Our “recent” (geologically speaking) temperature history:
By Lawrence Solomon in the Financial Post
Thank your lucky stars to be alive on Earth at this time. Our planet is usually in a deep freeze. The last million years have cycled through Ice Ages that last about 100,000 years each, with warmer slivers of about 10,000 years in between.
We are in-betweeners, and just barely — we live in (gasp!) year 10,000 or so after the end of the last ice age. But for our good fortune, we might have been born in the next Ice Age.
Our luck is even better than that. Those 10,000-year warm spells aren’t all cosy-warm. They include brutal Little Ice Ages such as the 500-year-long Little Ice Age that started about 600 years ago. Fortunately, we weren’t around during its fiercest periods when Finland lost one-third of its population, Iceland half, and most of Canada became uninhabitable — even the Inuit fled. While the cold spells within the 10,000 year warm spells aren’t as brutal as a Little Ice Age, they can nevertheless make us huddle in gloom, such as the period in history from about 400 AD to 900 AD, which we know as the Dark Ages. We’ve lucked out twice, escaping the cold spells within the warm spells, making us inbetweeners within the inbetween periods. How good is that?
We aren’t alone in having been blessed by good weather. About 2000 years ago, around the time of Caesar and Christ, temperatures were also gloriously warm, some say much warmer than those we’ve experienced in recent decades. That period — the centuries immediately before and after Caesar and Christ — are known as the Roman Warm Period, a time of wealth and accomplishment when the warmer weather filled granaries and extended grape and olive growing regions to lands that had previously been unarable.
Another period of unusual warmth came about 1000 years after the Roman Warm Period, during the centuries before and after the year 1000, in what is known as the Medieval Warm Period. In this period, again warmer than the present time, the world shucked off the insularity of the Dark Ages to allow civilization to once again blossom. England, then positively balmy, became a grape-growing region. In the North Atlantic, the Arctic sea ice released its grip over Greenland, making this vast island hospitable for Viking settlers. In the Canadian Rockies, majestic forests — trees larger than those of today — thrived before their decimation by the glaciers that came in with the Little Ice Age.
Another 1000 years and we come to our time, known to climatologists as the Modern Warm Period. What a great time of technological and cultural advancement we’ve known, one of unprecedented prosperity, human longevity, and human comfort. For a brief period in the 1970s it appeared to some scientists that the climate that had abetted our prosperity had turned — this was the fear of global cooling that then made headlines. Though many now mock those fears of climate cooling, the scientists were eminent and the science was sound — after all, given Earth’s history through the eons, and the passage of 10,000 years since the last ice age, it was hardly outlandish to believe that time of warmth was up.
It wasn’t then — the decades after the 1970s have been about as good as it gets. But it could be now. In fact, some of the same scientists who in the 1970s warned of a new cold spell still believe it could be imminent. Other eminent scientists with compelling new evidence have recently joined them in predicting the end of our Modern Warm Period. They and others note that the warming of the planet stopped 11 years ago and that the planet has begun to cool.
If a new Dark Age does come, it could be rapid, marked by plunging temperatures and extreme weather events. Such was the transition from the Roman Warm Period to the Dark Ages and from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age. To date, we have seen no plunging temperatures, no uncharacteristically extreme weather.
If we are living on borrowed time, as the history of the world would suggest, this reprieve would be but one more blessing to count. We should enjoy the warmth while we can, and hope that it persists so that the world our children and grandchildren inherit will be no less warm and welcoming.
Financial Post
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
In some respects our technology is the weak point in our infrastructure. Our entire municipal water system is designed around prevailing freeze levels in the winter. If the frost line extends much deeper than normal you have problems with freezing of both municipal and residential water systems but also sewage systems.
You also have other important infrastructure that begins to have problems at cold temps. I remember when I worked for Emergency Management here in Colorado in the late 1970’s through the 1980’s that we had some interesting issues that came out of extended ice storms and prolonged cold snaps. Ice storms as everyone knows can shut down entire power grids for days to weeks as ice laden power lines are pulled down by the score. Severe cold also causes fire fighting challenges, as water for fire suppression freezes and the fire ground becomes so slick that fire fighters cannot move around efficiently. Many fires are triggered by ice loaded power lines as well.
