Steve McIntyre points out some inconvenient data from Law Dome.
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Re-reading Climategate and AR4 Review Comments, I noticed an interesting discussion about handling the Law Dome O18 record – a series used in Mann and Jones (2003) and Jones and Mann (2004) with a very elevated MWP.
The Law Dome O18 series was illustrated in Jones and Mann 2004 as follows (although the digital data for most series in this article was commendably archived, the digital version of the Law Dome O18 series wasn’t. After a couple of years of effort, I obtained it from Tas van Ommen.
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AR4 Second Draft Figure 6.11 purported to show the “locations of temperature-sensitive proxy records with data back to 1000, 1500 and 1750″, but, for some reason, didn’t include Law Dome, Quelccaya and other sites. The caption was as follows;
Figure 6.11. Locations of temperature-sensitive proxy records with data back to 1000, 1500 and 1750 (instrumental records: red thermometers; tree-ring: brown triangles; boreholes: black circles; ice-core/ice-boreholes: blue stars; other records including low-resolution records: purple squares). All proxies used in reconstructions [R1] to [R11] of Northern Hemisphere temperatures (see Table 6.1 and Figure 6.10) or used to indicate Southern Hemisphere regional temperatures (Figure 6.12) are included.
Neither was the Law Dome O18 data shown in Figure 6.12, illustrating SH proxy histories.
IPCC AR4 Second Draft Figure 6.12
The IPCC stated of this data:
Taken together, the very sparse evidence for Southern Hemisphere temperatures prior to the period of instrumental records indicates that warming is occurring in some regions. However, more proxy data are required to verify the apparent warm trend.
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But of course, that’s not all there is to see.
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Steve writes:
Just in case you wondered what Osborn and Overpeck didn’t want you to see, here it is:
Note that the inversion of borehole temperatures raises interesting questions equivalent to principal component retention – see prior posts on this. I’ve asked the Danish institution for the pre-inversion borehole measurements.
Read the complete story here at Climate Audit
Hope they do a lot of time.
Maybe they can do their perp walks alongside the eco-loons threatening “civil disobedience” and informing us “we know where you live”.
@ur momisugly Chris G (07:49:33) :
Let’s see. There are lots of proxy data sets, and some show more or less MWP than others at different times and places. Therefore, there was a global MWP and that proves that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas and/or humans aren’t dumping gigatons of it every year into the atmosphere. Sorry, can someone explain the middle part a bit more clearly?
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Sorry, in reading the post I didn’t see any statements that would lead someone to think that the authors point was “there was a global MWP and that proves that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas and/or humans aren’t dumping gigatons of it every year into the atmosphere.”
I think the point was that there was a Global MWP (and Roman warming, and ‘unnamed pre-Roman warming).
I don’t think that the author believes that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas or that humans aren’t putting gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. What point were you trying to make?
How did you arrive at this conclusion?
Steve,
I cannot see the punchline either. I see the last graph.
I see a black sawtooth called del CL18. Dont know what that is.
Then I see a red line called Borehole (deg C) uncorrelated to the saw-tooth curve.
It goes from -19.5 deg ….is it 1000 BC? down to -22 deg 1000 AD? ( Does -1000 mean 1000BC ? )
Is this the warming ? At 1000 BC ? 2.5 degrees warmer than…. -22?
Sorry for being so stupid.
Caves at Waitorno on North Island of New Zealand also show proxy warming greater than present period during MWP, not by three ‘hocky stick’ trees, but by four stalagmites, (Williams, King, Zhao, Collerson, 2004) which supports Ice Dome data.
Correction,’Law’ Dome. Definitely not an igloo!
Milwaukee Bob,
The next scare is easy, and a perfect fit: someone needs to do the dihydrogen oxide thing en masse.
Bruce Cobb (08:33:56) :
“we know where you live”.
As Mother Nature perfectly knows where HE lives.
