At the Foresight Institute, J. Storrs Hall had some interesting graphs made from NOAA ice core data (Alley, R.B. 2000. The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland. Quaternary Science Reviews 19:213-226.) It sure seems to mirror other hockey sticks this past century. Dr. Mann will be thrilled to see this I’m sure.
J. Storrs Hall writes:
One thing that Climategate does is give us an opportunity to step back from the details of the AGW argument and say, maybe these are heat-of-the-moment stuff, and in the long run will look as silly as the Durants’ allergy to Eisenhower. And perhaps, if we can put climate arguments in perspective, it will allow us to put the much smaller nano arguments (pun intended) into perspective too.
So let’s look at some ice.
I’m looking at the temperature record as read from this central Greenland ice core. It gives us about as close as we can come to a direct, experimental measurement of temperature at that one spot for the past 50,000 years. As far as I know, the data are not adjusted according to any fancy computer climate model or anything else like that.
So what does it tell us about, say, the past 500 years? (the youngest datum is age=0.0951409 (thousand years before present) — perhaps younger snow doesn’t work so well?):
Well, whaddaya know — a hockey stick. In fact, the “blade” continues up in the 20th century at least another half a degree. But how long is the handle? How unprecedented is the current warming trend?
Yes, Virginia, there was a Medieval Warm Period, in central Greenland at any rate. But we knew that — that’s when the Vikings were naming it Greenland, after all. And the following Little Ice Age is what killed them off, and caused widespread crop failures (and the consequent burning of witches) across Europe. But was the MWP itself unusual?
Well, no — over the period of recorded history, the average temperature was about equal to the height of the MWP. Rises not only as high, but as rapid, as the current hockey stick blade have been the rule, not the exception.
In fact for the entire Holocene — the period over which, by some odd coincidence, humanity developed agriculture and civilization — the temperature has been higher than now, and the trend over the past 4000 years is a marked decline. From this perspective, it’s the LIA that was unusual, and the current warming trend simply represents a return to the mean. If it lasts.
From the perspective of the Holocene as a whole, our current hockeystick is beginning to look pretty dinky. By far the possibility I would worry about, if I were the worrying sort, would be the return to an ice age — since interglacials, over the past half million years or so, have tended to last only 10,000 years or so. And Ice ages are not conducive to agriculture.
… and ice ages have a better claim on being the natural state of Earth’s climate than interglacials. This next graph, for the longest period, we have to go to an Antarctic core (Vostok):
In other words, we’re pretty lucky to be here during this rare, warm period in climate history. But the broader lesson is, climate doesn’t stand still. It doesn’t even stay on the relatively constrained range of the last 10,000 years for more than about 10,000 years at a time.
Does this mean that CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas? No.
Does it mean that it isn’t warming? No.
Does it mean that we shouldn’t develop clean, efficient technology that gets its energy elsewhere than burning fossil fuels? Of course not. We should do all those things for many reasons — but there’s plenty of time to do them the right way, by developing nanotech. (There’s plenty of money, too, but it’s all going to climate science at the moment. 
) And that will be a very good thing to have done if we do fall back into an ice age, believe me.
For climate science it means that the Hockey Team climatologists’ insistence that human-emitted CO2 is the only thing that could account for the recent warming trend is probably poppycock.
h/t to Kate at SDA
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poppycock sums it up perfectly!
Great post –
Which pre-industrial temperature we have to stay within 2 degrees of…
But do any of these cores indicate who will take the next Stanley Cup? 😉
Great piece–and invaluable perspective. Thanks!
Wow! It pays to put things in perspective. Great piece. Thanks.
Pick your cherry. And we all know who’ll pick what.
So the ice core data says Greenland can get a heck of a lot hotter before all its ice will melt – in fact, 30 deg C hotter.
On the very last graph (at the bottom), there is a ‘ringing’ that is not seen on the other peaks. Could this be a sign of human influence?
Bob Carter has also shown this. It’s all a matter of choosing the starting point. Great work.
Will this be shown in the media? Of course, and especially on the ABC…. Then again, maybe not.
The delegates in Copenhagen are doing their best to tie themselves in knots. Give them enough rope… Time will tell, but we’ll all be broke by then.
In this instance, it looks like the helicopter-view trashes that from Big Al’s private jet.
Brilliant presentation. Sucks you in at the beginning, then reeals surprise after surprize.
I’d also love to see an expanded diagram of the Antarctic core data (Vostock) between 800 CE and the present (à la fig. 2). Is the MWP detectable there as well?
This is great stuff, stuff you won’t see on CNN with Campbell Brown. BTW Gavin was on Roberts’ show today too, I thought at the time, ya know, having Gavin, or Mann, or Hansen on these shows running interference for… themselves… is kinda like having John Gotti testifying before a House Subcommittee on Organized Crime as an expert witness and telling them “there is no such thing as the Mafia.”
David Y (16:46:16) :
But do any of these cores indicate who will take the next Stanley Cup?
Yes, they do. Just look at the last graph. It is the emphasis of Ottawa Senators. Just try it; it’s true! ‘TTaWA SeNaTor
So the previous four interglacial periods were by 2 -3 deg C warmer than now. I strongly wonder whether “runaway global warmings” occurred then. Anybody please teach me.
In any event the seven consecutive graphs will make a good fodder for my lecture on environment science in the coming semester. Many thanks.
If you assume that MWP is the high and LIA is the low of a 1100 year cycle, our present warming fits nicely on the upswing from the LIA. Try fitting the data to sine(2*PI*year/1100+1.81). This would indicate that we can have natural warming into the next century and enjoy a modern warming period that is not quite as warm as MWP ( much longer term trend is getting colder).
A problem with these charts that warmers could point to is that the temperature record stops at about year 1900, not showing the supposedly “unprecedentedly warm” recent temperatures.
OT: Gavin vs John Christy debate on CNN’s Situation Room an hour ago:
http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=GdaG6Upruz
Any recent ice cores (after 1990) so we can see what happens next?
Outstanding.
Simply outsatnding.
Thank you guys!
Thank you for this excellent piece of realism.
Sigh…Al Gore, on CNN yesterday, pronounced to the world that humans were responsible for the majority of CO2 in the atmosphere. Of course, no-one picked up on it. I could not believe what I was hearing:
“CHETRY: And that goes along with what David in Arizona asked you. He wants to know, please tell us what percentage of carbon dioxide is caused by human activity relative to other sources of carbon dioxide.
GORE: Well, the majority of it is caused by human activity…”
Sigh, Al, Al, Al, surely even you know that humans contribute only 3.225% of CO2, whereas 96.775% is entirely natural. Since when is 3% a majority?
I really do prefer to think that you are a bit dim or mistaken than what others accuse you of, but I am beginning to wonder.
Update on non-warming in Copenhagen: As emergency Global warming conference continues, it is perhaps ironic to study some weather information readily available on the internet. I apologize that the figures are not absolutely precise because they are taken from graphs at weatheronline.co.uk. Anyone can check my calculations, which took about 20 minutes and were not taxpayer funded. In the last 28 years (as far as the online records go back), the highest temperature in Copenhagen in December was 11 degrees C and that was back in 1983. Over these years, the average highest December temperature was around 7 C.
First day of Copenhagen: surprise surprise,a high of 7 C, exactly the same as the average of the last 28 years and 4 degrees COOLER than the high of the last 28 years.
Second day: a high of 7 C, the same.
Third day: a high of 6 C, 5 degrees cooler than the December high of the last 28 years.
Can we please have a reality check. Perhaps the eminent delegates are not aware?
Cherry picking, some may say
Is pleasant work and fine,
But murky moil and toil it is
When you’re hiding the decline.
No playful breeze will cool your brow,
No sunlight strike your face,
As you pluck your strange, outlier fruit
In the depths of cyberspace.
Track well your codes and protocols
As through this grove you rove,
Lest you be called to replicate
The tangled web you wove.
Oh, it’s “‘Arry this” and “‘Arry that,”
And “‘Arry, keep t’yer ‘ole,”
But “Save us, ‘Arry, save us!”
When ‘eds begin to roll.
Mark (16:57:14) :
Resolution decreases the further back in time you go.
DaveE.
Wow! This graph shows all the climate events discussed by Paleoclimatologists like Bryson and Lamb including the sharp cooling 8,200 ybp, the bifurcated Holocene Optimum and the cooling that preceded the drying of the Sahara and the rise of Egypt.
Of course at that high a latitude, it has to be interpreted in light of the higher degree of tilt of the Earth’s axis which in the early Holocene would mean a higher sun angle for the North. I’ve read a lot comments about the interglacials lasting only about 10,000 years but detailed studies of the Ice Ages in Britain (Homo Britanicus)show that the last time the Milankovich signal was similar to the present, the corresponding interglacial in the British Isles was 40,000 years with a sharp cooling in the middle. Clearly a lot more work needs to be done on the drivers of our climate to come up with knowledge that has real predictive power.
…and now a leading “economist” has to say something, afraid he will lose money, or credibility is he?
Great post – nothing punctures the AGW balloon like the perspective afforded by deep history. I just have one (I hope not too stupid) question: what is measured on the vertical axes?
Thanks.
“”” Does it mean that we shouldn’t develop clean, efficient technology that gets its energy elsewhere than burning fossil fuels? Of course not. We should do all those things for many reasons — but there’s plenty of time to do them the right way, by developing nanotech. (There’s plenty of money, too, but it’s all going to climate science at the moment. ) And that will be a very good thing to have done if we do fall back into an ice age, believe me. “””
Well the ice capades are rather nice; thanks for that. But as to the statement above.
What on earth leads you to believe that nanotechnology has any application to future energy sources ?
I have plenty of nanotechnology right now; use it every time I go fishing, as a matter of fact. My fishing rods use nanotechnology which goes inside a secret coating (called “Pixie Dust”) that is ued in the manufacture of the Carbon fiber (best place to sequester excess carbon). The nanotech pixie dust helps the epoxy material to bond to the carbon fibers more tenaciously, which stops the whole thing from peeling apart.
But I can assure you that it doesn’t put out any energy, except that which I put in in the form of my casting stroke (they are fly rods).
Why do people jump on to buzzwords as if they are the cure for whatever ails you.
If we don’t have Fetal Stem cells to cure everything from gout to ignorance and stupidity; we have to have nanotechnology to cause the taxpayer to dig deeper into his pockets to come up with grant money for otherwise out of work so-called scientists.
We’ll be using fossil fuels into the forseeable future; with just niche applications for anything else. It is not as if we haven’t looked pretty thoroughly for other ways to do things.
Stored chemical energy obtained by the oxidation of carbon and hydrogen, will be our main source of energy long after this climate change insanity is rotting on the trash heap of history.
If you think nanotechnology is the answer to our problems; why don’t you sell your house and invest the money in nanotechnology; but do it soon before the deepening cold won’t let you sell your house.
Not being a “climate scientist”, exactly how do you extract temperatures from an ice core ?
Notice how we have been in a general cooling trend since about 1500 BC. Each warming period has peaked at a lower temperature than the one before it. The trend since 0 AD has been particularly dramatic.
We might already BE in the next ice age and it might have begun at around 0 AD.
Looking at the longer trend, it seems to me that we may be on the trailing edge of this warm period!
Damn! I hope not! I’ve got a few years left in me yet & we don’t have the technology to cope with another LIA!
DaveE.
Well, why can’t our “brilliant” astrophysicists (arrogant) link this to the Sun???
Not Sunspots, but the Sun’s actual output and conversion to heat on the Earth!!
They can’t predict anything correctly!! Look at the Sunspot predictions for Cycle 24!! Since when is science based on a consensus?? Is the Earth still flat??
Either the Sun’s model is completely broken, or the Sun’s galactic position must affect energy reaching the Earth.
How can any “respectable” (cowardly) person with a degree not know that climate comes from the Sun????
During an eclipse, the temperature in the tropics drops 20 degrees F in 15 minutes. How can a rational person not know that the Sun controls our climate?? Sunspots are discussed, but not the real issue -> energy from the Sun that affects the Earth.
Will the real scientists come forward, not these jokers!!!!!
Small point. Should not “the youngest datum is age=0.0951409 (thousand years before present)” actually say 100 yrs before present? (actually 95 years). Otherwise, a sweet presentation that is easy to lay on the true believers around me.
Perspective !!!
Great details !!
But I can only guess that it will fall on deaf ears.
I would love to see CO2 plotted on top of the second graph with the MWP so that my simple brain could see the correlation.
Thanks
Ooops – just remembered – this is Greenland so of course the temps are below zero – my bad.
What about the lagging CO2 levels? What are the theories for that?
Great website by-the-way!
Wonderful post! I enjoyed reading step…by step…by step.
John Christy did superbly on the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer: Clear, succinct and supremely confident. Gavin nattered away like a teenager caught doing something wrong. He made mistakes in not saying exactly what hide the decline consisted of. John Christy nailed it. It had to give Wolf Blitzer, who is not dumb, something to think about.
Just an FYI:
“Alley, R. B.” is Dr. Richard Alley, who is in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State and associated with the Earth System Science Center. Yes, the same ESSC that Dr. Mann is Director of.
I am not a scientist but I was taught about the Vikings in school (real school, a grammar school!) and have read articles in NG about how the farms and fields are starting to appear from under the ice. That tells me all the graphs do, that we can get warmer too and flourish, A Gore was not tearing about the planet in jets but it was hotter, the variance tells me that weather is unpredictable and what should we call people who claim to predict the unpredictable? then what should we name them if they also claim to be scientists? Also there is an article in an early National Geographic centering on a lagoon, I think in Alaska, that had 5 glaciers joining and exiting the lagoon to calf icebergs in the ocean, 20 years later there were 5 distinct glaciers now melted back, calving into the lagoon. This shows considerable melting back, they were also victorian explorers who wrote the articles in the 1800s. I am frightened (politically) where this is going, I left England and have moved to Canada (good move in an ice age!) as the gov there interfere with your life all the time, they are control freaks operating through health and safety, EPA and CSA covers, this is now coming fast to the USA. If it was not for blogs like this and good scientists and sane folk here I would have worried about my own sanity! thanks.
I have been waiting for this kind of data. I will plot it against the Holocene solar proxy records (14C & 10Be) and see what transpires.
