Icy consensus: least ice "at least the last few thousand years"

Ok. Let’s say, just for arguments sake, that the doomsayers are all correct and that we’re heading for an ice-free Arctic at a fast pace.
Has anyone actually explained exactly WHY and HOW an ice-free Arctic is such a disaster? And for whom would it be a disaster? And in what way it would be a disaster?
My enquiring mind would like to know, because when I read all these ARCTIC IS MELTING! stories all I see is an implication that This Is A Bad Thing. I have never seen “An ice-free Arctic is bad because….”.

It is ridiculous, sheer, utter nonsense to claim that they can detect the September minimum from ancient sediments. Junk science reigns supreme in the Arctic.

Hmm, I tried to find an abstract by clicking on the Quarternary Science Reviews link, but that seems to link to the current issue. Which has some interesting stuff: “Thousand years of climate change reconstructed from chironomid subfossils preserved in varved lake Silvaplana, Engadine, Switzerland”, which confirms the Medieval Warm Period (or “Climate Anomaly”, as they like to say now): “The inferred July temperatures were in the same range as the inferred temperatures during the last part of the MCA suggesting that during the 20th century, at Lake Silvaplana, the chironomid-inferred temperatures do not exceed the natural climate variability of the past millennium.”

What he should have said was, “..then, with certain skills tricks and luck…”
lol… what an ass-hat…

>Polyak’s coauthors on the report hailed from Penn State University, University of Colorado, University of Massachusetts
Hmmm…..
REPLY: yeah, I’m, thinking the same thing, Penn State, proxy, press release prior to publication, worst in thousands of years…who do we know that talks like that? – Anthony

How do you compensate for the ocean currents when you are pulling sediments from the sea floor? Aren’t they studying the sediment that settled after being kicked up elsewhere, perhaps the Pacific or some other ocean?

Also on that note, what evidence is there that ocean currents have remained constant over these time periods?

“For example, scientists can search for a biochemical marker that is tied to certain species of algae that live only in ice. If that marker is present in the sediment, then that location was likely covered in ice at the time. Scientists call such markers “proxies” for the thing they actually want to measure — in this case, the geographic extent of the ice in the past.”
“When we look carefully at various chemical and biological components of the seafloor sediment, and how the sediment is distributed — then, with certain skills and luck, we can reconstruct the conditions at the time the sediment was deposited.”
Who could possibly dispute such rock solid logic?

“then, with certain skills and luck,” doesn’t sound very scientific to me.
I wonder if they’d bet their lives on their findings?

And who exactly did the team pick from Penn State? Any guesses?
There was not a paper listed at QR that I could find. I suppose it has just been submitted. The claims in the press release cannot be refuted until it is published, but the AGW elite will cite this as proof just the same.
Also you will note that this submission was sponsored by US tax payers through the Climate Change Program.

So…when folks were ice-skating on the Thames, the Arctic ice extent was smaller than it is today? (Eyes roll)
Do these guys ever d0 a sanity check?

If they can prove that the Arctic is more ice free than ever before, does this mean that all the history of traversing the north west passage was reconstructed from proxy data found in polar bear gizzards?

What sort of proxy do these people substitute for climate alarmist grey matter? BS?

Penn State – carving hockey sticks out of tree rings. I want to go back to the Eemian and see what happened in the end. I read somewhere there was a global warming spike, but who knows what to believe these days.

How do you compensate for the ocean currents when you are pulling sediments from the sea floor? Aren’t they studying the sediment that settled after being kicked up elsewhere, perhaps the Pacific or some other ocean?
Dave F @ June 2, 2010 at 10:16 pm
I was thinking along the same lines. How long does it take a dead algae to sink 5,000 or ten thousand feet to the bottom of the ocean and how far laterally has it moved via currents from horz. coordinates where it died? I suppose it may not matter because the assessment can be made relative to other layers in the same core, but that would require you assume the currents never vary.
Do the currents vary enough that it would mess up the whole analysis on that basis? How do you assess what amount of variance is significant?

So ice ages and interglacials are no longer relevant. Given past interglacial sea level rises it looks like we may have a long way to go yet. But then warmer atmosphere = more humidity = more precipitation and snow in the northern regions for increased albedo around the arctic and increased cloud albedo around the tropics. Who knows what is going to happen?

