From the THE EARTH INSTITUTE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY and the “must make the blade of the hockey stick flat” department comes this claim:
Study undercuts idea that ‘Medieval Warm Period’ was global
Vikings may not have colonized Greenland in nice weather
A new study questions the popular notion that 10th-century Norse people were able to colonize Greenland because of a period of unusually warm weather. Based upon signs left by old glaciers, researchers say the climate was already cold when the Norse arrived–and that climate thus probably played little role in their mysterious demise some 400 years later. On a larger scale, the study adds to building evidence that the so-called Medieval Warm Period, when Europe enjoyed exceptionally clement weather, did not necessarily extend to other parts of the world.
“It’s becoming clearer that the Medieval Warm Period was patchy, not global,” said lead author Nicolás Young, a glacial geologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “The concept is Eurocentric–that’s where the best-known observations were made. Elsewhere, the climate might not have been the same.” Climate scientists have cited the Medieval Warm Period to explain anomalies in rainfall and temperature in far-flung regions, from the U.S. Southwest to China. The study appears today in the journal Science Advances.
Norse, or Vikings, led by Erik the Red, first sailed from recently settled Iceland to southwestern Greenland around 985, according to Icelandic records. Some 3,000 to 5,000 settlers eventually lived in Greenland, harvesting walrus ivory and raising livestock. But the colonies disappeared between about 1360 and 1460, leaving only ruins, and a longstanding mystery as to what happened. The native Inuit remained, but Europeans did not re-inhabit Greenland until the 1700s.
The Greenlandic Vikings’ apogee coincided with the Medieval Warm Period (also known as the Medieval Climate Anomaly), generally dated from about 950-1250; their disappearance followed the onset of the Little Ice Age, which ran from about 1300-1850. Both periods are firmly documented in European and Icelandic historical records. Thus, popular authors and some scientists have fixed on the idea that nice weather drew the settlers to Greenland, and bad weather froze and starved them. But there are no early historical climate records from Greenland. Recently, historians have proposed more complex factors in addition to, or instead of, climate: hostilities with the Inuit, a decline in ivory trade, soil erosion caused by the Vikings’ imported cattle, or a migration back to Europe to farms depopulated by the Black Plague.
In the new study, the scientists sampled boulders left by advancing glaciers over the last 1,000-some years in southwest Greenland, and on neighboring Baffin Island, which the Norse may also have occupied, according to newly uncovered evidence. Glacial advances during the Little Ice Age have wiped out most evidence of where the glaciers were during the Norse settlement. But Young and his colleagues were able to find traces of a few moraines–heaps of debris left at glaciers’ ends–that, by their layout, they could tell predated the Little Ice Age advances. Using newly precise methods of analyzing chemical isotopes in the rocks, they showed that these moraines had been deposited during the Viking occupation, and that the glaciers had neared or reached their later maximum Little Ice Age positions between 975 and 1275. The strong implication: it was at least as cold when the Vikings arrived as when they left. “If the Vikings traveled to Greenland when it was cool, it’s a stretch to say deteriorating climate drove them out,” said Young.
The findings fit with other recently developed evidence that the effects of the Medieval Warm Period were not uniform; some places, including parts of central Eurasia and northwestern North America, may actually have cooled off.
In the Atlantic region, the research includes a 2013 study of ocean-bottom sediments suggesting that temperatures in the western North Atlantic actually went down as the eastern North Atlantic warmed. Other studies of the region suggest a more complex picture. A 2011 study of a core from the Greenland ice sheet shows a strong cooling at the start of Norse occupation, and another in the middle, with interspersed warming. On the other hand, lake-bottom sediments from southwestern Greenland studied in 2011 by Lamont-Doherty paleoclimatologist William D’Andrea, suggest it might indeed have been warm when the Norse arrived, but that climate cooled starting in 1160, well before the Little Ice Age.
The new study may feed recent suggestions by other researchers that the Medieval Warm Period was in part just an extended phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Modern observations show that the NAO is a generally decadal-scale climate cycle, in which warm winds from the west strengthen and boost temperatures in Europe and Iceland, but simultaneously make southwest Greenland and Baffin Island colder, by sucking in more Arctic air. That makes the two regions seesaw in opposite directions.
Gifford Miller, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Colorado, called the paper “a coup de grace on the Medieval Warm Period.” Miller said it shows “with great clarity of evidence” that “the idea of a consistently warm Medieval period is certainly an oversimplification and of little utility.”
Astrid Ogilvie, a climate historian currently based at Iceland’s Akureyri University, said the study “shows that the climate is clearly more complicated and variable than people earlier assumed.” As for the Vikings, the climate story has been dimming for some time, she said. “I do not like the simplistic argument that the Greenland people went there when it was warm, and then ‘it got cold and they died’,” she said. “I think the Medieval Warm Period has been built on many false premises, but it still clings to the popular imagination.”
The rocks were analyzed at the University of Buffalo, and at the Lamont-Doherty lab of geochemist and study coauthor Joerg Schaefer. The Lamont lab is among a handful that can precisely date such recent rock deposits. The analyses are done by measuring buildups of small amounts of Beryllium 10, an isotope created when cosmogenic rays strike rock surfaces newly exposed by melting ice.
###
In addition to Young and Schaefer, the paper was coauthored by Avriel Schweinsberg and Jason Briner of the University at Buffalo, who carried out the Greenland portion of the fieldwork.
The paper, “Glacier maxima in Baffin Bay during the Medieval Warm Period coeval with Norse settlement,” is available from Science Advances
There was a time when scientists were objective on Climate change:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/scientists_wouldnt_fall_for_the_climate_hype_last_time_so_why_this_change/
I suppose that is true only if you define “objective” to mean “agreeing with my point of view”. Another way to look at it is that the National Academy of Science report from that time further undercuts the claim made by many AGW skeptics that the scientific community was anywhere close to being in agreement on climate change (i.e., that it would cool) as they are today regarding warming.
I.e., it is further documentation to show that the National Academy of Sciences in Australia (and there is a similar report during that time from the NAS in the U.S.) is not an alarmist organization and did not buy in to whatever alarmist hype supposedly existed at that time. Seems like all the more reason to take seriously their views now rather than to simply ignore them as not being objective when their views disagree with your ideology.
“… if you define “objective” to mean ‘agreeing with
my point of view”[the data”.’ *** Seems like all the more reason to … simply ignore them as not being objective when their views disagree withyour ideology[the data].”Fixed.
joelshore mentions the label “ideology” in his comments more often than everyone else combined.
That shows the ‘dangerous AGW’ scare is 100.0% politics to him. Always has been. The ‘science’ is just a thin veneer.
Welcome back, Joel!
(Maybe you haven’t been gone and it’s just that I haven’t noticed you lately)
Agreed that the 70’s coolist consensus was not as magnificent as today’s warmist Truth, but times have changed a lot (even if the climate hasn’t).
Today, every proclamation from every back-water, educational institution across the globe is received with gasps of astonishment, wails of lament and sighs of resignation, all from the same mouths, especially, when it is revealed that the incidence of rheumatoid arthritis in the articulation points of Drosophila limbs can be expected to rise dramatically with the anticipated increased temperatures that are consistent with the predictions of climate models.
Every Lamb of yore from East Anglia would, today, be a black sheep in the climate flock, or already dismissed as an old ram with scrapie; in those days, there was no bevy of Bo Peeps breathlessly awaiting the next pronouncement about the meteorological conditions of Patagonia in the 4th. century.
Assuming that today’s NAS in Oz has the same intrinsic character that it did 40 years ago doesn’t seem sensible.
I second mebbe, welcome back Joel.
It is an echo chamber without people like you.
In this case I must disagree with you on two fronts. First, arguing that because the societies back then were not politically motivated provides no evidence at all as to whether or not that is currently the case. Secondly, your claim that scientists are fairly unified in regard to warming is also unreasonable when one examines the literature. The explanations for the “pause” have been published by the dozen, and they disagree substantially with one another. They are now swept from the headlines by papers that contrive to show it doesn’t exist by re-examining sea surface temps. Hilariously, by many of the same people who claimed that land temps were the place to look for warming. And, the pause buster paper is in complete opposition to the satellite record from the same organization. General agreement my @ss! Do they agree that CO2 causes some amount of warming? Of course they do. Do they agree on how much, or where, or on SLR or ice mass…. a review of the literature suggests not.
I came late to this thread but the actual evidence in the actual study shows that it was WARMER in Greenland when the Vikings occupied it and there was indeed a Medieval Warm Period in Greenland.
They might be trying to say the glaciers extended somewhat during the time-period due to more precipitation but there is not much evidence for that either.
[I just wanted to note that this happens 95% of the time I look up the actual study in climate science. The actual data completely contradicts the spin and even contradicts global warming in most cases as well. It is the global warming is real spin which is really the problem in this science.]
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/11/e1500806.full
http://d3a5ak6v9sb99l.cloudfront.net/content/advances/1/11/e1500806/F3.large.jpg
dbstealey says: “That shows the ‘dangerous AGW’ scare is 100.0% politics to him. Always has been. The ‘science’ is just a thin veneer.”
No what it means is that the attack on the scientific consensus is (almost) 100% politics. Just as it is when other science, widely agreed to by scientists, like evolution, is challenged by people.
mebbe: It is inevitable that those who don’t want to believe a certain scientific conclusion will conclude that the scientific societies were great back in the days before the evidence was strong enough for them to agree with the conclusion and that they have all gone to hell now that the evidence is strong enough for them to agree with the conclusion. That doesn’t make it so.
davidmhoffer,
Thanks for the welcome back.
Well, it doesn’t show that they aren’t now, but it makes such vast conspiracies among the major scientific societies in the world seem much less plausible. And it makes it seem strange that we are being asked by some to abandon the method of letting science inform public policy that has worked so well in the past (in favor of a method that nobody here has ever been able to articulate to me).
The IPCC reports and the statements by the scientific societies have made it clear what the points of general agreement are and what uncertainties remain. And, very few scientists seem to believe that the remaining uncertainties are so small (and so likely biased in one direction) that it makes sense to do nothing to mitigate the significant changes that are occurring and will continue to occur and likely accelerate.
As I correctly pointed out:
joelshore mentions the label “ideology” in his comments more often than everyone else combined.
joelshore’s excuse:
… the attack on the scientific consensus is (almost) 100% politics.
Readers can make up their own minds whether scientific skepticism is a political view. We know “consensus” is. They use “consensus” because that’s all they’ve got…
…but in fact, skeptics are the overwhelming consensus. So the believers in DAGW lose both arguments.
Well, it doesn’t show that they aren’t now, but it makes such vast conspiracies among the major scientific societies in the world seem much less plausible.
