In Which I Go Spelunking …

Simple questions…
Is the Oxygen 18 deposited at the same rate and manner in all those caves? Are all the caves have the same temperature, humidity, etc characteristics? Can we really put them all in the same pot (or plot!)?

THIS is open source science! Congrats!

.
• What’s up with the big jump and drop about 12000 years ago? I have not seen that in the ice core records, but it is present in these speleothem records from around the planet
The Younger Dryas?

Willis,
The NOAA link includes this:
“Smith et al. 2006 500-year Northern Hemisphere Speleothem Temperature Reconstruction in Text or Microsoft Excel format. ”
When plotted, this shows what looks like an average of about 6 degrees warming over the past 400 years, with a slight fall in recent years. Any comments ?

Just an armchair observer – it seems like temperature over very long periods seeks some stability point. Sort of like a pendulum swinging back and forth and then finding its zero point.

The depth below surface of the caves must give differing temps, certainly of the range shown in the graphs. Is there any adjustment for this?

Off topic but the Brits who visit this site might like to read this reference on Tony Blair and his income from consulting on Global Warming.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23838369-tony-blair-to-earn-millions-as-climate-change-adviser.do
Thank you for the information, another page to bookmark.

1.
Ray says:
May 26, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Simple questions…
Is the Oxygen 18 deposited at the same rate and manner in all those caves? Are all the caves have the same temperature, humidity, etc characteristics? Can we really put them all in the same pot (or plot!)?
__________________________________________________________________________
Are all the caves have the same temperature, humidity, etc characteristics?
In a word no. The caves in Southern Indiana are at 54.5F, caves in Texas, like Sonora are around 70F and dry. The caves in England, like Wookey Hole are a “bit damp” (better bring the scuba gear or practice holding your breath)
The cave temperature is generally the average temperature for the location unless you run into something strange like Crystal Cave of Giants in Mexico where the heat is “like a blast furnace”

Ralph Woods says:
May 26, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Just an armchair observer – it seems like temperature over very long periods seeks some stability point. Sort of like a pendulum swinging back and forth and then finding its zero point.
Neither stable nor zero. The first does not seem to happen and the second better not. Other than that . . .

Willis,
Sorry, .6 not 6.

So, what exactly does “we are currently at the cold end of the Holocene” mean?
Historically, what’s next? Up or down? The word “end” in that sentence indicates to me the Holocene is about to end. Correct?

Always use Google Scholar to check for pdf files.
http://dky.njnu.edu.cn/geoguanli/edit/UploadFile/200822914847689.pdf

John Hultquist wrote: “I think it odd that the quoted source used the singular ‘lake’ and not the plural ‘lakes’.”
The lake they were referring to is Lake Agassiz.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Agassiz
“Lake Agassiz was an immense glacial lake located in the center of North America. Fed by glacial runoff at the end of the last glacial period, its area was larger than all of the modern Great Lakes combined, and it held more water than contained by all lakes in the world today.”

DB, I agree they likely meant Lake Agassiz but still it didn’t just drain out the St. Lawrence River nor all at once.
http://www.eeescience.utoledo.edu/faculty/Fisher/Fisher-%20Chronology%20of%20glacial%20Lake%20Agassiz%20meltwater%20routed%20to%20the%20Gulf%20of%20Mexico.pdf
And it was not the only lake contributing to the northern oceans.

Seems a shame so few southern hemisphere records. WRT Australia, would it be possible for the CSIRO to put more effort into collecting this type of raw data? Perhaps the resources they put into computer modelling could be diverted. The CSIRO might get more original multi-cited papers out of SH data collection, since they have better access to the study areas. In the computer modelling side the CSIRO is competing with huge resources from other countries. Much less chance of ground breaking multi-cited papers. Can anyone suggest a person with influence who could be contacted with these thoughts?

Complacent Liberal Media Coverage of the Gulf Oil Spill

That bump would have been around the time Lake Missoula drained across Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, leaving us the Channeled Scablands among other things. It left an incredible place to marvel at and to imagine about the scale of it. It’s not often you see erratics the size of houses out in the middle of a high prairie.
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Glacial_erratic

Willis Eschenbach says:
May 26, 2010 at 7:44 pm
rbateman says:
May 26, 2010 at 7:19 pm
The end of the Holocene is inevitable if one draws on full geologic history as a guide, Smokey.
Well, there was a time when there were no regular ice ages. Then regular ice ages started. Someday, I assume that regular ice ages will end … so I would hardly call another ice age “inevitable”. “Very probable”, sure, but inevitable, no.