I am sure the last Baja California’s earthquake was just a jogging practice for the BIG ONE, next summer, when Al Baby (Aka:”El Gordo”) moves to his beach residence and marina, so to enjoy him with a nice at least 300 feet high tsunami wave.(tell him to get a big, big , and wide-of course-surfboard).☺
The dO18 ice core data is the best temperature proxy we have.
The fact that the IPCC paleoclimate chapter authors found another clever trick to exclude it just because it shows a MWP, tells you all you need to know about these individuals and the IPCC process in general.
Adam Soereg,
You’ve earned a degree in climate science. Well done sir!
Enneagram (08:23:05) :
So who would we identify as the villain – Mother Nature? or Al Gore and company? 🙂
Douglas DC (08:27:18) :
Good point as I think we all know that mile wide rock from space would sure put a dent in our existence, but as above who’s (what) the villain?
I think, as point out by Bret, we need a NEW “environmental” issue, trend, hypothesis, invention or discovery that “disturbs the sense of global equilibrium.”
I’m thinking – BLACK SOOT…. !! If we just had a study that showed IT is killing children in Zimbabwe…. Talk about grant money!!!
I have two bids for the burger and beer.
1. Methane will become the dominate gas in the atmosphere from those four hoofed burger producers.
2. Land is becoming top heavy and is in danger of capsizing from human population. Everyone grab their pool rings, rubber duckies, etc. and tie them to the nearest ocean shoreline. Also donate to Gore’s rubber factory. I am sorry for the last, not.
Richard A., I love it – DHMO! That the kind of thinking we need – to win.
Dihydrogen monoxide:
Is called “hydroxyl acid”, the substance is the major component of acid rain.
Contributes to the “greenhouse effect”.
May cause severe burns.
Is fatal if inhaled.
Contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
Accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
May cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes. (Toyota should have blamed it!)
Has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.
Not “new” but with the right – – trickout numbers in a study…. email Bert at WSJ, he might like it.
kwik (08:43:29) :
Steve,
I cannot see the punchline either. I see the last graph.
I see a black sawtooth called del CL18. Dont know what that is.
Then I see a red line called Borehole (deg C) uncorrelated to the saw-tooth curve.
It goes from -19.5 deg ….is it 1000 BC? down to -22 deg 1000 AD? ( Does -1000 mean 1000BC ? )
Is this the warming ? At 1000 BC ? 2.5 degrees warmer than…. -22?
Sorry for being so stupid.
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Kwik,
Not stupid.
I think that black line is for the presence of an isotope of Oxygen – O18, it wasn’t CL18, it isn’t easy to read, you would have to know that the ratio of O18/O16 is used as a proxy to determine precipitation temperature to easily recognize it. I somehow managed to pick up and retain that factoid in my other readings of this site (Thx Anthony).
Since this place is in Antarctica the temps are going to be below 0C (hopefully).
CRU climate fraudsters “vindicated” by UK Parliament
“The trick was not a ‘neat’ way of handling data, nor a recognized form of statistical analysis. The trick was a clever way of tricking the readers of the IPCC 2001 graphic into receiving a false rhetorical impression” of the coherency of the climate data.”
Link: http://tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=133072
Milwaukee Bob (09:59:39) :A very good idea. You have already convinced several thousands of progressive scientists, which in turn will inmediately pass the word to politicians who will wiseacre about it. Good job!
BTW. Fox journalist Tossel recentely made a poll among newyorkers about this issue and about 83% agreed to ban it!
Quite a pity, cause I like to drink that hydroxyl acid with whiskey on frozen pieces of dihydrogen monoxide!
This example of how the NSIDC sea ice extent chart was “adjusted” to avoid an inconvenient outcome has been sitting on my desktop for almost a week. This seems to be a good time to use it. The red line is the adjustment: click
I think the whole MWP debate is totally useless. Suppose that the world was indeed warmer a thousand years ago due to some natural variation. Does that in any way mean that CO2 is not warming the planet today? Suppose we get another “MWP” in the future, on top of AGW…
In my opinion, the case is closed: if you increase the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, then the planet will get warmer, no matter how the natural variations come and go. There is just no way around it.
