By Larry Bell
Dr. Christian Schlüchter’s discovery of 4,000-year-old chunks of wood at the leading edge of a Swiss glacier was clearly not cheered by many members of the global warming doom-and-gloom science orthodoxy.
This finding indicated that the Alps were pretty nearly glacier-free at that time, disproving accepted theories that they only began retreating after the end of the little ice age in the mid-19th century. As he concluded, the region had once been much warmer than today, with “a wild landscape and wide flowing river.”
Dr. Schlüchter’s report might have been more conveniently dismissed by the entrenched global warming establishment were it not for his distinguished reputation as a giant in the field of geology and paleoclimatology who has authored/coauthored more than 250 papers and is a professor emeritus at the University of Bern in Switzerland.
Then he made himself even more unpopular thanks to a recent interview titled “Our Society is Fundamentally Dishonest” which appeared in the Swiss publication Der Bund where he criticized the U.N.-dominated institutional climate science hierarchy for extreme tunnel vision and political contamination.
Following the ancient forest evidence discovery Schlüchter became a target of scorn. As he observes in the interview, “I wasn’t supposed to find that chunk of wood because I didn’t belong to the close-knit circle of Holocene and climate researchers. My findings thus caught many experts off guard: Now an ‘amateur’ had found something that the [more recent time-focused] Holocene and climate experts should have found.”
Other evidence exists that there is really nothing new about dramatic glacier advances and retreats. In fact the Alps were nearly glacier-free again about 2,000 years ago. Schlüchter points out that “the forest line was much higher than it is today; there were hardly any glaciers. Nowhere in the detailed travel accounts from Roman times are glaciers mentioned.”
Schlüchter criticizes his critics for focusing on a time period which is “indeed too short.” His studies and analyses of a Rhone glacier area reveal that “the rock surface had [previously] been ice-free 5,800 of the last 10,000 years.”
More here: http://www.newsmax.com/LarryBell/warming-global-climate/2014/06/17/id/577481/#ixzz355f6L5y2
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On Pierre Gosselin’s “No Tricks Zone” we have this:
Distinct solar imprint on climate
What’s more worrisome, Schlüchter’s findings show that cold periods can strike very rapidly. Near the edge of Mont Miné Glacier his team found huge tree trunks and discovered that they all had died in just a single year. The scientists were stunned.
The year of death could be determined to be exactly 8195 years before present. The oxygen isotopes in the Greenland ice show there was a marked cooling around 8200.”
That finding, Schlüchter states, confirmed that the sun is the main driver in climate change.
Today’s “rapid” changes are nothing new
In the interview he casts doubt on the UN projection that the Alps will be almost glacier-free by 2100, reminding us that “the system is extremely dynamic and doesn’t function linearly” and that “extreme, sudden changes have clearly been seen in the past“. History’s record is unequivocal on this.
Schlüchter also doesn’t view today’s climate warming as anything unusual, and poses a number of unanswered questions:
Why did the glaciers retreat in the middle of the 19th century, although the large CO2 increase in the atmosphere came later? Why did the earth ‘tip’ in such a short time into a warming phase? Why did glaciers again advance in 1880s, 1920s and 1980s? […] Sooner or later climate science will have to answer the question why the retreat of the glacier at the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850 was so rapid.”
On science: “Our society is fundamentally dishonest”
CO2 fails to answer many open questions. Already we get the sense that hockey stick climate claims are turning out to be rather sorrowful and unimaginative wives’ tales. He summarizes on the refusal to acknowledge the reality of our past: “Our society in fundamentally dishonest“.
– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2014/06/09/giant-of-geologyglaciology-christian-schluechter-refutes-co2-feature-interview-throws-climate-science-into-disarray/#sthash.z6pKzqtQ.dpuf
The knives will be out for him.
Reblogged this on New Life Narrabri and commented:
Swiss glaciers come and they go. The planet warms and it cools again. Scientists who are truthful are not popular in the global warming community!.
This is indeed great news, because it really cannot be refuted in any way. You cannot fake radiocarbon dating correlated with tree rings. Not the hockey stick tree rings, but just good old chronology done by counting back. Pretty hard to argue with. So what do they do? Make asses of themselves by heaping scorn on the discoverer.
Bravo Dr. Christian Schlüchter. Not just a fly in the ointment, but a goddamn jumbo jet.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7580294.stm, http://climateaudit.org/2005/11/18/archaeological-finds-in-retreating-swiss-glacier/
The Schnidejoch glacier, produced evidence of Roman & Neolithic people being active in the high Alps, back in 2003. Took the BBC another 3 years to notice this.
“Following the ancient forest evidence discovery Schlüchter became a target of scorn. As he observes in the interview, “I wasn’t supposed to find that chunk of wood because I didn’t belong to the close-knit circle of Holocene and climate researchers. My findings thus caught many experts off guard: Now an ‘amateur’ had found something that the [more recent time-focused] Holocene and climate experts should have found.”
.
Who does he think he is…..Alfred Wegener?
Best ignore him then I guess…..
The sun? What could the sun possibly have to do with the Earth’s climate? It’s literally(I could look it up) millions and millions of miles away.
================
“The year of death could be determined to be exactly 8195 years before present. The oxygen isotopes in the Greenland ice show there was a marked cooling around 8200.”
The sudden cooling around 8200 years ago has been known since about 1960. It even has its own Wiki page.
The warmth of the mid-Holocene is also well known, and was quantified in Marcott et al, who wrote
“Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<5000 years ago)
…
Current global temperatures of the past
decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values"
Sec 6.5.2 of the AR4 describes this period and its changes, including the 8.2K event, and sudden growth of sea ice about 5000 years ago.
Full marks to Dr. Christian Schlüchter. But the general point about existence of large glacial advance and retreat over thousands of years has been around for some time, at least to those who have eyes to read or ears to hear.
Example notes on archaeology from 9 years ago at
http://climateaudit.org/2005/11/18/archaeological-finds-in-retreating-swiss-glacier/
Also I recall remains of a Roman bridge being uncovered a few years ago below a retreating alpine glacier. Anyone recall a reference?
Full marks to Dr. Christian Schlüchter. But the general point about existence of large glacial advance and retreat over thousands of years has been around for some time, at least to those who have eyes to read or ears to hear.
Example notes on archaeology from 9 years ago at
http://climateaudit.org/2005/11/18/archaeological-finds-in-retreating-swiss-glacier/
Also I recall remains of a Roman bridge being uncovered a few years ago below a retreating alpine glacier. Anyone recall a reference?
Those darn flat earthers! Their backers, the Koch brothers have gone and fabricated physical evidence again. Good thing the enlightened climatocrats know what to do about inconvenient problems like this.
Nick, you are being obtuse.
But you know that.
hunter says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:13 am
Nick, you are being obtuse.
But you know that.
It’s nick’s own defense against going completely ga-ga.
I often ask warmistas whether they have heard of “Otzi” … and why he was discovered only recently …
but further on, I also ask them how he got there in the first place … and the possible circumstances about not only him being there, but clearly also his agressors …
the conversation usually ends there and then …
“Receding Swiss glaciers incoveniently reveal 4000 year old forests – and make it clear that glacier retreat is nothing new”
An estimate of the last 12,000 yrs temps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum#mediaviewer/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
Caption: “Temperature variations during the Holocene from a collection of different reconstructions and their average. The most recent period is on the right. Note that the recent warming is not shown on the graph.”
Significant that 4,000 yr old stuff is turning up
Swiss glacier Aletsch has been extensively studied by Holzhauser
http://archive.sciencewatch.com/dr/erf/2011/11feberf/11feberfHolz/
Boy, is he in trouble!
No! Really? You mean to say that what we’re supposedly experiencing temperature wise is NOT, repeat NOT unusual? Go figure! Next I’ll be starting to think that we know very little about how the Earth’s climate actually works! I may even begin to think that these warmista scientists are just in it for the money, salary, pension plan, self-agrandisement, because it is easier to go with the flow than stand against the tide! Maybe somebody is trying to pull the wool over our eyes for nefarious purposes because they have egos the size of the Universe & think they know what’s best for everyone else, & want people to bow down before them & worship them like idols! No, that’s going a tad too far me thinks……………….surely? (Sarc off!)
If Michael Mann had found the bits of wood he would have hidden them or turned them into hockey sticks and pucks.
“Dr. Schlüchter’s report might have been more conveniently dismissed by the entrenched global warming establishment were it not for his distinguished reputation as a giant in the field of geology and paleoclimatology who has authored/coauthored more than 250 papers and is a professor emeritus at the University of Bern in Switzerland.
I had read the fact that in Roman times the records and histories they left us told of an Alps with far less ice than now and trees higher up. But now a scientist decided to risk his considerable reputation by trying to put evidence of the warming into the record. Bravo!
Sadly, there are many inconvenient facts in science that get ignored if the fact goes against the prevailing paradigm. Science itself has the tendency to try to form a consensus and often does form some sort of general mythology that all must adhere to or be considered a “crank”.
I am hoping that over the next decade more and more open minded scientists from all disciplines will come forward and present honest data and their honest views. I am hoping the internet will help to make that possible and to help spread the word when it does happen.
Only in open, free, and honest debate can science and the knowledge of mankind move forward. Let us have more of it!
Quick, climate scientists, find a volcano from the period. Re-write the wiki. And don’t mention the Optimum. Scramble! What do you think you’re hired for? Now’s the time to pay for the free drinks at Cancun.
“Our society is fundamentally dishonest“.
Our scientific societies are fundamentally dishonest
This is not that unique an problem for warmists. In 1991 hikers in the Italian/Austrian Alps found a Bronze Age corpse named Ötzi was uncovered intact and in situ at the bottom of glacial melt. oops !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi_the_Iceman
How did Hanibul cross the Alps if they were deep in snow and ice? Why did the ice man undertake his journey if the route was deep in snow?
Answer— the snow was much higher up the mountains then.
Adam Gallon says:
The Schnidejoch glacier, produced evidence of Roman & Neolithic people being active in the high Alps, back in 2003. Took the BBC another 3 years to notice this.
Artifacts (and bodies) could have started on the top of ice and moved through it. What would be more solid evidence of the past being warmer would be buildings and other structures. e.g. Greenland.
Nick Stokes: thanks for that . . .
bah, my sentence structure sux….please excuse
Michael Asten says:
Also I recall remains of a Roman bridge being uncovered a few years ago below a retreating alpine glacier. Anyone recall a reference?
Which would be conclusive evidence that the glacier wasn’t there as recently as Roman times.
Most likely that any glacier was a distance from the bridge if it was intended to carry traffic. Possibly closer if the structure was part of an aquaduct intended to carry melt water.
It’s not as if the Romans would have dug through a glacier, built a bridge which could never be used (or seen), then refilled the hole.
Don’t confuse climate alarmists with facts and real data. It stops them from psychologically projecting their own failings onto their critics. It is much easier for them to ignore the scientific method and deny real evidence as they wrap themselves in imaginary scenarios that come out of computer climate models which have been coded to produce those scary scenarios.
Good stuff, but be reminded that the EPA is marching forward on GHG emissions. If we don’t find a way to stop it, this country will be shackled.
SO not only is the warmth not unprecedented. But the rate of increase is not even close to what has been experienced in the recent past.
Thanks for the great piece, but please correct the typo in the final (italicised) sentence, thanks.
Hmmm – unfortunately I have to agree with Nick Stokes on this one. The early Holocene climate and it’s causes are pretty well understood. Larry Bell’s report is misleading (at best) when he suggests that experts were caught “off guard” by Schlüchter’s discovery.
I didn’t know it was controversial that the holocene maximum (Holocene Climate Optimum, also known as Hypsithermal, Altithermal, Climatic Optimum, Holocene Optimum, Holocene Thermal Maximum, and Holocene Megathermal) was a warm period during roughly the interval 9,000 to 5,000 years B.P. and that it’s cooling since then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum
Alan the Brit: love the snark.
You have to love Rick Rokes. As someone on here mentioned before his name must be ‘adjusted’ by us ‘climatologicbloggers’ because he incorrectly wrote Nick Stokes in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013. Luckily we are here to correct his incorrect keystrokes. Raw names v Adjusted names, no difference the Adjusted names are more realistic because they fit well in my model.
Julius Caesar, in his “De Bello Gallico,” took great pains to describe in detail the flora, fauna and geographic encountered in his military campaign north of the Italian peninsula. He never mentioned glaciers- which surely would have been noteworthy features.
Thats actually quite funny, in a Monty Python sketch kind of way.
“Review of Holocene ‘Climate Optimum’ shows Temperatures 2°C hotter than Present”
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.dk/2010/11/review-of-holocene-climate-optimum.html
And yet this old stuff is turning up from under melting glaciers.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/holocene.html
“More over, we clearly know the cause of this natural warming, and know without doubt that this proven “astronomical” climate forcing mechanism cannot be responsible for the warming over the last 100 years.”
How much more reasoned evidence is required before the world at large recognises CAGW for the cynical fraud it is?
John Finn says: August 8, 2014 at 4:17 am
“Larry Bell’s report is misleading (at best) when he suggests that experts were caught “off guard” by Schlüchter’s discovery.”
Indeed. Here is a 2007 paper by mainstream paleo climate people which describes in detail finds from this period in receding Swiss glaciers, and the climatological context.
Some years ago, another Austrian glacial retreat uncovered an ancient mine, with stacked tools, etc. The miners left one day and never returned. Many such anecdotal examples of glacial ebb and flow have been found.
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:44 am
John Finn says: August 8, 2014 at 4:17 am
“Larry Bell’s report is misleading (at best) when he suggests that experts were caught “off guard” by Schlüchter’s discovery.”
Indeed. Here is a 2007 paper by mainstream paleo climate people which describes in detail finds from this period in receding Swiss glaciers, and the climatological context.
__________________
Bell did not suggest that experts were caught off guard, but instead, was reporting Schlüchter’s own words, which in proper context, do not say that the experts were caught off guard that such a discovery could be made…
I recall Rush Limbaugh from a couple years back describing the recent discovery of medieval silver mines in the Alps (?). The mine entrance was sealed and the tools were neatly stored waiting for the next summer period of mining when the snow line again receded high enough above the elevation to pack the mules with food supplies and make the trek up there. At some point the date was too late in the summer and it wasn’t worth going up there for only a few weeks so they skipped doing it that summer – and then another, and another … until NOW when it has warmed back up enough to reveal the silver mine still up there waiting for them to return a dozen generations later.
To me such accounts as that and revelations of ancient forests under glaciers are all irrefutable evidence of periods of warmer times in the past that simply obliterate CAGW theory. They should all be FORCED to admit that their theory cannot explain those warmer periods… before Congress.
David, UK, perhaps the original typist has a hairlip.
I recall a news article of several years ago of the Mendenhall glacial retreat uncovering a 1000 year old forest.
I’m surprised not to be able to find any photos of the recently discovered chunks of wood. Shouldn’t they exist somewhere?
Alan Robertson says: August 8, 2014 at 4:56 am
“Bell did not suggest that experts were caught off guard…”
He said:
“This finding indicated that the Alps were pretty nearly glacier-free at that time, disproving accepted theories that they only began retreating after the end of the little ice age in the mid-19th century.”
But he didn’t give any support for saying that those were the accepted theories. And they weren’t.
Nicely defined in Alley’s reconstruction of the Holocene.
http://i49.tinypic.com/oji4b7.jpg
Mike M says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:01 am
To me such accounts as that and revelations of ancient forests under glaciers are all irrefutable evidence of periods of warmer times in the past that simply obliterate CAGW theory. They should all be FORCED to admit that their theory cannot explain those warmer periods… before Congress.
________________
That would give Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and his cohorts another excuse to stand up and prevaricate about global warming and why you must be made to give up your money and your freedom.
So Bell reported that part of the interview “out of context”.. I’d say that’s misleading. Bell did also write
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:10 am
But he didn’t give any support for saying that those were the accepted theories. And they weren’t.
__________
What purpose is served with your employment of a logical fallacy?
Mike M says: August 8, 2014 at 5:01 am
“To me such accounts as that and revelations of ancient forests under glaciers are all irrefutable evidence of periods of warmer times in the past that simply obliterate CAGW theory. They should all be FORCED to admit that their theory cannot explain those warmer periods… before Congress.”
AGW theory is about what happens when you dig up and release a whole lot of new carbon (as CO2) in the air. This hasn’t happened before. It is not about the complete climatic history, which has obviously varied a lot in the past, without fossil fuel release. Noone contests that. That doesn’t mean burning FF won’t make the climate warmer.
I think that the issue here isn’t that the facts here aren’t known, but the way they are treated. One can find literally hundreds of places where climate scientists who — given inconvenient facts like these — should know better assert that the modern warm period is the warmest in the entire Holocene. This specific assertion is implicit (or, often, explicit) in all of the hypothetical dangers of SLR that are amplified out of all proportion to observation including these past intervals of thousands of years of greater warmth, implicit in all of the hypothetical risks to existing species and extinction, implicit in all of the supposed devastation warming will wreak on the most flexible and adaptable species on the planet (us) and generally presented without any discussion of the possible counterbalancing benefits. As you say, there is plenty of evidence that this is not true, that the Holocene Optimum lasted for thousands of years and was degrees Centigrade warmer than it is today. Yes, it was probably hard on wooly mammoths and certain other large furry mammals who had adapted to the preceding 90,000 year Wisconsin glacial episode, but the exploding human population had a lot to do with that as well. It certainly didn’t wipe out polar bears or seals or penguins, and it did not suffice to melt either Greenland or Antarctica to the point where they were “ice free” (although Greenland was more free of ice as late as the MWP before the LIA iced it up again — following an ancient natural fluctuation of the climate).
No the issue isn’t that there isn’t a rather lot of evidence for all of this stuff, just as even Briffa and Jones sniffed and turned up there noses at Mann’s initial “erasure” of the LIA and MWP in his cooked PCA of the tree-ring data because they had all published numerous papers, including some that appeared in the same AR, clearly showing the MWP and LIA, which were known and corroborated by multiple data sources. It is that the IPCC didn’t choose their graphs as cover art. Nor did Al Gore, when he promoted public panic that fed directly into his own pocket via his investments in to-be-subsidized alternative energy sources while continuing to drive his SUV and to live in his enormous, energy-expensive mansion and to fly all over the world to his many speaking engagements, burning kerosene all the way way up in the stratosphere where it can screw up the GHE and ozone. And when the news media incorrectly and repeatedly report that tired old meme — that the modern warming is “unprecedented” and hence requires CO_2 for explanation — where, exactly are the honest climate scientists who stand up and refute these assertions on television and say sorry, that’s just not true and here’s why?
Then there are the SPMs in the ARs — which can best be described as a pack of lies dressed up in the misused language of statistics and which are not written by the scientists whose work they supposedly summarize, but rather by a tightly-knit group committed to selling the belief that It Is All Our Fault, whether or not the data supports this. Indeed, in spite of data that does not support this. Where are the honest scientists who call them on this abuse of language? Sure, in Chapter 9 of AR5 it is acknowledged that taking the mean of multiple models is meaningless and presents “challenges” (understatement indeed) in providing any sort of axiomatic statistical basis for assertions of confidence, but who reads the one paragraph where this is acknowledged? Instead they read the SPM where they cheerfully rattle off pronouncement after pronouncement of doom, all supported by assertions of “confidence” that the naive or ignorant might think are tied into a computation of the error function like they are everywhere else in statistics, instead of being tied into the personal opinions of the people permitted to write the SPM, who are hand-picked so that they don’t make inconvenient assertions like “we have no idea how accurate the models are going to be in the long run, or if they have any predictive value whatsoever, either individually or collectively”.
rgb
A similar message has emerged in Alaska:
“An ancient forest has thawed from under a melting glacier in Alaska and is now exposed
to the world for the first time in more than 1,000 years.
“Stumps and logs have been popping out from under southern Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier — a 36.8-square-mile (95.3 square kilometers) river of ice flowing into a lake near Juneau — for nearly the past 50 years. However, just within the past year or so, researchers based at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau have noticed considerably more trees popping up, many in their original upright position and some still bearing roots and even a bit of bark, the Juneau Empire first reported last week.”
http://www.livescience.com/39819-ancient-forest-thaws.html
John Finn says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:17 am
Alan Robertson says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:56 am
Bell did not suggest that experts were caught off guard, but instead, was reporting Schlüchter’s own words, which in proper context, do not say that the experts were caught off guard that such a discovery could be made…
——–
“So Bell reported that part of the interview “out of context”.. I’d say that’s misleading. ”
______________________
Nope. Bell did not report that portion out of context. That’s your own misinterpretation of what I said in rethe article content and comments here.
—————-
“Bell did also write
Dr. Schlüchter’s report might have been more conveniently dismissed by the entrenched global warming establishment…… ”
_____________
That’s right, but your reason for including that snippet remains unclear. Is there some conclusion to be drawn from those words?
Oh, you silly skeptics. This is just another example of regional climate change. Proxy studies indicate that this warming was strictly confined to Europe and the Arctic….and parts of North America…..and much of Asia….maybe the North Atlantic….the Pacific too….and some in the Southern Hemisphere, although not as much. REGIONAL! And it was offset by other ‘regional’ areas that were colder (although we haven’t really found those yet).
Today’s warming is GLOBAL! Granted, it is mainly been in Europe and the Arctic….and parts of North America…..and much of Asia….maybe the North Atlantic….the Pacific too….and some in the Southern Hemisphere, although not as much. But it is certainly GLOBAL! (You can tell the difference by my use of capitalization!)
(sarc off)
rgbatduke says: August 8, 2014 at 5:24 am
“One can find literally hundreds of places where climate scientists who — given inconvenient facts like these — should know better assert that the modern warm period is the warmest in the entire Holocene.”
Examples?
Where’s Mosh??
Oh well, I’ll carry on for him:
“one site”
/sarc
Nick Stokes says: August 8, 2014 at 5:22 am “AGW theory is about what happens when you dig up and release a whole lot of new carbon (as CO2) in the air. ….That doesn’t mean burning FF won’t make the climate warmer.”
No… it means that not only does there remain no empirical evidence that burning FF makes the climate warmer, there is abounding evidence that, whatever role ALL of CO2 plays in driving earth’s temperature, it is undeniably miniscule, unmeasurable and irrelevant – let alone the weenie amount we add to it by burning FF.
Nick Stokes says: August 8, 2014 at 5:22 am
That doesn’t mean burning FF won’t make the climate warmer.
Nor does it mean that burning FF will make the climate warmer.
Onus probandi. It’s up to AGW theorists to prove that burning FF will make the climate warmer.
Well they can certainly explain the mid-Holocene warming – right down to the exact regional warming pattern. I don’t know about the Rush Limbaugh silver mines, though. Do you (or does he) have a link?
@ Nick Stokes
Quick Question. CAGW / AGW is based on the hockey stick.
10,000 years of stable temperatures with a sharp current warming.
i.e the period were in is completely outside the realms of normal and the only thing that can be causing it is CO2……
If the historical climate has been just as warm as todays climate, if not far warmer….. AS these tree rings show.
We can’t prove than our current climate is unusual in any way at all.
Thus the theory of AGW fails.
Alan Robertson says: August 8, 2014 at 5:21 am
“What purpose is served with your employment of a logical fallacy?”
What is that fallacy?
t brandt: “Julius Caesar, in his “De Bello Gallico,” took great pains to describe in detail the flora, fauna and geographic encountered in his military campaign north of the Italian peninsula. He never mentioned glaciers- which surely would have been noteworthy features.”
Not that it’s important, but would you by any chance be able to cite an example by book and chapter?
Schlüchter has been finding stuff for a while, as have other people. My interest was piqued by two or three articles I read within a week’s time, and recorded them, and later ones, in Glacial Retreat of 5,000-7,000 Years Ago
Events are not limited to the Alps, for example, in Peru Lonnie Thompson found
Oetzi died during this period, his final resting spot was exposed 5500 years after his death.
A common theme of these articles is to report how anomalous our current temperatures are compared to the past. (Warmest in 7,000 years! Disaster is near!) Surprisingly absent is speculation that there may be more botanical and archaeological remains to be found should glaciers retreat further.
Jim Clarke says: August 8, 2014 at 5:33 am “Oh, you silly skeptics. This is just another example of regional climate change. Proxy studies indicate that this warming was strictly confined to Europe…”
Yeah.. and only for a few hundred years!
Nick, either CO2 is the control knob for warming or it is not. If the early Holocene was warmer than present, and periods later in the Holocene were close to if not as warm or warmer than present temperatures, and CO2 was not the driving factor for any previous times, then the claims that the present is unique, and CO2 is the main cause is not supportable. Even recent high rates of heating or cooling as being unique are not supported, and the current temperature flattening is a strong contradiction to claims of human effects being dominate. While the previous published reports do include some admissions of previous warm periods, the so called main stream conclusions still say that only human activity could be the cause for the present warming, and that we have to do something. It is the consensus position that seems to go against the clear facts that is the issue here.
kim says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:46 am
The sun? What could the sun possibly have to do with the Earth’s climate? It’s literally(I could look it up) millions and millions of miles away.
Yeah, and just go outside and look at it (but not too long) and you’ll see it is really quite small too.
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:38 am
Alan Robertson says: August 8, 2014 at 5:21 am
“What purpose is served with your employment of a logical fallacy?”
What is that fallacy?
__________________
My hard drive recently burned a valve and threw a rod, so I no longer have my lists of fallacies available. Why don’t we just call it the “move the goal posts” fallacy.
Wait for it … wait for it …But it’s only regional, not global.
Mike M says: August 8, 2014 at 5:35 am
“there is abounding evidence that, whatever role ALL of CO2 plays in driving earth’s temperature, it is undeniably miniscule, unmeasurable and irrelevant”
No, there is no such evidence. There has been nothing to change the amount of carbon in the environment in the last millions of years. Recently we have dug up 400 Gtons and burnt it. Radiative physics says that the extra CO2 will impede outgoing IR and cause warming. And indeed it has warmed. And we’re on track to burn a lot more C.