I call bogus on the use of the polar region for sediment cores.
The reason: Because of the several oceanic currents which carry material from distant places and deposit it there.
As a result of just that alone, any pretend quantification of ice thickness is without validity.
It would be quite one thing were the polar region to freeze solid right down to the sea bed, but such hasn’t happened that we know of.

You would think wouldn’t you that they would ask themselves why the sea ice is less today than when the Danes were able to farm in Greenland.
I have never been wooed by the intrinsic brilliance of people who go into science for a living, mostly it’s because they don’t want to leave school, but now I am ashamed to say that I’m astonished at the level of stupidity of some of these guys doing climate science.

…re-examined the data from past and ongoing studies—nearly 300 in all—and combined them to form a big-picture view of the pole’s climate history stretching back millions of years.

A meta-analysis and they got the data and methods from those studies from the nearly 300 authors? AFAIK, climate science data and methods are very hard to come by. I wonder who was so generous with their closely guarded proxy data, especially the methods used to extract temperature or, in this instance, the ice extent? Maybe Steve McIntyre should be auditing this and the underlying studies, since the data’s so readily available.

Well, sometimes it is the EXTENT of the ice and sometimes it is the AGE of the ice and then it might be the VOLUME of the ice or whether or not it is ROTTEN….
What next? Whether it is the wrong colour or smells bad?
They are really milking this Arctic ice thing – obviously desperate funding might sink? freeze? evaporate? melt?
If they want to do something useful for the environment, these guys would be better picking up some litter….

“with a little skill & luck”? [snip] is that all about? Yes Mr & Mrs Smith, with a “little skill & luck” this steel framed building you & all your family will live in, for which you are paying a hefty fee, should stand up! No, it doesn’t quite stack for me.
A few problems, a) define a “few thousand years”, is that 1,000? 2,000? 5,000? 10,000? What? Using any of those time frames you can bet your bottom dollar on them being right! (Probably).
b) This paper would be more interseting if they had rationalised the issue that over the last 600,000 years the previous interglacials were warmer than today by several degrees C. By implication, there would have been a liklihood of less Arctic ice during those times than today. (NOAA ice core data central Greenland, from a guest post on this site some months ago now).

Just The Facts says:
June 3, 2010 at 12:02 am
Leonid Polyak is also signer 219 of 320; [–snip rest–]
*
*
Well, what were you expecting? Birds of a feather alight together.

I’m surprised nobody caught this yet:
“Underneath the surface, the ice can be thick or thin. The newest satellite techniques and field observations allow us to see that the volume of ice is shrinking much faster than its area today. The picture is very troubling. We are losing ice very fast,”
Maybe someone should ask him about sources for the volume?

Lets look at the 1961 (pre-AGW hysteria) take on this:
” the climatic optimum (of the current interglacial) was between about 5600 and 2500 B.C.’
” by 6000 B.C. all western Europe was occupied by a rich mixed forest of oak, alder and elm. This warm Atlantic period continued until about 2500 B.C. with gradually decreasing temperature Judging by the (fossil) flora of Spitsbergen, the Arctic Ocean was free of ice”
In : Encylopaedia Britannica, 1961 version, Author C.E.P.Brooks, Meteorological Office, UK (so it must be reliable….)
Its hard to see how there could have been NO ice in winter even then…but leaving that aside, is ice loss earlier this interglacial still accepted?
If it is, whats the issue now (apart from how do you translate a core record into physical ice area, thickness, and round the year variation) ?
DM

Here’s a list of publications of the principal author:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=Leonid+Polyak&hl=en&as_sdt=4000
An excerpt from one, http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~wsoon/DanBotkin08-d/ArcticSeaIce_History_review_Darby_2006.pdf :

Past changes in the Arctic Ocean and its marginal seas have been profound, even during the last 10,000 years.