Well, as the energy environment of our planet has not changed since the ice ages started , no new planets, no great sun energy variation, … I would vote for inevitable.
Sitting by the shore and watching waves coming in, after one recedes it is inevitable that the next one will come in. Not that the sea has not been calm or will not be becalmed again, but in the time frame watched the boundary conditions are such that the next wave is inevitable.

Richard Hill says:
May 26, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Seems a shame so few southern hemisphere records. WRT Australia, would it be possible for the CSIRO to put more effort into collecting this type of raw data? Perhaps the resources they put into computer modelling could be diverted. The CSIRO might get more original multi-cited papers out of SH data collection, since they have better access to the study areas. In the computer modelling side the CSIRO is competing with huge resources from other countries. Much less chance of ground breaking multi-cited papers. Can anyone suggest a person with influence who could be contacted with these thoughts?
_________________________________________________________________________
I do know that Australia and South Africa have caves since I have been caving with people from both countries. I wonder if speleothem studies could be under taken if suitable caves can be found. Ships logs are another source of information for that area.

“Well, there was a time when there were no regular ice ages. Then regular ice ages started. Someday, I assume that regular ice ages will end … so I would hardly call another ice age “inevitable”. “Very probable”, sure, but inevitable, no.”
Just guessing, but the earth might be susceptible to regular ice ages until Antarctica moves away from the South Pole, millions of years from now. That’s when sea level will rise to higher than it is now. It will drop during the glacial periods, and come back up to about present levels in the interglacials.

anna v says:
May 26, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Extending the geologic time-frame out another 3 billion years should follow the last 3.5 billion years.
Simple decay of higher order to lower. Another snowball Earth or two in between.
Until the Sun expands and cooks the planet prior to itself conking out some few billion years further.
Nothing to do to prevent geologic-scale climate change…except invent Warp Drive and get outta here.

Flask says:
May 26, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Thought about the onset of the next glacial and the attendant sea-level drop.
The Alarmists have not even stopped to consider the effects of that one.
How much of a global temp drop would it take to sufficiently lower the sea level to incapacitate the Suez & Panama Canals?
The blues will be sung on 6 Continents as Global Trade takes it on the chin.

stevengoddard says:
May 26, 2010 at 4:02 pm
The Younger Dryas stadial, also referred to as the Big Freeze,[1] was a geologically brief (1,300 ± 70 years) cold climate period between approximately 12,800 and 11,500 years ago (between 10,800 and 9,500 BCE)
That coincides nicely with the dip at 10,000 BCE (12,000 YA); but what about the bigger dip at 13,000 BCE (15,000 YA)?

Echenbach’s Hawk is apparently part bat since it flys around in caves.
ps. I like bats, most don’t.

—
Duster writes of “…in addition to Firestone’s possible extraterrestrial strike there is also a phenomenal radiation event with a large increase in cosmic rays to trigger the formation of excess C-14. The event was apparently very short in duration as well. I have yet to see any convincing hypothesis for the cause.”
Okay, so we may be looking at an event occurring outside our residential star system. Any residua of something cosmically catastrophic in the stellar neighborhood at that time?
Roger MacBride Allen and astrophysicist Eric Kotani (Yoji Kondo) published the novel Supernova in 1991 to explore the possible effects of a violent cosmic event within (astronomically) close range of Sol system. Major bad juju. Might something of a like nature have occurred to account for that “enormous C-14 anomaly” in the Younger Dryas?
—

Duster says:
May 26, 2010 at 10:42 pm
“Massive extinctions are taking place. As Firestone and some others have observed there is a “nanodiamond” horizon marking the beginning of the event, but what is less commonly discussed is that the YD is also marked by an enormous C-14 anomaly which collapses near 2,000 years into an apparent 500 or so. So, in addition to Firestone’s possible extraterrestrial strike there is also a phenomenal radiation event with a large increase in cosmic rays to trigger the formation of excess C-14.”
It just keeps getting more interesting. But since those massive extinctions were quite selective, I wonder how/if this radiation effect could play into that?