Kind of makes the recent paper posted here “Recent paper finds 1950-2009 Solar Grand Maximum was a ‘rare or even unique event’ in 3,000 years” look a little short sided.
————————————————————————————————————————–
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:22 am
“AGW theory is about what happens when you dig up and release a whole lot of new carbon (as CO2) in the air. This hasn’t happened before. It is not about the complete climatic history, which has obviously varied a lot in the past, without fossil fuel release. No one contests that. That doesn’t mean burning FF won’t make the climate warmer.”
Yes, Nick but warmer isn’t bad at all. And as you mention it is just a theory, and a failing one at that. Perhaps, as this article and other evidence shows, that temperatures since the LIA have been less than the norm for an interglacial and that the climate is getting back to where it should be (for an interglacial that is). So why the gigantic push to pretend to stop the warming? To instill a certain agenda which includes more government control. Does anyone still doubt that?
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:34 am
rgbatduke says: August 8, 2014 at 5:24 am
“One can find literally hundreds of places where climate scientists who — given inconvenient facts like these — should know better assert that the modern warm period is the warmest in the entire Holocene.”
———-
“Examples?”
____________________
Oh, that’s a neat, albeit well known trick. Why should we play Google for you? You already know of many instances which we could mention. After all, aren’t such examples found on your own website?
John Finn says: August 8, 2014 at 5:36 am “Well they can certainly explain the mid-Holocene warming…”
Huh? They never had to explain it because Michael Mann disappeared it! Yeah, “regional warmth” in places like in Europe, Machu Picchu, Alaska, Greenland, Tibet and the Vostok ice core record…
Nick Stokes (and indeed others) seem to be missing the point here: the evidence presented demonstrates that climate changes abruptly without human intervention. Indeed a great deal of evidence has accumulated by now (as can be seen if you browse WUWT) that world climate has changed abruptly many times without that intervention, and in spite of apparent atmospheric CO2 levels.
Stokes claims that the current warming is different in some way, when it is neither unprecedented nor unusual. Of course if you start from the assumption that climate change is caused by CO2…
But that assumption rests on the claim that current change is unprecedented, when the evidence demonstrates it isn’t, which leads to a circular argument now presented by Stokes: that the release of CO2 makes this change unprecedented, and that the unprecedented nature of that change is evidence that the release of CO2 is the cause.
Joe Born says: August 8, 2014 at 5:39 am
Not that it’s important, but would by any chance be able to cite an example by book and chapter?
For example, in book 6 chapters 25 to 28 Ceasar describes the “Hercynian forest” and some of the “wild beasts” which have not been seen in other parts. The “Black forest” formed the western side of the Hercyinian forest.
“extreme, sudden changes have clearly been seen in the past“. History’s record is unequivocal on this.” From the mouths of Siberian mammoths to God’s ears.
Last year, the Daily Mail carried an article regarding an archaelogical find in Norway. Some article of clothing (and possibly huiman remains) was found as one of the glaciers had retreated.
The clothing was carbon dated and found to be about 2000 years old. The conclusion was that the glacier was less extensive some 2000 years ago, and it is only now as the glacier is retreating that evidence of settlements sitting on the edge of this glcaier ar being revealed.
Of course, we also know that similar finds (but dating to the MWP) are being made in Greenland as the glacier there retreats,
It is clear that in the Northern Hemisphere that there have been many warmer periods in Northern Europe (Minoan, Roman, MWP) than the temperatures that we see today.
The position with respect to the Southern Hemisphere is less certain since it is more oceanic and civilisation was less advanced so there is less evidence of archaelogical finds pertaining to human settlements.
CO2 (if constant at pre industrial level) cannot explain any of this.
That a tree, or even several trees, would die within one year leads me to NOT consider it to be caused by a change in the Sun. A sudden cooling within such a short period of time is catastrophic. There are several other events to consider. A tsunami during a swing into a colder weather pattern, a nearby large volcanic event obscuring the Sun, a change to polar vortex loops extending South, a significant drop in solar recharge in the equatorial ocean band due to a catastrophically large equatorial volcanic event, etc…
Like the AGW scientists, solar proponents make sudden unjustifiable leaps into the cause.
Leonard Weinstein says: August 8, 2014 at 5:44 am
“Nick, either CO2 is the control knob for warming or it is not.”
That’s meaningless. The AGW theory is that adding CO2 will make it warmer. It does not say that warming could not be caused by something else.
“the so called main stream conclusions still say that only human activity could be the cause for the present warming”
Yes, that is based on the rapid rise consistent with AGW, and with no alternative explanation from present data. But it is not the proof of AGW, which is based on radiative physics.
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:22 am
That doesn’t mean burning FF won’t make the climate warmer.
====
You will let us know when it starts, right?
I am waiting for some climate scientist to publish a paper on what the optimum climate is for our biosphere. The first question that would naturally flow would be where is our current trend in relation to this finding.
That nobody seems interested in this vital comparison indicates that the climate is being studied for other purposes. Since all the urgent demands that flow from today’s climate science all converge on policy solutions that involve statism, bigger government, higher taxes, less personal liberty, the bigger picture tells me all that I need to know about “climate science”. It is socialism and Gaia worship by other means.
Nick Stokes says: August 8, 2014 at 5:48 am “Radiative physics says that the extra CO2 will impede outgoing IR and cause warming. “
Physics says that wood floats and ducks are like wood so if she’s lighter than duck she’s a witch!
Apparently simpleton applications of physics are unable to explain why natural climate forcings appear to to be MUCH stronger than any role CO2 can play. We are at ~400 ppm and still going up but warming stopped over 15 years ago. Why?
Don B says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:27 am
http://www.livescience.com/39819-ancient-forest-thaws.html
====
Don, thanks for that….it was funny
First they say an Alaskan glacier is retreating….and they are finding old big trees under it
…then they say they are worried about sea levels rising because of it
Then they say a neighboring glacier…right next door….is advancing and burying trees at the same time
Nick Stokes says:
No, there is no such evidence. There has been nothing to change the amount of carbon in the environment in the last millions of years. Recently we have dug up 400 Gtons and burnt it. Radiative physics says that the extra CO2 will impede outgoing IR and cause warming. And indeed it has warmed. And we’re on track to burn a lot more C.
Reply:
Sorry Nick, got to call you on that – how many gigatons of carbon were sequestered when glaciers buried ancient vegetation? And how many were removed from the atmosphere when the glaciers retreated and vegetation returned? And how many were recreated when animal life returned to breathe all that released oxygen, basking in the new warmth? I don’t have the skill to calculate it, but it’s just nonsense to say there are no drivers of carbon shifts since hydrocarbon storage millions of years ago.
Nick Stokes says: August 8, 2014 at 6:01 am “… with no alternative explanation..”
Yes there is! It’s called NATURE! It’s been going on for a long time. If human CO2 from FF has any affect on earth’s temperature you have miserably failed to prove that it is even measurable.
Why was the warming greater from 1910 to 1945 than it was from 1965 to 2000 when there was less CO2 in the earlier 35 year period? Do your precious computer models replicate that fact? Don’t think so. The central England temperature record shows that there is NOTHING “unprecedented” about the rate of warming and cooling cycles today – it’s just natural climate change. Accept it, we are NOT in control of the climate and there is nothing anyone can ‘do’ about it … other than pray that we do not enter another ice age.
t brandt says: August 8, 2014 at 4:27 am
“Julius Caesar, in his “De Bello Gallico,” took great pains to describe in detail the flora, fauna and geographic encountered in his military campaign north of the Italian peninsula. He never mentioned glaciers- which surely would have been noteworthy features.”
Here is a map of his campaigns, from this site. He crossed into Gaul via the coast. There is no reason to think that he came near any modern glacier sites.
Yes, but THIS time is different, because WE’RE doing it. Because shut up.
buckwheaton says: August 8, 2014 at 6:02 am “I am waiting for some climate scientist to publish a paper on what the optimum climate is for our biosphere. “
We’ll all have to remember to check in on you once in a while.
Taylor says: August 8, 2014 at 6:15 am
” Sorry Nick, got to call you on that – how many gigatons of carbon were sequestered when glaciers buried ancient vegetation? And how many were removed from the atmosphere when the glaciers retreated and vegetation returned? And how many were recreated when animal life returned to breathe all that released oxygen, basking in the new warmth?”
Well, we know that CO2 dropped (and then rose) by about 100 ppmv during the ice age. That’s about 220 Gtons C. And the temperature changed by about 6-8 °C, even though CO2 change was less than recent. CO2 may have had an effect, but it can’t have been the main cause.
rgbatduke says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:24 am
“I think that the issue here isn’t that the facts here aren’t known, but the way they are treated. One can find literally hundreds of places where climate scientists who — given inconvenient facts like these — should know better assert that the modern warm period is the warmest in the entire Holocene”.
Well said!
I would hope that Nick Stokes et. al. would come out and correct all those who have spread the misinformation, since they knew this all along. Why have they been silent?
It is time to set the record straight and admit that the Mann Hockey stick is wrong and stop the defense of the apparent errors and let the Administration be so informed.
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 6:01 am
Leonard Weinstein says: August 8, 2014 at 5:44 am
“Nick, either CO2 is the control knob for warming or it is not.”
“That’s meaningless. The AGW theory is that adding CO2 will make it warmer. It does not say that warming could not be caused by something else” <—–
The ENTIRE IPCC remit is that CO2 causes global warming.
This is such a ridiculous statement its insane.
We are taxed based on CO2 already in the UK.
Right nick…
Nick Stokes says:
“Well, we know that CO2 dropped (and then rose) by about 100 ppmv during the ice age. That’s about 220 Gtons C. And the temperature changed by about 6-8 °C, even though CO2 change was less than recent. CO2 may have had an effect, but it can’t have been the main cause ”
If CO2 WASN’T the cause of the ice age. What was ?
Were currently being taxed on the premise that CO2 IS the cause of warmer temperatures and controls the climate……
If your now admitting it doesn’t. Would you be so kind as to tell the UK Government to remove its carbon taxes.
On science: “Our society is fundamentally dishonest”
====
Now that is a statement that is truly unequivocal, to borrow from one of the earlier buzz words often used in the “literature” of so-called “climate science.”
Further to my comment (richard verney August 8, 2014 at 5:58 am), the facts regarding the find were not quite accurate. The article of clothing was dated to about 300AD (so a little after the Roman Warm Period, alternatively showing that perhaps that period extended a little longer at least in the very north of Europe).
Apparently there have been about 600 finds from various places in Norway, as glaciers have retreated. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/pre-viking-tunic-found-glacier-climate-change_n_2932431.html
It is clear from all these finds that there were period when it was considerbly warmer in Norway some 1700 to 3400 years ago than it is today. The point is that if CO2 levels remained constant at about 280ppm as the warmists claim, then CO2 cannot explain those warming trends. There is nothing at all unusual or unprecedented about today’s climate.
Nick Stokes says:August 8, 2014 at 5:34 am
rgbatduke says: August 8, 2014 at 5:24 am
“One can find literally hundreds of places where climate scientists who — given inconvenient facts like these — should know better assert that the modern warm period is the warmest in the entire Holocene.”
Examples?
Steve Keohane says: August 8, 2014 at 5:16 am
Nicely defined in Alley’s reconstruction of the Holocene.
http://i49.tinypic.com/oji4b7.jpg
They are in a directory marked “censored”.
But now to be serious. Nick Stokes, do you not agree that
reports of glaciers shrinking get way more press and even
attention in abstracts of papers and are sold as evidence of
CAGW while news of this sort gets less press and attention?
Didn’t Marcott (at a reviewer’s insistence) tack on the temperature
record at the end of his proxy study (or am I thinking of the wrong paper?)
and didn’t his abstract and the press it got (both university press release and
news media) suggest more that it was much warmer now? Didn’t he have to
belatedly say that the modern part was not robust? I rarely see the evidence
for the MWP and RWP being warner being hyped in abstracts, press releases,
and statements to and by the media whereas the hype in the other direction
is continuous and nauseatingly, mind-numbingly stupid.
Robert of Ottawa – That is my favorite too. It’s only regional.
But then most of the evidence for increased temperatures and
melting ice is northern hemisphere today as well. Polar amplification
and all that. The clearest evidence today is also regional and coincidentally in the
same places that were warm 1,000 and 2,000 years ago.
It wasn’t.
They do actually – by using the obsolete TSI reconstructions that many readers of this blog like to use. According to theses reconstructions (e.g. Lean et al) there was a strong increase in solar activity up until ~1960.
JustAnotherPoster says: August 8, 2014 at 6:28 am
“The ENTIRE IPCC remit is that CO2 causes global warming.”
Yes. And arsenic will kill you. But that doesn’t mean that by avoiding arsenic, you are immortal.
Johan: “book 6 chapters 25 to 28”
Much obliged. I have to confess, though, that I can infer little from glaciers’ not being mentioned in that context. (Also, I’m curious about what kind of animal in that forest could have been “magnitudine paulo infra elephantos.” And I’m a little skeptical about the hunting technique he writes about.)
It obviously ain’t true unless you can create a computer model for these forests!
“Well, we know that CO2 dropped (and then rose) by about 100 ppmv during the ice age.”
That’s highly uncertain and IMO very likely wrong.
http://robertkernodle.hubpages.com/hub/ICE-Core-CO2-Records-Ancient-Atmospheres-Or-Geophysical-Artifacts
I can no longer stomach reading Stokes posts. They contributing nothing but confusion, and are clearly intended to derail any constructive discussion. His intent is only to attract attention to himself. Like a child.
Nick Stokes says: August 8, 2014 at 6:46 am “… And arsenic will kill you.”
So can water but people keep right on drinking it anyway, go figure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
John Finn says: August 8, 2014 at 6:46 am It wasn’t.
Twas. http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1945/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1965/to:2000/trend
David Ball says: August 8, 2014 at 6:56 am
I can no longer stomach reading Stokes posts.
Like any good troll commenter, he uses state of the art ignoratio elenchi (i.e. the informal fallacy of presenting an argument that may in itself be valid, but does not address the issue in question).
Nick Stokes is a Trollolololol
Please, stop feeding the trolls. They get their pleasure and paycheck by getting you all riled up. He was going by some other name on a CBS thread yesterday. The tactic is: throw out some pathetic challenge, watch you run in circles, then throw out another pathetic challenge. His one minute post takes an hour to research and respond to. Once you realize their game, you will stop feeding them.
Nick Stokes…one brick short of a full load!
What? First of all, the present data is not consistent with the modelled AGW. That’s why everybody is worrying so much about “the pause”, to the point where it got its own box in AR5 and is up to 30 possible alternative explanations, all supported by, nay necessitated by present data. The problem isn’t that there is no alternative explanation, it is there are too many and we have no way of resolving any of them in a complex, nonlinear, multivariate system where linearization of response is almost certainly impossible.
Second, even the climate record of just the last 100 years — if you want to call that “present data” — refutes the assertion that most of the warming is probably due to CO_2. CO_2 is not a plausible explanation for the warming observed in the first half of the 20th century, which was within 0.2C of the warming observed in the second half. In both cases the warming was limited to a single stretch of roughly 15-20 years (1920-1940 and 1980-2000 in ROUGH terms). In both cases the warming was followed by a plateau or weak cooling, encouraging yet another linearization fantasy as you well know trying to assign a “simple cause” to two whole “cycles”. But how are the models any better, or even different, from connecting this to e.g. the PDO, a plausible cause with roughly the right timescale at a macroscopic quasiparticle level much largers than the supposed “microscopic” dynamics in the GCMs?
Truthfully, we cannot explain either one of these cycles — the individual models in CMIP5 are laughable when compared to the data, and the meaningless multimodel ensemble (MME) mean skates right over the 1930’s warming showing that collectively they don’t have a clue about natural variability of the climate either. Assigning the cause to an even larger scale dynamic is surely no worse, and of course it fits these two cycles pretty well even if it fails miserably everywhere else and still explains almost nothing (and, of course, neglects the possible effects of other things that surely — well, probably — contributed to the climate, more CO_2, varying aerosols, big volcanoes, the varying solar cycle, the slow/steady orbital progression that makes tiny but possibly significant changes in just where things like perigee and apogee happen relative to the oceans and continents, the manifold timescales of oceanic turnover, and various nonlinear feedbacks). However, the existence of the former cycle reduces the plausibility that CO_2 is the dominant cause of the second.
Indeed, the only place that the CMIP5 MME mean works is in the reference period used to parameterize the models! which just happens to be the single stretch in the latter half of the 20th century where rapid warming occurred. I cannot begin to tell you how dumb it is to initialize/validate models on a short data segment exhibiting a rapid change that is not fully characteristic of the full set, especially not when one has the full set to work with. It isn’t even surprising that the models fail almost immediately thereafter. Confounding, ignored causes abound, the models are almost certainly incorrectly balanced in their gain vs loss terms (that had to cancel out to fit the rapid rise in the reference) and even small errors in this sort of balancing of large, opposing terms in a nonlinear model often lead to divergence from reality downstream.
Finally, while I (as you know) fully acknowledge that the GHE is real and that there is likely to be an approximately linear first order partial derivative in the total climate response to increasing CO_2, in this sort of system that sort of information is nearly useless in terms of estimating the total derivative. The system might do anything from nearly completely cancel it via nonlinear feedbacks to enhance it via nonlinear feedbacks to wash it out in much larger terms that dominate the dynamics and make the response irrelevant. Given the general stability of the climate system and the fact that in past data glacial epochs have occurred on numerous occasions when CO_2 levels were 2 to 10 times its current level, it is at least plausible-plus that the feedbacks will tend to cancel, not augment, the linearized CO_2-only partial derivative. Which, by the way, we only know at best approximately, making a number of egregious assumptions (one of which I’ve been discussing on another thread, others of which relate to the marginal response over, say, ocean water as opposed to land).
We not only cannot seem to build plausible, verifiable physical models of climate evolution, we have rather excellent reasons to believe that we cannot build such a model at an operational scale five to seven orders of magnitude larger than the known Kolmogorov scale of the nonlinear chaotic dynamics, which is order of a few millimeters. The models we are using are not “physics based” in the sense that we can derive that physics. They are semiphenomenological models where ad hoc approximations are applied all over the place to get them to where the computations can proceed at all, even at the absurdly large length scales. They are justified only because related ad hoc models have been sufficiently tuned that they can predict the weather a few weeks in advance before the prediction becomes too random relative to eventual reality to be of much use. We have no reason whatsoever to think that these models, that egregiously and visibly fail in roughly 90% of the time record outside of the reference period in the last 130 or so years (to the extent that we actually know the data they are trying to fit, which is itself rather dubious), will magically become predictive still later. Given the non-Markovian nature of the climate, this is almost certainly not going to be the case — even the models themselves will give a different prediction if re-initialized to fit a reference period now relative to what they predicted initialized to fit a reference period back in the 80’s.
Of course, the models themselves — one at a time — produce a dazzling array of possible futures from any perturbation of the initial state — clearly illustrating the strong nonlinear chaotic nature of the dynamics even at the current resolution. Quite seriously, I would challenge you to demonstrate to me with any counterexamples a single case of a deterministic highly multivariate nonlinear system exhibiting chaos that can be accurately solved by a phenomenological replacement integrated at a scale a million times larger than its Kolmogorov scale. Why is it that we, as theoretical/computational physicists, should even think that such a thing is possible, even with far simpler systems?
Why is it that when I tell my classes to try to integrate even very simple chaotic systems to numerically “observe” chaos in e.g. a driven oscillator consisting of a mass on a rigid rod or a “bender bouncer”, I caution them to use a very small stepsize and rigorous tolerances because if they don’t, the chaotic nature of the dynamics can actually be erased by de-facto introducing stronger damping and at the very least will give you incorrect patterns of oscillation, a false idea of the phase space that is accessed. Should I be telling them to just use a large stepsize, that will work just fine? Should I tell them to use Euler’s method to do the integration (which AFAICT is more or less what climate models do implicitly) rather than a halfway decent ODE solver, perhaps one capable of dealing with local/limited stiffness?
Again, the thing that is hard for me to understand is how anyone could think that we have actually solved the problem correctly with GCMs at all. This is a hard problem, a “grand challenge” problem, in general nonlinear dynamics long before one tries to build a climate model as arguably the most extreme and most difficult exemplar of the general class of nonlinear dynamical models. Sorry, but it isn’t even about to be solved by climate scientists and computer science geeks (speaking as a card carrying member of the latter class and diligent amateur in the former) — they seem to be cheerfully oblivious to the difficulty and what we’ve already learned from far simpler problems. Even if we had a perfect model, one that could integrate the entire system down to the millimeter/millisecond scale, we’d still have the enormous problem of simply not knowing the initial state at anything like that resolution, and requiring still other models to generate plausible initial conditions from the pitiful set of observations at the even courser grid of spatiotemporal locations available at any given instant. We have to use models just to start the models out, and the data those models are built on is terrible and inadequate.
So please — let’s not — ever, ever again — bring out the tired old wheeze that “only CO_2 can explain the recent warming” which is no longer all that recent. We have almost no idea at all of how much — or little — of the one burst of 20th century warming that occurred when CO_2 was increasing was caused by the CO_2. That is because we cannot predict with the slightest bit of confidence what the temperature would have/should have been without that CO_2, and because even if we had a believable answer for that for one set if initial conditions, if a butterfly beat its wings in Brazil to slightly alter the initial state, we’d get an entirely different answer in as little as a single year.
rgb
This pretty much establishes that both the Minoan Warm Period and the Roman Climate Optimum were not only warmer than the current warm period, but also long-lasting enough to melt glaciers and to support forests with a much higher tree line than today’s.
It does not support the contention that such warmth would be an environmental catastrophe that would lead to mass extinctions.
All the posts regarding Nick Stokes reminds me of discussions I used to have with an ex wife. Never will it make him see the error in CO2 worship.
Similarly, every time I hear a warmist lament the glaciers disappearing in Glacial National Park in Montana, the official web site used to proclaim the glaciers there are only about 3000 years old which should shatter most people’s assumptions that the ice was there since the last ice age.
Nick Stokes says: August 8, 2014 at 6:01 am “The AGW theory is that adding CO2 will make it warmer. It does not say that warming could not be caused by something else.”
You are blatantly avoiding the fundamental basis of contention in that remark. The AGW theory claims that tiny amount of CO2 humans add is a MAJOR cause of warming. It claims that if humans were not burning FF that CO2 would be “substantially” lower than it is now. You will find no one here claiming humans have no affect on the climate, the question has always been HOW MUCH? (Recall Sarah Palin being hounded by Charlie Gibson in 2008 and excoriated by vile leftists in LSM afterward just for hinting at the idea that humans might not have as much influence on the climate as people are being led to believe?)
I think it was Brother Christopher who proved that less than 1% of climate scientists actually believe that human CO2 is responsible for more than one half of late 20th century warming?
“Our society is fundamentally dishonest“: oh yes, and in so many ways…
I discover a veritable flood of universally accepted lies, prejudice and hype in every field where I really know the ropes, from music to translation to art history to food industry to currency exchange. Politics and “climate change” are only a tip of the iceberg. Extrapolation suggests that the same situation prevails in virtually any other field (comes to mind, for example, how long and how stubbornly Leif Svalgaard insisted on WUWT that Solar activity cannot influence climate).
Amazing that in our age, when factual information is sometimes so easily accessible (though not always easily recognizable), most of the people prefer to fiercely hold on to their prejudices and fall for the besotting media propaganda and self-serving drivel spread by “educators.”
Glad to hear the truth from somebody who still can be heard.
Trees under glaciers is not news here in British Columbia.
rgbatduke says:
August 8, 2014 at 7:31 am
=====
that slams the lid on it…..
thanks!
Oatley says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:43 am
“Good stuff, but be reminded that the EPA is marching forward on GHG emissions. If we don’t find a way to stop it, this country will be shackled.”
With 82% of the energy produced in the US being carbon based fossil fuels, I have been trying to get my state, one of the eight that produce most of these resources, to start the ball rolling and get together with the others to push back against the EPA. How about a nice sales tax to enrich our states and raise energy prices throughout the country? Call it an “EPA Tax”. We need to get the attention of the American people. Can’t think of a better way to do it than to make the EPA’s policies REALLY hurt.
You have failed to understand the evil combination of CO2 and Homo sapiens. They have overwhelmed and destroyed the other control knob, so now it is CO2 all the way down.
John C says:
August 8, 2014 at 7:36 am
All the posts regarding Nick Stokes reminds me of discussions I used to have with an ex wife. Never will it make him see the error in CO2 worship.
They don’t worship it. It’s more like they ascribe evil, magic powers to it. Not unlike the so-called “witches” of yore.
Nick Stokes says: August 8, 2014 at 5:48 am
And indeed it has warmed.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A frightening 1/3 of one degree C in the 35 year satellite record. Eeeks!.
“What’s more worrisome, Schlüchter’s findings show that cold periods can strike very rapidly.” And I’m willing to bet that as the period formally known as the Modern Grand Maximum of the Sun comes to an end this will be all too painfully evident. Maybe the warmists have good bargains on their winter clothes they no longer need.
Surely the Earth operates within a range of temperature values? The temperature records look as if this could well be the case. The mild 20th century warming about which so much fuss has been made seems to have stalled, perhaps at a peak before average temperatures fall again.
Given the vastness of the Earth and its atmosphere, it’s remarkable that such a tight control of its surface temperatures is possible – and clearly how it works is not as yet fully understood.
tadchem says:
August 8, 2014 at 7:31 am
“he Minoan Warm Period and the Roman Climate Optimum were not only warmer than the current warm period”
John Mason says:
August 8, 2014 at 7:36 am
“the official web site used to proclaim the glaciers there are only about 3000 years old ”
..
…
…
Only one of you can be right. Which one?
@H Grouse – no both can be. The glaciers are still here with the AGW Warm period, so they could easily have been around for the Roman and Medieval. The Minoan was about 3000 years ago.
really, try some history.
Latitude says:August 8, 2014 at 7:58 am
rgbatduke says:August 8, 2014 at 7:31 am
=====
that slams the lid on it…..