There were situations where natural gas pipe lines were at risk of shutting down due to ice build up freezing out inside the pipe line as condensation built up and froze out in cold segments. Since large areas of the country is highly dependent on natural gas for heat, this can be a region wide problem.
Also construction grinds to a halt as digging in frozen ground tears up construction equipment at an alarming rate, and less well known the difficulties in properly compacting frozen fill from excavations leads to major problems when it finally warms up. Here in Colorado there were a rash of natural gas explosions in new homes that was traced to frozen back fill placed in trenches for natural gas lines to the homes settling in the spring when it thawed and it pulled the pipes apart at weak points creating cracks. The natural gas from those leaks migrated through the poorly compacted soils into the homes and ignited on pilot lights blowing the homes off their foundations.
Industries that now use steel for construction would likely move to aluminum for some applications as steels become brittle at temperatures near -30 deg F . Rail roads need to be careful when humping cars, as the assemble freight trains, in these temperatures as the cold soaked couplers can shatter as the cars crash together as the train is assembled. At cold temps Aluminum becomes stronger and tougher than common steels.
There would be a considerable period when major infrastructure like bridges, water supplies, electrical distribution and roads would suffer very high failure rates due to prolonged operation in severe cold.
Once you add in the problems with shorter growing seasons and higher costs to transport food, our modern on demand food supply system would have to fall back to the sort of warehouse storage used decades ago where a city could survive on its own food stocks for weeks if need be rather than depending on almost daily deliveries just to meet minimum demand.
In severe blizzards most local food suppliers are wiped out of key food stocks like milk, bread, etc. in a matter of hours. During the blizzard of 1982 here in Denver, a local convenience stores had bare shelves in a 12-18 hours after the storm set in, as folks were walking to the nearest local outlet, since they could not get their cars out of their driveways.
http://www.thorntonweather.com/blog/colorado-weather/christmas-eve-blizzard-1982-the-best-of-denver-storms/
http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/remote/graphics/profiler_images/102497/DP_1024_main_story.html
I was pushing through snow 4 ft deep to help get some nurses home from the hospital the morning after the snow hit. I also made a bread run for the local convenience store on day 2 after the blizzard hit. The bakery was back in operation but its delivery trucks could not make any deliveries as most roads were still impassable without a 4×4 vehicle or snow mobiles.
The northern half of the country would at least have some capacity to deal with these issues, but areas of the south that seldom see severe freezing temps would be crippled and the residents would pay a terrible price in cold injury and property loss due to freezing. Spring thaws in ice choked drainages also pose flooding problems that are enormous as ice dams cause flooding in areas that normally outside the flood plane of temperate floods.
More importantly unlike rising sea levels this is a sudden onset issue, as a cold outbreak can come with little warning and effect 100,000’s of square miles of land area in a matter of hours.
Larry
Eddie Murphy (11:52:34) :
“http://www.agriculture.com/ag/category.jhtml?categoryid=/templatedata/ag/category/data/agnewscategory-crops.xml
Articles:
•Testing has revealed dangerous levels of mycotoxins on corn in the western and central Corn Belt.
•Corn molds and diseases.
•Soybean diseases have exploded.
Corn, soybean harvest slowest in 30 years
http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml;jsessionid=REXVVEM1MLNUWCQCEAQB42Q?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story/data/1256590252339.xml#continue
Four to six times normal rainfall swamps crops
http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/10/rains-swamp-crops-and-wash-away-any.html
Plant rusts such as Ug99, which has the designation of TTKS, is a race of black stem rust (Puccinia graminis tritici) wheat rust badly affecting Africa and Asia is spreading fast… Late blight, in cultivated potatoes and tomatoes is still a big problem though some success has been made at developing a disease resistant potato utilizing wild varieties. There are various articles on these to be found with a google search.
http://www.google.com/m/search?ct=fsh&q=UG99+TTKS”
OMG it’s already starting!!! I thought we’d have a few more years for the farmers to change their crops for ones which are more ‘cold hardy’.
Time to stock up on non-perishable foods I think.
Speaking of no evidence of evidence:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin9.htm
There is no evidence of a blank sun.