Thanks.
George E. Smith (17:33:45) :
George, it was my understanding that fetal stem cells were not nearly as effective for cures as adult stem cells. Is this incorrect?
George: For a discussion of nanotech, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nanotechnology_applications
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_applications_of_nanotechnology
Making better fishing rods is not the only thing it is used for.
Yes, what about CO2. That’s the final argument of warmists.
Do ice core data suggest as NASA points that is in its highest concentration for 400.000 years????
I like poppycock, too.
Just a cursory look, but that seems to square well with:
http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html
does it not?
Uh, from the second plot, I see the MWP being about 2.5°C above the Little Ice Age.
akira said “A problem with these charts that warmers could point to is that the temperature record stops at about year 1900”
actually, the fourth graph seems to go to 2000.
These temperature numbers have twice as much variation as other estimates.
The researcher who prepared these numbers is Richard Alley who works under Michael Mann.
http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/people/index.html
His purpose in increasing the temperatures estimates was to exaggerate the effect of the Younger Dryas event and provide further scare-factor to global warming.
The Antarctic Ice Core temperature (above) only shows a 2.0C decline during the Younger Dryas but Greenland’s (above) are 15.0C. Greenland did experience more of a decline than Antarctica in this event but nowhere near these numbers.
During the ice ages, Antarctica declines by 10.0C yet Greenland declines by more than 20.0C?
Take the numbers and divide by half.
“”Does it mean that it isn’t warming? No.””
Well that certainly depends on your definition of “warming.”
I think a better answer is, “that depends on the time period under consideration.”
It was much warmer during the medieval warming period.
There are Vikings buried in permafrost in Greenland.
The permafrost is not disturbed.
It was not frozen when they were buried.
I would call that warmer then today, a lot warmer.
The ironic thing is that that this evidence of the medieval warming period is in a museum in Copenhagen.
The Fate of Greenland’s Vikings February 28, 2000 by Dale Mackenzie Brown
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland
Also, the medieval warming period was global.
Fraudulent hockey sticks and hidden data
joannenova.com.au/2009/12/fraudulent-hockey-sticks-and-hidden-data
For a satirical look at the climategate computer programming (hiding the decline):
Anthropogenic Global Warming Virus Alert.
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103
It’s all relative, Mr. Hall.
I would say we’re in a cold period (very cold by my thermometer outside).
http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm
Scroll down to see how the planetary temps have changed through geological time. Based on tectonic research over hundreds of millions of years, it appears the Earth is emerging from the last of four cool phases. Along with you, I sincerely hope it is emerging.
Over and over in the last 20 years the AGW idealogues have shown us the parts of the graphs that they wanted us to see – and told us what to think. If there’s one lesson that’s worth taking away from the climate change discussion, it is that the next graph will suggest something else.
I’m with you. The precautionary principle really should pertain more to cold-weather preparations than warm. More things go wrong in the cold. And that reminds me – my car heater broke down today (probably the sensor out again). I only know that it’s miserable when the temp is – 10 F.
Dr. Ross Taylor (17:15:49) :
Sigh…Al Gore, on CNN yesterday, pronounced to the world that humans were responsible for the majority of CO2 in the atmosphere. Of course, no-one picked up on it. I could not believe what I was hearing:
Ross, there is an emerging pattern in the TV “debates” we are being fed now. It revolves around the rather preposterous inability of many skeptic debaters to mount a cogent response to blatantly ignorant statements. And there are SO MANY good talking points for the skeptical side. Like it’s 3 percent of .0388 percent of atmosphere! Roughly equivalent to a peanut in the Astrodome!
In the CNN “debate” with Gavin Schmidt and John Christy, Wolf Blitzer lets Schmidt rail on about how the emails were stolen and invasion of privacy and taken illegally bla bla. Blitzer never steps in to return the debate to the science issues it’s supposed to be about. Aside from Chris Horner of CEI there is no one able to articulate or respond well to the alarmist ranting.
Maybe someone with on-camera television experience would step up and talk to the media about this stuff. Ah hem…)
Wolf Blitzer is not dumb? I suggest you google his performance on Jeopardy!
As Obama (I hope) has shown – one gave give off the appearance of integrity and intelligence while lacking even a drop of them!
I used to see charts like this all over the web before Global Warming was big. About two years ago all those charts dissappeared and all I could find was the “Hocky Stick.” It feels like 1984.
I like what was presented. The facts just keep getting in the way of new taxes and more power. Please keep up the good work. Make sure your national politicians hear your views.
Those are frightening profiles especially the last few down toward the bottom. And what is being done in terms of contingency planning for the end of the interglacial? Nothing whatever. W.A.S.S.
cheers Indiana, well, the MSM aren’t doing the job, so we have to keep trying to point things out about the facts, not the hysteria
“During the ice ages, Antarctica declines by 10.0C yet Greenland declines by more than 20.0C?”
Could very well be. Even during an ice age, Antarctica is still surrounded by water and I doubt the center of Antarctica will get much colder than it already is. Greenland, on the other hand is much smaller. During the summer months the island is surrounded by water. During an ice age, the sea around the island is frozen solid year round. Under those conditions, the North American polar region appears as a much larger continental land mass than Antarctica is. In other words, Arctic temperatures would approach Antarctic temperatures during glacial periods. Today the Arctic is much warmer. Antarctic drops 10 degrees, Arctic drops 20, the Arctic becomes about the same as the Antarctic.
@ meself: “Based on tectonic research over hundreds of millions of years, it appears…”
The research took place more recently than the tectonic shifts. ‘Scuse me.
George E. Smith (17:33:45) :
Better batteries for a start, lighter, stronger, materials (lighter even than the carbon fibre you’re talking about), meaning less energy required to push things around. Bullet proof tee-shirts, pills that reduce the need for surgery. There is no area that it will not affect.
It’s a field that is still in it’s infancy, but it is likely to be where all the major “applied” discoveries and inventions happen, because in a sense, it merges the four main scientific disciplnes, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Earth Sciences.
Bear in mind, Nature does most of its work at the molecular level, so for the first time, we humans will be on an even footing with it, which is good, but it’s also scary. Imagine the sorts of things that can be made once it becomes possible to produce buckyballs and carbon nanotubes on an industrial scale.
Where is TomP loitering these days? 😉
How come modern temps are shown as -35°C but the coldest station in Greenland only shows -18°C?
tokyoboy (19:02:43) :
“Where is TomP loitering these days?”
Good question. Maybe with Joel Shore.
Makes you wonder if they aren’t in climategate up to their chins, doesn’t it?
Has any one told Gore?
I am much much more afraid of the next ice age than continued warming. The graph here is nothing new, and any fool can see how steep the slope for all the previous progressions into ice ages were…. less than a couple hundred years. This means that this earth can go snowball within your lifetime. This should not be a pleasant thought.
Makes me wish the U.S. had put more money into researching nuclear power. With a great source of heat like that readily available, surviving an ice age might be a little easier. Of course, you’d still need to build greenhouse domes and pray no encroaching glacier has you in it’s sights.
If we head into an ice age we had better burn fosil fuels and fast. Too bad the atmospheric response to CO2 is logarithmic.
Geoff Sharp (18:02:50) :
I have been waiting for this kind of data. I will plot it against the Holocene solar proxy records (14C & 10Be) and see what transpires.
Thanks.
Here is a first pass: http://www.landscheidt.info/images/solanki_sharp_greenland.png
George E. Smith (17:33:45) :
“Well the ice capades are rather nice; thanks for that. But as to the statement above.
What on earth leads you to believe that nanotechnology has any application to future energy sources ?”
Well to begin with, current day ‘nanotech’ is akin to MNT nanotech like 18th century chemistry is to modern biochemistry. There are a number of projects in the works to produce power with nanotech:
a) Casimir Torque Generator: uses nanogaps in nanoscale rotor/stator assemblies to generate torque from casimir forces. Accepted physics says this will work.
b) piezoelectric nuclear batteries: tiny amounts of radioactive isotopes poised under nanotech piezo armatures is used to generate electricity from the piezo vibrations generated by alpha radiation striking the arm.
c) Efficient hydrogen synthesis from sunlight: Captures photons and utilizes every quanta of their energy to separate hydrogen from water and other compounds. Projected 60%+ efficiency vs solar power at 33% and photosynthesis at 3%.
d) Nanofusion: Use nanoassemblies to force hydrogen atoms to fuse under mechanical pressure of van der waals forces.
Any questions?
Wow.
Wow plus. We should be trying to find a way to INCREASE greenhouse emissions, not decrease them.
Tom T (19:17:06) :
“If we head into an ice age we had better burn fosil fuels and fast. Too bad the atmospheric response to CO2 is logarithmic.”
With diminishing returns. We are very near a complete plateau. The diminishing returns curve is something these bozo’s GCMs ignore, they treat CO2 as having linear returns, which even Arrhenius knew was bogus. Their claim that every doubling equals a 1 degree rise tries to present it as linear, but a) note the use of doubling, and b) its nowhere near that sensitive at this point, we are past the bend in the asymptotic curve, the rise for each doubling is decreasing by half with each doubling.
It would seem that charts like the ones in this article, taken from central Greenland, would at least partially refute the current scare over methane bubbling up from the Arctic. If the temperature in the Arctic circle has been warmer quite frequently in the past, then bubbly methane would seem to be no big deal, since the temperatures would have also been warm enough back then to send the methane bubbling and yet nothing bad happened.
However, I am not a scientist, only a concerned person. Taking these charts into account, is it still possible that methane is something to be concerned about?
As an aside, I would like to see someone give a comprehensive rebuttal of the whole methane scare. Right now, if you google “arctic methane skeptic” nothing very convincing comes up from the skeptic side of things. I would think this article could be relevant to that topic.
Looking further into the Greenland data I noticed the timescale between the data points varies. This makes it very difficult to match with other records of the Holocene that have a regular data point gap.
Over long time scales the data needs to be adjusted somehow to be relevant.
Fraud again. Pure fraud. I was instructed in the Greenland discovery and abandonment in 9th Grade, more years ago than I wish to discuss. The Southern Coast of Greenland, sheep, cattle, horse husbandry, trade with the fishing and fur outposts in Vinland, were all lectured, as were the stone and sod homes. Winter wheat and cheese. Then the mini-iceage, the advancement of the inuit and the starvation, etc.
All of this seems to have gone down some bizarre, revisionist, hole. As if it never happened.
ben wilson (17:47:18) :
What about the lagging CO2 levels? What are the theories for that?
Simple volatility. It takes hundreds of years worth of temps low enough to freeze out C02 at the poles and keep it there, along with a much colder oceanic temp to suck in more C02. The only thing it’s saying is that C02 isn’t gulped out of the atmosphere/biosphere overnight. And it isn’t released that quickly. So look again at the graphs. Fast plunges and fast rises get the temps low enough to take out /high enough to release in a slow sequestration/desequestration process.
We just happen to be around to witness global temps leveling and falling at the same time C02 is still rising.
It only says that we are not cold enough yet to stop the rise by restarting sequestration.
The Sun keeps acting the way it is, and that will change too.
These graphs adds more perspective:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
We live in the coldest point in geologic history since the Permian Era 250mya. Fortunately, we live in a warm interglacial (the Holocene), but unfortunately the regular occurrence of epic glaciations over the last 1.8 million years indicates another one is coming.
Soon. As many have hypothesized, and the data presented confirm, neo-glaciation has been happening for 6,000 years. But the rate has been slow — the evidence suggests temperatures plunged rapidly at the end of previous interglacials. The plunge in our future may be just around the corner.
I am rooting for CO2. I know the evidence also suggests that atmospheric CO2 concentrations are effects, not causes, of climate change. But if we could raise the global temp, and keep it warm, then we should! Burning fossil carbon might be the very best thing we can do for the planet. Frankly, I don’t think it will be enough, and we need to find more aggressive solutions to the global cooling problem.
Warmer is Better.
n.b. Sigh. If only Al had been a Coolist. Like me.
I wonder if Obama is even of normal intelligence.
Flint:
Love the poem. Did you submit it over at Delingpole’s Gore-inspired poetry competition?
TA:
Your premise about methane bubbling up in the Arctic during warmer periods in the past is correct. This is a phenomenon that nobody would have particularly noticed prior to the Global Warming Scare. Its amazing how many things go on around us unnoticed, or unremarked upon until an event or theory gives some context for observation. That’s what has happened in the case of Arctic methane.
>>> Sigh, Al, Al, Al, surely even you know that humans contribute only 3.225% of CO2, whereas 96.775% is entirely natural. Since when is 3% a majority?<<<
When Al is counting votes in Florida? ;~))
To be serious, the guy will not allow himself to be in any forum where their is even one individual who could name the boiling point of water if he can avoid it. When he does get pressed for some ‘hard science’ he just makes [snip] up off the top of his pointy head, and the ever compliant media lets him get away with it.
It’s all about government and mony, which are the only two thing Gore understands. Science???? He could care less.
Ah, the Big Picture… That nice, clear, Big Picture!
But there is one thing I disagree with, and that is…
“For climate science it means that the Hockey Team climatologists’ insistence that human-emitted CO2 is the _only thing_ that could account for the recent warming trend is probably poppycock.”
Not that it isn’t poppycock for the warmists to make such a claim, but from where comes the idea that human-emitted CO2 is just one of many factors that account for the recent warming trend and (presumably) it’s longer than usual run? While it would be nice to think so (looks alllll the way down… Yes, let’s not go there if we can avoid it!), isn’t it a bit… presumptuous, and perhaps wishful thinking…. to say we’re having any impact at all?
The hit numbers on this site at 13:30 JST:
9 December 26,924,381
10 December 27,138,725
So the daily increase is 214,344. If this rate continues, the increment for December will be more than 6,600,000 and the total hits will exceed 30 million in about two weeks ahead, just on the Christmas eve?
Heartfelt congratulations to Anthony, mods and all of you Christians!
” pat (20:07:25) : ”
He won’t release his college grades or his thesis so we can’t tell. Nobody from his class year seems to remember him either so there isn’t even any anecdotal information on what kind of a student he was.
Skeptic Tank (18:23:07) : “Uh, from the second plot, I see the MWP being about 2.5°C above the Little Ice Age.”
