this one, and others, that could easily get drowned in the low “signal to noise ratio” arising from ClimateGate.
Having said which, I think A J Strata (13:31:03) has the makings of another key thread here soon – perhaps?
The one thing I feel certain of is there is no 100/0 or 0/100 answer here between AGW vs NV. I suspect, without being able to prove it yet, that about 25 years from now we’ll have a much better handle on the matter and it will prove to be that C02 is causing warming. . . at about 25-50% of the low-end of the IPCC projections. That, in effect, they’ve attributed both a large degree of natural variation and heating impact caused by decrease of man-made global dimming (due both to efforts to clean up the environment started in industrialized nations in the seventies, plus the collapse of eastern europe in the late 80s) to C02. Which doesn’t mean C02 didn’t cause any of it –just not nearly as much as they think.
I suspect we’re in for a 30 year cooling trend and comparing the bottom of this period to the bottom of the 1940-1975 cooling will give us a much better idea of where we really stand. Except even then, I suspect, that the global dimming of 1940-75 caused by a world war and then industrial air pollution will still keep that period somewhat lower artificially.
Having said that, there is no question in my mind that “attacking” the MWP is the largest strategic error the Warmists have made. . . .for the simple reason that there are a lot more amateur historians than amateur scientists in the world, and that one thing did more to damage their ability to get by with “appeals to authority” in more minds than any thing else they could have done. If they were diddling what we did understand, there was no reason to feel confident that they weren’t diddling what we didn’t understand. . .
More good work. There is far too much anecdotal evidence that the MWP existed as a global phenomenon for the CRU to deny these charts to be wrong.
The CAGW hypothesis is dead, and not before time. Climategate seems to be catalysing a flood of real climate data.
Dave (14:11:56)
It is no coincidence that the two traditional disciplines with closest familiarity and perspective on the natural processes affecting past and present Earth surface cyclicity of climate, geology and meteorology, are also the disciplines dominated by sceptics.
Beispiellose Erwärmung oder beispiellose Datenmanipulation?
Somehow that sounds like the title of a musical piece by Arnold Schoenberg.
The real reason the MWP matters for them is because they can’t bloody prove anything yet by direct experimentation and observation. They are reduced to trying to do it by algebra.
A: Natural Variation
B: AGW
C: Warming trend
A+B = C
Assume A (Natural Variation) is low is the only way they have to prove that B is (AGW) is high.
Well, algebra is a lovely invention for solving for variables. . . but only when you have all the variables, and can actually prove the value of some of them to solve for the ones you don’t have.
They neither have all the variables, nor can prove the values of the ones they do know about, so algebra is worthless in this situation.
Having said that, a monster MWP does not prove that the warming of the last thirty years is actually due wholly or even mostly to natural variation. It just proves *it might be*. What if those scientists who were worried about a new ice age in the late 70s were right. . . except that they forgot to allow for AGW warming? Maybe we’d be in a new Little Ice Age right now without C02-induced AGW, and the IPCC has wildly underestimated AGW.
I don’t believe that to be true. .. but I do believe that attempts at algebraic solutions to this problem are nearly worthless. We simply don’t have enough data to feel even remotely confident that we’ve identified all the variables in the first place, nor assigned reasonable values to any of the ones we do know about.
The pic is a fabulous collection of data – all the different methods used provide vaildation – there is no denying it.
@ Britannic no-see-um
As climate is about 30 year historic weather statistics, so who knows weather better than meteorlogists ?
And earth history is in best hands of geologists.
Weather is a question of sun, humidity and the balance of HP & LP and ozean streams.
Here in germany, most universities teach climatology as part of geography, where it’s well placed.
Mann has a new paper in Science looking at this.
Abstract here
The supporting data has free access. Tells a different story.
@geo
Can you imagine, that well known Schellnhuber told in a German tv interview about the “linear connection” of CO2 increase and temp. increase ?
And, the same day, in an other broacast on an other station, also well known Latif had long time to explain, what a complex climate is and that there are no and never linearities ?
Mann continues to use proxy data “upside down” in that paper. He inverts the data so that what the proxy shows as cooling, he shows as warming and vice versa.
“He inverts the data so that what the proxy shows as cooling, he shows as warming and vice versa.”
It’s worse than just using the data upside down. The original interpretation of the data he’s inverting is “This data is contaminated.”
“The idea of a medieval warm period in 1965 formulated by the English climatologist Hubert H. Lamb for the first time.”
Perhaps the formal concept of a medieva warm period came to fruition at this time. But I have a 1957 (first edition) of “Weather” by Zim (Golden Guide) which cites warming from 600 AD – 700 AD, and 1000 AD-1200 AD as evidence against a long-term, overall global warming trend. One of the supporting planks for this claim is the settlements in Greenland which were abandoned around 1400 AD due to cooling. Later editions of this book said the warming had ceased and a cooling trend had set in.
The book ends with this sage analysis: “The only comclusion to be drawn about our climate is that we do not know whether it is changing drastically. Geologically we may be at the end of the Ice Age, or we may just be having a breathing spell of a few centuries before the next advance of the glaciers.”
Thanks Roger for that link!
Geo, I appreciate your analysis, and I’ll add mine FWIW. I’ve looked at everything the warmists have brought up as possible cause for climate concern. But over time every point every tidbit of their ‘science’ I have found to be lacking, so the CRU leaks never surprised me. One of the most important things I have found is the discussion / assertion that Hans Schreuder, retired chemist, brings to light in his EPA address. That being that, hey hold on a second, you have to to have all parts of a science resting on a solid foundation, and climate science, the new conglomeration of various sub sciences, may just have a problem with one of it’s key theories (the Greenhouse Effect). I think he’s right, it makes a lot of sense to me. If anyone really wants to get technical about micro climate changes, they have to start delving in to the even more restricted science of Chemtrailing. An at times admitted practice, that probably does create very temporary and localized greenhouse effects. The patents are there for weather modification, the City of Calgary even pays an aerial spraying service each year to keep the rain away from the city at certain times of the year.
But stepping back from that, this issue should always have been a geological issue, not a fear monger/ Malthusian one. It was never about reducing pollution, it was about reducing high functioning populations. This pattern we are seeing of Government / Media / Science all being intertwined in corrupt practices is repeated in many other fields like Healthcare, Education, Food and Resource control. With the same cabal of elites controlling it with their think tanks and round tables.
Well all this Medieval stuff is very dubious. I read an excellent book a few years ago by a chap called Herbert Illig who made a very good case that the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries never actually happened.
His premise was that Charlemagne was actually an invention of later centuries in order to project some kind of Golden Age when Europe was united under one emperor. His main thrust was that there were no contemporary documents of the time of Charlemagne ( circa 800 AD ) and that manuscripts that purport to be of that period are in fact 13th Century forgeries. Buildings that also are supposed to be of that period ( Aachen Cathedral, Regensburg Bridge and various others ) could not have been constructed in the timeframe and were again built later ( the Dark Age Europeans had lost the technology of the Romans from Rome and Byzantium to produce such structures ).