I don’t understand the temperature projections into the future. Am I missing something?

“Thought about the onset of the next glacial and the attendant sea-level drop.
The Alarmists have not even stopped to consider the effects of that one.
How much of a global temp drop would it take to sufficiently lower the sea level to incapacitate the Suez & Panama Canals?”
If global trade were to be significantly effected by this, then they would dig a channel however deep as would be required to keep that shipping lane open.
They are already increasing the capacity of this canal by making it wider.

In that case, since you understand it, perhaps you can tell us what the change was, about a million years ago, that started the current series of regular ice ages. That way, we’ll know what to look at for what might end the current series.
AnnaV has probably her own idea .
.
My take on it is that we don’t know that anything significant changed 1 million years ago .
It is just an artefact because more or less reliable “climatic” data are younger than 1 million years and most of those that are used are actually even shorter (100s thousands of years) .
1 million years is really nothing at the geological scales .
What happened between 79 millions and 78 millions years ago ?
Were there glaciation cycles ? How many and how strong ?
In some kind of vaguely defined average this randomly chosen short period looks like relatively warm but would a .04 or even .1 ky oscilating signal be visible at all at a 100 million year scale ? At a billion year scale ?
Would there be much of it left at all anyway ?
Certainly not .
If we talk temperature , the only way to maintain a parameter in a narrow band of variation (what is what we observe since the Earth exists and here I talk billions of years) is to make it oscillate or to make it constant .
As a chaotic system is never in equilibrium and can’t be constant , the system must oscillate .
The frequencies may vary with time and they surely do but there certainly were pseudo periodical Ice age oscillations since the day when temperatures at the poles allowed formation of ice and that happened billions of years ago .
So yes , the next Ice Age is a certainty unless one supposes that the climate system suddenly stopped to oscillate and went in a divergent , non chaotic , unbounded mode what would be unprecedented in 4 billions of years .
If one expects that the principal frequencies vary smoothly with time , the next occurence will happen with a similar frequency like the last one – that is the argument AnnaV used and I tend to think the same thing too .

RE:
Willis Eschenbach says:
May 26, 2010 at 7:44 pm
rbateman says:
May 26, 2010 at 7:19 pm
“The end of the Holocene is inevitable if one draws on full geologic history as a guide, Smokey.”
Well, there was a time when there were no regular ice ages. Then regular ice ages started. Someday, I assume that regular ice ages will end … so I would hardly call another ice age “inevitable”. “Very probable”, sure, but inevitable, no.
Willis,
The explanation usually given for the beginning of ice ages is the closing of the gap between North and South America, restricting interchange between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
So, unless someone blows up the Isthmus of Panama, it would seem that Ice Ages will continue 🙂
Mike

Willis,
Nice posting but I have one significant issue with it. This is that the Vostok Ice Core does not contain a Younger Dryas aged reversal. The reversal in d180, temperature, and trace elements found in various Antarctic cores (much more detaiol is available from the Taylor Dome, Byrd, Dronning Maud Land, Dome Conchordia, Siple Dome and Dome Fuji cores) during the glacial-Holocene transition has been dated accurately. The event is officially known as the “Antarctic Cold Reversal (ACR). There is a heap of detailed work on this and I can provide references if you are interested.
If you go back further into the isotopic records from Greenland and Antarctica you will find that millenial-scale climate events over the respective ice sheets are out of phase (by about 1500 yrs or so) through almost the entire glacial period from about 100,000 BP to 10,000 BP. Antarctic events appear to take the lead in terms of timing. This pattern is also found in sea surface temperatures when the Southern Ocean is compared to the North Atlantic. The causes of this general pattern are still being hotly debated. The effects stretch to the periodic penetration of Antarctic bottom water as far north as Portugal in the North Atlantic.
If you wish to follow up on this field of study I would suggest you start with:
Ahn, J.; Brook, E.J. 2008. Atmospheric CO2 and climate on millennial time scales during the last glacial period. Science 322: 83-85.
Schmittner, A.; Saenko, O.A.; Weaver, A.J. 2003. Coupling of the hemispheres in observations and simulations of glacial climate change. Quaternary Science Reviews 22: 659-671.
Blunier, T.; Brook, E.J. 2001. Timing of millennial-scale climate change in Antarctica and Greenland during the last glacial period. Science 291: 109-112.
*Monin, E. et al 2001. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the last glacial termination. Science 291: 112-114.
The last gives a very nice comparison of the relative timing of the Antarctic Cold Reversal and the Younger Dryas. NB there is a fairly large literature relevant to the relative timing and intenssity of millennial-scale climatic events for both hemispheres.
Note that in the last few years the presence of the Younger Dryas has largely been debunked as far as the climate record in New Zealand is concerned, whereas (unsurprisingly) there is clear evidence for a cold event associated with the ACR in NZ (from speleothem records).
By the way I seem to recall reading a paper (from the Journal Geology I think) on widespread charcoal in North America relating to a potential comet or asteroid strike at the initiation of the Younger Dryas.
Cheers
Rob R