If relatively recent changes in the Arctic have been ‘profound’, and these must have been taking place without any anthropogenic gases, who is to say the current changes are not simply natural variations?
In the article’s conclusion:

The Quaternary history of the Arctic Ocean is marked by dramatic changes in paleoceanographic and climatic regimes related to glaciations of the Arctic periphery and sea-level fluctuations. These changes affected all aspects of the Arctic Ocean system, including hydrography, sedimentation, and biota. The last major revolution
of arctic environments occurred during the last glacial to Holocene transition circa 10 ka ago. Besides the disappearance of large ice sheets in many parts of the circum-Arctic, the associated climatic warming, the rising sea level, and atmospheric changes affected environmental conditions dramatically in the central Arctic Ocean and its marginal regions. During this transition, the shallow continental shelf became widely flooded, which precipitated a profound reorganization of the circum-Arctic environment, from a dominantly terrestrial-fluvial to a marine environment with a strong fluvial influence over the vast width of the Siberian shelves. Time-transgressive changes in sedimentation together with geochemical and micropaleontological proxy data give clear evidence of the southwardly transgressing sea on the shallow shelves until about 5–6 ka. After that time, the modern sea-ice regime and hydrological patterns were fully developed in the Arctic, including enhanced water-mass exchange with the adjacent sub-polar seas through Fram Strait, Bering Strait, the Canadian
Archipelago, and across the Barents Sea.
Centennial- to millennial-scale climate changes are also documented in the Arctic during the Holocene, primarily in sedimentary records from continental margins that have higher sedimentation rates and thus provide better time resolution. These changes include fluctuations in the pattern of ice rafting, the position of the Marginal
Ice Zone, and temperature and salinity in both surface and subsurface water masses. Interpretation and causes of these changes are still under investigation, but there is little doubt that these Holocene climatic variations are at least as significant as recent warming.

Did you notice the passage “there is little doubt that these Holocene climatic variations are at least as significant as recent warming.”?
Clearly, the world has seen variations in the Arctic as significant as recent warming. The world survived, including the polar bear and seals. Also, these changes took place without any influence from mankind.
What’s the problem again?

“Maybe sometime down the road we’ll develop proxies for the ice thickness. Right now, just looking at ice extent is very difficult.”

From the PIOMAS page at the Polar Science Center:

Volume estimates using age of sea ice as a proxy for ice thickness are another useful method…

Long day, it’s late, brainwave supply down to reserve and near depletion.
Did I read that right, get the context correct? Polyak is talking about taking new measurements like for extent, as in right now for the current conditions, saying some day they’ll develop proxies for ice thickness that they can use for figuring current readings, as in currently there aren’t any such proxies for ice thickness? Or should I say, there aren’t any useful proxies?

I have a theory that because polar bears dont smile as often as they used to and look rather sad nowadays they must be upset about dangerous global warming so I propose a mission to the Arctic with an nuclear ice breaker and perhaps a team of fifty social workers and psyschologists and crystal healers and traditional medicine men(persons) to establish a dialogue with the polar bears to ask then why they are so sad about dangerous global warming and the dissapearing ice.
I will need two million dollars in low demonination bills in an unmarked case which I will collect from the Ohio wallmart lost and found next week and I promise a full report on my progress sometime around 2050ish.

Certain skills and luck? What does that remind me of, hmmm let me think….it has something to do with my childhood…Jr.High journalism class?…eerrrmmm no, that was better written……oh, I remember now! “Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat! GROWR! Oops, must have been a 71/2!”

A POX on all their proxies

AlanG says:
June 2, 2010 at 10:11 pm
OT: Al and Tipper Gore are separating after 40 years of marriage, after four children and three grandchildren, after just buying a $9 million house in Montecito, California, two weeks after celebrating their anniversary. I shouldn’t be delighted but I am. I wonder what the rows were about? Climategate perhaps?
Neighbors reported on numerous occasions hearing Tipper shouting “Nothing is settled, Al, nothing!”

I was thinking, thats an ingenious notion, algae drifting from ice melt to the sea floor. Two thumbs up for a ‘possible/maybe’ transport mechanism, but add the term ‘proxy’ and we have a good case to doubt the result equates to cryo-temporal-statistico-climatico-mechanica-tistics.
Saying they can tell, with any certainty, what the extent of Arctic Ice cover was, before the invention of coherent thought, is a novel approach to a pitch for funding.
Lets see how this rolls, i’ve got a million lunatic fringe ideas, i’d gladly take money for, now if I can just find a popular subject to shamelessly exploit,….