There is no conspiracy that I can see. Political pressure from those who hold the purse strings and a meme that has taken such deep root that the next generation of scientists grows up with it as their defacto standard and accept it uncritically? Yes, that I see.
And it makes it seem strange that we are being asked by some to abandon the method of letting science inform public policy that has worked so well in the past (in favor of a method that nobody here has ever been able to articulate to me).
When the science is corrupted by politics, it is no longer science informing policy. It is policy based science. The solution is not to find an alternative method. The solution is to drive the politics out of the science so that we can return to the method that works.
The IPCC reports and the statements by the scientific societies have made it clear what the points of general agreement are and what uncertainties remain.
It was reading the IPCC reports that first turned me into a skeptic. I’ve written spin documents for decades, I know my craft, and I recognize it when I see it. The IPCC documents are pure spin, and a reading of what the papers they refer to say, what their science chapters say, and what the summary for policy makers say reveals three different stories, each more heavily spun.
And, very few scientists seem to believe that the remaining uncertainties are so small (and so likely biased in one direction) that it makes sense to do nothing to mitigate the significant changes that are occurring and will continue to occur and likely accelerate.
Oh pish. The remaining uncertainties are huge. If they were few and small, those precious climate models would be getting it right. They aren’t. We don’t know why. In other words, we don’t know what we don’t know. So your statement is patently false, and your asking us to sign up for draconian actions that will condemn billions to short, brutal lives on the basis of science that is clearly in dispute, not just between scientists (despite the political pressure on them to unite around a political result) but between the purported consensus science and observations themselves.
CO2 is logarithmic Joel, I’m sure you will agree with that. If sensitivity were high, we’d easily be able to identify the signal in the data. Instead, we can barely discern it. The only logical conclusion is that sensitivity is low, and we have more to fear from natural variability than from CO2 emissions.
Ah yes. All those apolitical folks like Sen. Lamar Alexander, Sen. Inhofe, Mark Morano they are just trying to drive the politics OUT of the science. Ah yes, now I get it. Those big bad folks in the climate science community, in the National Academy of Sciences, in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in the AGU and the AMS, they are all politicizing science and it is up to a few ultra-conservative politicians with huge fossil fuel donations to help save us!
Got it.
joelshore is more political than they are… doubled and squared.
joeldshore
Those big bad folks in the climate science community, in the National Academy of Sciences, in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in the AGU and the AMS, they are all politicizing science
I see the problem Joel. You don’t understand what “politicization of science” actually means. It doesn’t mean the academies are doing the politicizing. It means the politicians who control the purse strings put pressure on the academies to produce a result in line with their political beliefs. A clear example from the past was the shuttle disaster in which the Reagan administration desperately wanted a given launch date. The pressure was so intense that NASA eventually over ruled the objections of the actual designers of the o-rings that failed and deemed it a beautiful day to launch.
You didn’t address my comment about sensitivity and the models failing to get close to observations I see. Not that I expected you to.
+1…. state of the union speech. Part of the speech was to talk to a teacher in space. What could go wrong? Political granstanding complete with a photo op.
Wow, you’re incredibly naive if you believe that the feverish focus on trying to remove the mediaeval warm period and prove that significant man made global warming is real is based on any genuine scientific motivation.
It’s not a coincidence that the balance of scientific opinion on past warming trends is rapidly being changed by adjustments in a downward direction.
the Hockeystick fraud, Darwin and other fraudulent downward adjustments, the NIWA fraud in NZ, the anti-science placement of measuring stations in hot urban locations, the climategate emails all paint a damning picture, not to mention the fact that the evidence overwhelmingly still supports the skeptics due to the fact that there’s no mid tropospheric hotspot. I’ve even seen the lie spread that Outgoing Longwave Radiation has gone down with increased surface warming despite the fact that the ERBE satellite has measured it as going UP with increased surface warming. Lying about this enables them to claim the heat has disappeared into the ocean, despite the fact they have not found this heat or come up with a mechanism that enables this sentient heat to suddenly decide to jump into the ocean depths and violate the laws of thermodynamics.
Then there’s the baseless 2 degrees threshold of doom. There is ZERO rationale or scientific reasoning behind this, it will be beneficial if anything and is OBVIOUSLY a political lie designed to rationalise their economic/political goals.
I means seriously you’d have to be braindead not to see the blatantly obvious scam at work here.
davidmhoffer says:
You only seem to see such pressure in one direction. So, what sort of pressure do you think the Bush Administration was putting on the academies when he was President? What sort of pressure is Lamar Alexander, who is Chair of the House Science & Technology Committee, putting on them? What about Sen Inhofe, who has served as both the Chairman and Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee?
When scientists were telling Bush and the Republicans in control of Congress things that they didn’t want to hear, I didn’t see you noting that we should really take note, given that the scientists were producing such results despite pressures to produce different results.
You said:
This is quite simply not correct. The instrumental temperature record and what we know about the forcings yields a best estimate of the climate sensitivity that is somewhere in the middle of the generally-accepted range, albeit with error bars that are large enough to include both pretty low and high sensitivities.
Paleoclimate data provides somewhat better constraints on sensitivity because it eliminates one issue plaguing the instrumental record, which is that the relaxation time scales and the sensitivity can play off each other in a way that makes it difficult to discern between higher sensitivity with slower relaxation time scales and lower sensitivity with faster relaxation time scales.
When davidhoffer pointed out to joelshore that the effect of CO2 is logarithmic, joelshore’s assertion was:
This is quite simply not correct.
That assertion was followed by more assertions (after the obligatory: “but… but… BUSH!)
It is widely accepted that the effect of CO2 is logarithmic, but joelshore cannot admit it. Because if he did, he would see that the reason there’s been no measurable effect from the rise in CO2 is because almost the entire effect took place within the first few dozen ppm:
So at current concentrations of ≈400 ppm, any minuscule warming isn’t even measurable.
In fact, CO2 could rise 20%, or 30%, or 40% or more, and we still couldn’t measure the tiny warming that would result. Just look at the chart, and follow those percentages to see how small the warming would be.
Well, that totally demolishes the alarmists’ ‘carbon’ argument. And Planet Earth is confirming the logarithmic argument: global warming has not been measurably affected by the rise in CO2. In fact, global warming stopped many years ago.
So the planet has spoken. And joelshore has asserted his opinion.
To quote Chico Marx: “Who are you gonna believe, me or your eyes?”
joeldshore
This is quite simply not correct. The instrumental temperature record and what we know about the forcings yields a best estimate of the climate sensitivity that is somewhere in the middle of the generally-accepted range
LOL. Even the IPCC in AR5 admitted that the models run hot. So I guess the IPCC is saying that the models aren’t based on range of sensitivity you are talking about and that they are therefor wrong? I
That’s the thing about this messy debate. First comes the claim of consensus, followed by the speaker’s definition of what the consensus is. But when I read the literature itself, it is plain that there is no consensus, and the speaker is invariably distorting the truth.
Thousands of papers indicating the existence of the mideval warm period are just evidence that scientists don’t agree.
It wasn’t until it became politically necessary to eliminate the MWP did papers start appearing contradicting it’s existence.
joel, there never was a consensus on global warming. That was a politically motivated claim backed by deceptive surveys and discredited science.
I find it fascinating the way joel declares that skepticism is driven by politics because there are a couple of politicians who back the skeptics.
On the other hand, all the politicians on his side are just following the consensus.
Is blatant hypocrisy really the best you have to offer joel?
I quoted three sentences of davidhoffer’s. The first said that the effect of CO2 is logarithmic, an approximately correct statement (in the concentration regime we are currently in) and the next went on to make other statements, which were the ones that I clearly criticized. You chose to attack a “straw man” argument that no reasonable person reading what I wrote would have any reason whatsoever to believe I was making.
[For bonus points, how many deceptive things can one find in the graph that dbstealey chose to include in his post?]
davidmhoffer says:
Exactly what statement from the IPCC are you referring to? As for the models running hot or cold over some period of time, there are a lot of possibilities other than an incorrect central-estimate of the climate sensitivity that could be the cause, including internal variability or troubles with estimation of a forcing (such as either the natural or man-made aerosol forcings).
I am referring to using the whole instrumental temperature record to constrain climate sensitivity; Trying to constrain it using some even shorter period is even more difficult.
joelshore says:
…how many deceptive things can one find in the graph that dbstealey chose to include in his post?]
It seems that the only ‘deception’ is in the fevered imagination of joelshore. No one else has found anything deceptive about that chart, which is copied from an article posted on WUWT. No one commenting under the article found anything deceptive about it, either. So no doubt joelshore just threw that comment in to give him time to fabricate something.
The central problem that joelshore has is this: Planet Earth is busy debunking his alarmist narrative. So, should we believe joelshore? Or Planet Earth?
As Chico Marx said:
“Who are you gonna believe, me or your eyes?”
Joeldshore
Exactly what statement from the IPCC are you referring to?
IPCC AR5 sets aside sensitivity as determined by the models and replaces it with “expert judgment”. I know you’ve been absent for a while, so I assume you’ve missed a few chapters. Wading through AR5 is rather a chore, and I know you’ll dismiss any write up on the matter in this forum, so perhaps you’ll read through this one and catch up. You’ll recognize the author I’m sure.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/01/06/ipcc-ar5-weakens-the-case-for-agw/
davidmhoffer:
The estimates of climate sensitivity in previous IPCC reports were not just based on models either. They were based on expert judgement, primarily relying on estimates from various empirical data (paleoclimate, instrumental temperature record, response to volcanic eruptions, …) at least as much as, if not more than, on the range of sensitivities in the various climate models.
As for Judith Curry, she is entitled to her opinion. However, her opinion is not objective reality any more than the one opinion of, say, Jim Hansen is objective reality. That is why it is useful to consider what the scientific community as a whole has to say.
“They were based on expert judgement”.
Absolutely not unless you think that unjustified assumptions to support an otherwise unsupportable agenda is sound judgement. The IPCC sensitivity was initially set to be big enough to justify the IPCC agenda with little regard for the science or data. Their charter explicitly directed them to identify ‘science’ to support this position, the (imaginary) consequences and potential mitigation strategies.
dbstealey: Some examples of questions that a REAL skeptic might ask about the graph that you posted:
* Why are they plotting things in terms of these 20 ppm increments given that the more appropriate way to understand an approximately-logarithmic relationship is to talk in terms of how much warming is produced for each doubling of concentration (which is why real scientists do exactly this)?
* What climate sensitivity did they assume in producing that graph? (Hint: They assumed a very low one.)
You have no ability to distinguish between real science and garbage that is produced by others for the expressed purpose of making you feel that your belief system is justified.
