OK, so my art is a bit tongue in cheek. But it does fit the disaster theme of the topic.
This op-ed piece in the Herald Sun is interesting, because it touches on many of the points covered here on WUWT. This is the first time I’ve seen all these collected in one article in a major newspaper. Andrew Bolt routinely uses material from WUWT, and this is the first time I’ve been able to reciprocate. There are some truly unique points raised by Bolt that are indigenous to Australia that we haven’t discussed here, but they are valid for discussion nonetheless. In cases where we have covered a point on WUWT, I’ve made a footnote link [in brackets] – Anthony
From Andrew Bolt, The Herald Sun
Global Warming Alarmists Out in the Cold
April 29, 2009 12:00am
IT’S snowing in April. Ice is spreading in Antarctica. The Great Barrier Reef is as healthy as ever.
And that’s just the news of the past week. Truly, it never rains but it pours – and all over our global warming alarmists.
Time’s up for this absurd scaremongering. The fears are being contradicted by the facts, and more so by the week.
Doubt it? Then here’s a test.
Name just three clear signs the planet is warming as the alarmists claim it should. Just three. Chances are your “proofs” are in fact on my list of 10 Top Myths about global warming.And if your “proofs” indeed turn out to be false, don’t get angry with me.
Just ask yourself: Why do you still believe that man is heating the planet to hell? What evidence do you have?
So let’s see if facts matter more to you than faith, and observations more than predictions.
MYTH 1
THE WORLD IS WARMING
Wrong. It is true the world did warm between 1975 and 1998, but even Professor David Karoly, one of our leading alarmists, admitted this week “temperatures have dropped” since – “both in surface temperatures and in atmospheric temperatures measured from satellites”. In fact, the fall in temperatures from just 2002 has already wiped out a quarter of the warming our planet experienced last century. (Check data from Britain’s Hadley Centre, NASA’s Aqua satellite and the US National Climatic Data Centre.)
Some experts, such as Karoly, claim this proves nothing and the world will soon start warming again. Others, such as Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University, point out that so many years of cooling already contradict the theory that man’s rapidly increasing gases must drive up temperatures ever faster.
But that’s all theory. The question I’ve asked is: What signs can you actually see of the man-made warming that the alarmists predicted?
[ Ian Plimer, Temperature trends]
MYTH 2
THE POLAR CAPS ARE MELTING
Wrong. The British Antarctic Survey, working with NASA, last week confirmed ice around Antarctica has grown 100,000 sq km each decade for the past 30 years.
Long-term monitoring by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports the same: southern hemisphere ice has been expanding for decades.
As for the Arctic, wrong again.
The Arctic ice cap shrank badly two summers ago after years of steady decline, but has since largely recovered. Satellite data from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre this week shows the Arctic hasn’t had this much April ice for at least seven years.
Norway’s Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre says the ice is now within the standard deviation range for 1979 to 2007.
[Antarctic Ice Growth, Arctic Ice Recovery ]
MYTH 3
WE’VE NEVER HAD SUCH A BAD DROUGHT
Wrong. A study released this month by the University of NSW Climate Change Research Centre confirms not only that we’ve had worse droughts, but this Big Dry is not caused by “global warming”, whether man-made or not.
As the university’s press release says: “The causes of southeastern Australia’s longest, most severe and damaging droughts have been discovered, with the surprise finding that they originate far away in the Indian Ocean.
“A team of Australian scientists has detailed for the first time how a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole – a variable and irregular cycle of warming and cooling of ocean water – dictates whether moisture-bearing winds are carried across the southern half of Australia.”
MYTH 4
OUR CITIES HAVE NEVER BEEN HOTTER
Wrong. The alleged “record” temperature Melbourne set in January – 46.4 degrees – was in fact topped by the 47.2 degrees the city recorded in 1851. (See the Argus newspaper of February 8, 1851.)
And here’s another curious thing: Despite all this warming we’re alleged to have caused, Victoria’s highest temperature on record remains the 50.7 degrees that hit Mildura 103 years ago.
South Australia’s hottest day is still the 50.7 degrees Oodnadatta suffered 37 years ago. NSW’s high is still the 50 degrees recorded 70 years ago.
What’s more, not one of the world’s seven continents has set a record high temperature since 1974. Europe’s high remains the 50 degrees measured in Spain 128 years ago, before the invention of the first true car.
MYTH 5
THE SEAS ARE GETTING HOTTER
Wrong. If anything, the seas are getting colder. For five years, a network of 3175 automated bathythermographs has been deployed in the oceans by the Argo program, a collaboration between 50 agencies from 26 countries.