Willis Eschenbach says:
May 26, 2010 at 10:33 pm
In that case, since you understand it, perhaps you can tell us what the change was, about a million years ago, that started the current series of regular ice ages. That way, we’ll know what to look at for what might end the current series.
I will go back to my dynamical analogy of the waves on the shore.
In that analogy, as a physicist, could I answer “what would end the current series of wavefronts”?
The answer is : a change in the energy inputs. For the wave fronts this change could take many ways: change in wind, change in cloud cover , change in currents.
In the case of the planetary system and earth itself, a change in orbits due to energetic interactions: getting into the range of different gravitational fields, a rogue planet entering the system, an asteroid hitting the earth, the sun turning nova, tectonic effects from internal energy changes, etc.
Your question reminded me of a Hodja story.
Hodja is an anatolian judge/mufti ( sometimes a clown) common in the folklore of Turks and Greeks who have originated in Anatolia.
Hodja was walking by a forest when he saw a man sitting on a thick branch of a tree and sowing it off on the wrong side. He spoke up: “my good fellow, be careful, you will have a bad fall” .
Before he reached the village he heard running footfalls and the wood cutter ran up to him and said: “Hodja, you are a great prophet, can you tell me when I will die”?
My answer would be, inevitably in the next eighty years.

we made a cave with speleothems for science. We used the crystal growing recipe on the bottle of Mrs. Stewart’s bluing, and we made several and layered them. We made them on alum foil with holes pricked in it, and we could shape the aluminum foil to resemble layers of rock. Every now and then we added new solution, and sometimes we added food coloring. That kind of showed when the application was made. We got stalagtites and stalagmites, some as big as a half inch. We had so much fun with that project we kept it around the house for the better part of a year, messing with it. We followed up with a trip to California Caverns up near Sonora – WHOA! We found that we had made a pretty good model in the kitchen.
Have a nice day Anthony – ttfn Juanita

Its worse than we thought, man caused the Younger Dryas… bad man, bad, bad bad, you shmuck!
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3460/did-megafauna-extinction-cool-planet
I think its highly possible there was a planet size comet captured in our solar system that came apart 25,000 years ago and it could have been producing the glacials by gravitational pull. Now that it came apart we might not have any more. Research the Taurids complex and surviving comet P2Enki. Harvard has a lot…
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/seri/MNRAS/0251/0000636.000.html
http://stevepace.intuitwebsites.com/

