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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“jack1947 (02:28:38) :
This is all very intersting and excellently explained. Can we please have the sources/references for the various graphs (and data) used? Thanks”
If you follow the link to Mr. Halls Foresight Institute website, and then from there follow the links to the NOAA website (a little hard to see – they are not highlighted with bright colors, only with grey on white), you will find the data files that NOAA has archived, and the reference to the articles they are from.
“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.”
Cheers Bill
What would make your graph more informative is if you plot the gisp temperature going back as far as that record goes. If there’s some overlap with the core data, it will give some idea of correlation between the two data series
Martin B said “jack1947 (02:28:38) :
This is all very intersting and excellently explained. Can we please have the sources/references for the various graphs (and data) used? Thanks”
If you follow the link to Mr. Halls Foresight Institute website, and then from there follow the links to the NOAA website (a little hard to see – they are not highlighted with bright colors, only with grey on white), you will find the data files that NOAA has archived, and the reference to the articles they are from.
Many thanks, Martin. It is obvious when you look at it, but we are all speed readers these days. Sorry. This post is a critical part of the wider argument against the current scientific madness. The sources are critical to making our case v the AGW lobby.
This information has to have been available for a long time. This can’t be the first time we are seeing this. What is the epistle from the Church of AGW elders on this point?
Onion (02:32:59) :
What would make your graph more informative is if you plot the gisp temperature going back as far as that record goes. If there’s some overlap with the core data, it will give some idea of correlation between the two data series
Unfortunately there is no overlap between station and GISP.
GISP finishes 1854.9 and Angmagssalik station starts at 1895
There is no station available that overlaps GISP 1880 is earliest.
I’ve found the following article regarding methane release during previous warm spell:
“Based on this result and on the presented analysis, it appears that all areas north of 60°N will maintain permafrost at least at depth. North of 70°N, surface temperature values today are in general below -11°C. These areas should maintain their active layer. It appears unlikely that almost all areas with near-surface permafrost today will lose their active layer within the next 100 years”
“”A second, rarely touched upon question is associated with the apparently limited amount of organic carbon that had been released from permafrost terrain in previous periods of climatic warming such as e.g. the Medieval Warm Period or during the Holocene Climatic Optimum. There appear to be no significant CH4-excursions in ice core records of Antarctica or Greenland during these time periods which otherwise might serve as evidence for a massive release of methane into the atmosphere from degrading permafrost terrains.””
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/05/24/cooling-the-permafrost-scare/
These graphs should, if AGW was about rational thinking, put an end to the whole enterprise.
But that huge lack of rational thinking in the AGW community is a pretty big problem.
I sent someone to this link and he replies to me thus…
Looks like they cherry picked data, other icecores come out with different results. This is why I would only trust reviews that take into account lots of ice cores like the IPCC AR4.
…Would this ba a valid comment?
I haven’t had time yet to check into it all.
ChrisP.
Take a look at my analysis of dozens of ice cores and draw your own conclusions. http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf.
If you take a another step outside the earth-centric hubris of the alarmist and notice that the polar ice on Mars is melting you can triangulate the historic and local with the trans terrestrial.
Boontoon says: we don’t really know the consquences of pushing CO2 ever higher. This argues for setting systems in place now to try to limit that.
Wrong. There is no evidence whatsoever that higher atmospheric C02 levels are in any way a danger to mankind or the environment. On the contrary, there is plenty of evidence that the some 100ppm higher C02 levels are entirely beneficial, increasing plant growth rates substantially.
Trying to limit C02 is not only costly, it is insane, whether done by trying to limit fossil fuels or by geoengineering.
I am not sure now, are all the data shown in this presentation absolutely correct?
I arranged all the graphs on this post into a youtube video to post on my blog. Feel free to use it.
REPLY: Dear “Doc” Thanks very much for doing this, I had planned to do so but you saved me the trouble. I’ll make this it’s own post – Anthony
docattheautopsy – great stuff/blogged it.
This is all very interesting but, mostly irrelevant since climate change is no longer a science issue.
The totalitarian impulse that made hell on Earth for much of the 20th Century is resurgent. You can see that by looking at the proposed solutions to the alleged problem of global warming / climate change / name du jour. Basically, you will give your lives to these control freaks. How you live, where you live, even if you live will be decided by people who hate people.
The opportunists who see profit in this scam – the carbon traders, the third world tin pots looking for “compensation” and so on – are the useful idiots for the anti human totalitarians.