Hardly. But what I haven’t seen is any substantiation of this:
“One can find literally hundreds of places where climate scientists who — given inconvenient facts like these — should know better assert that the modern warm period is the warmest in the entire Holocene.”
Though the key quote really for this post is the original
“This finding indicated that the Alps were pretty nearly glacier-free at that time, disproving accepted theories that they only began retreating after the end of the little ice age in the mid-19th century.”
This “disproving accepted theories” is what I’ve been pressing. If that isn’t true, then what is the post about? And I’ve given several examples where the accepted science is quite the opposite – that the mid-Holocene was warm, and quite consistent with much reduced glaciers. So Schlüchter’s findings are no surprise, and contradict no AGW theory (not that AGW is relevant there anyway).
No-one seems to be able to counter that.
Having just finished an extensive discussion with him and reading of his review of the literature, I cannot help but correct this. Lief has never said that solar activity cannot influence climate. He has stated that the evidence that variable solar activity has a strong (dominant) influence on climate is extraordinarily weak and mostly based on incorrect assertions about just how relatively large/extraordinary the levels of solar activity were in the late 20th century. Having just finished reading through the evidence he provides, I have to agree. Even if you “want” to believe that it is the explanation, before you can or should go around asserting that it is, at the very least you have to address the very serious issues with consistency raised by the substantial evidence that while the late 20th century had comparatively high solar activity relative to the overall level of the last 180 years that we have good records of solar magnetism and hence inferrable state, it wasn’t that extraordinary, certainly was nothing like a “grand maximum” over that or any other plausible interval, and in any event isn’t well-correlated with temperature changes over any particular stretch of temperatures 100 years in length or more. You cannot just cherrypick an interval, accept one particular scientist’s claim for solar state when it is evaluated by just one proxy and inconsistent with results consistently obtained by four or five alternative means, some of them effectively direct measurement and not proxies at all, and claim success.
The challenge he establishes is straightforward. A) Reconcile the solar activity data you wish to use with that which you don’t wish to use (because it doesn’t support your assertion). One or the other has to be incorrect, and the first order of business is to determine which one is more likely to be in error. Lief’s presentation and discussion convinced me — and I’d like to think that as a physicist I’m not an idiot when it comes to the underlying reasoning even if it isn’t my field — that it would be very very difficult to assert that the methods that show no grand maximum are in error, as there are several of them, they independently lead to results that can be cross checked, and they are manifestly consistent with sunspot observations and the modern instrumental record where they overlap. Alternative presentations — e.g. Ushokin’s — are not in and of themselves implausible, but they do not resolve the inconsistency, and by failing to do so are at the very least not a good basis for making egregious statements about climate causality. B) Explain why and how the tiny changes in solar irradiation can explain large changes in the climate.
Note well that he doesn’t assert that such explanations cannot exist, only that they haven’t been proven and often are asserted on the basis of carefully selected data inconsistent with what should be considered a reliable, multiply verified record of solar activity back to at least the early to middle part of the 19th century. Such an explanation is not likely to be simple — a linear response model, for example. And so far, we have had damn-all luck in building multivariate nonlinear models for the climate that can explain why solar state is important in explaining this burst of warming or cooling, but not that one when almost exactly the same solar conditions held. But that sort of linear response is exactly what is constantly being asserted, based on sketchy data that contradicts some really, really solid data, without explanation or resolution of the conflict.
This is actually good science. In fact, it is great science. Skeptics are just as easily infected or equipped with confirmation bias and data blinders and cherrypicking combines and data dredges as warmists. It doesn’t help the science (which is probably leading to some really, really complex explanations, not plural, all tightly coupled and nonlinear and chaotic and non-Markovian) to constantly try to assert an ill-supported, inconsistent, linearlized explanation — which includes both one-knob CO_2 and one-knob solar state — for the climate.
rgb
“extreme, sudden changes
Sorry I can’t remember where I read it but here is what it said.
Frozen Mammoths were to have whole strawberries in there
stomach. Now that is fast!
From earthsciencescanada.com…
Quote: “Will the Athabasca Glacier melt away altogether? It’s possible. Some 5000 years ago, during a period not much warmer than the present, the middle of the Columbia Icefield was forest, not ice.”
http://www.earthsciencescanada.com/geovista/PDFs_en/vistas8_agci.pdf
Also, a recent documentary on the Rocky Mountains, narrated by none other than Suzuki, noted that 5000 years ago the Columbia Ice Fields didn’t exist. This is fact, and had nothing to do with SUVs or a lack of wind farms!
Another recent documentary explained that circa 5000 BC the Sahara Desert wasn’t a desert, but instead something resembling the Serengeti along with extensive herds of every kind of African plains species found there.
Climate change is a fact of life, always has been, always will be. There is nothing whatsoever unusual about our current global climate changes.
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 8:29 am
Hardly.
===
Nick…we don’t know anything…it’s all a bunch of hooey
Nick Stokes
In an article here in 2013 I reconstructed (highly variable) temperatures and compared them to the virtually static (until modern times) hockey stick.
I took the opportunity of assessing thousands of glacier records and compiled a first version of a chart showing glacier advances and retreats over the last 3000 years. I overlaid the Hockey stick on top of it.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/clip_image010.jpg
(note) A closed blue horizontal line at the top of the graph equates to a period of glacial retreat (warmth) and a closed blue line at foot of graph demonstrates glacier advance (cold)
As can be seen, there are many glacial advances and retreats which seem to give the lie to the static nature of the climate recorded by the Hockey stick.
Here is the full article;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/16/historic-variations-in-temperature-number-four-the-hockey-stick/
Nothing today seems to be unprecedented or even unusual.
tonyb
Interesting concepts put forward by Nick Stokes.
LIA cooling caused a reduction in CO2 levels, but warming must be caused by a rise in CO2 levels.
Joe Born says:
August 8, 2014 at 6:54 am
Strabo writes about Cisalpine Gaul (the Alps) in his Geography [my emphasis]:
And beyond Comum, which is situated near the base of the Alps, lie, on the one side, with its slope towards the east, the land of the Rhaeti and the Vennones, and, on the other, the land of the Lepontii, Tridentini, Stoni, and several other small tribes, brigandish and resourceless, which in former times held the upper hand in Italy; but as it is, some of the tribes have been wholly destroyed, while the others have been so completely subdued that the passes which lead through their territory over the mountain, though formerly few and hard to get through, are now numerous, and safe from harm on the part of the people, and easily passable — so far as human device can make them so. For in addition to his putting down the brigands Augustus Caesar built up the roads as much as he possibly could; for it was not everywhere possible to overcome nature by forcing a way through masses of rock and enormous beetling cliffs, which sometimes lay above the road and sometimes fell away beneath it, and consequently, if one made even a slight misstep out of the road, the peril was one from which there was no escape, since the fall reached to chasms abysmal. And at some places the road there is so narrow that it brings dizziness to all who travel it afoot — not only to men, but also to all beasts of burden that are unfamiliar with it; the native beasts, however, carry the burdens with sureness of foot. Accordingly, these places are beyond remedy; and so are the layers of ice that slide down from above — enormous layers, capable of intercepting a whole caravan or of thrusting them all together into the chasms that yawn below; for there are numerous layers resting upon another, because there are congelations upon congelations of snow that have become ice-like, and the congelations that are on the surface are from time to time easily released from those beneath before they are completely dissolved in the rays of the sun.
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/4F*.html
climatology is the poorly marked and dimly lit intersection of art and science
Adam Gallon says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:33 am
The retreating Swiss glacier you cite showed that an intermittently open pass exists in the Alps which had been forgotten in recent centuries.
The finds exposed by its retreat came from specific time periods, during the Medieval, Roman & Minoan Warm Periods & the Holocene Climatic Optimum (like Ötzi, the Italian-Austrian Iceman).
Nick Stokes said:
Nick,
So we all agree that the current retreat of glaciers is not unprecedented.
Then do you agree that this natural variation explains any recent warming (or cooling)?
I suspect not because I think you still want to believe that recent warming is “unprecedented”.
That is implied by your response to Weinstein:
“Yes, that is based on the rapid rise consistent with AGW, and with no alternative explanation from present data.”
That sounds like the “theory” proposed by CAGW believers, which compel us to believe that 1) all these climate ‘catastrophes’ have happened recently and 2) there were 600 jillion tons of manmade CO2 released in the same period. So, somehow [waving hands] 2) is the cause of 1)
But you were clever not to claim that argument as scientific proof:
“But it is not the proof of AGW, which is based on radiative physics.”
But you did not present any compelling proof based on radiative physics either. Yes, we know CO2 absorbs long-wave radiation, but so does H2O and the other GHG’s. And it is well-known that climate models can be twiddled to produce any desired result, and have little or no skill in predicting real world climate events.
So where is the compelling proof, based on radiative physics, that manmade CO2 released into the atmosphere will have these dire, catastrophic consequences?
There is no compelling proof, except for a lot hand waving and loudly acclaimed 97% “support” for CAGW.
But it does not make any difference how many people believe in a theory, it is not a valid theory if it can be falsified by experimental observations.
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
-Albert Einstein
The MSM obviously do not agree with Einstein because they think they can prove CAGW, through implication, by merely increasing the number of news reports on “extreme weather” catastrophes. => “Twin hurricanes hit Hawaii! Must be that manmade CO2. What else could it be!?”
But the notion that the modern retreat of glaciers is unprecedented and therefore can only be caused by excessive CO2 is certainly shot down by these many apparently well-known historically ancient retreats.
And, finally you complain that no one can counter your claim that AGW is consistent with ancient receding glaciers. Perhaps that is because AGW has been transformed into a kind of religion, which can’t be falsified because it continuouslly redefines itself to counter criticism. It used to be about “global warming” when that fizzled it switched to “extreme climate”. Very adaptive, like a human.
Again, show me your _compelling_ proof that manmade CO2 causes glaciers to recede.
Tony
“I took the opportunity of assessing thousands of glacier records and compiled a first version of a chart showing glacier advances and retreats over the last 3000 years.”
Even at present, some glaciers are advancing while others (even close by) are retreating. They respond to precipitation as well as temperature. So that is yet another reason why finding evidence of some diminished glaciers in Mid-Holocene wouldn’t contradict anything.
But the fact is, no-one is saying that is was a lot colder then.
jones on August 8, 2014 at
12:45 am
“Following the ancient forest
evidence discovery Schlüchter
became a target of scorn. As
he observes in the interview,
“I wasn’t supposed to find
that chunk of wood because I
didn’t belong to the close-knit
circle of Holocene and climate
researchers. My findings thus
caught many experts off
guard: Now an ‘amateur’ had
found something that the
[more recent time-focused]
Holocene and climate experts
should have found.”
.
Who does he think he
is…..Alfred Wegener?
Right, ‘jones’, but then…
is it you, Mr. Wegener?
Only asking – Hans
RGB at Duke says it for me in characterizing the problem as predicting the behavior of a complex, nonlinear, multivariate system. Complex system theory is not exactly a secret so one would think climate scientists would be aware of the unpredictability of the particular tiger they have by the tail. Then it occurs to me that while they cannot prove the system is controlled by CO2 it also cannot be proven that turning up the knob on CO2 can’t result in global warming. If the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in China can lead to that tornado in Kansas why can’t CO2 lead to warming? It becomes a contest between who can provide the most likely explanation and since the people to whom the explanation is being presented are the ‘man in the street,’ green houses and warming are more familiar and easier to understand than complex systems theory. Of course this makes climate scientists pushing the CO2 explanation total frauds which I hate to think is true. Maybe complex system theory is not that well known.
Big oil planted the wood there for others to find, right Al?
Same thing in Alaska. Forest from Medieval Warm Period exposed by retreating Mendenhall Glacier:
http://www.livescience.com/39819-ancient-forest-thaws.html
Mick says:
climatology is the poorly marked and dimly lit intersection of art and science
Good quote. But I’d make it ‘art and pseudoscience’.
===========================
markx says:
LIA cooling caused a reduction in CO2 levels, but warming must be caused by a rise in CO2 levels.
Nick Stokes is nothing if not illogical.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Nick Stokes says:
…AGW theory…
Nick, AGW is not a ‘theory’. To be a theory, AGW would have to be able to make repeated, accurate predictions. It can do neither. AGW is merely an unproven conjecture.
……………………………………………………….
johann wundersamer says:
…is it you, Mr. Wegener? Only asking – Hans
Mr. A. Jones has commented here for years. I very much doubt that he uses sockpuppet identities.
It seems time has stood still for Nick Stokes who is discounting this story today with the same dull arguments it was originally discounted with so many years ago. One has to be profoundly driven by something more important than truth to discredit the importance of a mature forest where glaciers existed before the mature forest and which exist again today. He appears to be indistinguishable from being fundamentally dishonest and therefor an unreliable source of science. Sad if true.
Nick Stokes says:
But the fact is, no-one is saying that is was a lot colder then.
That is very surprising to me, because “unprecedented” nature of current warming is THE driving factor in all of the publicity around CAWG.
I think the problem is that the only reason people are worried about CAGW is because they are being told that high temperatures are really, really bad, they create horrible problems, catastrophic problems to be exact – mass extinction, death of polar bears, death of corrals, complete destruction of cities, etc.
Well, it appears that we have hard proof that higher temperatures do not have that effect. So, whether caused by humans or not, and explained by models or not, higher temperatures are not going to kill polar bears.
If that is so, the whole argument becomes pretty academic and of little interest of anybody outside of very narrow circle of climate researches.
But that is not what you want, is it? Because if it’s contained to obscure field of science, the funds will dry up, the fame will disappear, together with all of the perks of “planet saviors” that you got so used to.
So you will continue to be telling us that, one one hand, you knew all along that it was much warmer before but current moderate warming is going to be a horrible thing.
Is that correct for the summary of how you going to play this?
Nick Stokes:
“And indeed it has warmed. And we’re on track to burn a lot more C.”
We burned FF, it got warmer, ergo FF caused the warming.
Thank you for providing another example of logical fallacies.
dbstealey says:
August 8, 2014 at 9:37 am
“AGW is merely a conjecture.”
..
..
No, the correct term is “hypothesis”
@H Grouse – no, until the null hypothesis is disproven, DbStealey is correct.
Science 101.
Nick Stokes
“and with no alternative explanation from present data.”
—-
And yet another logical fallacy.
I wonder if Nick will be able to get all of them before the day is over.
Resourceguy, if you’re referring to my post, you lost me…??? My point was that glacial historical evidence…such as provided by my link, and consistent with the topic at hand…proves that somewhat radical shifts in global climate are a natural occurrence.
Or I’m misunderstanding your post?
IMHO, AGW is a load of garbage!
Richard D says:
August 8, 2014 at 8:12 am
//////////////////
And not due to CO2!
The satellite record shows zero first order correlation with rising levels of CO2. The staellite record shows us that temps were essentially flat before the 1998 Super El Nino, and essentially flat as from the 1998 Super El Nino.
The approx one thrird of a degree that you note is a one off step change, occuring in and around the Super El Nino of 1998. Unless that Super El Nino was itself caused by the increase in CO2 over say the preceding 20 years (and as far as I am aware no one seriosly argues that it was, or puts forward an explanation as to how CO2 drove that Super El Nino), then CO2 has nothing to do with the temperature record recorded by the satellite data.
CO2 cannot explain the past temperature record of CO2. Further, and not least because, it appears that CO2 lags temperature and therefore is not the driver of those temperatures, but rather merely a response.
The relevance of all of this is that the only reason why CO2 is said to be the driver of the post 1970 warming is because the IPCC could not think of any other reason to explain that warming. There is no direct evidence that CO2 drove the post 1970 warming, and the IPCC does not cite any direct evidencei.
However, until one can explain all past temperaure events/anomalies there can be no merit in the claim we cannot think of anything other than CO2 as being the driver behind the post 1970 warming, since what drove the past temperatures may be driving the post 1970 warming. The claim of not being able to think of any thing else is worthless, and the fact that we cannot explain the past is proof positive that there is a big whole in our knowledge and understanding of what drives climate/temperature changes. In other words, we know that we do not know!
“Other evidence exists that there is really nothing new about dramatic glacier advances and retreats. In fact the Alps were nearly glacier-free again about 2,000 years ago. Schlüchter points out that “the forest line was much higher than it is today; there were hardly any glaciers. Nowhere in the detailed travel accounts from Roman times are glaciers mentioned.”
Well then that can’t be true can it Steven Mosher? After all that is recorded history and history doesn’t mean anything whereas upside down dendro proxies than don’t validate against instrumental metrics are far more believable. /sarc
Nick Stokes says:
No, there is no such evidence. There has been nothing to change the amount of carbon in the environment in the last millions of years. Recently we have dug up 400 Gtons and burnt it. Radiative physics says that the extra CO2 will impede outgoing IR and cause warming.
Nick,
You forgot to add “all other things being equal”.
In nature, of course, all other things rarely stay equal. And that is the fundamental issue that the Doom and Gloom crowd doesn’t seem to get. That and the fact there is more that we don’t know we don’t know than there is stuff that we actually know.
It seems that it might be a very good thing to require all climate scientists (actually all scientists) to read Feynman’s Cargo Cult Science speech. Repeatedly.
The most important part of that speech is widely ignored by a large number of climate scientists. That portion is:
“That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school–we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can–if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong–to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another.”
Compare that to the ever popular sentiment expressed by Phil Jones:
“Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it…”
So we know that, all other things being equal, adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will lead to warming. That should be relatively easy to model. However, as Freeman Dyson noted:
“The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world we live in…”
So your assertion “Radiative physics says that the extra CO2 will impede outgoing IR and cause warming.” is true. However, it is true in a trivial way. It doesn’t address the complexities of the climate and is an appeal to authority which misses the point. And it completely fails Feynman’s ideal on how science should be done.
Eric
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/02/10/el-nino-prediction/5368631/
(Indeed, one could probably reach 100 times from Michael Mann alone. It’s also amusing to note the “success” the new method has just enjoyed predicting another super-El Nino this year and the obvious relish that scientists like Mann have that it will lead to lots of warming and put skeptics in their place and vindicate the GCMs (even as it leads to supposed human catastrophe — but I suppose that’s less important than him being “right”.)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling.htm
(Except that AR5 has an entire box devoted to “the pause” and the “missing heat in the ocean” argument is doubly problematic — it is almost impossible to detect or resolve (I’d argue that it IS impossible, but hey, 4000 ARGO buoys are plenty to cover 70% of the Earth’s surface, at depth, with black magic used to transport heat down from a stable buoyant surface layer to depth) and if it IS going into the ocean, problem solved as the oceans could eat 100% of the proposed global forcing imbalance for the next dozen centuries and not change one full degree in temperature.)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm
(Greenhouse gases controlled most past climate changes? Oh. My. God. Somebody needs to learn how to do statistical correlation and learn enough physics to realize the causes need to precede the effects. It is precisely this sort of nonsense that the article above specifically refutes. But where are climate scientists speaking out against it? And where is the evidence for the assertion fairly compared to the much more substantial evidence against it, such as the mere fact that greenhouse gases where in no possible way responsible for the beginning of the current Pleistocene ice age and in no possible way explain either the variable periodicity or depth of glacial episodes over the last 3.5 million years, let alone the last 600 million — Ordovician-Silurian transition anyone? Or any of the other glacial episodes that occurred with Phanerozoic CO_2 2-10 times what it is today?)
http://www.climatechange.ie/quotes_all.html
(Numerous examples, most of them dated and with their garish claims of certainty about the future refuted by the mere progress of time, all backed eventually by “climate scientists”.)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/sep/01/research.high
(For example, Phil Jones and the unquenchable Michael Mann. The warmest in 2000 years? Really, Phil? And where are the climate scientists saying oops, sorry, we were mistaken, maybe the MWP and RWP were just as warm, certainly within our ability to resolve temperatures at all on this sort of time scale. But no one ever thinks to present error bars, eh?)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/14/1299306/-NASA-Last-month-was-second-warmest-April-in-history-of-temperature-data-recording#
(But the article simply headlines “in history” and again, conveniently ignores possible error. We only know modern temperatures — excuse me, temperature “anomalies” relative to an arbitrary modern baseline in absolute temperature we do not know within one full degree Centigrade — to within an acknowledged 0.15C (in e.g. HADCRUT4 — GISS keeps mum on error). If we assume, very reasonably, that the error back in the 1930s (say) was 0.5C and in the 19th century was closer to 1C, we have no idea what the warmest years are only in the thermometric record, which is not “in history” or even “in the history of temperature data recording”, but rather only that part of the latter where somebody has built a model that might, possibly, conceivably, be able to krige the samples into a “global anomaly” with an error bar smaller than infinity. Warmest, or second warmest, in 1000 years? Almost certainly not. Warmest in 2000 years? Certainly not. Warmest in 3000 years? See top article — many of the glaciers that we are worried about melting didn’t even exist to melt 3000 years ago, or 8000 years ago.)
And I haven’t even gotten to Cliimategate yet, or the need to “erase” the MWP, or to the SPM of the various ARs. The latter is where this stuff is really poisonous.
Quite seriously, Nick. The news is full of assertions that our weather, the state of the climate, etc etc are “unprecedented”. If the Jones and Briffa graph of the temperatures of the last 1000 years — including the MWP — had been used as cover art instead of Mann’s hockey stick, do you really think that anyone would have done anything but yawn, politically speaking? If if that beneficial thing had happened, there would have been two consequences:
a) Climate funding would be at most 10% of what it is today.
b) The climate research and modeling that did occur wouldn’t have bet the ranch on the predictions of one single man — Hansen — who had an absolutely insane level of influence, who benefited enormously in terms of political influence, power, and financial support, and who was perfectly willing to state in public, ex cathedris that seas were likely to rise 5 meters by 2100. See, for example, his TED Talk on global warming, made while he was still head of NASA GISS.
Who — in the scientific community doing climate science — calls the media on this sort of stuff, which is often traceable back to a comparatively small group that probably isn’t representative, as you say, of what the science actually says? Who speaks out against the crap that makes it into the media, the assertions of certain knowledge where we don’t even have arguably probable knowledge, the lack of acknowledgement of error, and of course the assertions of “confidence” that utterly lack foundation?
@H Grouse: (from above)
“In fact the Alps were nearly glacier-free again about 2,000 years ago. Schlüchter points out that “the forest line was much higher than it is today; there were hardly any glaciers. Nowhere in the detailed travel accounts from Roman times are glaciers mentioned.”
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 6:01 am
Leonard Weinstein says: August 8, 2014 at 5:44 am
“Nick, either CO2 is the control knob for warming or it is not.”
That’s meaningless. The AGW theory is that adding CO2 will make it warmer. It does not say that warming could not be caused by something else.
“the so called main stream conclusions still say that only human activity could be the cause for the present warming”
Yes, that is based on the rapid rise consistent with AGW, and with no alternative explanation from present data. But it is not the proof of AGW, which is based on radiative physics.
————————–
What’s your excuse now for calling AGW a “theory”. In other comments you claimed you only called it that because it was so called in the post. Is AGW or is it not a theory, in your opinion?
IMO it’s not even an hypothesis, since it has been shown false so consistently.
The “rapid rise” is not consistent with AGW, since temperature has risen much more rapidly in the past without being preceded by an increase in CO2, and temperature has risen, fallen and stayed about the same all during the time that CO2 has risen from ~280 to 400 ppm over the past 150 years. Only for a brief interval from the late 1970s to ’90s did rising temperature happen accidentally to coincide with rising CO2. From the 1940s to ’70s, CO2 rose and temperatures fell. Since the late ’90s, CO2 has risen while temperatures stayed flat or fell. During the 1920s to ’40s, CO2 fell or stayed the same while temperature rose.
Moreover, there are far better alternative explanations, which much more closely coincide with the actual record than AGW. Saying, “What else could it be?” is not only unscientific, but antiscientific.
Just why is it that you believe in this “theory”, so repeatedly falsified? There is not a single shred of actual evidence in support of the “theory”. In the lab, a doubling of CO2 from 280 to 560 ppm produces about one degree C of warming. This has not been observed in nature, but remains theoretically possible, I suppose. However such an increase would be a good thing, not bad, were it to happen. The only way to get “catastrophic” consequences is to assume an unrealistic positive feedback from water vapor, which not only is not in evidence but is shown false by the best available evidence.
You’ve got nothing, nada, zip, zilch, except a naive faith in the failed religion of CAGW.
US Government maps show that the glaciers in what today is Glacier National Park in Alaska lost 80% of their volume between the 1770s and the 1850s, a phenomenon for which there is no coherent explanation. Most certainly not increases in CO2.
Another inconvenient reality showing that suddenly retreating glaciers are not unprecedented.
tadchem says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:00 am
.
“In fact the Alps”
..
If it were warmer in Roman times, than it is now the glaciers at Glacier National Park would not be 3000 years old.
What are the calculated trends.? Also the more recent period you chose includes a decade when temperatures were flat or cooling (i.e. 1965-75). The 1975-2010 trend shows more warming. (0.18 degrees per decade)
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 6:01 am
First, it IS the position of the majority on AGW and CAGW that CO2 (and CH4) is the main control knob, and that nothing else can explain the temperature rise over the last 150 or so years. I recognize that you personally are not so extreme, and qualify the statement to only that CO2 can cause heating due to radiation theory, and allow heating may be caused by other means. However, most skeptics also agree with that last statement. The AGW hypothesis (it is far from meeting a theory status) has been falsified on many claims associated with it’s main accepted description, and especially by the reality of large variation of climate in the past with no significant CO2 change, and by the recent 17 year temperature leveling out. There is nothing that AGW claims that can’t be demonstrated without pulling in the need to explain the warming by human production of CO2 and positive feedback. If you don’t need to use CO2 and positive feedback to explain the temperature changed, and consider how natural variation can explain all the level of variation (solar effects, ocean long period currents, long period cloud variation, random chaotic processes, etc.), using the necessity of AGW is violating Occam’s Razor. I think almost all agree that CO2 alone can cause a small temperature increase and this is not the issue, rather it is the net sensitivity, feedback, and natural variation. Since essentially all models have demonstrated no skill, especially for the last 17 years, and the fact that it is just as likely (or more so) that we will see falling temperatures from the present as resumption of warming, how can you possibly defend the full AGW hypothesis? What has it shown that is clearly demonstrating it is valid?