I quite like Illig’s thesis, but he has rather over-egged the pudding. I can well believe that much of what we believe about the period 700-1000 was invented by later generations, to “fill the gaps”. However I can’t quite get my head around the time-travel Dr Who/Marty McFly paradoxes caused by losing 2 or 3 centuries in the past.
Anyway the point of this rambling post is that where the distant(ish) past is concerned, nothing is certain. We only know what we have been told; archaeology gives us bones ( often literally) upon which we have to put flesh. I think the MWP existed ( in Britain at least ) because we can see the results of its end ( the Great Famine of 1315/16 and the Black Death wiping out a weakened population ) and the fact that a fat, rich England was the target of invasions by the Normans and Vikings and developed an insatiable demand for Gascon wine.
What the Warmists are trying to do is to square Dr Illig’s circle. If the MWP never happened, why should we believe that the 9th and 10th centuries ever existed at all ?
I loved this line:
“Thus, the Medieval Warm Period was soon declared an odious affair.”
Just catching up on comments and I wanted to point out that HR and H.R. are different posters.
And now we return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
>>Here’s a thought. Perhaps we have just begun to
>>enter the “MWP”. After all “Medieval” is a fairly subjective
>>term that in the future may refer to our time period. 😉
Well, after centuries of civilisation in Europe, we now have female genital mutilation and murder of daughters for having the wrong boyfriends as standard practice.
Back to the Medieval period? You bet….
Are we warmer? Greenland is not green….
.
Unprecedented data manipulation. Gets my vote.
Right up there with “what in the heck were you doing with original observations from around the world?”.
What is wrong with the following picture:
“Hello, Vatican ?? . Ah yes, this is the RRU (religion research unit).
Yes, we are sending our boys down to pick up the Shroud of Turin.
It’ll be in good hands, and I assure you this has been cleared at the
hightest levels.”
20 years later.
“Hello, Pope Benedict??, uh… well… we um.. lost I mean misplaced the Shroud…
click”.
I have been reading all articles about “Climategate” especially those that attempt to play down its importance, like ” it does not disprove the existence of Global Warming”, or “this is just how scientist talk” etc. The amazing thing is the tremendous and almost unanimous push back they receive in the “comments” section. i am beginning to believe that we may be at, or very close to the moment when the little child in the fable cried out: “The Emperor has no clothes!”. Using modern verbiage we may be very near to, or at the actual “Tipping Point”.
If no one else has offered yet (I didn’t read all of the comments), I may be able to translate this, but it will take a little time. I studied German and even lived in Hamburg briefly, but it’s been a while, and some of the words used in the article are not that common.
A small nit to pick.
Moderator — might want to consider changing “phenonmenon” in title to phenomenon.
[Thanx, done. ~dbs, mod.]
Of interest in the Penn State investigation of Michael Mann is the Academic Integrity Policy of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, which begins with:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Academic integrity is the pursuit of scholarly activity in an open, honest and responsible manner. Academic integrity is a basic guiding principle for all academic activity in the College. All students should act with personal integrity, respect other students’ dignity, rights and property, and help create and maintain an environment in which all can succeed through the fruits of their efforts.
Academic integrity includes a commitment not to engage in or tolerate acts of falsification, misrepresentation, or deception. Such acts of dishonesty violate the fundamental ethical principles of the EMS community and compromise the worth of work completed by others.
To protect the rights and maintain the trust of honest students and support appropriate behavior, EMS faculty will regularly communicate high standards of integrity and reinforce them by taking reasonable steps to anticipate and prevent acts of dishonesty in all assignments. At the beginning of each course, the instructor will provide students with a statement clarifying the application of EMS academic integrity policies to that course.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The full statement is at:
http://www.ems.psu.edu/current_undergrad_students/academics/integrity_policy
Note the links at the end. The policy seems to be intended for students. Perhaps there are other policies for professors and staff.
This quote: Furthermore, historical traditions, are evidence of unusual warmth at this time. Years brought the 1180s the warmest decade ever known winter. In January 1186/87, the trees were in bloom, near Strasbourg. And earlier you come across a longer heat phase, roughly between 1021 and 1040th The summer of 1130 was so dry that you could wade through the river Rhine. In 1135, the Danube took so little water that they could cross on foot. This fact has been exploited to create this year, the foundation stone for the bridge from Regensburg to [4].”
Nothing like actual history to tell the story.
The MWP…is a roaring lion that is next to impossible…to get rid of.
GRRRRRRRRRRR!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I think if you look carefully at the data presented on this figure, then it tends to support the basic conclusion of Mann and others, namely that to the extent that different records tend to show a warm period sometime in the range of 800-1400 A.D., these periods tend to be asynchronous.
Wardrobe / sensor drift malfunction.
Maybe it’s time to revisit this.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/18/nsidc-satellite-sea-ice-sensor-has-catastrophic-failure-data-faulty-for-the-last-45-days/
I have now manged to have the full article translated to English. I am sure, that it is still far away from perfect, so it would be nice if you could report mistakes, badly used idioms etc in the comments section on my blog.
The Medieval Warm Period – a global phenomenon. Unprecedented warming or unprecedented data manipulation?
On the global MWP, see Loehle and McCulloch (EE 2008), linked at http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/AGW/Loehle/.
Well Leopardi in 1800’s talks about warming period, seasons that lost its mind refering something that Magalotti wrote in 1683 : See chapter XXXIX http://www.leopardi.it/pensieri.php
” La quale immaginazione è così fondata, che quel medesimo appunto che affermano i nostri vecchi a noi, affermavano i vecchi, per non dir più, già un secolo e mezzo addietro, ai contemporanei del Magalotti, il quale nelle Lettere familiari scriveva: “egli è pur certo che l’ordine antico delle stagioni par che vada pervertendosi. Qui in Italia è voce e querela comune, che i mezzi tempi non vi son più; e in questo smarrimento di confini, non vi è dubbio che il freddo acquista terreno. Io ho udito dire a mio padre, che in sua gioventù, a Roma, la mattina di pasqua di resurrezione, ognuno si rivestiva da state. Adesso chi non ha bisogno d’impegnar la camiciuola, vi so dire che si guarda molto bene di non alleggerirsi della minima cosa di quelle ch’ei portava nel cuor dell’inverno”. Ouesto scriveva il Magalotti in data del 1683. L’Italia sarebbe più fredda oramai che la Groenlandia, se da quell’anno a questo, fosse venuta continuamente raffreddandosi a quella proporzione che si raccontava allora.
È quasi soverchio l’aggiungere che il raffreddamento continuo che si dice aver luogo per cagioni intrinseche nella massa terrestre, non ha interesse alcuno col presente proposito, essendo cosa, per la sua lentezza, non sensibile in decine di secoli, non che in pochi anni.”
A translation here:
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/leopardi-1832-onclimate-change/
Now about the image above extrapolating such a small number of data measurements to evidence worlwide medieval Warming period is a stretch.
Al Gore won his Nobel on the basis of a total fraud.
Fitting.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/28/how-the-trick-was-pulled-off/#more-13328
… shows “The LFD curve indicates low-frequency density changes produced by processing the original data in a manner designed to preserve long-timescale temperature signals (Briffa et al., 1998c).” I would imagine this is what should be most useful in looking at the MWP and LIA ?