But, obviously ,if all the ice had melted then there would be no ice core left now to tell the story. And if the temperature of that snow is now -31 deg C there is a rather large change necessary to melt it now. Not going to happen anytime soon?
Mike Lorrey:
“b) piezoelectric nuclear batteries: tiny amounts of radioactive isotopes poised under nanotech piezo armatures is used to generate electricity from the piezo vibrations generated by alpha radiation striking the arm.”
Don’t we already have something similar? I believe our space probes are powered in a thermoelectric (not pyroelectric) manner – the tech is just rather expensive to produce.
AAAARGH. Didn’t we know this years ago??? Why is this news????. Am I caught in some warp in time that keeps replaying the same data but no-one is paying any attention? I need a cup of tea.
I really wish my fellow skeptics would stop throwing out that 3% CO2 produced by humans. The problem is that the natural CO2 is constantly recycled while the human produced CO2 Just adds to what’s already there. It will eventually join the recycling pool, but for now it adds to the amount in the atmosphere (well about half of that produced does). As the total CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the amount that is sequestered each year goes up, but as long as the amount emitted is larger than the system is able to handle, it will accumulate. The real open question is the temperature sensitivity of the system to increased atmospheric CO2. Personally I think it’s relatively low, much lower than alarmists claim. Steve McIntyre has been asking for a derivation of the sensitivity from experiment or first principles (or even just from declared assumptions) for a long time with no takers. This is what we should be pushing for.
Not so good news on the cooling front:
Redding, CA this morning set it’s all-time record low, 16 deg. F., beating out the old one of 17 set in 1937 and 1990. 2nd day in a row record low for Redding, Red Bluff and a couple other places. This is the WARM end of the Sac Valley.
Get rid of the warmists quick before we all turn into popsickles.
Lows here 16, 14, 10, 10 and 12 forecast for tonight.
No Global Warming here. Sorry folks. It’s not like we didn’t know this was coming, what with a cold PDO, sickly Sun and a bunch of literary works.
I pity the folks in the Plains and Midwest. Thier snowplows are getting stuck now. As Charlie Gisbson chortled, “this is early December, with winter 2 weeks away”.
Now, go back and watch Learnord Nimoy’s “In search of the Coming Ice Age”.
Flint (17:18:13) :
Cherry picking, some may say
Is pleasant work and fine,
But murky moil and toil it is
When you’re hiding the decline.
No playful breeze will cool your brow,
No sunlight strike your face,
As you pluck your strange, outlier fruit
In the depths of cyberspace.
Track well your codes and protocols
As through this grove you rove,
Lest you be called to replicate
The tangled web you wove.
Oh, it’s “‘Arry this” and “‘Arry that,”
And “‘Arry, keep t’yer ‘ole,”
But “Save us, ‘Arry, save us!”
When ‘eds begin to roll.
Nice one – adaptation from Rudyard Kipling’s Tommy
“O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play,..
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,..
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,..
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!”
(My Dad was mad keen on poetry)
“In other words, we’re pretty lucky to be here during this rare, warm period in climate history”. We’re lucky we was born in this time period.full stop(I’m talking developed countries).You would have to be a masochist to want to be born in any other time period.I see the AGW proponents as a threat to us, and future generations,not AGW.
The blog entry is one which I agree with and echoes (perhaps more eloquently) that which I oft state. The ONLY real long term trend that man should be concerned with is the cooling trend which has continued since the Holocene Climatic Optimum. This little warming bump of the last 100 years or so is a blessing to man and perhaps an opportunity to learn if properly approached.
Climate models are a learning tool… not proof of anything. While we can learn utilizing them I do not know of a single climate model that adequately explains the warming periods (the bumps) which have occurred during the cooling trend which has existed for over 7,500 years. There have been many, many of them. The failure by man and model to fully understand and explain them reflects that neither man nor model really knows all of that much about climate mechanisms at this time.
Science has a responsibility to man to learn… not pretend it knows. Science has and ethical and moral responsibility to society…. to prepare man to adapt to climate change regardless of the direction of change. Science is failing in that. The time, money, and effort are going to a fools errand which is focused on CO2.
But thats just the refrain… and very nice one all in all
Sorry, I am a sceptic to the end.
Here is a brief description of how the evaluation of the core is done. I do believe I see the word “corrections” in there!!!!
ABSTRACT:
Greenland ice-core records provide an exceptionally clear picture of
many aspects of abrupt climate changes, and particularly of those
associated with the Younger Dryas event, as reviewed here.
Well-preserved annual layers can be counted confidently, with only 1%
errors for the age of the end of the Younger Dryas 11,500 years before
present. Ice-flow corrections allow reconstruction of snow accumulation
rates over tens of thousands of years with little additional uncertainty.
Glaciochemical and particulate data record atmospheric-loading changes
with little uncertainty introduced by changes in snow accumulation.
Confident paleothermometry is provided by site-specific calibrations
using ice-isotopic ratios, borehole temperatures, and gas-isotopic ratios.
Near-simultaneous changes in ice-core paleoclimatic indicators of local,
regional, and more-widespread climate conditions demonstrate that much
of the Earth experienced abrupt climate changes synchronous with
Greenland within thirty years or less. Post-Younger Dryas changes
have not duplicated the size, extent and rapidity of these
paleoclimatic changes.
Sorry, here is where I found it:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
What a marvelous display of all the cherries.
Journalists, editorial boards, school children look at this.
An increase from -32 c to 31.4 c? Lessee that’s 273 kelvin – 32 c = 243 kelvin.
Increasing to 243.6 is a 0.2% increase.
What amazing accuracy from analzying a 500 year old air bubble the size of a pinhead! Speaking of pinheads….
Shoveling my driveway today, I observed several decades of annual snowfall accumulations, based upon the strata with the characteristic density differences indicating the annual temperature cycle.
Oh! my gawd, It is worse then we thought. The next great Ice Age is hard apon us. WE need a lot more CO2 to save us from the cold. At least 2 degrees C worth.
As usual Big Al is on the wrong side of reality. Must be educated beyond his intelligence. :-p
next;
Geoff Sharp (19:20:48) :
“Geoff Sharp (18:02:50) :
I have been waiting for this kind of data. I will plot it against the Holocene solar proxy records (14C & 10Be) and see what transpires.
Thanks.
Here is a first pass: http://www.landscheidt.info/images/solanki_sharp_greenland.png”
checked out your plot……. seems to me the corilation might be off 6-800 years .. maybe the same as the CO2 laging the temperatures by about 800 years. just a thought, keep at it.
The major point you’re NOT saying is that we will have to adjust in major ways to changes in climate, weather, locations of where people live and work (agriculture, bridges, highways, housing, infrastructure, water). Given what whiners we are and how little people are willing to make simple changes in their lifestyles now, how do you think that is going to go over? What do you think the cost of that will be? Differences between now and the past are a) a lot more people now straining the earth’s resources, and b) much more entrenched civilization – nomads can move quickly and adjust quickly, we can’t. A fast change in climate and weather will not eliminate the human race but it will be a disaster for most of us.
It was much, much warmer during the medieval warming period than it is today.
There are Vikings buried in permafrost in Greenland.
The permafrost was not disturbed since it froze.
It was not frozen when they were buried.
I would call that warmer then today, a lot warmer.
The ironic thing is that this evidence of the medieval warming period is in a museum in Copenhagen.
The Fate of Greenland’s Vikings February 28, 2000 by Dale Mackenzie Brown
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland
Also, the medieval warming period was global.
Fraudulent hockey sticks and hidden data
joannenova.com.au/2009/12/fraudulent-hockey-sticks-and-hidden-data
For a satirical look at the climategate computer programming (hiding the decline):
Anthropogenic Global Warming Virus Alert.
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103
This post says nothing about AGW. The first data point is 95 years BP. And BP should mean before 1950 – ie 1855. It misses all the modern warming.
The run-up at the end of the graph is interesting. But there’s no point in comparing it to earlier rises. It isn’t the modern warming.
Good post and a brilliant example of how cherry-picking works to make a nonsense of using average global temperature trends as a climate proxy.
As the Climategate document shows, the data can always show the trend you believe and if it doesn’t fit in exactly the data can be adjusted to make it appear so.
Looking at the last graph and observing we have an unexpectedly quiet sun makes me worry that we’re in for coller time ahead.
Nick Stokes (22:36:00) :
Well, that is a pretty silly thing to say. The modern warming is unprecedented doom laden man-made h-e-double hockey sticks(could NOT resist). Or not. Depends on your perspective. Now look at the graphs again and absorb the real point.
I think that the sequential presentation of those graphs is a wonderfully persuasive technique. (It reminded me of the wonderful OP book, Cosmic View: the Universe in 40 Jumps.) Such charts should be used on any contrarian TV presentation. But I have two suggestions.
1. If possible, fill in the gaps to bring the short-range charts up to 2000.
2. Explicitly and consistently caption each chart with titles like, “The Past n Years.” That would really help.
Dave Dardinger (21:25:08) :
“I really wish my fellow skeptics would stop throwing out that 3% CO2 produced by humans. The problem is that the natural CO2 is constantly recycled while the human produced CO2 Just adds to what’s already there. It will eventually join the recycling pool, but for now it adds to the amount in the atmosphere (well about half of that produced does).”
Dave, you are assuming there is some sort of natural balance. Remember, the biosphere has pulled out a HUGE amount of CO2 from our atmosphere – this implies that there is no “balance” but, in fact, that the CO2 sink dominates CO2 production.
I think there are other and better explanations for the rise of CO2 than human activity.
No wonder the climate “scientists” keep their perspective short and focus only on the last few hundred years. And no wonder the MWP is such a problem for them. From those graphs it is readily apparent why they don’t find comfort in the company of geologists with a view that’s far more extensive than theirs. Let’s let the energy companies do what they do best – find sources of energy. This will build up a greater knowledge base so that future, more creative approaches can discover new energy sources we might not be able to imagine, something we may find ourselves needing when, in the coming centuries, the bottom drops out on our rather temperate climate, no matter how much CO2 we pump into the atmosphere.
David (22:56:12) :
Well, if there’s a real point, I wish someone would say. I see a whole lot of ups and downs, maybe exaggerated, as Bill Illis (18:26:54) said. But why compare this to the rise from 1750-1850. It’s clearly intended to show that past changes are larger than the present. But what is shown is not the present.
Brilliant article. Every journalist should read it.
Have informed BBC UK & BBC Worldwide of this article. Hope they get sucked in and report it. I won’t hold my breathe.
Nick, why doesn’t the data come up to the present?
Nick Stokes (22:36:00) :
This post says nothing about AGW. The first data point is 95 years BP. And BP should mean before 1950 – ie 1855. It misses all the modern warming.
The run-up at the end of the graph is interesting. But there’s no point in comparing it to earlier rises. It isn’t the modern warming.
Here is a similar posting that has color graphs for the ice ages (though no Greenland ice cores) and includes graphs up to now. (CET, for example)
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/how-long-is-a-long-temperature-history/
Especially interesting is this graph showing the “recent warming” is about what it was in 1720…
http://www.smhi.se/sgn0102/n0205/upps_www.pdf
BTW, on the “ringing”: I think it looks more like a peak clip. Notice that our “shoot up peak” does not go as high as the others, and the sideways ‘shelf’ is about as wide as the other peaks are at that hight. So I’d look for some punctuating cooling impact that prevented the peak from going all the way. Thing from space causing “global winter” for a while? Volcanic hickup? Who knows…
But what is very clear is that there is a hard lid just above our present temps that smacks us back down; and that the “end game” is a one way trip to coldsville… There is clearly a non-linear positive feedback risk, but it is all to the downside as accelerating cold. So this present quiet sun, solar minimum, PDO, whatever cold phase is very “double plus ungood” (for the benefit of AGW folks, I’ve translated it their vernacular 😉
It is also clear that “climate” can make movements of great drama, orders of magnitude more than the last 100 years and the peaks are higher than our peak in this interglacial. (When it immediately gets knocked back down very hard).
But without that momentum coming out of an ice age, the peak can not be reached. And we don’t have that momentum behind us anymore.
And all of this is why I’ve said it is a VERY Bad Idea to push toward cooling real hard at this time. Very Very Bad Idea.
FWIW, I would guess that the major “drivers” of this cyclicality are the orbital mechanics setting the stage, then the ocean cycles, and finally the biosphere as the ice age deserts ‘green up’ and a lot of changes come to the hydrology and albedo of the planet.
We here in the US have sufficient coal, petroleum and natural gas in known and obtainable reserves to last us at least another 400 years. Oops, better switch right now at enormous cost and much higher electrical and heating rates to “new technology”. After all, we surely can’t expect technology to improve in the next 400 years any more than it did in the last 400 years, now can we?
Dave Dardinger (21:25:08) :
The problem is that the natural CO2 is constantly recycled while the human produced CO2 Just adds to what’s already there.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. There’s nothing special about the “human produced CO2”. It gets recycled just like all the other.
This is a dynamic feedback system. The natural sinks and sources balance because they push against each other in equal measure. If you want to shift that balance, you have to push in significant measure against one side or the other with signficantly comparable force.
The AGW side asserts that the two are treated differently, but this is a kluge with little justification designed to attribute the observed rise in CO2 to humans. In an earlier age, these people would have been explaining epicycles to Galileo.
Grossly exaggerated vertical scales can make even a speck of dust look the size of a mountain.
More CO2 in our atmosphere makes the green plants grow considerably faster. The faster growing green plants make themselves out of the carbon in carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. The rate of absorption of carbon dioxide increases as the percentage of carbon dioxide increases. Cycles are the most natural thing there are in nature.
This thread is refreshing.
According to NASA (2003),”……the last two decades of the twentieth century were a good time to be a plant on planet Earth. In many parts of the global garden, the climate grew warmer, wetter, and sunnier, and despite a few El Niño-related setbacks, plants flourished for the most part…. “.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalGarden/
Presumably, the CO2 enriched atmosphere was also a factor and as the CO2 emissions from burning carbon laid down in the distant past increases (as it inevitably will) and the temperature sensitivity of the atmosphere to increased concentrations decreases (it’s probably quite low now anyway), the biosphere will thrive while the human population stabilizes due to increased wealth and education.