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 6:16 am
Caesar would certainly have seen glaciers had they then been in the same places as they were in the 19th and 20th centuries. He was at Geneva in 58 BC, for instance.
tetris says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:06 am
“the glaciers in what today is Glacier National Park in Alaska”
Glacier National Park is not in Alaska.
http://pics3.city-data.com/ccdmapsf/ccdmf835.png
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:07 am
Can you really be this dim?
The glaciers in Glacier National Park advance and retreat with changes in temperature and precipitation. That they have not completely melted, so that their highest reaches are thousands of years old, is evidence for natural climate change, not against it.
They were longer than now at the end of the LIA in the 19th century. They were shorter than now during the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods.
sturgishooper says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:16 am
“Can you really be this dim?”
If it was warmer during the MWP and at Roman times, the glaciers in GNP would not be dated as being 3000 years old.
@ H Grouse says: August 8, 2014 at 10:18 am
Question #1 – Are the glaciers there today?
Question #2 – What was the period of 3000 years ago known as?
Answers, since the glaciers are there today, then that means they survived the temperatures of today. It does not tell you at what temperatures they did not survive. Ergo, there is insufficient data to make the leap of faith you did. 3000 years ago was the Minoan Warm period. Which is generally seen (by most except Mann) as being warmer than the current warm period and the Roman warm period. So logic dictates that somewhere between the temperatures of today and those of the Minoan is the point where the glaciers disappear. Since that is a RANGE (not a single point) of temperatures, the Roman could be warmer and the glaciers still there since it is recognized (by most except Mann) that the RWP was not was warm as the Minoan.
I guess you are that dim.
Bits of them are that old, but GNP was almost ice free during the Medieval and Roman WPs, c. 1000 and 2000 years ago.
“But he didn’t give any support for saying that those were the accepted theories. And they weren’t.”
Oh I get it now… scientists know that the glacial retreat is nothing special, but it’s no big deal that the IPCC and scaremongers conveniently ignore that scientific knowledge when pushing the world to adopt its agenda?
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 9:43 am
According to that infallible source Wikipedia:
Without a control, it is impossible to test for CAGW; therefore, it is a conjecture.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:18 am
If it was warmer during the MWP and at Roman times, the glaciers in GNP would not be dated as being 3000 years old.
What does it matter? It was, by your methodology, warmer 3000 years ago than today. So, how is current temperature being unprecedented?
“That’s meaningless. The AGW theory is that adding CO2 will make it warmer. It does not say that warming could not be caused by something else.”
Yes, the IPCC reports pretty much say exactly that. They completely rule out natural causes for the temperature rise from 1950 to present. If it was possible for it to happen back then, it’s possible for natural processes to be partly responsible now. And if it’s possible that natural causes are a contributor, then it’s an utter lie to claim that the rise is proof of catastrophic AGW due to CO2.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 9:43 am (Edit)
…the correct term is “hypothesis”.
Wrong. As usual.
A theory is a more rigorous hypothesis. It is still an hypothesis. A theory must be validated, but AGW has never been validated.
[‘H Grouse’ <—(a sockpuppet name) is sure posting a lot on a workday. Either he is unemployed, or employed as a sockpuppet, or he is cheating his employer.]
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:22 am
What does it matter?
It matters a lot. If the glaciers in GNP are 3000 years old, why didn’t them melt away during the MWP and Roman times which are thought to be “warmer” than today?
nice finding but wrong interpretation as usual with deniers,first we notice that trees don’t grow in the coldest place on earth …second if tree grew in glaciers it mean glaciers were not the coldest place, so how do you call a name were glaciers are a warm place???? glaciers are a cold place on earth nowaday…conclusion world was colder.
For Nick Stokes
Radiative physics says that the extra CO2 will impede outgoing IR and cause warming. And indeed it has warmed. And we’re on track to burn a lot more C.
Radiative physics? The question is not that it does not happen, the question is the magnitude and relative contribution. Neither of the basic equations, related to temperature and pressure support the current computer models related to temperature rise.
For the current argument….
From this link, from the scientist that has extensively studied this glacier.
http://archive.sciencewatch.com/dr/erf/2011/11feberf/11feberfHolz/
The paper shows that glacier maximums (cold and moist periods) coincide with phases of higher lake levels. Furthermore, in agreement with previous studies, a comparison between the fluctuations of the Great Aletsch glacier and the variations in the atmospheric residual 14C (radiocarbon) records supports the hypothesis that variations in solar activity were a major forcing factor of climatic oscillations in west-central Europe during the late Holocene.
H Grouse has no understanding of the term “unprecedented”.
What is being observed today has happened repeatedly throughout the Holocene. There is nothing unprecedented or unusual about current temperatures.
sturgishooper says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:20 am
“but GNP was almost ice free during the Medieval and Roman WP”
Well, then you’d better check with the people that have dated the glaciers in GNP as being 3000 years old.
@ H Grouse says: August 8, 2014 at 10:37 am
Almost is not GONE – learn the meaning of words.
dbstealey says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:33 am
“Wrong. As usual.”
Arguing about the meaning of words is not winnable
The sockpuppet says:
Arguing about the meaning of words is not winnable
Wrong. As usual.
Words matter. “H Grouse” just wishes words didn’t matter. Without words there would be no Constitution, no books, no lawyers, no science, and no H Grouse.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:34 am
As I’ve repeatedly tried to get you to understand, the glaciers in GNP did almost entirely melt during prior warm periods, which were warmer than now. They grew during the LIA and Dark Ages Cold Periods. Since the 19th century, they have been retreating again, but not as far as they did during prior warming periods.
During glacial phases, they are much bigger. Yet even those large glaciers did entirely disappear during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, which ended about 5000 years ago.
Why is this so hard for you to grasp? Climate changes naturally. Glaciers advance and retreat naturally. Those in GNP were smaller during previous warm periods of the past few thousand years. Got it?
Larry Bell has a bachelor or arts in architecture and a master’s degree in fine arts. He has never published a peer-reviewed paper on climate science. With all due respect (I’m sure he a tremendous architect and ubran planner), I’m not putting much stock in his opinion of climate science. In his blog (linked above), he asks why the earth “tipped” to warming in the mid-1800s, before the industrial age began. Well, maybe it had something to do with clearing large tracks of land, which also upset the CO2 balance. You would think he would know something about land use change. http://forestry.about.com/library/bl_us_forest_acre_trend.htm
dbstealey says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:37 am
…
“unprecedented”.
I’d suggest you re-read my posts and point out to me where I used the term “unprecedented”. (excluding this one)
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:37 am
What part of “almost” don’t you understand?
Have you actually read any of the papers on the advance and retreat of glaciers in GNP? Apparently not.
Have you seen the moraines reached by the glaciers during the Little Ice Age, from which they have now retreated, just as they did during the Medieval WP after the Dark Ages Cold Period?
sturgishooper says:
Got it?
‘H Grouse’ will never get it. Understanding is beyond his grasp.
sturgishooper says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:43 am
…
“which were warmer than now”
Since, according to you it was WARMER than it is now, and today it is warm enough to melt the last remaining (out of 25) in about 10 years, that means the were ALL gone during the MWP and Roman times.
…
But then, there’s that pesky little fact that the glaciers there TODAY date back 3000 years.
@H Grouse – sorry, future predictions are not facts. The facts are they are NOT gone. The facts are they were ALMOST gone during the MWP and RWP (and ALL gone during the Minoan).
Until they are ALL gone, they are still here. Those are the facts.
After reading this, I looked up articles on how Hannibal and the elephants crossed over the Alps over 2,000 years ago. Archeologists, historians and other scientists have been researching just that.
It appears the tree line was much higher then and the temperature was much warmer than today.
Even more embarrassing, he crossed the glaciers in late autumn-early winter.
Try finding some elephants and doing that today – even in the summer.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:48 am
The ten years estimate, if anyone other than you actually made it, is totally bogus and spewed by lying alarmists without any scientific basis. Besides which, it would have to assume temperatures warmer than the past decade for the coming decade, which is unlikely.
But even if the “pause” is followed by more warming, the USGS predicts 30 years, not your totally unfounded ten:
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/big-thaw/
H Grouse says:
This web site: http://nrmsc.usgs.gov/research/glacier_retreat.htm says:
I have so far found no information on the extent of the glaciers during the years they are claimed to have been in existence. However, I will note that their existence during the WMP and during Roman times in no way disproves the existence of these warm periods. I think you will have to show that they grew during those times to cast doubt on the MWP and Roman warm periods.
H Grouse says:
Where did you get this claim from? Did you make it up or find it on some web site? If the latter, I would like to check it.
I should add that in 2003, the USGS estimated 2030 for the demise of GNP’s glaciers, but now they’ve pushed it back to an ever-receding “30 years”.
Richard Sharpe says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:59 am
The assertion is a lie. USGS’s Fagre estimated they’d be gone by 2030 in 2003, but in 2013 said “30 years”, according to Nat Geo writer Glick.
Around the world, glaciers are growing again:
http://iceagenow.info/category/glaciers-are-growing-around-the-world/
Along with Antarctic sea ice. The world is cooling.
Along the Swiss-Austrian border, high up in the Alps archeologists found the remains of a large man dated from 3000BC. A little lower in elevation, and further inside Switzerland. archeologists found Roman coins, pottery, and camp remains. All of these finds were once covered under 60 foot ice snow and ice.In other words, the glaciers that so many are shedding tears over (their melting, that is) are of a recent nature (perhaps less than 1000 years old).
Barry says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:43 am
Can you say “ad hominem” “and appeal to authority” logical fallacies?
I knew you could.
Rocky Mountain glaciers growing, too, including Sperry in GNP:
http://iceagenow.info/2011/11/glaciers-growing-rockies/
Don’t have data for 2012 or last year.
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:22 am
Mike M says: August 8, 2014 at 5:01 am
AGW theory is about what happens when you dig up and release a whole lot of new carbon (as CO2) in the air.
————————-
You could have put a ‘should’ in there somewhere but, nonetheless I agree 100%. Although, understanding how the climate works would certainly aid us in understanding how changing CO2 levels will affect it. We spend a lot of time pointing out the nonesensical ‘science’ surrounding this issue when, most of the time, it is simply irrelevant to the core issue whether true or not. We don’t know what will happen if CO2 levels are doubled. Luckily, we don’t realy have a reason to be concerned either.
“Grouse” is just “grousing”. PNA
It is interesting that this paper: http://nrmsc.usgs.gov/files/norock/products/GCC/SattelliteAtlas_Key_02.pdf
says:
Of course he is quoting someone from 1939/40 and perhaps the consensus has changed since then.
A warden told me the same thing has happened for the front of the receding Athabasca Glacier: he said 3000 year-old stumps are being revealed. The University of Calgary is supposedly (his account) sampling and studying the revealed stumps.
Duh.
However, that was then, and this is now. Today is “special”, so it is irrelevant to the warmists: nature might have done that, then, but CO2 is doing it now. Apples and oranges.
Until we can show that CO2 is NOT causing the temp rise, the argument from history has no relevance in the Climate Wars.
sturgishooper says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:53 am
Wayne Delbeke says:
August 8, 2014 at 11:17 am
And others.
…
All you need to do to is find plant material recently uncovered by the melting glaciers at GNP that date back 1000, or 2000 years to prove the MWP and Roman times were “warmer” than today. That’s the problem, the carbond dating is 3000 years.
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 8:29 am
{{SNIP}}}
Though the key quote really for this post is the original
“This finding indicated that the Alps were pretty nearly glacier-free at that time, disproving accepted theories that they only began retreating after the end of the little ice age in the mid-19th century.”
This “disproving accepted theories” is what I’ve been pressing. If that isn’t true, then what is the post about? And I’ve given several examples where the accepted science is quite the opposite – that the mid-Holocene was warm, and quite consistent with much reduced glaciers. So Schlüchter’s findings are no surprise, and contradict no AGW theory (not that AGW is relevant there anyway).
No-one seems to be able to counter that.
Nick, the theory is the Michael Mann Hockey Stick – for a change what is in contention is the shaft of the hockey stick which you will remember was long and straight neatly (as requested in the climategate papers ) removing the Medieval and Roman warm periods and reinforcing the often quoted Earth is now the hottest ever!!
If I understand you correctly you are saying that you and other climate scientists knew that this claim that we are now in the hottest times was wrong – but nevertheless you kept schtum and didn’t point out that Mann’s hockey stick was obviously totally incorrect as you knew as did hundreds of climate scientists (including John Finn) and presumably those in the climategate papers who wanted to ‘get rid’ of the previous optima, that there were many previous optima in the Holocene much warmer than the present.
That puts you all into an interesting ethical bind.
If you knew that what Mann and the IPCC said and used as their poster graphic for their reports was completely incorrect – as you are telling us now – why did you keep silent and watch politicians use the incorrect data for self enrichment, power and a way to raise taxes and fuel costs – leading to thousands of deaths in fuel poverty in the UK alone? Can you live with that? What caused the silence – desire for funding? Maintenance of a steady job? Billions are being spent based on the claim that it is warmer now than ever – and you are saying well we all know that’s not true. Can you not stand in front of Congress and tell them the same thing? John Finn could do the same for a parliamentary committee. In the mean time whole industries are suffering and people facing unemployment because the politicians know they are onto a good little earner and nobody is standing up and telling them they are wrong. Why are you not telling them they are wrong if you know it was warmer in the past?
People will be asking this question more insistently in future so it might be an idea to have a satisfactory answer.
Eric says:
August 8, 2014 at 9:48 am
It seems that it might be a very good thing to require all climate scientists (actually all scientists) to read Feynman’s Cargo Cult Science speech. Repeatedly.
The most important part of that speech is widely ignored by a large number of climate scientists. That portion is:
————————————
Like math….we are in the age of the ‘New Science’ 😉
Article states:
“In fact the Alps were nearly glacier-free again about 2,000 years ago. Schlüchter points out that “the forest line was much higher than it is today; there were hardly any glaciers. Nowhere in the detailed travel accounts from Roman times are glaciers mentioned””.
——————–
Actually it was more like 2,300 years ago for sure.
I figured that out several years ago via the historical record and a wee bit of logical reasoning and intelligent deducting ….. and here is part of what I said about it at the time, to wit:
————
“Hannibal lucked out when he decided to march his army and herd of elephants across the Alps to attack the Romans in 218 BC because there surely could not have been many glaciers or heavy snowpack blocking his route since documented history proves he accomplished that feat”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal
Have you considered curing your total ignorance by reading actual studies, and improving your morals by at least trying to tell the truth?
You’re off by a factor of about 100%, ie 5900 years ago (from 1989) rather than 3000.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpubs.usgs.gov%2Fbul%2F1902%2Freport.pdf&ei=lhflU-WYN8b5oATXsIHwDA&usg=AFQjCNH5Z-9TuOOlw1VQri4iLUMc3japWg&sig2=1y1u2lHrIfmeDYjgyLYh_g&bvm=bv.72676100,d.cGU
The younger group of moraines was formed by
advances that culminated in the mid-19th century as
indicated by tree-ring studies at several localities in the park.
During that time, Glacier National Park contained more than
150 glaciers. The climatic cooling of the mid-19th century that
produced these moraines, although mild compared to fullglacial
conditions, was the most severe climatic deterioration
in the Glacier National Park region since the end of the
Wisconsin glaciation.
Since the mid-19th century, glaciers in Glacier National
Park have shrunk dramatically. From the mid-19th century
until about 1920 retreat rates were slow. From 1920 to the
mid-1940’s the Glacier National Park region experienced a
period of above average summer temperatures and below
average annual precipitation that caused the glaciers to
retreat drastically; many disappeared altogether. After the
mid-1940’s, the overall retreat rates slowed. Between 1966
and 1979, several of the larger glaciers in the Mount Jackson
area advanced slightly…
During the early to middle Holocene warm period
there were probably even fewer glaciers in the park than
at present. Several of the larger glaciers in Glacier
National Park may have survived this warm period,
although many of the park’s glaciers probably did not
exist at this time. Oxygen-isotope ratios determined by
B.H. Luckman on fir fragments from Jasper National
Park suggest that the mean annual temperature at 5,900
yr. BP was about 1.9 oc warmer than present (Osborn,
1982). Although a similar amount of warming would
certainly eliminate many of the smaller, marginal glaciers
in Glacier National Park, the larger, higher glaciers such
as the Blackfoot, Harrison, Sperry, Rainbow, Grinnell,
and Jackson probably survived the early to middle
Holocene warm period. It is interesting to note that as
early as 1942, Matthes stated that most of the presentday
glaciers in the park were not the shrunken remnants
of late Wisconsin glaciers but were new glaciers that
probably formed when the climate cooled after the
middle Holocene (Matthes, 1942).
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 11:22 am
Above addressed to H’s latest pack of lies at 11:22 AM.
sturgishooper says:
August 8, 2014 at 11:41 am
5900 years ago???
Thank you.
..
You just gave MORE evidence that the MWP and Roman warming were NOT warmer than today.
PS….Here are some “3000 year” studies
..
http://www.geog.uvic.ca/dept/uvtrl/2000-02.pdf
http://alaskaresearch.voices.wooster.edu/files/2010/07/AppletonIS.pdf
H Grouse says:
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:22 am
What does it matter?
It matters a lot. If the glaciers in GNP are 3000 years old, why didn’t them melt away during the MWP and Roman times which are thought to be “warmer” than today?
You, sir, should quote me in full. Here is what I have said:
What does it matter? It was, by your methodology, warmer 3000 years ago than today. So, how is current temperature being unprecedented?
I don’t care which particular time period was warmer than today. I care that it was warmer than today in recent history, and it did not created catastrophe. That kills concept of CAGW dead. The rest is details that some obscure scientists can argue about for al eternity.
Oldseadog says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:38 am
If Michael Mann had found the bits of wood he would have hidden them or turned them into hockey sticks and pucks.
——————————————————–
Careful, Oldseadog, the Mann is known to sue.
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 11:50 am
That kills concept of CAGW dead.
Not really, because ****IF**** the current warming is being caused by CO2, then the fact we are at unprecedented (i.e. 800,000 years) levels of CO2 is significant.
This is nothing new.
Prof. Dr. Patzelt
http://youtu.be/glplSyZM7uE
H Grouse:
re your post at August 8, 2014 at 11:58 am.
The year 1942 AD was much more recent than “800,000 years” ago.
Just thought you should know.
Richard
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 11:49 am
The fact that glaciers haven’t melted in the Park for 6000 years or more shows there is nothing unusual about their advance and retreat. At present, they are growing again. Their record extent came during the LIA, so retreat after that exceptionally cold period is to be expected.
Different glaciers in Banff and GNP will of course show different patterns.
Do you even read what you link?
As you’ve already been instructed, Glacier Bay NP is in Alaska, not Montana. And here is the history it gives for glaciers there:
“The glacial history of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is complex and
based on a combination of factors including the tidewater glacier cycle and the overall
climate of the region (Barclay et al., 2009). During a previous retreat the glaciers
retreated to approximately their modern positions (Mann and Hamilton, 1995).
Approximately 12,500 cal yr BP marks the period post glaciation when vegetation
began to enter the Bay following the retreat of the ice. The expansion and diversification
of flora in the area continued until 10,800 cal yr BP to 9,800 cal yr BP when a shift is
thought to correlate with the Younger Dryas period in Europe and caused the vegetation
in the Bay to change (Mann and Hamilton, 1995). Present trees, Sitka Spruce, Western
Hemlock, Mountain Hemlock, and cedar are an analog for those that entered into the Bay
after 10,000 cal yr BP. The trees move into the area in the previously stated order with
the western red cedar as one of the last tree varieties to travel north, not arriving until the
middle Holocene (Mann and Hamilton, 1995). The migration of the species completed in
4,000 cal yr BP (Mann and Hamilton, 1995). However, progress made by the tree taxa in
their migration north during this 6,000 year period would be greatly undone by the harsh
climate of the Little Ice Age, which was too extreme for trees and other vegetation to
survive (Mann and Hamilton, 1995).
Pollen records used to reconstruct paleoclimate suggest a warm period between
9,000-6,000 cal yr BP, called the Hypsithermal (Mann and Hamilton, 1995). By 9,000 cal
yr BP, sea level had reached its present height in most of southeast Alaska not
experiencing uplift of subsidence (Mann and Hamilton, 1995). During the Neoglacial
period the glaciers in the West Arm began to advance in a slow process broken up by
stand stills and minor retreats (Mann and Hamilton, 1995). This advance began with the
advance to the mouth of Reid Inlet, 5,750 cal yr BP, and Johns Hopkins Inlet, 5,430 cal
yr BP (Connor et al., 2009). Between 5,220 and 4,790 cal yr BP gravel outwash sediment
buried trees along Whidbey Passage, Francis Island and Sturgess Island respectively
(Connor et al., 2009). Shallow marine sediment with a lack of dropstones present at
Kidney Island and in Berg Bay, 4,560 and 4,290 cal yr BP respectively, gives evidence of
an outwash plain in front of the glacial advance. Willowby Island outwash buried in situ
stumps that were radiocarbon dated to between 3,710 and 3,420 cal yr BP marking the
advance that far down the Bay (Connor et al., 2009). Geikie Inlet shows an advance at
approximately 3,000 cal yr BP based on radiocarbon dating of a tree-ring series (Wiles et
al., 2011). A wetter and cooler climate trend followed this trend appearing in the pollen
records after 3,300 cal yr BP (Mann and Hamilton, 1995). The glaciers of the eastern
arm of Glacier Bay joined with the glaciers of the western arm of the inlet around 2,700
cal yr BP.
Un-rooted wood found in a glacial outwash till in Berg Bay radiocarbon dated to
between 2,520 and 2,270 cal yr BP suggesting the forefield of the western arm extended
well to the south of this location. Many glacial lake silts dating to 2,660 cal yr BP are
found throughout the east arm showing the presence of Glacial Lake Muir (Figure 8).
This indicates that the ice of the west arm had advanced far enough to dam the east arm
and cause the lake to form (Connor et al., 2009; Goodwin, 1988).
Trees in mid-Wachusett Inlet were killed by the advance of Carroll Glacier in
2,560 cal yr BP. A vegetated outwash located at the mid-point of Muir Glaciers upper
fjord dates to 2,790 cal yr BP. This matches the tree-ring and radiocarbon dating of the
Muir Inlet advance dating between 2,310 and 2,750 cal yr BP (Aughenbaugh, 2010). At
some point after 2,520 cal yr BP the west arm ice retreated behind the east arm causing
the release of Glacial Lake Muir.
A retreat occurred at this time. The ice advanced again to the mouth of the East
arm by 1,860 cal yr BP and lasted until 1,220 cal yr BP forming Glacial Lake Adams
(Figure 8). The forefield edge of the glacial outwash was located at Berg Bay in 1,780 cal
yr BP. 900 cal yr BP saw the ice come to a standstill, or in some cases a minor retreat. In
850 cal yr BP, the ice of the west arm retreated, releasing Glacial Lake Adams and
allowed for the growth of vegetation to be reestablished in the lower Bay area. After 850
cal yr BP the glaciers resumed their advance (Mann and Hamilton, 1995). By 420 cal yr
BP, the ice front was located north of Beardslee Island at Kidney Island. The ice
continued to advance until it reached Bartlett Cove between 280-170 cal yr BP (1750
AD) (Connor et al., 2009).
After 280 to 170 cal yr BP the glacier began its rapid and catastrophic retreat.
Several reasons for this rapid retreat have been proposed by the scientists that study
Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve and the surrounding area (Figure 9). One
hypothesis formed is that the ablation is based on warmer climate and aggravated by ice
calving into the waters of the fjord (Mann and Hamilton, 1995).”
The retreat turned out not to be so “catastrophic”. Glaciers there advanced in the 21st century:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nps.gov%2Fglba%2Fnaturescience%2Fupload%2FOverview%2520of%2520Glacier%2520Bay%2520Glaciers2.pdf&ei=GB7lU4bpM834oASX6oDQBA&usg=AFQjCNGBJcV_GZr8gooyH4JZmuJIRNFW0g&sig2=Rj-Pshj1WO5Z06PftuJk2w&bvm=bv.72676100,d.cGU
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 11:58 am
Earth is currently cooling. There is zero evidence to support the conjecture that whatever warming might have occurred between c. 1977 and 1996 was primarily (or at all) “caused” by CO2, and all the evidence in the world is against that unfounded assertion.
Proctor says
“Until we can show that CO2 is NOT causing the temp rise, the argument from history has no relevance in the Climate Wars.”
17 years 10 months no warming. 17 years 10 months accelerating CO2 rise.
DONE!
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 11:58 am
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 11:50 am
That kills concept of CAGW dead.
Not really, because ****IF**** the current warming is being caused by CO2, then the fact we are at unprecedented (i.e. 800,000 years) levels of CO2 is significant.
You continue to quote out of context and misdirect. I am sure it’s on purpose.
All that regular people, politicians, and everyone who is not a climate scientists, care about is whether global warming is catastrophic or not. They don’t care if it AGW or N(atural)GW or any other GW or C(limate)C(hange), as long as it’s not C(atastrophic)GW.
The fact that temperatures that were significantly higher than today did not destroy life as we know it is all that we care about.
H Grouse says
“No, the correct term is “hypothesis””
No the correct term is “Debunked hypothesis”
richardscourtney says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:02 pm
1942 AD
…
You should see what the readings are today if you take them today FROM THE SAME locations.
Paris has well over 900 ppm !!!
Bob Boder says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:07 pm
…
“17 years 10 months no warming.”
…
Yes, and during those 17 years and 10 months we’ve had about 50 mm of sea level rise.
H. Grouse: “Not really, because ****IF**** the current warming is being caused by CO2, then the fact we are at unprecedented (i.e. 800,000 years) levels of CO2 is significant.”