Warming believer Josh Willis, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reluctantly concluded: “There has been a very slight cooling . . .”
MYTH 6
THE SEAS ARE RISING
Wrong. For almost three years, the seas have stopped rising, according to the Jason-1 satellite mission monitored by the University of Colorado.
That said, the seas have risen steadily and slowly for the past 10,000 years through natural warming, and will almost certainly resume soon.
But there is little sign of any accelerated rises, even off Tuvalu or the Maldives, islands often said to be most threatened with drowning.
Professor Nils-Axel Moerner, one of the world’s most famous experts on sea levels, has studied the Maldives in particular and concluded there has been no net rise there for 1250 years.
Venice is still above water.
[Sea Level in the Maldives, Sea Level satellite data]
MYTH 7
CYCLONES ARE GETTING WORSE
Wrong. Ryan Maue of Florida State University recently measured the frequency, intensity and duration of all hurricanes and cyclones to compile an Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index.
His findings? The energy index is at its lowest level for more than 30 years.
The World Meteorological Organisation, in its latest statement on cyclones, said it was impossible to say if they were affected by man’s gases: “Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.”
[Ryan Maue and Hurricane energy, Hurricane landfall trends]
MYTH 8
THE GREAT BARRIER REEF IS DYING
Wrong. Yes, in 1999, Professor Ove Hoegh-Gulberg, our leading reef alarmist and administrator of more than $30 million in warming grants, did claim the reef was threatened by warming, and much had turned white.
But he then had to admit it had made a “surprising” recovery.
Yes, in 2006 he again warned high temperatures meant “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef could die within a month”.
But he later admitted this bleaching had “minimal impact”. Yes, in 2007 he again warned that temperature changes of the kind caused by global warming were bleaching the reef.
But this month fellow Queensland University researchers admitted in a study that reef coral had once more made a “spectacular recovery”, with “abundant corals re-established in a single year”. The reef is blooming.
MYTH 9
OUR SNOW SEASONS ARE SHORTER
Wrong. Poor snow falls in 2003 set off a rash of headlines predicting warming doom. The CSIRO typically fed the hysteria by claiming global warming would strip resorts of up to a quarter of their snow by 2018.
Yet the past two years have been bumper seasons for Victoria’s snow resorts, and this year could be just as good, with snow already falling in NSW and Victoria this past week.
[New low temp record at Australian ski resort this year]
MYTH 10
TSUNAMIS AND OTHER DISASTERS ARE GETTING WORSE
Are you insane? Tsunamis are in fact caused by earthquakes. Yet there was World Vision boss Tim Costello last week, claiming that Asia was a “region, thanks to climate change, that has far more cyclones, tsunamis, droughts”.
Wrong, wrong and wrong, Tim. But what do facts matter now to a warming evangelist when the cause is so just?
And so any disaster is now blamed on man-made warming the way they once were on Satan. See for yourself on www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm the full list, including kidney stones, volcanic eruptions, lousy wine, insomnia, bad tempers, Vampire moths and bubonic plagues. Nothing is too far-fetched to be seized upon by carpetbaggers and wild preachers as signs of a warming we can’t actually see.
Not for nothing are polar bears the perfect symbol of this faith – bears said to be threatened by warming, when their numbers have in fact increased.
Bottom line: fewer people now die from extreme weather events, whether cyclones, floods or blinding heatwaves.
Read that in a study by Indur Goklany, who represented the US at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “There is no signal in the mortality data to indicate increases in the overall frequencies or severities of extreme weather events, despite large increases in the population at risk.”
[Going down – death rates due to extreme weather events]
So stop this crazy panic.
First step: check again your list of the signs you thought you saw of global warming. How many are true? What do you think, and why do you think it?
Yes, the world may resume warming in one year or 100. But it hasn’t been warming as the alarmists said it must if man were to blame, and certainly not as the media breathlessly keeps claiming.
Best we all just settle down, then, and wait for the proof — the real proof. After all, panicking over invisible things is so undignified, don’t you think?
“My post to Joel was phrased in such a way that it seemed to be rude about you”
It was unambiguously so.
“which was not the intention.”
Fair enough.
I’m not sure quite what you mean by “dubious ‘facts’”. I don’t think I’ve posted anything that’s not extremely well known. If you tell me what you’re referring to, perhaps I can explain more.
~snip~ However, “Did the MWP and LIA exist?” is certainly an interesting question.
