At the Foresight Institute, J. Storrs Hall had some interesting graphs made from NOAA ice core data (Alley, R.B. 2000. The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland. Quaternary Science Reviews 19:213-226.) It sure seems to mirror other hockey sticks this past century. Dr. Mann will be thrilled to see this I’m sure.
J. Storrs Hall writes:
One thing that Climategate does is give us an opportunity to step back from the details of the AGW argument and say, maybe these are heat-of-the-moment stuff, and in the long run will look as silly as the Durants’ allergy to Eisenhower. And perhaps, if we can put climate arguments in perspective, it will allow us to put the much smaller nano arguments (pun intended) into perspective too.
So let’s look at some ice.
I’m looking at the temperature record as read from this central Greenland ice core. It gives us about as close as we can come to a direct, experimental measurement of temperature at that one spot for the past 50,000 years. As far as I know, the data are not adjusted according to any fancy computer climate model or anything else like that.
So what does it tell us about, say, the past 500 years? (the youngest datum is age=0.0951409 (thousand years before present) — perhaps younger snow doesn’t work so well?):
Well, whaddaya know — a hockey stick. In fact, the “blade” continues up in the 20th century at least another half a degree. But how long is the handle? How unprecedented is the current warming trend?
Yes, Virginia, there was a Medieval Warm Period, in central Greenland at any rate. But we knew that — that’s when the Vikings were naming it Greenland, after all. And the following Little Ice Age is what killed them off, and caused widespread crop failures (and the consequent burning of witches) across Europe. But was the MWP itself unusual?
Well, no — over the period of recorded history, the average temperature was about equal to the height of the MWP. Rises not only as high, but as rapid, as the current hockey stick blade have been the rule, not the exception.
In fact for the entire Holocene — the period over which, by some odd coincidence, humanity developed agriculture and civilization — the temperature has been higher than now, and the trend over the past 4000 years is a marked decline. From this perspective, it’s the LIA that was unusual, and the current warming trend simply represents a return to the mean. If it lasts.
From the perspective of the Holocene as a whole, our current hockeystick is beginning to look pretty dinky. By far the possibility I would worry about, if I were the worrying sort, would be the return to an ice age — since interglacials, over the past half million years or so, have tended to last only 10,000 years or so. And Ice ages are not conducive to agriculture.
… and ice ages have a better claim on being the natural state of Earth’s climate than interglacials. This next graph, for the longest period, we have to go to an Antarctic core (Vostok):
In other words, we’re pretty lucky to be here during this rare, warm period in climate history. But the broader lesson is, climate doesn’t stand still. It doesn’t even stay on the relatively constrained range of the last 10,000 years for more than about 10,000 years at a time.
Does this mean that CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas? No.
Does it mean that it isn’t warming? No.
Does it mean that we shouldn’t develop clean, efficient technology that gets its energy elsewhere than burning fossil fuels? Of course not. We should do all those things for many reasons — but there’s plenty of time to do them the right way, by developing nanotech. (There’s plenty of money, too, but it’s all going to climate science at the moment. 
) And that will be a very good thing to have done if we do fall back into an ice age, believe me.
For climate science it means that the Hockey Team climatologists’ insistence that human-emitted CO2 is the only thing that could account for the recent warming trend is probably poppycock.
h/t to Kate at SDA
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These graphs adds more perspective:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
We live in the coldest point in geologic history since the Permian Era 250mya. Fortunately, we live in a warm interglacial (the Holocene), but unfortunately the regular occurrence of epic glaciations over the last 1.8 million years indicates another one is coming.
Soon. As many have hypothesized, and the data presented confirm, neo-glaciation has been happening for 6,000 years. But the rate has been slow — the evidence suggests temperatures plunged rapidly at the end of previous interglacials. The plunge in our future may be just around the corner.
I am rooting for CO2. I know the evidence also suggests that atmospheric CO2 concentrations are effects, not causes, of climate change. But if we could raise the global temp, and keep it warm, then we should! Burning fossil carbon might be the very best thing we can do for the planet. Frankly, I don’t think it will be enough, and we need to find more aggressive solutions to the global cooling problem.
Warmer is Better.
n.b. Sigh. If only Al had been a Coolist. Like me.
I wonder if Obama is even of normal intelligence.
Flint:
Love the poem. Did you submit it over at Delingpole’s Gore-inspired poetry competition?
TA:
Your premise about methane bubbling up in the Arctic during warmer periods in the past is correct. This is a phenomenon that nobody would have particularly noticed prior to the Global Warming Scare. Its amazing how many things go on around us unnoticed, or unremarked upon until an event or theory gives some context for observation. That’s what has happened in the case of Arctic methane.