If the current warming is caused by pinto-bean consumption, then the fact that we are at unprecedented (i.e., 4,500,000,000-year) levels of pinto-bean consumption is significant.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:21 pm
Yes, and during those 17 years and 10 months we’ve had about 50 mm of sea level rise.
—-
Which is less than the previous 20 years.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 9:43 am
No, the correct term is “hypothesis”
—
Don’t theories have to get at least an occasional prediction correct?
MarkW says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:23 pm
Which is less than the previous 20 years.
Doesn’t matter if it is less. That wonderful “thermal expansion” and “melting ice” problem still exists for all the folks saying “no warming”
lemiere jacques says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:36 am
—-
Would you mind repeating that? In English this time.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:28 pm
—–
You really aren’t any good at this science thing.
Thermal equilibrium is not achieved over night.
MarkW says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:25 pm
.
at least an occasional prediction correct?
This one worked out fine
..
http://www.carbonbrief.org/media/82629/nsidc_sept_sea_ice.png
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:37 am
—–
Sturgis says almost ice free.
You proclaim that if it was warmer they must have ice free.
I guess this is just one of those words, whose meaning doesn’t matter to you.
MarkW,
H Grouse has no understanding of the lag time between warming and thermal expansion. He has argued incessantly that thermal expansion happens instantaneously. He even posted a link that explained that there is such a lag time. Didn’t matter. ‘H Grouse’ argues incessantly for the sake of argument. He is incapable of learning anything.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:28 pm
Sea level has been increasing since the Little Ice Age. Humans have nothing to do with it. Ice expanded during the LIA. Since its trough in the late 17th century, ice has been on balance waning, but also waxing. Same as for the past four billion years.
Its warmer now than 300 years, but cooler than 1000, 2000, 3000 and 5000 years ago, indeed cooler than about 2/3 of the Holocene, which has been a cooler interglacial than the Eemian and MIS 11, among recent ones. Ice has been in a downward trend on earth since the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago, at various paces of retreat.
There is no evidence that humans have anything to do with warming observed since the depths of the LIA during the 1690s.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:33 pm
—–
Notice how the troll left the last 3 years of data out of his cherry picked chart.
Mike M said: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1945/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1965/to:2000/trend
John Finn says: August 8, 2014 at 10:10 am What are the calculated trends.? Also the more recent period you chose includes a decade when temperatures were flat or cooling (i.e. 1965-75). The 1975-2010 trend shows more warming. (0.18 degrees per decade)
Yes, your later period was steeper, I must have missed it. The worst case I could find was about a difference in warming rate of about 0.3 degrees per century so if we double CO2 and CO2 is that influential we might make it back to MWP warmth in another 300 or 400 years. Is that a good reason to stop me from buying 100W light bulbs or doubling my electric bills? Is it worth putting coal miners out of work?
I should add, that according to the leading lights of CAGW, the arctic was supposed to be completely ice free this year.
MarkW says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:32 pm
“this science thing.”
..
Thermal expansion does not wait. Thermal expansion is not “thermal equilibrium” Keep your apples separate from your oranges.
dbstealey says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:35 pm
Maybe in his home universe, it works like that.
As usual, the sock puppet ‘H Grouse’ cherry picks only the Arctic when posting about sea ice.
For a chart of global ice cover, see here.
We see that global ice is rising. So much for the ‘global warming’ nonsense.
sturgishooper says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:35 pm
“Sea level has been increasing since the Little Ice Age”
…
So have global temperatures.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:28 pm
MarkW says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:23 pm
Which is less than the previous 20 years.
Doesn’t matter if it is less. That wonderful “thermal expansion” and “melting ice” problem still exists for all the folks saying “no warming”
I don’t know why I bother, you’ll just quote me out of context again, but It’s been increasing at faster rate for much longer than man had been producing any noticeable amount of CO2. The fact that it increased only by 50mm in last 18 years actually signifies that sea rise is slowing down. Which directly proves that you are wrong.
H Grouse says: August 8, 2014 at 12:33 pm at least an occasional prediction correct?
Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
Did anyone predict this? http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Grouse says:
So have global temperatures.
Which debunks the claim that human CO2 emissions cause global warming.
[BTW, does Grouse work? If so, he is cheating his employer by posting throughout the work day.]
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:39 pm
Well, duh! How do you suppose the LIA is characterized except by average temperature as implied by proxies and shown by instruments.
That a warmer world should have higher sea level is not at issue. The cause of post-LIA warming is. There is no reason to suppose that humans have had much or anything to do with it. Maybe a tiny bit from groundwater pumping. CO2, not so much.
MarkW says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:35 pm
“Notice how the troll left the last 3 years of data out of his cherry picked chart.”
This is better, …..
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/06/Figure3.png
Doesn’t change the trend line.
@H Grouse
#1 – Sea ice melting does not increase sea level. Physics 101
#2 – Half a world is not the whole world. Keep your cherry picking to yourself. The better one shows TOTAL – which includes ANTARCTICA
H Grouse:
The trouble with you trying to be clever is that you reveal you are not. Your post at August 8, 2014 at 12:16 pm says in total
I was referring to the value obtained by Massen & Beck for global background CO2 as later measured at Mauna Loa.
You really don’t have a clue what you are talking about or you would not have made such a mistake.
Richard
sturgishooper says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:42 pm
.
“Well, duh! ”
..
OK, please explain to me how we get 50 mm of sea level rise if there has not been any warming in the past 17 years and 10 months.
Doesn’t it stand to reason that if it is not getting warmer, then sea levels should stop rising?
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:36 pm
—–
Did you take classes in how to make yourself look dumb, or do you come by this skill naturally.
Take an iron bar. Apply a torch to one end. A few seconds later go to other end of the bar and touch it. Did you get burnt? Of course not, for the simple reason that the heat hasn’t moved to the other end yet. And iron is a good thermal conductor compared to most other things.
It takes time for heat to move from the atmosphere into everything else. Until the heat has moved, then thermal expansion can’t take place.
It’s really simple, unless you are dedicated to protecting your religious beliefs at the expense of your integrity.
H Grouse says
“Thermal expansion does not wait. Thermal expansion is not “thermal equilibrium” Keep your apples separate from your oranges.”
The same thermal expansion that was happening before Rockefeller started selling Gas and and Edison invented the light bulb. Man made Global warming at work.
If the oceans are warming and the air ain’t then something else is warming the oceans bub. There’s your next bit of proof that it’s not the CO2. Work on your next theory this one is done.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:39 pm
So have global temperatures.
—-
However CO2 levels didn’t start rising until almost 100 years later.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:43 pm
The global temperature trend line is down:
MIS 11 warmer than Eemian Interglacial.
Eemian warmer than Holocene.
Holocene Climatic Optimum warmer than Old Kingdom Warm Period.
OKWP warmer than Minoan WP.
Greek Dark Ages Cold Period warmer than Dark Ages Cold Period.
Minoan warmer than Roman WP.
Dark Ages Cold Period warmer than LIA.
Roman warmer than Medieval WP.
LIA colder than DACP.
Modern Warm Period cooler than Medieval WP.
Not a happy trend for the fate of humanity.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:45 pm
The rate of increase in sea level rise has indeed slowed, but we’re still in a warmer cycle than the LIA. But that has little or nothing to do with human GHGs.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:43 pm
—-
Actually it does change the trend line. It flattens it noticeably.
However the problem with your graph is that it starts at the beginning of the warm cycle of the PDO, which is well known to melt arctic sea ice.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:45 pm
sturgishooper says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:42 pm
.
“Well, duh! ”
..
OK, please explain to me how we get 50 mm of sea level rise if there has not been any warming in the past 17 years and 10 months.
Doesn’t it stand to reason that if it is not getting warmer, then sea levels should stop rising?
I haven’t got a clue. SInce it is obviously not going to cause catastrophe, why should I care? I am perfectly happy for you to spend all of your life trying to figure that out. As long as you leave me alone and don’t try to change my way of life, trying to stop sea rise that had been happening for ages.
Doesn’t it stand to reason.
—-
No Grouse, it doesn’t stand to reason at all.
Glaciers take time to melt. Also ground water pumping is still going on.
But your plot doesn’t predict a warmer future.
It doesn’t match decreasing summertime Arctic air temperatures up where the ice actually is.
It doesn’t even relate to rising CO2 levels.
Now, explain why the Antarctic sea ice has been steadily expanding since 1996, and has been above 0.0 anomaly ever since 2006?
The ever-increasing Antarctic sea ice at 58-59 south latitude receives 5x times more energy in September than does Arctic sea ice up at 80 north latitude that same day. Today, at the actual sea ice limits of the Arctic, more energy is LOST from the open ocean by evaporation, convection, conduction, and long-wave radiation than can be gained by the few hours of sunlight each day at 5 – 7 degree solar elevation angles.
So, why should we care about receding Arctic sea ice?
Less Arctic sea ice in August, September, October => more heat loss => colder futures.
More sea ice in those months => less heat loss => warmer futures.
Yes, losing Arctic sea ice seems like a problem to me.
And, according to the DMI, the daily summertime temperatures up at 80 north have been getting colder since 1959. So, why do you not fear a colder future?
Why do you NOT care about the ever-increasing Antarctic sea ice?
More Antarctic sea ice => more reflected energy 7 months of the year => colder futures. And Antarctica has been getting colder!
richardscourtney says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:44 pm
…
“You really don’t have a clue”
..
“Those done by chemical methods prior to 1960 are often rejected as being inadequate due too poor siting, timing or method. ”
http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/CO2_versus_windspeed-review-1-FM.pdf
Thanks RIchard.
RACookPE1978 says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:53 pm
“Now, explain why the Antarctic sea ice has been steadily expanding”
Shifting wind.
..
Also note, that Antarctic ice MASS has been decreasing.
..
http://congrexprojects.com/docs/12c20_docs2/2-grace_esa-clic_forsberg.pdf?sfvrsn=2
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:52 pm
I: haven’t got a clue.”
..
I will give you two.
1) Thermal expansion
2) Melting ice.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:57 pm
Actually, Antarctic mass is not diminishing. The EAIS quit retreating about 3000 years ago, as shown by radionuclides in the soil around its margins.
sturgishooper says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:50 pm
…
“but we’re still in a warmer cycle”
…
There are thousands of “cycles”……. PDO+AMO+Indian+sunspot+Milankovicth+tarot cards????
Ever hear of Occam’s razor ?
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:43 pm
MarkW says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:35 pm
“Notice how the troll left the last 3 years of data out of his cherry picked chart.”
This is better, …..
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/06/Figure3.png
Doesn’t change the trend line.
No, not really. 2012? You still left out 2 last years of data. The years when ice started to increase.
Er, uhm, ah … NO.
That is NOT a “prediction” of Arctic sea ice trends, that is a two-year old “plot” of what happened to Arctic sea ice.
See, a prediction is made “ahead of time” about the “future” of sea ice.
And, what Sereze (and hundreds of other co-religion propagandists) have predicted is a “Arctic feedback” where “loss of sea ice => increased heat absorbed in the open ocean + less solar energy reflected into space each day => more Arctic warming => more sea ice loss => more Arctic warming.”
And that is NOT what has happened when Arctic sea ice was lost in 2007, 2012, 2002, or any other year. Each year, after a new “sea ice low record” was set, more sea ice was found the next year.
sturgishooper says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:59 pm
“radionuclides in the soil around its margins.”
…
GRACE has a wider geographical perspective.
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:04 pm
“You still left out 2 last years of data.”
Adding in the rise in 2013 doesn’t change the trend.
H Grouse says
“1) Thermal expansion
2) Melting ice.”
1) Thermal Expansion since before CO2 increases.
2) Melting ice Because of 1
Again CO2 theory as cause for either is done and you keep proving it yourself!
Keep posting and maybe you can actually convince yourself.
H Grouse:
Thankyou for your post at August 8, 2014 at 12:54 pm which confirms you don’t have a clue about atmospheric CO2 issues: it demonstrates your ability does not extend to you being able to accurately quote from a paper I cited.
Personally, I don’t think you are real because you are too stupid to be a real person. I think you are a team of employed trolls obtaining remuneration for each post you provide.
Richard
RACookPE1978 says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:04 pm
..
“Er, uhm, ah … NO.”
…
AGW predicts the melting of the Arctic ice cap.
The 30 year trend shows it’s happening.
…
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:04 pm
GRACE isn’t accurate and has had to be rejiggered. Please try to stay up.
The EAIS never gets above freezing.
You clearly have no clue as to what Occam’s Razor even means.
richardscourtney says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:07 pm
“because you are too stupid to be a real person.”
..
Now, now Richard, you’d do much better if you’s lay off the ad-hominem type of arguments. It degrades your stature.
Grouse:
Enough with your ‘thermal expansion’ nonsense. There is clearly a lag time between absorbed energy and rising sea levels. See here. That link reports on the IPCC’s determination that sea levels will continue to rise due to lag times:
Thus, your false claim that there is no lag time is debunked — just like all your other nonsense.
Sea levels have not been rising any faster than they have since the LIA, and the great stadial befor the Holocene. Human emissions have nothing to do with sea levels. There is no “fingerprint of AGW” in the temperature record.
Finally, there is no warming of the deep ocean, per the ARGO buoy data.
Your belief system is based on emotion, so you cannot be convinced. But others can see reality: global warming has stopped.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:59 pm
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:52 pm
I: haven’t got a clue.”
..
I will give you two.
1) Thermal expansion
2) Melting ice.
OMG! I said you going to quote me out of context and you did! Good for you.
Let me spell it out, so you get it:
Since, as we already established, it doesn’t affect anything, I haven’t got a clue and I DONT CARE
Not my problem. Not how I make a living. Have no effect on anyone and anything whatsoever. You figure it out, and after you do, explain to someone who gives a c..p. Now, please go away. In a mean time, please, please stop telling me how to live my life? Leave me the #$#%#$ alone, will you?
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:08 pm
It shows no such thing.
The “Arctic ice cap”, by which I assume you mean Arctic sea ice, was reduced during the 1920s-40s, too, but built back up, just as is happening now after the warming of the late 20th century via natural ocean current oscillations, not the air.
During the Medieval WP, Arctic sea ice was less than now. Ditto the Roman and Minoan Warm Periods. During the Holocene, it practically disappeared for thousands of summers in a row. The satellite era just happened to coincide with the onsets of the warm phases of the PDO and AMO.
Bob Boder says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:07 pm
..
“Again CO2 theory as cause ”
..
I’m not arguing causes. I’m posting facts. Forget causes. So many people claim “no warming in 17 years” and all I am doing is pointing out a measured fact of reality that disproves the 17 year claim.
If sea levels are rising, then thermal expansion of sea water is happening.
H Grouse says
“AGW predicts the melting of the Arctic ice cap.
The 30 year trend shows it’s happening.”
And gone by the summer of 2013 but Oh no it still there and you no what its getting bigger! And you know what its still not getting warmer either.
Proving yourself wrong again! keep going i am starting to laugh now and that makes it worth it.
sturgishooper says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:11 pm
“During the Medieval WP, Arctic sea ice was less than now.”
..
Wow, I didn’t realize that during the MWP that they had satellite measurements of Arctic sea ice. See? I learn new things every day !!!!
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:12 pm
There are other reasons for sea level rise besides thermal expansion. There are other reasons for thermal expansion besides warmer air temperature (which is not warming now anyway), such as undersea volcanism.
You have everything to learn.
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:04 pm
“You still left out 2 last years of data.”
Adding in the rise in 2013 doesn’t change the trend.
Forgive me if I don’t take your word for it, but why didn’t you add it then? And what about 2014? This graph ends in June 2012. We are in August 2014 – the data is there.
Bob Boder says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:13 pm
“And gone by the summer of 2013”
I don’t think I made that claim.
If I did, can you copy / paste my post where I did so?
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:14 pm
Hey, ignoramus, proxy data are better than satellites, which still have problems, despite efforts to fix them. Science knows as an observed fact that Arctic sea ice was less 1000 years ago than now, based upon proxy data of all kinds.
You know that the CAGW liars are in the hot seat when the trolls show up with their buckets full of rocks and claim it’s water.
This post jogged a memory for me. Here it is…From 2005
The Coming and Going of Glaciers: A New Alpine Melt Theory
By Hilmar Schmundt
The Alpine glaciers are shrinking, that much we know. But new research suggests that in the time of the Roman Empire, they were smaller than today. And 7,000 years ago they probably weren’t around at all. A group of climatologists have come up with a controversial new theory on how the Alps must have looked over the ages.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/the-coming-and-going-of-glaciers-a-new-alpine-melt-theory-a-357366.html
H Grouse says
“If sea levels are rising, then thermal expansion of sea water is happening.”
Again since before CO2 rise.
If, as you say, it is rising because of “thermal expansion” and it was before CO2 rise and is now with out atmospheric temperature rise then again it ain’t AGW causin the rising bub!
Keep proving yourself wrong, maybe you’ll understand what your trying to say, but no one else does.
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:15 pm
..
“And what about 2014?:
..
NSIDC shows that we’re at 2 standard deviations below average right now.
..
Do you know what 2 standard deviations is a lot?
H Grouse:
Thankyou for your post at August 8, 2014 at 1:09 pm.
I take your post as being your confirmation that your inane stupidities are because you are a team employed and remunerated to troll.
Richard
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:03 pm
—
Occam’s razor requires one to accept the simplest answer, even if it is plainly wrong?
I never knew that.
Bob Boder says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:18 pm
..
“Again since before CO2 rise.”
…
For one minute drop any thought of CO2.
…
Now….people are claiming that there has been no warming in 17 years and 10 months.
Sea level rise in the past 17 years and 10 months proves there is warming.
..
WHATEVER the cause.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:19 pm
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:15 pm
..
“And what about 2014?:
..
NSIDC shows that we’re at 2 standard deviations below average right now.
..
Do you know what 2 standard deviations is a lot?
Actually, NSIDC shows that we are within 2 standard deviations. Do you know what it means?
Grouse trolls:
AGW predicts the melting of the Arctic ice cap.
Wrong, as always.
AGW predictions were that polar ice would decline due to human CO2 emissions. When that prediction failed, the goal posts were moved to ‘Arctic’ ice.
Every alarmist prediction has failed. When one group’s predictions are 100.0% wrong, reasonable people will question their premise.
Quick, someone hand Grouse a shovel. His old one is wearing out.
H. Grouse:
You might wish to begin educating yourself before presuming to comment on Arctic sea ice extent, but then again, probably not, since your ignorance is apparently blissful to you:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2012/08/natures-medieval-warming-melts-arctic-northwest-passage-sea-ice-but-modern-warming-does-not.html
MarkW says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:19 pm
” even if it is plainly wrong?”
…
Except that neither case has been shown it is “wrong”
Both explanations might be correct.
I follow Occam.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:12 pm
—
The FACT remains that temperatures aren’t rising, even the IPCC has finally admitted as much.
If thermal expansion were the only cause of ocean warming, you might have a point, even though even the IPCC says that it will take hundreds to thousands of years for the oceans to reach thermal equilibrium.
Face it, you have leeched onto a fact that you don’t even understand in order to avoid dealing the uncomfortable fact that the world isn’t warming.
Grouse trolls:
Sea level rise in the past 17 years and 10 months proves there is warming. WHATEVER the cause.
Wrong, as always. Sea level rise proves that there was past warming. See, there is a lag time — something that ‘Grouse’ cannot admit, because if he does his whole argument goes down in flames.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:14 pm
—–
There you go, making yourself look stupid again.
Look up the concept of proxies, and weep for your lost self respect.
H Grouse and others:
NOAA mean sea level data, derived from their tidal gauges show no sea level rise this century- none. Exceptions are in locales that are subsiding such as Grande Isle, LA. and the Chesapeake Bay area.Note that this includes both Pacific and Atlantic gauges as well as the Gulf of Mexico.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:16 pm
—–
Nobody said you made that claim.
The fact remains that the people who’s predictions you are claiming prove AGW, made that claim, and it turned out to be wrong.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:19 pm
——
Once more you beclown yourself.
No 2 std dev is not a lot.
sturgishooper says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:22 pm
…
“wish to begin educating yoursel”
…
Now, tell me…if the MWP was warmer than today, why are they not finding organic material at the melting edge of the Glacier National Park glaciers dated 1000 years ago? The dates are coming back at 3000 years.
H Grouse says;
“I don’t think I made that claim.
If I did, can you copy / paste my post where I did so?”
Well, make a claim now Bub, when will it be gone? Make a real prediction here if you dare, since you know what AGW theory predicts it should be easy for you just let everyone else in on the secret. I am a betting you’ll just move the goal post again and won’t make an actual prediction, Do you actually know anything!
i’ll make mine here and now. Not for at least the next 40 years! And not because of AGW ever or anything else unprecedented.
Your on the clock Bub!
MarkW:
At August 8, 2014 at 1:25 pm you write
I strongly suspect there is no self named H Grouse.
I think we are confronted by a troll team operating as H Grouse to present idiocy.
If my suspicion is anywhere near true then the absence of a ‘self’ means there could not have been “self respect” to be lost.
Richard
MarkW says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:28 pm
“No 2 std dev is not a lot.”
..
2 sigma is 95%……
…
I think 95% is “a lot”
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:22 pm
——
The problem for you troll old boy, is that the far simpler explanation is that this decrease in arctic ice was caused by the same thing caused all previous decreases in ice. Which would be the well known and thoroughly documented cycles.
It is your CO2 that is the complex, because CO2 itself cannot cause the warming claimed for it. You have to use models which add in all kinds of unproven (and in some cases, disproven) positive feedbacks to get the scary numbers.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:31 pm
—-
95% is the bare minimum for acceptable statistical analysis.
No, it’s not a lot.
But then, if you knew anything about statistics, you would have known that already.
richardscourtney says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:30 pm
..
“I think we are confronted by a troll”
..
Richard, if you cannot add to the discussion at hand, you should refrain from making inane comments.
funny that “shifting wind” theory …
See, there is NO “data” showing any wind speed shifts, wind speed changes, or wind direction changes above the sea ice that have affected the Antarctic sea ice every day between mid-2006 (when the Antarctic sea ice anomaly increased to a positive “excess” sea ice value, and continued its 22 year trend of INCREASING Antarctic sea ice AROUND the Antarctic continent.
Thus, for your “claim” to be true, you need to show measured values of Antarctic winds every day of the year blowing sea ice AWAY from the near-circular Antarctic continent OUT to a distance of 500 to 1000 kilometers AWAY from the continent.
Local winds? Even they have NOT been measured over the past 7 years as your “claim” requires.
Further, I want you to explain your claim of “increased (continental) antarctic ice loss” during a period when the actual measured Antarctic average air temperatures have been decreasing since 1980…. You are relying on GRACE satellite “data” which have NOT been “calibrated” against actual Antarctic (or Greenland) ice mass losses.
MarkW says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:33 pm
..
“if you knew anything about statistics,”
..
Then you must know Mark, that the current reading of Arctic ice extent is lower than 2 sigma of the average.
..
That is significant….unless you think otherwise.
H Grouse
I am still waiting for your prediction? When does AGW theory say that arctic ice will be gone, oh great and all knowing master of theory?
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:37 pm
MarkW says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:33 pm
..
“if you knew anything about statistics,”
..
Then you must know Mark, that the current reading of Arctic ice extent is lower than 2 sigma of the average.
..
That is significant….unless you think otherwise.
You are very, very confused person, H Grouse. The current reading of Arctic ice extent is whithin 2 sigma of average. Read them and weep:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2014/08/asina_N_stddev_timeseries.png
H Grouse:
Thankyou for your post at August 8, 2014 at 1:34 pm which confirms the obvious fact that you are a troll.
However, it remains to be determined if you are an individual or a team.
Importantly, you have yet to reveal if you are being employed to troll and if so by whom and at what rate(s) of pay.
The additional information would be appreciated.
Richard
There is a direct relationship between the number of truths revealed by a thread’s topic and the number of troll comments trying to obscure those truths.
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:42 pm
.
“extent is whithin 2 sigma ”
…
Too close to call
Every year around the end of December I see lots of chubby white-haired men in warm red suits, with boots and gloves. This year, it was much colder than it’s been for some time, so obviously that’s the reason they were wearing gloves, because we all know people wear gloves when it gets cold. I know that they always used to wear gloves anyways, but this time it’s different, because it’s never been this cold before.
Bob Boder says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:39 pm
..
“I am still waiting for your prediction”
…
I don’t like to make predictions, and I will not.
philjourdan says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:48 pm
“really, try some history.”
…
Really, please find some vegetation at the edge of the melting glaciers that carbon date back less than 3000 years. If you find some, then we’ll know the MWP and/or Roman warming was “warmer” than today”
@ H Grouse says: August 8, 2014 at 1:51 pm
I have not looked. Nor do I care to. For unlike you, I at least know history. So I can calculate that 3000 years ago was the Minoan Warm Period and I would not make such a stupid statement that it could not have been warmer than today as you did.
Should I decide to embark on an expedition to a glacier, I will report my findings. Until then, making trolls like you look foolish is a much more productive use of my time.
H Grouse says
“I don’t like to make predictions, and I will not.”
But I was asking for your prediction based on AGW theory since you say it predicts this and it predicts that, i thought you were an expert, guess I was wrong. You don’t actually know what AGW theory predicts or doesn’t predict do you?
How about instead of posting a bunch of nonsense here you read some of the things that people post and ask simple straight forward questions and learn something. There are lot of really smart dedicated people posting here that know a lot. I have learned a lot here and you can too if you are so inclined to think for yourself.
OK Bub!
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:45 pm
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:42 pm
.
“extent is whithin 2 sigma ”
…
Too close to call
It’s plainly visible on the picture I had posted. No if, buts and maybes. Here it is, again, just to make sure:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2014/08/asina_N_stddev_timeseries.png
The parrot is really dead.
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:02 pm
.
.
” just to make sure:”
Still too close to call
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:04 pm
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:02 pm
.
.
” just to make sure:”
Still too close to call
You should get new glasses.