Interesting qualifications: Skill & Luck.
But you don’t need skill & luck to unprecedentally beat the AGW video game, just the cheat codes.

Umm, by such methods, couldn’t the most they hope for is to describe the changes of the spring max extent over time?

In previous inter-glacials sea levels were 3 to 20 m higher than today and we are now 10,000 years into a longer than average inter-glacial. I realise that melting sea ice does not increase sea levels but on past form a lot more ice will melt before the next ice age.

Aren’t they scared of finding oil? That would be poetic justice.

Leonid Polyak should be ashamed for producing this bilge. “Certain skills and luck”? Scientific fraud looks more likely. “Patterns in the proxy data that fit together like pieces of a puzzle”? He “found” what he was being paid to “find”. Quelle suprise.
Since so little is actually known about it, and temperatures aren’t cooperating, it seems that Arctic Ice may be the Warmists’ Last Hurrah.

..after a winning weekend in Vegas the giddy Mr. Polyak thought he would try his hand at the science table..
-craps-

Just the facts: “It’s also interesting that all these guys seem to know each other… Nothing conclusive, but certainly interesting…”
And worth keeping on file. I can personally attest to the close relationships among climate scientists, being acquainted with at least two of them. I am pretty sure these two have known each other for many years, at least back to their university days as young radicals, and possibly even longer.
Since then, when they are not meeting in person, they have exchanged a voluminous correspondence, initially by letter and more latterly by the electronic email. So in that sense they are pretty typical of climate scientists the world over, as we all discovered to our dismay last November.
Frankly, I am very curious as to the nature of this long-term relationship. One wonders how much help they have been giving each other on the quiet; help that they have conveniently “forgotten” to record in their notebooks to evade a climate audit.
What I have discovered to my cost is the ruthless nature of the climate crowd. Just a few weeks ago at a party one of these so-called scientists, who I suspect had drunk a little too much of the kool-aid, was boasting of his skill with “tipping points”, while looking at me in a meaningful way.
This seemingly casual remark was clearly intended to intimidate. It worked, at least on me, and after that party I kept a profile lower than the Arctic ice. Unfortunately, these scientists know where I live, and their reach is long. Ask my wife.
Right now, though, I am enjoying some welcome breathing space. I hear my two acquaintances are travelling to attend a “conference”, where they will probably meet other like-minded “scientists”.
Just one more piece of the puzzle.

This story is loading with subjective remarks , which by themselves have nothing to do with an objective description of reality . This is appearing to be a study made of studies with the only purpose to find a justification of the agw alarmist stories .
Gaily they are omitting the period when the vikings grew wheat in greenland …….
Apparently the alarmists are running out of arguments and under strong pressure to create the state of fear for their own purposes . Search and thou shalt find , but is this also true for a demonic description of reality ?

#
#
geronimo says:
June 3, 2010 at 12:13 am
“You would think wouldn’t you that they would ask themselves why the sea ice is less today than when the Danes were able to farm in Greenland.”
___________________________________________________________________________
Not only farm but explore the area:
“…A stone inscribed with runes has been found telling that in 1333, three Greenlanders wintered on the island of Kingigtorssuaq just below 73 degrees north. There is also evidence of voyages to the Canadian arctic. Two cairns have been discovered in Jones Sound above 76 degrees North and two more have been found on Washington Irving Island at 79 degrees north….” http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/vikings/Greenland.html
Washington Irving Island is at the entrance to Dobbin Bay, eastern Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. Ellesmere Island is well within the arctic circle and not that far from the north pole (about 600 miles)
An interesting description of Norse habitation of North America plus a Norse map of the arctic area, north pole islands and all: http://www.heritage.nf.ca/exploration/norse.html
Norse Map: http://www.heritage.nf.ca/exploration/vmap.html
Here are the Greenland temperatures from Ice Core data. The temperature at that time was 2C warmer than today. http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
geronimo says:
June 3, 2010 at 12:13 am
“…..I have never been wooed by the intrinsic brilliance of people who go into science for a living, mostly it’s because they don’t want to leave school, but now I am ashamed to say that I’m astonished at the level of stupidity of some of these guys doing climate science.”
_________________________________________________________________________
Not stupid just greedy. Al Gore and Maurice Strong (father of Global Warming) were engaged in a scheme (Molten Metal Inc) to fleece the American public while Gore held the office of VP. Al Gore hyped the company on the first US earth day and Maurice Strong made a killing before the company went belly up.
As a chemist I want to know why the heck they built a full size facility, funded by taxpayer grants BEFORE doing the pilot plant work???? Pilot plants are the first step in scale up from lab bench to full size plants. I have seen skipping this step cause some bad accidents (equipment blown up)
The story: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/04/us/panel-to-quiz-clinton-s-96-campaign-chief-on-stock-gift.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all%5D
Lawsuits: http://securities.stanford.edu/1008/AxlervMoltenMeta/001.html
House Committee Investigation: http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20040830154236-07181.pdf
Follow the money: google Maurice Strong and David Rockefeller, his mentor.

I did this calculation once and it is lost on my hard disc somewhere, but I calculated the total heat generated by humans and compared it to the absorption by the sun and concluded that it was insignificant. Does anyone have that calculation? It is 3 or 4 computers back for me so I will have a bit of trouble finding it and i don’t want to do the crunching again.
PW

Caleb says:
June 3, 2010 at 1:05 am
“How much stimulous money has been spent on so-called Climate reserch?”
Here’s your answer…
Final Stimulus Bill Provides $21.5 Billion for Federal R&D…
And remember that this was taxpayer-funded “stimulus” ca$h- over and above the normal annual federal appropriations!! Meanwhile, my friends were being laid off in 2009 as the economy tanked and the unemployment rate shot to 10%.
As long as tons of our money keeps flowing to the AGW crowd, they will continue to publish reports like this one. After all, it’s what they’re paid to do…

This has to be one of the biggest stinking crocks passing for science to come by in a while. So many good issues raised above.

Ah, yes, science by press release. I imagine the IPCC has already included it in it’s next report.

The article appears to be #38 in the list of forthcoming QSR articles at
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_tockey=%23TOC%235923%239999%23999999999%2399999%23FLA%23&_cdi=5923&_pubType=J&_auth=y&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=c826a32bf8f782638a5a32988054c75e.
It was accepted 3/12/10, but no date is scheduled yet for publication. A PDF is available for $31.50. Mann is not a co-author, but Richard Alley of PSU is.

stevengoddard says:
June 2, 2010 at 10:01 pm
It is ridiculous, sheer, utter nonsense to claim that they can detect the September minimum from ancient sediments. Junk science reigns supreme in the Arctic.

From his posts on WUWT, we know that Steven has a deep knowledge of the arctic sea ice data. However, this claim doesn’t seem so preposterous to me — If open sea generates certain planktons or whatever that do not appear when the surface is frozen, years (or at least centuries) with September thaws might be easily spottable in the sediment record.
Let’s take a look at the paper first.

Even though he is wrong I would suppose he and his team are putting food on the table anyway.

the first comprehensive history of Arctic ice
The word comprehensive clearly should not have been used.

Brace yourselves Guys!
I think we’re in for a steady stream of government-sponsored reports intended to show us all just how bad things are. The only way out is for Congress to quicly pass the pending “energy” legislation!!
G.

Gail Combs says:
June 3, 2010 at 6:29 am
Excellent list Gail! I think Anthony should consider creating a link to these resources so that people can see how awash in (tax) money the Global Warming research community is these days. I’ve also recently discovered that many of our climate luminaries like Hansen, Schmidt, Karl etc. are pulling down six figure base salaries as government employees…

It is good to see this one come out because the extent of BS involved makes the results easy for a 10 year old to find the problems. I want to see more research like this!

tty says:
Incidentally the paper is out, it must be this one:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBC-4YKFMY0-2&_user=10&_coverDate=03%2F12%2F2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid
Well if that is the paper folks, you need to read it. And focus on the data extrapolation from three, (3), tres, ice cores from the artic ocean: (If this link works)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MiamiCaptionURL&_method=retrieve&_udi=B6VBC-4YKFMY0-2&_image=fig3&_ba=3&_user=10&_coverDate=03%2F12%2F2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=full&_orig=search&_cdi=5923&_issn=02773791&_pii=S0277379110000429&view=c&_acct=C000052423&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1450477&md5=ca392cac7ff8d2cd4a35b6e0f5b9a314
And Anthony, Mann isn’t one of the listed authors, but Mark Serreze is.

Al Gore’s Holy Hologram says:
June 3, 2010 at 6:14 am
Volume is everything, NOT cover.
+++
It would be. . . if we had enough volume data. I think we have something close to 3 orders of magnitude more extent data than volume data, however.
It’s not just the number of years covered that makes that true, it’s mostly the granularity. We have daily extent data for 30 years, and a few piddling volume data points when even in periods when we have them they are months apart in granularity.

Sometimes you can tell when a paper is bogus by the reduced number of trolls attempting to validate the thesis. We have none here so far. Maybe it’s because of this passage from the paper (coupled with the number of cores taken in the ocean itself, see above):
Sediment cores that represent the long-term history of sea ice embracing millions of years are most likely to be found in the deep, central part of the Arctic Ocean, where the seafloor was not eroded during periods of lower sea-level and the passage of large ice sheets. On the other hand, rates of sediment deposition in the central Arctic Ocean are generally low, on the order of centimeters or even millimeters per thousand years ([Backman et al., 2004] and Polyak et al., 2009 L. Polyak, J. Bischof, J. Ortiz, D. Darby, J. Channell, C. Xuan, D. Kaufman, R. Lovlie, D. Schneider and R. Adler, Late Quaternary stratigraphy and sedimentation patterns in the western Arctic Ocean. Global Planet, Change 68 (2009), pp. 5–17. Article | PDF (896 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (5)[Polyak et al., 2009]), so that sedimentary records from these areas may not capture short-term (submillennial or even millennial-scale) variations in paleoenvironments.

Frank K. says:
June 3, 2010 at 8:17 am
…… I’ve also recently discovered that many of our climate luminaries like Hansen, Schmidt, Karl etc. are pulling down six figure base salaries as government employees…
________________________________________________________________________
Have any links to that info? I always wonder about those little Swiss bank accounts …..

Seems like an awfully robust study for such a settled science.

Gail Combs says:
June 3, 2010 at 5:18 am
House Committee Investigation: http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20040830154236-07181.pdf
Follow the money: google Maurice Strong and David Rockefeller, his mentor.
Would happen to have an alternate URL for the above? Clicking on produces a 404 message: “Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server.”

Patrick Davis says:
June 3, 2010 at 6:16 am
“Frank K. says:
June 3, 2010 at 5:45 am
Caleb says:
June 3, 2010 at 1:05 am
[–snip–]
This is scary! If there is seriously reduced economic activity, there will be seriously reduced tax revenue. Where do these people think all the money comes from? Oh yeah, that’s right. It’s plucked right out of the air we breathe, and our wallets, just to be sure.
Well, if you think ~that~ is scary, then consider this: The Dems in the Congress —right along with their fellow traveler Republicans— have it in mind to ‘nationalize,’ i.e., confiscate,’ everyone’s 401k and IRA accounts.
Yep, that’s right! From thence you’ll get a stipend predicated upon what some bureaucrat ‘thinks’ you need to live on.
Word has it that both of those accounts will be zeroed-out and you’ll just get the minimum FICA payment to subsist upon.
Feeling the ‘change’ yet?

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
June 3, 2010 at 7:30 am
Even though he is wrong I would suppose he and his team are putting food on the table anyway.
Food on his is food take out of the mouths of yet other people’s mouths.
Remember: Government cannot give to one without taking from another.

Phil. says:
June 3, 2010 at 6:47 am
Gail Combs says:
June 3, 2010 at 5:18 am
Here are the Greenland temperatures from Ice Core data. The temperature at that time was 2C warmer than today. http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
A minor detail but the most recent temperature data on that graph is 150 years old so that would be 2ºC warmer than 1855.
And of course you have a problem with that, right?
Now you’ll begin to ~absolutely~ prove that it wasn’t such, right?
GOT DATA?
We await.