First of all, though, in what sense are you using ‘re-writing of history’? A paranoid Orwellian sense, or simply in the sense that human knowledge progresses? If the former, I’ve no time for such an attitude.
“the previously settled science as erxpressed by an overwheming consensus of historians”
History is not science, and would you please provide evidence that such a consensus ever existed?
Assuming anyway that you’re not paranoid and Orwellian, here’s my answer to your question. Always, in any science discussion, you need to carefully define your terms. What do you mean, exactly, by little ice age, and mediaeval warm period? Do you believe they were global or regional? What temperatures do you believe prevailed in those times? What do you mean by “very much warmer” and “very much cooler”? What sources are you basing your beliefs on?
As regional (ie, northern Atlantic) phenomena, they certainly existed. It was certainly cooler in the 1750s than it is now. Whether it was warmer in the 1200s than it is now is more difficult to ascertain but it looks unlikely.
As global phenomena, there was until recently not really enough evidence to say either way. About two thirds of the scientists in the world are based in North America and Europe, which naturally makes data collection from those regions easier. Recent years have seen a great effort to find out whether or not these climate variations were truly global. It’s still early days: few truly global reconstructions exist. The best evidence so far seems to be that these climatic variations were not truly global, as warm and cool periods started and ended at different times in different parts of the world. And the best evidence is that average global temperatures today are higher than they have been at any point in the last 1000 years.
Hi RW
Even Al Gore didn’t believe the LIA and MWP (both of which he acknowledged) were confined to the North Atlantic (see Earth in the Balance)
Most historians will have seen evidence (studies, observed evidence, contemporary accounts etc) from a wide variety of sources, from the Ipiatuk in the Arctic two thousand years ago to the Romans,to the Mayans, to know that our climate changes from warm to cold at frequent intervals. The greatest period of instrumental warming occured between the LIA spikes when the 1730’s showed values similar to todays. Observed evidence (Pathe newsreel , newspaper accounts, diaries,) also illustrate arctic melt similar in the period 1909-1936 to todays (also recorded by Hansens revisions of US Temperatures)
This is a good book showing the widespread impact of the MWP and there is another very good one about the Vikings I can quote you if you will read it (some 500 references)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Great-Warming/Brian-Fagan/e/9781596913929
In order to believe past events can be attributed to ‘natural’ forcings I do appreciate the temperature swings need to be minimised, but surely you are not advocating Dr Manns work as being accurate after all that has happened?
Tonyb
TonyB,
Of course the MWP was global! That’s the reason that guy [I don’t recall his name right now] sent an email to a colleague saying: “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” If the MWP had never existed, there would be nothing they needed to get rid of.
And regarding your comment that our climate changes from warm to cold at frequent intervals, that is a function of natural climate variability that carries right up to the present: click
[It’s to the credit of the visitors to WUWT that no one has made an issue about the fact that Pickens money helped produce this report. It is very well balanced, and it doesn’t take sides. And its conclusions are well worth reading, IMHO.]
Smokey
I think the comments from RW and Joel were interesting in as much it is evident the hockey stick resolutely refuses to be broken in some peoples eyes.
It is also interesting that a large part of the case for warming still relies on this artefact (and its spaghetti variations) and its usage to refute history.
In Joels mind for example, if the global temperature has always been relatively constant in the past (with constant co2 levels) that minor variation can be explained away by ‘natural’ variability. However, in his eyes that means modern ‘unprecedented’ warming can only be explained by rising levels of man made co2.
Dr Mann spent a lot of time trying to get rid of the MWP and the LIA and this was promoted by the IPCC. Warmists such as RW and Joel then rely on this ‘scientific’ study to prove their case.
Through my studies I have accumulated hundreds of studies -scientific and anecdotal- showing the MWP and LIA existed. However these learned -and often boring and difficult to understand-studies are not as easy to digest as a very powerful graphic of a (doctored) hockey stick still used to this day in schools, media etc.
It might be useful to have access to a comprehensive set of links to papers that have demolished the Hockey stick, and in addition explains in simple language how it was constructed in the first place then subsequently demolished. I am aware of the work of Mcintyre/Ross, Monckton, Bishop Hill, David Holland, North and Wegman of course. Do you have access to a good comprehensive list combined with a good simple summary -with graphics- of how the stick was constructed and demolished?
We need to recognise that to this day the Hockey stick remains the most potent ‘proof’ of mans supposed interference with our climate and have the means to refute it at a variety of levels.
Tonyb
Well, you didn’t really define your terms at all there.