As to why nobody else has commented on this graph or the other nonsense you have written here, I am not sure how many are reading at this point, and furthermore it is not me but rather davidmhoffer who admitted to me that this place “is an echo chamber without people like you”.
You might try looking up the phrase “Epistemic Closure” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/books/28conserv.html?_r=0).
joeldshore December 8, 2015 at 8:07 am
davidmhoffer:
The estimates of climate sensitivity in previous IPCC reports were not just based on models either. They were based on expert judgement, primarily relying on estimates from various empirical data (paleoclimate, instrumental temperature record, response to volcanic eruptions, …) at least as much as, if not more than, on the range of sensitivities in the various climate models.
Joel, you cannot have it both ways. If sensitivity is constrained to a narrow range and is accurate, then there is something going on in the models that is wrong and nobody knows what (else they would fix it and the models would be right). When you don’t know what is wrong with your model, which is based on and constrained by the known physics, it cannot be used to provide a useful estimate of anything. Yet they are quoted ad nauseum in the press and science papers alike. Chirs Folland of the CRU went so far as to say “The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data, we’re basing them on the climate models.” But now you say that wasn’t true, it was really the models and a whole bunch of other stuff. Even if I accept your version of things, AR5 deliberately sets aside the models altogether for the specific reason that they run too hot, and replaces them with “expert opinion”. So even if I accept your argument that sensitivity was always a matter of mixed opinions (despite what Folland said), I then have to ask what part of the physics are the models getting wrong that renders them so according, not to me, but the IPCC itself?
As for Judith Curry, she is entitled to her opinion. However, her opinion is not objective reality
If you can provide a rebuttal to what Curry said in the article I linked to, by all means do so. If all you are going to do is dismiss it out of hand as her opinion, then you have entirely missed the point. I read AR5 myself, and came to the same conclusions that Curry did before her article appeared. Hers is just a nice neat summary that is easily pointed to without going back and reconstructing all the specific quotes myself. So rebut it, show where one of the quotes is wrong, or out of context. But merely dismissing it as opinion leaves it standing quite unscathed. T
Joeldshore;
That is why it is useful to consider what the scientific community as a whole has to say.
Yet when I point to the fact that when I look at what the individual scientists in the community are saying, they are rarely (if ever) saying what their science bodies say, and they certainly don’t exhibit a consensus of any sort.
It’s amusing watching joelshore get completely deconstructed. His argument is based on mere assertions as usual.
The only real ‘Authority’ is Planet Earth. That authority trumps the alarmist narrative (‘dangerous AGW’).
We have just been through a true “Goldilocks” century: global temperatures have been unusually flat and benign. It would be hard to find a similar time frame in the record that was as beneficial for the biosphere.
But the alarmist contingent shot itself in the foot by trying to sound a false alarm over… what, exactly? We would be extremely fortunate to have another century of such a fine global climate.
Now that the alarmist crowd has stated its position, the last thing they will ever do is honestly admit they were wrong from the get-go. They would view that as a ‘climbdown’, and they would be forced to admit that the hated skeptics were right all along.
But that’s the situation, isn’t it? They’ve tried their giant head fake, and it didn’t work. Now they’re stuck, and it’s amusing to watch people like joelshore try to tap-dance his way out of that predicament. ☺
To Joel D Shore
Read this. Please. It is very long, but please. Read it. Some of the language is inflammatory, and is itself political. But the story it tells is one I have lived, though on a smaller and less public scale. But I have followed this debate for a very long time, since the announcements of the very first agreements from Kyoto became public and one of my professors (an atmospheric physicist) proclaimed (to the best of my memory) “CO2? Are they nuts? Water vapour is the dominant greenhouse gas”. A mere author and musician, not a scientist at all, eloquently outlines the case against the “consensus” of climate scientists in words that both a layman and a scientist such as yourself can understand.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/08/mark-steyns-illuminating-and-entertaining-testimony-to-the-cruz-hearing-on-climate-today/
http://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/exploration/norse-north-atlantic.php A Little History
One of the reasons vikings went to Greenland and Iceland was some of the first atempts to make Norway a Christian country. To preserve the old ways they left to be free from religius prosecution.
Others fleed king Haralds armies when he gathered the whole coast of Norway to a single kingdom.
Eirik the red propably left Norway because of a murder so he moved his household to awoid a blood fued. Vikings sailed most of the known world at the time. They never settled anywhere else than Greenland and Iceland.
So they sailed any where, MWP or not!
Is it too cold for a good sized cattle dairy industry in Greenland? It’s said that the dairy industry consisted of a whopping 22 COWS in 2013!
Here is a NON-PEER REVIEWED article. Make of it what you will.
Greenland summer Armageddon is underway. It is worse than I thought!
http://beta.dmi.dk/uploads/tx_dmidatastore/webservice/b/m/s/d/e/accumulatedsmb.png
Why is it that barley grown in Greenland is today being talked about in excited terms, when it was just a matter of fact in the Medieval time? Why would you attempt to grow barley IF YOU KNEW IT WAS TOO COLD AND YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON YOU GETTING IT RIGHT?
Here are the Warmists at the Economist back in the day.
Why depend on something that must have failed? Why was it “centered on”???
Let me now try to end this bit of my comments.
Q. If this study is saying that it was just as cold when Eric Red et al reached Greenland as when the settlers saw their demise, then how come dairy cattle and certain crops were more widespread than now? Don’t Greenlanders like more widespread barley and milk? Maybe lactose intolerance / lack of climate change money intolerance.
If it was that cold in Greenland, then how did they manage to grow barley there?
https://ancientfoods.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/viking-barley-in-greenland/
Some details from Gail Combs…
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/arctic-sea-ice-continues-at-highest-extent-since-2005/#comment-529082
…and musical commentary:
A few years ago there was an article about a man named Kenneth Hoeth who was trying, experimentally, to grow barley in modern Greenland. I haven’t found any subsequent news about how that experiment came out. But even if he succeeded we should remember that he has two advantages over the Norsemen:
1. Mr. Hoeth presumably has access to modern, improved strains of barley, bred for quicker maturity; And,
2. He’s growing his barley at ~400 ppmv CO2, which makes barley (and other C3 plants) grow grow considerably faster and mature slightly faster than they do at the ~280 ppmv level which prevailed 8-10 centuries ago.
Since, in spite of those disadvantages, the Norsemen nevertheless managed to successfully cultivate barley, they must have enjoyed either a substantially longer growing season, or else warmer temperatures (which speed up the growing cycle), or both, compared to Greenland today.
If Hoeth had succeeded it would have been front page news on The Guardian, as a final rebuttal of MWP. If we did not hear about it, it because he did not succeed.
There own twisted logic is revealed in the press release:
By their own admission, “most evidence ” of where glaciers were when the Norsemen arrived was wiped out by later advance. This refutes any suggestion that it was just as cold during the Norse settlement,
If they have managed to identify “a few moraines” for which they think the layout indicates they survived from the Norse period this does not overturn the bulk of the evidence.
Also some of these sites were ” on neighboring Baffin Island, which the Norse may also have occupied”. So they are using sites where apparently there is NO evidence that the Norse actually inhabited, just “may have”.
daveburton:
You ask
Please do not ask questions about historical facts of the MWP. Michael Mann gets upset when people do.
I wrote a circulated email to Chick Keller soon after the Mann, Bradley and Hughes 1998 ‘hockeystick’ was published. In it I wrote (among other things)
Unknown to me, my email was forwarded to Michael Mann who replied with an email that I learned about when it was released as part of climategate. Mann’s email said
Our host provided an article about this affair on WUWT here.
Please note that I am here and now still going public with such comments in hope that the execrable Michael Mann will make good his threat so I can challenge him in a court.
Richard
Well done by a man who knows both the science and history!
It was much warmer http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/archaeologists-uncover-clues-to-why-vikings-abandoned-greenland-a-876626.html
The Flat Earth Institute decided that ice cores provide only a local temperature record.
What amazes me is that you guys are adamant you know that there was a global medieval warm period 500 years ago but a lot of you refuse to accept the recent temperature record is certain enough to show modern global warming.
Not to mention what these claims do to the other sceptical arguments, e.g. A low climate sensitivity and the claim that it is CO2 that reacts to temperature increase.
The cognitive dissonance here is frightening.
no more beer for this one either …
LOL. First of all the MWP was 700-1200 years ago. Your lack of knowledge gives away the clear fact that you have never researched this topic at all.
As of recent warming, I know very few skeptics that deny it has warmed. Skeptics question the accuracy of the surface data based on solid science. Do you actually believe a thermometer placed next to an air conditioner exhaust fan is accurately measuring the temperature? And now, with the surface data diverging from the satellite data, only a complete fool would not question why.
The only that is “frightening” is your comment. Face-palm.
Back in 2001 CAGW tied the warming with their stated cause celeb, co2. “You don’t believe the world is warming?” If you agreed with that statement it put you on the side of CAGW. if you disagreed, it made you look stupid. The difficulty was separating the warming from the cause. That is why, in this argument, of the MWP and LIA is so important. From the beginning, CAGW has stated that they didn’t happen, and if it was warmer in Europe it wasn’t world wide. Both events were world wide.
This is a problem for AGW theory. AGW is directly tied to temperatures. If they can’t show how co2 affected temperatures in the past, they really can’t say anything about co2 now. In fact if you look at the data the IPCC presents in defence of AGW, it shows co2 and temperature in tandem. What it doesn’t show is the MWP and the LIA. why were these two events chosen? One is that they were recent. Things start to become murky the further back you go. And two, there is ample evidence that they occurred world wide. Third, the temperature and co2 levels were flat. So either co2 levels during that time period fluctuated during those time periods, which would leave CAGW having to provide explanations of where it came from and where it went. Or the temperature record they have is, gasp, wrong, and shows no correlation with co2 at all.
It is interesting to note that if you take all of the co2 fossil fuel produced and match it against the record, the current level of co2 is 65 to 75 ppm too high. There are several ways of determine this, they all match. Which is another quandary. Basically none of the numbers are right.
Without an explanation of how the increase and decrease of temperature occurred not dependent on co2, CAGW can’t say whether this current warming period, which is called CWP, is caused by co2 or some other factor. To anyone that has looked at this, it’s some other cause. Then if they agree it is some other factor, then how is this time period different that caused temperatures to go up during the MWP ??
YOU HAVE FAILED!!!
Do YOU GUY accept that you have failed???
Oh gee, you spelled cognitive dissonance correctly. What was presented here on climate and CO2 is based on real data. You have only assertions. And, BTW, there was no warm period 500 years ago. I think almost everyone posting here accepts that there has been warming since the LIA. What we don’t accept is NOAA and NASA adjustments to the surface temperature records, the aim of which is to give a distorted picture of that warming. The only databases that have not been tampered with are those containing UAH and RSS satellite data.
