From WUWT on March 16, 2008, we found this article and it is now just getting national news exposure. I’m bringing it forward again since there has been a lot of activity in search engine traffic that has found its way here tonight.
Sean Hannity read from it during his Fox News show.
Read the original article here:
November 2nd, 1922. Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.
Anthony, mods:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/8443687.stm
Andrew Neil relentlessly grills John Hirsh, head of the Met Office during a BBC program for blowing the weather predictions, and why he received a performance bonus for such bad forecasting.
Destined to become a classic.
Should be a spike in WUWT views today.
I still want to see 250,000,000 by January 1, 2011.
Look what this Guardian article claims true science is:
Britain’s cold snap does not prove climate science wrong
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/jan/06/cold-snap-climate-sceptics
“The ability to distinguish trends from complex random events is one of the traits that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is also the basis of all science; detecting patterns, distinguishing between signal and noise, and the means by which the laws of physics, chemistry and biology are determined.”
Emphasis is mine.
Doesn’t even remotely sound like the definition of science I learned years ago!! What happened to the scientific method??
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Hannity only steals from the best!
@ wayne (23:34:03) :
Thus we remain in awe that science ever saw progress before the invention of the spreadsheet.
Dev (23:21:39)
I got the impression that Andrew Neil knew more about the Met Office’s medium/long term forecasting record than did the Met’s performance bonussed head, John Hirst, who seemed to be full of bluster and wanted only to focus on the Met’s short-term forecasting effort. Though even there, Hirst was unable to explain why foreign (US) weather sites were forecasting the cold spell in the UK this January long before the Met alerted the British public If I were a UK taxpayer, I would want my money back.
wayne (23:34:03) :
Look what this Guardian article claims true science is:
“The ability to distinguish trends from complex random events is one of the traits that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.”
If so then why do some birds migrate?
Why is the Met Office, with its multi million pound supercomputer, unable to “distinguish trends from complex random events” and come up with an accurate seasonal forecast? Their 50% chance of milder than normal winter for 2009 which was later changed to 45% chance of a colder than normal winter seems very animalistic to me? :o)
Here are some more historic Arctic melt stories from way back:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08578.htm
http://www.icue.com/portal/site/iCue/flatview/?cuecard=41751
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Arctic.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1078291/
http://co2science.org/articles/V12/N32/C2.php
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2372
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826611.200-when-crocodiles-roamed-the-arctic.html
wayne (23:34:03) :
The more I think about Guardians definition of science the madder I get! Reading patterns in charts, detecting trends, boloney! Their beloved ‘scientists’ sure didn’t detect THIS pattern. They didn’t find THIS trend! You might as well throw in reading tea leaves and reading Al Gores palm creases into their definition of ‘true science’!
Dev (23:21:39) :
Bloody brilliant… loved every second of that. John Hirsh came across as a weasely politician trying to justify the very air he breathes. I see he stated the world will warm in the next decade… bring it on Juohn baby!
photon without a Higgs (23:22:45) :
Poor Anthony and mods if that does happen… he will have to sub-lease half of the Google hardware to keep up 😉
The idea of unpredecented weather events in Australia is also well tested by early news reports. I found this report of drought conditions in the Lachlan a bit of a classic…
http://littleskepticpress.blogspot.com/2009/12/lachlan-river-valley-things-have-been.html
Washington Post, November 2nd, 1922. “Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt” is a particularly good example of a way to calm hysteria. I have been pushing around (as recently as yesterday) as it has the same impact on others as it did on me when I saw it mentioned in a comment on WUWT? in early 2008.
When pointing to it I always say: “Check the dateline.”
That is where the shock and awe begin…
In the last 200 odd years there have been 4 climate change panics, 2 warming and 2 cooling, based on the frequency and sequence of the previous 4 panics the next one is due in 2030 and will be a cooling panic.
“The ability to distinguish trends from complex random events is one of the traits that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.”
should read
“The ability to distinguish imagined trends from complex random events and think you can change them is one of the traits that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.”
We dislike change and prefer certainty, ask any nursery nurse or old care home assistant what is the easiest way to keep their charges happy and they will say a regualar routine.
Just to clarify for those who can’t think for themselves; The Global Cooling we have now, is the opposite of Global Warming.
Well, based on non-scientific arguments, it might be possible to postulate that a ‘regime change’ happened in 1918 ish to warm conditions, another one around 1950ish to cold conditions and another around 1980ish to warm again.
I note that ice is forming around Spitzbergen, if you think the NSIDC satellite data is sound, so we may be returning to a new ‘cold regime’ for the next 3 decades in the Norwegian/Russian sector of the arctic.
Will this be accompanied by a ‘warmer regime’ around Newfoundland?
I guess that’s for the experts to educate us about…………..
Timing Could Not be Better
Today, Penn Hadow will give a lecture to the Insurance Institute of London on Climate Change and the results of his “scientific” expedition to the North Pole to
no doubt discover “The ability to distinguish trends from complex random events is one of the traits that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is also the basis of all science; detecting patterns, distinguishing between signal and noise, and the means by which the laws of physics, chemistry and biology are determined.”
Hee hee
Paul
It does make one wonder, why it’s taken Fox the thick end of 2 years to raise this?
The arctic melting in the period 1920-1940 is very well documented as expeditions there to view the rapidly melting ice became the equivalent of todays celebrity jaunts to the area.
The most famous were those mounted by Bob Bartlett on the Morrissey. One memorable diary extract describes his observations of the mile wide face of a glacier falling in to the sea.
http://boothbayharborshipyard.blogspot.com/2008/08/arctic-explorer-on-ways.html
“Wednesday, 10th August 1932
The ship rolled heavily all night and continues to do so….
The glacier continues its disturbances. No real bergs break off but great sheets of ice slide down into the water and cause heavy seas. About noon, the entire face of the glacier, almost a mile in length and six or eight feet deep slid off with a roar and a rumble that must have been heard at some distance. We were on deck at the time for a preliminary report like a pistol shot had warned us what was coming. The Morrissey rolled until her boats at the davits almost scooped up the water and everything on board that was not firmly anchored in place crashed loose. But this was nothing to the pandemonium on shore. I watched it all through the glasses. The water receded leaving yards of beach bare and then returned with a terrific rush, bringing great chunks of ice with it. Up the beach it raced further and further, with the Eskimos fleeing before it. It covered all the carefully cherished piles of walrus meat, flowed across two of the tents with their contents, put out the fire over which the noonday meal for the sled drivers was being prepared, and stopped a matter of inches before it reached the pile of cement waiting to be taken up the mountain. Fortunately, in spite of heavy sea, which was running, the Captain had managed to be set shore this morning so he was there with them to help straighten out things and calm them down.”