I extracted the LFD curve here:
http://uploader.polorix.net//files/1585/briffa3%20mod.jpg
The LIA is apparent and with temperatures falling after a 1940 high.
Now this graph looks very different to Briffra 2000:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=693
What is going on here ?
In 793 some ships came to the eastern shoreline of Northumberland, at a monastery on Lindisfarne (Holy island). The men, danes as they were called, had stayed in the near waters of Scotland, and attacked the monastery by way of ship after winter. In the document recording the attack the date January 8 is written. This is generally regarded as the beginning of the Viking age.
However, scholars are saying that this date must be wrong because attacks like these weren’t possible in wintertime. They favour June 8 as the right date. Why are they changing the date? Because they think it was too cold for an attack.
But there are some facts that may contradict these scholar’s theory. Januari 6 is a date of great weight in the catholic church. It’s the day on which the three kings were supposed to have reached Bethlehem to see the newborn baby Jesus (the day of Epiphany). All over the christian world of the middle ages this day was a day when much wealth poured into churches and monastaries. Attackers such as the danes were of course aware of this and they could have waited two days until the festivals were over and done. Many of the danes of this time were actually christians, albeit arian or orthodox christians, so they could have gathered information about the festivities when visiting the monastery.
Another fact is that the late 8th century is recorded as having very mild winters in England and Scotland with little or no ice as well as not much snow so staying in Scotland over Winter must have been a somewhat easy task for these sailors. After all, many attacks from the goths some 500 years earlier came in wintertime.
My point with this comment is that this story from the early middle ages shows that is was warmer back then. Who in their right mind would set out in an open boat in early January today?
BTW, the term Viking age could very well be replaced with early middle ages. No one in those days from Scandinavia wouldn’t even have known what that word meant in the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries. The first time the word viking is recorded is in english (old english wicing) and then used as a word for people from other nations living in the english towns (old english wic = town, related to latin villa and vicus, meaning village). When talking about raids, invasions from the people of Scandinavia the english had the word dane (old english dene, plural for old danish dan).
The modern meaning is from a revival of the old norse word vikingr, which means scoundrels, crooks living in towns.
Joel Shore (19:14:53) :
to the extent that different records tend to show a warm period sometime in the range of 800-1400 A.D., these periods tend to be asynchronous.
Meanwhile, the Mann and CRU reconstructions don’t show anything at all.
Alan:
“This page looks at the leaked CRU emails in terms of the Medieval Warm Period:”
Thank you Alan. Very good link. Possibly it desevers it’s own thread.
I’m glad to see history getting out. CO2 Science has a lot of information on the MWP, on all continents. http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
I have a translation to more readable English for you. Send me your email address and I’ll send the rest(with hyperlinks but without the pictures. Here is what will fit in this section:
Unprecedented Warming or unprecedented data manipulation?
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell, 1984
We live in a time of superlatives. If one turns on the TV, one is offered the choice of the best films; the greatest hits or the dumbest opening lines of all time. And even with laundry soap, it is no longer good enough that it can wash whiter than white. Even here the desire to purchase can be aroused in the end user only when the product is praised as ‘The greatest of all time’.
The state of reporting on Climate Change must naturally follow this same trend. At the upcoming Copenhagen conference, one can choose reports about the salvation of mankind or of complete ecosystems or, if one prefers something a bit more bombastic, the entire planet. To achieve this, we learn further that massive changes to our economic and financial systems are necessary. Productive enterprises and countries should be fettered with bureaucratic chains in order to be able to control their CO2 emissions. Preferably with a worldwide government-like organization regierungsähnlichen Organisation. created just for that purpose.
Why this great need? You suspect or know it already. We are experiencing a warming such as has never occurred in the history of mankind or even in the history of the earth. And as a result, we are about to experience the greatest catastrophe of all time. … Really!
The Medieval Warm Period contradicts the thesis of an unprecedented warming.
However, one must mention that the first half of the title which refers to warming such as has never before existed, raises clear questionmarks for several climate scientists as well as for many historians. Was there not once something such as the medieval warm period? And was it not, in the opinion of many researchers, warmer then than it is today?
The idea of a medieval warm period was first formulated in 1965 by the English climatologist, Hubert H Lamb[1]. Lamb, who in 1971 founded the British Climate Research Unit (CRU), saw the high point of the warm period between 1000 and 1300 AD i.e. in the High Middle Ages. He estimated that the temperature then was 1-2 C higher than the normal period defined as 1931-1960. In the far North, it was even as much as 4C warmer. The regular voyages of the Vikings between Iceland and Greenland was scarcely hinder by drift ice and many burial places of Vikings in Greenland are now found in the Permafrost.
Glaciers were smaller than today.
Likewise the existence of the Medieval warm period is also attested by the worldwide retreat of glaciers for the period between about 900 and 1300 [2]. An interesting detail is also that many glaciers which have been retreating since 1850, release plant remains from the middle ages which is a clear proof that the extent of the glaciers then was less than it is today.[3]
Also historical traditions point to unusual warmth in this time. The decade of the 1180’s provided the warmest winters ever known. In January 1186/87, the trees of Strasbourg were in bloom. Earlier there was a longer heat phase between approximately 1021 and 1040. The summer of 1130 was so dry that one could wade through the Rhine river. In the year 1135, the Danube had so little water that one could cross on foot. This circumstance was used in that year to lay the foundation for the stone bridge at Regensburg.[4]
Clear evidence for the warm phase of the high middle ages is also found in the limits of crop cultivation. The treeline in the Alps rose to 2000 meters which is higher than the current level.
Wine cultivation was possible in Germany in the Rhine and Mosel valleys up to 200 meters over the present limits as well as in Pomerania, East Prussia, England, Southern Scotland and in southern Norway, therefore much farther north than is the case today.[6] Pollen findings demonstrate that during the Middle ages wheat was cultivated in Norway as far north as Trondheim and barley was cultivated to nearly the 70th latitude[4]. In many parts of Great Britain, the amount of arable land reached levels that have never again been achieved.
Also in Asia, historical sources report that the limit of citrus cultivation have never been as far north as it was in the 13th century. Accordingly it must have been about 1 C warmer then than it is today.[7]
Archeaology and history confirm the warm period.
Insects can also be used as historical climate markers. The cold-sensitive beetle Heterogaster urticae can be identified archaeologically in York during the Roman optimum and during the Norman High Middle Ages. Despite the warming of the 20th century, this beetle can today only be found in sunny locations of southern England. [8]
During the medieval Climate Optimum, the population of Europe reached hitherto unknown levels. Many cities were founded in this time including those originating in high mountain valleys and meadows which at the beginning of the little ice age had to be abandoned. [9]
The middle ages were the time of high culture for the Vikings. In this period they expanded into present day Russia and settled Iceland, Greenland as well as parts of Canada and Newfoundland. In Greenland at this time cereal crops could be grown. With the end of the Medieval warm period came also the end of the Viking Bloodtime (heydey). The settlements in Greenland were abandoned and even in the homeland Norway, many of the more northern or higher altitude settlements were left. [10] The history of the Vikings is also in good agreement with the reconstructed temperature record derived from Ice cores. Accordingly, it was at least a degree warmer in Greenland during the time of the Vikings than it is during the modern warming period.[11].