“Bill Illis (09:45:20) :
The dO18 ice core data is the best temperature proxy we have.
The fact that the IPCC paleoclimate chapter authors found another clever trick to exclude it just because it shows a MWP, tells you all you need to know about these individuals and the IPCC process in general.”
Hi Bill !
I would like to make a study of O18 analysis only. But to do this, i would need
1) Good argument that O18 is state of the art, the best indicator
2) Good methods to translate into temperature.
Can anyone help with this?
K.R. Frank Lansner
Chris G: Let’s make this as simple as possible. If there was a MWP, and it was not confined to the North Atlantic where we have written evidence of its reality, then the present warming is not unprecedented and CO2 is not implicated one way or another. Simple enough to bury AGW forever, is it not?
Anders L. (11:55:08),
Even after a one-third increase in CO2, there is no empirical evidence that CO2 has caused any rise in temperature. I tend to think it has a slight effect, but that the minor radiative effect is wildly overstated for political and monetary reasons.
To state that “There is just no way around it” shows that you have your mind made up, and the lack of real world evidence won’t change it. That approach is not scientific, it is emotional.
Keep in mind that the recent rise in temperature might well be only a spurious correlation with the rise in CO2.
It is simply too soon to tell, absent any measurable, testable evidence showing that CO2 is the primary cause — or the cause of any measurable warming at all, for that matter.
At this point AGW is only an unverified hypothesis, and the proper course of action is to be skeptical until there is actual evidence that CO2 is causing global warming.
L,
No, it is not. You have voiced the fallacy that there is only one driver of climate. _No one_ claims that anthropogenic CO2 is the only driver of climate; so, the fact that there have been climate changes in the past in no way refutes that CO2 is the dominate driver the changes we are seeing in the past century.
So, what is your stance?
That CO2 is not a GHG? If so, please go open a physics textbook, and try to read it.
That more GHGs do not lead to more warming? Please see the definition of a GHG, and again, open a physics textbook.
If neither of these fit your stance, then how much warming do you predict from a doubling of CO2? And how do you arrive at that figure?
I appreciate the questions asked in these comments. Most of them are things I didn’t know the answer to, but didn’t want to be thought ignorant. If we were really concerned about co2, why don’t we have a mass planting of trees to absorb it? Oh, I know, there wouldn’t be a lot of grant money.
I took brief look at some of the FIO emails and files. There is a lot of material there that needs thorough investigations, as you all know. Anyway, one email that caught me eye was ‘briffa-keigwin.email.txt’. I’ve plotted out the data and present it here:
http://www.trevoole.co.uk/Questioning_Climate/userfiles/gallery/In_Progress_Graphics/d18O_data_from_Briffa-Keigwin_email_of_FOI2009zip.htm
If ice volume, of which d18O is supposed to be a proxy, scales with temperature then where is the hockey-stick? Generally d18O is in good agreement with dD temperature in ice cores.
I don’t know if this time-series has been published as it is here or just used as part of a multii-proxy reconstruction. It might be interesting to find out. However I note:
Quote: “The final figure of the published data (1996) attenuated the signal by lumping the data into 50yr boxes …”
Bill Marsh,
Well, what is the point of the article?
I interpreted it as either a discussion of the science, whether the MWP was global or not, or as an attempt at character assassination. I took the science route. And, since the agenda of this site is to refute AGW theory, I put it in that context. But, it really doesn’t fit in that context, which is my point.
Smokey (12:24:59) :
The way I am seeing this is that
1.) the MWP was much warmer than today’s warming period
2.) Greenhouse gases may contribute to warming
3.) the contribution that is implied to warming is NOT sufficient to raise global temps to the MWP levels, so there really isn’t anything to get excited about, nor is there anything to be gained in limiting them.
4.) the stupidest thing that can happen is to be messing with C02 concentrations necessary for the biological cycles when an impending cooling cycle is taking place.