There is no evidence of an active sun.
A fender-bender.
There is no evidence of solar activity evidence other than face value, evidently.
We hold these truths as self-evident, that there is no evidence.
RW,
“If they and others say that, then they and others are fools. There is no evidence whatsoever to support this [no warming in 11 years] claim.”
Ok, I know this has been done to death, but what the heck. I offer a sample of no warming since 2003.
http://climatesci.org/2009/05/18/comments-on-a-new-paper-global-ocean-heat-content-1955%e2%80%932008-in-light-of-recently-revealed-instrumentation-problems-by-levitus-et-al-2009/
The link is to Roger Pielke’s site where he shows there has been no increase in OHC as measured by Argo since 2003. He show’s that where Hansen predicted 6.9 * 10^22 joules of increased OHC to 2009, there has in fact been none.
Kinda makes you think, rw, don’t it?
So, if we’re entering a cold period and scientists know it’s likely to happen but don’t want to admit it, they’ll go ahead with all their expensive schemes and taxes, and will then be able to “prove” it’s all gone according to plan and they’ve staved off a disastrous “warming”.
Or am I being too cynical?
M White (08:27:37) :
“It’s not all bad. The industrial revolution began during the LIA.”
Out of pure necessity. Under dire circumstances humans are more inventive.
Hotrod, that would be a very important article for WUWT. Something like
‘What Cold can do to Infrastructure’.
??
No-Name (12:30:41) :
Not cynical, you are being too optimistic. Cooling eats up agricultural production like a bug in a silo, out of all proportion.
“Enjoy the warmth while it lasts”. Some are still saying that there is an El Nino this year, see SOI, draw terribly red charts, etc. …but they have forgotten that for US the inventors and parents of that El Nino, named after the El Nino Christ child, the birth of Christ in december, means the El Nino warm current going southward along the coasts of south america, which is actually NOT happening now, so there is no el Nino at all, what is indeed really happening is the contrary: The emergence of the cold humboldt´s current, running northwards along the west coast of SA.
See the anomalies:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
You see those few positive anomalies but now above, or north, of the equator line, and cold waters both sides of the South Pacific seas (usually associated with warm weather). Our “fridge” radiator is cold.
Fascinating. I was wondering just exactly how oxygen isotopes are used as a temperature diagnostic, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. It gives what appears to be a fairly good primer on the subject.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_isotope_ratio_cycle
Of course Anthony has covered many studies that use both hydrogen and oxygen isotopes as diagnostics for historical temperature but this is the first time I ever bothered to look up the science behind such measurements.
Is the Wikipedia entry accurate? Anyone have any more info?
The trend in temperatures since 1998 is statistically identical to the trend since 1978. When one is foolish enough to look only at the noise, one can convince oneself of anything. This “11 years of global cooling” is the warmest 11 years in the instrumental record. You may well be desperate (for whatever reason) for global warming not to be happening, but the facts don’t bend to your will.
X% CO2=Y degrees temperature (raised to the power of finagle)
The above equation concisely states the “first principles” AGW argument.
Since X occurred, and Y did not, why not hold the AGW crowd’s feet to that fire?
Nail the finagle factor to the floor and make them explain why their equation has failed!
Beijing gets first snow after meteorologists seed clouds!
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/Beijing-gets-first-snow-after-meteorologists-seed-clouds/articleshow/5186405.cms
Yup. Warmer is Better. Glad to see Larry Solomon finally picked up on that. Most of the Human Race already got the memo, though — that’s why most of us live where it’s warm.
Sandy (13:00:40) :
Hotrod, that would be a very important article for WUWT. Something like ‘What Cold can do to Infrastructure’.
I agree.
Ron de Haan (14:23:58) :
The snow that the Chinese have displaced is like the irritantion of a virus to Climate. It will keep after it until it suceeds in collapsing that void, with force. It would be far better to move the Capital than move the snow.
I second (third) the request for an article as to what cold can do to infrastructure, Hotrod.
Also, this quote of yours below is SUCH an important point.
The term “flash freeze” comes to mind.
“More importantly unlike rising sea levels this is a sudden onset issue, as a cold outbreak can come with little warning and effect 100,000’s of square miles of land area in a matter of hours.”