The parrot is dead. It is not sleeping or pretending. It really is dead.
Udar:
It is the troll’s brain which is dead, not the parrot.
It really would be good to know who is employing the troll to make their daft comments.
Richard
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:34 pm
Richard, if you cannot add to the discussion at hand
—-
By applying Occam’s razor, I have to conclude that you need to stop posting.
MarkW says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:33 pm
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:31 pm
—-
95% is the bare minimum for acceptable statistical analysis.
No, it’s not a lot.
But then, if you knew anything about statistics, you would have known that already.
What does 95% have to do with anything?
The probability of a being 2sd below the mean is ~2.2%
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:08 pm
“You should get new glasses.”
…
Don’t need them, just use “CTRL++”
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:37 pm
—–
Actually, it’s less than 2 sigma, but then you already knew that.
Billy Liar:
Thanks for the excerpt–and for the link; I don’t have a copy of Strabo.
MarkW says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:14 pm
“I have to conclude that you need to stop posting.”
…
I would love to hear your rendition of how Occam applies
…
Please, post it
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:15 pm
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:08 pm
“You should get new glasses.”
…
Don’t need them, just use “CTRL++”
Then you need new “CTRL++” key :/ Or computer. Or screen. Or, like Richard suggests, new brain.
Current extent is about 2/3 of the way in 2 sigma band. It’s not even close to the edge. In fact, it’s the largest extent in last 5 years. Which is why you excluded it from your graph.
Re: trolls on this sight. They’re ALWAYS so sure. So damn sure they KNOW what happens with our climate.
How does the adage go?
The knowledgeable person is fraught with doubt while the ignorant one is cock-sure.
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:20 pm
..
“It’s not even close to the edge.”
..
I downloaded and installed a “new brain”
…
Still not even close.
Alan Robertson says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:44 pm
Good observation.
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:20 pm
“In fact, it’s the largest extent in last 5 years.”
Do you realize what the odds are of having five years in a row close to 2 sigma is?
…
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:22 pm
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:20 pm
..
“It’s not even close to the edge.”
..
I downloaded and installed a “new brain”
…
Still not even close.
http://youtu.be/yH97lImrr0Q?list=RDyH97lImrr0Q
RobRoy says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
August 8, 2014 at 2:21 pm
I guess I don’t understand the rules.
The only deniers are the communist [mother*ers] who are trying to take over the world one lie at a time!!!
[Cut the foul language. .mod]
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:22 pm
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:20 pm
..
“It’s not even close to the edge.”
..
I downloaded and installed a “new brain”
…
Still not even close.
Sorry, the first one didn’t work
http://youtu.be/yH97lImrr0Q
H Grouse responding to:
and also
Funny that thing about statistics and standard deviations:
See, the Arctic sea ice is WITHIN 2 standard deviations of the established normal (less than 2 years AFTER a “record low” Arctic sea ice extents in 2012.) Therefore, Arctic sea ice is WITHIN “normal” for this year, and there is NO reason to suspect (or blame) ANYTHING other than “natural changes” for today’s sea ice extents.
Now, the Antarctic sea ice extents are GREATER THAN 2 standard deviations ABOVE the established normal for Antarctic sea ice extents.
Thus, Antarctic sea ice extents CANNOT be explained away by claiming “natural deviations” or “natural causes” …
Nor can this “excess” 2.05 million square kilometers of “extra” Antarctic sea ice be explained away by “wind” since there are NO “wind records” existing that are sufficient to move the “normal” Antarctic sea ice 500 – 1000 kilometers ADDITIONAL distance away from the Antarctic coast through ALL seasons of EVERY year since 1996 …
For H Grouse and anyone else who is too cheap to buy a decent pair of reading glasses:
http://i58.tinypic.com/dbqng3.png
RACookPE1978 says:
August 8, 2014 at 2:45 pm
” Therefore, Arctic sea ice is WITHIN “normal””
..
Seriously… if it were within ONE standard deviation, you might be close….but…..nature is not helping your case.
Oh yes, they will all be saying we knew this, we knew that with such incontrovertible evidence. But the efforts to bury it have occupied the Team for over a decade. Mann flattened the hockey stick to get rid of both the LIA and MWP. Marcott tells us that the last decades were the hottest in millennia and they have been chipping at the warm periods to make them less contrasting. Sure, before climate science’s “Golden Age”, these things were known. It is the dishonesty of those who have tried to bury these things more recently that is egregious. Good thing the Holocene research people didn’t get a hold of this tree. This is a timely find
I’ve watched this site since its inception, and I have never seen anyone as consistently wrong as “H Grouse”.
Phil. says:
The probability of a being 2sd below the mean is ~2.2%
So, once in less that 50 years we can expect the same polar ice action? If so, that is very recent history, and it indicates natural variability. This has all happened before, and not that long ago [link is from 1922].
Recall that the predictions were for zero Arctic ice by 2013 or 2014. Like every alarmist prediction, they were wrong. Arctic ice is recovering nicely. This year shows much more Arctic ice than in the recent past.
Dear adherents to the ABC religion.
…
I am shocked that all of you can look at this graph.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2014/08/asina_S_stddev_timeseries.png
…
and not see that in FIVE years, we’ve never even come close to the big black line labeled. 1981-2010 average.
…
Not even close
…
Fine, you can be blind to reality, but that is your choice.
…
If you knew statistics you could calculate the probability that in FIVE years, you’d hit the AVERAGE once. just once in five years. I’m not asking much, but it looks like in the past five years, the extent hasn’t even come to within one standard deviation of the average.
…
If you guy want to continue to deny reality, that is your choice, but the data shows that the TREND for Arctic ice is clear, and convincing to anyone with at least a minimal grounding is statistics.
Congratulations, H. Grouse. You are the most successful troll I’ve seen around here in ages. You’ve managed to keep this thread in the weeds for hours.
Also, thanks for the ctrl++ hint: I did not know that.
Even better, you get a big shout- out and a really, really big thanks for providing such great troll training for some of the newer participants. The lessons they will take away from your training are invaluable and will serve them well, down the road.
You are a doubleplus good troll.
dbstealey says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:00 pm
I’ve watched this site since its inception, and I have never seen anyone as consistently wrong as “H Grouse”.
…
And tell me sir, since the inception of this site, can you please show ALL OF US where I’ve made one single “prediction”
…
Not playing your game. I’ll just have fun pointing out facts to you. You can deal with their ramifications.
@rgb
Thank you for participating in this discussion. You have my utmost respect and I’m sure that is true of the majority of the reader here. Your students will undoubtedly be the leaders of the future. Those from other universities visiting here @ WUWT are gaining much more than can be realized. There is hope for the future of science, I hope.
From one of your earlier comments on this thread: quote
“………..Then there are the SPMs in the ARs — which can best be described as a pack of lies dressed up in the misused language of statistics and which are not written by the scientists whose work they supposedly summarize, but rather by a tightly-knit group committed to selling the belief that It Is All Our Fault, whether or not the data supports this. Indeed, in spite of data that does not support this. Where are the honest scientists who call them on this abuse of language? …….. ”
Sir, while you were not part of that particular process (to the best of my knowledge) you are one of the honest and true academics who call them and others on this abuse of science and language. I respect that!
dbstealey says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:00 pm
…
:Arctic ice is recovering nicely.”
…
Hasn’t hit the AVERAGE in five years.
…
If you call that “recovering” I have a job for you at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington DC.
H Grouse:
At August 8, 2014 at 3:05 pm you say
That is blatant falsehood because I have repeatedly asked you to state facts so we can deal with their ramifications but you have not provided the requested facts.
I remind that the requested facts are how many of you are there, who is employing you to troll, and what payment(s) do you obtain for your trolling.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:15 pm
…
Here’s a fact for you to ponder
Sea levels have risen 50 mm in the past 17 years and 10 months.
Sea level rise is composed of three factors.
1) Thermal expansion
2) Melting ice
3) Others
..
Now, as you have said, there hasn’t been any warming in the past 17 years.
…
I enjoy your cognitive dissonance in relation to these stated facts.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:07 pm
dbstealey says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:00 pm
…
:Arctic ice is recovering nicely.”
…
Hasn’t hit the AVERAGE in five years.
…
If you call that “recovering” I have a job for you at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington DC.
The ice was decreasing till 2012, then it started to increase. It is within 2 sigma band, meaning it is statistically within normal spread. Nothing strange or unusual here. At the same time Antarctic ice have been consistently increasing and now its outside 2 sigma band – meaning this increase is statistically significant.
But none of it matter much. What matters is why should we care?
I asked this question number of times and you never answered me. Why do we care what ice, or glaciers, or sea level, or sea temperature, or many other things do, when we know for a fact that it was much warmer than today and nothing bad had happened?
H Grouse,
Average of what the last thirty years? How about the last ten thousand.
Again not AGW related. You don’t have anything really to say you just move from one non issue to the next and argue nothing of consequence. It’s quite boring.
richardscourtney says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:15 pm
.
“who is employing you to troll, ”
…
PS…if you are unable to discuss facts, and feel the need to resort to ad hominem name calling, (i.e. “troll”)…could you leave us adults to comment and go elsewhere?
You can’t believe everything you read.
I think the wood was placed there by Neanderthals who were burying wood in the ice for future use.
Bob Boder says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:26 pm
…
“Average of what the last thirty years”
…
What are your standards for establishing a baseline. ? 50 years? 100 years? (of course, please include your reasoning for > 30 years)
OK. So, why do you persist in ignoring the ever-increasing, rapidly accelerating Antarctic sea ice extents?
You claim (wrongly!) that crossing a 2 standard deviation line one direction over an entire summer interval means nothing, but then you are at equally wrongly inconsistent that exceeding two standard deviations FOR THREE FULL YEARS the other direction must be ignored! Or perhaps that means your mind does not see either trend correctly.
What is your specific mathematics and physics and thermodynamics and particle physics and radiation physics and heat transfer and fluid flow and engineering: both classwork, laboratories and paid professional experience? Perhaps we are not expressing things in terms you are able to understand.
See, if “not reaching average” even once in five years” portends dire consequences for Arctic sea ice loss as you claim – when we have shown that increased Arctic sea ice loss means a GREATER heat loss from the Arctic ocean at all dates after mid-August these years … Then what does it mean when Antarctic sea ice “normals” are “usually” exceeded at ever increasing amounts since 1994?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
What does it mean when two standard deviations (millions of square kilometers!) are exceeded every day for years?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
What does it mean when the Antarctic continent is growing colder each year?
It has fascinated me for years how “experts” totally convinced history is wrong, absolutely certain about the future, remain at a total loss about the present?
H Grouse:
You have yet again avoided the important questions.
I again repeat them.
How many of you are there, who is employing you to troll, and what remuneration(s) are you obtaining for your trolling?
Richard
What evidence have you presented that you are an educated adult capable of learning things in the physical sciences?
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:24 pm
..
“Nothing strange or unusual here”
…
In a truly stochastic process, the reversion to the mean would indicate that in the past five years, at least ONCE you’d cross the mean.
…
Remember, if you flip a coin five times, and it comes up heads five times in a row, the probability of that happening is 1/32
We use the standards established by the NSIDC, NOAA, DMI, JAXA, NASA-GISS, etc – and the many other national agencies from around the world – as displayed for each day’s measurements here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
Each agency has an established baseline, and that baseline is displayed in each of the several dozen plots and graphics for the Arctic, worldwide, and Antarctic areas. If you need to ask about each agency’s normals, ask them.
H Grouse
Boring. I Pick 1,000,000 years. Why because it sounds like a fun number to me.
Now what, AGW still has nothing to do with arctic conditions in your time span or mine.
Tell me what is going to happen based on your knowledge, oh thats right you won’t. You know why you won’t because all the BS you spewed has already been run threw the computer models and guess what it comes out as non sense just let your arguments.
RACookPE1978 says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:33 pm ..
.
“you are an educated adult ”
…
Never claimed to be educated, but if you want to continue to debate me, I would be more than happy to oblige. But then, if you don’t want to debate a grade school dropout, then you are free not to.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:34 pm
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:24 pm
..
“Nothing strange or unusual here”
…
In a truly stochastic process, the reversion to the mean would indicate that in the past five years, at least ONCE you’d cross the mean.
…
Remember, if you flip a coin five times, and it comes up heads five times in a row, the probability of that happening is 1/32
Come on, Grousee. You really should know better. [Weather] is not a random process. It is chaotic, but it is not random. Natural variations don’t mean “random variations”. It means we are not responsible for them.
But let’s not change the topic here – I repeat, yet again – why should we care, when the article that started this shows conclusively that climate was much warmer in the past and nothing bad happened?
Why am I confused as to just what the he!! we are talkng about?
I thought it was finding tree pieces in Swiss glaciers and the fact that it has to be warmer for those trees to get there, in the first place.
And as far as the BS argument about the statistics of the Arctic ice…there’s lies, damn lies and then there’s statistics.
H Grouse says
You flip your coin, I ll watch a sine wave go from peak to through.
Bob Boder says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:41 pm
,,,
” I Pick 1,000,000 years”
…
Great!!!
…
Please post a link to your first scientific paper you publish.
I’ll be waiting.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:34 pm
…
Remember, if you flip a coin five times, and it comes up heads five times in a row, the probability of that happening is 1/32
And yet, it happens all the time. It is very known thing that thing like coin tosses tend to cluster together. I suggest you try to throw a coin few time and record how often you get a clusters of 5 heads in a row…
H Grouse
And I won’t wait for yours because I already know it would be non sense.
The grouse says:
since the inception of this site, can you please show ALL OF US where I’ve made one single “prediction”
I never said you made a prediction. I said you were wrong about everything. There is a difference.
Next:
the data shows that the TREND for Arctic ice is clear, and convincing to anyone… If you call that “recovering”… &blah, blah, etc.
The trend is, in fact, clear: Arctic ice is recovering. Chalk up another “wrong” for birdbrain. Grouse is wrong about everything. He cherry picks random factoids that provide fodder for his confirmation bias. He is either stupid, or on someone’s payroll. Maybe both.
When will a mod delete “H Grouse” comments? He is certainly using multiple identities in his effort to be a site pest.
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:45 pm
…
“t is very known thing that thing like coin tosses tend to cluster together. ”
The probability of heads is 1/2, the probability of tails is 1/2.
…
The coin is Markov….there is no “clustering”
(Reply: You are using more than one screen name; a violation of site Policy. Post under your real name, or watch your comments get deleted. First warning/last warning. ~mod.)
dbstealey says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:48 pm
” I said you were wrong about everything.”
I wasn’t wrong about 50 mm of sea level rise.
…
So, your statement is false.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:43 pm
Bob Boder says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:41 pm
,,,
” I Pick 1,000,000 years”
…
Great!!!
…
Please post a link to your first scientific paper you publish.
I’ll be waiting.
_________________
Again, good job! You are on top of your game.
Demand that others act like google. It’s a well known trick, but well played!
This explains how Hannibal was able to cross the Alps with elephants, I remember seeing artist’s rendering of the great crossing with the elephants slogging through the snow and ice, the freezing soldiers, etc. and I marveled at how he was able to make those poor tropical animals do that.
There was no snow and ice.
Funny thing happened on the way to WUWT – it’s become the H Grouse site. Why do you people let him into your brains? His tireless posting has diverted you all into his maelstrom and your counter-bickering only triggers a reflexive response of more his/her blather.
(Reply: Good point. If he continues to use a sock puppet name, his comments will be deleted. ~ mod.]
H Grouse
Based on your knowledge of AGW theory can you tell me something that it predicts that will happen in the future?
Can you also explain how AGW causes the oceans to warm, causing your thermal expansion?
H Grouse says:
I wasn’t wrong about 50 mm of sea level rise. So, your statement is false.
You tied that number in with your flat wrong statement about no lag time in thermal expansion. I corrected that. So once again, you were wrong.
You can’t even cherry-pick your own statements without stumbling.
[Snip. No more warnings. Use your correct name. ~mod.]
Db says
It’s just amusing to me, my wife is watching the same movie for like the tenth time in a row. Also if I keep him here he is not ruining one of the new posts.
H Grouse –
You are a troll. Truly. If you can not answer a question, you change the subject. You redirect and quote out of context, you modify quotes so you can answer a question that was not asked.
So, here is one last chance for you to show that you have any credibility left – answer me the question I was asking many time:
why should we care about any of those unimportant to general public issues when we know that climate was much warmer in the past?
wow this thread has really gone to hell.
(Reply: Yes, it has. Thread bombing violates site Policy. So does sock puppetry. We now return you to the article’s topic. ~mod.)
rgbatduke says: August 8, 2014 at 9:58 am
You had said
“One can find literally hundreds of places where climate scientists who — given inconvenient facts like these — should know better assert that the modern warm period is the warmest in the entire Holocene.”
and now you have listed various news reports, blog posts etc, none of which, as far as I can see, has a scientist asserting that the modern warm period is the warmest in the entire Holocene. There are variants of Mann’s claim that they are the warmest in the last millennium, but this head post is about a discovery from the mid-Holocene.
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:01 pm
“You are a troll.”
….
That is your opinion.
REPLY: No, I think he’s right, especially since you used to go by “chuck” with a fake “c_u_later” email address. – Anthony
Mods, please tell us his real name. It helps to know the trustworthiness of ones interlocutor.
Nick Stokes says: “The sudden cooling around 8200 years ago has been known since about 1960. It even has its own Wiki page.”
By whom was it known? For 50 years the only person that “knew” continental drift was Alfred Wegener. Now of course it is very easy to say, “Well, I knew about it all along!”
And so it shall be with climatology as it becomes mature, mistakes made in the past will be forgotten as scientists say they’ve known about this or that all along.
AGW or not, my insanely high heating bill was “man made” in this Australian winter
Richard Sharpe says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:16 pm
Mods, please tell us his real name. It helps to know the trustworthiness of ones interlocutor.
_________________
One man enters, one man leaves.
Leonard Weinstein says: August 8, 2014 at 10:11 am
“First, it IS the position of the majority on AGW and CAGW that CO2 (and CH4) is the main control knob, and that nothing else can explain the temperature rise over the last 150 or so years.”
A typical statement from IPCC is in AR4 9.1.3:
“Based on the available studies and understanding of the uncertainties, the TAR concluded that ‘in the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations’. Since the TAR, a larger number of model simulations using more complete forcings have become available, evidence on a wider range of variables has been analysed and many important uncertainties have been further explored and in many cases reduced. These advances are assessed in this chapter.”
They analyse the known forcings for the last 50 years, and show that alternatives could not produce the observed warming. This is by successive elimination, and confidence grows gradually.
But that is given knowledge of all forcings during the last fifty years. It does not claim that CO2 must have caused warmings in the past, when forcings were different, and not well known. It says that CO2 is the only remaining “control knob” in that 50-year period, when others have been eliminated.
No scientists, for example, seriously believe that the major glaciations were caused by CO2.
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:33 pm
Actually, there are “scientists” who do think that CO2 causes the glacial/interglacial cycles.
Please list all the other alternative explanations for warming during the past 50 years which we considered and why they were ruled out by your buddies on the “climate science” Team. On what basis did they reject the Null Hypothesis, other than ideological, career and financial interest, of course.
Thanks.
Michael 2 says: August 8, 2014 at 4:19 pm
“By whom was it known? For 50 years the only person that “knew” continental drift was Alfred Wegener.”
The IPCC AR3, in 2001, devoted sec 2.4.2 to “How stable was the Holocene climate?”. And they list much variability. Of this event they say:
“The most prominent event in both records occurred about 8,200 years BP (Alley et al., 1997; von Grafenstein et al., 1998; Barber et al., 1999) when annual mean temperatures dropped by as much as 2°C in mid-Europe and the European alpine timberline fell by about 200 m (Wick and Tinner, 1999).”
@ Grouse
@ nick Stokes
>>>>>>>>>
35 years and 1/3 of one degree of warming C….Significant? Go grab your panties, snort…
Heh, almost 400 comments and no one took my bait about the sun being to far away to affect Earth’s climate. Was I too obvious?
=====================
Richard D says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:42 pm
____________________
“Meet the new boss Same as the old boss” The Who– “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
kim says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:53 pm
Heh, almost 400 comments and no one took my bait about the sun being to far away to affect Earth’s climate. Was I too obvious?
=====================
Maybe if you didn’t go around with that sarc tag on our forehead…
pimf: “your forehead
And thanks, RGB@Duke for the insight about Leif. Awesome rigourous, ain’t he? He’s pondered these questions for a lifetime. I used to think he’d be the one to figure out the sun/climate connection, but now find that he’s the one to tell us what it isn’t. That’s very useful.
===============
Alan Robertson says:
+++++++++++++++++++++
Indeed
Adam Gallon says: August 8, 2014 at 12:33 am
“http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7580294.stm,
The Schnidejoch glacier, produced evidence of Roman & Neolithic people being active in the high Alps, back in 2003. Took the BBC another 3 years to notice this.”
From that 2006 BBC report
“What fascinates scientists about the age of the finds is that they correspond to times when climate specialists have already calculated the Earth was going through an especially warm period, caused by fluctuations in the orbital pattern of the Earth in relation to the Sun.”
Dr. Schlüchter’s findings are not
“disproving accepted theories that they only began retreating after the end of the little ice age in the mid-19th century”
HGrouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:42 pm
Hopefully you and your offspring can adapt to rapidly changing temperatures.
…
No problem, I have electric central air and heating in addition to propane and a wood stove. You?
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:02 pm
If the Team recognize(s) that climate has always changed cyclically, on what possible basis can it, they and you conclude that the 20 years c. 1977-96 were any different? Even in the thermometer record, there have been longer periods of even more rapid rise (accepting the adjusted “record”, which of course has been heavily stepped on in both directions) than during the late 20th century, so why posit CO2 to explain it, other than that CO2 just happened to be increasing then? Of course there were also periods of falling CO2 and rising temperature, as during the 1930s, and, as in c. 1944-76 now, rising CO2 and falling temperature, plus flatness all around.
Nick stokes worked hard for his money in this thread, me thinks. Lets give it up for Nick!
Richard D says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:23 pm
The late, great Donna Summer, Queen of Disco, spoke excellent German.
Glacial retreat is a terrible thing for well over 13 thousand years. We must all act now. The climate is changing.
64 comments by H Grouse out of 389.
Ric Werme says: August 8, 2014 at 5:37 pm
64 comments by H Grouse out of 389.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Yep, how many more paid lackeys in addition to grouse and nick stokes I wonder?
I am stupefied, and it’s unprecedented. We must act now on co2. It all makes sense.
This is climate change. Coz that is exactly what the climate has always done. So let’s join hands and act. We never did it before, but let’s do it now so a few cunning fellow can make lots of money. You know it makes sense. (They think I don’t know who they are.) Oxurgh, Grantham, Al Bore (now dis investing), Pachauri former Glorioil et. al. There are many of them hiding, investing and claiming an emergency because they think people are just too dumb to see. Hello.
Nick Stokes says:
Do you have the orbital parameters that caused these warm periods? Did they apply to the Holocene Optimum? The Roman Warm Period? The MWP?
Oh look. Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit has a whole category on the Holocene Optimum and the efforts by the team to minimize the various warm periods:
http://climateaudit.org/category/holocene-optimum/
Let us not forget Alaska. Brrrr. Retreating glacier reveals 1,000 year old tree stumps. I have bee informed that it was all a northerly affair.
Treelines are just a pain in the arse. Children won’t know what a treeline is.
Proof this site is run by people that don’t have a clue:
REPLY: No, I think he’s right, especially since you used to go by “chuck” with a fake “c_u_later” email address. – Anthony
Richard Sharpe says: August 8, 2014 at 5:49 pm
“Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit has a whole category on the Holocene Optimum and the efforts by the team to minimize the various warm periods:”
Ah yes, the team. Do you know who was co-author with poor persected Wegener Schlüchter on these wood discoveries?
TF Stocker. Co-Chair WG1 (IPCC).
Joerin, U. E., Nicolussi, K., Fischer, A., Stocker, T. F., & Schlüchter, C. (2008). Holocene optimum events inferred from subglacial sediments at Tschierva Glacier, Eastern Swiss Alps. Quaternary Science Reviews, 27(3), 337-350.
Joerin, U. E., Stocker, T. F., & Schlüchter, C. (2006). Multicentury glacier fluctuations in the Swiss Alps during the Holocene. The Holocene, 16(5), 697-704.
HORMES, A., SCHLÜCHTER, C., & STOCKER, T. F. (1998). MINIMAL EXTENSION PHASES OF UNTERAARGLACIER (SWISS ALPS) DURING THE HOLOCENE BASED ON 14C ANALYSIS OF WOOD ANNE HORMES, 1 CHRISTIAN SCHLÜCHTER1 and THOMAS F. STOCKER2. Radiocarbon, 40(2), 809-817.
etc
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 6:49 pm
Yes, poor indeed.
As recently as 2008 he was a dues fully paid up, card carrying member of the Team. But now, cast into outer darkness for his heresies.
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:33 pm
They analyse the known forcings for the last 50 years, and show that alternatives could not produce the observed warming. This is by successive elimination, and confidence grows gradually.
But that is given knowledge of all forcings during the last fifty years. It does not claim that CO2 must have caused warmings in the past, when forcings were different, and not well known. It says that CO2 is the only remaining “control knob” in that 50-year period, when others have been eliminated.
====
…gobsmacked
They analyze forcings they don’t even know….and conclude it must be CO2..
What an incredible thing to say…..no one knows the forcings now
Latitude says:
August 8, 2014 at 7:04 pm
And yet that is exactly their procedure. None dare call it science.
Their antiscientific method was well summed up by Al Gore, with respect to Arctic sea ice: “What else could it be?”
sturgishooper says: August 8, 2014 at 6:56 pm
“As recently as 2008 he was a dues fully paid up, card carrying member of the Team. But now, cast into outer darkness for his heresies.”