There are pathe news reels of his voyages which your grandparents may have watched at the cinema in the 1930’s, and books on the subject.
Here is a bibliography of material relating to him.
http://www.nlpubliclibraries.ca/nlcollection/pdf/guides/NL_Collection_Guide_11.pdf
These are two technical examinations of the 1920 arctic melting referenced here;
ftp://ftp.whoi.edu/pub/users/mtimmermans/ArcticSymposiumTalks/Smolyanitsky.pdf
http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Chylek/greenland_warming.html
This free online book by Dr Arnd Bernaerts examines the last great warming -prior to the modern one- in great detail.
Arctic warming 1919-1939. Author: Dr Arnd Bernaerts
. http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/chapter_1.html
My own study demonstrated a surprisingly warm period recorded in the arctic around 1815-1860 and was carried here.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice/#more-8688
I have often written short pieces on the frequent episodes of Arctic warming back to the Ipiatuk some 3000 years ago, and one day will work them up into a longer piece. There is simply nothing the slightest bit out of the ordinary regarding extensive arctic ice melt at very regular intervals.
Tonyb
photon without a Higgs (23:22:45) :
I still want to see 250,000,000 by January 1, 2011.
Do you think the site has the bandwidth to host the exclusive video of the pagan sacrifice of Al Gore to appease the Sun God and beg for the return of the warmth?
Of course if you can think of something else that could get that many hits, well, feel free to suggest it. Might be a bit tough gathering enough practicing Druids for my idea anyway…
“Doesn’t even remotely sound like the definition of science I learned years ago!! What happened to the scientific method??”
————————————
Don’t be silly. The scientific method is so early 20th century. Only new improved climate science can get you the reliable, constant and immediate conclusions you need, no matter what is actually happening in reality. Only with climate science can you start with whatever conclusion you want¬* and then work backwards to selectively fit evidence to the conclusion. Ah, but what if the evidence does not fit the conclusion? that is NOT a problem with climate science as we have two possible ways to deal with such an eventuality:
1. safely ignore or reject any contradictory evidence and denounce anyone who raises it as a flat-earther or denier.
2. edit the evidence, overly un-related evidence over the actual evidence to “smooth” the evidence to fit the theory.
Yes only in climate science can outright lies be passed off as truth and the dodgy methods involved can be legitimately suppressed. Even the pesky freedom of information act cannot hinder data manipulation**
Feeling sad that politicians do not take your conclusions seriously enough? Not enough certainty with the old, difficult “scientific method”? Too much variability? Not to worry, NEW climate science gives you all the certainty you could possibly need. Have politicians and the media scaring little children and giving them nightmares in no time. YES with NEW climate science, even polar bears falling out of the sky and monkeys and kangaroos committing suicide becomes believable.
SO throw out all those old science text books, and embrace climate science, where conclusions lead the science wherever YOU want it to go!
¬* so long as the conclusion is runaway global warming. Remember that in climate science, you give us your conclusion before we give you the grant to pay for your research!!!
** does not guarantee to eliminate the possibility of whistle blowers exposing the truth.
I got a real kick out the part where it said that reports from fishermen, hunters, reseachers all point to a radical change in the climate.
Oh really, now? And I suppose, then, that all the reports of alien abductions over the years point to an imminent invasion from the next system over?
And I didn’t note the date, at first, so I mistook that for an article written in recent times. Now, I like to think that some day future generations will look back on this and laugh their keesters off over how dumb we were. I’m not so sure about that now…
Captain Martin Ingebrigteen ‘says that he first noted warmer conditions in 1918, that since that time it has steadily gotten warmer, and that today the Arctic of that region is not recognizable as the same region of 1868 to 1917.’
The warm PDO kicked off in 1916 and 1976 – the great climate shift is under our nose and has nothing to do with AGW.
Dev (23:21:39) :
That was quite amusing. In effect he said:
Our short term forecasts are impeccable -when the short term is the present we can tell you what is happening. (and was hitherto predicted by anyone but the Met Office)
Our very long term forecasts are excellent. The best in the world. This is proven by the fact that they haven’t happened yet but will in the future.
In the BBC interview, John Hirsh claims that iin 1999 the Met Office forecast a levelling off in global temperature rise over the coming decade (as has happened).
Is he correct?
I thought the basis of all science was:
1. Define the problem
2. Gather information
3. Form hypothesis
4. Collect data and experiment
5. Analyze
6. Form conclusions
7. Publish results
8. Apply quality assurance and independent testing.
9. Revise conclusions and go back to step 3.
AGW goes 6, 3, 1, 4 and 7. Step 2 is incomplete, step 5 is token and steps 8 and 9 are disregarded.
wayne (23:34:03) :
“What happened to the scientific method??”
I think there may be a connection here somewhere.
Monday 27 July 2009 19.06 BST:
“The Scott Trust Charitable Fund supports projects associated with independent journalism, journalist ethics, media literacy and journalist training, both in the UK and abroad.”
…
“The Trust has also joined forces with the BBC and Reed Elsevier to take part in a two-year project with the Global Reporting Initiative to develop specific metrics for the global media industry on how to report on their corporate social responsibilities”
—-
Scott Trust = Guardian
BBC = Government
Reed Elsevier = New Scientist
—-
Still looking for the common financial interest link….
So it was warm in November 1922. Why is it that those Flat Earthers who consider the sun to be the prime cause of of our variable climate, not man, are not surprised?
[URL=http://img260.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=56083_Sunspot_Nos_1900_to_1940_122_429lo.jpg][IMG]http://img260.imagevenue.com/loc429/th_56083_Sunspot_Nos_1900_to_1940_122_429lo.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
Correction 200 years should have read 110 years, here’s the webpage from 2006 that lists them plus some of the press reports and learned papers.
http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice.asp
It is patently obvious that the global air circulation systems moved poleward from around 1975 and that resulted in a small amount of warming in the troposphere.
It is equally obvious that they started moving equatorward again as long ago as 2000 which is a fact that I noted at the time and that I have been proclaiming for two years now. That resulted in, first a pause in warming and now, probably a cooling.
Unless one can link CO2 levels in the air to those air circulation movements then CO2 as any sort of climate driver is as dead as the Dodo.