What do you mean, exactly, by little ice age, and mediaeval warm period? Do you believe they were global or regional? What temperatures do you believe prevailed in those times? What do you mean by “very much warmer” and “very much cooler”? What sources are you basing your beliefs on?
“That’s the reason that guy [I don’t recall his name right now] sent an email to a colleague saying: “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.””
That is certainly fiction.
RW: That is certainly fiction.
Fiction possibly, but fiction under oath.
Mike Bryant: “One year does not a trend make…
True. Interestingly, the graph you link to shows a continuing warming trend through 1998 and on until the mid-2000s, in contradiction to many claims by climate sceptics that warming “stopped” in 1998 or 2002 etc.
“…but it MIGHT be the beginning of something.”
Again true, although we will have to wait a few years before the current temperatures can be placed accurately within the long-term context.
In that regard it’s interesting that many climate sceptics are now going out on a limb with predictions of an imminent cooling global climate. In my view, in a tactical sense, this is a counterproductive move, especially when we have seen predictions from the warmist side running foul of events.
The predictions of cooling run a high risk of fatally undermining the sceptics’ position, since it would be difficult to retreat to the more solid ground of, say, natural variation or mild CO2 warming, without suffering loss of credibility.
I have been very surprised that climate sceptics are so keen to engage in risky predictions when all they need do is kick back and watch the river flow.
Brendan H
Damn! I agree with Brendan. Although he is still using electricity from the grid. When are you going to lead by example Brendan instead of telling poor people they shouldn’t have what you have?
Ah, OK – so you really do think that “history is being rewritten” in a paranoid and Orwellian sense, and your main reason for rejecting scientific progress seems to be that you heard that some guy sent an e-mail to some other guy saying something.
If the so-called hockey stick were a work of pure fiction, that would not change our understanding of the physics of CO2. No matter what temperatures were in the middle ages, CO2 is still a greenhouse gas. Its concentrations are still rising sharply. Temperatures are still rising as a result, and will continue to do so.
History has been rewritten throughout history, this is not a paranoid or Orwellian concept.
Did you know that Joe McCarthy was right about a lot of Communists working for the Soviet Union were in high positions in the US govt.? I doubt you were taught that. While his methods were reprehensible, he was correct about many he accused. I will not bother to cite the proof, but since the fall of the Soviet Union, declassified documents from the Soviet Union bear this out. Look up Venona.
I’m not sure I believe Deming’s testimony or care.
What I do believe is that this issue has been taken hostage few dozen primary members of the Hockey team who in no sense practice science. By withholding data and methods, their self-referential independent verifications, and far more than I have time to delve into here, their results are reduced to little more than wishful alchemy. That they peer-review each other is not relevant. History will paint Mann et Al with the same brush as Lysenko. I just hope the millions do not have to die unnecessarily before that happens.
The physics of C02 infrared absorption is known and minor. As far as feedbacks and final effect on the terrestrial environment are not remotely known with any level of confidence. Feedbacks could be positive, negative, or null. There are lots of papers and theories, but none that we could have any conceivable level of confidence in at this time.
Jeez: definitely fiction, regardless of oaths. Why would he be reticent about naming his “major researcher in the area of climate change”, otherwise?
Fiction in other ways, too.
” The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the “Little Ice Age” took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the High Middle Ages.”
Funny, then, that the Renaissance, the Spanish conquest of the Americas, the first British Empire which laid the foundations for Britain becoming the first superpower, the Copernican Revolution, the Galilean Revolution, the founding of the Royal Society, Newton’s formulation of a theory of gravity, and of calculus, the development of classical music into forms which still define much of Western music, and innumerable other examples of scientific, cultural and societal progress all took place after the Medieval Warm Period had come to an end.
RW:
I mean, dude, that’s just funny.
Interesting use of irrelevancy, really interesting. Ignoratio elenchi anyone?
But I’m going to bed. Nighty night.
Thanks for that, awesome.
Brendan H
I have to agree with you as well. Tactically it is daft to pitch our sceptics wagon to some climatic phase that at this stage is nothing more than very interesting, and certainly not a definitive trend.
Bearing in mind the intermediate state we are in at present (2008 was barely .2C or so above the temperature the year the Royal Society was founded-in the LIA) at present we are showing a very weak recovery from those values and it is reasonable to expect warming to continue for some years otherwise we remain too close for comfort to the values of the LIA rather than the MWP. (I will come back to definitions when I have much more time RW!)
Tonyb
RW (02:01:22) :
Jeez: definitely fiction, regardless of oaths. Why would he be reticent about naming his “major researcher in the area of climate change”, otherwise?