Some hope with the mentality exhibited at the Copenhagen jamboree http://www.eikongraphia.com/wordpress/wp-content/Tower%20of%20Babel.jpg.
About the 95 years not shown in the graph: Nuuk is not in the middle of the ice sheet, but it has a long temperature record, and unfortunately for humankind, it shows that the top of the current warm period could just as well have be already 70 years behind us:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431042500000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
I know that the current interglacial is thought to be a much longer one than the previous ones, but still, the thought of a LIA – or even sligthly worse, is much more depressing than the thought of a few iceland states getting a few problems.
Hey guys- drop everything and watch this, lets laugh at how life works out- happy Christmas:
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/?p=2224
D Stewart (22:29:07) : “The major point you’re NOT saying is that we will have to adjust in major ways to changes in climate, weather, locations of where people live and work (agriculture, bridges, highways, housing, infrastructure, water).”
Our modern way of life has never been tested against any major temperature change, in either direction, so there’s really no sense in saying it can’t do anything and that we need massive amounts of thought and capital poured into something else (and most of all “stop whining”, I presume). Materials will change, consumption patterns will change, demographics will change… as the need to do so happens. And until it happens, you’re in no position to say we’ll experience massive failure.
“Given what whiners we are and how little people are willing to make simple changes in their lifestyles now, how do you think that is going to go over? What do you think the cost of that will be?”
I can’t say what the costs will be but since things will be changing at some point in the future, the trend helps getting more people to adapt in a more efficient manner than YOU yelling at them NOW, where things are still pretty stable and warm. That’s my hunch, anyway.
And simple changes we can make now?! What, like wearing a parka? Turning up my thermostat to heat my house to 100 degrees? Learn to make igloos? Learn to ski? Build and drive more Hummers? Teach myself that recycling and not bulding and driving a Hummer will save the planet from the opposite of global warming instead? Or shall I simply shiver more (which is the simplest thing I can think to do)?
“Differences between now and the past are a) a lot more people now straining the earth’s resources…”
…And man is smarter, and has discovered economic principles that he wasn’t aware of back then, not to mention having a grasp of science whereas before he did not, together which makes him far more adaptable than in any other point in his existence…
“and b) much more entrenched civilization – nomads can move quickly and adjust quickly, we can’t.”
What does the pace and actions of nomads matter? I mean, it’s not like you or any of us have been to colder times and can say that it’s true that they will survive and that we, by contrast, meaning modern man, will face massive losses due to our own apathy of the present.
The problem is, again, you’re using the past to predict a future outcome (and one factor which is many factors simply wasn’t even there at the time from which you are projecting…)
“A fast change in climate and weather will not eliminate the human race but it will be a disaster for most of us.”
Disasters are nothing new to humankind. We’ve survived so many of them it can really be said to be background noise in te fabric of our beings. Not that colder temperatures, coming fast or slow, are even a disaster, especially given how greatly things have changed since way back in all the other plunges. They’re cold temperatures.
Why make into more than that?
Alan Wilkinson (23:34:39) :
Nick, why doesn’t the data come up to the present?
Well, the fact is that it doesn’t. I believe ice-core methods don’t work until the ice is compacted, which takes many decades.
Spend or not spend borrowed public funds on a crash programme to develop alternate energy “to save the climate” ?
Try this article which some claim is an attempt at defending current energy and climate policies !
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23901891/Climate-Policies-Balanced-Future
Andrew McKillop
Dave Dardinger (21:25:08) :
The problem is that the natural CO2 is constantly recycled while the human produced CO2 Just adds to what’s already there.
Only if you believe that the atmosphere is God and can decide to keep the man-made CO2 up and let the natural CO2 down.
Turn that argument upside down and ask yourself how is there CO2 up there even before man came along. By your logic, if it wasn’t for man, there would be no CO2 up in the atmosphere at all, as it would already have been absorbed by now. It’s a dynamic system and CO2 is heavier than air, so it’s natural propensity is to fall back to Earth.
Poppycock of course was first used, I believe, by David Bellamy back in 2004. He hasn’t been seen on BBC since. He was known and loved by a whole generation of kids who watched his programmes on botany and biology, popularising science in amazing ways.
Alas, popycock sealed his fate.
On live BBC you can use as much foul languiage as you like, leave filthy and insulting mesages on peoples answering machines, but not call AGW poppycock.
We live in interesting times indeed.
Forgot the link to the article:-
http://www.abd.org.uk/downloads/poppycock.pdf
Yes, I loved David Bellamy as a kid and felt so proud when I saw his views on AGW (I am also a PhD graduate from Durham). Go David go………………
Here’s a modern hero:
and here he is again, bless him, doens’t his sincerity make Gore seem repulsive?:
This is all very intersting and excellently explained. Can we please have the sources/references for the various graphs (and data) used? Thanks
It was the ice-core data that changed my mind about global warming. I used to be an AGW believer with a low-emission car and electricity supplied via wind-turbines. But then I downloaded the ice-core data myself and took a look and realised the whole theory was, well, “poppycock”.
You can see all kinds fo things from the ice-core data:-
1] Current CO2 levels aren’t particularly high
2] CO2 increases AFTER temperature increases, so you can’t even be sure that rising CO2 now is caused by man – it could be caused by perfectly natural increases in temperature which then releases more CO2 into the air as ice retreats slightly and unfreezes CO2 and releases methans which then breaks down to CO2.
3] High levels of CO2 aren’t enough to prevent temperatures falling.
4] Current temperatures aren’t particularly high.
5] Higher temperatures in the past didn’t cause tipping points that were enough to prevent subsequent cooling.
Funnily enough the AGW proponents started to go very quiet about ice-cores when these sorts of challenges were made and then they focussed on secret tree-ring data and surface stations with back-filled datalogs. They learned some lessons – not about AGW theory being fallacious but about finding ways of preventing the keen amateur from spotting gaping flaws in their theories. Information is now on a “need to know” basis. They have decided we don’t need to know.
Two things.
To anyone who does not know who Joshua Storrs Hall is, I recommend you look him up. He is the head of Foresight.org and one of the premiere names in Nanotechnology. He is the creator of the concept of Programmable matter, AKA Utility Fog, and one of the most creative minds working on Molecular Nanotechnology and Molecular Engineering. When it comes to Drexlarian Nanotechnology, not the redefined materials science dealing with nanoscale materials but actual Mechanosynthesis, there are few who can top him for knowledge.
The second thing is I recommend anyone who is concerned about bad science look up the Electrical Universe, which discusses how Modern Astrophysics has ignored any and all evidence that the universe is primarily ruled by Electromagnetic forces, not Gravity. Over any distance EM is 37 orders of magnitude stronger than Gravity, and falls off on a linear scale instead of a logarithmic scale like gravity. The electrical interactions between the Sun and our electromagnetic fields greatly effect weather.
Also, if you look into EU theory, you will also find that there is substantial evidence that our solar system underwent severe changes at the end of our last ice age. As ridiculous as it may sound, our ancestors insisted in numerous ancient documents that Saturn used to be much closer to Earth, and that a too close brush with Jupiter, once much closer to the sun, resulted in Saturn being removed from it’s previous prominence, and it and several other planets such as Mars and Venus also were sent into erratic orbits.
As planets act as anodes in a vaccum to the Sun’s cathode, the electrical forces seeking equilibrium brought all the planets into their current orbits, but not without several thousand years of eccentricity. It is recorded in some ancient texts that Mars and Venus both had close encounters with the Earth, resulting in massive electrical discharges between planets as they sought to equalize potentials.
The interesting thing is that if this theory is correct, which will require much more evidence to confirm, then our periods of warming and cooling would seem to correspond to the possible major changes in orbits among the planets. In theory, the Earth was originally a planet around Saturn, which was a small star, which intersected the current solar system, went through a long period of eccentric orbits before finally settling in a long period orbit which eventually intersected that of Jupiter. That would make the sudden end of the last ice age a product of assuming our own independent orbit around the sun, and the various spikes due to planetary interactions as the planets equalized charges and stabilized their orbits to what we see today.
I can’t say I’m convinced, but it is interesting to contemplate.
However, the story of how EU theory is being suppressed by the mainstream Astrophysics community is very similar to that of the chicanery seen here by the AGW crowd. While I can’t say I agree with the Saturn Theory, the evidence for electrical phenomena in space is readily apparent if you know anything about electrical forces. I highly recommend anyone who is interested to check out EU theory and see how the electrical interactions between Earth and the Sun can influence our weather.
Espen (00:04:52) :
‘About the 95 years not shown in the graph:’
Not to worry. Griss and/or CRU can make that graph dance.
is this new data ? .. if this is valid data then its obvious the planet is cooling and should end all discussion, what am i missing??
LarryOldtimer (23:41:58) :
“Grossly exaggerated vertical scales can make even a speck of dust look the size of a mountain.”
1. Their side started it.
2. Where should the bottom of the scale be — zero degrees Kelvin? Changes that can be seen only on the scale portrayed are the ones that are meaningful to human civilization, so the scale isn’t exaggerated.
Dave Dardinger (21:25:08) :
‘The problem is that the natural CO2 is constantly recycled while the human produced CO2 Just adds to what’s already there.’
First of all you would have to prove that Co2 drives the climate.
Lets see. No “Hot Spot”, flat or declining heat in the “Pipe Line”, no increase in “Heat Trapping Clouds”, ice core data shows this is not the warmest period in “Our Time”, “Climate Models” have never been V and V and now, “Climategate”.
How deep is the “Rabbit Hole”?
So, tell me again how “Co2 drives the climate”?
Excellent article. I’m sending this one around.
Can someone please explain what is the scale on the y-axis of graphs 1 to 6?
This a fantastic explanation of the big picture of historical temperature. It is so very easy to get hung up on a few tenths of a degree here and there. The general public *are not* aware of this bigger picture, but htey should be made so.
How can we get the message out there? We could print t-shirts or print flyers? This should be made into a leaflet size that some of us can independently print off a few thousand copies and distribute at weekend and during rush hour.
Well, that’s it for me MMGW proved beyond doubt. That peak temperature around the end of the bronze/start of the iron age. All these guys with their home smelters pouring out CO2!
“Present” is assumed to be 1950 in this plot:
(Present might be different in ice cores but does not make much difference)
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/1373/gisp2moderngrnlnd.png
This appends a shifted (-29degC) measurement from modern Greenland on to the end of the misrepresented plots made here.
As can be seen even this crude addition shows modern temperature at 1degC above the MWP.
Todays temperature is in fact as high as any in the last 2000 yeats. In the period of the core there are only 3higher temperatures (5900BC,4975BC, 1347BC).
Comments?
Pull your heads out of the sand and check how the average temperature on Greenland has evolved over the last 95 years. I believe you can use the emerging hockey stick to smash the credibility of the author of this piece of garbage “science”.
The author’s final conclusion is based on a faulty premise – I’m generally not seeing anyone going around saying that humans are the _only_ cause. It’s easy to make your own strawmen and then knock them down.
“Does it mean that we shouldn’t develop clean, efficient technology that gets its energy elsewhere than burning fossil fuels? Of course not. We should do all those things for many reasons — but there’s plenty of time to do them the right way, by developing nanotech. (There’s plenty of money, too, but it’s all going to climate science at the moment. ) And that will be a very good thing to have done if we do fall back into an ice age, believe me.”
Problem is, in characterizing everything as “poppycock” that completely undermines any effort to develop clean, efficient technology that gets its energy elsewhere than burning fossil fuels. Nanotechnology to generate power? Easily decades, if not closer a century away before we see such technology in widespread adoption for serving any substantial part of our energy demand. And no impetus to develop it anyways if the pundits and skeptics are going around saying we don’t need it. And as for “all the money going to climate science” suggests that some vast amount of money is being thrown at climate – yet there’s not really been that much of any dramatic increase in the budgets of agencies like NOAA or EPA regarding climate over the last couple of decades. Meanwhile, in the prior administration, money was actually cut off to efforts to develop clean, efficient technology that gets its energy elsewhere than burning fossil fuels, and it was a major setback, while we in fact subsidized efforts TO rely on burning fossil fuels.
The basic issue I have with all of this is that the result of climate-skeptics’ efforts is that they remove all impetus to ever develop cleaner, renewable means of generating power and more efficient technologies.
It’s basically just throwing our hands up and allowing ourselves to be at the mercy of whatever (be it warming – or another ice age – or running out of coal and oil) rather than being proactive by trying to gain broader understanding and a broader range of technologies and resources, and thereby be more prepared to master our destiny, whatever that might be,
As such, we need to continue to develop energy technologies, we need to continue to study what drives climate change, to be more ready for whatever comes, whether it’s warming OR an ice age, as opposed to saying “we don’t have all the answers, so let’s just pull the plug, give up and put the blindfold on and accept our fate” as the pundits and skeptics would have us do.
This piece in Forbes is interesting. Scientists were claiming an ICE Age doom in 1975.
Wow. This really puts things in perspective, doesn’t it! I’ve been following the climate change debate for only the last several months. Before then, I assumed it was all conclusive science. There has been some damning evidence out there but this article is exceptionally enlightening. Thanks for posting.
I think those same Vikings who named Greenland Greenland then hauled themselves over to what is now Newfoundland and established colonies producing grapes etc. But that didn’t last because it got cold again.
Dave Dardinger (21:25:08) :
The problem is that the natural CO2 is constantly recycled while the human produced CO2 Just adds to what’s already there.
CO2 is CO2 — there aren’t any people-cooties on manmade CO2 to enable Mama Gaia to identify it as unsuitable for recycling.
Slightly OT, but I just had an enlightening discussion with someone who swears the MWP never happened, and those Viking ruins being excavated are actually in Newfoundland, *not* Greenland, and my knowledge of geography is obviously deficient.
I pulled up Greenland on Google Earth and he identified it as Norway.
My head hurts now…
Excellent article, both in content and presentation.
As a former NOAA employee, it’s good to see the numbers used in an even-handed manner.
So is someone going to explain the scale on the y-axes, PLEASE?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png has the long term records of temperature as recorded by ice cores. The context that is missing, though is this.
