Well here we go again, you know the drill. Global warming at fault, other possibilities ignored, multiple press releases. Lake Tanganyika is the second largest lake in the world for fresh water, so naturally any change it is cause for “alarm”. Unfortunately in these press releases there is no mention of a possible increase in turbidity due to human action on and around the lake, decreasing the albedo to absorb more sunlight on the lake surface, warming it. At least somebody has already asked that question previously in peer reviewed literature where they describe the Lake Tanganyika problem as “watershed deforestation, road building, and other anthropogenic activities result in sediment inundation…“.
But in our current press releases, there is this hat tip to anthropogenic: “The team attributes the lake’s increased temperature and the decreased productivity during the 20th century to human-caused global warming.”
First from Brown University:
Brown Geologists Show Unprecedented Warming in Lake Tanganyika
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Lake Tanganyika, the second oldest and the second-deepest lake in the world, could be in for some rough waters.
Geologists led by Brown University have determined the east African rift lake has experienced unprecedented warming during the last century, and its surface waters are the warmest on record. That finding is important, the scientists write in the journal Nature Geoscience, because the warm surface waters likely will affect fish stocks upon which millions of people in the region depend.
The team took core samples from the lakebed that laid out a 1,500-year history of the lake’s surface temperature. The data showed the lake’s surface temperature, 26 degrees Celsius (78.8°F), last measured in 2003, is the warmest the lake has been for a millennium and a half. The team also documented that Lake Tanganyika experienced its biggest temperature change in the 20th century, which has affected its unique ecosystem that relies upon the natural conveyance of nutrients from the depths to jumpstart the food chain upon which the fish survive.
“Our data show a consistent relationship between lake surface temperature and productivity (such as fish stocks),” said Jessica Tierney, a Brown graduate student who this spring earned her Ph.D. and is the paper’s lead author. “As the lake gets warmer, we expect productivity to decline, and we expect that it will affect the [fishing] industry.”
The research grew out of two coring expeditions sponsored by the Nyanza Project in 2001 and 2004. Cores were taken by Andrew Cohen, professor of geological sciences at the University of Arizona and director of the Nyanza project, and James Russell, professor of geological sciences at Brown, who is also Tierney’s adviser.
Lake Tanganyika is bordered by Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia — four of the poorest countries in the world, according to the United Nations Human Development Index. An estimated 10 million people live near the lake, and they depend upon it for drinking water and for food. Fishing is a crucial component for the region’s diet and livelihood: Up to 200,000 tons of sardines and four other fish species are harvested annually from Lake Tanganyika, a haul that makes up a significant portion of local residents’ diets, according to a 2001 report by the Lake Tanganyika Biodiversity Project.
Lake Tanganyika, one of the richest freshwater ecosystems in the world, is divided into two general levels. Most of the animal species live in the upper 100 meters, including the valuable sardines. Below that, the lake holds less and less oxygen, and at certain depths, it is anoxic, meaning it has no oxygen at all. What this all means is the lake is highly stratified and depends on wind to churn the waters and send nutrients from the depths toward the surface as food for algae, which supports the entire food web of the lake. But as Lake Tanganyika warms, the mixing of waters is lessened, the scientists find, meaning less nutrients are funneled from the depths toward the surface. Worse, more warming at the surface magnifies the difference in density between the two levels; even more wind is needed to churn the waters enough to ferry the nutrients toward the fish-dwelling upper layer.
The researchers’ data show that during the last 1,500 years, intervals of prolonged warming and cooling are linked with low and high algal productivity, respectively, indicating a clear link between past temperature changes and biological productivity in the lake.
“The people throughout southcentral Africa depend on the fish from Lake Tanganyika as a crucial source of protein,” noted Cohen, an author on the paper. “This resource is likely threatened by the lake’s unprecedented warming since the late 19th century and the associated loss of lake productivity.”
Climate change models show a general warming in the region, which, if accurate, would cause even greater warming of the Lake Tanganyika’s surface waters and more stratification in the lake as a whole. “So, as you move forward, you can imagine that density gradient increasing,” said Russell, an author on the paper.