We have global records indicating the MWP existed.
The satellite record does not show catastrophic warming.
The ground based system is so contaminated by error that the proper error bars for it should be between 5C and 10C.
No cognative dissonance here, just an ability to do basic science and adhere to reality.
When temperatures warm many degrees, you can see it. When temperatures warm a few hundredths of a degree (smaller than the margin of error in measurement) we’re asked to just trust them. There’s a difference.
It appears that sammydj is just as confused by the term “climate change denier”/”global warming denier” that skeptics are! We didn’t choose that moniker, it was chosen by others. Skeptics really don’t deny that the climate changes (we believe it always has, and it always will) and skeptics don’t deny global warming (we believe that is has in the past, and it most likely will continue until it starts to get cool again).
Skeptics don’t accept methods that are questionable, or attempts to pin global changes on atmospheric Co2 changes etc. We’re more accurately CAGW deniers, or “unproven theory deniers”, but using those names makes the other side look bad, so THEY don’t use them against us.
This phrase gives it all away.
“The concept is Eurocentric–that’s where the best-known observations were made. Elsewhere, the climate might not have been the same”
Translation – damn those European for reporting what the climate actually did instead of what our models say”
Trouble is we know the Chinese also recorded weather information too.
From
EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF THE MEDIEVAL
WARM PERIOD IN CHINA
ZHANG DE’ER Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Baishiqiaolu No. 46 Beijing 100081, China
This record reflects actual cultivation in the period around A.D. 1264. These places (i.e. Tanghe county and Deng county today) can be considered as the northernmost county of citrus cultivation at that time (Figure 2). It can be shown that the northern boundary of citrus cultivation in the mid-thirteenth century was north of that in the Tang Dynasty and even further north than the present limit (He Kang, 1985).
The Indians also have unearthed evidence for both the MWP and LIA
Quaternary International
Volume 325, 19 March 2014, Pages 74–82
Holocene Palynology and Tropical Paleoecology
M.F. Quamar, M.S. Chauhan
Signals of Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age from southwestern Madhya Pradesh (India): A pollen-inferred Late-Holocene vegetation and climate change
The Antartic ice cores are irrefutable proof of is existence
microaggression alert: It’s Euro privilege at work.
/s-off
The Idso’s website (co2science.org) has an ongoing project devoted to collection of world-wide data confirming the global nature of the MWP.
I think it should be the shaft of the hockey stick, not the blade.
Soo Freudian.
So…there CAN be a Little Ice Age..that affected the whole planet…but not a Warm Period that did? We don’t know why the Vikings left…the GUESS that the weather had something to do with it is simply that, a common sense guess. But so is thinking in light of this new “argument” (that I think is thin at best) “Well, they arrived when it was cold, and left when it was cold….so maybe they just got sick and tired of everyone and everything freezing to death and decided to move on”. Common sense.
Nothing in this study “proves” the temperature of Greenland didn’t change between the time the Vikings arrived, and when they left, or before they arrived and after they left, or before they arrived but before they left…..
It proves that common sense has left Hockey?
The Vikings moved in when Nature was nice. Then Nature foreclosed and they moved.
Ok, so they found boulders where the Vikings lived. The boulders were deposited by a glacier coming down the mountains. What would you do if that happened where you lived? – Even if you were not a hardy Viking, you would of course move over and let the ice do its job. It’s happened before that houses have been broken by moving glaciers in Norwegian valleys. – Who cares?
A moving glacier responds to things that happened 5 to 10 years earlier. They respond to snow that fell on the mountains up to a decennium before. So, down in the valley the weather is still good for living. Perhaps they even appreciated getting some ice down and moving some soil. When the glacier retreats, it will leave good soil behing and lush grass for the cattle.
The Hockey Stick got rid of the Little Ice Age too, IIRC.
I don’t know why they left perfectly good farmsteads that for the last 700 or so years have been under ice. I just can’t imagine why they would not have enjoyed that. (/sarc)
How the Mediaeval Warming Period could be well recorded in Icelandic and European historical records and yet be absent from neighbouring Greenland, quite escapes me. There is also proxy evidence for the MWP from Chile, Peru, Japan, China New Zealand and Antarctica. Perhaps there just wasn’t any MWP in Greenland, despite all the Norse evidence that there was!
There are written records about the trips to Greenland. Towards the end, it was becoming more difficult to sail there, some years there were no voyages at all, due to ice, until they stopped altogether.
I have seen records from Iceland etc. Your thinking is correct, these people are MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD DENIERS
Papers galore covering AROUND THE WORLD!!! They say it was oil funded, I say so was BEST Koch, CRU Shell et al. (seek out Pachauri and his Glorioil Texas based hypocritical BS.) Do I really need to go on???
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
When they can contradict every single study done in the Medieval Warm Period Project, I’ll take them more seriously. Until then….the score ain’t close at all.
Hey, Gifford Miller declares this paper the coup de grace for the MWP. If it is good enough for him to declare it caput, on the basis of a couple of moraines…well…
Oh good, more agenda-driven “science”.
only truly evil people try to change history
Maybe instead of all that grant money put into erasing the MWP they should give it to Doc Brown. He can then build a Flux Capacitor and put it into a DeLorean so he and Marty can steer Erik the Red to Bermuda instead?
Holy smokes! You got $$$…you get published!
“The article processing charge for a standard, CC-BY-NC-licensed paper in Science Advances is $3,000, according to AAAS.”
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/40766/title/Opinion–OA-Advocates-Slam-Science-Advances/
AND
“the journal plans to charge an additional fee ($1,500) for processing articles longer than 10 pages.”
That’s a whole lot of payola required to get published online……
What they’ve really done here is insult the intelligence of my ancestors, as well as all of us today, and show that their method of determining temperature by proxy is BS.
No man, they have isotopic signals from rocks at several sites where they alertly spotted “traces of moraines” that “they could tell” predated blah blah blah…
They COULD TELL!
Oh, yes, indeed, O. Olson and Menicholas “they could tell“:
(emphasis mine)
Very much like Emily Lattela
Again, when in the latest warm period neat little farmsteads started appearing out of the retreating ice…can’t imagine how that might have happened. Oohh I know! Aliens put them there to throw us off the scent. (/sarc – but was it needed?)
Lol, Owen (good one) and… NO. #(:))
It appears that Michael Mann has quite a few friends trying to bolster his hockey stick. It is too bad that history proclaims another truth. I am afraid that this recent study is suggesting that the Vikings were too stupid to live. It is amazing that during that time they established an empire that was one of the most extensive in the world. Is it climate science that really makes folks stupid, or what?
This was basically their response 18 years ago. ” it was local and not world wide”. So now, it was never warm in the first place. Too bad no matter how much they twist it, the MWP or the LIA aren’t going away, and they weren’t local but world wide. Maybe they are leaving out first hand accounts of the trips to greenland, or the size of people and their health from forensics. Oh, we have to look at some trace element in the rocks to draw our unfounded conclusions on. Maybe we could show them the church where the last wedding took place when it was starting to get cold. Which fits the real global temperature record and not the flat line run up to the hockey stick.
There is more than enough evidence geological, ice core, and written to file that analysis “that the Vikings may have not settled greenland in nice weather”, where it belongs… in the garbage bin.
I’ve long since lost the link but recall a description of old Viking graves in Greenland. The graves are now locked in permafrost but the bodies are well decomposed. So at some time in the last 900 years it was warmer in Greenland.
Steve:
This is likely not your lost link, but, it appears to provide similar content:
(Source: http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/ )
Best wishes finding what you were searching for,
Janice
And your decomposed bodies deduction is supported by this:
(emphasis mine)
Source: http://www.historyonthenet.com/vikings/viking-tattoos-historical-or-not.html
And this is what they base a “scientific” paper on these days? “Traces” and “maybe’s”? I realize some fields of science have a certain amount of judgement and experience built into their conclusions, but this seems pretty flimsy to me. An objective geologist with access to the paper itself could tell, I suppose.
Couldn’t those glacial advances have come from the cold period that followed the Roman Warm Period? Seems they are not thinking in Geologic time with this,
Talk about non-falsifiable beliefs! If a study says that the Medieval Warm Period was global then it supports your point of view and if a study says that it was not then it shows that “they are still trying to erase the ‘Medieval Warm Period’” and hence supports your point of view.
Gotta love that logic!
Ice core proxies strongly indicate that the MWP was global. This hypothesis is falsifiable.
The above study simply does not falsify the ice-proxy data-backed hypothesis.
Janice,
It depends how you define “global”. If you define “global” as “Many places experienced relatively warm temperatures in some part of the period between about 900 and 1400 AD” then it looks like the MWP probably was global. However, the warmth was not highly synchronous like it is now, so the result when you look at a global (or Northern Hemispheric) average appears to be more of a broad diffuse bump in temperatures than any sort of sharp peak. This is what most Reconstructions, including Mann et al.’s, tend to show.
The global warming was global through out the world. Sometime around 2006 or 7 a world wide drilling project confirmed that there were many instances of both warming and cooling. All in synchronization all over the world. Producing a report like this and leaving out evidence of written accounts, forensics of the changing diets, settlemets, the change in health and trading patterns shows the motives are political and not scientific. The evidence is overwhelming in favor of a MWP worldwide.
The above study is garbage.
I’m taking all of this evidence of a worldwide MWP to the table, and CAGW is calling the case closed based on beryllium? Insanity truly has no limits.
joeldshore:
I refer you to my my above post..
If you believe what you say then please ask Michael Mann to make good his threat so I can sue him.
Richard
Then read Bill Illis December 5, 2015 at 3:36 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/04/study-shows-they-are-still-trying-to-erase-the-medieval-warm-period/#comment-2087795
He nailed it. Nuff said. GK
If I leave my coffee on the counter for 20 minutes, the temperature cools down to room temp (and the room warms up very slightly). It’s called Newton’s Law of Cooling. Don’t tell me that over hundreds of years, part of the world warms up and the rest remains cold. That’s pure BS.
first you set up the strawman that everyone thought it was uniformly warm…..no one did, Europe had horrible changing weather
..then you burn it down by saying it was warm in some places and cooler in others…just like everyone had already said
Then you say no one thought the weather changed……
Norse Barley found in Greenland settlements. No amount of warmunist BS can refute that factual archeology. Nuff said.
Maybe they sprinkled that barley on the ground, kind of like how we do rock salt to melt snow and ice here in the winter. You don’t know! (sarcalicious)
Oh, yes, Aphan, very likely true. And on the bags (found in the basement of Old Sven’s Tavern in a small village in Minnesota) it came in it says (in English): “Product of China.” lolol And that’s when Astrid thought: “I think…. we should write a paper!”