“The ability to distinguish trends from complex random events is one of the traits that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is also the basis of all science; detecting patterns, distinguishing between signal and noise, and the means by which the laws of physics, chemistry and biology are determined.”
They have simply snap themselves.
Their inability to distinguish the signal and noise would implies that they are not scientists of any kind. Not to mention that they have actually twist the fundamentals of the science.
Dev (23:21:39) :
Niel let him off the hook on the prediction from 1998/9 though, which was a shame. They did not forecast a levelling off of global temps in that year but Hirst said they did. Niel should have had that prediction to hand. Nvere the less it was a typical robust Niel interview and made Hirst very uncomfortable.
“wayne (23:34:03) :
[…]
“The ability to distinguish trends from complex random events is one of the traits that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is also the basis of all science; detecting patterns, distinguishing between signal and noise, and the means by which the laws of physics, chemistry and biology are determined.”
[…]
Doesn’t even remotely sound like the definition of science I learned years ago!! What happened to the scientific method??”
Move over Popper, Get lost Occam, hello, Dr. Mann…
They seem to place more of their chips on Methane now:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8437703.stm
Burn it before it reaches the atmosphere! Quick!
I liked the sentiment expressed in the last sentence: “The warmth of the waters makes it probable that the favourable ice conditions will continue for some time”
“Favourable” indeed!
The article was also read yesterday morning by Steve Ducie on the “Fox and Friends show”.
Really enjoyed the skewering of John Hirst. The Met Office should be privatized, perhaps then a few minds would be concentrated on accurate forecasting rather than propaganda.
Look about now would be a good time to reflect upon just what a marvel a truly brilliant scientist is. Not the BS IPCC variety. I’m talking Albert Einstein, Max Plank, Neils Bohr and the like. People have by and large taken for granted our amazing ascent from the very basic level of knowledge just a century or so ago to the meteoric rise in knowhow of the modern age. No wonder the general public were so easilly fooled into believing that real science has anything to do with this farcical agw movement. Instead of celebrating the achievement of real scientists that have led to our amazing era of modern technology people have instead displayed a preference to vilify it. Great scientists of the past, it should be reminded to the general public, have gifted the world with a heroic and truly amazing legacy. At 10,000m altitude every passenger of a long haul flight should be grateful that the true and highly disciplined science that underpins aeronautical engineering was behind the design of their aircraft and the not the BS science version of the IPCC.
I thought this report was so fascinating that I re-typed it in a more accessible layout and posted it on my blog here a month ago.
http://thesequal.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=climate&action=display&thread=31
I think it’s a bit of a killer, myself and worth a million proxy studies!
To quote one of the greatest anthropologists of all time ( Loren Eiseley):
Why should it take so much longer for an ape to become a caveman than for a caveman to become an Einstein?
More than 90%of the worlds animal life of past periods is dead, though it flourished in some instances longer than the whole period of human development, somewhere along its evolutionary path it vanished without descendants, or it was transformed, through still mysterious biological process,into something else.
We can’t trace the living races far into the past. We know little or nothing about why man lost his fur….Though theories abound, we know little about why man became man at all.
And after only 12,000 years of ”human” presence, climate science is settled.
John Hirst was the head of WWF which used to look after wildlife, but is now an advocacy group supporting AGW.
Thanks JohnH
“In the last 200 odd years there have been 4 climate change panics, 2 warming and 2 cooling, based on the frequency and sequence of the previous 4 panics the next one is due in 2030 and will be a cooling panic”.
I remember at school being told the story of the little boy who “cried wolf.”
Just a thought!
RexAlan
PS, And in the future there will be great towers that harvest the wind! and then….and then….wooden shoes
I also remember having to write an essay for English class entitled.
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”.
Quite appropriate really considering our knowledge of climate science and what is being proposed to fix AGW.
This is worth a look.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/eb/eb.html
In the summer of 1930 the remains of Andrée’s Balloon Expedition to the North Pole 1897 were found on the island Vitön east of Svalbard. This was due to unusually strong melting of ice and snow because of a warm summer. Interestingly, Dr. A. Hoel (then Head of the Svalbard Office in Oslo) was a member of the Commission sent out to investigate the camp and collect the three bodies later cremated in Stockholm. Photographs from 1897 could be developed and printed after 33 years on the island.
It seems that warm spells and strong melting are not that unusual in the Arctic.
/Max
Met Office Video available on YouTube
Andrew Neil relentlessly grills John Hirsh, head of the Met Office
It will all come down to this. In years to come when the climate has either cooled more or has not warmed much at all, the AGW alarmists will be laughed at like the clowns they are. It’s that simple.
In the Andrew Neil grilling of the Met Cheif ref in post 1, John Hirsh claimed the Met office had predicted the leveling off of temps after 1998 back in that period. The Met Office press release archive only goes back to 2007.
Anyone seen this elusive forecast.
Here’s what they said in Jan 2007, hardly reads like a prediction of levelling off.
2007 is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998, say climate-change experts at the Met Office.
Each January the Met Office, in conjunction with the University of East Anglia, issues a forecast of the global surface temperature for the coming year. The forecast takes into account known contributing factors, such as solar effects, El Niño, greenhouse gases concentrations and other multi-decadal influences. Over the previous seven years, the Met Office forecast of annual global temperature has proved remarkably accurate, with a mean forecast error size of just 0.06 °C.
Met Office global forecast for 2007
Global temperature for 2007 is expected to be 0.54 °C above the long-term (1961-1990) average of 14.0 °C;
There is a 60% probability that 2007 will be as warm or warmer than the current warmest year (1998 was +0.52 °C above the long-term 1961-1990 average).
As Trevor mentions above, has anyone got any link to where (as the head of the Met Office states) they predicted a levelling-off of temperature in 1999? In all my years of following the Met Office’s forecasts and the CET I have never heard this before. It would indeed be quite a brownie point for them if their models predicted 11 years of no warming, and I certainly think this is a lie by John Hirst five minutes into this interview http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/8443687.stm Andrew Neil has never been higher in my estimation. At last, a journalist who has done his research!
“DR (17:50:57) :
My earlier post I’m guessing was deleted because it was not a direct link? I found the original below. Interesting read.
IS OUR CLIMATE CHANGING? A STUDY OF LONG-TIME TEMPERATURE TRENDS
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/061/mwr-061-09-0251.pdf
REPLY: Hi DR, perhaps your earlier post got caught in the SPAM filter, that sometimes happens. Thanks for providing this resource, it is quite interesting.”