Some researchers have posited that the declining fish stocks in Lake Tanganyika can be attributed mainly to overfishing, and Tierney and Russell say that may be a reason. But they note that the warming in the lake, and the lessened mixing of critical nutrients is exacerbating the stocks’ decline, if not causing it in the first place. “It’s almost impossible for it not to,” Russell said.
Other authors on the paper are Brown graduates Marc Mayes and Natacha Meyer; Christopher Johnson at the University of California, Los Angeles; and Peter Swarzenski, with the United States Geological Survey. The National Science Foundation and the Nyanza Project funded the research.
=======================================
Here is the University of Arizona version
=======================================
Twentieth-Century Warming in Lake Tanganyika is Unprecedented
Warming in the last century threatens one of Africa’s largest inland fisheries.
Lake Tanganyika’s surface waters are warmer than at any time in the previous 1,500 years, a University of Arizona researcher and his colleagues report online in Nature Geoscience.
The rise in temperature during the 20th century is driving a decline in the productivity of the lake, which hosts the second-largest inland fishery in Africa.
“People throughout south-central Africa depend on the fish from Lake Tanganyika as a crucial source of protein,” said study co-author Andrew S. Cohen, a UA professor of geosciences. “This resource is likely threatened by the lake’s unprecedented warming since the late 19th century and the associated loss of lake productivity.”
This is the first detailed record of temperature and its impacts on a tropical African ecosystem that allows scientists to compare the last 100 years with the previous 1,400 years, Cohen said.
The team attributes the lake’s increased temperature and the decreased productivity during the 20th century to human-caused global warming.
“We’ve got a global phenomenon driving something local that has a huge potential impact on the people that live in the region and on the animals that live in the lake,” he said.
The annual catch of the Lake Tanganyika fishery is estimated at about 198,000 tons per year, more than 20 times greater than the U.S. commercial fishery in the Great Lakes, he said. The nations of Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo border the lake, which is the longest lake in the world and the second deepest.
The surface waters of Lake Tanganyika are the most biologically productive part of the lake. For the 1,400 years before 1900, those waters were no warmer than 75.7 F (24.3 degrees C). Since 1900, the lake’s surface waters warmed 3 degrees F, reaching 78.8 degrees F (26 degrees C) in 2003, the date of the researchers’ last measurement.
The researchers used sediment cores from the lake bed to reconstruct the 1,500-year history of the lake. The scientists analyzed the cores for chemicals produced by microbes and left in the sediments to determine the lake’s past temperature and productivity.
Because sediment is deposited in the lake in annual layers, the cores provide a detailed record of Lake Tanganyika’s past temperatures and productivity and of the regional wildfires.
The instrument record of lake temperatures from the 20th century agrees with the temperature analyses from the cores, Cohen said.
The cores were extracted as part of the UA’s Nyanza Project, a research training program that brought together U.S. and African scientists and students to study tropical lakes. The National Science Foundation funded the project.
“A big part of our mandate for the Nyanza Project was looking at the interconnectivity between climate, human activity, resources and biodiversity,” said Cohen, who directed the multi-year project.
Lake Tanganyika and similar tropical lakes are divided into two general levels. Most of the fish and other organisms live in the upper 300 feet (about 100 meters). At depths below that, the lake waters contain less and less oxygen. Below approximately 600 feet, the lake water, although nutrient-rich, has no oxygen and fish cannot live there.
During the region’s windy season, the winds make the lake’s surface waters slosh back and forth, mixing some of the deep water with the upper layers. This annual mixing resupplies the lake’s food web with nutrients and drives the lake’s productivity cycle, Cohen said.
However, as Lake Tanganyika warms, the upper waters of the lake become less dense. Therefore, stronger winds are required to churn the lake waters enough to mix the deeper waters with the upper layer. As a result, the upper layers of the lake are becoming increasingly nutrient-poor, reducing the lake’s productivity.