Nah. Doc Brown and Marty went back in time to plant evidence for a warm period.
“An ice core drilled from the island’s massive icecap between 1992 and 1993 shows a decided cooling off in the Western Settlement during the mid-fourteenth century.”
http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/
Has no one thought to ask the Native American peoples where their forbearers lived and what were the ancestral lands. They have a comprehennsive oral tradition and those peoples such as the Iroquois/ Haudenosaunee could say where they resided and why they left ( excepting invasive colonial invaders)
I remember reading somewhere that the American pilgrim fathers were saved from starvation by the local indians. It was bloody cold at the time apparently, they left records?
THIS looks more like the definitive work on the matter.
This is a huge amount of energy: “…0.65° warmer than in recent decades…”
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6158/617
Pacific Ocean Heat Content During the Past 10,000 Years
Rosenthal et al. … present a temperature record of western equatorial Pacific subsurface and intermediate water masses over the past 10,000 years that shows that heat content varied in step with both northern and southern high-latitude oceans.
The findings support the view that the Holocene Thermal Maximum, the Medieval Warm Period, and the Little Ice Age were global events, and they provide a long-term perspective for evaluating the role of ocean heat content in various warming scenarios for the future.
We show that water masses linked to North Pacific and Antarctic intermediate waters were warmer by 2.1 ± 0.4°C and 1.5 ± 0.4°C, respectively, during the middle Holocene Thermal Maximum than over the past century. Both water masses were ~0.9°C warmer during the Medieval Warm period than during the Little Ice Age and ~0.65° warmer than in recent decades.
• Accepted for publication 30 September 2013
This is a straw man both ways. No one said that it was uniformly warm back then and it is not measured as uniformly warm now. In the modern warm period 2/3 of the temperature stations have gone up and 1/3 have gone down.
On President Obama’s visit to Alaska. Check the tree-stumps in the retreating glaciers. A Limerick.
President Obama is on a mission to Alaska to promote draconian measures to combat Climate Change. What he doesn’t know is that Alaskans see evidence of the Ice Age everywhere, and that warm and cold periods has been with Alaska since time began. He can begin studying the tree-stumps that pop up out of melting glaciers and ask himself – why?
Well, he won’t. A quote from Obama’s speech in Alaska: “If we do nothing, Alaskan temperatures are projected to rise between six and twelve degrees by the end of the century ”
On the other hand, if we do implement his draconian measures, we might lessen the temperature rise by about 0.05 degrees. *
Old tree-stumps in glaciers that shrink.
It once was much warmer – you think.
We can learn from the past
warm and cold will not last.
You cannot get this? – Seek a shrink.
Background:An ancient forest which is thought to have been hidden for at least 1,000 years has been discovered beneath a melting glacier. The trees are between 1000 and 2800 years old.
Logs and stumps can be seen underneath the thawing 37 square mile Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska, with some of the trees still bearing roots and bark.
Remnants of the forest have been protruding from the river of ice, which flows into a lake near the city of Juneau for around five decades.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2451640/Mendenhall-Glacier-melting-reveals-ancient-forest
* And then again, it might get colder all by itself: http://lenbilen.com/2014/07/01/eleven-signs-of-cooling-a-new-little-ice-age-coming/
Lenbilen — Your wit with a point should be repeated with emphasis (I’m afraid people will miss it in is current position above) so…
{Annotated version — ed. JM}
APPLAUSE! #(:))
{Insightful comment otherwise, too!}
Thanks. That makes sense.
#(:))
To YOU, it makes sense… (keep on writing — your creativity brightened my day!)
The Danes would like everyone to know that despite the cooling temperatures in Greenland, the Vikings toughed it out:
(Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/18/claim-danish-researchers-debunk-greenland-climate-myth/ )
To repeat for clarity (the wording of the above post on WUWT confused some readers at the time) the Danish study says :
1. The Vikings came to Greenland when it was relatively warm.
2. The climate cooled significantly after they arrived.
3. The Dane’s ancestors were tough! They did not leave due to cold
Conclusion: The above study supports the MWP Theory.
Wikipedia states that the Little Ice Age occurred between 1300 AD and 1850…ish. Wikipedia also states that the MWP 950 to 1250
Idiot Author of Study (IAS) claims-
“Eric the Red first sailed to Greenland in 985… But the colonies disappeared between about 1360 and 1460”
“that the glaciers had neared or reached their later maximum Little Ice Age positions between 975 and 1275…The strong implication: it was at least as cold when the Vikings arrived as when they left. “If the Vikings traveled to Greenland when it was cool, it’s a stretch to say deteriorating climate drove them out,” said Young.
WELL DUH!!!! It was just STARTING to warm up when they arrived (thus glaciers were still at their maximums along with all their moraine debris) and as it warmed, they thrived for 300+ years FARMING and raising cattle, which is impossible to do unless you can grow stuff and feed cattle (all this taking place during a period we call the MWP..when the glaciers most likely shrank back some) and then it started to get cold again…less crops=less cows, less everything…and glaciers advanced again to the SAME FREAKING places as they had been before.
It’s the exact same “stretch” to claim that deteriorating climate drove them out, as it is to say deteriorating climate DID NOT drive them out. How do these people have jobs?
Those melting, retreating glaciers would also provide plentiful fresh water in a warming climate.
The study’s data is sound. It how they made interpretations and conclusions that are BS.
“The concept is Eurocentric”
Yeah sure. below is an excerpt from the following link.
They pilgrims landed in 1620, hmm now when was that,, OH yes the little ice age.
The colony nearly died off during the first year. It was only saved by the arrival of a second ship the Swiftsure.
And they were pretty well prepared. Or so they thought.
“The first winter of Plymouth Colony was rough and many of the colonists died of scurvy and terrible conditions on-board the ship. The Mayflower sailed with 102 emigrants and of the 102, only 57 survived. Close to fifty percent of the original colonists died the first year. By the time of the harvest only 53 of the original 102 still survived. Of the 18 women, 14 died before the first Thanksgiving, leaving only 4 adult women.”
http://thehistoryjunkie.com/plymouth-colony-facts/
If it was just as cold for the vikings I don’t think it would have been possible for their colony to thrive.
By the way anyone Know what the breed of cattle the viking had was. Were they native or imported.
Barley again native or import. Does it still flourish,
michael
Oops not Swiftsure that was the one that didn’t go.
Hanging head in shame….
michael
Dear Michael,
Your information was no less helpful for that small error. Lift that chin, young man — there is no shame in making a mistake, just in refusing to learn from one.
WEAR that sweater I sent you!
Love from your Mom
(Well! That is what she WOULD have written!)
Ah Janice, Its local history for me. I grow up in Conn. and have been to Plymouth many times. Took my older there when he was young. Now semi retired I find names sometimes blend together, to much to remember.
Still there are to many places I have not yet seem and even more I wish to re-visit, now with my younger boy in tow..
michael
arrrhg not yet seen…. must learn to spell,,,
Michael Mann — The Hockey Stick
There was a crooked Mann
Who played a crooked trick
And had a crooked plan
To make a crooked stick
By using crooked math
That favored crooked lines
Lysenko’s crooked path
Led through the crooked pines
And all his crooked friends
Applaud what crooked seems
But all that crooked ends
Derives from crooked means
Eugene WR Gallun
An oldie but a goodie
You’re my hero Eugene.
Eric the Red, he traveled afar, establishing colonies bold,
But one summer day, the winds changed they say, and they all left because it got COLD.
And more
Fine rhyme with devastatingly accurate facts, to boot.
Eugene WR Gallun
An oldie but a goodie
😉
(Actually, I have no idea how old you are — your writing could be that of anyone from their 20’s up.)
Janice,
Eugene is referring to the fact that he has posted it before. I agree. It’s an oldie but goodie.
H.R. … thank you. I realized that. But, thank you for making sure I knew. I was trying to make a joke. Failed. Obviously. Yes, a goodie, indeed (both).
Janice Moore
I wrote that poem several years ago when the hockey stick was still a “new lie”. That’s what I meant by “an oldie”. I have put it up before on WUWT. I am currently 67 moving forward to 68 in Jan. The poem is a “goodie” but “goodie” is not a part of a poet’s job description.
Eugene WR Gallun
Hi, Mr. Gallun,
Yes, I realized that. Thanks for telling me. And I still think that BOTH you and it are “goodies.”
Your WUWT ally for truth (and humor),
Janice
Insects have a tale to tell too. From https://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/voyage/subset/greenland/environment.html
See also http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/
So the Vikings were stupid enough to plant crops in the snow…. Hmmmmmm……
… and lucky enough for them to grow!
Absolutely!
So, then the obverse must be true today and it’s actually very cold all over the world EXCEPT in the Arctic … so there is NO global warming, just regional warming.
Thanks Gifford. I sort of suspected that. 😉
Surprised? These mendacious twits at NASA most recently erased the nearly two-decades long pause.
It sounds like agenda driven science. Look until you find what you want.
These people are ignorant. Read about the Dorset people, who were there when the Vikings showed up, not the Inuit.
Read about all the other Northern settlements in the Scandinavian world that retreated South after the MWP ended.
Gawd. Ignorant. Stupid. Dishonest.
BTW, anybody who declares victory in a scientific debate, and declares the debate is over, is really not searching for truth. They are engaged in a polemic, not a scientific debate.
Think about evolution. We still don’t understand it. We can’t model it. We can’t predict its course. It is hard to even explain, although we know it has happened. We deny it when convenient. It’s like climate change. Cuvier was champion of special creation and Lamarck a champion of evolution. Both were right on the basic observation: New species did appear over time, but, since DNA was unknown, each man hatched a theory that didn’t involve DNA. Can’t blame them, but, a better scientist would have said we just don’t understand how new species come into being. We need a better understanding of the biology of living things. If they had just said: Parents pass on their traits to their offspring. We have to discover that mechanism before we can begin to understand evolution. But, in the feisty world of science, admitting ignorance is not going to help your career.
So, because our scientists are ignorant, but will not admit it, we are making the same old mistakes.
Exactly right.
And so long as all models diverge significantly from real world observations the theory of catastrophic man made climate change is falsified.
Anthony: your intro reads: the “must make the blade of the hockey stick flat” department. But this isn’t about the blade, it’s about the shaft of the hockey stick.
Are you saying they are trying to give us the shaft?
There are a lot of records and data covering the past 100 years which could easily be interpreted as showing patchy not global warming.
Yet the team’s inventive interpretation of far less data is casting the MWP as patchy?