Fiction in other ways, too.
” The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the “Little Ice Age” took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the High Middle Ages.”
Funny, then, that the Renaissance, the Spanish conquest of the Americas, the first British Empire which laid the foundations for Britain becoming the first superpower, the Copernican Revolution, the Galilean Revolution, the founding of the Royal Society, Newton’s formulation of a theory of gravity, and of calculus, the development of classical music into forms which still define much of Western music, and innumerable other examples of scientific, cultural and societal progress all took place after the Medieval Warm Period had come to an end.
They were just running away from the cold, don’t you know.
Seriously though.
There are many studies that purport the Renascence was triggered by the fall of the Byzantine empire finally in 1453. The empire fell because of the crusades , which did happen during the affluent medieval warm period, which ate away the edges of the empire, and then by the rise of Islam and the coming of the mongol turkish races from the north, possibly looking for warmer climates as their areas were hit but the LIA. How is that for a short refutation of your short refutation?
The triggering happened because scholars with their manuscripts from ancient greek philosophers and scientists and some current ones too went to Italy and from the knowledge was spread around that led to the intellectual flowering . I suppose the cold helped in keeping them in and studying :).
RW
(Anna please see later in this post)
This lists some of the 400 or so studies of the MWP.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
There are separately available many other studies but the most interesting are the various books which brings numerous references together. I particularly recommend The Viking World’ which has some 500 studies and was published last year. This demonstrates the initial settlement of Greenland as the ice retreated and their eventual demise as the sea ice returned several centuries later.
A similar fate seems to have befallen the Ipiatuk a century earlier who dwelt in the arctic and had cities almost as large as those today but who also died out as climate changed.
In addition the reference I gave you yesterday is a good book about the MWP and the author wrote a book on the LIA.
I personally think we have too much of a fixed view about both events in as much the MWP was thought of as continually hot and the LIA continually cold. I think the periods were characterised by predominantly warm or cold climate but there were periods in between that were not typical of the general climate. if you follow this link and go to the uk
http://www.climate4you.com/
you can see that the warm periods in the UKs past include some in the LIA, indeed the 1730’s were similar to today as were other periods. Pepys also wrote of extreme heat in his diaries as did the Venerable Bede.
I think our current recovery from the LIA is extremely weak as 0.5C of a degree or so since the 1700’s is not exactly excessive warming. If man is having an influence the natural recovery from the LIA plus man induced heat should be able to do much better than that shouldn’t it?
I would like to reinforce Anna’s excellent potted history of the Byzantine empire with this link which leads to a much longer history of them
http://www.archive.org/stream/byzantineempire00omanrich/byzantineempire00omanrich_djvu.txt
We have their climate references which list the droughts and rains and cold and warm spells and access to their drawings of the various irrigation systems they developed to cope with changing climate. The Byzantine empire in the East was, as you know, the successor to the Western Roman empire which was partly destroyed as the climate changed for the worst following the Roman optimum (the Rhine froze allowing their enemies to outflank them).
Prof Hunt writes most eloquently of the High level passes the Romans used to patrol their empire which then became closed by ice in subsequent centuries .
This is a reference to a very cold spell the Byzantines experienced in the 8th century which caused much hardship.
“On the Continent eighth-century minor annals record the severe winter in the
area from which they drew their information, Austrasia. This was the power center of the new Carolingian dynasty around the Meuse and Moselle rivers and west of the Rhine. In this region that “worst freeze” began on 14 December 763 and continued until 16 March 764. A generation later, the royal court still remembered the winter for its unprecedented bitter cold. About that time someone in the same or a related milieu wrote up the most detailed record, in the Chronicon Moissiacense. It observes under the year 762 that the freeze reached as far as the western provinces of the Byzantine Empire:
“A great freeze oppressed the Gauls, Illyricum and Thrace and, wasted by the freeze, many olive and fig trees withered; the sprouts of the crops withered, and in the following year, hunger oppressed these regions very severely, such that many people died from scarcity of bread.”
In response to the Frankish king’s request for news about the papal and royal
ambassadors whose return from Byzantium he had expected earlier, Pope Paul I protested that “it has assuredly not escaped you that because of the very cruel harshness of this winter season, no one is coming from those parts” with news of the envoys. In fact, the pope’s unusually specific expression of relief that the king himself, the queen, and their three children were “healthy and safe and unharmed” probably reflects the receding terrors of that extreme winter.