Reading back through that article. It would be interesting to compare the temperatures shown in the graphs and table to the “value added” data from HAD CRUT and NASA.
You can ask for proof of John Hirst’s claim that the Met Office predicted the levelling-off of temps in 1999 here:
enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk
Please do so, I have.
There is no way the Met office made that prediction, but there was a famous published paper a couple of years, probably 2007 or early 2008 that said warming would stall for 10-14 years then take off again.
OT. We’re coping with the ‘weather’ here in the UK! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1241199/Heres-make-Britains-winter-wonderland.html
Stephen Wilde (01:47:55) :
You wrote, “It is patently obvious that the global air circulation systems moved poleward from around 1975 and that resulted in a small amount of warming in the troposphere,” and continued with, “It is equally obvious that they started moving equatorward again as long ago as 2000 which is a fact that I noted at the time and that I have been proclaiming for two years now. That resulted in, first a pause in warming and now, probably a cooling.”
Unfortunately, TLT anomaly data does not support what you’ve written:
http://i49.tinypic.com/2dt9b37.png
Robert Norwood (14:29:53) :
(said in part)
“There is not one molecule of evidence to suggest that we, humans, have a positive impact on the planet. ”
—–
Reply: Robert, that’s a very myopic view of this earth and man’s impact.
One good “molecule of evidence” that indicates humans have a tremendous positive impact on this earth is the demonstrable fact that trees are now growing 27% faster because of the additional CO2 in the atmosphere.
Expand your horizons a bit and view the video from this link:
http://www.plantsneedco2.org/default.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
And there is this:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0603-can_carbon_dioxide_be_a_good_thing.htm
The benefits of CO2 far outweigh any slight negative impact, which has been hyped and fudged to the level of criminal activity. The deserts will blossom as the rose because plants do a whole lot better on significantly less water with increased CO2. And since healthier plants worldwide contribute significantly to the food supply and better habitat for other animals, I see a distince benefit from man’s activities.
Barry Foster (03:47:47) :
That anomalous: I read their releases almost daily over the last 15 years or so. There was nothing whatsoever claiming that temperatures would “level off” over the last 15 years, unless i’ve missed something. Still, i’ll ask them where they stated this
jeez (04:04:13)
Yet they state recently that 2010 will be the hottest year on record and that global warming would recommence after 2008 (they wrote that in late 2007).
Maybe you’re confusing the 15 years levelling off period with a more competent climate agency or else a scientific research paper?
Here is what I was remembering.
It was the year 2014 that I remembered. Not 14 years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3302874/Global-warming-forecast-predicts-rise-in-2014.html
Here is the nearest MET office leveling off forecast, made in 2007 but after the event.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/10/weather.uknews
British scientists are predicting a succession of record-breaking high temperatures in the most detailed forecast of global warming’s impact on weather around the world.
Powerful computer simulations used to create the world’s first global warming forecast suggests temperature rises will stall in the next two years, before rising sharply at the end of the decade.
From 2010, they warn, every year has at least a 50% chance of exceeding the record year of 1998 when average global temperatures reached 14.54C.
jeez (04:09:50)
Its all very confusing. Climate will level off, but will continue to warm over the next 10 years and 2014 will be 0,3C warmer than 2003, and half the years will be warmer than 1998. It will slow down but it will speed up as soon as it slows down, all in the space of a few years.. thereafter it will really hit the roof.
Still, the assertion was that the prior years, from 2002 onwards were predicted to level off by this chief of the met. This isn’t the case
TonyB mentions Bob Bartlett and Pathe new reels. You can actually see some of those at the British Pathe website and search for ‘Bob Bartlett’
http://www.britishpathe.com
In the days when warmer arctic waters led to “favourable ice conditions”. Now its “OMG the world is ending ice conditions”.
And here is a look at something they were saying in 1999 about 2000. Not a press release but a report and only looking at one year.
Empirical Prediction of the Global Temperature
Anomaly for 2000
contributed by Chris Folland and Andrew Colman
The Met Office, Bracknell, United Kingdom
Excerpt
Our overall best estimate forecast of the temperature anomaly for the year 2000 is 0.41+-0.16 oC, or a range from 0.25 oC to 0.57 oC based on the intrinsic skill of the empirical hindcasts. The uncertainty +-0.16 oC represents approximately the 5% and 95% confidence limits of the individual forecasts. Thus there is about an 80% probability that 2000 will be warmer than 1999 but just less than a 5% probability that 2000 will be as warm or warmer than the warmest year, 1998.
http://www.iges.org/ellfb/Mar00/cole1.00.htm
OT, but I got a good laugh out of this explanation from my morning newspaper in Halifax, NS:
“With the icy weather on the front page of all the major U.K. dailies (“BRRRITAIN!” shivered the Daily Mirror) some wondered what role if any climate change played in the cold snap — the country’s longest since 1981. British opposition lawmaker Ann Winterton attracted jeers of derision when she told Britain’s House of Commons that the snow “clearly indicates a cooling trend.”
Weather experts said the bout of cold weather didn’t necessarily reflect climate change one way or the other.
Robin Thwaytes, the duty forecaster at Britain’s weather office, said that, while “it’s very unusual for something like this to last as long as it has,” such events do happen every 20 to 30 years.”
Bob Tisdale (04:01:31)
I’m puzzled by your remark, Bob, because your link shows all three lines rising slowly up to around 2000 then either flattening or declining.
Or have I missed something ?
another thing: the statement is that *human activities* (ie co2) are now the most dominant factor in the climate, meaning that natural factors cannot *mask* them, which they wrote in 2007. This new model, which looks like a mish mash of co2+natural factors seems to refute their prior assertion, though they rationalise around this by claiming it was masking human induced global warming.
its as absurd as the forecast based on this same model that predicted a warm winter for 2008/9 in the UK. When it turned out to be one of the coldest they rationalised around it by saying “It would have been even colder if it had not been for global warming”
“Dr. Max (03:22:23) :
In the summer of 1930 the remains of Andrée’s Balloon Expedition to the North Pole 1897 were found on the island Vitön east of Svalbard. This was due to unusually strong melting of ice and snow because of a warm summer”
It should be noted that a search expedition actually landed on Vitön in 1898, i e the year after the Andrée Expedition, but found nothing since the remains were deeply buried by the snow. It was only after the arctic warming in the 1920’s that uncovered them.