In addition, warmer water contains less dissolved oxygen, reducing the quality of the habitat for some fish species.
Other lakes in Africa are showing similar effects to those the team found in Lake Tanganyika, he said.
The finding has implications for lakes in more temperate climates.
“Increasingly, lakes in the U.S. are warming and they’re behaving more like these African lakes,” Cohen said. “There’s a potential for learning a lot about where we’re going by seeing where those lakes already are.”
The team’s article, “Late twentieth-century warming in Lake Tanganyika unprecedented since AD 500,” will be published in the June issue of Nature Geoscience.
Cohen’s co-authors on the paper are first author Jessica E. Tierney of Brown University in Providence, R.I.; Marc T. Mayes, Natacha Meyer and James M. Russell, also at Brown University; Christopher Johnson, a former University of Arizona student now at the University of California, Los Angeles; and Peter W. Swarzenski of the U.S. Geological Survey in Santa Cruz, Calif. The National Science Foundation funded the research.
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I don’t have a problem with them stating there have been changes in the lake which are anthropogenic induced. Clearly, man’s existence is going to have ‘some’ influence. Their jump to anthropogenic global warming being THE major cause is not acceptable however. They don’t know that.
Were all known natural influences identified, quantified, and segregated from data reflecting the change?
Were local and regional anthropogenic influences identified, quantified, and segregated from data reflecting the change?
The balance, after removing the above from the data, would be the starting point where ANY global warming ‘might’ potentially be responsible for changes identified.
So what did they really learn? It appears that the temperature of the water in Lake Tanganyika is not static, it changes over time. Changes in water temperature possibly has some affect the fish population. Both they could have learned in an 6th grade science class.
Can we get that monkey that does the hurricane predictions to have a look into Lake Tanganyika?
Jessica Tierney published another paper in Science in 2008 using the same Tex86 temperature proxies on Lake Tanganyika (covering 60,000 years this time).
The data from 1,300 years ago shows the Lake temperature at 28C (versus 26C today) so one of the papers is wrong.
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/web/Cohen/pdf/83%20Tierney%20et%20al%202008.pdf
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/tierney2008/tierney2008.html
[One always has to check the actual data used in these studies because the news releases and the abstracts are rarely supported by the actual data presented in the papers].
Or maybe the lake has simply been fished out, just like most of the waters of this Planet.
Rich Matarese says in part:
” … Whenever I encounter the AGW cabal chicken-dancing like this, I am minded of my youngest granddaughter (now a lordly five years of age) some several years ago falling upon an Easter egg in the back yard and yelping self-righteously to her older brother that here was proof positive that the Easter Bunny really does exist.”
Of course the Easter Bunny really does exist, you can even see it lay an egg on TV. I believe that it works for Cadbury. Peer reviewed evidence.