The special processions that King Pippin enjoined on the bishop of Mainz for God’s mercy for “the great and marvelous consolation and abundance of the fruit of the earth” after the terrible “tribulation for our sins” surely reflects the return to normalcy in 765. The economic impact on the Carolingian kingdom was serious enough to force Pippin to suspend his long-standing effort to conquer Aquitaine.
Some 2,000 kilometers to the southeast, a well-informed observer at Constantinople recorded that great and extremely bitter cold settled on the Byzantine Empire and the lands to the north, west (confirming the Chronicon Moissiacense’s statement concerning Illyricum and Thrace), and east. The north coast of the Black Sea froze solid 100 Byzantine miles out from shore (157.4 km). The ice was reported to be 30 Byzantine “cubits” deep, and people and animals could walk on it as on dry land.38 Drawing on the same lost written source, another contemporary, the patriarch of Constantinople, Nicephorus I, emphasized that it particularly affected the “hyperborean and northerly regions,” as well as the many great rivers that lay north of the Black Sea.39 Twenty cubits of snow accumulated on top of the ice, making it very difficult to discern where land stopped and sea began, and the Black Sea became unnavigable. In February the ice began to break up and
flow into the Bosporus, entirely blocking it.
Theophanes’ account recalls how, as a child, the author (or his source’s author) went out on the ice with thirty other children and played on it and that some of his pets and other animals died. It was possible to walk all over the Bosporus around Constantinople and even cross to Asia on the ice.
One huge iceberg crushed the wharf at the Acropolis, close to the tip of Constantinople’s peninsula, and another extremely large one hit the city wall, shaking it and the houses on the other side, before breaking into three large pieces; it was higher than the city walls. The terrified Constantinopolitans wondered what it could possibly portend.
Hope you will find the time to read some of these excellent books-after all I have ploughed through all the IPCC’s assessments 🙂
Best regards
Tonyb
Sorry
My refernce to the Ipiatuk above should have read they were around in the Arctic a thousand years before the Vikings not a century.
tonyB
TonyB:
“2008 was barely .2C or so above the temperature the year the Royal Society was founded-in the LIA”
According to what data? The only directly measured temperature record that goes that far back is the Central England Temperature.
Central England Temperature in 1660: 9.08°C.
Central England Temperature in 2008: 9.96°C.
9.96-9.08 = ?
“0.5C of a degree or so since the 1700’s”
According to what data? CET gives more like 1.5°C. Hadcrut gives a global rise of about 0.8°C since 1850.
“the 1730’s were similar to today”
CET gives a mean temperature of 9.86°C for 1730-1739, and 10.39°C for 2000-2008.
“the natural recovery from the LIA”
That is what they call ‘not even wrong’. ‘Natural recovery’ is a meaningless term in this context.
As for ‘co2science.org’… not a reliable source. First of all their ‘mission statement’ reveals that they begin from the premise that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. Second, I did a quick check on one of these papers. I just did this completely randomly. I went to ‘South America’ and looked at the first paper, about sea temperatures off Peru. The claim is that temperatures there in the mediaeval warm period were 23.2°C, and that temperatures there today are 22°C, so therefore it’s not as warm today as it was then.
However, they have the warm period there peaking in about 700AD, long before the commonly accepted dates for the mediaeval warm period. And, when I looked up modern measurements of sea surface temperatures, I found this image. Look at the coast of Peru. The colours there indicate a temperature of 26-28°C, considerably higher than the peak claimed by co2science.org.
If you think climate change was the only reason the Norse colonies in Greenland collapsed, you should wonder why the Inuit who lived further north survived and thrived, and were still there when the Danes returned in 1721.
anna v: I don’t think you have refuted the notion that Europe in the little ice age was in fact wealthier, culturally more enlightened and had far greater knowledge and understanding of the natural world than was the case in Europe in the mediaeval warm period. There is a reason that ‘mediaeval’ is a synonym for backward and unenlightened.
RW
If the middle of the LIA at around 9.86 and the current period at around 10.32 is not similar I don’t know what is. (please also factor in UHI-as the record sites have moved several times to a less rural area. )
The difference as you can clearly see if you study the months is that we generally don’t have very cold winters – they did in most of the CET record which is why its called the LIA 🙂 – which lowered the mean. To this day however the warmest winters are not in the 20th or 21st Century.
The Royal Society got their charter in 1661 CET 9.75 or 1662 CET 9.50 2008 was 9.96-a fraction of a degree difference in 350 years as I have already said.
http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Societies/RS.html
Your comment about the Inuit is completely irrelevant-different ships, different food, different prey, different culture, different habitation. One was an Arctic people the other a European group who couldn’t survive when their trade routes to Europe seized up. Read the book with an open mind and you will see why the Inuits survived and the Norse didn’t.