P Wilson (04:22:05
oops. I’m getting confused by the Met Office farrago. (Its like an infection)
“still, the assertion was that the prior years, from 2002 onwards were predicted to level off by this chief of the met. This isn’t the case”
It isn’t the case that they predicted it, but is the case that the Met chief said that they did
THre was also a NYT feature in 1938 warning of arctic melt and global warming if anyone can find it. It reports a Russian ship floating in open waters 300 miles from the North Pole.
We’ll always have Paris – and we’ll always have this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyDmdcPw7Uw Personally, I can’t wait for 2014 to come. Oh, Ms Pope, my email will be pre-written and ready to send!
Here’s another Arctic story the mainstream media missed, I think Anthony had a similar story around April 2009 with more background information:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2009/04/images-of-arctic-pole-icefree-march-1959-its-happened-before-preglobal-warming-hype.html
Simply amazing how many great climate stories the press has totally missed, especially the folks at Fox. They really should assign someone to read WUWT on a daily basis. Fox would have new, interesting material to work with every single day that none of the other networks would mention. It would be a climate “scoop” of the day, every day for Fox.
Robert Norwood, although I’m a complete contrarian, we humans DO affect global temperatures – most definitely. We shouldn’t deny this. Through land-use change, particle emissions, and so many other activities. The effect is certain. The argument is by how much? CO2 from us has a very small effect, and even then, could have negative feedbacks in the form of increased cloud cover etc. We must set out our stall and state the truth. Warmists make the mistake of stating that our effect is huge. Let’s not make a similar mistake by stating that our effect is non-existent.
Stephen Wilde, “I’m puzzled by your remark, Bob, because your link shows all three lines rising slowly up to around 2000 then either flattening or declining.”
But read what you wrote previously, “It is patently obvious that the global air circulation systems moved poleward from around 1975 and that resulted in a small amount of warming in the troposphere,” and continued with, “It is equally obvious that they started moving equatorward again as long ago as 2000 which is a fact that I noted at the time and that I have been proclaiming for two years now. That resulted in, first a pause in warming and now, probably a cooling.”
And again, here’s the graph.
http://i49.tinypic.com/2dt9b37.png
Show me where the heat moves poleward then back toward the equator, please. Remember the 80s and 90s were impacted by volcanic eruptions, too.
Re press hysteria over global ‘climate change’ (hotter or colder), the Business and Media Institute published a very nice history called “Fire and Ice,” here:
http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice.asp
It begins:
/Mr Lynn
Bob Tisdale (05:03:12)
The heat doesn’t move poleward and then back equatorward.
It is the air circulation systems that move poleward under a warming pressure from the tropical oceans and then move equatorward again as the warming pressure from the tropical oceans declines.
So the troposphere as a whole gets warmer when the tropical oceans are releasing energy faster and the sign that it is happening is the poleward shift of the air circulation systems. Vice versa for cooling.
Entirely consistent with your chart.
The tropical oceans show the most marked trend and the other latitudes follow on different timescales and to different degrees because of the different land and ocean distributions.
If anything your chart proves my point.
So unless someone can show CO2 in the air altering the rate at which energy is released by the oceans then CO2 as a climate driver comes nowhere.
Here’s another historical piece:
“Sunspots and the weather: Astonishing Discovery by Prof Bigelow – Now certain that solar storms determine meteorological conditions on Earth. Weather may be forecasted by observing the Sun.”
It was a page 1 feature from the New York Times October 28 1906.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9E0DE4DB1631E733A2575BC2A9669D946797D6CF
(aka http://tinyurl.com/odr8um )
At the time of the article Professor Bigelow was one of the world’s leading meteorologists; he reported his finding:
“That there is a causal connection between the observed variations in the forces of the Sun, the terrestrial magnetic field, and the meteorological elements has been the conclusion of every research into this subject for the past 50 years.”
Maybe the New York Times could rerun the article with updates from Prof Emeritus Cornelius de jager, the grandfather of modern solar physics (see here http://www.cdejager.com/about ), and the many dozens of other physicists who have published corroborative findings
Here is an obituary of Prof Bigelow who died in 1924:
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/052/mwr-052-03-0165b.pdf
Ice free to 81.5 degrees of longitude. A graphic showing what this means would be useful?
I don’t know if anyone else follows the CET like I do – and it is a bone of contention between me and the Met Office (MO) via emails, but yet again it appears to be wildly optimistic http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html The MO says the central England average so far this month is -0.8 deg c. I cannot fathom how so. I would have thought it should be something like -2.0 deg c. Last night we had -18 deg c not far from where I live (according to the MO!) and today’s daytime temperature is currently (at 1.30 pm in brilliant sunshine) -6 deg c. So the average of that 24 hours is -12 deg c. We’ve had quite a few nights that were well below freezing and hardly any counter-balancing daytime temps since the month began. The software had been down from Dec 22 until just two days ago, then they pluck a mere -0.8 deg c from somewhere! However, there’s no point in trying to take them to task over it as they just don’t reply.
John Hirsh’s claim that the Met Office predicted 10 years ago that temperatures would level off lacks any credibility. If the Met Office did so, why has it spent the past decade telling us that winters would be milder and summers hotter year after year?
Yes, long range forecasting is imperfect, but when the Met Office’s forecasts – long term, annual and seasonal – always err on the warm side, bias is clearly evident.
Hirsh’s bleating about the strength of the Met Office’s short term forecasts was pathetic. Short term forecasts of snow and ice are too bloody late for Councils that have failed to stock up on supplies of grit and salt on account of the Met Office’s seasonal forecast for a mild winter. The cost to Britain of the nation being totally unprepared for a bitter winter have been immense.
The Met Office’s forecasts have been the stuff of politics, not meteorology.
http://butnowyouknow.wordpress.com/those-who-fail-to-learn-from-history/climate-change-timeline/
Re the devolution of scientific method: A family member, a biologist, tells me that grantsmanship in her field, and doubtless in most, essentially requires that you have come to a conclusion in order to write your grant application. Basically you are asking for money to substantiate your claims, not to test an hypothesis, and certainly not to conduct basic research with the traditional aim of something interesting ‘turning up’.
Is this an inevitable consequence of turning over the funding of scientific research to government agencies, run by bureaucrats loathe to deviate from the ‘received wisdom’ of the time, and certainly not willing to go out on any limbs? I suspect so.
The question then becomes: What’s the alternative? Self-funded research in the modern age is impractical where it involves expensive equipment, laboratories, etc. And universities tie promotions and tenure to professors’ ability to bring in grants, not to do real science.