William Roberts says:
May 27, 2010 at 9:00 am
I see that people here are “quick” learners. Not about actual science, mind you. This is the same type of “trick” that Michael Mann uses. To blindly say that the d18O signal in a speleothem is purely temperature is WRONG. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to ignorance, as opposed to a devious ploy. Many deniers were up in arms about the tree rings and precipitation changing tree ring width – not just temperature – and now you’re doing it here!!! Too funny.
Your observation that the early Holocene was much warmer than present is seriously flawed based on your transfer function.
Readers here should be aware of the terrible science being employed here. Don’t blindly accept it.
_______________________________________________________________________
Willis is not asking us to “blindly accept it” He has an inquiring mind, took some already published data and had a look at it, and played with it for a bit. He thought it looked interesting and put it up at this website for the rest of us to look at, comment and critique. Seems pretty close to what science is supposed to be like, an open discussion about the data and given, time, money, equipment and expertise, reproduction of the results.
Willis even said:
“…So, what does all this mean? Heck, I don’t know, I’m investigating, not drawing conclusions…..
The amount of the temperature change depends on the coefficient used to translate from d18O to temperature. So the numbers are likely in the right range, but may be somewhat too large or too small.
Anyhow, that’s my thoughts about what I’ve found out, I welcome yours. I continue with the investigation. It strikes me that I may be able to adjust the conversion factor (d18O/T) to see if that improves the fit of the data … should be interesting. Onwards …”
You say the O18 should not be used to estimate temp. How about giving us some studies/papers that show it is a poor proxy???
This shows O18 used for sea temp studies: http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins/energy/Companion/E16.3.pdf.xpdf
Yes I know that is based on living animals sequestering the O18. So here is a paper that
seems to be using O18 in climate studies using speleothems.
“…Abstract
‘Clumped isotope’ thermometry is based on analyzing mass 47 in CO2 extracted from carbonates and uses the tracer mass 47 anomaly (Δ47). Δ47 is defined as the deviation of R47 from that expected for a random distribution of isotopologues and reflects a temperature dependent preference of 13C and 18O to create a bond with each other in CO2 or in the carbonate lattice. Being an internal characteristic of the carbonate mineral, it is independent of the isotopic composition of the water in which equilibrium precipitation of the carbonate occurs and can therefore be used to independently determine carbonate growth temperatures. This work provides a first examination of the applicability of ‘clumped isotopes’ thermometry to reconstructing the growth temperatures of speleothems, by examining the glacial/interglacial variations of the Δ47 values of speleothem carbonates from Soreq cave, Israel. The results indicate that the last glacial maximum temperatures were 6–7 °C colder than modern day temperature and a sample at 56 Ky BP was 3 °C colder than the modern…” Glacial/interglacial temperature variations in Soreq cave speleothems as recorded by ‘clumped isotope’ thermometry

#
speleo PhD student says:
May 27, 2010 at 11:24 am
Dear Willis, I am afraid William Roberts is right on this. I am doing a PhD on speleothems and climate. The interpretation of d18O depends on many factors, and primarily on cave location. ….
Please don’t get me wrong. I support scepticism and open science. However, doing a bit more research before you start your analysis will dramatically enhance your credibility. I hope you see my point.
___________________________________________________________________________
I was wondering about the rain fall dependency. However from the caves I explored, the spelothems were always wet on the bottom so although the rate of growth is related to the amount of rainfall and the width of the growth bands can be used to determine wet vs dry years, wouldn’t the O18 be dependent on how long it took for the water to move into and out of the water table into the cave?
What I find interesting is, even though there is the confounding, you get a strong signature of “something” common to all 20 data sets. Temperature? Temperature plus precipitation? Precipitation only?
It may not be what Willis was initially looking for but it is still worth seeing.

speleo PhD student:
don’t bother arguing with these writers here. While claiming to be skeptics, they are really “antis” rather than skeptics. “Anti” anything that interferes with their Objectivist and Libertarian viewpoints that an individual should be able to do whatever they wish to do free from government and societal restraints.
Step on the poor slob in the gutter “he deserves to be there and I am better” is their motto. Ayn Rand would be proud.
There actually is no “science” reported here, just fabricated articles cherry picking data and written from their “anti” slant.
One wonders who is funding them for all their time as they seem very prodigious in the volume of crap they post.

Willis, did you plot the Dongge cave record individually? What do you see? Even better, plot all the monsoon records and also the records that are INTERPRETED AS RAINFALL IN THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE altogether (for instance, Soreq cave record). You will see that, in the “wet and warm” early Holocene, d18O will turn sharply NEGATIVE, and you interpret negative d18O as cooler temperatures for the rest of the records, don’t you? So, does d18O work as a temp proxy for the rainfall-proxy regions? NO. “Wet-and-warm” argument is NOT reflected by d18O. Wet makes d18O more negative, but warm makes it more positive! Show us monsoon records and non-monsoon records seperately, and everyone will get the issue.
The first thing you should do is to skim through all the original papers associated with the data sets, eliminate all the data sets in which d18O is interpreted as a rainfall proxy. And and and.. d18O is influenced also by seasonality of rainfall, did you know? Imagine, if you have a shift to more summer rainfall with the same total annual precip amount, wouldn’t you get higher values of d18O? Even if the temperatures do not change? You should also eliminate data sets for which this effect can be important. And you CAN NOT decide before reading the original papers.
I believe that Early Holocene was warmer and wetter than present in the Northern Hemisphere. But this is no argument against the current warming, because the reason for the Early Holocene warmth is very well established. It is the increased summer-time solar irradiance due to the state of Milankovitch cycles. And: If you attempt doing paleoclimatology without any knowledge of the Younger Dryas… I don’t know what to say…
The “warmists” out there, especially the ones at realclimate, are so happy when they see posts like yours. Your analysis is invalid and your claims are easily refutable using well-known facts. I am sorry, but you give skeptic community a bad name, with “works” like this. I can’t imagine Steve McIntyre doing this.

