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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This post says nothing about AGW. The first data point is 95 years BP. And BP should mean before 1950 – ie 1855. It misses all the modern warming.
The run-up at the end of the graph is interesting. But there’s no point in comparing it to earlier rises. It isn’t the modern warming.
Good post and a brilliant example of how cherry-picking works to make a nonsense of using average global temperature trends as a climate proxy.
As the Climategate document shows, the data can always show the trend you believe and if it doesn’t fit in exactly the data can be adjusted to make it appear so.
Looking at the last graph and observing we have an unexpectedly quiet sun makes me worry that we’re in for coller time ahead.
Nick Stokes (22:36:00) :
Well, that is a pretty silly thing to say. The modern warming is unprecedented doom laden man-made h-e-double hockey sticks(could NOT resist). Or not. Depends on your perspective. Now look at the graphs again and absorb the real point.
I think that the sequential presentation of those graphs is a wonderfully persuasive technique. (It reminded me of the wonderful OP book, Cosmic View: the Universe in 40 Jumps.) Such charts should be used on any contrarian TV presentation. But I have two suggestions.
1. If possible, fill in the gaps to bring the short-range charts up to 2000.
2. Explicitly and consistently caption each chart with titles like, “The Past n Years.” That would really help.
Dave Dardinger (21:25:08) :
“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).”
Dave, you are assuming there is some sort of natural balance. Remember, the biosphere has pulled out a HUGE amount of CO2 from our atmosphere – this implies that there is no “balance” but, in fact, that the CO2 sink dominates CO2 production.
I think there are other and better explanations for the rise of CO2 than human activity.
No wonder the climate “scientists” keep their perspective short and focus only on the last few hundred years. And no wonder the MWP is such a problem for them. From those graphs it is readily apparent why they don’t find comfort in the company of geologists with a view that’s far more extensive than theirs. Let’s let the energy companies do what they do best – find sources of energy. This will build up a greater knowledge base so that future, more creative approaches can discover new energy sources we might not be able to imagine, something we may find ourselves needing when, in the coming centuries, the bottom drops out on our rather temperate climate, no matter how much CO2 we pump into the atmosphere.
David (22:56:12) :
Well, if there’s a real point, I wish someone would say. I see a whole lot of ups and downs, maybe exaggerated, as Bill Illis (18:26:54) said. But why compare this to the rise from 1750-1850. It’s clearly intended to show that past changes are larger than the present. But what is shown is not the present.
Brilliant article. Every journalist should read it.
Have informed BBC UK & BBC Worldwide of this article. Hope they get sucked in and report it. I won’t hold my breathe.
Nick, why doesn’t the data come up to the present?
Nick Stokes (22:36:00) :
This post says nothing about AGW. The first data point is 95 years BP. And BP should mean before 1950 – ie 1855. It misses all the modern warming.
The run-up at the end of the graph is interesting. But there’s no point in comparing it to earlier rises. It isn’t the modern warming.
Here is a similar posting that has color graphs for the ice ages (though no Greenland ice cores) and includes graphs up to now. (CET, for example)
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/how-long-is-a-long-temperature-history/
Especially interesting is this graph showing the “recent warming” is about what it was in 1720…
http://www.smhi.se/sgn0102/n0205/upps_www.pdf
BTW, on the “ringing”: I think it looks more like a peak clip. Notice that our “shoot up peak” does not go as high as the others, and the sideways ‘shelf’ is about as wide as the other peaks are at that hight. So I’d look for some punctuating cooling impact that prevented the peak from going all the way. Thing from space causing “global winter” for a while? Volcanic hickup? Who knows…
But what is very clear is that there is a hard lid just above our present temps that smacks us back down; and that the “end game” is a one way trip to coldsville… There is clearly a non-linear positive feedback risk, but it is all to the downside as accelerating cold. So this present quiet sun, solar minimum, PDO, whatever cold phase is very “double plus ungood” (for the benefit of AGW folks, I’ve translated it their vernacular 😉
It is also clear that “climate” can make movements of great drama, orders of magnitude more than the last 100 years and the peaks are higher than our peak in this interglacial. (When it immediately gets knocked back down very hard).
But without that momentum coming out of an ice age, the peak can not be reached. And we don’t have that momentum behind us anymore.
And all of this is why I’ve said it is a VERY Bad Idea to push toward cooling real hard at this time. Very Very Bad Idea.
FWIW, I would guess that the major “drivers” of this cyclicality are the orbital mechanics setting the stage, then the ocean cycles, and finally the biosphere as the ice age deserts ‘green up’ and a lot of changes come to the hydrology and albedo of the planet.
We here in the US have sufficient coal, petroleum and natural gas in known and obtainable reserves to last us at least another 400 years. Oops, better switch right now at enormous cost and much higher electrical and heating rates to “new technology”. After all, we surely can’t expect technology to improve in the next 400 years any more than it did in the last 400 years, now can we?
Dave Dardinger (21:25:08) :
The problem is that the natural CO2 is constantly recycled while the human produced CO2 Just adds to what’s already there.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. There’s nothing special about the “human produced CO2”. It gets recycled just like all the other.
This is a dynamic feedback system. The natural sinks and sources balance because they push against each other in equal measure. If you want to shift that balance, you have to push in significant measure against one side or the other with signficantly comparable force.