>>> Sigh, Al, Al, Al, surely even you know that humans contribute only 3.225% of CO2, whereas 96.775% is entirely natural. Since when is 3% a majority?<<<
When Al is counting votes in Florida? ;~))
To be serious, the guy will not allow himself to be in any forum where their is even one individual who could name the boiling point of water if he can avoid it. When he does get pressed for some ‘hard science’ he just makes [snip] up off the top of his pointy head, and the ever compliant media lets him get away with it.
It’s all about government and mony, which are the only two thing Gore understands. Science???? He could care less.
Ah, the Big Picture… That nice, clear, Big Picture!
But there is one thing I disagree with, and that is…
“For climate science it means that the Hockey Team climatologists’ insistence that human-emitted CO2 is the _only thing_ that could account for the recent warming trend is probably poppycock.”
Not that it isn’t poppycock for the warmists to make such a claim, but from where comes the idea that human-emitted CO2 is just one of many factors that account for the recent warming trend and (presumably) it’s longer than usual run? While it would be nice to think so (looks alllll the way down… Yes, let’s not go there if we can avoid it!), isn’t it a bit… presumptuous, and perhaps wishful thinking…. to say we’re having any impact at all?
The hit numbers on this site at 13:30 JST:
9 December 26,924,381
10 December 27,138,725
So the daily increase is 214,344. If this rate continues, the increment for December will be more than 6,600,000 and the total hits will exceed 30 million in about two weeks ahead, just on the Christmas eve?
Heartfelt congratulations to Anthony, mods and all of you Christians!
” pat (20:07:25) : ”
He won’t release his college grades or his thesis so we can’t tell. Nobody from his class year seems to remember him either so there isn’t even any anecdotal information on what kind of a student he was.
Skeptic Tank (18:23:07) : “Uh, from the second plot, I see the MWP being about 2.5°C above the Little Ice Age.”
But, obviously ,if all the ice had melted then there would be no ice core left now to tell the story. And if the temperature of that snow is now -31 deg C there is a rather large change necessary to melt it now. Not going to happen anytime soon?
Mike Lorrey:
“b) piezoelectric nuclear batteries: tiny amounts of radioactive isotopes poised under nanotech piezo armatures is used to generate electricity from the piezo vibrations generated by alpha radiation striking the arm.”
Don’t we already have something similar? I believe our space probes are powered in a thermoelectric (not pyroelectric) manner – the tech is just rather expensive to produce.
AAAARGH. Didn’t we know this years ago??? Why is this news????. Am I caught in some warp in time that keeps replaying the same data but no-one is paying any attention? I need a cup of tea.
I really wish my fellow skeptics would stop throwing out that 3% CO2 produced by humans. The problem is that the natural CO2 is constantly recycled while the human produced CO2 Just adds to what’s already there. It will eventually join the recycling pool, but for now it adds to the amount in the atmosphere (well about half of that produced does). As the total CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the amount that is sequestered each year goes up, but as long as the amount emitted is larger than the system is able to handle, it will accumulate. The real open question is the temperature sensitivity of the system to increased atmospheric CO2. Personally I think it’s relatively low, much lower than alarmists claim. Steve McIntyre has been asking for a derivation of the sensitivity from experiment or first principles (or even just from declared assumptions) for a long time with no takers. This is what we should be pushing for.
Not so good news on the cooling front:
Redding, CA this morning set it’s all-time record low, 16 deg. F., beating out the old one of 17 set in 1937 and 1990. 2nd day in a row record low for Redding, Red Bluff and a couple other places. This is the WARM end of the Sac Valley.
Get rid of the warmists quick before we all turn into popsickles.
Lows here 16, 14, 10, 10 and 12 forecast for tonight.
No Global Warming here. Sorry folks. It’s not like we didn’t know this was coming, what with a cold PDO, sickly Sun and a bunch of literary works.
I pity the folks in the Plains and Midwest. Thier snowplows are getting stuck now. As Charlie Gisbson chortled, “this is early December, with winter 2 weeks away”.
Now, go back and watch Learnord Nimoy’s “In search of the Coming Ice Age”.
Flint (17:18:13) :
Cherry picking, some may say
Is pleasant work and fine,
But murky moil and toil it is
When you’re hiding the decline.
No playful breeze will cool your brow,
No sunlight strike your face,
As you pluck your strange, outlier fruit
In the depths of cyberspace.
Track well your codes and protocols
As through this grove you rove,
Lest you be called to replicate
The tangled web you wove.
Oh, it’s “‘Arry this” and “‘Arry that,”
And “‘Arry, keep t’yer ‘ole,”
But “Save us, ‘Arry, save us!”
When ‘eds begin to roll.
Nice one – adaptation from Rudyard Kipling’s Tommy
“O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play,..
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,..
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,..
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!”