@ Smokey: I am well aware that proxies are distorted by paleoclimate scientists as well, but bad science cannot be debunked by bad science. I wonder why people like Willis are so impatient just to “write” and to “reconstruct” something, when they could do much better with a little bit more effort and attention. Fighting back with bad science only makes the “establishment” more powerful, and in turn my life more miserable. I cannot defend Willis and support skeptic community (which I would really like to), if the products are this quality.
About the article: I’ll publish some formal ones first (I must). After obtaining the PhD and getting more independent, everything will be easier. I promise to return.

Dear Willis, it is not safe for me to use my real name. Apologies for that.
Yes, I tried to lecture you, which was much needed. I don’t see why lecturing should be wrong, this is my area.
You still seem not wanting to understand the basics of this science. The correlation between “temperature” and “d18O in modern precip” is POSITIVE. Accordingly, in your text, you correctly found a value of +0.36 per mil d18O change for every degree celcius, after subtracting the deposition effect… This means, if you assume all other effects (amount effect, seasonality, precip source effect etc.) to be non-existent, you will observe 0.36 per mil more positive d18O for every degree C. This positive relationship is what we observe in all the ice core records as well, and all researchers in the field know this. This has nothing to do with caves, this is basic isotopic fractination. Spannagel cave record is a rare example of the reversed relationship, where the source effect plays a role (read the paper). And, monsoon records have their own story, through their own mechanism, which I explained above.
So, 1) if you assume an inverse relationship between temp and d18O, maybe you made a mistake. This is plain wrong. This is contrary to your very first calculation. 2) You cannot take Spannagel or Monsoon records as references for this assumption… Spannagel’s reasoning is through the “variable source effect”, due to a special geographical location, and temperature is only INDIRECTLY related to this and authors make use of that fact (read the paper). Therefore you cannot use this reasoning for all of your collected data.
Thanks for the discussion by the way. What I say is: study more before publishing.

” if there is a relationship between temp and d18O, it must be a positive one”
Why MUST it be positive, when other sources say that it can go either way depending on location? If you’re going to educate, lets get to the crux of the matter instead of simply stating something as fact, shall we?

Willis, apologies for my earlier remark. I clearly didn’t have my brain engaged when I didn’t spot the difference in horizontal scales used!
I think it is key here to understand if this proxy is “bang-up-to-date” i.e. the last data is indicative of the state of present day temps rather than 1000 yrs ago. The ice-core data is not so0 up to date, because ice-cores take time to freeze in the record of the temp proxies.
However, I notice with interest that the orange dots appear to have the same pattern as the purple dots but displaced by about 1500 yrs. Could that be because they are caves in different hemispheres? – there was a comment earlier in this thread that climate patterns in the northern hemisphere follow the southern hemisphere by 1500yrs, according to the ice-core record. or maybe the cave is just deeper?
As I said before, the thing that interests me more is the fact that we seem to be about 1/3rd of the way through a linear decline from the peak temperatures immediately after the end of the last ice-age to the worst part of the next ice-age. This is what the ice-cores say should be happening, in which case the CO2 clearly isn’t doing nearly enough to stop the next ice-age happening!

Just to chime in some more logic to this incoherent post. Thanks phd student for trying to bring truth to this mess.
Independent evidence: marine sediment cores from the tropics measure an upper limit of 3 degrees C cooling for the tropics during the LGM compared to present. So why are stalagmites from Indonesia, Borneo, Panama, Oman etc showing more than a 10 degree C temperature change according to the “I’m just playing around” excel graph?
Because they are records of hydrologic changes. NOT temperature. This post is randomly using a transfer function based on thermodynamic equation of fractionation in the formation of calcium carbonate, which yields bogus conclusions in these records. Obvious ploy. NOT science. No clap-clap, backslap from me for this post.