Climate Scientists wish to eliminate contradictions.
Until the mid-90’s in the last century, among climate researchers, the Medieval warm period was an undisputed fact. So in the first progress report of the IPCC from 1990, the figure 7c was found on page 202 [12]. In this figure, the Medieval Warm Period is clearly shown as warmer than the present. However the existence of this warm period quickly became a thorn in the side of the responsible scientists. If in the 12th century without human influence, it was even warmer than at the high point of industrialization, why should the current warming have non-natural causes?
So the Medieval warm period was soon declared a ‘verdammenswerten’ (worthy to be completely damned) opportunity. Meanwhile legendary is the email, which the American Climate researcher David Deming [13] received in 1995. He had in that year published in the renowned magazine Science, his investigation of climate change in North America via cores (Bohrkernen)[14]. With this publication, he at once became known among climate researchers, many of whom apparently assumed that he was in line with them. [13.15]:
„With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. So one of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said ‘We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.’“
Thus the Climate-Maschinerie (machination) was already started for the eradication of the Medieval Warm Period. In 1995, the English climatologist Keith Briffa published in the magazine Nature a study with sensational results. According to his investigations of tree rings in Siberian ‘Polar-Ural’, the medieval warm period never occurred and the 20th century suddenly appeared as the warmest of the last 1000 years. The thesis that the 20th century was the warmest of the millennium experienced its real breakthrough however three years later with the publication of Michael Mann’s infamous hockeystick [17,18].
Warm Period is erased.
In this diagram that the Icon’s of anthropogenic Global Warming presented in the 3rd IPCC progress report, the Medieval Warm period was now completely eradicated. However this curve quickly came under attack, mostly because the Canadian mathematician Steven McIntyre had great doubt on the correctness of the representation and went after it with the meticulousness of an auditor [19]. McIntyre showed not only that Mann had used an algorithm that 90% of the cases led to a hockeystick, but also showed more serious errors in the selection of data and the
assignment of locations as well as the use of erroneous data [20].
Naturally, the clique around Mann, the so-called Hockey-Team, could not allow this reproof to stand. In reaction, the site Realclimate.com was founded, a name which should suggest the Truth but somehow reminds one of the Real Ghostbusters [cartoon version of the movie], i.e. a poorly made copy of the Original that in contrast to the original only pretends to represent the Richtige [correctness]. These pages were used from this time on to launch accusations and defamations against non-‘rechtgaeubige’ [right believers][21], Whereby care was increasingly taken, as much as possible not to mention McIntyre (the main enemy) by name.
In consequence of the publication of Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick and the critique thereof, there arose row-wise studies that should have shown that the results of Mann truely represent the actual temperature course of the last 1000 years. A preliminary high point of the debate was the forced disclosure of the long locked raw data from tree-ring studies which had served as a principal witness for the correctness of the thesis of unusual warming in the 20th century. It was thereby established that clearly data had knowingly been selected, in order to come to the desired result.[22]
Contradictory data
Independent of the discussion over the correct or incorrect use of proxy data such as tree rings for the determination of temperature history, the Mainstream-Climateresearchers had to battle a whole series of problems. What was to be done with all the archaeological data, the mentions of weather events in church books and historical facts, that very clearly showed an unusually warm period existed in the middle ages? Quite simply, one attempted to craft the argument that yes, all these phenomena had occured however, they are all exclusively regionally isolated events.[23]. When somewhere during the middle ages it is supposed to have been warmer than the present, then perhaps in England, the Alps, Greenland or North America. Globally however, it would be certain at that time, as the many hockeystick diagrams show, that it had been colder than at the end of the 20th century.
When one however generates an overview of the literature on the subject of the Medieval Warm Period, that have been published in recent years, a completley different picture arises. There are a large number of studies from all around the world that all show the same thing: that at the time of the high middle ages, it was warmer than today. An excellent overview can be found on the internet site CO2-Science, which has created an entire section for studies of this kind.[24]. There one can count 765 different scientist from 435 research institutions whose work has fleshed out the Medieval Warm period. A small portion of these studies is represented in the following picture[25] (by clicking on the graphic, you will obtain an enlarged image from which individual studies can be chosen.)
This survey makes it completely clear, At the time of the High Middle ages, between 1000 and 1300 it was almost everywhere around the world, warmer than today. There have been phases of warming that still exceed the 0.6 C temperature rise of the 20th century. and that completely without any anthropogenic influence of increased emission of the putative ‘climatekiller’ CO2. The statement, that the Medieval Warm period either did not occur or was only a locally limited phenomenon, can safely be considered as untenable.
It is therefore truer that there are other factors that influence climate that widely exceed the
ability of CO2 as a driver of climate variability. This thesis is further massiveley supported by the observations of the last 10 years. Finally since this time we have experienced no more temperature increase and since 2002, the temperature has even fallen slightly. And that despite the increase in CO2 levels to all-time levels by the emission of CO2 from fossil fuels in exactly the same time frame.
Sources:
(Same as original)
Thanks for doing the fine translation, Rudolf.
Joel Shore (19:14:53) :
“I think if you look carefully at the data presented on this figure, then it tends to support the basic conclusion of Mann and others, namely that to the extent that different records tend to show a warm period sometime in the range of 800-1400 A.D., these periods tend to be asynchronous.”
Joel, there are many types of proxies here, and many of the non tree ring proxies tend to have very bad dating characteristics. So if you see lake sediment dating as showing events at a different time than tree ring dating, that doesn’t mean that it was. But as I look at these graphs I still see a majority of them having an MWP that was warmer than today somewhere between 900 and 1100.
Also take a look at the global, non tree ring proxy that Loehle and McCulloch did. It’s linked about three posts below yours.
Calgary does not pay for such a non existant service. I was with you for a while…
Oh dear, this is just too unfortunate. I was interested by this link, had a look at the image and then (as a true sceptic ought to do) started clicking on the data. And I’m ashamed by the fraudulent use of data that’s gone on here.
First of all, some of the papers cited (with graphs displayed) perfectly disprove the concept of a global MWP, for example
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Dansgaard-1975.html
in which the authors make the point that there is a correlation offset in temperatures of ~250 years between England and Greenland (see, for example, fig. 3 in this paper). What this means is that a ~200-300 year period of slightly warmer temperatures (an anomaly of about 0.6 degrees C) in Greenland was over around 1000AD, around the starting point for slightly warmer temperatures in England (an anomaly of about 0.4 degrees C) for 200-300 years. This timing in Greenland is also supported by
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Johnsen-2001.html
Unfortunately, 1000AD is about the time Europe may have just been *starting* to become a little warmer, as suggested by
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Sicre-2008.html
and
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Grudd-2008.html
— in other words, whilst both Greenland and Europe seem to have had a 200-300 year period of slightly warmer temperatures, the timing for these don’t overlap and thereby disprove the concept of a global-wide MWP.