The AGW side asserts that the two are treated differently, but this is a kluge with little justification designed to attribute the observed rise in CO2 to humans. In an earlier age, these people would have been explaining epicycles to Galileo.
Grossly exaggerated vertical scales can make even a speck of dust look the size of a mountain.
More CO2 in our atmosphere makes the green plants grow considerably faster. The faster growing green plants make themselves out of the carbon in carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. The rate of absorption of carbon dioxide increases as the percentage of carbon dioxide increases. Cycles are the most natural thing there are in nature.
This thread is refreshing.
According to NASA (2003),”……the last two decades of the twentieth century were a good time to be a plant on planet Earth. In many parts of the global garden, the climate grew warmer, wetter, and sunnier, and despite a few El Niño-related setbacks, plants flourished for the most part…. “.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalGarden/
Presumably, the CO2 enriched atmosphere was also a factor and as the CO2 emissions from burning carbon laid down in the distant past increases (as it inevitably will) and the temperature sensitivity of the atmosphere to increased concentrations decreases (it’s probably quite low now anyway), the biosphere will thrive while the human population stabilizes due to increased wealth and education.
Some hope with the mentality exhibited at the Copenhagen jamboree http://www.eikongraphia.com/wordpress/wp-content/Tower%20of%20Babel.jpg.
About the 95 years not shown in the graph: Nuuk is not in the middle of the ice sheet, but it has a long temperature record, and unfortunately for humankind, it shows that the top of the current warm period could just as well have be already 70 years behind us:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431042500000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
I know that the current interglacial is thought to be a much longer one than the previous ones, but still, the thought of a LIA – or even sligthly worse, is much more depressing than the thought of a few iceland states getting a few problems.
Hey guys- drop everything and watch this, lets laugh at how life works out- happy Christmas:
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/?p=2224
D Stewart (22:29:07) : “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).”
Our modern way of life has never been tested against any major temperature change, in either direction, so there’s really no sense in saying it can’t do anything and that we need massive amounts of thought and capital poured into something else (and most of all “stop whining”, I presume). Materials will change, consumption patterns will change, demographics will change… as the need to do so happens. And until it happens, you’re in no position to say we’ll experience massive failure.
“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?”
I can’t say what the costs will be but since things will be changing at some point in the future, the trend helps getting more people to adapt in a more efficient manner than YOU yelling at them NOW, where things are still pretty stable and warm. That’s my hunch, anyway.
And simple changes we can make now?! What, like wearing a parka? Turning up my thermostat to heat my house to 100 degrees? Learn to make igloos? Learn to ski? Build and drive more Hummers? Teach myself that recycling and not bulding and driving a Hummer will save the planet from the opposite of global warming instead? Or shall I simply shiver more (which is the simplest thing I can think to do)?
“Differences between now and the past are a) a lot more people now straining the earth’s resources…”
…And man is smarter, and has discovered economic principles that he wasn’t aware of back then, not to mention having a grasp of science whereas before he did not, together which makes him far more adaptable than in any other point in his existence…
“and b) much more entrenched civilization – nomads can move quickly and adjust quickly, we can’t.”
What does the pace and actions of nomads matter? I mean, it’s not like you or any of us have been to colder times and can say that it’s true that they will survive and that we, by contrast, meaning modern man, will face massive losses due to our own apathy of the present.
The problem is, again, you’re using the past to predict a future outcome (and one factor which is many factors simply wasn’t even there at the time from which you are projecting…)
“A fast change in climate and weather will not eliminate the human race but it will be a disaster for most of us.”
Disasters are nothing new to humankind. We’ve survived so many of them it can really be said to be background noise in te fabric of our beings. Not that colder temperatures, coming fast or slow, are even a disaster, especially given how greatly things have changed since way back in all the other plunges. They’re cold temperatures.
Why make into more than that?
Alan Wilkinson (23:34:39) :
Nick, why doesn’t the data come up to the present?
Well, the fact is that it doesn’t. I believe ice-core methods don’t work until the ice is compacted, which takes many decades.
Spend or not spend borrowed public funds on a crash programme to develop alternate energy “to save the climate” ?
Try this article which some claim is an attempt at defending current energy and climate policies !
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23901891/Climate-Policies-Balanced-Future
Andrew McKillop
Dave Dardinger (21:25:08) :
The problem is that the natural CO2 is constantly recycled while the human produced CO2 Just adds to what’s already there.
Only if you believe that the atmosphere is God and can decide to keep the man-made CO2 up and let the natural CO2 down.
Turn that argument upside down and ask yourself how is there CO2 up there even before man came along. By your logic, if it wasn’t for man, there would be no CO2 up in the atmosphere at all, as it would already have been absorbed by now. It’s a dynamic system and CO2 is heavier than air, so it’s natural propensity is to fall back to Earth.
Poppycock of course was first used, I believe, by David Bellamy back in 2004. He hasn’t been seen on BBC since. He was known and loved by a whole generation of kids who watched his programmes on botany and biology, popularising science in amazing ways.
Alas, popycock sealed his fate.
On live BBC you can use as much foul languiage as you like, leave filthy and insulting mesages on peoples answering machines, but not call AGW poppycock.
We live in interesting times indeed.
Forgot the link to the article:-
http://www.abd.org.uk/downloads/poppycock.pdf
Yes, I loved David Bellamy as a kid and felt so proud when I saw his views on AGW (I am also a PhD graduate from Durham). Go David go………………
Here’s a modern hero: