Category Archives: paleoclimatology

Gradually heading to hell in a handbasket just as bad as instant doom

Posted on February 8, 2012 by

From the National Science Foundation: Global Extinction: Gradual Doom as Bad as Abrupt In “The Great Dying” 250 million years ago, the end came slowly The deadliest mass extinction of all took a long time to kill 90 percent of … Continue reading →

Posted in Extinction, paleoclimatology, Science, vulcanism | Tagged , , , , , , , | 78 Comments

Mann: Trees aren’t behaving like I want them to – volcanoes to blame

Posted on February 6, 2012 by

From Penn State Tree rings may underestimate climate response to volcanic eruptions Some climate cooling caused by past volcanic eruptions may not be evident in tree-ring reconstructions of temperature change because large enough temperature drops lead to greatly shortened or … Continue reading →

Posted in paleoclimatology | Tagged , , | 117 Comments

New paper speculates on volcanoes during the Little Ice Age

Posted on January 30, 2012 by

From NCAR/UCAR, they’re still trying to stamp out solar influence as a potential cause of the Little Ice Age. One of the things I wonder about is that during low sunspot activity, does the reduced solar-magnetic influence have any effect … Continue reading →

Posted in paleoclimatology, vulcanism | Tagged , , , , , , , | 287 Comments

Frequency of strong Florida hurricanes decreased in last 600 years

Posted on January 26, 2012 by

The next time some alarmist caterwauls about hurricanes becoming worse and more frequent due to global warming, show them this study. Noting that “the brief observational record is inadequate for characterizing natural variability in hurricane activity occurring on longer than … Continue reading →

Posted in hurricanes, paleoclimatology, weather | 27 Comments

The Message in the Dye 3 Data

Posted on January 24, 2012 by

Guest post by David Archibald The story so far: in this recent post – Ap Index Neutrons and Climate, we had looked at the Dye 3 oxygen isotope-derived temperature record to see how big climate swings have been over the … Continue reading →

Posted in climate data, glaciers, paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , , , | 95 Comments

The behind the scenes bumbling of the hockey stick

Posted on January 16, 2012 by

Mann oh Mann. Tom Nelson continues to wade through the 5000+ Climategate 2 emails. I’ve selected a few he’s highlighted in the vein of behind the scenes discussion of Dr. Michael Mann’s infamous “hockey stick” which claimed we were living … Continue reading →

Posted in Climategate, Michael E. Mann, paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 93 Comments

Mercury fingered in Permian-Triassic extinction

Posted on January 5, 2012 by

Hmmm. This sounds a bit like a sales pitch against “dirty coal” in support of the recent EPA Mercury ruling instead of regular geological research. I question this research claim because they only have evidence that there were spikes of … Continue reading →

Posted in paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 104 Comments

Paging Mike Mann – your dendrochronologist will see you now

Posted on January 3, 2012 by

Tom Nelson has another Climategate 2 email well worth reading Dendrochronologists get spanked by guy with expertise in tree physiology and wood anatomy ClimateGate Email 1738 “However, there are bounds to dendrochronology, as there are to every field of investigation, … Continue reading →

Posted in Michael E. Mann, paleoclimatology, peer review, post-normal science | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 148 Comments

SST’s cooler now than in the Medieval Warming Period

Posted on December 31, 2011 by

From “The Hockey Schtick“, some inconvenient truth that breaks Mann’s already broken hockey stick into even smaller pieces. A new paper finds significant cooling of Atlantic Ocean over past millennium, making the MWP warmer in terms of sea surface temperature … Continue reading →

Posted in paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 52 Comments

In China, there are no hockey sticks

Posted on December 7, 2011 by

Reposted from Jo Nova’s site Chinese 2485 year tree ring study shows shows sun or ocean controls climate, temps will cool til 2068 A blockbuster Chinese study of Tibetan Tree rings by Lui et al 2011 shows, with detail, that … Continue reading →

Posted in paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 264 Comments

Hockey stick falsification – so easy a caveman kid can do it

Posted on December 1, 2011 by

With apologies to the Geico caveman, paleoclimatology isn’t just for grant enabled scientists anymore. Priceless Climategate email 682: Tom Wigley tells Michael Mann that his son did a tree ring science fair project (using trees behind NCAR) that invalidated the … Continue reading →

Posted in Climategate, paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , , | 103 Comments

“hide the decline” – worse than we thought

Posted on November 30, 2011 by

Some background from the original “hide the decline” from Steve McIntyre here Despite relatively little centennial variability, Briffa’s reconstruction had a noticeable decline in the late 20th century, despite warmer temperatures. In these early articles [e.g. Briffa 1998], the decline … Continue reading →

Posted in Climategate, paleoclimatology | 102 Comments

Climategate 2 email – Rob Wilson replicates McIntyre & McKitrick – produces hockey sticks out of noise