In support of this notion, there’s absolutely no evidence of an MWP in Ellesmere Island, right by Greenland, as shown here:
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Cook-2009.html
(where the letters “MWP” are over a period of variation no warmer than the data preceeding it for 3000 years — see fig. 9 in that paper).
The basic problem with this little collection of proxy data, as far as I can tell, is that the compilers have deliberately sought out any little spike in the graphs at any time around 1000AD +/- 500 years. A big “MWP” is then placed over the spike, irrespective of the variable noise in the proxy data, the magnitude of the spike, or even whether, in fact, the timing correlates with the MWP in Europe. This isn’t science, where an attempt is made to prove the null hypothesis; rather, this is delusion, where every attempt is made to prove the actual hypothesis and all evidence to the contrary is swept away.
(It’s worth noting, incidentally, the magnitude of some of the temperature rises that have been labelled “MWP” — most appear to be between 0.5 to 1 degree C. And this raises an important point — if you accept that temperature and climate were *noticeably* different in Europe during the MWP with a total warming of less than 1 degree C, what do you think a rise of 2-6 degrees will be like?)
“Hockey stick” – the “Piltdown man of our time”?
I don’t understand what the MWP has to do with AGW, since it occurred in an era when there was no AGW. AGW is about one thing and one thing only: what will happen to the Earth’s climate system in response to a sharp and sustained change in the composition of the atmosphere?
There has never been a global high-tech civilization on Earth before the present one, so it is rather pointless to try and understand the impact of our current industrial civilization by studying mechanisms and events that have nothing to do with it.
Anders L. (23:57:49) :
AGW is about one thing and one thing only: what will happen to the Earth’s climate system in response to a sharp and sustained change in the composition of the atmosphere?
Au contraire — AGW posits that the Earth has *never* been warmer than it is today solely due to the increase in manmade CO2, so it must ignore the evidence of periods when it *has* been warmer. Showing that evidence knocks the pins out from under the AGW argument.
There has never been a global high-tech civilization on Earth before the present one, so it is rather pointless to try and understand the impact of our current industrial civilization by studying mechanisms and events that have nothing to do with it.
That’s like saying there were never any gliders capable of supporting the weight of a man before Otto Lilienthal’s inventions, so it is therefore pointless to study the mechanisms an albatross uses to soar for hundreds of miles.
>>I don’t understand what the MWP has to do with
>>AGW, since it occurred in an era when there was
>>no AGW.
That is the whole point Anders.
If it was warmer back in the Medieval period, when there was no fossil fuel burning of any significance, then the recent warming of the Earth may well be natural too. Plus, Gore, et al, cannot claim that this recent warming to be utterly unique, as a method of scaring people.
The MWP is a problem for the AGWs, and so it had to be manipulated out of the arguments.
And this is why the recent Yamal cooling was such a problem (Hide the Decline). If Yamal trees cannot show our recent warming (if there was any), then how can they be used as evidence to eradicate the MWP??
Quite a problem, really.
.
Geo,
This is very well put, and is exactly what awoke me to the fact that the figures might be fudged:
“Having said that, there is no question in my mind that “attacking” the MWP is the largest strategic error the Warmists have made. . . .for the simple reason that there are a lot more amateur historians than amateur scientists in the world, and that one thing did more to damage their ability to get by with “appeals to authority” in more minds than any thing else they could have done. If they were diddling what we did understand, there was no reason to feel confident that they weren’t diddling what we didn’t understand. . .”
Bemused (22:49:04) :
Oh dear, this is just too unfortunate. I was interested by this link, had a look at the image and then (as a true sceptic ought to do) started clicking on the data. And I’m ashamed by the fraudulent use of data that’s gone on here.
– in other words, whilst both Greenland and Europe seem to have had a 200-300 year period of slightly warmer temperatures, the timing for these don’t overlap and thereby disprove the concept of a global-wide MWP.
Actually, what I think this means is that scientist’s confidence when counting tree or sediment rings is greatly misplaced.
In many spheres, you see accuracy of tree, ice-core and sediment data being quoted to the nearest year. But you only need an ancient avalanche to sweep away a few hundred ice-core rings, an ancient earthquake to disturb the mud sediments or a tree-ring dislocation by poor ring matching, and suddenly you have lost 150 years of data.
What these graph do show, however, is proxy temperature data from the past that demonstrates warmer climes than now. As per my post above, it was this evidence that had to be eradicated by all means.
.
In Eos, a dutch monthly magazine of the Netherlands, I saw an interesting article:”Climate change was fall for the Middle East” (author: Karel Van Lerberghe). He has also publications in “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”.
He mentions two periods of drought:
– the period from 2250 to 1950 BC, that was responsible for the fall of the Accadic Empire;
– the period from 1200 to 850 BC, that was responsible for the end of the civilisations such as the Hitittic Empire and many cities of the Levant, and even for the fall of Troy, described in Homeros’ Ilias.
Drought and heat was the origin of crop failure, famine and undermining of the central authority, a consequence of roaming population groups.
The author poses the question if something like that will happen now.
——–
I made the following reflection:
It is possible that a cycle of roughly 1050 years can be discovered.
A drough and warm period has reappeared during the following periods:
– from 2250 – 1950 BC
– from 1200 – 850 BC
– from 150 BC – 200 AD (correct?)
– from 900 AD – 1250 AD (MWP)
Will this trend persist and will we know a hotter period from 1975 – 2300 ???
Something interesting to scrutinize?
Anders L.
GW is about one thing and one thing only: what will happen to the Earth’s climate system in response to a sharp and sustained change in the composition of the atmosphere?
Lets not forget that humans only account for 3% of this change so AGW should really be looking for is what caused the 97% that man is not responsible. Oh wait, we already know that.
It’s the sun warming the oceans.
RE: Bill Tuttle
“Au contraire — AGW posits that the Earth has *never* been warmer than it is today”
No, it doesn’t.
“Showing that evidence knocks the pins out from under the AGW argument.”
What I am trying to point out is that there is no example in history where sudden and massive emissions of CO2 (like the one we are in the middle of right now) have occurred. We can study MWP and the glacial cycles and PDO and every other example of natural variation, but it will only tell us so much.
Right now we are in unchartered territory, and to find a safe way forward we have to focus on where we are going, not on where we have been.
I made some polishing of the Google translation, if interested, drop me a message [got it ~ ctm]
Anders L. (01:43:04) :
“Au contraire — AGW posits that the Earth has *never* been warmer than it is today”
No, it doesn’t.
Ummmmm — ‘scuse me? I’m using AGW as an acronym for Anthropogenic Global Warming, and perhaps you’re using it in some other context that I’ve missed. If so — sorry, man. If not — sorry, see Mann.
What I am trying to point out is that there is no example in history where sudden and massive emissions of CO2 (like the one we are in the middle of right now) have occurred.
Most of the “massive” emission of CO2 equates to a 50ppm rise over a period of 150 years. That’s an average of one part per million every three years. Dr. Tim Ball has a very well-researched article on the subject here:
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/6855
We can study MWP and the glacial cycles and PDO and every other example of natural variation, but it will only tell us so much.
But it will — or *should* — lead to a more complete understanding of those mechanisms which caused them, and how much influence each has individually and in conjunction with the other. Once we get a handle on *that*, we have a baseline we can use to examine any influences *we* may have. Right now, we don’t have a true baseline, just a series of arbitrary starting points which aren’t based on much more than, “Okay, this looks like a likely spot — let’s start here.”
Right now we are in unchartered territory, and to find a safe way forward we have to focus on where we are going, not on where we have been.
But unless we know where we *have* been, we won’t be able to chart a decent course forward, and looking backwards is the only way we have of discovering how we got where we are. If we don’t focus properly on where we want to go, and determine the best way to get there (invoking past experience), we may wind up in a place we’d really rather not be…
Anders L. (01:43:04) :
“What I am trying to point out is that there is no example in history where sudden and massive emissions of CO2 (like the one we are in the middle of right now) have occurred.”
Don’t be silly. In the geologic past CO2 has been twenty times higher than it is now — for millions of years at a time. Life thrived with higher levels of CO2.
CO2 is a minor trace gas. Over the past 150 years the atmosphere has gone from being 99.9% non-CO2, to still being 99.9% non-CO2. And almost all of the annual CO2 increase is due to nature, not man. CO2 follows rises in temperature; it is an effect, not a cause.
Here, this chart by Dr Spencer, with a normal y-axis, will show you the rise in CO2: click
Panic over CO2 if you like. But be aware that that is exactly what the alarmist crowd wants you to do.
Or you could relax; the Earth has had much higher CO2 levels many times before with no ill effects. Why should it be a problem now?
Anders L –read my post on the IPCC reliance on “algebraic solutions” upstream for why this matters. They are assigning a (low) value to natural variation based on their reading of history, and then assigning “the rest” of the 20th/21st century warming to AGW. If the actual value of natural variation is plausibly higher than what they’ve assigned because the delta between the trough of the Little Ice Age to the peak of the MWP is much larger than they’d like to admit, then that particular algebraic solution lands in the dustbin of history.
Which doesn’t mean C02 isn’t a problem –it just means *you can’t use that particular arguement to prove it*. Instead you have to do the heavy lifting of actually proving scientifically by theory and reproducible experimentation that x% increase in C02 will always produce Y degrees of warming (whatever is going on with natural variation around it). They can’t do that today. . . and thus “the science is settled” is nothing more than an arm-waving.
Anders L, as far as CO2 goes we are far from “uncharted territory”. CO2 levels have been more than 10x the current levels and we’re still here to talk about it. If you want to think about massive changes in the atmosphere think volcanoes.
Don’t be confused, most people here are all in favor of efficient energy strategies. However, we don’t need the AGW hypothesis to look for improvements, those have been occurring for years and will continue as it provides for a competitive edge in almost all areas. All you get with cap$trade, etc. is high taxes on energy to fund governments.
Here is where real science reflects reality:
“The longest day in the past century occurred sometime during 1912, according to JPL geophysicist Dr. Richard Gross. The shortest day in the past 100 years was August 2, 2001, when the length of time that it took Earth to make one complete turn on its axis actually dipped below 24 hours by about one-thousandth of a second.”
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=15
And being ACI closely related to LOD, then:
Temperatures´forecast to 2099:
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e08.pdf
Believe it or not this is “science settled”, by reason and logic.
Anders L. (23:57:49) :
“AGW is about one thing and one thing only: what will happen to the Earth’s climate system in response to a sharp and sustained change in the composition of the atmosphere?”
Nothing to worry about here Anders, CO2 and CH4 account for only a small part of the wrongly named ‘greenhouse effect’. The main ‘GHG’ is water vapour and all evidence points to this being part of a global ‘thermostat’ system which regulates the energy balance – so run away global warming won’t be an issue.
Smokey says:
Anders is talking about the rate of rise of CO2, not its absolute value. Admittedly, he may be wrong about there being NO analogy in the past, as the PETM ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petm ) ~56 million years ago seems to be a pretty good analogy (although they may not have a very good handle on just how fast the rise in CO2 was then). On the other hand, this isn’t very reassuring as there seems to have been significant effects from this event.
Ah…Because, for example, given where we have chosen to set up much of our infrastructure, we might not want sea levels to rise several meters higher than they are today.
Seriously, by this standard, why worry about anything? Major asteroid impacts? They’ve happened before and the earth survived. Supervolcanoes? Same thing. Terrorists flying airplanes into buildings? May not have happened before but surely on the scale of these other events, this is utterly and completely trivial.
chillybean:
No. We are responsible for all of the change and, in fact, the composition would have changed twice as much if the oceans and biosphere had not been able to take up about half of what we have emitted. Please try reading real science on the carbon cycle rather than junk science meant to deceive you.
The oceans in net are currently absorbing CO2, not liberating it.
bemused:
“First of all, some of the papers cited (with graphs displayed) perfectly disprove the concept of a global MWP, for example
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Dansgaard-1975.html
in which the authors make the point that there is a correlation offset in temperatures of ~250 years between England and Greenland (see, for example, fig. 3 in this paper). What this means is that a ~200-300 year period of slightly warmer temperatures (an anomaly of about 0.6 degrees C) in Greenland was over around 1000AD,”
I can only say that you are really screwing up your eyeballs coming to these conclusions. I look at that graph and I don’t see that it was over around 1000. Around 1000 the temperature looks to be about 1C above the axis. About 920 it looks to be about 1.4 C above the axis. Your example doesn’t prove at all what you claim it proves.
“around the starting point for slightly warmer temperatures in England (an anomaly of about 0.4 degrees C) for 200-300 years. This timing in Greenland is also supported by
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Johnsen-2001.html”
Again, I have no idea what you are talking about. Greenland is near a high point at the year 1000. It is certainly not past the high point. Also remember that you are not talking about tree ring samples here. Time correlation for many proxy types is very poor.
“Unfortunately, 1000AD is about the time Europe may have just been *starting* to become a little warmer, as suggested by
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Sicre-2008.html
and
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Grudd-2008.html”
Again, I have no idea what you are looking at. In your first example the year 1000 already shows above the modern temperature line. and it shows almost 2C above the little ice age. And the Grudd example is sitting flat on top of the MWP in the year 1000.
“– in other words, whilst both Greenland and Europe seem to have had a 200-300 year period of slightly warmer temperatures, the timing for these don’t overlap and thereby disprove the concept of a global-wide MWP.”
Looks to me like your cherry picked examples still overlap very nicely at 1000.
“In support of this notion, there’s absolutely no evidence of an MWP in Ellesmere Island, right by Greenland, as shown here:
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Cook-2009.html”
Again, what are you talking about. There is a spike of 1C sitting right over the year 1000. The fact that there was a warmer period 500 years earlier is totally irrelevant.
“(where the letters “MWP” are over a period of variation no warmer than the data preceeding it for 3000 years — see fig. 9 in that paper).”
So what? It shows more than 1C warmer that 250 years earlier.