So, nobody is prepared to invest $18 and an hour or so to actually understand what these scientists are saying. Instead, we now know that, whatever it is that they’re actually saying, it can’t be true, because…
… they used an instrumental measurement from 2003, and “There is no excuse for this.” [Henry Chance]
… perhaps they didn’t bother to measure the thickness of the the annual layers in the cores, and this is “Very bad science!” [Ed Caryl, who clearly couldn’t be bothered to actually check that the allegation of incompetence that he made is correct]
… CO2 is incapable of warming more than the top millimeter of water [davidmhoffer]
… Fertilizer [DP]
… no scientist could possibly measure water temperature to closer than + / – 5 deg F [Geoff Sherrington]
… they didn’t measure fish scales and they didn’t consider over-fishing [Hockey Schtick]
… 200,000 tons of fish a year is an unbelievable claim [Eric Gisin]
… it’s all based on ONE borehole [MarcH]
… it’s a load of horse pucky [INGSOC]
… they didn’t mention measuring the thermal gradient [Tom Jones]
… the link to AGW is weak to non existent at best [Dennis Nikols, who is not a limnologist]
… it’s all part of Nature’s pro-AGW viral plot [Jim Steele]
… there’s no “actual science” here [Fitzy]
… the claims “aren’t true” [George Turner, who apparently needs no evidence or logical basis to make this claim]
… measuring only surface temperatures tells you nothing about total heat accumulation [Rich Matarese, who admits he has no idea whether or not they measured anything other than surface temperatures, or indeed, whether they make any claims about total heat accumulation, but calls the researchers “clowns” anyway]
… it’s all being caused by geothermal heating [Gary]
… it’s clearly impossible [implies Pat Moffit’s rhetorical question] to say anything about historical surface temperatures from core samples taken from the bottom of a lake
… David L’s pool in Philadelphia isn’t any warmer than it was 5 years ago
… there are no instrumental data records to calibrate the core data to [Lars Kamel]
… there’s no such thing as a fresh water sardine [Warrick]
… it’s 2003 data [Wayne]
… the lake is too old [Berndt Koch]
… the lake is too big [Tony Hansen]
… 95% of the forest has been destroyed [James Atwell]
… the globe isn’t warming [Bob Layson]
… a study of a single lake in Africa cannot be linked to AGW [even, presumably, if it is the second largest body of freshwater in the world, according Steve from Rockwood]
Geez, these “scientists” are just dumber than dumb. As well as being incompetent and corrupt. Why didn’t they think to come here first and find out all the real answers? Would have saved them all that heat and those flies in Africa.
The key claim is that warming will reduce fisheries on the lake: “The people throughout southcentral Africa depend on the fish from Lake Tanganyika as a crucial source of protein,” I would argue that people in the area rely on fishing technology as much as the fish. Do they fish with nets thrown by hand? Advanced fishing boats? There is a nice YouTube video “Travel and fishing on lake Tanganyika” where you can see one fishing boat then others along the lake: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KxEZR9-vGQ (with nice music). This is a stunningly beautiful place and should attract thousands then tens of thousands of tourists. How many billions of dollars are spent on sports fishing an diving each year? How many have been to Lake Tanganyika?
Infrastructure would develop to support tourists and funded by tourism and supporting the local economies.
Some visitors would be entrepreneurs and investors who would see opportunities in enhancing commercial fisheries. Maybe some fish farming. Maybe others would see potential in devising ways to enhance circulation of deep waters with surface waters to enhance fisheries.
“east African rift…”? The following image explains it all:
http://blue.utb.edu/paullgj/physci1417/Lectures/Continental_Rifting.JPG
So…vukcevic says:
May 19, 2010 at 1:10 am
There is a strong possibility that the heating is GEOTHERMAL.
IS RIGHT!
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC4.htm
BTW, what about Yellowstone?
..Though there are some questions: What did cause those GMF changes?, if magnetism, as it is, caused by an electric current, could it be possible that local heating is a kind of induction heating?
As an ocean engineer I worked on a project regarding methane harvesting in Lake Kivu (a nearby African rift valley lake). Most of the lakebed was made up of siliceous ooze (greater than 30% organic/animal derived material in the sediment) which housed methane and H2S deposits. This layer of sediment has a layer depth that varies from 15 to 100 meters (estimated). The ooze effervesces when brought to the surface and is kept just below the surface, to release the gases in the water, before being brought onboard for examination. I have heard, but have not entirely verified, that the other rift valley lakes have similar bottom conditions. Bearing this in mind I wonder exactly how they are pinpointing temperature data from unstable/disturbed core samples.
Note that the only core samples on record for Kivu are from gravity cores which can only retrieve a few meters (in most cases 4 meters) worth of sediment, I will have to check if Tanganyika studies used different devices. Woods Hole has done a great deal of surveying in the rift valley lakes and their records are online for verification.
My curiosity is getting the best of me yet I am hesitant to subscribe to a journal of which I am only interested in a single article. Does anybody know exactly how they are retrieving this information?
So for years, even decades, folks have spent enormous amount of energy, time, and money to try to solve the ever increasing pollution problem in Africa, and for lakes and river especially, and some hobnob greenie is now shouting global warming as the problem?
