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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I find it particularly interesting that there are extreme drops in temperature corresponding with the Bronze Age Collapse in the Mediterranean, as well as the Western Roman Empire.
RE: “The real problem in an Ice Age would come from the competition for resources that are suddenly more scarce combined with nuclear weapon technology.”
Yes indeed. And even an LIA type event would unleash this. It’s coming and there is nothing we can do to stop it.
Boonton (07:24:11) :
No the bulk of natural CO2 is recycled… Yes there is no law that gurantees all natural processes net out to exactly 0 but they tend to be in rough balance. Humans are responsible for the majority of the unrecycled CO2.
That is a completely nonphysical viewpoint. I tried to explain how systems behave in the real world. Let me try again.
Balance in nature does not happen by luck. Equilibria are achieved because two forces push against each other with equal force. Suppose you have two equally stiff springs attached to opposite sides of a table, stretched so that where they both attach to a mass at the center of the table. The stretch forces cancel out, leaving the mass in place at the equilibrium in the center. Now, just because the spring forces cancel does not mean that you can push the mass, and it will just slide right off the table. When you push on it, you create an imbalance, and the mass will move just far enough that the force from the spring being stretched will cancel the force you are applying.
For example, let’s say the spring force on each side is 20 N in equilibrium, and each spring is stretched 1 meter, giving a linear spring constant of 20 N/m. Lets say you reinforce one side by shortening one of the springs by 3%, i.e., by 0.03 meters. You have then, at the old equilibrium point, added 0.03*20 = 0.6 N. There is a net force acting on the mass now, and a net force acts to accelerate mass. Will we therefore accelerate the mass right off the table? Of course not. We will move it until the spring forces cancel again, i.e., to the point K*(1-x) = K*(1+x-0.03) or x = 0.03/2 = 0.015 meters from the center in the direction of the shortened spring. You’ve applied 0.6 N out of 20 N, a 3% increase, from one side, yet you only moved the mass 1.5% of the distance to the side.
Valkyrie Ice (03:29:40) :
Gravity has been measured directly via torsion balance on uncharged spheres. It isn’t electrical.
Have a look at just how much of our present civilisation exists close to sea level.
Then look at the sea level change at the end of the Ice Age.
Yes and because 10,000 years ago small villages of 100 people or less had no problem moving 10, 20, or 30 miles as water lines shifted hardly means it would be no big deal to simply move the developed coastlines of the US 10 miles over 10 years (or even 30 years for that matter). Granted it wouldn’t be an extinction level event but it would be bad.
Evolve, adapt, sieze the opportunities. Don’t waste money fighting Nature to avoid what Nature wants, work with it.
This is a niece prep talk but I don’t know what it has to do with global warming. It’s not about ‘fighting nature’ but about trying to properly take costs into account….that has a lot to do with siezing opportunities BTW.
Bart
That is a completely nonphysical viewpoint. I tried to explain how systems behave in the real world. Let me try again.
I’m not seeing your point. Clearly there are massive natural forces that put CO2 in the air and massive forces that take it out. If they weren’t in a rough balance our atmosphere would either have no CO2 at all or would be filled to the brim with CO2. A rough balance simply means they tend to cancel out, there might be some periods where a bit more goes in than comes out and vice versa so 800 ppm CO2 is not a constant like, say, the speed of light. That’s all I meant.
The statement Gore made that humans are responsible for the majority of CO2 is correct if you’re asking what is responsible for the net increase in CO2. If you’re asking what produces the bulk of the gross CO2 put into the air in any given period of time then Gore’s answer would be incorrect. Its the former, though, that is relevant.
A rough balance simply means they tend to cancel out…”
The point is that, any additions do not simply integrate independently of the natural forcings. They become part of the system. And, to affect the system substantially, they have to be substantially on the order of the natural forcing.
But, anthropogenic forcing is not substantially on the order of the natural forcing. At all.
“The statement Gore made that humans are responsible for the majority of CO2 is correct if you’re asking what is responsible for the net increase in CO2.”
No. He isn’t. It is a hypothesis based on a kluge, not a proven fact.
Boonton,
I saw that you tried to refer to wikipedia.
Let me explain something about Wikipedia;
Wikipedia is a nice place to find info on for example dead things. Like planes, cars, boats. But it is no place to go if you want to find facts where there is politics involved. Many historic data cannot be looked up there.
The last place to go regarding global warming is wikipedia.
Or anything that can be coupled to global warming.
Try yourself to put that article on top here in Wiki. It wont last long. I few minutes, is my guesswork. Unless something has changed lately.
I tried to put stuff there, and it was removed within 5 minutes. Thrust me, Wiki has a gatekeeper there, making sure nothing is put there, that isnt political correct regaring global warming.
Yeah!
With analyses like this, there is not really any need for radiative physics, is it?
“Present” is assumed to be 1950 in this plot:
(Present might be different in ice cores but does not make much difference)
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/1373/gisp2moderngrnlnd.png
This appends a shifted (-29degC) measurement from modern Greenland on to the end of the misrepresented plots made here.