Posted on November 27, 2011 by

Reader Crosspatch writes in comments: 4241.txt is where Briffa Rob Wilson apparently believes he recreates what McIntyre is talking about the hockey stick showing up no matter what data you feed into it. Briffa Wilson creates randomly generated time series, … Continue reading →

Posted in Climategate, paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 65 Comments

John L. Daly’s message to Mike Mann and The Team

Posted on November 23, 2011 by

Ric Werme writes in comments: When I realized the Climategate 2009 Emails went back many years, one of the first things that occurred to me was there might be Emails from John Daly. He died before I became involved in … Continue reading →

Posted in Climategate, paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , , | 85 Comments

Carbon, on the uptake

Posted on November 21, 2011 by

From the University of Bristol Carbon cycling was much smaller during last ice age than in today’s climate Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the most important greenhouse gases and the increase of its abundance in the atmosphere by … Continue reading →

Posted in Carbon dioxide, paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 85 Comments

Shock news: trees grow better in a warmer climate with more carbon dioxide

Posted on November 11, 2011 by

The geniuses at Columbia University’s Lamont -Doherty Earth Observatory have discovered Liebigs Law of the Minimum. The tree researcher exclaims: “I was expecting to see trees stressed from the warmer temperatures,”…“What we found was a surprise.” Trees on Tundra’s Border … Continue reading →

Posted in paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , , , | 125 Comments

New study shows temperature in Greenland significantly warmer than present several times in the last 4000 years

Posted on November 10, 2011 by

Kobashi et al 2011 was just published in GRL, and it looks like it will be upsetting the paleoclimate apple cart. The conclusions of Kaufman et al 2009 look to be minimized in comparison to this much more complete study. … Continue reading →

Posted in Arctic, glaciers, paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , , | 80 Comments

Roman Period “megadrought” found in the USA southwest

Posted on November 4, 2011 by

From the University of Arizona, one wonders how such a thing could happen when CO2 was at “safe” levels. They are using bristlecone pines again, which may very well be a better proxy for rainfall than for temperature. At least … Continue reading →

Posted in paleoclimatology | Tagged , , | 194 Comments

Scientific consensus fails again: Start of “Anthropocene” pushed back to Late Pleistocene, scientist vindicated

Posted on November 2, 2011 by

Guest Post by David Middleton From The Seattle Times SEATTLE (AP) – It’s not unusual for an archaeologist to get stuck in the past, but Carl Gustafson may be the only one consumed by events on the Olympic Peninsula in … Continue reading →

Posted in paleoclimatology | Tagged , , | 156 Comments

A short anthology of changing climate

Posted on November 1, 2011 by

Guest post by Tony Brown Context is everything, and nowhere more so than in climate history, where a graphic such as this seems to illustrate an alarming uptick in temperatures that has been blamed on modern man and his profligate … Continue reading →

Posted in climate data, paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 164 Comments

No global climate change in the past 20,000 years?

Posted on October 25, 2011 by

Guest post by Dr. Don J. Easterbrook Dept. of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA In a paper entitled “Current global warming appears anomalous in relation to the climate of the last 20 000 years,” Svante Björck claims that, over … Continue reading →

Posted in paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , | 72 Comments

The Durban ramp-up begins – now the Earth only warms by hemispheres, and not simultaneously – until now

Posted on October 21, 2011 by

From Lund University, a new way to blame modern man.  Look for more nuttiness like this as the Durban climate conference approaches. Read the conclusion of the paper below, which is a long winded treatise of speculation. New study shows … Continue reading →

Posted in Durban Climate Conference, paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , | 48 Comments

New science field: “paleoblameatology”

Posted on October 14, 2011 by

Some days you just have to shake your head and say to yourself that there’s irrational fixation on CO2 that has deep roots in the psyche when we see things like this. The 10:10 video was proof enough, but now … Continue reading →

Posted in paleoclimatology, ridiculae, Science | Tagged , , , , | 126 Comments

BBC: The Little Ice Age was all about solar UV variability… wasn’t an ice age at all

Posted on October 10, 2011 by

Mike Bromley writes in: BBC has the explanation for the European LIA… it wasn’t really an ice age at all.   See this strange quote.

Posted in paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , , | 122 Comments

Evaporation, not outflow, drained ancient Lake Agassiz during the Younger Dryas

Posted on October 5, 2011 by

From the University of Cincinnati: Long-Lost Lake Offers Clues to Climate Change What caused water levels to drop in an immense yet long-vanished lake? Research by a University of Cincinnati geologist suggests that conditions 12,000 years ago encouraged evaporation. Not long … Continue reading →

Posted in paleoclimatology | Tagged , , , | 64 Comments