Sounds like there’s a need for private sources that will encourage basic science, unencumbered by bureaucratic rigidity or political agendas. Anyone with deep pockets want to start a foundation?
/Mr Lynn
Barry Foster (03:47:47) :
Andrew Neil is doing a brilliant job. I’m sure the BBC would love to get rid of him, but he’s too well known. I was amazed by John Hirst’s claim. Maybe he’s simply ignorant, but I somehow doubt it.
I just shot off an email to enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk
Here’s the text:
******************************************************************************
Dear sir/madam,
In his interview with Andrew Neil, John Hirst made a specific claim
that the climate models had predicted that the global temperatures
would level off after 1999. Being a prediction, it must have been
made no later than 1999.
I find this surprising. As far as I’m aware only recent climate models
have predicted a levelling off, when the trend was already obvious. I
find it difficult to believe that any official climate models prior to
2000 made this prediction. If the Met Office models did indeed
predict a pause in global warming then most of its recent statements
contradict their own models.
Could you please provide me with evidence of Met Office models –
or any others for that matter – prior to 2000 that predicted the current
pause in global warming.
If you cannot provide the proof then I can only assume that the head
of the Met Office was lying. If this seems to be the case then I will
consider making an official complaint.
You can see the interview here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/
8443687.stm
John Hirst repeatedly makes the claim right at the end of the
interview.
*************************************************************
Another good resource is “Arctic” magazine from the Arctic Institute of North America available online. Read the articles on arctic ice islands discovered in the late 1940’s by aerial surveyors. The big ones were called T1, T2, and T3. They were as big as 300 square miles and were believed to be large chunks of ice shelves broken off and imbedded in the pack. A sign of a previous warming?
If you live in the UK, and you’re fed up with the BBC bias toward global warming, then you have to read this http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/
RyanC,
The Met Office was on the BBC last night claiming that because of global warming the current cold snap isnt as bad as it could have been.
Mailman
OT just seen an ad for helpapolarbear.com. Adopt a pb no less. What crap is this.
And yet the charts at Cryosphere Today for Northern Hemisphere Ice Extent back to 1900 are flat until 1970 or so (depending on the season), followed by a distinct decline in recent years. How did they (mis?) estimate the extent for the earlier years?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
I’m still reminded of the actuarialist that studied the relationship of weather to sunspot activity and found a 2-3 year lag, which would predict that temperatures will continue to drop for a while after this deep solar minimum. Provided, of course, we’re now IN the minimum, which hasn’t been established yet, although I can’t see how it could get much more “minimum” than it currently is.
So we’ll see if next year is colder than this one, and the year after that is colder yet. Perhaps in three or four years we’ll start to see some moderation in this cooling pattern. If so, it will be one more general example of weather following sun activity, which shouldn’t be surprising considering the impact the sun and cosmic rays have on our weather (view The Cloud Mystery on YouTube for a very interesting hypothesis).
We’ll see how the Met Office handles it by then, if there’s even a Met Office around. They seem like a very expensive waste of time.
I saw it on Hannity. Anything related to “Al Baby”, there in the NH in these days , when everybody is enjoying “Global Warming” must be either utterly funny or exactly the contrary, that is why Hannity took it from WUWT. And it is a good thing they are reading WUWT.
I like the ending sentence, “it makes it probable that the favorable ice conditions will continue”
Today less ice and snow is a disaster, and more ice is favorable. The only thing that changes is climate, with or without humanity, humans stupidity will remain unchanged.
Well this winter we learned (again) that alot of ice and snow may not be the best option for life on this planet anyway. Not refering to arctic sea ice but the cold spell striking nothern hemisphere this winter.
The BBC has announced a review of the impartiality of science reporting, including BBC editorial control of comments regarding GM crops and climate change. Perhaps the science is not settled? http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/january/science_impartiality.shtml
What’s interesting regarding the comments about sunspots is that 1922 was during the minimum, but there had been a spike in solar activity in March of 1922. Wonder what effects that had on temperature. All very interesting stuff. See for yourself:
http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/sunspotplotter.htm
The current cold snap ain’t over yet, there’s plenty more of it forecast right now.
So the real question here is not where we currently are, which is very obviously in a bad cold state, but where things go from here.
All the MET is doing is stalling, hoping for a warming miracle, not man enough to admit they got carried away by thier own mirage.
At this rate of Climate Change Cold, a year from now will see hordes of people jamming Churches. They surely won’t be flocking to Gore’s place.
The AP index won’t rise, the Solar Wind is limp, and the winters hopscotch from North to South in a ‘top this’ contest.
Stephen Wilde, excuse me for my misunderstanding.
You wrote, “It is the air circulation systems that move poleward under a warming pressure from the tropical oceans and then move equatorward again as the warming pressure from the tropical oceans declines.”
Please link the dataset that illustrates this latitudinal variability. Thanks. You know me, always interested in data.
Mailman @ 06:10:11
You mean without AGW, my family jewels would be even smaller than they are now?
Here is an article from March, 2000, that was featured in UK’s “The Independent”
“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
The Independent article from 2000 posted by toyotawhizguy (07:18:51) :
is currently in their top 10 read articles, they must be kicking themselves
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Chris Wright (05:50:39)
“If you cannot provide the proof then I can only assume that the head
of the Met Office was lying.”
Its not the fact that he lied, but like the other proponents, Mann, jones et al, its the shameless of the fraud, and the gallingness of it that ought to be equally brought into question. Unlike scientists in other fields, they are not accountable, and this has put cheek and mischief at the centre of climatology. Cheek and mischief, because they can’t develop any scientific arguments so make up for this lack with sheer cheekiness.
http://acsys.npolar.no/ahica/intro.htm
toyotawhizguy (07:18:51) :
Back in ’94 I happend to be setting at the Airtanker Base in Redding Ca.The San Francisco Comicle,er, Cronicle had a article by a Sierra Club drone who said this:
“Due to Global Warming California from Sacramento North will become a branch
of the Sonoran Desert. Rain will be a rare thing.” “This year is the start.”
Virtually as I read the article a Tropical storm remnant headed up the Central
Valley and the skies opened….
Fire Season was done…
Oh…What a disgusting future!!: frozen kool-aids!
Every time I wash my car, it is certain to rain soon after.
Conclusion: Washing my car causes rain.
I bought winter tires this year, and the usual annual snow fall didn’t happen.