To answer the question on nanotechnology: 1/3 of US energy consumption is used to make steel from iron ore and coal. The process used essentially “burns” the iron ore, which is incredibly energy inefficient. Nano lets you do the same thing at a fraction of the energy, and lets you separate out the iron atoms from the chrome, carbon, etc. So one can regenerate new types of steel from the old.
the big problem IS how much energy is saved, and that all that existing steel can now get easily recycled: it means coal mines, ore mines, all the railroads used to move them, the furnaces, all get closed. So while the country as a whole comes out way ahead on energy costs, certain unions will NOT be happy.
So expect this technology to first be deployed in other countries (my bet is Mexico), and our unions to demand subsidies and tariffs to keep it out.
It’s a truly good wind that blows nobody ill…
*******
10 12 2009
Fred H. Haynie (08:03:59) :
I produced a pdf presentation. http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf. You may find answers to many of your questions there. If you wish to contact me, my e-mail address can be found on that site.
*******
Fred, that’s an impressive bit of analysis there! It looks accurate from a first pass. But I think Ferdinand Engelbeen (just do a search for his name here or Climateaudit) would disagree about the source of the current CO2 increase — his isotope-ratio arguments are pretty convincing that they’re from fossil-fuel combustion.
Are you saying some CO2 trapped in clathrates don’t end up showing itself? I’d presume the clathrate releases the gas when vaporized during the analysis, unless chemically changed.
For the technically inclined, I’d recommend people look at your extensive analysis and website.
Beng,
My analysis of the isotope data indicates that about one third of the CO2 accumulation is from organic sources and two-thirds from inorganic. Concetrations of both have been increasing at about the same rate indicating they are most likely coming from the same source (the ocean). Fossil fuels are not a source of the inorganic fraction. There is a lots of decaying organic matter in the oceans to be the source of C13 depleted CO2.
Clathrate hydrates are a liquid structure at atmospheric pressures and temperatures above about -30C. I have no idea what happens to them at temperatures and pressures in deep ice cores. The air bubbles are no longer a gas. The gas is extracted after the cores have been climatized to atmospheric pressures for a long time. As I understand it, the ice is crushed in a vacuum to extract the air without vaporizing the water. Am I wrong?
There was a professor in Australia (I think his name is Bob Carters or Carteres) who plotted the CO2 in the same graphs as shown here and he found that the increase in CO2 always lagged the warming period by a couple of hundred years, in other words: the increase in CO2 is a cause of global warming, not the other way around. Just as much as lung cancer does not cause smoking.
This makes sense from a chemistry point of view as I am sure a large portion of CO2 is dissolved in the oceans: CO2 + 3H2O =>CO3– + 2H3O+. If the oceans warm up, the equilibrium shifts in the opposite direction: CO3– + 2H3O+ => CO2 + 3 H2O
Henry Pool,
Didn’t you mean to say increased atmospheric CO2 is the result of global warming and not the cause?
The real interesting thing of all this, is how fast earth changes from glaciation to warm. You have to wonder, what was the sun doing that made that happen?
Perspective, something the lamestream media carefully factors out of their presentations.
@ur momisugly Fred: yes, the record showed that increases in CO2 followed the warming periods.
This is where I blame Al Gore. He and the professors that helped him should have known this. In the movie they made it look like as if the temperatures went up the same time as when the CO2 went up. If he (Al Gore) did not know about this then, he should know the truth by now.
@ur momisuglytarpon
I found out hat most scientists skeptic of AGW think that climate is related to cloud formation. The more cloud formation, the more sunlight is deflected from earth. The less cloud formation the more heat is absorbed by earth (the oceans act as buffers for this energy). In its turn, cloud formation can apparently be related to solar activity. More solar wind means fewer cosmic rays and fewer cosmic rays mean fewer clouds. It is predicted that a period of more clouds is now coming, i.e. global cooling is apparently on hand.
Why stop the analysis during the Pleistocene? Look back even further to the Paleocene-Eocene global warming event:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum
So, speaking as a geologist, what is all the hysteria about? The only constant is change.
Fred – your work is spectacular. I have been saying for ages that the IPCC storyline on the rise in CO2 from anthropogenic sources is non-physical. I have discovered it is all based on a kluge which allow them to claim that anthropogenic and natural CO2 are taken up differently by the sinks, despite the fact that there is no difference beyond infinitesimal isotopic variation between them, and nature has no way of enforcing this “separate but equal” treatment.
Fred, a very quick search brought up a link:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icecores.html
that states:
The ice core was sliced into 1.5-2.0 meter segments. A discontinuous series sampled every 25 meters and a continuous series from 1,406 to 2,803 meters were then sent in solid form to Grenoble, France for further analysis.
At Grenoble the ice was put into clean stainless steel containers. The samples were crushed and then melted with the gases given off collected and saved for further analysis. The melt water was tested for chemical composition and then electrolysised.
From that short description, I can’t say if carbon could “hide” in the water as carbon compounds (tho the water was analysized). More searching should bring up further details.