Larry
Yes.
Fear the cold, not the warm.
Our world “leaders”, soon to convene in Copenhagen…are not only barking up the wrong f****** tree, they are completely LOST in another part of the forest altogether.
Heh heh…..forgot that funny part about Al Gore getting lost in the forest one time. Remember that?
Its a very telling trait about this entirely dumb ram and the sheeple that follow him.
Truly the blind leading the blind.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Dave Dodd – what an awesome straw man! Never seen one quite so outrageous as that. You completely misunderstand and vastly oversimplify the situation, and thus – obviously – come to a wildly erroneous conclusion. Sadly, your approach is endemic here.
Does it really need saying again that no-one, anywhere, ever expected temperatures to rise monotonically year after year?
Monica Crowley on McLaughlin has predicted Cap & Trade to be officially dead. I hope she is right. The economy this weekend is as nervous as a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The climate looks cold, as if to match the mood. Monckton’s warning still rings clear in my ears. They will try to sell an end run into a World Government repackaged as a World Economic Agreement.
Enjoy your last days of Global Warmth. Tell your grandchildren how good things once were when the Earth was warm, as our ancestors have told us.
RW (13:59:25) :
The trend in temperatures since 1998 is statistically identical to the trend since 1978. When one is foolish enough to look only at the noise, one can convince oneself of anything. This “11 years of global cooling” is the warmest 11 years in the instrumental record. You may well be desperate (for whatever reason) for global warming not to be happening, but the facts don’t bend to your will.
___________________________________
1998, 1978, it is all just noise. The ice-core record shows temperature has been more-or-less stable for 11,000 years, with lots of spikes representing many decades much warmer than the last one.
Global warming has certainly been happening since 1978, at the rate of 0.13 C per decade according to the satellite record. (The NOAA surface record suggests a slightly higher rate, but it should be ignored as it is still authored by a “scientist” who says those who contradict him “should be tried for high crimes against humanity.” Is it true that a climate scientist is someone who can do arithmetic, but lacks the objectivity to be an environmental activist?)
You assert that the rate of warming since 1998 is the same as since 1978. If so, big deal, just noise. Even if it weren’t, the 30-year 0.39 C increase is a fraction of the warming predicted by theoretical CO2 forcing.
Speaking of desperate, how do you explain the lag of CO2 behind temperature in the ice-core record? And try to be quantitative.
Warmite eats wombat and small dead animals; one claw at a time; burrows for more.
…-
“Australians care less about climate change
A new international survey has found Australians no longer care about climate change as much as they do about domestic issues and the financial crisis.
The survey looks at attitudes towards climate change in 12 different countries and found concern in Australia dropped in the past year by 14 per cent, the largest drop among the developed nations surveyed.
The Climate Group, which advises governments and businesses on low-carbon policies, was one of the groups that commissioned the survey.
The group’s CEO, Steve Howard, says Australians do still care about climate change.
“Around the world, 4 out of 5 people want to see a good global deal in Copenhagen,” he said.
“Are people a little bit less concerned than this than 12 months ago or 2 years ago? Yes they are, but we’ve just had a global financial crisis and I think we’ve seen a reordering of people’s priorities.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/02/2730362.htm?section=justin
RW (13:59:25) :
This “11 years of global cooling” is the warmest 11 years in the instrumental record. You may well be desperate (for whatever reason) for global warming not to be happening, but the facts don’t bend to your will.
Perhaps “warmest” in the instrumental record, but not the historical record.
And warm by how many tenths of a degree?
The UAH temperature anomaly rose from 0.007C in August to 0.161C in September.
This is not ‘warm’ it is most likely noise or unaccounted for UHI.
RW, I’d call it a falsifying instance not a straw man.
Don’t forget, if you need some pretty pics to show your friends the dangers this article highlights, I did some here:
http://peacelegacy.org/articles/global-warming-precautionary-principle-backfires
To get ready for the next ice age, we would need big nuclear reactors underground, and plan to live in tunnels. And we could have a name, to distinguish ourselves from the people that remain on the surface. We could call ourselves Morlocks. And the people on the surface could be Elois.