(My Dad was mad keen on poetry)
“In other words, we’re pretty lucky to be here during this rare, warm period in climate history”. We’re lucky we was born in this time period.full stop(I’m talking developed countries).You would have to be a masochist to want to be born in any other time period.I see the AGW proponents as a threat to us, and future generations,not AGW.
The blog entry is one which I agree with and echoes (perhaps more eloquently) that which I oft state. The ONLY real long term trend that man should be concerned with is the cooling trend which has continued since the Holocene Climatic Optimum. This little warming bump of the last 100 years or so is a blessing to man and perhaps an opportunity to learn if properly approached.
Climate models are a learning tool… not proof of anything. While we can learn utilizing them I do not know of a single climate model that adequately explains the warming periods (the bumps) which have occurred during the cooling trend which has existed for over 7,500 years. There have been many, many of them. The failure by man and model to fully understand and explain them reflects that neither man nor model really knows all of that much about climate mechanisms at this time.
Science has a responsibility to man to learn… not pretend it knows. Science has and ethical and moral responsibility to society…. to prepare man to adapt to climate change regardless of the direction of change. Science is failing in that. The time, money, and effort are going to a fools errand which is focused on CO2.
But thats just the refrain… and very nice one all in all
Sorry, I am a sceptic to the end.
Here is a brief description of how the evaluation of the core is done. I do believe I see the word “corrections” in there!!!!
ABSTRACT:
Greenland ice-core records provide an exceptionally clear picture of
many aspects of abrupt climate changes, and particularly of those
associated with the Younger Dryas event, as reviewed here.
Well-preserved annual layers can be counted confidently, with only 1%
errors for the age of the end of the Younger Dryas 11,500 years before
present. Ice-flow corrections allow reconstruction of snow accumulation
rates over tens of thousands of years with little additional uncertainty.
Glaciochemical and particulate data record atmospheric-loading changes
with little uncertainty introduced by changes in snow accumulation.
Confident paleothermometry is provided by site-specific calibrations
using ice-isotopic ratios, borehole temperatures, and gas-isotopic ratios.
Near-simultaneous changes in ice-core paleoclimatic indicators of local,
regional, and more-widespread climate conditions demonstrate that much
of the Earth experienced abrupt climate changes synchronous with
Greenland within thirty years or less. Post-Younger Dryas changes
have not duplicated the size, extent and rapidity of these
paleoclimatic changes.
Sorry, here is where I found it:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
What a marvelous display of all the cherries.
Journalists, editorial boards, school children look at this.
An increase from -32 c to 31.4 c? Lessee that’s 273 kelvin – 32 c = 243 kelvin.
Increasing to 243.6 is a 0.2% increase.
What amazing accuracy from analzying a 500 year old air bubble the size of a pinhead! Speaking of pinheads….
Shoveling my driveway today, I observed several decades of annual snowfall accumulations, based upon the strata with the characteristic density differences indicating the annual temperature cycle.
Oh! my gawd, It is worse then we thought. The next great Ice Age is hard apon us. WE need a lot more CO2 to save us from the cold. At least 2 degrees C worth.
As usual Big Al is on the wrong side of reality. Must be educated beyond his intelligence. :-p
next;
Geoff Sharp (19:20:48) :
“Geoff Sharp (18:02:50) :
I have been waiting for this kind of data. I will plot it against the Holocene solar proxy records (14C & 10Be) and see what transpires.
Thanks.
Here is a first pass: http://www.landscheidt.info/images/solanki_sharp_greenland.png”
checked out your plot……. seems to me the corilation might be off 6-800 years .. maybe the same as the CO2 laging the temperatures by about 800 years. just a thought, keep at it.
The major point you’re NOT saying is that we will have to adjust in major ways to changes in climate, weather, locations of where people live and work (agriculture, bridges, highways, housing, infrastructure, water). Given what whiners we are and how little people are willing to make simple changes in their lifestyles now, how do you think that is going to go over? What do you think the cost of that will be? Differences between now and the past are a) a lot more people now straining the earth’s resources, and b) much more entrenched civilization – nomads can move quickly and adjust quickly, we can’t. A fast change in climate and weather will not eliminate the human race but it will be a disaster for most of us.
It was much, much warmer during the medieval warming period than it is today.
There are Vikings buried in permafrost in Greenland.
The permafrost was not disturbed since it froze.
It was not frozen when they were buried.
I would call that warmer then today, a lot warmer.
The ironic thing is that this evidence of the medieval warming period is in a museum in Copenhagen.
The Fate of Greenland’s Vikings February 28, 2000 by Dale Mackenzie Brown
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland
Also, the medieval warming period was global.
Fraudulent hockey sticks and hidden data
joannenova.com.au/2009/12/fraudulent-hockey-sticks-and-hidden-data
For a satirical look at the climategate computer programming (hiding the decline):
Anthropogenic Global Warming Virus Alert.
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103