If the team were to honestly and objectively apply the same standard to both periods would they not come to the conclusion there is far more stuff indicating the current period is patchy?
This is a point that I have long made.
First Climate is regional not global, and second change and the consequences of change occur and are felt predominantly on a regional basis.
For example, the Us has (which is about 6% of the area) has cooled since the highs of the late 1950s/early 1940s.
There has been all but no warming in equatorial/tropical regions since the satellite started taking measurements.
There has been no warming in the bulk of Antarctic, not only in the satellite data, but also radiosonde balloon measurements.
This is what RSS shows for regional variation.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/MSU%20RSS%20TropicsAndExtratropicsMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
A couple of typos.
Couldn’t agree more. My comment along the same lines was to be:
“the idea of a consistently warm Medieval period is certainly an oversimplification and of little utility.”
Pretty much like the modern warm period. Pretty much like any period based on global temperature.
Anyone who thinks the MWP in Greenland was totally toasty is dreaming. The Vikings were there nearly half a millennium. There were undoubtedly half century periods of glacial advance (when the enthalpy went elsewhere on the planet). Vikings could handle themselves. They could take a lick. If those folks bailed after 500 years, no modern Carbon moonie would have survived the first week.
I’m confused. Can’t those whose work resulted in the earlier consensus simply declare the science settled. This would obviate these interminable revisions and the need for expensive studies.
Maybe it’s what I beleive is up for debate and what you beleive is the gospel truth.
Not inclined to eat that dog food.
So, they have a new toy; It gives evidence that is contrary to previous oxygen isotope analysis in both ice cores and human teeth.
Did they in any discount the previous evidence, or did they just say, “our new evidence indicates what we want it to, so all previous evidence shall be ignored (it doesn’t fit the current “settled science” dictum.
They appear to have simply ignored it. Pretty big elephant peeking over their shoulder, heh. Guess they think it’s just a big, gray, rock.
So it was already cold when the Vikings arrived? And how did they bury their dead, by chipping through the permafrost?
Lol, Art B! Didn’t you get the memo? The permafrost arrived, suddenly, in the middle of the night, on December 9th, 1947. Then, …. uh…….. around 1957, human CO2 emissions took off! Aaaand………. and it slowly began to melt……… because of human CO2 emissions……. until …. it… CAME BACK AGAIN OUT OF THE DEEP OCEAN (or from outer space)….. so, it’s cold there now….. .
So, that’s how they were able to bury their dead.
“Thus, popular authors and some scientists have fixed on the idea that nice weather drew the settlers to Greenland, and bad weather froze and starved them. But there are no early historical climate records from Greenland.”
Nice straw man argument. Because we can show ONE glacier was not in retreat, Viking always had it cold in Greenland hence MWP did not exist. Meanwhile in China, in the Austral Hemisphere…
The lack of common sense put into these attempts to do away with the MWP is very telling. Desperation and fear.
And a lovely sight it is.
The desperate tactic of a rearguard in retreat.
“Wars are not won by evacuations.” Sir Winston Churchill
CO2 UP. WARMING STOPPED.
Bwah, ha, ha, ha, haaaaa!
Gentlemen, to successfully raise livestock you have to feed them, do you not? And what, pray tell, do you feed the livestock? You grow crops and cut hay gentlemen. I put it to you that a growing season of sufficient length is necessary. Is that not true gentlemen?
Bloody wankers.
Rewrite history, revise data, and you can support anything, prove whatever you want.
I expect the IPCC to take on the name “Ministry of Truth”, and the UN to become the “Ministry of Plenty”.
This will be double plus ungood.
Before its sent to the forgettery
Its thought that the MWP beginning in 900AD had led to the destruction of the Dorset culture from N. America with the people being replaced by Inuits.
“The Tunit were strong people, but timid and easily
put to flight. Nothing is told of their lust to kill.”
They had disappeared from Greenland around 200. The guess is that they adopted a lifestyle when the world got colder that depended on hunting on ice and they couldn’t compete with Indians coming north to Baffin Island and New Foundland, and the maritime culture of Inuits from the west when the world warmed again.
http://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/archeo/paleoesq/pec01eng.shtml
How big must have the climate change have been for such big change in culture for paleolithic people?
Intriguing. Big climate change likely needed for such an upheaval, indeed. Thanks for sharing. (just so you know SOMEONE read your comment — hard to tell on WUWT, sometimes, huh?)
I mean (sorry mod) someone besides a moderat0r.
#(:))
Thanks for the reply, Janice. I like to pretend that it doesn’t matter but it is nice when someone agrees with you.
So the same people who believe in climate change today refuse to accept the evidence that the climate changed in the past. Do I have that right?
Gifford Miller, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Colorado,
Astrid Ogilvie, a climate historian currently based at Iceland’s Akureyri University,
Wow, paleoclimatologist & climate historian …… the cool stuff you can find at the bottom of a “Crackerjack Box”
michael
Interesting paper out in Science this week suggests differently.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/12/02/science.aac9937
Tropical Pacific Ocean dynamics during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) and Little Ice Age (LIA) are poorly characterized due to lack of evidence from the eastern equatorial Pacific. We reconstructed sea surface temperature, El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) activity, and the tropical Pacific zonal gradient for the past millennium from Galápagos ocean sediments. We document a “Mid-Millennium Shift” (MMS) in ocean-atmosphere circulation ~1500-1650 CE, from a state with strong zonal gradient and dampened ENSO to one with weak gradient and amplified ENSO. The MMS coincided with deepest LIA cooling and was likely caused by southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Peak MCA (900-1150 CE) was a warm period in the eastern Pacific, contradicting the paradigm of a persistent La Niña pattern.
See also http://phys.org/news/2015-12-el-nino-occurrences-medieval-climate.html as Science paper behind paywall.
I see where they mention that a cooling started around 1160. That made me look to see what the JG/u 2K graph shows, and sure enough it can be clearly seen that there is a precipitous drop around 1130 AD that lasts up to 1160+ AD, certainly a grand minimum. Then after warming back up it stays above average warm, except for a swift plummet at 1200 AD, until around 1230 AD when the cold comes back and stays. There are a few short streaks of warmth after 1230 AD, but otherwise temps are consistently to the cool side…http://images.sciencedaily.com/2012/07/120709092606_1_900x600.jpg
“…the idea of a consistently warm Medieval period is certainly an oversimplification and of little utility.”
I’ve never had a problem with that. Just as I’ve always thought the idea of a consistently warm MODERN period is certainly an oversimplification and of little utility.
But there is a modern warming. And there was a medieval warming. And if you doubt the Roman Warming, try paddling a boat into ancient ports like Ostia and Ephesus. (Just a matter of siltation? What’s a bit of silt against all this swamping sea level rise we’re supposed to be copping?)
This paper self-destructs, it contradicts itself.
“Climate change is not necessarily globally uniform but can be different in different regions.”
OK, so that means (logically) that a single study looking only at boulders in Greenland tells us little or nothing about the existence or otherwise of a global medieval warm period (MWP).
For that you can go to the website CO2 Science which lists about a thousand peer reviewed publications on palaeoclimate reconstruction which do, collectively, clearly show what the MWP was a real phenomenon on every continent of the world.
http://www.co2science.org/
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Yes, they are trying to use glacial evidence against the MWP & LIA as global because that evidence is practically good enough alone to establish them. However, glaciers are very variable, mostly due to precipitation, and a few may be longer in warmer periods. They are just exceptions.
‘On a larger scale, the study adds to building evidence that the so-called Medieval Warm Period, when Europe enjoyed exceptionally clement weather, did not necessarily extend to other parts of the world … “It’s becoming clearer that the Medieval Warm Period was patchy, not global,” said lead author Nicolás Young …’.
==================
Even if that were true (which it isn’t) ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’.
‘Gifford Miller, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Colorado, called the paper “a coup de grace on the Medieval Warm Period” …”.
===================
Every branch of science has its subbranches or specialties, chemistry has environmental, inorganic, nuclear, organic etc., physics has applied, experimental, theoretical, computational and so on.
So there is this speciality in climate change™ science called ‘getting rid of the medieval warm period’ climate science.
MWP world wide evidence…..
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/Glacial.pdf
from that den of deniers Cambridge University ,UK
Correcting isn’t presenting facts….. trying to correct past history is the same as throwing dust in the face of people so they can’t see what’s there…..
Where have all the MONEY gone politicians, so called experts and journalists visiting COP21 in Paris?
Reality check:
Short introduction
Greenland was a green land when the first settlers arrived, not in 1000 AD but around 980. The farms that grow on Greenland from Disco Bay (north of Western Settlement) mostly along the coast or close to fjords were compared with farms on Iceland and Norway/Sweden same time large farms.
A quick information re. farms on Greenland during Viking Age up to 1435.
Short info about farms in Western and Eastern Settlements.
While the main hall in the Eastern Settlements is around 56 m² the same type of hall in Western Settlement had a mean value of 28 m²,
as for the total mean of Byres: Eastern Settlements 87 m² and 27 m² in the Western Settlements,
Barns in Eastern Settlement had a total mean 85 m² and in Western Settlements the Barns had a total mean of 36 m²
Storeage mean also was lower in west as well.
Lets look at two of the farms in the west Greenland Settlements: Sandnes(W51) Hall 72 m², Byre 84 m² and Barn 155 m²; and Anavik(W7) Hall ?, Byre 50 m², Barn 54 m² and Storage 38 m². [McGovern, Table 6 Floor-area of selected structures of farms of the Eastern and Western Settlements, page 213.]
The barn and other outbuildings were so large that most non royal farms in Scandinavia during the Viking – Early Middle Ages should have been jealous of the surfaces and the number of stalls in the barn.Garden under Sandet a Greenland farm rising from 670 years permafrost
Gifford Miller, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Colorado, called the Young paper “a coup de grace on the Medieval Warm Period.” That’s rather overstating it a bit.
The Danes think “climate change” did for the Greenland settlements…..
“We cannot attribute the end of the Norse civilisation to a single factor, but there is enough evidence to suggest that climate change played a major role in determining its collapse,” concluded Ribeiro. “Harsh climate conditions made farming and cattle production increasingly difficult and the extensive sea-ice prevented navigation and trading with Europe.”
[http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/PressRelease/pressReleaseId-98837.html]
It seems the Norse Greenlanders could have survived but got tired of eating seal rather than beef [and they weren’t great farmers]……so the girls left and the boys followed [they are always slower to get the drift]
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/archaeologists-uncover-clues-to-why-vikings-abandoned-greenland-a-876626.html
And there is plenty of evidence the MWP was not just a local phenomenon but was world wide
e.g. Groves and Switsur of Cambridge University..
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/Glacial.pdf
and Zinli Lu of Syracuse University..