Please put aside your prejudices and check more than one random paper on the MWP. THey are not written by the group you dismiss out of hand, merely collected by them. I have checked around 80% of their papers over the years (what I couldnt tell you about moss and eels at one time wasn’t worth knowing!!) and would qualify around 80% of those papers, with another 10% or so unproven and the remainder probably incorrect. To dismiss hundreds of studies made by numerous independent researchers, plus historical contemporary records in one line is unreasonable. If I dismissed the Hockey stick after reading just one study you would quite rightly criticise me.
I take the effort to check on sources that disagree with me which has resulted in my buying material from Nasa, Various American Societies, Historic sources, going to talks and generally trying to see the evidence from the other side as well (we’re not born climate sceptics you know). I also work on a daily basis with sea levels so have first hand experience of the observed reality as opposed to the modelled suppositions.
As for ‘global’ temperatures, would you like to tell me the actual meaning of such an impossible construct? Perhaps you would also like to tell me how many stations it was derived from in 1850, and how consistent it has been ever since? It is an artefact with dubious data used to parse the meaningless results to tenths of a degree to try and give it scientific credibilty.
Please try and be a little more receptive to things you might not agree with and we can all have a constructive debate.
Tonyb
Half a degree or even a quarter of a degree is a large difference in annual average temperatures – certainly noticeable to most people. 2007 in the UK was about half a degree cooler than 2006. I certainly felt that difference.
Now how about we recognise the difference between short term internal variability and long term trends. Look at all the years around 1660. For example, the first 20 years in the CET. Mean temperature, 8.86°C. Now, look at the last 20 years. 10.25°C. 1661 and 1662 were unusually warm relative to the climate of the time; 2008 was unusually cool relative to today’s climate. And still 2008 was warmer than 1661 and 1662. And the last 20 years were the warmest 20 years in the entire 350 years CET record. Your comment about “the intermediate state we are in” is not supported by the data.
My comment about the Inuit was not irrelevant, and you even re-stated the point. Climate was only one factor in the demise of Norse Greenland.
Yes, I know that the papers were written by many different people. I don’t trust ‘co2science.org’ to interpret them correctly, given their anti-scientific mission statement and their failure on the one that I checked. I don’t trust anyone who says “I believe X” and then goes looking for evidence in favour of X.
“impossible construct” – why?
“It is an artefact with dubious data used to parse the meaningless results to tenths of a degree to try and give it scientific credibilty.
Please try and be a little more receptive to things you might not agree with”
I find the juxtaposition of these two sentences highly ironic.
TonyB, as a lifelong avid reader of history, particularly the Roman and Byzantine empires, I was fascinated by the account of icebergs in Constantinople. Thanks for that.
And in response to RW’s question to you: “History is not science, and would you please provide evidence that such a consensus ever existed?” you provided voluminous scholarly references. Score one for TonyB.
I’ve been away from this thread for awhile, but I’m glad jeez provided the Deming reference for RW (01:12:28). Score one for jeez.
For RW to claim, without a shred of evidence, that Deming was lying is preposterous. At the time I was just commenting about the incident from memory. But since it was challenged, I’ve just now searched the quote — and got over 1700 hits: click. Score one for Smokey.
There is so much rampant dishonesty in the alarmist crowd that it’s not surprising some of them would try to “get rid of” inconvenient facts like the MWP.
RW paints himself into a corner by giving a baseless opinion about the Deming email: “That is certainly fiction.” Certainly? Based on exactly what evidence?
It is difficult to believe that someone would be prepared to throw away a lifetime of professional achievement and his hard earned reputation, by lying under oath by stating that he received an email from a colleague that said, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”
Those suffering from psychological “projection” impute their personal failings onto others. Someone who routinely lies assumes that other people routinely lie, too. But to believe that a professional scholar would try to score a minor point by lying under oath beggars belief. And the answer to why Deming didn’t name the person who sent him the email may be hard for some to understand, but it’s clear that he simply wanted to avoid embarrassing a professional colleague.
Even the UN’s Second Assessment Report has a 1,000-year graph clearly showing that the temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than it is today. Naturally those who believe that human CO2 emissions caused the recent warming are uncomfortable that their hypothesis is destroyed by the MWP.
Finally, I also have to thank Brendan H. for his good advice. Score one for Brendan H.