William Roberts says:
May 28, 2010 at 8:37 am
Just to chime in some more logic to this incoherent post. Thanks phd student for trying to bring truth to this mess.
With characteristic narcissistic arrogance AGW drones are trying to bring mess to the truth.
What is remarkable looking at the data as a whole is that speleothem records from every corner of the globe give a coherent record which is consistent with ice core and other reconstructions of terrestrial temperatures. This of course undermines one of the AGW “we’ve got to lose the MWP” strategies of trying to argue that any climate temperature change recorded in a palaeo reconstruction must be only local and not global, unless it involves CO2 emitted by enemies of the people.
The disorganised barrage of factoids presented by assorted trolls and PhD students include the idea that the relationship between d18O and temperature is variable and dependent on location. If so, why the coherence in the data? If this were true then the data would indeed be a mess and show no trend. But they’re not.
The left-field introduction of SST reconstruction by William Roberts is indeed irrelevant and bizarre. Obviously an attempt to confuse and muddy the waters. Obfusticating further, we are told “tropical speleothem records … are NOT simply records of temperature. They are records of changes in hydrology.”
O how interesting! According to CAGW, the weak effect of CO2 in increasing atmospheric temperature is amplified by positive feedback from the hydrological cycle, clouds and precipitation – which one would assume implies a correlation between temperature and the hydrological cycle. But here, for the sake of rubbishing speleothems as a temperature proxy we need to imply no correlation between temperatures and hydrology.
This is of course all diagnostic of AGW professional training – any signs of being able to hold more than one idea in your head at once and it is “go directly to the job centre, do not pass go, do not collect 200”.

Willis, I see that Matt Ridley used your graph and gave you credit in a post at Rational Optimist:
http://bit.ly/ctFoa0

—
Having myself no dog in this fight (PETA be damned), I comment here only to observe that these exchanges represent what I conceive to be one of the best uses of such fora in the advancement of scientific inquiry.
This is something akin to an extended wrangle among graduate students and post-doctoral fellows without the suppressive intrusions of the professoriate – or a wrestling match among resident physicians and subspecialty fellows without a preceptor attending physician’s nose stuck into the give-and-take.
Reminds me of time-wasting sessions down in the bowels of Medical Records when we were supposed to be dictating discharge summaries and instead sought salvation from agonizing boredom in disputation on specific cases and on clinical medicine in general, with the added benefit conferred by present participants’ abilities to open a browser tab or window on the side and search the literature for supporting information and citations.
This is damned healthy, and I’d be interested to learn to what extent something substantive gets into the published literature as a direct or indirect result.
—

phlogiston says
“The dip before the interglacial is curious (13-14 ky ago) – has this been seen before?”
I am also puzzled about that, I would also like to find to know the answer to that question? It seems not quite to fit in with the greenland ice core data.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/hockey-stick-observed-in-noaa-ice-core-data

HENRY@Willis
I must say that the data towards the end (the current warm period) do have a wide spread, ranging from -6 to +5 . Do you know why is that? I am puzzled that the average here does not show the 0.7 degrees or so increase of the last 150 years. So, what are we saying? If you look inside the caves, there really was no global warming (outside) ? Or was it just too little to notice? Or is the 0.7 perhaps wrong?

William Roberts
How bizzare would it be if global temperature correlated with glaciation and ice extent?! O thank you for correcting such a foolish error!
Odd how such a fuss is being made of Arctic extent and glacier retreat / advance, when they are unrelated to climate temperature. At least now we know that ice is not affected by cold or heat.
What a truly educational site this is!