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X12000659
Bubonic plague did not hit Iceland until 1402, but when it did, it killed half the population. This would have freed up land there for immigrants from Greenland.
The Black Death struck again in 1494, once more killing half of Icelanders.
Some Greenlanders might also have gone all the way back to Norway, devastated from 1349-50. Smaller outbreaks of plague and other infectious diseases appeared there approximately every decade during a 300-year period.
Reblogged this on Norah4you's Weblog and commented:
A quick information re. farms on Greenland during Viking Age up to 1435.
Short info about farms in Western and Eastern Settlements.
While the main hall in the Eastern Settlements is around 56 m² the same type of hall in Western Settlement had a mean value of 28 m²,
as for the total mean of Byres: Eastern Settlements 87 m² and 27 m² in the Western Settlements,
Barns in Eastern Settlement had a total mean 85 m² and in Western Settlements the Barns had a total mean of 36 m²
Storeage mean also was lower in west as well.
Lets look at two of the farms in the west Greenland Settlements: Sandnes(W51) Hall 72 m², Byre 84 m² and Barn 155 m²; and Anavik(W7) Hall ?, Byre 50 m², Barn 54 m² and Storage 38 m². [McGovern, Table 6 Floor-area of selected structures of farms of the Eastern and Western Settlements, page 213.]
The barn and other outbuildings were so large that most non royal farms in Scandinavia during the Viking – Early Middle Ages should have been jealous of the surfaces and the number of stalls in the barn.
The Greenlanders exported butter (salted in the jar) and hard cheese (!) to Europe especially from 1100 up to 1435. There still exist documents showing these. Origins!
Up to late 1200’s the Greenlanders lived a good life. Then the King of Norway called for them to pay tax not only tithes to Church. That together with colder weather after a series large eruptions of vulcano in Greenland from 1280 up to 1341 made a drastic change in wealth and lifestyle. Up to 1410 they still had regular contacts with Europe – the last known expedition that returned with information that came to Papal Church knowledge was as late as 1521(!) Garden under Sandet – a Greenland farm rising from 670 years permafrost
An article of interest from Spiegel Online International:
Abandoned Colony in Greenland: Archaeologists Find Clues to Viking Mystery
Nora
Thank you for posting. Is this statement correct?
Did you mean a volcano in Iceland perhaps?
Not the first large eruption but eruptions on or around Iceland helped colling down. The first eruption was on the eastern side of Greenland where a large island was blown up same as St. Helena. The islands remains today is a good fishing place. You may find it on maps almost like Dogger bank but remains after a volcano blow up.
the remains is located in sea outside a place where a ship in mid 1000’s had to land due to boat falling apart (a King’s son and several priests were on board and 7 of them survived and made it to land but when ships looking for them the year afterwards no one lived graves and an annal was found)
Thanks Norah,
Can you supply more details? e.g. the traditional name of the fishing grounds.
I cannot locate any online records of a volcanic eruption in historic times on the Greenland continental shelf near Cape Farewell.
From the New York Times, May 8, 2001, By James Brooke
Story of Viking Colonies’ Icy ‘Pompeii’ Unfolds From Ancient Greenland Farm
Kulusuk Lake is located on Kulusuk Island off the east coast of Greenland about the same latitude as northern Iceland. The lake was the subject of a recent paper with a graph of glacier advance and retreat. I used this graph to explore how the warming and cooling might correspond with warming and cooling in Europe and finally what the impact might have been on the Greenland colony.
https://geoscienceenvironment.wordpress.com/2015/12/05/glacier-response-to-north-atlantic-climate-variability-during-the-holocene/
As for the Greenland settlements about 1000 AD, it seems that Greenland may indeed have recovered from very severe climate conditions that had prevailed 200 years before. My graph based on accumulating the data shows that the greatest extent of the glacier was probably 200 years before settlement began.
By 1000 AD the climate may have appeared suitable for settlement. The settlers could not have known that climate would again deteriorate for 400 years, that the glaciers would again advance and that the colony would fail.
The Medieval Warm Period may not have been nearly as warm as the Roman Warm Period, which in turn may not have been as warm as the Minoan Warm Period. Possibly the Medieval Warm Period did not quite match the modern warm period. However, the evidence from the Kulusuk Glacier reveals substantial glacier retreat culminating around 1000 AD, the expected date of the Medieval Warm Period.
The evidence from the Kulusuk Glacier suggests that the modern warm period may be similar to some of the short, quick blips of the past that were followed by cold periods. See the graph showing cold periods beginning at 3000 PB and 2000 BP after short quick glacier retreats caused by warming.
https://geoscienceenvironment.wordpress.com/2015/12/05/glacier-response-to-north-atlantic-climate-variability-during-the-holocene/
Glacier response to North Atlantic climate variability during the Holocene. N. L. Balascio, W. J. D’Andrea and R. S. Bradley, Clim. Past Discuss., 11, 2009-2036, 2015
http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/11/2009/2015/cpd-11-2009-2015.html
If the temperature goes up regionally this will still increase average global temperatures. Basic grade school math.
In Europe 1 midi Marielle Fournier – 09/08/12, the discussion about climate begins at 33:40.
It is an exchange between
Michel Petit, climatologist, member of the French Academy of Sciences
Benoît Rittaud, mathematician, author of Le Mythe climatique and La peur exponentielle
Laurent Cabrol, weatherman
At 42:16
Translation:
Who is Michel Petit?
http://www.academie-sciences.fr/pdf/membre/PetitM_bio0611.pdf
One aspect of the failed Greenland settlements was lack of access due to increased sea ice. The Norse settlers relied on Norway for items such as iron goods for agriculture and boatbuilding.
“It’s becoming clearer that the Medieval Warm Period was patchy, not global.”
Jeez – what are these people taking?
All climate trends are patchy. Modern warming is patchy. Where is the warming at the south pole?
During the MWP, Greenland’s climate supported agriculture during the vast majority of years. They would have had the occasional bad year. Most farmers can survive one failed crop. Ten failed crops in a row would certainly put the farmers off the land.
The MWP in Greenland was not patchy. It was reliable.
richard verney says
“This is a point that I have long made.
First Climate is regional not global, and second change and the consequences of change occur and are felt predominantly on a regional basis.”
Yes that is true but there is a greater truth – that climate is zonal, as amply demonstrated by the Koppen-Geiger land classification that dates back to 1884 and demonstrates that climate change is best displayed in the movement of these zones as reflected in the movement of native plant species that respond to changes in precipitation and land temperature – specifically soil temperature over the growing season as measured by the modern heat unit system. Climate changes is best measured by movement of the boundaries of the Koppen zones of which the historical cropping data from Viking Greenland, Roman Britain etc are good examples with the changes in climate in the Sachel a good modern example.
Such changes largely reflect a redistribution of the heat arising from solar energy by changes in ocean and atmospheric oscillations (with changes in the boundaries of the Hadley, Tyrell and Polar cells) mainly induced by a combination of changes in solar activity combined with lunar Saros cycles. Thus we do not expect the Earth to show uniform cooling or warming, and indeed that is the case with the well establish NH – SH yoyo and is reflected in the 100 plus papers showing the Medieval Warm Period was global but not necessarily contiguous in all areas. Details of these papers are available at the Idso site: http://www.co2science.org/subject/g/globalmwp.php
On the question of Hoeth and growing barley in Greenland this has been reported by the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/node/7852916
Whilst this reflects increased temperatures in Greenland combined with more modern varieties and agronomic expertise it also reflects the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide that improves performance as shown in the following videos on the “Greening of the Earth” that date from 1992, updated in 1998.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27XbnyWC5WM&feature=youtu.be
There is a good argument from the satellite data that much of the increased atmospheric CO2 has come from the oceans as they have warmed. The converse is also true and as the oceans cooled at the end of the Medieval warm Period one can speculate that the resulting lower level in Greenland – where much of the re-absorption into the colder ocean would have taken place – would have contributed to a lowering of barley yields making agriculture at that time untenable, leading to emigration.
The proponents of the current “CO2 witchhunt” in Paris will doubtless claim that these videos are denier propaganda as they were funded by the US coal industry. However, the research, that is well documented and peer reviewed, took place at the University of Florida, at US Department of Agriculture Research Stations, and other places abroad including Germany. The conclusions of these videos has been amply supported by the data from the recent Ibuki, OCO and other satellite studies showing that since satellites began flying in the early 1980’s the Earth has had an approximate 14% increase in biomass. Given the importance of CO2 to the continuing welfare of humans via the essential supply of food it is fortunate that there are some countries that are going rt ensure adequate future supplies, not least China, India, South Africa and others that are building a large number of coal fired power stations;
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/12/planetary-heroes-meet-in-paris-to-save-earth-from-bad-weather/
The only really interesting comment in this for me at least is that from Astrid Ogilvie, a climate historian currently based at Iceland’s Akureyri University, who said the study “shows that the climate is clearly more complicated and variable than people earlier assumed.”
Amen to that!
Except they use it as an excuse. As in “we don’t really know, but trust us! We’re scientists!”
1300 CE was also about when farming became impossible due to lack of rainfall thus causing the abandonment of the cliff dwelling villages in the quaint tourist destination of Mesa Verde in the US southwest. Coincidence?
The “science” in this study sure is patchy.
Here’s another study that concludes:
” This ikaite record qualitatively supports that both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age extended to the Antarctic Peninsula.”
An ikaite record of late Holocene climate at the Antarctic Peninsula
Zunli Lua, , , Rosalind E.M. Rickabyb, Hilary Kennedyc, Paul Kennedyc, Richard D. Pancostd, Samuel Shawe, Alistair Lennief, Julia Wellnerg, John B. Andersonh
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X12000659
These drones are simply using the directive from “1984”; “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past”. Straight out of the Warmunist playbook.
There is insurmountable evidence from every part of the world that the MWP was global and warmer than now, to include historical as well as proxy physical data.
That the reams of evidence to this effect continues to be ignored is yet another sign of how far the rot and corruption of science has spread/
Clearly the brief warming period experienced by the Norse in Greenland was brought about by the flatulance of their herds. As they switched from cows to goats and pigs due to the ease of raising those animals, the effect was diminished, cooling the region and ultimately causing the collapse of the Norse colonies there.
Can I get my grant now? Department Chair, even?
“I do not like the simplistic argument that the Greenland people went there when it was warm, and then ‘it got cold and they died’,” Astrid Ogilvie
It’s certainly true that it’s non-simplistic to say that they went there when it was too cold to grow food or raise livestock and then “died” while it was still too cold, after hundreds of years.
Sometimes the truth is simple, if not indeed simplistic.
Many such instances exist throughout human history of real climate change populating, then depopulating regions.