Maybe he has quarrelled with someone. But the wood discoveries referred to by Bell are ancient, and uncontroversial. Here, from that 1998 paper, co-authored by TF Stocker, Co-Chair WG1:
“The 14C dates suggest a ca. 2000-yr cyclicity of tree growth in the area covered by the present Unteraarglacier. The most intense warm and dry period occurred between 4100 BP (probably extending back to 4580 BP) and 3600 BP, with growth of fen peat between 3800 and 3600 BP attributed to wetter conditions.”
“Latitude says:
August 8, 2014 at 7:04 pm
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:33 pm
They analyse the known forcings for the last 50 years, and show that alternatives could not produce the observed warming. This is by successive elimination, and confidence grows gradually.
But that is given knowledge of all forcings during the last fifty years. It does not claim that CO2 must have caused warmings in the past, when forcings were different, and not well known. It says that CO2 is the only remaining “control knob” in that 50-year period, when others have been eliminated.
====
…gobsmacked
They analyze forcings they don’t even know….and conclude it must be CO2..
What an incredible thing to say…..no one knows the forcings now”
Read that again…and think about it. What is the one forcing they do admit?
So, if that is ‘known’ and the rest are ‘unknown’, how many were analyzed?
How many were accepted?
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 7:22 pm
His conclusion that glacial movements are caused by insolation however is anathema. The same or greater changes as observed in the 20th century happened in the past without rising CO2. Yet another nail in the coffin of the great climate conspiracy, a swindle of global proportions.
mjc says: August 8, 2014 at 7:28 pm
What an incredible thing to say…..no one knows the forcings now”
Read that again…and think about it.”
No. Read what I said again. You even quoted it:
“in the past, when forcings were different, and not well known”
Forcings in the last century are rather well known.
@Nick Stokes
If they are so well known, why were they not modeled correctly?
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 7:41 pm
Forcings were the same in the past and previous centuries as in the 20th and 21st. Effect on climate of more CO2 is negligible at best, although the increase has had a noticeable positive effect on vegetation.
Magnitude of forcing of course changed enough from early 19th to early 20th to switch from LIA conditions to Modern Warming Period, but CO2 played practically no role.
Nick Stokes says
“Forcing in the last century are rather well know”
Really I guess that’s why the climate models work so well!
I guess that’s why the climate was warming before the addition of the one extra force co2?
Maybe you can explain this forcing in detail vs forcing in prior centuries?
Bob Boder says: August 8, 2014 at 8:01 pm
“Maybe you can explain this forcing in detail vs forcing in prior centuries?”</i?
Details are here
I was following the extensive exchange between “H Grouse” and other commenters, and noted that “John Finn” also commented. I recall the latter name in other WUWT postings. I did a Google search for “H Grouse” + “John Finn” and came up with “About 40 results (0.35 seconds)”. That’s a small enough number to scroll through all of them. All but one of the hits were from WUWT. The last hit was http://amozeshi.aliexirs.ir/Report-Global-warming-stopped-years.html, but that linked back to WUWT.
The mod dispensed with H Grouse, so I looked up “John Finn” “global warming”. I came across this link:
Climate action that can make a difference – Ithaca Times …
http://www.ithaca.com/…/article_08d868b0-cbf0-11e3-887e-001a4bcf887a.html
Apr 24, 2014 – … in the Northeast, it’s tempting to wonder if global warming is actually real. … John Finn is a licensed professional engineer and volunteer with …
That led to an April 2014 comment on ithaca.com by John Finn, P.E., supporting a carbon tax:
http://www.ithaca.com/opinion/climate-action-that-can-make-a-difference/article_08d868b0-cbf0-11e3-887e-001a4bcf887a.html
“By John Finn, P.E.
“John Finn is a licensed professional engineer and volunteer with the local chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby. Learn more online at http://www.citizensclimatelobby.org”
I followed the link to Citizens Climate Lobby, and to its advisory board:
http://citizensclimatelobby.org/about-us/advisory-board/
Dr. James Hansen
Dr. Katherine Hayhoe
and others
If the Team recognizes past cycles, then why did they want to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period, and why did Mann et al engage in such criminal activities in order to do so?
Nick stokes says
“Effective climate forcing used in our current simulations”. Right from your post
Those same simulation that work so well at predicting the climate?
Ya well understood.
Another poser spewing BS that he doesn’t take the time to read before he posts it.
The Team doesn’t understand anything. These posers always say that was predicted or that was already understood. Run their stupid models in reverse you think it would look anything like past climate? Their models would have a static climate in the past and that’s why they work so hard to eliminate any past climate variation. They one changing forcing component and that’s what ever BS they can push to get funding.
They also send out their teenage groupies like H Grouse and Nick Stokes to spew BS and fly a bunch of trial balloons hoping they’ll find their next line of sellable crap.
Reblogged this on The Next Grand Minimum and commented:
While the scientists were “stunned” by the speed of the cooling 8,0200 years ago, it might we a good time to remember that we live in a chaotic universe and stuff happens.
Such changes can occur very rapidly. His research team was stunned to find trunks of huge trees near the edge of Mont Miné Glacier which had all died in just a single year. They determined that time to be 8,200 years ago based upon oxygen isotopes in the Greenland ice which showed marked cooling.
We all should be wise to remember that chaotic events can happen at any time in our universe and on our planet. We are currently living in a null point between events: super volcanos, x-Class CMEs, meteor impacts, and some events that we have yet to imagine.
Sturgis…thanks, I was going to get around to saying that, but you beat me to it.
It’s simple…if something works for a very long time (as in practically all of history), then there is no reason to assume that it suddenly stopped working in the last 100 yrs.
Schweet!
Christian scientist speaks truth to power….
Details to follow. Video at 11.
Wow, that Minoan Warm Period must have really been nice. Doubtful ours will last long enough to have the same effect. Seems each succeeding warm period is more wimpy than the previous one.
[+emphasis]
[+emphasis]
Either Grouse is wrong about his (presumably world wide) 50mm sea level rise claim or mpainter’s post is wrong. Can’t be both unless Grouse is referring to some local, but un-named, rise.
Based on local observations of no verifiable sea level change in 60 years I opt to trust mpainter over Grouse. And, therefore dbstealey is probably correct as well.
F. Ross,
You left out my full reply to Grouse:
You tied that number in with your flat wrong statement about no lag time in thermal expansion. I corrected that. So once again, you were wrong.
After Grouse claimed his 50mm sea level rise was due to ongoing global warming, I reminded him that his comment was tied in with his assertion that there is no lag time in thermal expansion. That is clearly wrong, as this link says:
Grouse can’t have it both ways. His claim that instantaneous, no-lag-time ocean thermal expansion proves ongoing global warming is wrong. Thus, his carefully selected “50mm” is wrong. There is, in fact, a significant lag time between energy input and thermal expansion. Thus, thermal expansion continues even after global warming stops.
Everything Grouse says is wrong in one way or another. That’s OK, not everyone is up to speed. But Grouse refuses to learn, and when he is shown to be wrong by others, which happens constantly, he never admits it — instead, he changes the subject, or he moves the goal posts, or he re-frames the comments the way he wants, or he engages in other troll-typr behavior. That is the problem with H Grouse.
@dbstealey says:
August 8, 2014 at 10:44 pm
Exactly so!
I was just trying to pin him down on one point, but, as anyone can easily see, he is rather “slithery”.
F. Ross,
Exactly right, you’ve got his number. Good for you. Very perceptive.
I hope you didn’t ban H Grouse, troll or not. I hate when I get banned from Pro-CAGW sites.
His arguments are repetitive and circular. His obstinacy should …just be ignored, not banned. IMO. He does appear to have the knack of getting under most peoples skin though. He sounds like a Nuccitelli-ite!
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 8:06 pm
Bob Boder says: August 8, 2014 at 8:01 pm
“Maybe you can explain this forcing in detail vs forcing in prior centuries?”</i?
Details are here
////////////////////////
But that does not answer the question that was put to you, since your citation is not the forcings of prior centuries.
What were the forcings that gave rise to:
1. The Holocene Optimum
2. The Minoan Warm Period
3 The Roman Warm Period/The almost glacier free Alps some 2100 BP
4/ The Viking Warm Period
5. The Little Ice Age
6. The 1810 to 1820 warming seen in CET
ETC, ETC
What were the relevant forcings/radiative budget at those times?
When you can answer that, you may be in a position to answer what caused the post 1970s warming, but until you can answer the above, quite simply you are not in a postion to do so, and the statement that the post 1970s warming can only be due to CO2 is false.
The problem is that we KNOW as FACT that there is something that we do not know about, ie., this is one of the known unknowns. We know that there is something that can cause significant warming (greater than we see today), and we do not know what that is, or how it works. But we know that it definitely exist because we can see physical evidence of its hand at work.
It may be correct to say that presently, we cannot think of anything other than CO2 that would explain the post 1970s warming, but since we know that CO2 did not cause any of the above warmings (the IPCC is firm that during the last 10,000 years and prior to the industrial revolution, CO2 has remained constant at about 280ppm), we cannot rule out the known 'unknown factor' that brought about the past warmings (cited above), as being the operative forcing factor post 1970.
Your comments are illogical. The failure to accept this simple point (ie., that we know that there is something that we do not know about) demonstartes an unscientific approach and state of mind. Your approach may work with Politicians (who for the main part have never held down a proper job, accordingly lack commonsense, and lying and being economical with the truth is part and parcel of the daily life of a Politician), but to ordinary people it makes you appear ridiculous; it is a PR disaster.
The problem is that nature will play out the hand, and there comes a time when adjusting data simply cannot conceal the cards lying face up on the table. The way that the cards are presently unfolding, suggest that the game will be up within the next decade.
The funniest thing posted today was this:
+++++++++
H Grouse says:
MarkW says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:28 pm
“No 2 std dev is not a lot.”..
2 sigma is 95%……
I think 95% is “a lot”
+++++++++
That is slack-jawed amazing. There is literally nothing there.
H Grouse and the engineer guided by M Mann are not the same person. No engineer could get stats so wrong.
The discussion of Antarctic v.s. Arctic ice is interesting if only that it teaches us that to speak out of both sides of your mouth you have to have a forked tongue.
RGB, please don’t waste your valuable capacity for insight responding to trolls. While Anthony appreciates the clicks, you have better things to do.
richard verney says: August 9, 2014 at 1:32 am
“What were the forcings that gave rise to:
1. The Holocene Optimum
…”
In fact there was a study of the Mid-Holocene, reported back in AR3 8.5.5.1. It’s results seem to have held up well. It made sense because at least one major forcing was known, which was orbital.
But generally the forcings aren’t well known for long past periods, as I said. This isn’t a lack of understanding, and doesn’t affect the modern period, where they are known. We just don’t have the observations.
This long thread was dominated by a back-and-forth between regulars and an obstinate troll who has now been told to use his correct name/handle. But this comment by Stokes should have come early and been discussed much more.
We do know many of the “forcings” but we may not know them all. Of the ones we do know, we have little to no clue as to how large a roll they play in determining the climate. I wager the young science of climatology would have made a lot of progress in my long lifetime if they had not gone done the road to religious worship of Hansen and his pet theory.
The world has focused on CO2 which does nothing to speak of on net as even the “adjusted” temperature record shows. At the same time, all these “forcings” that Stokes says we “know” have been depreciated as minor — unless it could be shown that mankind’s use of industry could be blamed.
Yes, Mr. Stokes, we do know many of Mother Nature’s “forcings” by name but we don’t know how they really work and to what degree they effect the climate over time.
NOTE: I find the word “forcing” to be distasteful. Our planet’s climate (and weather of course) is the product of many, many factors. We should call each of those factors a, …. factor. (or some other word besides “forcing”)
richard verney:
I write to provide an important (n.b. not picky) correction to your post at August 9, 2014 at 1:32 am which adds to the point you were making.
You say
Yes. All that you say is very true. But we do know some things “other than CO2” that would explain all the warming periods you mention and also the post 1970s warming.
A redistribution of surface temperature (induced for example by random variation to ocean currents) would alter radiative balance to cause change to global average surface temperature anomaly (GASTA) and such changes to GASTA could be larger than those under discussion.
As you say, nobody knows what has caused variations in GASTA to cause the Minoan, Roman, Medieaval, and present warm periods. But Nick Stokes is wrong to suggest that altered atmospheric CO2 concentration is the only known possible cause.
Richard
sturgishooper says:
If the Team recognizes past cycles, then why did they want to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period, and why did Mann et al engage in such criminal activities in order to do so?
Money, fame, all expenses paid jaunts to holiday locales, unearned professional success… the standard trade-offs for corruption. The usual enticements.
crabalocker says:
August 9, 2014 at 1:00 am
He worked for it diligently, digging faster and deeper. People were kind enough to hand him new shovels, which was nice. But enough was enough.
I would suggest bookmarking this thread. The entire discussion is illustrative of the nature of the opposition we face in this great war for control over our lives which has been posed to the world at large as a quest to save the planet from man made global warming. We truly are standing in opposition against the dark side.
Nick Stokes says
Again you say that the forcing (factors) for the last century are well known and you use Hansen’s BS as your proof, but once again if the forcing is well known why don’t the models work? Answer, they aren’t well know.
Now go back to your dorm room and talk with Finn, Grouse and Carter and have another sit down with professor Hansen and get some new instruction, because friend your not even interesting any more your just boring, when I can’t even get a laugh out of you it becomes worthless.
I also agree with crispin, RGB don’t waist your time with Nick Stokes address his masters you are waisting your time on him he is a puppet/robot incapable of learning anything, he is programmed and set in motion that is all. Your posts are to good to be held down responding to him and the other groupies.
“They analyse the known forcings for the last 50 years, and show that alternatives could not produce the observed warming. This is by successive elimination, and confidence grows gradually.
But that is given knowledge of all forcings during the last fifty years. It does not claim that CO2 must have caused warmings in the past, when forcings were different, and not well known. It says that CO2 is the only remaining “control knob” in that 50-year period, when others have been eliminated.”
Unfortunately, you’re assuming that the forcings are well known over the past 50 years. Most skeptics would stipulate that you do not. “alternatives could not produce” assumes that you know all of the alternatives, which is an argument from ignorance.. the fact that you don’t know of alternative forcings means that you’ve proven CO2 as the culprit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
You have models. You have numbers. You don’t have a real clue, however. Physical processes are always the same. If you can’t explain the past, you can’t explain the present either. The fact that you can’t explain the past should be a giant blinking neon light indicating that you’ve overlooked something. Sticking your head in the sand about it doesn’t make it go away, despite how “certain” you are.
I also agree with crabablocker don’t ban these puppets, they have a right to speak and they will grow up someday/maybe.
“But that is given knowledge of all forcings during the last fifty years. It does not claim that CO2 must have caused warmings in the past, when forcings were different, and not well known. ”
Addendum: Obviously CO2 wasn’t the only forcing in the past causing these things. THAT’S the point. If there was another forcing in the past that could do it that you’re unaware of, then it’s entirely possible (or even likely) that the same forcing is still going on behind the scenes today that you’re blissfully ignorant of.
PeterK says: “Nick Stokes…one brick short of a full load! ”
Just one?
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 7:41 pm
Forcings in the last century are rather well known.
=====
well that’s a relief…..now we know the computer games are as good as they will get
and we can stop paying attention to this BS and f.a.k.e science now……..
Nick Stokes says:
August 9, 2014 at 2:09 am
How can you possibly claim to know all the forcings for the alleged warming of the 20th century but not for prior warming periods and the warm cycles of previous cooling periods?
Just another example of the unscientific approach of the Team.
In the past there have been warming periods of longer duration, higher and more rapid temperature change than for the twenty years after c. 1977. What makes the recent warming different from those? That CO2 was higher is simply an observation, not a cause.
ALl this stuff about Schluchter’s being a “skeptic” who is causing considerable disquiet among “warmists” is undermined by the fact that one of his co-authors for this work is arch-warmist fraudster and lead author of IPCC WG1, THomas Prechter:
http://tmtfree.hd.free.fr/albums/files/TMTisFree/Documents/Climate/Multicentury_glacier_fluctuations_in_the_Swiss_Alps_during_the_Holocene_joerin06hol.pdf
NIce bit of theorising, my Wattite friends, but it might help if you research the evidence first (I know: it’s so dreary gathering evidence when one could be glorying in one’s hypothesising instead).
Bill H,
We leave it up to you to get us the info. ☺
Mr. Stokes knows the known knowns but seems unaware there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns. If all the unknowns were known then climate science would truly be settled. They’re not and it isn’t. Neither side knows enough to silence the other. The battle ground, therefore, is the remedy and that is a purely political issue.
Think before you vote and stop voting for stupid people.
OT – the ‘Like’ button is nothing less than a tracking beacon.
Conclusions
The radiocarbon ages of tree fragments and peat discs found
on proglacial forefields indicate 12 phases of glacier recessions
during the Holocene. Locations and type of occurrence of the
dated samples show that trees and mires grew where glaciers
exist at present and, therefore, glaciers were smaller at that
time. The extended data set of recessions limits periods of
glacier advances in a complementary way and improves on the
chronology of natural climate fluctuations in the Alpine
region. As a result, it is suggested that major glacier fluctua-
tions occurred on a multicentennial scale and that their pattern
changed from long recessions (>500 yr) interrupted by short
advances (<200 yr) during the early Holocene to the opposite
pattern with relatively short recessions and prolonged advances
during the late Holocene (after 3.3 cal. kyr BP). It is important
to recognize that this natural variability of glacier extent, which
occurs on a centennial timescale, is superimposed on a much
longer term, multimillennial-scale trend towards increased
glacier extent culminating in the ‘Little Ice Age’. This is
indicated in our data as a progressively reduced occurrence of
wood and peat remnants through the course of the Holocene,
which is consistent with a long-term reduction of sea surface
temperatures in the North Atlantic.
Do not the conclusions of the paper go against the ‘official’ party line?
Do they not point to a warmer, more variable past?
Don’t they flat out state that glacial fluctuations are ‘natural’ and implied to be cyclical?
So, even if the ‘skeptic’ label is misapplied, this is still worth something…because, at the least it doesn’t confirm the ‘party line’ and makes headway to falsifying at least chunks of it…ie that the past was ‘flat’ and cooler. Warmer than now and wide, fairly rapid swings in temperature really does put the screws on the idea that what we have now is ‘unprecedented’.
@Joe Borne How do I quote a chapter & verse for something he didn’t say?
A fer instance of his descriptions of fauna: Book 6 Chapter 6:
“26. Est bos cervi figura, cuius a media fronte inter aures unum cornu exsistit excelsius magisque directum his, quae nobis nota sunt, cornibus: ab eius summo sicut palmae ramique late diffunduntur. Eadem est feminae marisque natura, eadem forma magnitudoque cornuum.”
If you go to this site http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0002:book=6:chapter=26&highlight=cervi and search for the word “glacies” (ice) you will see that Caesar never used it in the entire work.
Glaciers are dynamic.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10562017/Melting-glaciers-in-northern-Italy-reveal-corpses-of-WW1-soldiers.html
I have tried and tried to convince people that ice is never a permanent geological feature, but many don’t get it.
Of course he knows all the forcings. How else stay sound in wind and limb?
========================
What an astoundingly clear and simple ( and factual ) description of the corruption. Three cheers to this genuine Scientist!
H Grouse back again talking about glaciers when s/he doen’t understand why Venus is hot, Mars is cold, Earth is great and Mecury is not as hot as Venus.
philjourdan says:
It is interesting that H Grouse will not tell us where he got the claim that the GNP glaciers (if he was not confused with Glacier Bay National Park) are 3000 years old.
This web site (which I quoted upstream): http://nrmsc.usgs.gov/research/glacier_retreat.htm
Suggests that they are ~7,000 years old.
Do you have a reference for the claim that they disappeared during the Minoan Warm Period?
@richard Sharpe – I was not claiming they were gone during the Minoan. I was merely pointing out that the Minoan was 3000 years ago after Grouse said the Minoan was not as warm. He apparently did not do the math to date the Minoan.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:51 pm
“Really, please find some vegetation at the edge of the melting glaciers that carbon date back less than 3000 years. If you find some, then we’ll know the MWP and/or Roman warming was “warmer” than today””.
————————
A little common sense reasoning would tell most any semi-learned individual that the above quoted text was an utterly asinine and/or silly statement.
Given the proxy based FACT that the Roman Warm Period (2,200 BP) and the Medieval Warm Period (1,100 BP) were both much “warmer” than today (late 20th Century) ….. and the FACT that the glaciers are still in “melt mode” today (late 20th Century), …. then the remains of the highest extent of any mountain vegetation that grew during the RWP or MWP would still be underneath the glacial ice and thus could not be found at the current “melt-water” edges of said glaciers.
And given the proxy based FACT that the Minoan Warm Period (3,300 BP) was even “warmer” than both the Roman WP and Medieval WP ….. then the “melting” of the Minoan WP glaciers, the Roman WP glaciers and/or the Medieval WP glaciers could have caused severe erosion of the surface and thus there would be no vegetative remains underneath the current glaciers.
When mountain erosion by glacier movement “scrapes” the surface down to “bedrock”, it will require several hundred continuous years of “warm” temperatures to re-vegetate said eroded areas. Vegetation growth clear across northern Russia and Siberia to the edge of the Arctic Ocean required from 1,000 to 3,000 continuous years of “warm” temperatures. Ref: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033589499921233
And the author’s reason and/or intent for posting said could be “one (1) or more” of several. And it has been my experience that females have a propensity for refusing to admit being “wrong” about anything and thus are noted for offering such “tripe n’ piffle” in their rebuttal commentary.
And I think there are far more important issues for resolving than to be arguing with F Grouse about ….. “The little end of nothing”.
Cogar says
While much of what you say makes sense, your personal experiences with women is not a reason to make generalized comments about the gender. There are plenty of guys on this site that behave in just this manor when challenged and plenty of women who don’t. Judge each person on their actions not on their being.
WIth Nick Stokes you always need to watch the pea.
He is arguing that ‘climate forcings’ are rather well known. Of course, the compositions of ‘forcings’ in the team’s models are defined by the team, and in general everything that is less known is assigned as a ‘feedback’. CO2, of course, is assigned as the key ‘forcing’ in the model. Nick is simply derailing the thread, as per usual, and directing you all to argue on the terms he and the team have defined. Much as Grouse was earlier in arguing the age, not the extent or growth/decline, of glaciers. Many asked about how he can post so much while doing his day job, perhaps consider that he WAS doing his day job.
Whenever you have a discussion with someone like Nick you need to step back and figure out where the trick or technicality in the argument is.
What was wrong with “driver”? That was the term that was commonly used previously, wasn’t it? Isn’t it still used in other sciences?
Read professor Christian Schlüchter’s full comments in English “Receding Glaciers Nothing New” at http://larepublicacatalana.wordpress.com/
You forgot the “imputed” rise. That is that amount that does not exist but is inserted into the records because of land rebounding. So there you go – imputed rise.
Then why did you call it incorrectly initially? You clearly stated “outside” 2 sigma. Now you say it is indeterminate (it is actually not – as others have told you the hard numbers show it clearly within 2 sigmas – but I guess you cannot read them).
And this, my friend, is one of the best comments made on the list so far. This is precisely why I assert that the fluctuation-dissipation theorem is a key, ignored statistical tool when it comes to climate science.
One is caught between a rock and a hard place. There is no meaningful, causal (lagged!) short term first order correlation between CO_2 level and global average temperature across the entire thermometric record. There is even less over the geological record, where it appears, at least, that well-mixed CO_2 concentration generally lagged temperature rather than the other way around. That is, knowing how CO_2 concentration changed in the past is not a good predictor of the future temperature to the point where knowing how the temperature changed is a better predictor of how CO_2 concentration changed in the future. Yet in the same record there are an enormous number of fluctuations of temperature, often very large ones year to year, month to month. These temperature fluctuations “must” be connected to the modes by which the Earth dissipates the energy absorbed from sunlight. Indeed, the time scales of the dissipation of these fluctuations should be a direct measure of the time scales of the dissipative processes.
I just don’t understand why this isn’t the primary focus of the climate community. A direct, quantitative analysis of the fluctuations in the climate should provide direct, quantitative information about the lossy channels by which the Earth gives up heat to stay in a quasi-dynamical equilibrium. Models, for example, with the wrong fluctuation spectrum are simply wrong, wrong at a very deep, irreparable level. Furthermore, one can learn an enormous amount about the relative role of the various GHGs, as well as their absolute influence on the climate by looking at the short term responses to boluses of e.g. methane like the one accompanying the Gulf Oil disaster, to boluses of CO_2 like the ones accompanying major forest fires, to large measured variations in local humidity, correlated to equally local fluctuations in temperature.
As a single example, CO_2 doesn’t just almost exponentially increase in the Mauna Loa record, it has a substantial seasonal fluctuation. The fluctuation-dissipation theorem more or less requires this fluctuation in presumed forcing to be accompanied by a measured real-time-or-slightly-lagged response in global temperature. Note well that this correlation should be independent of, but strongly related to, the expected long term warming, because of the system can successfully dissipate the additional supposed forcing to where it is not resolvable in the short run, there is very little reason to expect it to be resolvable in the long run.
Of course, this particular signal, with an annual fourier component, will be very difficult indeed to resolve from the other annual drivers in the climate, including ones that directly confound forcing variations over two orders of magnitude larger due to the elliptical orbit of the Earth around the sun, which results in an annual variation in forcing over 90 watts/m^2 from peak to minimum, exactly in counterphase with the fluctuation in global average temperature. Given that direct forcing varies by this amount, the temperature varies the wrong way relative to the direct forcing, and the annual variation in CO_2 forcing is far, far less than 1 watt/m^2, what the Earth is trying to tell us is that it, like Honey Badger, just doesn’t give a shit about small variations in forcing, as it has more than enough negative feedback and structural variation to confound 90 watts/m^2, let alone 0.1 watt/m^2. In other words, it seems likely that the mean residence time of extra heat trapped by extra CO_2 is at this point very very short, lost within internal noise and dynamical fluctuations that routinely reject far greater amounts of heat very quickly to maintain dynamic equilibrium. Rather than move some slowly varying set-point as one imagines by ignoring the fluctuations, the fluctuations are already so large and nonlinear that the set point just doesn’t move much linearly in response to small additional forcing.
rgb
Bob Boder says:
August 10, 2014 at 8:48 am
“While much of what you say makes sense, your personal experiences with women is not a reason to make generalized comments about the gender”.