Conclusion: Installing winter tires prevented snow.
CO2 is rising and the temperature records are showing a rise.
Conclusion: A rise in CO2 causes the Earth’s temperature to rise.
When Al Gore visits a city, extreme weather events seem to occur.
Conclusion: Al Gore is really is weather spirit. Worship him.
Humans can readily make associations and, unfortunately, come to wrong conclusions.
Now you know what the americans indian legend of the white buffalo. means…
The four ages of creation are in me; I am the four ages. I will come to see you in every generation cycle. I shall come back to you
http://www.merceronline.com/Native/native05.htm
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=61
Bob Tisdale (07:10:26)
I don’t think the data exists in the form I would like to see it.
The mainstream only recently asserted in a Discovery Channel documentary that it was the human effect on the atmosphere that had sent the mid latitude jets poleward. That has been demonstrated to be wrong by the shift equatorward again.
Only after the demonisation of CO2 around 1988 was it more fully appreciated that the PDO was significant on a global rather than regional scale and only since then has it slowly become appreciated that each ocean has similar oscillatory behaviour.
I don’t think anyone else has extrapolated from the observations in the way that I have so I can’t produce any evidence from a superior authority (other than the planet itself, that is).
It ties in quite nicely with some of your work though, and that of Vincent Gray and a few others.
My articles at climaterealists.com go into a lot more detail but can be heavy going unless one is on the same track already. However I think time will vindicate my various hypotheses.
@ el gordo (01:02:02) : Captain Martin Ingebrigteen ’says that he first noted warmer conditions in 1918, that since that time it has steadily gotten warmer, and that today the Arctic of that region is not recognizable as the same region of 1868 to 1917.’ The warm PDO kicked off in 1916 and 1976 – the great climate shift is under our nose and has nothing to do with AGW.
And we also know in 1913 (SC 15) there were 311 sun-spotless days, just as the sun is quiet now.
Coincidence?
Roger Knights said in reply to my (00:44:26) :
“And yet the charts at Cryosphere Today for Northern Hemisphere Ice Extent back to 1900 are flat until 1970 or so (depending on the season), followed by a distinct decline in recent years. How did they (mis?) estimate the extent for the earlier years?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
It would be interesting to know when they did the estimate and their methodology-they don’t seem very good at examining historic records. Following my orginal article on the 1820-1860 arctic ice melt I had private correspondance with one of the major snow and ice data establishments who admitted they knew nothing of the melting during the period of which I wrote. If you’re not looking for something you won’t find it I guess.
Tonyb
@ Dev (23:21:39)
I watched the video and I am simply amazed that the head of the MO makes more than the Prime Minister. How the bleep is that possible???
Is it just me;or does the Guardian article sound a bit like the parseing of
entrails?
For those that missed the Hannity show (like me), here is a video clip that includes the segment on the 1922 article. It is at the 2:10 point:
http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/m/28241835/hannity-s-america-1-6.htm#q=arctic
I found it using the foxnews.com search engine. I hope the link works when I repost it here. By the way, there is no hat tip to WUWT.
I watched the video and I am simply amazed that the head of the MO makes more than the Prime Minister. How the bleep is that possible???
Well first off they currently get a lot extra from expenses (problems on this later as they all got caught with their fingers in the pot), plus a free house for during the week and free palace for the weekend (Chequers) etc etc
Then there is the money they make after being PM, the last chancer T Blair is now on £8M per annum as a conservative figure.
River clyde in Glasgow has frozen over, UKs temp is only 2 degrees C over Antartic. Salt is running out in Scotland, but its not much use as the temps are lower than required for the salt to work.
The cryosphere today comparison page seems to suggest that the sea ice is concentrating this winter, as comapred to the past two.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=01&fd=06&fy=2007&sm=01&sd=06&sy=2010
Might this affect the sea ice minimum in 2010
find somone in Norway:
http://ask.bibsys.no/ask/action/result?kilde=biblio&q=adolf+hoel
This might be of interest to readers:
On Oct. 2, 2008 I posted a clipping I found from the New York Times in 1884. What is curious about this article is that not only does it note retreating glaciers due to climate change, but it blames it “partly on the prolonged action of man on the earth”. Has anyone out there ever heard of a media account of someone blaming climate change on man prior to this date? Not I.
Here’s my post…
http://algorelied.com/?p=218
From the John Hirsh video, the most striking part to me (paraphrased):
Our performance bonus is not only based on forecasts and the like, but business models, etc.
AKA, the more money we receive from the public, private, and government, the better my bonus.
It is also striking to me how incredibly relentless Andrew Neil is. I wish we had more journalists like that!
Sean does endeavor to deliver the best information possible. Yes, at times he may pull information from WUWT. On the other hand, several members at the Hannity forums frequently link to WUWT as a source. That is good for public attention, to topic content, and to WUWT.
This thread has three linked references to WUWT in it.
http://forums.hannity.com/showthread.php?p=66543181
Mr Lynn (05:47:29) :
Thanks for the reality! Thought that was what had happened.
Science changed somewhere around the mid 80’s. I could feel the change in current articles, magazines and books I was reading. I guess that was corporate / government take over of universities/grants and the fertile minds. Scientific America used to have great, great articles, all of them, in depth, with equations and totally explained fully the subject, that was in the old days.
Then they became something of a gigantic commercial. Foggy ideas, no details, all tied to products or proprietary arenas were millions and billions were to be made. Describing, not defining. I dropped my subscription in the mid 90’s. Couldn’t take it anymore. Very sad. Now most of the current science sites are but the same commercial over and over again.
Feels like I’m in a Groundhog Day warp.
Stephen Wilde: You wrote, “The mainstream only recently asserted in a Discovery Channel documentary that it was the human effect on the atmosphere that had sent the mid latitude jets poleward. That has been demonstrated to be wrong by the shift equatorward again.”
If it was demonstrated, there had to be some means of doing so. Typically, this is done with data, but you prefaced your reply with, “I don’t think the data exists in the form I would like to see it.”
I’ll be happy to look at the data in the form in which you are unhappy. A link?
Bob Tisdale (13:35:20)
I’d like to see the average global jet stream positions going back to say at least 1900 combined with tropospheric temperature variations over the same period and the cycle of El Nino and La Nina events over the same period.
There still wouldn’t be a perfect match not least because it is the net global situation for all the oscillations in every ocean combined that matters most and not just the PDO.
Can you recommend a source ?