So all the waste being dumped into the lake, chemical waste included, and all the unmanaged crap going into the lake from the shore from industries and cities, and the lake having been used as such for decades and decades, is not the cause of the problem anymore because now AGW is?
Those greenies will stop at nothing to try and apparently destroy everything for the sake of upholding a pseudo scientific hypothesis. Their intentions be damned.
A few questions come to mind:
1) Did the air temperature in the region increase?
2) Was it enough to cause the alleged temperature rise in the lake? (Which still leaves the question of did the air temp cause the lake temp to rise or vice-versa?)
3) I would think the primary mechanism for heating lake (or ocean water) is direct absorption of sunlight. If the lake (or ocean) has a rising temperature, isn’t that mostly evidence of decreased cloudiness? This would tend to support those who say that solar cycle is responsible for the current global warming.
I can’t believe how shallow these types of articles are.
Sixth largest lake in the world by surface area and second largest by volume, bordered by four countries, ten million people living near it, and fish harvest twenty times that of the US Great Lakes… and NO ONE has recorded the surface temperature since 2003? I find that unbelievable. All serious fishing boats, and surely there are some serious fishing boats even in that very poor region of the world, have GPS, sonar w/fish finder, and water temperature instruments. You can buy a combo unit with all those instruments for about $200. I live on the shore of a 20,000 acre impounded lake with an average depth of about 100 feet and have those instruments even in my recreational boat. The lake authority continually monitors the water temperature gradient at the dam down to a depth of 200 feet. Lake Tanganyika must have fishermen who see the surface temperature a thousand times a day every day of the year. Surely many fishing boats keep a log with the daily temperature readings in it.
What this sounds like, if we can believe that the surface temperature has changed significantly in recent years which seems to be a matter of great doubt given the authors’ most recent past measurement is seven years ago, is a change in the amount of water exchange in the deep and shallow layers. The lake I’m on is stratified by temperature. Annually the surface layer in the winter becomes colder than the bottom layer and the layers exchange. The low oxygen bottom layer has a bad odor and we know when the exchange occurs because we can smell it when it happens. In Lake Tanganyika there is no such annual exchange as it’s in the tropics and the surface never becomes colder than the bottom. Unless there is some source of bottom heating the paper would appear to be wrong about nutrient upwelling from the bottom. If such an exchange is actually happening then there’s a source of heat underneath the lake driving it. If there’s a source of heat underneath the lake then it must be identified, measured, and monitered before any conclusions can be reached about what’s happening. The surface warming by 3 degrees F due to the average air temperature over the lake warming by 1 degree is patently absurd.
Dear Barefooted girl et al.,
I get the Nature Geosciences journal for free (uni.), so I was able to actually read the thing. It is not possible to export the full text PDF (legally) to here, but a link to the abstract MIGHT work for public parties (maybe not?):
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/ngeo865.html
ELSE, you could ask the corresponding author for a PDF:
Jessica_Tierney@brown.edu
The article is only 4 pages long, well-written, but the proxies used have limits. Proxies used include the TEX86 (temp.) proxy, the weight per cent of biogenic silica and charcoal abundance (fire history). I am surprised that they did not use van Geel style NPPS (actual algal microfossils) to, but the report is a short one, and probably does not reflect the full effort. Still, one would like actual algal species ID’s to reconstruct eutrophication condfitions. I know next to nothing about TEX86, but I am assuming the this proxy (being useful in oceans and LARGE lakes only) MIGHT be sensitive to increased turbidity due to major human impacts in the hydrosphere, as suggested by the WUWT author. I have done diatom studies on Holocene age pollen cores from Texas estuaries, and find differential preservation through time to be a problem (latest samples seem to have the most diatoms, broadly post AD 1000). This might (or might not?) incluence SiO2 measurements, but needs to be considered. Differential preservation is not discussed in the letters section of Nature Geosciences, as this is actually a long letter report rather than a final article. Once again, it looks like good work, only it’s been grand-standed just a little bit for a letter, and some conclusions require further justification (perhaps in final article?).