We don’t live in -350,000 AD. We live in 2009 AD. The dramatic costs that global warming may impose on us were not imposed in -350,000 because we didn’t exist then (and to the extent we did, our ancestors didn’t have cities, buildings, machines and fixed capital to worry about in order to maintain their standard of living).
Likewise the Medieval Warm Period was real but local to Europe (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_warm_period). But again we don’t live in Medieval Europe. Imagine there’s a button that if you push it will instantly revert the earth to the climate of the Medieval period. There’s no reason to think that pushing it wouldn’t impose an immediate and immense cost.
Additionally, let’s say the MWP was imposed by some natural process totally independent of human activity. Let’s say a comet of frozen CO2 crashed into some remote corner of the world in AD 800 and while no one noticed the impact the world experienced a few centuries of higher temperatures. What does that have to do with the AGW debate today? Absolutely nothing.
Yes its true, we can do a fantastic job of lowering CO2 output and just when we think we are done another giant CO2 comet comes along ruining all the work we did. But if CO2 comets are a random feature of our climate system then there’s nothing we can do about them. If we didn’t lower CO2 output, we’d be facing both the CO2 from the comet as well as the CO2 from our activities. (For ‘CO2 Comet’ substitute any natural process(es) that might cause a spike in warming or CO2 outside of AGW).
Some other issues:
Gore did misspeak regarding humans making the majority of CO2 but:
“Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. There’s nothing special about the “human produced CO2″. It gets recycled just like all the other.”
No the bulk of natural CO2 is recycled. For example, breathing. You and all animals breath out CO2. But to do this they need to burn C with the O2 in the air they breath in. They get C from food which pulls CO2 out of the air. Yes there is no law that gurantees all natural processes net out to exactly 0 but they tend to be in rough balance. Humans are responsible for the majority of the unrecycled CO2.
I love this thread! I had produced a series of graphs like these of ever lengthening duration for a PTK lecture I did about 14 years ago to show the 1/f-noise-like variations of climate. Mine was more schematic and not an actual record, but doesn’t it do a nice job of putting the hockey sticks, even fabricated ones, in proper perspective?
In the mid 1990s geophysicists were making hockey sticks from borehole temperature measurements. I now realize these predated Mann’s hockey stick. They were fabricated using “inverse mathematics” but fabricated none the less. I think they have disappeared from public view almost entirely, yet, with warmists looking for new confirmatory data they are likely to reappear at some time.
Rutger: Good question. Mann and co make a big deal out of a few tenths of a degree here and there and claim that man made CO2 is the cause and theat they can detect it and that it is dangerous.
Please do ask the guys on realclimate.org whether think that the hockey stick (which we now know has lots of arjee bargee attached to its creation!) is relevent when plotted in the context of the entire record.
The fact is that the climate has been swinging around VIOLENTLY (orders of magnitude more than the worse IPPCC bullshit) without any help from us for hundreds of thousands of years – and we have not switched off, and cannot control, that natural process. Am I worried about climate change? You betcha I’m worried, I’m worried about NATURAL climate change and we can’t do a thing about it.
Excellent article. I have two questions though. Hopefully someone can answer them.
1) Why does the data not extend to the current year?
2) Heat will be conducted from warm ice to cold ice, so that over the years the temperature distribution will tend to level off. Has anyone done the calculations to determine the magnitude of that effect? Is the data we are seeing, “adjusted” to account for that ?
Great article,
just wonder if Copenhagen will pass international laws to prohibit posts like this, it works in Iran were the country was taken over by crazy’s .
The Y axis in the first 6 graphs is temperature in celcius. All the figures are negative.
The raw numbers are here:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
along with the abstract by the author which kuhnkat posted earlier.
Not sure what the Y axis is representing on the Vostok graph (graph 7)
I have done a rather detailed statistical analysis of the readily available NOAA ice core data from both Greenland and Antarctica. This post is consistant with the results of my analysis. I produced a pdf presentation. http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf. You may find answers to many of your questions there. If you wish to contact me, my e-mail address can be found on that site.
Excellent work,very impressive!
Especially the plot from -2000 up to now, the three peaks: 1. about 0 -Roman Empire
at its best time “Augustus Cesar”,
2.Leif Ericsson discovers Greenland and Vinland,
last and least
” Holy Gore” invents Internet and Hockeystick!
Please don’t hide this decline!
“The problem is that the natural CO2 is constantly recycled”
But what is the storage factor? Could the % recycling be made much better?
Life uses CO2 contructively, and levels have been higher in the past, but unfortunately, a heck of a lot of it gets put into ‘deep storage’ doesn’t it? Otherwise we wouldn’t have such things as coal, or soil ending up as subsoil and piling tons and tons of the stuff piling up above archaeological sites Worldwide would we?
What about the billion upon billion tons of limestone? Limestone is mainly calcium carbonate, CaCO 3. When it is heated, it breaks down to form calcium oxide and carbon dioxide. We have all those building blocks that end up as limestone, raining down from the top 100ft layer of the Oceans that cover approx 70% of the Planet, all day and every day?
Funny how that CO2 absorbtion into the Oceans is supposed to be ‘acidifying’ when the real life in the real Oceans, uses the stuff to such great effect?
What’s the ph of limestone again?
Isn’t there a strong case, that by actually releasing the CO2 from deep storage, then all we are doing, is making sure that life has enough of a pretty essential basic component, to go forward with into the coming millions of years?
Now if the temperatures would indeed increase sufficiently so life could make even more efficient use of it . . .
Which leads me to Ice Ages.
I don’t worry about Ice Ages. We have had them before. If The Canadian and American grain belts goes under ice, well, there may well be super ice lakes over them which could be home to huge numbers of fish. At the same time, the Sahara and present similar regions Worldwide, might well become highly productive replacements. Africa as a whole, might return to its previous fertility.
Plus, sea levels will go down dramatically, and coastal plains that have not seen the light of day for 1,000’s of years, once the salt is washed out of them, well, they will be remarkably fertile after 1,000’s of years of fish guano and fish bones and recycled seaweed, dropping on them, won’t they?
We have either evolved the ability to cope, and cherish challenges, or we haven’t.
The miseryguts doomsayers so intent on frightening the children, don’t seem to be particularly evolved enough to adapt to anything at all (especially perhaps truth, let alone reality), do they?
They should keep their personal problems to themselves, and not expect the whole World to throw unaffordable trillions at their paranoia, phobias, and psychotic hatred of humanity.
In a very real way, all they are doing, is standing up in a crowded theatre, and yelling at the top of their voices FIRE! when there is no fire. Such scaremongering deserves jail time.
I’d far rather we spend some money on putting in desalination plants in useful places around the World, use drip agriculture in places with plenty of sunlight, and actually address the issues.
The price of desalinated water, is now down to less than 0.50c per cubic metre. Just think how much of the money that’s already been wasted on this AGW propaganda, could have been turned into desalination plants and drip agricultire systems around the World.
So, this is recorded as degree’s below zero? How was Greenland green with those kinds of temps? Or, was it just the southern tip?
*******
9 12 2009
Suzanne (17:22:03) :
I’ve read a lot comments about the interglacials lasting only about 10,000 years but detailed studies of the Ice Ages in Britain (Homo Britanicus)show that the last time the Milankovich signal was similar to the present, the corresponding interglacial in the British Isles was 40,000 years with a sharp cooling in the middle.
*******
Similar Milankovich conditions occured ~400k yrs ago — seen at the very beginning of the last figure. This is interesting because that interglacial, as you say, was longer than the later ones, and in fact has a U-shaped profile — rising rapidly, tailing off alittle, then rising again to a peak before showing the characteristic rapid dropoff as the interglacial ends.
That could suggest that this interglacial may be similar — temps could, completely naturally, rise slowly (in our time perspective) again to Holocene optimum levels during the next few ~10k yrs before the next glacial occurs.
Let’s hope so. Not looking foward to the drastic temp falloff that occurs when interglacials end…
The basic issue I have with all of this is that the result of climate-skeptics’ efforts is that they remove all impetus to ever develop cleaner, renewable means of generating power and more efficient technologies.
saying “we don’t have all the answers, so let’s just pull the plug, give up and put the blindfold on and accept our fate” as the pundits and skeptics would have us do.
You are working on a couple of false premise’s here. Heh, if there are renewable EFFICIENT/COST EFFECTIVE ways of generating power, ain’t nobody gonna be against it.(except the greens) Nobody want’s to stop anybody from developing anything. What most skeptics, I believe ARE saying, is that I don’t want to pay 4 times as much for electricity and fuel to fight a bogeyman. The real tell, in this instance, is the AGW proponents constant fight against nuclear power, which, if they were serious, is the obvious answer.
The first time I saw this graph in a book touting how we are all going to die because of GLOBAL WARMING! I thought to myself:
You know, if CO2 GW is real then all we are doing is extending a very short warm period just a little. In other words, staving off the inevitable ice age for a few years. Hmmm. Can that be bad?
The problem is that the natural CO2 is constantly recycled while the human produced CO2 Just adds to what’s already there. It will eventually join the recycling pool, but for now it adds to the amount in the atmosphere (well about half of that produced does).
You make the mistake of assuming that there is some sort of Natural Balance, like the warmists assume there is some sort of Perfect Temperature. There is no apparent evidence for either position.
Bill Illis (18:26:54) : “Present” is assumed….
Ask mann et al make the graft. They do the trick better than you.
Moderator, edit it and my bad English.
CO2 is a good thing. More of it would be fantastic news for life on the planet.
Higher temperatures are a good thing. Slightly Higher temperatures would make life on this planet easier, not harder.
Unfortunately, pumping CO2 into the atmosphere does not appear to be increasing the temperature of the planet, nor are we emmitting enough yet to cause real benefits in the bioshpere.
The real issue we face is how to generate enough energy to support all of the wonderful increase of the creation, but I guess that’s why God put the Sun out there :-).
Mark (16:57:14) :
On the very last graph (at the bottom), there is a ‘ringing’ that is not seen on the other peaks. Could this be a sign of human influence?
did you not notice… there is ‘ringing’ in the trough. the line becomes smooth gradually, the further back you go. this ‘ringing’, as you called it, is possibly due to the recent records being more fine grained. it’s not a sign of human influence.
Bob
Life uses CO2 contructively, and levels have been higher in the past, but unfortunately, a heck of a lot of it gets put into ‘deep storage’ doesn’t it? Otherwise we wouldn’t have such things as coal, or soil ending up as subsoil and piling tons and tons of the stuff piling up above archaeological sites Worldwide would we?
Very true, there are massive natural processes that pull CO2 out of the air and store the C. But let’s think about this logically. CO2 is only a small portion of the air and has been that way for millions of year. Clearly if nature has massive carbon sinks it also has massive carbon emmitters. If it didn’t all the carbon would have disappeared from the air ages ago.
This hints that carbon is somehow very important to the system and both types of massive natural systems have been in rough balance for a very long time. At least in terms of human experience. Again if 500,000 years ago something wacky happened with CO2 and climate we weren’t around for it so whatever costs it imposed were born by animals and plants.
Can we improve the natural CO2 sinks? Sure but it seems like it would be very expensive to me. A project like, say, altering the DNA of 80% of the world’s trees to make them more CO2 asorbing sounds a lot more expensive and risky than cap-n-trade. But I’m no scientist so if you got a grant proposal please write it up.
I don’t worry about Ice Ages. We have had them before. If The Canadian and American grain belts goes under ice, well, there may well be super ice lakes over them which could be home to huge numbers of fish. At the same time, the Sahara and present similar regions Worldwide, might well become highly productive replacements. Africa as a whole, might return to its previous fertility.
Whose this ‘we’ that had them before? ‘We’ meaning a modern developed civilization have never had an Ice Age. You’re right that a something as big as an Ice Age probably wouldn’t mean the extinction of humanity but that is a long way from saying it wouldn’t represent a massive cost (which likewise means a massive expense would be justified to avoid it). Ditto for rapid warming.
If it didn’t all the carbon would have disappeared from the air ages ago.
Uhm, at less than Four HUNDRED parts per MILLION, it pretty well has.
Can we improve the natural CO2 sinks?
Why do the natural sinks need to be improved? What is the upward limit of the biosphere given different levels of temperature, humidity, precipitation, and CO2.
A project like, say, altering the DNA of 80% of the world’s trees to make them more CO2 asorbing sounds a lot more expensive and risky than cap-n-trade.
Before you attempt that, you might look at the suggestion above.
But I’m no scientist,
Never would have guessed.
I take exception to part of the second to last paragraph of this post.
I don’t see anything in that data or anywhere else that provides a good reason to move away from fossil fuels. We have plenty of coal, gas and oil reserves and we should use them because there is nothing as cheap and effective other than nuclear for power generation, and I’m all for that too.
Dave Smith (05:51:37) :
It is indeed easy to create your own strawmen. Like the impetus argument you make…
Also, ignoring the fact that droughts, floods, extinctions, warmth, cold, rising seas, falling seas, and so on are the normal state of the climate is somewhat disingenuous at best. Instead, the sell in politics and media is that we can avoid these things by reducing our CO2 emissions, which is totally false, yet the save the world scientists do not speak up about the fact that these events will persist. Instead when North Dakota floods because a river froze over and explosives are needed to break up the ice, we hear about how global warming causes extreme weather events. Why?
What is the ppm where C02 becomes toxic to humans?
I’m afraid that the left is showing its hand, even my own mother (God have mercy on her) believes that Norman Borlaug was a bad man because his crop engineering resulted in several billion people -not- starving to death, resulting in a ‘non-sustainable planet.’ (as if Earth did not exist in a solar system full of energy and resources). Her views come straight from NPR.
One can get the impression from the Nature Conservancy, NPR, and the uber-rich at Kobenhavn, that they desire to engineer a society of perhaps 100 million lower-caste people serving a small brahman class, in an eco-paradise. Latin America and the 3,000 year reich of the brahmans in India seem to be there inspiration.
Boonton (09:43:11) :
The real problem in an Ice Age would come from the competition for resources that are suddenly more scarce combined with nuclear weapon technology.
EricH (23:32:00) :
Brilliant article. Every journalist should read it.
Have informed BBC UK & BBC Worldwide of this article. Hope they get sucked in and report it. I won’t hold my breathe.
The (intelligent) media must be laughing their collective arses off if they read this thread.