———————
My comment about gender was not per se “generalized”, it was based in/on scientific FACT.
Because it is a scientific fact that the majority of the females of the higher species are born with an inherited survival instinct to nurture and protect their offspring at all costs, even if it means putting their own life at risk.
Thus said, in the human animal species with its advanced mental abilities means the females are biologically influenced by their inherited DNA to make “emotional” decisions rather than “logical” decisions ….. to better insure protection of “their own”, … whatever “their own” might be.
And that “personality attribute” is a fact characteristic of the female members of the Homo sapien sapien species. And when and/or if a male of the species is nurtured by its parent or guardian to have or to exhibit the same or similar “personality attribute” they are sometimes referred to as “girlie-men”. To wit:
“In an article in the journal American Speech, linguist Edwin Battistella analyzes the development of the expression from ironic mockery of bodybuilding culture to an overt connotation of weakness and a covert connotation of effeminacy (effeminate)”.
Source ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girlie_men
Cheers
Actually, Nick is not a “groupie”, he’s (in my opinion) rather honest, sincere, and well informed in physics and climate science in general. I respect his opinions and statements even where I disagree with them. I absolutely do not think he is parroting Hansen — I hope not, since Hansen’s assertions are in my opinion indefensible and a general embarrassment to the climate “warmist” community in the same way that the Dragonslayers are an embarrassment to the climate “skeptic” community. I have cheerfully taken correction from Nick before, and imagine that I will again, and on many issues — such as the reality of the GHE and the non-physicality of arguments against it — we completely agree.
We disagree — I think — on how much we can rely on climate models, and on how accurately we know the actual state of the Earth’s climate present or past. Nick seems to put a fair amount of faith in the climate models in spite of their profound and serious statistical and computational warts. He also makes assertions such as (paraphrased) “we know the state of the climate, e.g. initial conditions and forcings, in the last century pretty well” which I disagree with profoundly, again on a statistical basis.
In fact, if I had to characterize our disagreement, it is my stance that we are profoundly ignorant of the present state of the climate and forcings, and our knowledge of its past state is (naturally) far worse, and further that our ability to predict the future accurately given a perfect knowledge of the Earth’s climate state and what e.g. volcanoes and human industry and the sun are going to do as external inputs is basically nonexistent (within the resolution of all reasonable proposed warming or cooling by 2100). Nick seems to think otherwise, that we actually know the present state and forcings pretty well, and that we can reasonably guestimate the future climate independent of variations in vulcanism, human industry, and the state of the sun (or rather, perhaps, allowing for it within some reasonable range).
At this moment, I think that the evidence heavily supports my stance and that his is based on an optimistic belief unsupported by comparison with our enormously imprecise observations (such as they are) that we’ve managed to solve the Navier-Stokes equation in two coupled-fluid systems at a spatiotemporal resolution 5 to 7 orders of magnitude above the Kolmogorov scale for the microdynamics and that in the end all we get is that CO_2 acts as a linearizable driver of global average surface temperature that we might as well estimate with a simple one layer model. I don’t even think this is a priori plausible, and of course a direct comparison of global average surface temperature and the model predictions of the same (or any other significant climate parameter) over the last century even in regions where Nick asserts that we know the state and forcings at this point rather strongly suggests that it isn’t, in fact, the case.
This is precisely the sort of honest disagreement scientists can, and should, have. In time one stance or the other (or more likely, both) will prove untenable as more data (and better data!) is accumulated, better models are built, and so on. In the meantime, one place I think Nick and I would agree is that we could either or both be wrong in terms of any simple assertion of the future based on models, data, forcings, etc. I rarely if ever hear him asserting things like “the 2014-2014 El Nino is 75% likely to lead to a huge burst of global warming, proving that the models were all right after all” such as one can almost quote Mann stating a few months ago, before the “legendary” coming El Nino fizzled into the current La Nada. I would like to think that both of us respect the possibility that nonlinear, chaotic nature can confound even very short term predictions of collective phenomena such as El Nino and La Nina that do indeed have an enormous impact on the Earth’s climate, quite capable of warming the planet or cooling the planet a few tenths of a degree sustained in a matter of a year or two and giving lie to the notion that there is some simple linear set point in the process.
rgb
Mods, can you elevate RGB’s comment to an article. It is the most cogent explanation I have seen:
Mods:
Richard Sharpe says at August 11, 2014 at 12:20 pm
Seconded!
Richard
I have known for years , and that from my reading of History, the AGW was a total crock.
What is taking scientists, even those skeptical of the AGW brouhaha, so long.
just read some history written by people who were there
rgbatduke says: August 11, 2014 at 11:16 am
“He also makes assertions such as (paraphrased) “we know the state of the climate, e.g. initial conditions and forcings, in the last century pretty well” which I disagree with profoundly, again on a statistical basis.”
I’d like to make a distinction there. I think we know the forcings fairly well. I don’t think we need to know the initial conditions well (and we don’t). I keep coming back to what we can expect of GCMs. As traditionally run, they are started from long ago when we know the initial conditions poorly, and then run to a state where unphysical stuff in the initial conditions has dissipated, and we have a strating point that does not correspond to a known starting point, but has little physical inconsistency. Then that is run with known or scenarioed forcings. It shows the climate effect of the forcings, but doesn’t attempt to realise actual weather. So when you ask, what model has done best over the last decade in matching weather, that is the wrong question. They weren’t trying to do that, and didn’t have the information. The proper use is to put together an ensemble to gather climate statistics.
There is a newish attempt to get back to trying to match an initial state with the hope of tracking for a decade or so. I’m not sure how well that is currently doing.
I have some background here. I’ve worked for a long time in CFD, including particle methods (rocks etc). There we almost never know the initial conditions. Sometimes we look for a steady state, but more often it is for statistics. For example, wear in a rock mill. Or flow over an aeroplane wing. In turbulent flow, of course, you never know the initial state (unless you are modelling onset of turbulence, but that is chaotic).
Nick Stokes writes “I keep coming back to what we can expect of GCMs.”
I appreciate your participation here. As you answer questions and challenges it adds to my own knowledge or at least awareness of what is on people’s minds and why it is there.
It seems to me that researchers would use a General Circulation Model hoping for error, because in error is a clue to something new and interesting to be studied. I am dismayed by the excessive faith and billions of dollars being moved by these models, but their utility in furthering climate science can hardly be disputed.
When the GCM accurately tracks climate change then I believe you can say you understand the science. I realize that the time scales you consider for accurate tracking differ from mine, but governments have not waited 30 years to make decisions, so the model must track well enough within the time frame of government decision, whatever that may be (five years seems reasonable). In other words, GCM’s ought to track real climate changes within 5 years for me to give government decisions based on them much faith.
When a hurricane comes along, it’s “climate change”. My father complains about blackberries no longer growing in Oregon, it’s “climate change”. Well, yes, I suppose it is — on a regional or local scale indisputably. The fact that the population of the Willamette valley has grown dramatically in the past 30 years seems to be ignored when people say “climate change”. So, yeah, there’s a little bit of climate change and a whole lot of new pavement. What’s he willing to do to bring back blackberries? De-populate Oregon?
I suspect logging, or the cessation thereof, probably also has something to do with it. Burning the wood chips used to fill the Willamette valley with smoke which sometimes gets trapped and is very unpleasant. Smells like skunk all the way from Portland to Medford. But that smoke also fills the air with particulates seeding rainfall in the Cascade mountains. Not so much now that pollution is controlled.
rgbatduke says: August 11, 2014 at 10:50 am
“There is no meaningful, causal (lagged!) short term first order correlation between CO_2 level and global average temperature across the entire thermometric record.”
People have looked at this. Lucia developed a model
Lumpy which compares HADCRUT with total Model E forcing, with an exponential lag filter. It correlates pretty well. GHG forcing is a large part of the total. Stephen Schwartz published something similar. Tamino did a similar (“two-box”) model.
H Grouse did not appear until rgbatduke started to get over on Stokes.
Because I like this argument so much I decide to try to see if there was anything wrong with it.
At what point do increases become too large for the system to handle? Is it 4.7W/m^2 or 90W/m^2 or 330W/m^2 or 1460W/m^2?
It would seem that an approximately 300W/m^2 swing below the max is not too much for the system to handle, but what arguments can we develop about how far above the current max insolation the system can handle?
Nick Stokes:
At August 12, 2014 at 3:56 am you write
So, you say independent work by Lucia, by Stephen Schwartz, and by Tamino each failed to obtain a “meaningful, causal (lagged!) short term first order correlation between CO_2 level and global average temperature across the entire thermometric record”. This is confirmatory of the quoted statement from rgbatduke.
Any data series can be modified to agree with anything.
Richard
Michael 2 says:
August 12, 2014 at 10:38 am
The GIGO GCMs designed to produce man-made GHG warming are worse than worthless, except to show how badly CACA “climate science” stinks.
It’s news to me that blackberries no longer grow in Oregon. IMO they’re as hard to get rid of as ever.
milodonharlani wrote “The GIGO GCMs designed to produce man-made GHG warming are worse than worthless, except to show how badly CACA “climate science” stinks.”
Well yes, that is sort of my point but with a more positive spin. I sometimes am faced with a “blackbox” situation in telecommunications or computers and I must guess at what is inside the box. So I simulate or make a model, either actualized in a computer program or just in my mind. So long as real inputs in the real thing produce outputs and my model with the same inputs produces the same outputs I can conclude that the model is a reasonable mimic of the real thing. But when the real thing deviates from the model one can take the easy road and simply say the model is “wrong” but it is more useful to explore the details of the wrongness as it reveals some hidden aspect of the “black box”.
Software testing is somewhat similar in concept and you test at the margins, boundaries or edges since that is where your model (the software being tested) is going to deviate from expectations (the customer-provided specification).
“It’s news to me that blackberries no longer grow in Oregon. IMO they’re as hard to get rid of as ever.”
This is likely an instance of confirmation bias. If you were born and raised so far “left” that Oregon is east then you see climate change (and neocons) *everywhere*. As it happens his new house is adjacent to a freeway; his old house was 3/4 mile from the Willamette River. Different biome.
“Work on a serious disease of black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis) in Oregon demonstrated the presence of Black raspberry necrosis virus in declining plants… It is transmitted by the large raspberry aphid (Amphorphora agathonica) and the green peach aphid (Myzus persicae).”
Combine that with Oregon’s environmental sensitivity (pest spraying, anyone?) and viola! Climate change. There is no escape, the goalposts are moved — why do viruses and aphids now exist? Climate change! It is a safe bet since I doubt anyone can stop climate changing.
richardscourtney says: August 12, 2014 at 10:40 am
“So, you say independent work by Lucia, by Stephen Schwartz, and by Tamino each failed to obtain…”
No, I’m saying, very clearly, that they succeeded. RGB rightly emphasised a lagged response as being the only physically feasible possibility. A response that acted as a pulse one year later also makes no physical sense. The only realistic option is a response to forcing which tapers over time, and that is what they used.
Nick Stokes:
Your post at August 12, 2014 at 1:40 pm truncates what I quoted and disputes the truncated version.
THE WORKS YOU CITED FAILED ACCORDING TO YOUR ACCOUNTS.
The actual quotation from rgbatduke was
You said in response to that
And I replied
My response was and is true.
Richard
Richard Sharpe said @ August 11, 2014 at 12:20 pm
Agree!
milodonharlani said @ August 12, 2014 at 10:57 am
Having battled Ribes spp for over 30 years, you do need a strategy. First, knock the tops off (fire/slashing) and hit the sappy new growth in Spring with glyphosate when the shoots are about 300 mm long. Hit them again in the Autumn and, if needed, again the following spring. This uses a much smaller amount of glyphosate than spraying a whole bush and works far more effectively.
Hint: Leave a few to make fruit for winemaking. Delicious as a dry red and also makes a very nice desert wine when fed extra sugar slowly to bring the alcohol level up to 15-18%.
Cougar says
Seriously? scientific fact? you know someone is a women by the way the argue online! All women act the same way because your read a study that says so?
i really think you are over the top with that but you go on believing what you want its your life. it does make me question other things that you state as fact though.
Bob Boder says: “Seriously? scientific fact? you know someone is a women by the way the argue online! All women act the same way because your read a study that says so?”
It is easy enough to identify personality characteristics in writing. Some characteristics have a gender component. An example is the T/F axis of the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator.
http://www.knowyourtype.com/myers-briggs-percentages/
A person could argue that “T” should always be a male principle (facts, figures, science) and “F” should always be a female principle (emotions, empathy, feelings) — in which case reality is that you and I have both male and female “principles” with one being dominant at any moment depending on the circumstances; but one will be more dominant more often.
In my experience this is most acutely experienced in Cisco network engineering where women simply do not choose this profession. I attended a free luncheon at a seminar on Cisco quality of service features. Free seminar, free lunch! Several dozen men, no women. Not one. I have no explanation and really don’t concern myself with it much.
What is the accepted increase in thermal energy in the atmosphere for each doubling of CO2. I vaguely recall something like 4.7W/m^2 or something like that …
Why? The uncertainty in nearly everything “global” increases substantially as one moves back in time. There is a lot of debate over just what CO_2 levels were 150 years ago, because (like temperature) the instrumental measurements were not taken at a place or in a way that permits us to properly compare them to today’s. Things get even worse when one switches over to a proxy or to ice core data, because one then usually confronts the low-resolution problem plus the various other problems with ice cores or proxies. Aerosol levels in general would be even more poorly known. If one goes back over 100 years, even tracking world vulcanism becomes difficult because it is difficult today. 70% of the Earth’s surface is ocean, another 10% of it is land that was difficult to access before the invention of the airplane.
If by “fairly well” you mean “with large error bars”, then sure, but that’s not the way I interpret the phrase.
To continue with your comment, I understand how the GCMs work and the argument concerning the transient. But if one looks at the actual tracks produced by perturbed parameters ensemble runs with a GCM, one sees that the tracks often diverge substantially for decades. They don’t make anything like a high resolution bundle. This reflects the fact that the Earth’s climate system isn’t “stable” as in a linear oscillator plus noise, it is nonlinear and chaotic — plus noise.
I’ve remarked before on the need to analyze the fluctuations in the climate models, both per run and collectively. Figure 9.2a in AR5 is very instructive. Even though it is a “spaghetti graph” that a cynical person would assert is presented primarily to obfuscate the obvious failure of (most of) the models one at a time, one can still glean a number of really useful things from examining it. For example, PPE mean results, averaged over an unstated but usually “large” number of runs, still have far, far too much variance, the time dependence (e.g. autocorrelation) of the variance is wrong, and of course these means are individually and collectively diverging from the actual climate in most if not all cases. So while yes, it is a noble effort and a reasonable thing to try, the GCMs are not working. They fail at many different levels, the most important of which is that according to the models, the current climate is very unlikely given the models, where good science and statistics suggests that the current climate is the most likely outcome of correct models and that a hypothesis tests suggests that the models are incorrect.
I’ve also given, many times at this point, arguments that suggest that it would be surprising if the GCMs “work” to predict long term climate in a chaotic nonlinear system. For one thing, they don’t have the computational granularity to be able to succeed given the known dynamical timescales of the system — by many orders of magnitude. For another, they contain egregious and easily biased approximations of large, cancelling terms that cannot be computed on the overlarge spatiotemporal grid, which is numerically asking for trouble once one gets outside of the reference period against which the parameters of these terms are set. Small errors in big cancelling contributions in a non-Markovian model grow over time, and if those small errors contain a systematic component or bias they will tend to grow in just one direction. I think it is very plausible that this is the explanation for the growing divergence between the climate models and reality — they overemphasized the role of CO_2 in the reference period, which was the one period of strong warming in the latter half of the 20th century. This forced them to exaggerate the role of other atmospheric components to keep things balanced — e.g. aerosols, clouds, albedo. In the end, one ends up with a plausible dynamical model in the sense that it makes future climates, but unfortunately those future climates diverge from the real climate, which has a different balance (and doubtless has significant dynamics at the length and time scales to short to be represented in the existing GCMs and that isn’t being correctly approximated at scale).
We could go down a list of physics computations that have similar problems, and how difficult it has been to semi-phenomenologically solve them — electronic structure being the one I personally am most familiar with. Hartree has systematic errors. Hartree-Fock has systematic errors. Non-relativistic computations have systematic errors. The actual many electron problem is non-computable for even very small systems with only a “few” electrons. It wasn’t until Kohn and Sham showed how to do a single electron computation with a semi-empirical density functional potential that had sufficient “universality” to allow one functional to compute at least a moderately wide range of electron densities, atoms, and molecules that we began to get consistently close results. And we still don’t have (AFAIK) a universal single-electron density functional that will work for everything from hydrogen to uranium.
I am reminded of early fears of the nuclear bomb setting off a global chain reaction and turning the Earth into a sun (or the LHC creating a black hole and imploding the local Universe). People just don’t understand statistical mechanics. If the temperatures/pressures created by a nuclear bomb could “ignite the atmosphere”, we would have been extinct long ago, because natural events generating this magnitude of temperatures and pressures have occurred with annoying regularity every time an asteroid fell over geological time. Similarly if high CO_2 levels could cause a climate catastrophe, one would really think that there would be a climate catastrophe signature in the phanerozoic record associated with all of the multimillion year periods where the Earth has had CO_2 levels in excess of 1000 ppm. But we don’t. We don’t even find that these intervals are meaningfully anticorrelated with the onset of ice ages. We do find that periods of low temperatures have low CO_2 in the more recent record (e.g. ice core data) for perfectly apparent reasons, validated by the observation that in general the CO_2 change lags the change in temperature by centuries — it certainly doesn’t lead the change in temperature in such a way that we can imagine that it causes it.
No, I’m afraid that we have to seek other causes to explain the significant variability of the climate over all time scales. CO_2 is not the only knob. It may not even be an important knob once it passes 200 to 300 ppm — IMO the effect of CO_2 is on global average temperatures is saturated and buffered by negative feedback in other channels, e.g. water vapor.
I know you will probably disagree with this, as you think that water vapor is a positive feedback, but note once again — GCMs that implement this assumption have annual to decadal variation that is nearly an order of magnitude too large (based on the graphs I’ve seen of single runs and estimates based on the visible variations in 9.2b of AR5). I would gently suggest that this is because they have the wrong sign in the water vapor feedback, and have to “fix” this error by strengthening negative feedback from other things in order for the climate to not just run away. Those other things, of course, have the wrong dynamical time scale and so the climate overruns both warming and cooling while waiting for their lagged response.
rgb
The Pompous Git says:
August 12, 2014 at 9:31 pm
Excellent tips. Thanks. Staking out goats to eat the vines hasn’t worked all that well so far. I might go for killing the roots, since they’re spreading despite all my control efforts. Not sure I want total eradication. So far the goats haven’t spread the seeds.
I always have plenty of blackberries for wine & flavoring beer, but they’re not my favorite fruit stock.
rgbatduke says:
August 13, 2014 at 5:32 pm
(not rgb): “I’d like to make a distinction there. I think we know the forcings fairly well.”
rgb:
” I would gently suggest that this is because they have the wrong sign in the water vapor feedback, and have to “fix” this error by strengthening negative feedback from other things in order for the climate to not just run away. Those other things, of course, have the wrong dynamical time scale and so the climate overruns both warming and cooling while waiting for their lagged response.”
Surely we should be starting the whole exercise with the idea that, since the earth’s climate has not only NOT run away with itself in 4B or so years, that this is stronger evidence for what is happening in the climate than anything else we know. I consider it as good a law as we are ever going to be able to propound on climate science that the earths climate system has proven stable throughout its history. It varies between remarkably constrained upper and lower temperatures spread only 8-10C apart (or so).
The very fact that we have been struck by large asteroids, globally rocking the planet, darkening the skies for perhaps more than decades and then inexorably recovering back into the surprisingly narrow band of its approximately same maxima and minima is a 4th of July fireworks of evidence about the behavior of climate.
The billion+years continuity of life, heck, I have a 470 million year old Ordovician nautiloid fossil, a gastropod fossil with a central Archimedes-type screw convolution of its shell more than a foot long in limestone that a co-worker drilled off for me on one of my birthdays a few decades ago in northern Saskatchewan (I wish I knew how to put a picture of it in this post). It is a member of the highly diverse phyllum mollusca – the most abundant of shell fish today in the oceans . A look at the fossil record gives an unbroken continuum of this phyllum for almost half a billion years. I proffer this phyllum as a poster child for climate. It, too, survived the asteroids, the ice ages, the tropical eras of no ice, pole to pole the transit though the space junk of the spiral arm we occupy…. Hey, and it used the lime-CO2 of the oceans to make the same carbonate shells.
http://www.tonmo.com/community/pages/nautiloids/
Why can’t we agree on this stable foundation of climate and progress from here. At this level, it removes the non-linear, chaotic aspect of short term climate. The evolution of this creature, in harmony with its environment, is, well … more of a linear thing with no error bars and if there was chaos, it was like the chaos of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring – riotous but in key.
It was rgb’s description of a tiny 15 years in the history of climate in which a few percent of CO 2 added by humans and a modest half a degree of warming was going to tip us into extinction that inspired this rant and that 15 years following during which there was no warming, indeed some cooling of late, and they are still going on about it and they want us to spend trillions more. rgb, you are too kind to these guys. There can be no question that the planet has experienced longer, more dramatic bouts than this a million times or more. It really is all very silly.
rgbatduke says: August 13, 2014 at 5:32 pm
“The uncertainty in nearly everything “global” increases substantially as one moves back in time. There is a lot of debate over just what CO_2 levels were 150 years ago,…”
Limited knowledge of past forcings limits ability to hindcast. What we’d like, and I think have, is knowledge for long enough that the GCM’s can respond to climate alone, without troubles due to initial errors, or indeed, errors in long past forcing. “Long enough” would be 50+ years.
“I’ve also given, many times at this point, arguments that suggest that it would be surprising if the GCMs “work” to predict long term climate in a chaotic nonlinear system.”
I’ve spoken of CFD. That’s a nonlinear, chaotic system. Turbulent flow over a wing has all that, yet Boeing etc happily use the info about lift, drag etc.
“For one thing, they don’t have the computational granularity to be able to succeed given the known dynamical timescales of the system”
CFD doesn’t either. You can never resolve turbulence. But various conserrvation laws come to the rescue.
“I would gently suggest that this is because they have the wrong sign in the water vapor feedback, and have to “fix” this error by strengthening negative feedback from other things in order for the climate to not just run away.”
I keep hearing here what I think is a fallacy equating positive feedback with runaway. AGW theory says that wv feedback approx doubles the sensitivity. That isn’t runaway, and doesn’t require compensating negative feedback.
Nick Stokes says:
August 13, 2014 at 7:30 pm
There you go again with AGW “theory”. It’s not a theory, or even a supportable hypothesis. It’s a repeatedly falsified conjecture.
Michael 2 says
This is the comment that Cougar made
“And it has been my experience that females have a propensity for refusing to admit being “wrong” about anything and thus are noted for offering such “tripe n’ piffle” in their rebuttal commentary.”
This is what he states as scientific FACT!
He claims that based on this he could tell that someone (who i agree is clueless) must be a female.
I ask you are there no males here who act like that? By the by look at his response to my comments.
I am not saying men and women aren’t different they clearly are. I am say that Cougar doesn’t know how to deal with women so he has no clue how they behave and thus shouldn’t be making comments like above.
Want to defend what he said?
Bob wrote: “Want to defend what he said?”
As I recall it was a bit of snark better suited for twitter and thus not really important to challenge OR defend. I didn’t read it all the way through. This “meta-discussion” has been more interesting than what started it.
Bob Boder:
At August 14, 2014 at 1:11 pm you say
No, he presented it as his personal experience and not as “scientific FACT!”
On the basis of my own experience I do not agree with his claim that females have a greater “propensity” than males but I am not him so I do not share his experience.
And I also do not agree with your misrepresentation of Cougar’s statement.
Richard
He does state it as scientific fact in a later post
Richardcourtney says
Cogar also doesn’t say a “greater” propensity, he says a propensity and he doesn’t say some females he says females. This implies that all females have this propensity.
When I called him on it i said that he shouldn’t use his experiences with women as a basis to define the gender as a whole, pretty much as you say in your post. His response was that it was based in/on scientific FACT.
I have not misrepresented him and was very polite in my pointing out the error of his statement.
I told him he should judge people on their actions and not their being.
In general his implication was that H Grouse had to be a female, the implication being that being female was an issue to him. If you doubt me read the posts above.
Defend him if you want, but make sure you understand what you are defending.
PS H Grouse is clueless though and this is why I started my original post by saying that much of what Cogar says I agree with
Bob Boder says “Cogar also doesn’t say a “greater” propensity, he says a propensity and he doesn’t say some females he says females. This implies that all females have this propensity.”
“Propensity” already implies “some”.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/propensity “tendency, preference, or attraction”.
But the reason for making this identification seems to be to deprecate the authority of the writer. As such it is “ad hominem” and does not advance the discussion.
Miochael 2:
I completely agree your post at August 15, 2014 at 11:30 am .
ALL ad homs. and misrepresentations inhibit debate and do “not advance the discussion”.
But not all personal comments are ad homs. The personal comments being discussed here are ad hom.
Richard
Courtney says
Again Read my first response to Cogar initial comment and then his response to me.
He is wrong and you can defend what he said as long as you want it doesn’t matter his comment is still wrong. I am not attacking him and I do most often agree with him on relevant topics, but his response and your defense just proves the point you are both refusing to just admit a mistake and move on you have to argue a losing. This is exactly the behavior he claimed proved that H Grouse must be a female. Again you can’t say someone must be a female because they refuse to admit they are wrong.
Smokey 128 wrong name sorry
I want to read even more things about it!