Basing a study on cosmogenic nuclide dating (Beryllium 10 in this instance) of rock samples is akin to putting your life savings on zero in Roulette.
Read about it here.
http://quaternary-science.publiss.net/system/articles/pdfas/782/original_vol57_no1-2_a07.pdf?1284108221
These guys are going to have a much tougher job with the task of erasing the Chinese MWP:
http://www.co2science.org/subject/m/summaries/mwpchina.php
This paper obviously was written to push the cult of CAGW’s agenda as opposed to solve a scientific problem.
Holistic analysis with a formal written complete review of all possible hypotheses and all of the data is used if the objective is to solve a problem as opposed to write papers forever or in this case to push the cult of CAGW’s agenda. Industrial analysis such as plane crash analysis uses holistic formal analysis as the public would not accept occasional crashes of planes due to uncorrected technical and pilot problems.
The methodology used by pure science is fractional analysis where the problem is divided into infinitesimal parts and each fractional part is examined ignoring other observations and analysis. Fractional analysis enables paradoxes and anomalies which disprove the base theory to be ignored and enables, in fact forces, the analysis to go on forever as the problem with never be solved, as there is fundamental error in the base theory which is never corrected. Paradoxes and anomalies that occur due to base errors in the theory are hand waved away with Zombie theories such as Milankovitch theory that changes to summer insolation at 65N somehow causes the glacial/interglacial cycle and cyclic abrupt climate change or is part of the ‘solution’.
In the case of this climate wars paper, the specialists are aware small regions of a glacial can advance when there is warming if there is a significant increase in snowfall in the region in question. This does not mean there was no Medieval warming period.
Support for the fact that there was a Medieval warming period is the fact there are cycles of warming and cooling the paleo record, called Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles or Bond cycles and that this cyclic warming and cooling is evident in both hemispheres.
Contrary to folk legend the earth’s climate does not cyclically jump or tip from one ‘state’ to another. Just as rocks do not jump up hill, there is a physical reason why the earth cyclically warms and cools (sometimes abruptly cools). The physical reason is changes to the solar cycle.
P.S. The sun can cause the cyclic warming and cooling, as the sun is significantly different than the standard model. As noted the analysis will go on forever if there are fundamental errors in the base theories. There are hundreds of astronomical paradoxes and anomalies in peer reviewed papers some of which have been known for more than two decade (number of paradoxes and anomalies increases with time with better observations) that support the assertion that the sun and stars are significantly different than the standard model which explains how the universe can be/ is eternal rather than started 13.7 billion years ago in a big bang.
Greenland Ice Sheet Temperatures Last 100,000 years
http://www.hidropolitikakademi.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/4.gif
It is interesting that the Dansgaard/Oescheger events which have characteristic period of 1470 years have continued throughout the Holocene interglacial period.
As there are cosmogenic isotope changes that are concurrent with all of the Dansgaard/Oescheger events (also referred to a Bond events named after Gerald Bond who tracked 23 of the cycles) and the Heinrich events it is obvious a specific solar cycle change is causing what is observed.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/05/is-the-current-global-warming-a-natural-cycle/
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/rahmstorf_grl_2003.pdf
In short the alarmists are simultaneously attempting to erase the Medieval WP while at the same time accusing skeptics of trying to erase the Modern WP.
—
Glacier maxima in Baffin Bay during the Medieval Warm Period
coeval with Norse settlement
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/11/e1500806
The paper looks like a political piece of writing to me.
However among the bluster, is a lot of what ifs and maybes and that should be noted. Also for warmist propaganda, a lot of own goals. In admitted to the MWP in Europe and the Little Ice Age which they don’t seem to claim as local. And they don’t lay a scratch on other warm periods like the Holocene.
This paper throws doubt on using Moraines as a climate proxy:
—
The effects of interannual climate variability on the moraine record
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/2013/12/05/G34791.1.abstract
It seems strange to me how the Baffin piece can claim Europe to be local but Baffin not?
Why is Baffin not the anomaly? The paper doesn’t go into in depth research to around
the world to back up their claim. Even so they are left to explain away their cold Baffin
via the term ‘dipole’? And there seems to be a lot about soil ages but if the making of their
expansion is in doubt, this seems bogus and useless.
It seems that when the sea ice expands out in the South Pole, warmists call it warming.
But when it’s Moraines, it’s the cold.
All I can say is two can play that “game” – today’s “global” warming isn’t “global”. Some places have growing glaciers. Some places have almost started their own glaciers again (Boston still had a snow pile in July and last year there was a place in Canada that did). Let’s do away with that fictitious “global temperature” and see if there are any local areas that are getting colder. Global warming is an oxymoron.
“Also some of these sites were ” on neighboring Baffin Island, which the Norse may also have occupied”. So they are using sites where apparently there is NO evidence that the Norse actually inhabited, just “may have”.”
That’s about it. I haven’t done much extensive reading on the subject for 20 years since I studied the subject, but “occupied” doesn’t mean what I think they think it means…
They’ve found some Norse yarn, maybe a small building. The Norse probably hunted there, may have traded, may have explored.
But there are none, nada, zero, zip, archaeologists or historians who will say the Norse “occupied” Baffin Island like they colonized Greenland.
This is sounding more and more like this:
https://youtu.be/mjEcj8KpuJw
Hallmark of a pseudoscience: rewriting history.
‘Rewriting’ is such a harsh judgemental terror of a word. Adjusting is better.
Much like the past temperature record, history requires adjusting.
Did I read a link here at WUWT about the final days of the Greenland Settlement that indicated some may have died without burial suggesting that the remaining Greenlanders may have died under duress?
Is “adjusting” the new “rewriting”, I wonder.
So where would you put your cattle ranch today on Greenland? Grow your grain, cut your hay for a long winter. Why are farmsteads long under the ice only emerging in recent times? If a period in Greenland warmer than today’s is hard to imagine, go to the North coast of GL and see the wave sorted beaches and the driftwood. This “coast” has been icebound for thousands of years, but clearly it once had waves breaking on them and driftwood from the north being dropped there. I’m so tired of the lack of logic and the ignoring of such data. We are dipping slowly in oscillations toward a certain ice age, hopefully far enough away that the human race might do something about it. Even if one is political, they shouldn’t find illogical thinking acceptable.
Maybe someone else could explain why this report seems to base it’s conclusion the medieval warm period was not global in nature because use of a new dating technique reveals an increased likelihood a few rocks in Greenland may have been covered in something that blocked sunlight from striking them and forming a Beryllium isotope the PI expected to find? There’s nothing else that might have done this? It’s not possible for some ice to have remained in that spot during an otherwise warm period? This single observation is all that’s necessary?
All prior evidence to the contrary aside, this new finding turns the medieval warm period on it’s ear and puts the understanding it was a global phenomenon to it’s heels?
It’s very difficult to accept when the apparent preponderance of evidence says otherwise, but it’s not all that difficult for me personally. I’ve always thought “paleo” climatology was mostly a joke anyway.
Sediment cores of the Western Baltic sea show a planktonic diatom that thrives in the warmer Atlantic was also prevalent in the Western Baltic. However, this diatom no longer survives in the present Baltic Sea as it is now too cold. The sediment cores show that it disappeared around the same time the “medieval warm period” ended.
It’s pretty hard rejecting that sort of evidence of an earlier warmer climate. Sediment cores don’t lie.
If you read Ian Plimer’s book ‘Heaven and Earth’, it has all the details of that of that research in the footnotes and references.
This Video Clip starting at 1h2min6sec captures what is happening. This documentary is highly prophetic.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=1h2m6s
A nice documentation of the “local” MWP and LIA in the Gulf of Mexico:
http://www.marine.usf.edu/PDFs-and-DOCs/publications/J.Ritchie-Holivar2006.pdf
I posted it on Realclimate once and Gavin went ape.
“It’s becoming clearer that the Medieval Warm Period was patchy, not global,”
Doesn’t this contradict the rationalization for homogenization?
To me this is half a dozen of one or 6 of another. Either temperatures were higher worldwide and since CO2 didn’t vary, what caused that? OR, temperatures were higher in this region (spotty) as this article claims in which case you have to explain how that is possible for hundreds of years for temperatures to be different in a specific region or set of regions. To me, either way Climate Scientists lose because they have no explanation for either. If it is global it clearly says there is some other probably cyclic phenomenon (sun, longer ocean cycle, mantle release…) that they don’t know about or deny. If it is not global they have to show how this is physically possible. What kind of phenomenon could keep a particular region warmer over hundreds of years? Continuous volcanoes? Some kind of biological manifestation? Sudden changes in ocean currents that then persists and only changes hundreds of years later. To me the former problem is a lot easier to understand and explain than the latter. I have asked a climate modeler how the latter could happen since he said the MWP was regional. He hadn’t really thought about it. That shows really lazy thinking. They are more willing to accept an interpretation that is much harder to explain and they don’t spend any time trying to understand instead of letting their cherished CO2 is king idea be tarnished. The fact is if they insist it is regional it only points out they have no explanation for the latter problem. Also, the modeler said that during the MWP temperatures were colder at the south pole and this was different than today. However, in fact the current warming has spotty characteristics like he described the MWP having in which some places like the south pole are indeed colder and gaining ice mass not losing ice.
Paper of limited value, since the authors did not sample moraines blindly. They selected moraines deliberately. “Young and his colleagues were able to find traces of a few moraines–heaps of debris left at glaciers’ ends–that, by their layout, they could tell predated the Little Ice Age advances.” Many other sources of evidence show Greenland was once substantially warmer than today.
The authors apparently ignore other evidence of a cooling climate leading to the collapse of the Viking settlements in Greenland.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/archaeologists-uncover-clues-to-why-vikings-abandoned-greenland-a-876626.html
Settlements were abandoned when Greenland cooled.
http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/
It seems the authors also ignore evidence showing the Greenland glaciers were smaller 3000-5000 years ago. And thus, what is the point of their paper? Clearly, Greenland was much warmer in the past. Other evidence supports the widely-held view Greenland was indeed warmer when the Vikings settled there. These warmer periods were caused by natural processes, not anthropogenic CO2.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/22/study-greenland-ice-sheet-was-smaller-3000-5000-years-ago-than-today/
There is worldwide evidence for the MWP.
http://www.livescience.com/39819-ancient-forest-thaws.html
Farming practices on Greenland in past currently difficult, if not impossible today. Although continued warming might bring these lands back to the state they were in the past. We are not there yet.
And…
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/11244-greenland%E2%80%99s-not-so-rapidly-flowing-glaciers
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/26/on-the-vikings-and-greenland/
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/12.jpg
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/vikings_during_mwp.html
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/end_of_vikings_greenland.html