I have observed the shifts in 1975 and 2000 with my own eyes in the real world and in weather charts. Many locations refer to the PDO regime shift but do not always acknowledge any link with the net latitudinal positions of the air circulation systems beyond seasonal variability.
Royal Navy ship records from the 17th Century are useful in establishing past storm tracks and somewhere I saw it asserted that during the LIA the ITCZ was situated much nearer to the equator.
It is also clear from historical records that civilisations prospered or fell as the air circulation systems moved latitudinally above them and moved them periodically from cold to warm or wet to dry and vice versa.
Peter of Sydney (03:36:02) :
It will all come down to this. In years to come when the climate has either cooled more or has not warmed much at all, the AGW alarmists will be laughed at like the clowns they are. It’s that simple.
Assuming that we are allowed to laugh at them… without being rounded up by green shirted thugs for thought crimes.
I have blogged reference to this item on WUWT and also posted a brief video clip ( 1 min 7 sec long ) of Sean’s comments.
http://penoflight.com/climatebuzz/?p=694
Regarding the history of attributing climate dynamics to human activity see the excellant essay by Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr “Towards a History of Ideas on Anthropogenic Climate Change” in the book Climate Development and History of the North Atlantic Realm” edited by Gerold Wefer, Wolfgang H Berger, Karl-Ernst Behre and Eystein Jansen published by Springer in 2002 ISBN is 3-540-43201-9.
From the Abstract:
“In this essay we show that the notion of anthropogenic climate change is not novel. Concerns about transformations of the Earth’s climate by human activities have been expressed since the 18th century Enlightenment and earlier.”
The paper has a rich bibliography, too.
Of course, gods and devils and humanity’s sinfulness have always been a standard explanation of climate dynamics. Sallie Baluinis has shown vividly how ‘witches’ were burnt alive at the stake throughout Europe for bringing on the cold. Brian Fagan in several of his books documents the use of human sacrifices (usually teenages of both genders) to stop the cooling, the drought, the floods or the warmings.
Stephen Wilde: In my comment of 13:35:20 I asked you for a dataset on which you are basing claims that “It is patently obvious that the global air circulation systems moved poleward from around 1975 and that resulted in a small amount of warming in the troposphere,” and “It is equally obvious that they started moving equatorward again as long ago as 2000 which is a fact that I noted at the time and that I have been proclaiming for two years now. That resulted in, first a pause in warming and now, probably a cooling.”
Yet in your reply to me at 14:21:35 you asked me for a data recommendation. Let me drop back to a more basic question. If you know of no data source, on what data are you basing your claims of latitudinal variations in “global air circulation systems”?
Contradicting Hirsh’s comment that the models had predicted the flat trend we’ve observed over this last decade, here’s a press release from the Met Office’s archives, courtesy of the Wayback Machine.
Understanding past climate boosts confidence in prediction
http://web.archive.org/web/20021021010859/www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/pr20001212.html
12 December 2000
Release number 448
“This model is still not perfect but, by successfully simulating past temperature changes, it demonstrates the credibility of our climate predictions”, said Dr. Stott. “Our predictions show that the current rate of warming of 2 to 3°C per century is likely to continue over the coming decades.
They did relatively little of that in Britain. The country wasn’t as susceptible as its neighbors to ideological frenzies and fanciful forays into the non-pedestrian domain. (E.g., broomstick-flying.)
TonyB (00:44:26) :
In sedimentary geology work, one of our tutors would turn a wet beer glass upside down on the wet bar (we were forever wet by beer). He would gently heat the glass with a lighter, slightly compressing the interior gas. One could then slide the glass long distances with a gentle push; or if the bar was tilted (as it so often seemed on those late nights) the glass would go exploring the slopes.
Overpressures between geological layers can assist one to slide over the other. We have no glaciers here so we are innocents, but I wonder if your description of the flowing glacier was related to an overpressure beneath it. Various others have written of the natural escape of several gases from the earth (helium is light and produced by alpha decay, methane we know about, CO2 in sedimentary piles would be sometimes expected, etc).
Just a thought.
RussP
Thanks! That must be one of the best links anyone has ever provided to me on WUWT.
Astonishing footage-this one below demonstrates changing attitudes to wild life-it is of a polar bear being captured and brought on board which I found quite disturbing.
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=9665
Tonyb
Geoff
I will use your elegant arguement next time anyone talks of glaciers in the modern era!
I think that example cited was purely caused by the warm weather which lasted for much of the 1920’s/30’s
Tonyb
I have now clarified the position regarding John Hirst’s claim that the Met Office claimed during the late1990s that there would be a levelling off of global temperature rise in the then forthcoming decade.
Although John HIrst is head of the Met Office, I am afraid he is mistaken on this point.
He may have misunderstood or misremembered a graph that the Met Office published in 2007, namely a ten-year look ahead from that date. To test their methodology, they used the same prediction process for previous years, namely (I think) 1986, 1995, 2005. All very sensible. However, these test results for previous years (‘hindcasts’) are on the same published graph as the 2007 prediction, and my suspicion is that John Hirst confused what the graph was saying. The graph is available here. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/science/creating/monthsahead/decadal/
I do find it worrying that the head of the Met Office should believe that his organisation predicted the current levelling off, when in fact it did no such thing, although Andrew Neil’s extremely aggressive and rather rude questioning may have led John Hirst to say something he did not quite mean.
@roger Knights (21:23:50) :
” Sallie Baluinis has shown vividly how ‘witches’ were burnt alive at the stake throughout Europe for bringing on the cold.
They did relatively little of that in Britain. The country wasn’t as susceptible as its neighbors to ideological frenzies and fanciful forays into the non-pedestrian domain. (E.g., broomstick-flying.)”
I think we in Britain were more generally sceptical about the reality of witchery but we still joined in – though we didn’t burn them, we hanged them as criminals rather than as heretics (as on the continent). So the alarmists still got their way, even then.
For anyone interested in the historical data at Cryosphere Today, click on the “Download historical sea ice dataset here” link on the homepage. Then click on documentation.
@RitchieP:
I read somewhere that the number of executions in Britain was considerably lower than on the Continent. I couldn’t find support for this in Wikipedia (or contradiction), and I didn’t want to spend a half hour (maybe) tracking it down,but maybe someone here has this fact at his/her fingertips?
Here’s a possibly alarming (in light of the UK’s freeze) fact I found in the Wikipedia entry on witch-hunts:
Who would be casting spells for snow but us deniers?