Read my and many other’s posts.
Bill (05:21:25) :
“Present” is assumed to be 1950 in this plot:
(Present might be different in ice cores but does not make much difference)
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/1373/gisp2moderngrnlnd.png
The plots in the header above are simply designed to hide the incline. They stop in the 1700s with a flattening of the rise. However, from my plot you can see that the incline starts again increasing to +2C above initial recorded temps.
Unlike CRU there is no document explaining why the incline should be hidden.
Why do the natural sinks need to be improved?
Bob asked “But what is the storage factor? Could the % recycling be made much better?”
Uhm, at less than Four HUNDRED parts per MILLION, it pretty well has.
Well yea but then so what? We know there’s massive natural carbon sinks and massive natural carbon producers, the balance out leaving around 800ppm in the air. It still hints that carbon might be important and casually moving that number around can produce dramatic consquences.
Looking at the long term temp. graph I can see quite a few possible scenaros that might be at play.
Consider this hypothesis. Suppose that on average life is a CO2 drain on the air (leaving out the actions of modern humans). This might make sense given the massive oil reserves we had which is the past carbon storage of life long ago. Say we have periodic vulcanic eruptionsof CO2. There’s your long term graph. Life draws down CO2 cooling the climate and every few dozen thousand years eruptions push the levels back up creating warming spurts.
This would make for the long term graph that skeptics seem to be talking false security in but its actually quite scarey. Why? Because it would mean we are now pushing life to be a net CO2 producer. Rather than draw down CO2 between eruption events, we are keeping it stable and adding. The eruptions will still come so the CO2 positive aspects of the natural system remain meaning we might be pushing ourselves far outside of the relatively comfortable equilibrium that’s been at play for the last half a million years or so.
What is the upward limit of the biosphere given different levels of temperature, humidity, precipitation, and CO2.
Well clearly physics would say the most CO2 you can have is 1 million parts per million. Beyond that we know CO2 will suffocate us at some point between that upper limit and the current 800 ppm. No doubt life on earth can exist at more than what we have now but that’s not really the question. We’d like life to continue to exist, of course, but we’d also like to be comfortable for people like us and our civilization. Bob’s eagerness to see half of North America covered with an ice sheet notwithstanding.
From a conservative point of view, we don’t really know the consquences of pushing CO2 ever higher. This argues for setting systems in place now to try to limit that. Should the opposite case turn out to be, that we need more CO2 to dodge natural ice ages and such it’s really easy to change course….a gallon of oil or coal not burned today doesn’t disappear. It can just as easily be burned in 2020 or 2050. Put the systems in place now, figure out what the bugs are and if it turns out the next ten years of data and research show we are in deep trouble then at least we have a head start on clamping down on CO2. If not then issue more carbon credits and we keep the system in place but loose until we are sure.
Most supporters of climate policy are not claiming the skeptics are right about the uncertainity. Considering how complex these systems are its clear this is no simple model. The problem is with skeptics claiming uncertainity merits assuming no problem and not even baby steps at a solution.
Boonton
“Whose this ‘we’ that had them before? ‘We’ meaning a modern developed civilization have never had an Ice Age. ”
Have a look at just how much of our present civilisation exists close to sea level.
Then look at the sea level change at the end of the Ice Age.
Archaeologists can’t exactly do much research at such depths even today.
So we don’t know the extent of development in the past, yet the fact that we can’t manipulate stone (e.g. massive granite chests with lids weighing tons, and which have perfect, and airtight joins) like the Ancient Egyptians, even today, are among the things that beg some pretty big questions.
“but that is a long way from saying it wouldn’t represent a massive cost (which likewise means a massive expense would be justified to avoid it). Ditto for rapid warming.”
Evolve, adapt, sieze the opportunities. Don’t waste money fighting Nature to avoid what Nature wants, work with it. I was taught this at an early age as a competition swimmer and trained lifesaver (any lifesaving tests, I went in for, and qualified with them all). Don’t fight the current. I have had to watch someone drown, while myself and others watched helpless, but tried to shout instructions what to do to live. There were two in the water, on a freezing day. One lived, one died.
It was all I could do to stop myself going in, yet I managed to stop a few others going in as well so the result was +4, and -1.
We would have had to fight our way through a strong current to try to get to those in trouble, and they were in trouble because they were fighting the current. Bear in mind I was a very strong swimmer, yet I knew, if I had gone into that water, within 200 yds, I would have been in deep trouble too.
So I watched a guy drown.
Even being +3 up, is cold comfort, I can assure you.
Similarly, we cannot justify outrageous expenditure on measures that most certainly will not avoid the inevitable, and we most definitely cannot justify interference in the Right to Life, the Right to Liberty, and the Right to Property, that accompanies this ‘pretence’ of being able to make a difference.
I don’t vote for tyranny in any guise, and tyranny is precisely what we face, in this disguise called ‘Climate Change’.
I never though I would hear this again!!!!!!!!!
rbateman (20:05:10) :
ben wilson (17:47:18) :
What about the lagging CO2 levels? What are the theories for that?
Simple volatility. It takes hundreds of years worth of temps low enough to freeze out C02 at the poles and keep it there, along with a much colder oceanic temp to suck in more C02. The only thing it’s saying is that C02 isn’t gulped out of the atmosphere/biosphere overnight
I thought we had finished with CO2 freezing out of the amosphere when temps fall below -78.5C!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s a larf a minute here!
@Profarmer, you failed to demonstrate how what I put forward is a false premise. I am asking, how WILL efficient/cost effective ways of generating power materialize, when we pull the plug on research toward it, and while we continue to subsidize and support non-efficient and non-renewable power?
You said “Nobody want’s to stop anybody from developing anything” yet that’s precisely the outcome of the skeptics’ efforts. The solutions to clean, efficient and renewable energy aren’t going to just fall out of the sky. What I am saying is that I don’t want to be caught paying 4 times more for gasoline and coal 40 years in the future with NO alternatives.
For my part, I have no problem with nuclear power, but we have to seriously rethink how we go about handling and processing spent fuel, i.e. recycling it more effectively, to reduce the waste and possibility of contamination as much as possible.
@David, again, my impetus argument is no strawman. It’s fact that we’ve made bad policy decisions in the past to pull the plug on pursuit of renewable alternatives, and it’s fact that we’ve made bad policy decisions in the past to subsidize non-renewable energy at the expense of alternatives. Regardless of past historic temperature trends, we need to be able to prepare for future energy needs, and this going around saying “climate change is a scam” is completely counterproductive to solving future energy needs.
I said nothing whatsoever about droughts, floods, et cetera, so it makes little sense for you to be attacking me on this. I would however point out that an instance of North Dakota flooding or freezing is not ‘global’ nor is it indicative of a trend – it is regional and is a single event, and let’s please not be myopic here and muddle the issues, as it’s even worse ‘science’ to take a single isolated event in time and geography and then attempt to extrapolate it out across the entire globe and into future decades than to depict an out-of-context “hockey stick” of historic data as is being pointed out here.
And for Nick Stokes, the point being made is that the Earth’s climate state is the ice house climate, not the interglacial climate. It also seems from past evidence that the greenhouse effect is incapable of overcoming the processes that cause icehouse.
I find it particularly interesting that there are extreme drops in temperature corresponding with the Bronze Age Collapse in the Mediterranean, as well as the Western Roman Empire.
RE: “The real problem in an Ice Age would come from the competition for resources that are suddenly more scarce combined with nuclear weapon technology.”
Yes indeed. And even an LIA type event would unleash this. It’s coming and there is nothing we can do to stop it.
Boonton (07:24:11) :
No the bulk of natural CO2 is recycled… Yes there is no law that gurantees all natural processes net out to exactly 0 but they tend to be in rough balance. Humans are responsible for the majority of the unrecycled CO2.
That is a completely nonphysical viewpoint. I tried to explain how systems behave in the real world. Let me try again.
Balance in nature does not happen by luck. Equilibria are achieved because two forces push against each other with equal force. Suppose you have two equally stiff springs attached to opposite sides of a table, stretched so that where they both attach to a mass at the center of the table. The stretch forces cancel out, leaving the mass in place at the equilibrium in the center. Now, just because the spring forces cancel does not mean that you can push the mass, and it will just slide right off the table. When you push on it, you create an imbalance, and the mass will move just far enough that the force from the spring being stretched will cancel the force you are applying.
For example, let’s say the spring force on each side is 20 N in equilibrium, and each spring is stretched 1 meter, giving a linear spring constant of 20 N/m. Lets say you reinforce one side by shortening one of the springs by 3%, i.e., by 0.03 meters. You have then, at the old equilibrium point, added 0.03*20 = 0.6 N. There is a net force acting on the mass now, and a net force acts to accelerate mass. Will we therefore accelerate the mass right off the table? Of course not. We will move it until the spring forces cancel again, i.e., to the point K*(1-x) = K*(1+x-0.03) or x = 0.03/2 = 0.015 meters from the center in the direction of the shortened spring. You’ve applied 0.6 N out of 20 N, a 3% increase, from one side, yet you only moved the mass 1.5% of the distance to the side.
Valkyrie Ice (03:29:40) :
Gravity has been measured directly via torsion balance on uncharged spheres. It isn’t electrical.
Have a look at just how much of our present civilisation exists close to sea level.
Then look at the sea level change at the end of the Ice Age.
Yes and because 10,000 years ago small villages of 100 people or less had no problem moving 10, 20, or 30 miles as water lines shifted hardly means it would be no big deal to simply move the developed coastlines of the US 10 miles over 10 years (or even 30 years for that matter). Granted it wouldn’t be an extinction level event but it would be bad.
Evolve, adapt, sieze the opportunities. Don’t waste money fighting Nature to avoid what Nature wants, work with it.
This is a niece prep talk but I don’t know what it has to do with global warming. It’s not about ‘fighting nature’ but about trying to properly take costs into account….that has a lot to do with siezing opportunities BTW.
Bart
That is a completely nonphysical viewpoint. I tried to explain how systems behave in the real world. Let me try again.
I’m not seeing your point. Clearly there are massive natural forces that put CO2 in the air and massive forces that take it out. If they weren’t in a rough balance our atmosphere would either have no CO2 at all or would be filled to the brim with CO2. A rough balance simply means they tend to cancel out, there might be some periods where a bit more goes in than comes out and vice versa so 800 ppm CO2 is not a constant like, say, the speed of light. That’s all I meant.
The statement Gore made that humans are responsible for the majority of CO2 is correct if you’re asking what is responsible for the net increase in CO2. If you’re asking what produces the bulk of the gross CO2 put into the air in any given period of time then Gore’s answer would be incorrect. Its the former, though, that is relevant.
A rough balance simply means they tend to cancel out…”
The point is that, any additions do not simply integrate independently of the natural forcings. They become part of the system. And, to affect the system substantially, they have to be substantially on the order of the natural forcing.
But, anthropogenic forcing is not substantially on the order of the natural forcing. At all.
“The statement Gore made that humans are responsible for the majority of CO2 is correct if you’re asking what is responsible for the net increase in CO2.”
No. He isn’t. It is a hypothesis based on a kluge, not a proven fact.
Boonton,
I saw that you tried to refer to wikipedia.
Let me explain something about Wikipedia;
Wikipedia is a nice place to find info on for example dead things. Like planes, cars, boats. But it is no place to go if you want to find facts where there is politics involved. Many historic data cannot be looked up there.
The last place to go regarding global warming is wikipedia.
Or anything that can be coupled to global warming.
Try yourself to put that article on top here in Wiki. It wont last long. I few minutes, is my guesswork. Unless something has changed lately.
I tried to put stuff there, and it was removed within 5 minutes. Thrust me, Wiki has a gatekeeper there, making sure nothing is put there, that isnt political correct regaring global warming.
Yeah!
With analyses like this, there is not really any need for radiative physics, is it?
“Present” is assumed to be 1950 in this plot:
(Present might be different in ice cores but does not make much difference)
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/1373/gisp2moderngrnlnd.png
This appends a shifted (-29degC) measurement from modern Greenland on to the end of the misrepresented plots made here.
As can be seen even this crude addition shows modern temperature at 1degC above the MWP.
Todays temperature is in fact as high as any in the last 2000 yeats. In the period of the core there are only 3higher temperatures (5900BC,4975BC, 1347BC).
Comments?”
OK – I’ll bite
1. So you admit there are periods in the past, when the temperature was higher? What was the reason?
2. Does anyone know how close to the green bits of Greenland (back when Greenland used to be green) this ice core is?
3. How closely correlated is ice core data with the appended modern measurement data? The appended data indicates what appears to be a dramatic warming followed by a dramatic cooling followed by another dramatic warming. It seems much more variable than the ice core data.
4. You mention this is a ‘crude’ addition you have done. How would you get it more accurate?
I would like to add some more on Wikipedia;
I never tried to add my own entry from scratch.
What I did was trying to add some issues regarding global warming in an already existing entry.
It was no inflamatory stuff, just a reference indicating that there might be other explanations too.
But it was removed within 5 minutes.
As I understand , there are three main Global Temperture datasets :
* The University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climate Research Unit
* NOAA/GHCN, the Global Historical Climate Network
* NASA/GISS, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies
The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the University of East
Anglia’s Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU) receives almost all of their raw
data from the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) , which is part of NOAA !
Since the big debacle about the ‘ Hockey Stick ‘ theory , maybe the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration decided to rather have other agencies devise the hockey stick , the NOAA had decided to do it for them ?
One point. In ice core and geological records, “before present” generally means before 1950. For example, from an article on GRIP ice cores “BP refers to 1950 for both ice core and 14 C yr (which are uncalibrated).” From an article on Taylor Dome ice cores, “The data set consists of depth (m), ice age (kyr BP 1950) …”
As a result, your dates are all off by 59 years. Your “Hockeystick” rise shown above began in 1778, and the most recent date in the record is 1855.
Other than that, great presentation.
Dr. Lurtz (17:39:42) : “During an eclipse, the temperature in the tropics drops 20 degrees F in 15 minutes. How can a rational person not know that the Sun controls our climate?? ”
Unfortunately Doc, the sun didn’t change during the ecilpse. It was the insolation that changed due to the moon. This is the crux of the ongoing discussion involving cloud cover.