As can be seen even this crude addition shows modern temperature at 1degC above the MWP.
Todays temperature is in fact as high as any in the last 2000 yeats. In the period of the core there are only 3higher temperatures (5900BC,4975BC, 1347BC).
Comments?”
OK – I’ll bite
1. So you admit there are periods in the past, when the temperature was higher? What was the reason?
2. Does anyone know how close to the green bits of Greenland (back when Greenland used to be green) this ice core is?
3. How closely correlated is ice core data with the appended modern measurement data? The appended data indicates what appears to be a dramatic warming followed by a dramatic cooling followed by another dramatic warming. It seems much more variable than the ice core data.
4. You mention this is a ‘crude’ addition you have done. How would you get it more accurate?
I would like to add some more on Wikipedia;
I never tried to add my own entry from scratch.
What I did was trying to add some issues regarding global warming in an already existing entry.
It was no inflamatory stuff, just a reference indicating that there might be other explanations too.
But it was removed within 5 minutes.
As I understand , there are three main Global Temperture datasets :
* The University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climate Research Unit
* NOAA/GHCN, the Global Historical Climate Network
* NASA/GISS, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies
The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the University of East
Anglia’s Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU) receives almost all of their raw
data from the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) , which is part of NOAA !
Since the big debacle about the ‘ Hockey Stick ‘ theory , maybe the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration decided to rather have other agencies devise the hockey stick , the NOAA had decided to do it for them ?
One point. In ice core and geological records, “before present” generally means before 1950. For example, from an article on GRIP ice cores “BP refers to 1950 for both ice core and 14 C yr (which are uncalibrated).” From an article on Taylor Dome ice cores, “The data set consists of depth (m), ice age (kyr BP 1950) …”
As a result, your dates are all off by 59 years. Your “Hockeystick” rise shown above began in 1778, and the most recent date in the record is 1855.
Other than that, great presentation.
Dr. Lurtz (17:39:42) : “During an eclipse, the temperature in the tropics drops 20 degrees F in 15 minutes. How can a rational person not know that the Sun controls our climate?? ”
Unfortunately Doc, the sun didn’t change during the ecilpse. It was the insolation that changed due to the moon. This is the crux of the ongoing discussion involving cloud cover.
These may be a dumb questions, but:
1. How in the heck can you get a historical temperature reading from a chunk of ice?
2. From what I can see, the “hockey stick” and other variations are less than half a degree. Doesn’t this fall within “experimental error” or “instrument noise”?
3. Here on my deck, the temperature in the morning is around 10 degrees C; at 3 in the afternoon it is around 35 C. So what is the big deal if the earth warms up one or two degrees?
Please explain????
could someone explain the numbers on the right of the graph because they make no sense to me.
Boonton (11:55:14)
‘This is a niece prep talk but I don’t know what it has to do with global warming. It’s not about ‘fighting nature’ but about trying to properly take costs into account….that has a lot to do with siezing opportunities BTW.’
Seizing opportunities,BTW, is the problem at the expense of consumers and tax payers. The Co2 warming alarmist want the consumers and taxpayer to pay trillions to combat at slight increase in temperature caused by doubling of Co2.
Who will benefit? Wall Street, the same ones who gave us the housing bubble, big business, like GE. our government, with a new tax system and control that will rival income tax, and other special interest groups, like third world dictators who kill and mane their citizen.
Yes sir folks, give me that good old fashion Co2 Cap and trade. Like the one that Enron wanted.
Onion (14:45:34) :
plot:
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/1373/gisp2moderngrnlnd.png
This appends a shifted (-29degC) measurement from modern Greenland on to the end of the misrepresented plots made here.
1. So you admit there are periods in the past, when the temperature was higher? What was the reason?
No idea, but as someone pointed out temperatures seem to act like an underdamped electronic resonant circuit with ringing. Look at the response to the end of younger drias transient.
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/histo2.png
If the climate is reacting like an underdamped circuit then it shows that it could easily be pushed into wild oscillation!
3. How closely correlated is ice core data with the appended modern measurement data? The appended data indicates what appears to be a dramatic warming followed by a dramatic cooling followed by another dramatic warming. It seems much more variable than the ice core data.
The further north you go it seems that warming in the 40’s gets bigger almost reaching current temperatures.:
this is nordik temps below 50 metres asl
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/5748/nordikbelow50m.png
above 50m asl
http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/5932/nordikabove50m.png
all heights but further north than 60N
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/6634/nordikabove60n.png
All heights but further South than 60N
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/7210/nordikbelow60n.png
4. You mention this is a ‘crude’ addition you have done. How would you get it more accurate?
All I did was chose a long record station as close as possible to the grip sample site. However, the station is presumably costal and low altitude whereas gisp is at a few 1000metres asl. No modification of either data was made to account for this. The station temperature is nearly 30deg C warmer than the core temps.
Dr. Ross Taylor (17:15:49) :
Thank you for this excellent piece of realism.