“For RW to claim, without a shred of evidence, that Deming was lying is preposterous”
There isn’t a shred of evidence that this mystery ‘colleague’ ever existed, let alone sent the alleged e-mail. Score nil to Smokey.
See what I mean? An email is evidence.
And who has ever seen this e-mail? Who has ever been told the name of the mystery ‘colleague’?
Score -1 to Smokey.
Reply: I’m willing to call the “Was Deming lying/was Deming telling the truth controversy a draw. Can we move on now? ~ charles the moderator
Hi RW
I thought I recognised the paper you cited. I bought it from Elsevier a little while ago for $30 as the sea studies matched my professional interests, I live by the sea and I wanted to know more about the MWP and LIA in an area other than Western Europe.
Rein is a perfectly respectable researcher who has produced numerous peer reviewed studies. Why don’t you read the report again and disregard its original source? Rein can’t help it if a third party linked to his work.
Comparing the UK in 2006 and 2007 needs to take into account there was nearly a full degree temperature difference -nearly double what you stated-but the nature of the two years was not the same at all with regards to wetness and the number of individual warm and cold months. You are comparing apples and oranges.
My point was that despite the CET covering very largely a LIA period, the older temperatures were at times similar to current ones. I was referring to intermediate in the sense of modern temperatures are between LIA and MWP which is a pretty reasonable definition.
With regards to your comments about irony, the difference is that I have thoroughly checked the material mentioned, you do not appear to have done so-see my comment about the study you rejected.
In this respect I used to believe in the concept of a global temperature and its accuracy until I read about Gistemp and the number of stations, their location and lack of consistency. I then researched which ones were used back in 1850 and would repeat that I think they are worthless due to the numbers involved and their provenance. If you can point me to a good article explaining how compiling one global temperature has any meaning and also HOW it is compiled accurately and meaningfully back to 1850 I will gladly read it.
Smokey
I am inclined to agree with your comments-why would a respected scientist throw away his reputation by a silly and pointless lie? However if RW can come up with evidence that demonstrates Deming was lying-and he seems absolutely certain about it- as sceptics we have a duty to examine it.
Tonyb
Sorry Moderator-all the various replies re Deming happened as I was typing my last message 🙂
tonyb
Reply: I was just being silly anyways. At least I didn’t link to the MP argument sketch, although I was sorely tempted. ~ charles the moderator
Reply 2: I can’t resist.
~ charles the moderator
Jeez: “Although he is still using electricity from the grid. When are you going to lead by example Brendan…”
Not going to happen.
“… instead of telling poor people they shouldn’t have what you have?”
But poor people need to be guided, kindly but firmly. If they didn’t need guidance, they wouldn’t be poor.
As a matter of interest, my local energy provider recently switched on the first stage of its wind farm. I was sort of chuffed, despite not having lifted a finger to help. All that carbon-free energy! I can now leave my computer on 24/7, guilt-free.
Smokey 1: “There is so much rampant dishonesty in the alarmist crowd…”
Smokey 2: “Those suffering from psychological “projection” impute their personal failings onto others.”
Hmm.
“Finally, I also have to thank Brendan H. for his good advice.
Thanks Smokey. And it’s all carbon-free. No fees to pay; no ads to click.
“Score one for Brendan H.”
Ahem…two (see above).
If you take David Deming at face value, you’re very gullible. There isn’t a shred of evidence that this mystery ‘colleague’ ever existed, let alone sent the alleged e-mail.
“If you can point me to a good article explaining how compiling one global temperature has any meaning and also HOW it is compiled accurately and meaningfully back to 1850 I will gladly read it.”
Lots of papers on methodologies, bias corrections and all that sort of stuff are available on the GISS website, and on the Hadcrut website. If you have found that they are wrong, why not write up your analysis and publish it?
“With regards to your comments about irony, the difference is that I have thoroughly checked the material mentioned, you do not appear to have done so-see my comment about the study you rejected. ”
I did not ‘reject’ the study. I rejected the ‘co2science.org’ interpretation of it, which was trivially shown to be wrong.
RW (11:50:50) :
“anna v: I don’t think you have refuted the notion that Europe in the little ice age was in fact wealthier, culturally more enlightened and had far greater knowledge and understanding of the natural world than was the case in Europe in the mediaeval warm period. There is a reason that ‘mediaeval’ is a synonym for backward and unenlightened.”
That was not my aim. My aim was to refute that the connection with the LIA had something to do with the enlightenment, which was responsible for the industrial revolution and the subsequent wealth the the use of coal and the steam engines brought. I gave the common historical explanation.