These may be a dumb questions, but:
1. How in the heck can you get a historical temperature reading from a chunk of ice?
2. From what I can see, the “hockey stick” and other variations are less than half a degree. Doesn’t this fall within “experimental error” or “instrument noise”?
3. Here on my deck, the temperature in the morning is around 10 degrees C; at 3 in the afternoon it is around 35 C. So what is the big deal if the earth warms up one or two degrees?
Please explain????
could someone explain the numbers on the right of the graph because they make no sense to me.
Boonton (11:55:14)
‘This is a niece prep talk but I don’t know what it has to do with global warming. It’s not about ‘fighting nature’ but about trying to properly take costs into account….that has a lot to do with siezing opportunities BTW.’
Seizing opportunities,BTW, is the problem at the expense of consumers and tax payers. The Co2 warming alarmist want the consumers and taxpayer to pay trillions to combat at slight increase in temperature caused by doubling of Co2.
Who will benefit? Wall Street, the same ones who gave us the housing bubble, big business, like GE. our government, with a new tax system and control that will rival income tax, and other special interest groups, like third world dictators who kill and mane their citizen.
Yes sir folks, give me that good old fashion Co2 Cap and trade. Like the one that Enron wanted.
Onion (14:45:34) :
plot:
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/1373/gisp2moderngrnlnd.png
This appends a shifted (-29degC) measurement from modern Greenland on to the end of the misrepresented plots made here.
1. So you admit there are periods in the past, when the temperature was higher? What was the reason?
No idea, but as someone pointed out temperatures seem to act like an underdamped electronic resonant circuit with ringing. Look at the response to the end of younger drias transient.
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/histo2.png
If the climate is reacting like an underdamped circuit then it shows that it could easily be pushed into wild oscillation!
3. How closely correlated is ice core data with the appended modern measurement data? The appended data indicates what appears to be a dramatic warming followed by a dramatic cooling followed by another dramatic warming. It seems much more variable than the ice core data.
The further north you go it seems that warming in the 40’s gets bigger almost reaching current temperatures.:
this is nordik temps below 50 metres asl
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/5748/nordikbelow50m.png
above 50m asl
http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/5932/nordikabove50m.png
all heights but further north than 60N
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/6634/nordikabove60n.png
All heights but further South than 60N
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/7210/nordikbelow60n.png
4. You mention this is a ‘crude’ addition you have done. How would you get it more accurate?
All I did was chose a long record station as close as possible to the grip sample site. However, the station is presumably costal and low altitude whereas gisp is at a few 1000metres asl. No modification of either data was made to account for this. The station temperature is nearly 30deg C warmer than the core temps.
Dr. Ross Taylor (17:15:49) :
Thank you for this excellent piece of realism.
Sigh…Al Gore, on CNN yesterday, pronounced to the world that humans were responsible for the majority of CO2 in the atmosphere. Of course, no-one picked up on it. I could not believe what I was hearing:
“CHETRY: And that goes along with what David in Arizona asked you. He wants to know, please tell us what percentage of carbon dioxide is caused by human activity relative to other sources of carbon dioxide.
GORE: Well, the majority of it is caused by human activity…”
Sigh, Al, Al, Al, surely even you know that humans contribute only 3.225% of CO2, whereas 96.775% is entirely natural. Since when is 3% a majority?
3% is a majority when a Progressive wants something. If they can stifle debate, if they can create a “consensus” among a small group without the media showing just how small that group is, if they can hide the 96.775% with large words and lengthy commentary like Gavin Schmidt did in the interview above being allowed 5 times as much air time to state theory as fact. I like Dr Christie but he is not good for TV interviews. He was quite passive.
The following story was related to me by a friend who works at a large research university that is up to its eyeballs in environmental nonsense generally and AGW in particular: “We were interviewing prospective graduate students. So in walks this student who, after the usual pleasantries, announced that she wanted to study the consequences of global warming. ‘And what will you do,’ I asked, ‘if the climate cools?’ She looked at me disbelieving. So I pulled out a copy of Alley’s book, The Two Mile Time Machine and showed her a couple of figures that cover the material treated here. She looked at them, muttered something about not knowing much about paleoclimatology and ended the interview. I’ve often wondered as to her reaction on learning (if she ever did) that global temperatures, at least for the present, have stabilized.”
To my friend’s account, I would add two observations of my own, probably familiar to most posters here.
The first is that there is independent evidence for climatic cooling in Greenland as the MWP transitioned to the LIA. The evidence is in the form of changing carbon isotope ratios in Viking bones exhumed from a Greenland graveyard. These data allow one to conclude that with the passage of time, the settlers got more of their food from the sea and less from terrestrial sources, i.e., presumably in the form of milk and meat from their livestock. This, of course, is what you would expect if the climate cooled. A good reference is Arneborg, J., et al. 1999. Change of diet of the Greenland Vikings determined from stable carbon isotope analysis and 14C dating of their bones. Radiocarbon. 41: 157-168.
My second observation is that warmists familiar with the Greenland Viking / LIA story will tell you that these were local phenomena, which is why Mannian hockey sticks are so important to their argument. JoNova gives a good review of the evidence refuting this claim, <i.e., that the MWP was a world-wide phenomenon.
” mrmetreon (17:03:18) :
could someone explain the numbers on the right of the graph because they make no sense to me.”
They appear to be meaningless they don’t appear to be C of F and the numbers descend which makes no sense, if the graphs are meant to represent ascending temperatures. The Vostok image makes sense but that is someone else’s work the figures there are in C either side of a 0 mean.
What can you expect if you reference the work of Nano technology scientist rather than a climate scientist.
bill (18:05:28) :
If the climate is reacting like an underdamped circuit then it shows that it could easily be pushed into wild oscillation!
Ummm…. Doesn’t it already oscillate wildly? If you look at the temperature on a day to day basis for all four seasons, that is pretty apparent. In fact, it is often referred to as ‘noise’ or ‘weather’.
mrmetreon (17:03:18) – What numbers on the right of what graph? The graphs on this article don’t seem to have numbers on the right.
“And the following Little Ice Age is what killed them off, and caused widespread crop failures (and the consequent burning of witches) across Europe.”
Interesting that the current climate scare is also causing witch-hunts. Some things never change.
Boonton (09:43:11) :
“This hints that carbon is somehow very important to the system and both types of massive natural systems have been in rough balance for a very long time. At least in terms of human experience. Again if 500,000 years ago something wacky happened with CO2 and climate we weren’t around for it so whatever costs it imposed were born by animals and plants.”
Wrong. The historic record shows that CO2 has been many orders of magnitude bigger than it is now, so no ‘rough balance’ is in evidence. No catastrophic global warming either, so CO2 levels have only the smallest of effects on global temperature – H2O vapour is the major GHG.
Life on earth is only here now because it has evolved to cope with the changes seen in the past. Life can be found in the hottest desserts, and in the coldest places on Earth. Homosapiens can and does live successfully over a wide temperature range, so when climate changes, as it surely will, our descendants will find new ways to adapt. Species only evolve in response to environmental pressures. Without change they stagnate and little development happens.
“Stephen (20:37:27) :
” mrmetreon (17:03:18) :
could someone explain the numbers on the right of the graph because they make no sense to me.”
They appear to be meaningless they don’t appear to be C of F and the numbers descend which makes no sense, if the graphs are meant to represent ascending temperatures. The Vostok image makes sense but that is someone else’s work the figures there are in C either side of a 0 mean.
What can you expect if you reference the work of Nano technology scientist rather than a climate scientist.”
The numbers on the LEFT side of the graphs are temperatures in degrees celsius, as can be read from the NOAA-archived source data file that the author used. But I suppose that “real” climate scientists such as yourself can’t be bothered with looking at the actual underlying data. Nor indeed with discriminating between left and right. You are aware that there are negative temperatures in the celsius temperature scale, aren’t you?
“jack1947 (02:28:38) :
This is all very intersting and excellently explained. Can we please have the sources/references for the various graphs (and data) used? Thanks”
If you follow the link to Mr. Halls Foresight Institute website, and then from there follow the links to the NOAA website (a little hard to see – they are not highlighted with bright colors, only with grey on white), you will find the data files that NOAA has archived, and the reference to the articles they are from.
“All I did was chose a long record station as close as possible to the grip sample site. However, the station is presumably costal and low altitude whereas gisp is at a few 1000metres asl. No modification of either data was made to account for this. The station temperature is nearly 30deg C warmer than the core temps.”
Cheers Bill
What would make your graph more informative is if you plot the gisp temperature going back as far as that record goes. If there’s some overlap with the core data, it will give some idea of correlation between the two data series
Martin B said “jack1947 (02:28:38) :
This is all very intersting and excellently explained. Can we please have the sources/references for the various graphs (and data) used? Thanks”
If you follow the link to Mr. Halls Foresight Institute website, and then from there follow the links to the NOAA website (a little hard to see – they are not highlighted with bright colors, only with grey on white), you will find the data files that NOAA has archived, and the reference to the articles they are from.
Many thanks, Martin. It is obvious when you look at it, but we are all speed readers these days. Sorry. This post is a critical part of the wider argument against the current scientific madness. The sources are critical to making our case v the AGW lobby.
This information has to have been available for a long time. This can’t be the first time we are seeing this. What is the epistle from the Church of AGW elders on this point?
Onion (02:32:59) :
What would make your graph more informative is if you plot the gisp temperature going back as far as that record goes. If there’s some overlap with the core data, it will give some idea of correlation between the two data series
Unfortunately there is no overlap between station and GISP.
GISP finishes 1854.9 and Angmagssalik station starts at 1895
There is no station available that overlaps GISP 1880 is earliest.
I’ve found the following article regarding methane release during previous warm spell:
“Based on this result and on the presented analysis, it appears that all areas north of 60°N will maintain permafrost at least at depth. North of 70°N, surface temperature values today are in general below -11°C. These areas should maintain their active layer. It appears unlikely that almost all areas with near-surface permafrost today will lose their active layer within the next 100 years”
“”A second, rarely touched upon question is associated with the apparently limited amount of organic carbon that had been released from permafrost terrain in previous periods of climatic warming such as e.g. the Medieval Warm Period or during the Holocene Climatic Optimum. There appear to be no significant CH4-excursions in ice core records of Antarctica or Greenland during these time periods which otherwise might serve as evidence for a massive release of methane into the atmosphere from degrading permafrost terrains.””
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/05/24/cooling-the-permafrost-scare/
These graphs should, if AGW was about rational thinking, put an end to the whole enterprise.
But that huge lack of rational thinking in the AGW community is a pretty big problem.
I sent someone to this link and he replies to me thus…
Looks like they cherry picked data, other icecores come out with different results. This is why I would only trust reviews that take into account lots of ice cores like the IPCC AR4.
…Would this ba a valid comment?
I haven’t had time yet to check into it all.
ChrisP.
Take a look at my analysis of dozens of ice cores and draw your own conclusions. http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf.
If you take a another step outside the earth-centric hubris of the alarmist and notice that the polar ice on Mars is melting you can triangulate the historic and local with the trans terrestrial.
Boontoon says: we don’t really know the consquences of pushing CO2 ever higher. This argues for setting systems in place now to try to limit that.
Wrong. There is no evidence whatsoever that higher atmospheric C02 levels are in any way a danger to mankind or the environment. On the contrary, there is plenty of evidence that the some 100ppm higher C02 levels are entirely beneficial, increasing plant growth rates substantially.
Trying to limit C02 is not only costly, it is insane, whether done by trying to limit fossil fuels or by geoengineering.
I am not sure now, are all the data shown in this presentation absolutely correct?
I arranged all the graphs on this post into a youtube video to post on my blog. Feel free to use it.
REPLY: Dear “Doc” Thanks very much for doing this, I had planned to do so but you saved me the trouble. I’ll make this it’s own post – Anthony
docattheautopsy – great stuff/blogged it.
This is all very interesting but, mostly irrelevant since climate change is no longer a science issue.
The totalitarian impulse that made hell on Earth for much of the 20th Century is resurgent. You can see that by looking at the proposed solutions to the alleged problem of global warming / climate change / name du jour. Basically, you will give your lives to these control freaks. How you live, where you live, even if you live will be decided by people who hate people.
The opportunists who see profit in this scam – the carbon traders, the third world tin pots looking for “compensation” and so on – are the useful idiots for the anti human totalitarians.
To answer the question on nanotechnology: 1/3 of US energy consumption is used to make steel from iron ore and coal. The process used essentially “burns” the iron ore, which is incredibly energy inefficient. Nano lets you do the same thing at a fraction of the energy, and lets you separate out the iron atoms from the chrome, carbon, etc. So one can regenerate new types of steel from the old.
the big problem IS how much energy is saved, and that all that existing steel can now get easily recycled: it means coal mines, ore mines, all the railroads used to move them, the furnaces, all get closed. So while the country as a whole comes out way ahead on energy costs, certain unions will NOT be happy.
So expect this technology to first be deployed in other countries (my bet is Mexico), and our unions to demand subsidies and tariffs to keep it out.
It’s a truly good wind that blows nobody ill…
*******
10 12 2009
Fred H. Haynie (08:03:59) :
I produced a pdf presentation. http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf. You may find answers to many of your questions there. If you wish to contact me, my e-mail address can be found on that site.
*******
Fred, that’s an impressive bit of analysis there! It looks accurate from a first pass. But I think Ferdinand Engelbeen (just do a search for his name here or Climateaudit) would disagree about the source of the current CO2 increase — his isotope-ratio arguments are pretty convincing that they’re from fossil-fuel combustion.
Are you saying some CO2 trapped in clathrates don’t end up showing itself? I’d presume the clathrate releases the gas when vaporized during the analysis, unless chemically changed.
For the technically inclined, I’d recommend people look at your extensive analysis and website.
Beng,
My analysis of the isotope data indicates that about one third of the CO2 accumulation is from organic sources and two-thirds from inorganic. Concetrations of both have been increasing at about the same rate indicating they are most likely coming from the same source (the ocean). Fossil fuels are not a source of the inorganic fraction. There is a lots of decaying organic matter in the oceans to be the source of C13 depleted CO2.