Sigh…Al Gore, on CNN yesterday, pronounced to the world that humans were responsible for the majority of CO2 in the atmosphere. Of course, no-one picked up on it. I could not believe what I was hearing:
“CHETRY: And that goes along with what David in Arizona asked you. He wants to know, please tell us what percentage of carbon dioxide is caused by human activity relative to other sources of carbon dioxide.
GORE: Well, the majority of it is caused by human activity…”
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?
3% is a majority when a Progressive wants something. If they can stifle debate, if they can create a “consensus” among a small group without the media showing just how small that group is, if they can hide the 96.775% with large words and lengthy commentary like Gavin Schmidt did in the interview above being allowed 5 times as much air time to state theory as fact. I like Dr Christie but he is not good for TV interviews. He was quite passive.
The following story was related to me by a friend who works at a large research university that is up to its eyeballs in environmental nonsense generally and AGW in particular: “We were interviewing prospective graduate students. So in walks this student who, after the usual pleasantries, announced that she wanted to study the consequences of global warming. ‘And what will you do,’ I asked, ‘if the climate cools?’ She looked at me disbelieving. So I pulled out a copy of Alley’s book, The Two Mile Time Machine and showed her a couple of figures that cover the material treated here. She looked at them, muttered something about not knowing much about paleoclimatology and ended the interview. I’ve often wondered as to her reaction on learning (if she ever did) that global temperatures, at least for the present, have stabilized.”
To my friend’s account, I would add two observations of my own, probably familiar to most posters here.
The first is that there is independent evidence for climatic cooling in Greenland as the MWP transitioned to the LIA. The evidence is in the form of changing carbon isotope ratios in Viking bones exhumed from a Greenland graveyard. These data allow one to conclude that with the passage of time, the settlers got more of their food from the sea and less from terrestrial sources, i.e., presumably in the form of milk and meat from their livestock. This, of course, is what you would expect if the climate cooled. A good reference is Arneborg, J., et al. 1999. Change of diet of the Greenland Vikings determined from stable carbon isotope analysis and 14C dating of their bones. Radiocarbon. 41: 157-168.
My second observation is that warmists familiar with the Greenland Viking / LIA story will tell you that these were local phenomena, which is why Mannian hockey sticks are so important to their argument. JoNova gives a good review of the evidence refuting this claim, <i.e., that the MWP was a world-wide phenomenon.
” mrmetreon (17:03:18) :
could someone explain the numbers on the right of the graph because they make no sense to me.”
They appear to be meaningless they don’t appear to be C of F and the numbers descend which makes no sense, if the graphs are meant to represent ascending temperatures. The Vostok image makes sense but that is someone else’s work the figures there are in C either side of a 0 mean.
What can you expect if you reference the work of Nano technology scientist rather than a climate scientist.
bill (18:05:28) :
If the climate is reacting like an underdamped circuit then it shows that it could easily be pushed into wild oscillation!
Ummm…. Doesn’t it already oscillate wildly? If you look at the temperature on a day to day basis for all four seasons, that is pretty apparent. In fact, it is often referred to as ‘noise’ or ‘weather’.
mrmetreon (17:03:18) – What numbers on the right of what graph? The graphs on this article don’t seem to have numbers on the right.
“And the following Little Ice Age is what killed them off, and caused widespread crop failures (and the consequent burning of witches) across Europe.”
Interesting that the current climate scare is also causing witch-hunts. Some things never change.
Boonton (09:43:11) :
“This hints that carbon is somehow very important to the system and both types of massive natural systems have been in rough balance for a very long time. At least in terms of human experience. Again if 500,000 years ago something wacky happened with CO2 and climate we weren’t around for it so whatever costs it imposed were born by animals and plants.”
Wrong. The historic record shows that CO2 has been many orders of magnitude bigger than it is now, so no ‘rough balance’ is in evidence. No catastrophic global warming either, so CO2 levels have only the smallest of effects on global temperature – H2O vapour is the major GHG.
Life on earth is only here now because it has evolved to cope with the changes seen in the past. Life can be found in the hottest desserts, and in the coldest places on Earth. Homosapiens can and does live successfully over a wide temperature range, so when climate changes, as it surely will, our descendants will find new ways to adapt. Species only evolve in response to environmental pressures. Without change they stagnate and little development happens.
“Stephen (20:37:27) :
” mrmetreon (17:03:18) :
could someone explain the numbers on the right of the graph because they make no sense to me.”
They appear to be meaningless they don’t appear to be C of F and the numbers descend which makes no sense, if the graphs are meant to represent ascending temperatures. The Vostok image makes sense but that is someone else’s work the figures there are in C either side of a 0 mean.
What can you expect if you reference the work of Nano technology scientist rather than a climate scientist.”
The numbers on the LEFT side of the graphs are temperatures in degrees celsius, as can be read from the NOAA-archived source data file that the author used. But I suppose that “real” climate scientists such as yourself can’t be bothered with looking at the actual underlying data. Nor indeed with discriminating between left and right. You are aware that there are negative temperatures in the celsius temperature scale, aren’t you?