Bruce
There are numerous studies, including below, that differ with this paper. I’ve read one, but couldn’t find it, that indicated an increase in temperature would be beneficial.
As mentioned above, the immense water mass of Lake Tanganyika has created a very stable environment for its inhabitants. Temperature changes, organic waste, softer rain water etcetera will rapidly be buffered by this enormous lake. This is important to keep in mind when keeping fish from Lake Tanganyika. In certain aspects, they are almost like sea dwelling fish.
Temperature wise, it is not only the large water mass, but another factor that makes Lake Tanganyika so stable – even more stable and homogenous than the ocean in most places. This factor is volcanic activity near the bottom of the lake. The temperature at the bottom of Lake Tanganyika has been measured and turned out to differ no more than 5 degrees F from the surface temperature. The stable temperature has however created sharp changes in oxygen content as you proceed down into the lake. Since there are virtually no temperature changes in Lake Tanganyika, there are no driving forces for vertical currents. Without any vertical currents and water exchange with the surface, the deep soon becomes oxygen depleted. Animals that need oxygen to survive, including of course all the Tanganyika cichlids, can therefore only be found at the top 300 meters of the lake.
.
Latest BBC report – Unprecedented Warming in Lake Tanganyika – Newsnight 19:05:10
Quote:
It has been reported today that Lake Tanganyika has been warming significantly, and this may have significant ramifications for the wider global climate. Brown University graduate, Jessica Tierney, explained that this was the best freebee jolly she had been on in years, and that if she used the phrase ‘Global Warming’ enough times, she and her mates could be back for a reunion booze-up next year. Her graduate compatriot, Marc Mayes, added that getting a phd nowadays was a breeze, just make up a few temperatures that always increase, and you are guaranteed an ‘honours’.
Education minister, Kosmos Thalpo, applauded the achievements of the new generation of post graduates, and denied that these had been any dumming down of education standards.
Endquote…..
.
Warrick says:
May 18, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Sardines in fresh water? I suspect they mean small tilapia (Sarotheradon species, or cichlids)
Anchovy or herring is correct -the fish are clupeids. They are thought to have evolved from a marine incursion some 25M+ years ago although still a bit of discussion on this fact. The anchovies are pelagic in nature and have a diurnal vertical migration of 200m making them difficult to target in a traditional net fishery. The top predators are latids (Nile Perch)
3F since 1900? Sound the alarms! Way to prove the Earth is warming, perhaps naturally. What I did not see was any sort of proof that the warming came from CO2.
Bullet in this theory comes from the comment from Dave Springer at 8:03:
The surface warming by 3 degrees F due to the average air temperature over the lake warming by 1 degree is patently absurd.
Water is a positive feedback indeed.
Bujumbura, Burundi
Although the countries bordering Lake Tanganyika – Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tanzania and Zambia – have little or no industry, and have been fishing and farming on it’s shores for millenia – researchers have now found the source of turbidity, which changes the albedo of the lake’s surface from very low to even lower, which has been hypothesized to be the cause of the lake’s warming over the last century or so.
“It’s those damn missionaries” said local scientist and fishing-net maker Didier Nkurunziza, who has been investigating the cause of the fish dying in this traditionally bountiful lake. “Every day, they trudge down to the lake to baptize some kid, and it’s not just one guy , there’s alway 2,3 or 4 other villagers helping, every day. You would not believe how muddy things get; here, let me show you some of my research data”.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KvZmVkCm66w/SJ_o7reXSSI/AAAAAAAAAYs/hPj5ILi0B2k/s1600-h/PICT0569.JPG
Research data from Mr. Nkurunziza, local scientist
“The muddy water gets much warmer in the sun” said Mr. Nkurunziza, pointing to several dozen glass bottles of muddy water, and one thermometer, next to the fishing nets behind his modest home. When asked how far this muddy water travels out into the 231,000 km^2 lake, Mr. Nkurunziza laughed. “You are joking, no ? There is no measuring tape big enough for Lake Tanganyika, believe me, I’ve tried to find one.”