Clathrate hydrates are a liquid structure at atmospheric pressures and temperatures above about -30C. I have no idea what happens to them at temperatures and pressures in deep ice cores. The air bubbles are no longer a gas. The gas is extracted after the cores have been climatized to atmospheric pressures for a long time. As I understand it, the ice is crushed in a vacuum to extract the air without vaporizing the water. Am I wrong?
There was a professor in Australia (I think his name is Bob Carters or Carteres) who plotted the CO2 in the same graphs as shown here and he found that the increase in CO2 always lagged the warming period by a couple of hundred years, in other words: the increase in CO2 is a cause of global warming, not the other way around. Just as much as lung cancer does not cause smoking.
This makes sense from a chemistry point of view as I am sure a large portion of CO2 is dissolved in the oceans: CO2 + 3H2O =>CO3– + 2H3O+. If the oceans warm up, the equilibrium shifts in the opposite direction: CO3– + 2H3O+ => CO2 + 3 H2O
Henry Pool,
Didn’t you mean to say increased atmospheric CO2 is the result of global warming and not the cause?
The real interesting thing of all this, is how fast earth changes from glaciation to warm. You have to wonder, what was the sun doing that made that happen?
Perspective, something the lamestream media carefully factors out of their presentations.
@ Fred: yes, the record showed that increases in CO2 followed the warming periods.
This is where I blame Al Gore. He and the professors that helped him should have known this. In the movie they made it look like as if the temperatures went up the same time as when the CO2 went up. If he (Al Gore) did not know about this then, he should know the truth by now.
@tarpon
I found out hat most scientists skeptic of AGW think that climate is related to cloud formation. The more cloud formation, the more sunlight is deflected from earth. The less cloud formation the more heat is absorbed by earth (the oceans act as buffers for this energy). In its turn, cloud formation can apparently be related to solar activity. More solar wind means fewer cosmic rays and fewer cosmic rays mean fewer clouds. It is predicted that a period of more clouds is now coming, i.e. global cooling is apparently on hand.
Why stop the analysis during the Pleistocene? Look back even further to the Paleocene-Eocene global warming event:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum
So, speaking as a geologist, what is all the hysteria about? The only constant is change.
Fred – your work is spectacular. I have been saying for ages that the IPCC storyline on the rise in CO2 from anthropogenic sources is non-physical. I have discovered it is all based on a kluge which allow them to claim that anthropogenic and natural CO2 are taken up differently by the sinks, despite the fact that there is no difference beyond infinitesimal isotopic variation between them, and nature has no way of enforcing this “separate but equal” treatment.
Fred, a very quick search brought up a link:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icecores.html
that states:
The ice core was sliced into 1.5-2.0 meter segments. A discontinuous series sampled every 25 meters and a continuous series from 1,406 to 2,803 meters were then sent in solid form to Grenoble, France for further analysis.
At Grenoble the ice was put into clean stainless steel containers. The samples were crushed and then melted with the gases given off collected and saved for further analysis. The melt water was tested for chemical composition and then electrolysised.
From that short description, I can’t say if carbon could “hide” in the water as carbon compounds (tho the water was analysized). More searching should bring up further details.
Beng,
I don’t think all ice cores were treated with some standard procedure and they were not analyzed by a single laboratory. I wouldn’t put much faith in the accuracy of the science in your cited web page. For information on clatherate hydrates of CO2, study http://www.john-daly.com/zjiceco2.htm. My analysis tends to confirm the conclusions expressed there.
But none of this has stopped Copenhagen and it is there that political and economic decisions with far reaching consequences will be made.
Thank heavens the third worlders have walked out because of not enough cash.
Now what will it take to stop the big bananas from going?
look, I must admit that initially I also believed that carbondioxide was a cause for climate change as its properties to absorb heat are well documented.
However, the fundamental argument of the AGW theory is that this trace gas (at slightly less than 0.04% or 400 ppm) is THE key ingredient to controlling a massively complex system such as climate.
We are asked essentially to dismiss the effects of solar variations, orbital changes, cosmic rays, magnetic field changes, or many other variables and their inter- relationships. The main component of air, namely water vapor (average 1% in air and which is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2), is completely ignored.
The argument is absurd on its face.
But now,
those like me who stood by (thinking that we must trust the experts) have allowed this to happen. I did not check up on the science until far too late. Here is now a whole worldwide industry based on a simple set of misconceptions – and ….you just cannot stop it. It has a life of its own. It is like a (false) religion. People want to believe it. All you can do is you to just sit back and laugh…..
I never thought much of Sarah Palin but got more respect for her when she said: the science used in Copenhagen is agenda- based science. I think that is hitting the nail on the head.
Now the question is: whose agenda is it? Follow the money….it is all just like a simple detective story.
Question for climate illiterate: When I look at the above carts I see negative number on the left hand side. What do those numbers represent? Temperature? Why all negative?
Thanks for the great work.
I have a pretty dumb question…
The axes in the charts aren’t labeled, but it’s obvious that the x axis is the time frame. What is on the y axis?
Add to last: Never mind, I got it. Brain malfunction. It’s degrees C.
The IPCC says that their Global Circulation Models (GCMs), on which all the climate panic is based, can only explain the late 20th century global temperature rise from a human signal: the extra CO2 added by burning fossil fuels. Then, i suppose, the GCMs can also not explain all the other steep global temperature rises during the Holocene, other than by some unnatural forcing. What forcing is that? Or is the answer that they simply cannot explain, so the models must be inadequate?
Can anybody tell me what the warmist’s reply to this dilemma is? I’m really curious.
henry @ frans
you should have a close look at all that work from Fred
http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf
he determined exactly by data analysis what I sort of felt instinctively!
Amazing!
henry@ frans
By the way, if you do look at Fred’s work, note that SST stands for Sea Surface Temperature.
Frans,
The IPCC models claim to show an anthropogenic signal because they are not programmed to account for all the natural changes. A good model that one can use for prediction should be able to fit all the data including historical past. The alarmist have chosen to average out MIA and LIA to produce “hockey sticks” to fit the models. There is no way they can filter out ice ages and claim that their models are any good.
Anthony: I linked your article to a nephew, who had this to say,”This interpretation goes against all other NOAA data I can find. I’d welcome a more substantial source!”
Can you help us?
I misstyped in my last comment. I intended to type MWP rather than MIA. However, it could stand for the “Missing In Action” “Medevil Warm Period”.
this is all true
I know no one will ever read this but I have always wondered what testing nuclear weapons in the ocean might of had to do with El Nino’s and the like. Dead fish, currents, You know those kind of things.
I have asked myself that very same same question. Not only the killing of flora and fauna due to the radiation of the nuclear explosions but also the blasts itsself, could this not have been a cause of more instability of that ocean’s floor in terms of earthsquakes, tsunamis, volcanic activity, etc.?
I suppose those who know or suspect something will keep quiet about it.
(we are talking mainly about the Indian ocean here)
Could we not asks the dates of the blasts (from the governments of England, France and USA) and try to correlate this to any of the data that you found fishy? Pun intended
You should challenge Wikipedia’s version of the past 1000 years. They’re supposed to be neutral:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
They claim to compile nearly a dozen different 1000+ year peer-reviewed temperature reconstructions into one graph. Funny, none of those graphs remotely resemble this graph….But I’m sure they’ve all made a major mistake that the Greenland core data here caught.
The question in my mind is not how frequently temperature might swing over 500, 1,000, or 10,000 years; but how well species can adapt to a possible 1, 2, or 3 degree change over 100 years…while we’re demanding exponentially more production out of arable land over time. I’m sure its nothing to worry about. We won’t be alive anyway if something hits the fan. Let’s leave any potential problems to our kids…like social security.
I suspect that the graph on Wikipedia is a ‘global” average if that is possible,
i.e. they just used the South Pole measurements and the Greenland ice cores to make a an average?
You should read Fred’s analysis of all available data (as discussed earlier).
he concludes that there are thousands of temp. cycles with swings of around 2 degrees.
( Ithink this is why Copenhagen decided on that figure (of 2 degrees)
Apparently a statistically significant twenty year cycle tends to dominate sea surface temperature change rates of about 0.14 degrees C/year. We are now in the middle of this and can expect a downswing (I think it has already started in the US and Europe? – seeing that it is so cold now there….)
I think many species can adapt but low lying areas can be a problem in a warm period due to flooding.
Interesting graphs which apparently come to the same conclusion as I did that the climate is not quite at the end of a warm spot and due, around 2040, to get a lot colder.
The hockey stick much vaunted by global warming activists doesn’t quite reflect reality. My calculations, using a 55 year average of Greenland ice core results show a cycle of temperatures swinging regularly up and down with the swing getting progressively bigger. Overall there seems to have been a 0.1°C temperature rise since 1250 and the ‘swing’ is about to swing downward.
I am a little concerned about the data source for the graphs though. My understanding is that the ice cores from Greenland are not available for 40,000 years. How about quoting the data source as a web link?
I’m not sure if someone else mentioned this and I didn’t read all the other comments. But I do have a bad habit of noticing patterns.
In the last graph in the article, look at the duration between temp peaks. I know the original summation is that the Earth is more often in cool periods, with a temp spike that looks a lot like a normal heart rhythm on an EKG monitor. Look at the current conditions and the width of time to the previous spike. We about due for a cold plunge. And CO2 levels have nothing to do with it, other than as a consequence of temp change. Whether temp changes causes CO2 change (good evidence for that, at least coincidentally, from the Vostok record) or as a coincidence based on volcanic emissions, CO2 does nothing to change overall climate. It would appear that we are headed for another cool period, just based on the pattern of the graph.
Ron, I did a study on my own and came to the conclusion that CO2 has little or nothing at all to do with global warming. If global warming is real then it must be all the energy and water vapor producing activities that we are putting in the atmosphere, – which would mean that the only the energy that we steal from nature i.e. solar, wind, hydro, gravity etc) is green. (remember that nuclear needs a lot of water to cool and rocket fuel also makes water vapor). Water vapor is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 and its concentration in the air is between 25 and 50 times greater than CO2.
In the course of my investigations I found that most scientists skeptic of AGW think that climate is related to cloud formation. The more cloud formation, the more sunlight is deflected from earth. The less cloud formation the more heat is absorbed by earth (the oceans act as buffers for this energy). In its turn, cloud formation can apparently be related to solar activity. More solar wind means fewer cosmic rays and fewer cosmic rays mean fewer clouds. It is predicted that a period of more clouds is now coming, i.e. global cooling is apparently on hand. (I know some people in the northern hemishere who might actually not like to hear that!). Let us hope that the cooling wiil not be as dramatic as before? I think for the big dips in the last graph there must be specific reasons that start off the big freezes, like orbital position (Markovnikov). You are right, it looks like we are a bit overdue for a dip…..
There was a professor in Australia (I think his name is Bob Carters or Carteres) who plotted the CO2 in the same graphs as shown above and he found that the increase in CO2 always lagged the warming periods by a couple of hundred years, in other words: Increases in CO2 followed global warming, not the other way around. Just as lung cancer does not cause smoking.
This makes sense from a chemistry point of view as I am sure a large portion of CO2 is dissolved in the oceans: CO2 + cold 3H2O =>CO3– + 2H3O+. If the oceans warm up, the equilibrium shifts in the opposite direction: CO3– + 2H3O+ +heat => CO2 + 3 H2O
This is where I blame Al Gore. He and the professors that helped him should have known this. In the movie they made it look like as if the temperatures went up the same time as when the CO2 went up. If he (Al Gore) did not know about this then, he should know it by now.
Are you people now also beginning to wonder: who is benefiting from keeping up this CO2 and carbon footprint nonsense? What a waste of ….energy! I am sure a few simple tests can prove that CO2 is not to blame.Here is now a whole worldwide industry based on a simple set of misconceptions (like testing done with 100% CO2 and weighting of global warming influence of CO2 by comparing the current CO2 concentration with that of 1750) – and ….you just cannot stop it. It has a life of its own. It is like a (false) religion. People want to believe it. All you can do is to just sit back and laugh…..
Just a correction.
The vikings did not settle Greenland in the MWP, as you sugggest in figure 2.
But at the end of the 900’s, which is at the end of the huge spike in figure 3.
Keep it correct.
The data, by your own admission, give ” us about as close as we can come to a direct, experimental measurement of temperature at that one spot”.
At that one spot? I thought global warming was, um, global, not at one spot. I don’t understand, therefore, how these diagrams are refutations of global warming.
John, the point of the graphs was just to show that climate does not stand still. The last graph (from Antarctic ice) shows this better.We must be thankful that we have a warm period. From the graphs, it would seems we are due for dip. I hope this has not already started. I heard someone complaining thet they have the evidence of “global warming” lying on the streets, for weeks now. By the way, it seems that the cold weather that the northern hemisphere is experiencing seems pretty global. Even here in South Africa it is a cooler than usual. It means that that tipping point that we all talked about (which happens to coincide with an increase earth albedo) and which started in 2003 has been again confirmed. I predict that soon we will be talking about global cooling and how we can protect earth from falling into a little ice age.
John!
here is an another example of that tipping point I spoke to you about
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/04/coal-creek-redux/#more-14815
watch this space: global cooling is coming. it is real. and this time it is not a hoax (like global warming).
omg
Great, hope some politicians will understand this as well. Truth is that All knows how to manipulate those dumheads.
Anyone notice that the graph stops at 1900?
How the Americans made ‘poppycock’ out of the Dutch word ‘pappekak’ (thin fluid shit) is beyond me, but may be the right word in this context. The world is covered with assholes and pink baby shit after all.
There seems to be an overall periodicity in the long-term, cf. the last plot. What is the cause for that? The sun?
Hi Wolfgang
I think this is due to the orbital position of earth, e.g.. the Milankovitch cycles.
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/584/19982009.jpg
Dr Climate, I like the graph, but I just want to be sure about the y axis. Is the unit on the y axis degrees C /100?
@ Henry Pool
Thank you for your answer…another thing I learned. 🙂
@ Wolfgang
sorry, one thing about wattsupwithtaht.com: there are an awful amount of postings and so much information to digest. If you (like me) are interested in global cooling, follow us now here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/11/ipcc-scientist-global-cooling-headed-our-way-for-the-next-30-years#comments