you say: “You appear to be saying that the speleothem records were precipitation records that also look like temperature records because … well, you don’t say why.”
uhhh – reading comprehension. Yeah, that’s what to say here. I DID say why. The earth was deglaciation. Continental ice caps were melting. That little speed bump caused worldwide changes – including, but not limited to, temperature and precipitation.
Alternatively, over the course of the Holocene, insolation changes caused the see-saw pattern in hemispheric precipitation. And I DID give you a ref. You should’ve read it before you asked your question. So reading comprehension again. Read the Wang ref.
I’m focusing on the tropics b/c they are the biggest hole in your initial plot for this post. To say those records are temperature is a way off the mark.
Also, I think you should read a bit more about the effect of tropical sst’s on global climate. Where do you think most of the water in the atmosphere comes from? Hint: warm, tropical waters.
Since you want quotes of what you said, here’s one “Yes, El Niño has a large effect … but that’s only a small part of the tropical SSTs.”
No. El Nino is directly related to/a manifestation of changes in tropical SST. And the changes in tropical SSTs/El Nino are substantial worldwide, not a “small part”. If you say “no” to that, then now you are just disagreeing with no scientific basis.
you say: “Most tropical SSTs don’t vary much. As an example, there has been no warming trend in tropical SSTs since the start of the satellite record (1979).”
wrong again. try here
Cravatte, S., et al. (2009). “Observed freshening and warming of the western Pacific Warm Pool.” Climate Dynamics 33(4): 565-589.
or here
Lyman, J. M., et al. (2010). “Robust warming of the global upper ocean.” Nature 465(7296): 334-337.
read the wang reference and then see if that addresses your 1,2,3 questions.
hopefully you will focus on the science and not trying to act like a martyr and correct me like you were my dad.

sure sure. you’re right. golf ball bathroom. got it.
Now we can stop complaining about tone.
you say: “So you are saying that the record I showed is a precipitation record that also shows temperature? It’s very hard to try to dig out your meaning.”
Did you read the wang paper? That should clear up what I am saying.

uhhhh, yes it can. I don’t want to have to tell you the play-by-play of the whole paper when you can just read the paper yourself. Sorry, trying to be scientific and not lecture you about it. Let me know when you’ve actually read it so we can discuss the science more.
Oh, and about your in-depth analysis of the Lyman paper: so you’re judging a book by its cover (or title as it were) now? Good call. And given that each year in the paper consists of hundreds, if not thousands of data points from buoys and floats, your 16 degrees of freedom and resulting p-value mean squa-doosh. So the trend, which you confirm, is “robust”. …but of course you would’ve known that if you actually read the paper as opposed to conducting your rigorous scientific analysis without even reading it.

nevermind. It just showed up. Weird. sorry for multiple posts.

First off – wow this post is already on page 3 of this blog. you guys really churn them out here. …I doubt anyone is actually even reading this thread anymore as it is already buried. So I guess it’s just you and me. Too bad b/c finally people may understand the mistakes you have made.
Second – nice double talk. Way to avoid addressing my comments by repeating the question.
third – yes, I DID in fact answer your questions. The change in precipitation from glacial times to present occurred b/c the earth warmed up. Warmer earth, more rain in many places. Over the course of the Holocene, there is a phase-shift of 180 degrees between the northern and southern hemispheres. That’s why the China speleothem and the brazilian speleothem records have opposite trends over the Holocene. As is VERY evident in the paper. And is what I said here:
“The earth was deglaciation. Continental ice caps were melting. That little speed bump caused worldwide changes – including, but not limited to, temperature and precipitation.
Alternatively, over the course of the Holocene, insolation changes caused the see-saw pattern in hemispheric precipitation. And I DID give you a ref. You should’ve read it before you asked your question. So reading comprehension again. Read the Wang ref.”
Therefore, you are incorrect again. We both said the same things. ..also, how many times do I have to say it???
Fourth – why would you see my name in the wang paper? I didn’t have anything to do with it. It is part of the answer to why your post is incorrect. That’s why I shared it with you. …now who is being uncivil???

If I’m Gene Kelly, then you are Cyd Charisse.
What I’m saying is this: speleothems record a combination of temperature and precipitation changes. If you have a way of determining the change in temperature via other means, say a nearby marine sediment core – then you have an independent constraint on temperature. You can convert that temperature to d18O of calcite using a thermodynamic equation. The resultant change in calcite d18O cannot be due to temperature. It is due to amount or the source of precipitation.
clear enough??? probably not, so go ahead and fire away.
And I did comment on your analysis of the Lyman paper. I said you didn’t properly count the degrees of freedom for your p-value. reading comprehension.
As to who is uncivil??? Both of us are guilty. I can live with it. Can you???

SO- back to your original post where you put absurdly large temperature variations for cave records in the tropics and sub-tropics: do you plan on re-posting with an update? …Or just leave your readers with false information.
This post is already on page 4 of this blog, so you guys aren’t afraid to crank out a post.