“This isn’t science, where an attempt is made to prove the null hypothesis; rather, this is delusion, where every attempt is made to prove the actual hypothesis and all evidence to the contrary is swept away.”
Actually, you are describing your own methods and the methods of the hockey team very clearly. Have a look at the IPCC spagetti graph. Those are all suppose to be global proxies. But they are all over the place. There is often .8C variation between them. There are times when some are going up while others are going down. And again, these are suppose to be global reconstructions.
“if you accept that temperature and climate were *noticeably* different in Europe during the MWP with a total warming of less than 1 degree C, what do you think a rise of 2-6 degrees will be like?)”
I see absolutely no reason or evidence for expecting such a rise. The IPCC started with a graph and the believe that the MWP was warmer than today. But such an admission was problematic when it came to blaming mankind for the warming. So they redefined their null hyposisis to say that there was no MWP or LIA. And they have been misrepresenting and cherry picking their way to that conclusion ever since.
Joel Shore (08:33:40) : So you are expelling and contaminating the atmosphere with an average amount of 900 grams of CO2 per day. What will you do in this respect?
Joel Shore (19:14:53) :
“I think if you look carefully at the data presented on this figure, then it tends to support the basic conclusion of Mann and others…” & blah, blah, etc.
Also, does any natural process put CO2 into the atmosphere? Or is all the increased CO2 the fault of us evil humans? Joel Shore has the definitive answer: “We are responsible for all of the change” Of course, that is ridiculous.
In the past CO2 levels were twenty times higher than todays, for millions of years at a time. Those CO2 levels caused no climate catastrophe, so only a catastrophic global warming Kool Aid drinker would believe that the slight hiccup going on now will cause runaway global warming.
It won’t, of course. CO2 as a trace gas is entirely beneficial. At current and projected levels it is completely harmless. The CRU tricksters and their sock puppets wouldn’t have to fabricate their global warming scares if they had any solid empirical evidence.
Based on the leaked emails, it’s now questionable that the purported warming has even occurred to the extent they claim. In fact, current global temperatures are within a couple of tenths of a degree of what they were thirty years ago. Where’s that runaway global warming they’re always predicting?
As CO2 rises naturally, the planet has been cooling for almost a decade now. Mother Nature herself is falsifying the CO2=CAGW silliness. So who are we gonna believe? A sock puppet? Or mother Earth and our lying eyes?
I believe that one of the reasons for the rush to get legislation and the push regarding “tipping points”, etc. is that the law(s) need to be in affect BEFORE temperatures start to decline. The team is well aware of this and needs to show that they are the cause of any possible drop in temperature and not mother nature.
Most of those MWP studies from around the world were of course not coordinated by the same person or persons.
I’ve often wondered just how easy/hard it is to be off by 50 years one way or another in trying to date 900 year old proxies.
James Chamberlain (09:16:30) : Dear James, temperatures started to decline in 1998.
In the following link you will see temperatures to the year 2099, from a respectful source: FAO, yes, the UN’s organization: (see figure 9.1)
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e08.pdf
Of course temperatures has nothing to do with CO2.
Breaking News!, CLIMATEGATE now in Pravda:
http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/30-11-2009/110832-climategate-0
Bemused:
if you accept that temperature and climate were *noticeably* different in Europe during the MWP with a total warming of less than 1 degree C, what do you think a rise of 2-6 degrees will be like?)
The Tropics? More Temperate climes? GW has not been shown in any Scientific way to be a net disease. Proceding the way the ipcc “science” has operated, for a mere $10 billion I will assemble a bunch of scientists who will “prove”, along with our propaganda machine, that GW will establish the next thing to Heaven on Earth.
Meanwhile, the Mann and CRU reconstructions have not shown anything at all about current or past temperatures – Mann’s because his tree rings + methods do not work, except to produce graphical hockey sticks unrelated to anything real – and the idea of teleconnection is absurd, and an example of anecdotal reasoning – and CRU’s, first because CRU doesn’t have its raw data and therefore doesn’t have an instrumental reconstruction to even consider.
GISS is next.
Joel Shore:
“Anders is talking about the rate of rise of CO2, not its absolute value.”
Now, according to the IPCC, the forcing attributed to CO2 is given by
F = 5.35*Ln (C/280) where C represents any carbon dioxide concentration in ppmv. Let us examine this relationship to determine how much the “rate” of increase influences the forcing.
Hold on! Somethings not right – the rate of increase does not appear anywhere. How inconvenient. Well, I guess you just made that up. But hey, if Jones et al can – why not?
Smokey:
“And almost all of the annual CO2 increase is due to nature, not man. CO2 follows rises in temperature; it is an effect, not a cause.”
The first statement is dead wrong. Almost all of the annual increase in CO2 is due to man.
The second statement is correct if you are talking about the CO2 cycle during the glacials of the last million years or so. I guess we have all seen Al Gore’s graphs. But this time it is the other way around. Man has increased the CO2 level by almost 40%, and will keep on increasing it for the foreseeable future. And this increase in CO2 will make the Earth hotter.
There is simply no way around it, unless you choose to believe that there exists a benevolent cosmic power who has provided this planet with some hitherto unknown mechanism, which automatically protects it from unthoughtful actions committed by certain primate societies.
Anders L. (12:39:06) : ..You are right, so our pledge should be: “God save us and protect us from the GWrs. fools”
If the rate of c02 increase is anthropogenic then it stays in the atmosphere and natural exchanges deplete from the atmosphere, such is the cleverness of nature to distinguish between natural and non anthropgenic c02, until 40% is anthropogenic. However, if the fraction of aerial c02 is constant then its 3% (or is that 1%pa?), regardless of SST’s, natural c02 volume, and
That means Anthro co2 is 12ppm, mathematically.
there is no indication that the anthropogenic percentage is increasing, or has increased.
“But this time it is the other way around. ”
This is dangerous. The Alien Space Probes which visit earth every 10,000 years to communicate with Pacific Grey Whales will see a co2 increase not a response to temperature increase. What will they do? Perhaps this will shake their science to its core and invent exotic financial instruments to solve it.
@Anders L
And it’s our transpiration that lets sealevel rise, isn’t it ?
Could come from PIK Potsdam or so.
I will call that the Duck-tales.
The steady rise out of the Little Ice Age into the Current Warm Period seen in the shorter graphs above (http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Andreev-2007.html) is confirmed by the best T proxy of all: actual thermometer records from Central England and other long running sites (http://www.ClimateReason.com).
Yet Tamino (Grant Foster) who appears in 18 of the CRU e-mails managed to turn the linear Central England record back to 1660 into a Hockey Stick!
John Ray has the story:
http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2009/11/central-england-temperature-series-very.html
Joel Shore (19:14:53)
Modern warming is asynchronous as well unless you truncate the proxies at 1960 and splice on the instrument record (as now revealed in the emails). So apples to apples, modern warming and MWP are similar in nature except that MWP was much longer. Hence sea levels equal to 1/2 meter higher than today, smaller glaciers worldwide than today, etc which all take many decades of “asynchronous” warming to achieve.
Anders L. (12:39:06),
I provided a link to support the statement you quoted. That IPCC link indicates that most annual CO2 emissions are natural. You responded with assertions/opinions.