Westerners first found Lake Tanganyika in 1858 – Richard Burton and John Speke found it while searching for the source of the Nile river. Soon, the missionaries showed up, and the Lake began its long, dangerous warming trend.
“What else could it be ?” asked Mr. Nkurunziza. “God has sent Gustave to save Lake Tanganyika and it’s people from the missionaries.”
Gustave is a a 6.1 meter Nile crocodile living in Burundi, rumored to have killed 300 people during baptisms. While this number is likely exaggerated, Gustave has attained a near-mythical status and is greatly feared by people in the region.
@Dave Springer says: May 19, 2010 at 8:03 am
The surface warming by 3 degrees F due to the average air temperature over the lake warming by 1 degree is patently absurd.
Dave,
Possibly the lake is warming due to decreased albedo and the warmer surface temp is driving the air temp increase in the area of the lake. Living near Lake Superior, I can tell you that it is probably the lake affecting local air temperatures and not the other way around. The magnitudes you mention seem pretty reasonable to me given the lake is pretty close to the equator. Around here you can see a huge difference in air temp between the lake shore and only a mile inland. Like 10 degrees or more depending on the wind, etc.
Bill Illis @ur momisugly May 19, 2010 at 6:45 am / provided a couple of good links. The PDF of Tierney’s previous paper in particular. It contains several items worth further study. One in particular ties Southeast Africa to the northern hemisphere. (side note: a relationship in regards to MWP comes to my mind for later investigation).
Back to relationship to the current paper and topic. From the PDF of the previous study I lifted part of the Tanganyika lake data image. The temp data throughout the Holocene is quite interesting. I leave it to you to place that data in context as it applies to any specific areas of personal interest. I also encourage giving the entire paper an objective reading.
The image:
http://www.leekington.com/images/Laketemps2.jpg
Who cares anymore what some global warming addicted pseudo scientists think or say anymore?
In their desperation to gather in the research money being shoveled off the AGW R&D truck they will now say and do anything.
They must be so disappointed they won’t get to appear on Oprah or get a few freebie trips to Bali to be feted by the media with the Jorel Scientist of the Year Award.
Enneagram: May 19, 2010 at 7:15 am
BTW, what about Yellowstone?
Old faithful is fine (at least for the time being).
http://www.nps.gov/PWR/customcf/apps/stream/stream.htm?parkcode=yell
Anu, from his article:
“…local scientist and fishing-net maker…”
heh
Nigel Harris at 7:11 am said: So, nobody is prepared to invest $18 and an hour or so to actually understand what these scientists are saying. Instead, we now know that, whatever it is that they’re actually saying, it can’t be true, because… then preceded to do EXACTLY the same thing. Nigel, what phenomenal insight do have that tells you all the people you called out are, well – “dumber than dumb”? JUST because they didn’t invest $18 and read the paper?
I sure didn’t need to. Directly from the UA Press release: The team attributes the lake’s increased temperature and the decreased productivity during the 20th century to human-caused global warming.
And:UA geosciences professor Andrew S. Cohen (in the pink shirt) said: “We’ve got a global phenomenon driving something local that has a huge potential impact on the people that live in the region and on the animals that live in the lake.”
Nigel, any so called scientist that makes a statement wherein there is NO inclusive data to support it and NO evidence of a link, even in the most minor of ways, between any global wide phenomena and a very local condition, especially with each (in this case) being evidentially miniscule in relative size, is 1. Dumber than dumb, 2. Incompetent and corrupt, or 3. Both.
As for Why didn’t they think to come here first and find out all the real answers? Would have saved them all that heat and those flies in Africa. I reference you to 1, 2 and 3 above…. Or of course it could have been just another boondoggle African vacation, wasting tax payer money – – well, I guess that would fall under #2 above….