So please provide empirical evidence that, as you stated, “…this increase in CO2 will make the Earth hotter.”
By ’empirical evidence’ I am referring to solid, real world, reproducible evidence showing that the current blip [geologically speaking] in CO2 will ‘make the Earth hotter.’ Be sure to include testable evidence that measures how much CO2 it will take to raise the global temperature by a given amount.
When someone makes statements like yours, I generally ask that same question. So far, no one has provided any empirical evidence. Maybe you will be the first.
@Aimee Gardens (15:47:51) :
“millions of species are going extinct every month and you deniers want to see the world die in a gigantic cosmic explosion. YOU DISGUST ME.”
Link, please. (Aww, what the heck! I’ll settle for a link to evidence that 100,000’s of species are going extinct every month.)
Aimee Gardens wrote:
“millions of species are going extinct every month and you deniers want to see the world die in a gigantic cosmic explosion. YOU DISGUST ME”
Oh my! Someone has leaked the secret of the real skeptical agenda.
There’s a mole at Climate Skeptic HQ.
Anders L. (12:39:06) :
“And almost all of the annual CO2 increase is due to nature, not man. CO2 follows rises in temperature; it is an effect, not a cause.”
The first statement is dead wrong. Almost all of the annual increase in CO2 is due to man.
Got a link to that opinion that isn’t based on a wiki?
The second statement is correct if you are talking about the CO2 cycle during the glacials of the last million years or so. I guess we have all seen Al Gore’s graphs. But this time it is the other way around.
So, you’re saying a natural progression — warming *results* in an increase of atmospheric CO2 — that has taken place for several hundreds of thousands of years (to be overly conservative) has suddenly reversed itself merely because a politician has decreed it so?
And this increase in CO2 will make the Earth hotter.
Gee, at (01:43:04) you told me that *wasn’t* what AGW was all about.
Aimee Gardens (15:47:51) :
millions of species are going extinct every month and you deniers want to see the world die in a gigantic cosmic explosion.
Just out of curiosity, how many millions of species went extinct in November? Can you name a couple for me? I should probably send a sympathy card.
YOU DISGUST ME.
*snfff*
Darned frangipani-scented deodorant…
I’m sure “Aimee” was facetiously pretending to be a warmist. No actual warmist is so absurd as to say that millions of species are going extinct monthly. She was “trolling” in the true, or restricted, sense of trying to get a rise out of us with an irritating post.
Smokey:
“By ‘empirical evidence’ I am referring to solid, real world, reproducible evidence showing that the current blip [geologically speaking] in CO2 will ‘make the Earth hotter.’”
Roy Spencer has an interesting site called “Daily Monitoring of Global Average Temperatures.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/daily-monitoring-of-global-average-temperatures/
Check it out. Proceed to the live data page and look at how tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures have changed over the last 12 years, when the Earth, according to the sceptics, has become colder and colder. When did the warmest November month of the satellite record occur, do you think? (Hint – it was not long ago …)
According to the AGW theory, one unique signature of CO2 warming is decreasing temperatures in the stratosphere. Why not compare, let’s say, 1999 and 2009? (Or compare any other year with 2009, if you think I am cherry picking.)
Anders L. (15:22:41),
OK, I looked at the channels, even though I’ve seen them a hundred times before.
Question: What’s so unusual about routine natural climate variability? Does it, like, scare you?
Yes, you’re cherry-picking. Looking at the temps for most of the past century: click
And HadCRUT shows the same thing: click
And then there’s the global temperature trend: click
Finally, back to Dr Spencer: click
I could do this all night. I’ve got plenty of similar graphs. But I think the point has been made: global temperatures are essentially the same as they were 30 years ago. No need for you to panic.
I never believed in manmade global warming, I have always believed in warm and cool earth cycles. Al Gore, the CRI and the scientist that went along with this scam are all criminals.
years ago I read or watched a documentary about the Medieval Warm period and through all the BS about manmade global warming not once did this subject ever come up. I’m glad this web page is available. I have been sending it to friends and relatives so they can also see for themselves the lies that have been perpetrated against us all.
While not a scientist I find this AGW business and the controversy surrounding it facinating and have read a great deal about it. It certainly appears that Mann, et al have manipulated data to achieve a desired political and sociological outcome. I would call what they have done psuedo-science and considering the amount of research funds they have used to do this criminal in nature.
Also I don’t see a lot of discussion about the Sun in any climate change articles. Does everyone seriously think that the climate changes from very minor changes in trace gases but the source of heat is not a factor? In reading about the Maunder Minimum it appears that during the coldest part of the Little Ice Age sunspot activity was at its lowest. It would appear that solar radiation has a coorelation with climate.
It would appear that these global warming scientists are deliberately ignoring the sun and not at all interested in studying the effects of changes in solar radiation on climate cycles. As a layman observer the obvious conclusion is that there is a purely political motivation to promoting the notion of AGW.
Another observation that is pertinent is the almost non-existant attention of the media to the email scandal from the CRU at East Anglia. This is purely political to the point that it supports only one conclusion; the AGW position is mere propaganda. The recent events and political circus at Copenhagan further illustrate that AGW is a leftist agenda and the latest vehicle to try and force the developed world to submit to a global socialist government.
This article hits the nail on the head.
I’ve always wondered how it could have been “locally” warmer in all the times and places from which there is direct evidence but somehow colder on average, despite the lack of evidence that it was colder everywhere else, and despite the fact that for everywhere else to have been colder would require that the climate work differently than it does today.
Growing up, the history books were clear, unambiguous, and in unison – it was warmer during the first few centuries of this millenium, and that warmth explained documented events from around the world. Mann didn’t attempt to come up with an alternate explanation for many of these events – he simply dismisses them as “anecdotal” and argues that somehow the average, based upon proxies (primarily upon proxies that, when tested, fail to replicate recent temperature shifts, and that are driven by many factors in addition to temperature) plugged into a model (the predictive qualities of which have also proven to be poor), was somehow very different from the sum of the locations from which we have direct evidence.
That conclusion was what the IPCC wanted to hear, and so they went with it, despite the fact that it simply doesn’t add up.
I read Orwell as a teen, and Hayek as an adult, and when I see history being rewritten to support an agenda, that concerns me. Even if you ultimately support the agenda (not that I do), you should be concerned when the history books are rewritten.
I hope that the history can be severed from the agenda. I hope that history is left alone and the agenda can run its course, or run aground, without history being affected.
I’d prefer that we un-re-write the history and adopt “cap and trade” than defeat “cap and trade” and adopt the agenda-driven revised history.
Otherwise there is no history.
I am glad that so many are opening their minds about this all, very good work here and many good and informative comments.
It is well known fact in Iceland where I live, that it was a very nice warm period there from 1000-1300 before it started to get colder again.
@ Joel Shore
You are talking about ‘junk science’ while you are quoting Wikipedia as a source. May I remind you about the William Connolley affair, when that green party activist rewrote more than 5,000 Wikipedia articles in order to impose his view on the global warming issue? No serious scientist cites Wikipedia as a reliable source.