And another thing: Polar undersea volcanoes.
WHY has that NOT been mentioned at all?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625140649.htm

Gail Combs says:
June 3, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Frank K. says:
June 3, 2010 at 8:17 am
…… I’ve also recently discovered that many of our climate luminaries like Hansen, Schmidt, Karl etc. are pulling down six figure base salaries as government employees…
________________________________________________________________________
Have any links to that info? I always wonder about those little Swiss bank accounts
Yes, I do have a link that I came across recently. It’s a publicly available search engine for salaries of individuals working for the government (the data for which are apparently in the public domain). I’ll post it if Anthony says it’s OK, but you may be able to find it yourself…
My main message, however, is that it is the huge amounts of money flowing to the climate research groups in academia and government that is driving these ridiculous press releases (like the present example) and the countless global warming-related studies we see everyday. If there were no funds, there would be no projects, no papers, and no press releases…

Gail Combs says:
June 3, 2010 at 7:46 pm
However there is this which gives several story leads.
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/DOE-Incinerating-Cash.htm#B.%20Hearings%20on%20OST%27s%20Funding%20of%20Molten%20Metal
However there is this which gives several story leads.
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/DOE-Incinerating-Cash.htm#B.%20Hearings%20on%20OST%27s%20Funding%20of%20Molten%20Metal
And I thank you kindly for that!

“a team led by Ohio State University has re-examined the data from past and ongoing studies — nearly 300 in all”
Anybody want to bet that Briffa’s Yamal and Mann’s Hockey Stick are among them?

Jeff Id says:
June 3, 2010 at 3:39 am
I can’t wait for this one. We need a new paper to beat up on. If someone can get this when it comes out, please send to me.
May Dresden look like paradise in comparison after all of you are through with it.

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
June 3, 2010 at 9:10 pm
“Underneath the surface, the ice can be thick or thin. [–snip rest–]”
Wow! I missed that line! Thanks for pointing it out.
Yeah, someone could also say: “Under the surface of a body of the ocean, the water can be shallow or deep.”
Shhhhhh! Don’t tell the fish!!!
:o)

geronimo says:
June 3, 2010 at 12:13 am
I have never been wooed by the intrinsic brilliance of people who go into science for a living,
Well, not every scientist wants to marry a muddle headed skeptic. But I’m sure you found someone nice.
but now I am ashamed to say that I’m astonished at the level of stupidity of some of these guys doing climate science.
Well, if you’re not a woman, that would explain why most of “these guys” never wooed you. No need to call them stupid.
Ashamed, astonished – you’re certainly emotional… forget about those climate science guys. Move on.
You would think wouldn’t you that they would ask themselves why the sea ice is less today than when the Danes were able to farm in Greenland.
Or, I would wonder if the Danes were once again farming on Greenland.
Yes, they are:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,434356,00.html
I would also think that Vikings escaping murder convictions were more likely to locate in marginal farmland (Greenland) than modern Danes, who have quite a few options for making a living these days:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_of_Denmark

About 3 out of the 14 Arctic ice areas are greater than -.1 million sq km from average (eye balling graphs is not easy and you have to watch the scale, they are not the same for each area). Without knowing the SD bars, this seems positively….boringly normal for a positive -and natural- Atlantic warm current melt season.

899 says:
June 4, 2010 at 1:27 am
Yeah, and they’re farming the permafrost areas of the last settlements too, right?
Right?
They are farming now in both the old Western Settlement and Eastern Settlement, yes.
http://www.archaeology.org/image.php?page=online/features/greenland/jpegs/map.jpeg
Qaqortoq (the town in my last citation) is right in the middle of the old “Eastern Settlement” – I’m sure the Vikings never grew potatoes, radish and broccoli like the current farmers do. Or the potato farmers of Nuuk – located in the old Western Settlement:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1001/p01s02-wogn.html
Looks like it’s warmer than when Erik the Red started farming there, and it’s getting warmer.
The Viking settlements were based on grazing sheep, goats and cattle, not farming wheat… The Western and Eastern Settlements, even if directly on permafrost, could use the 2 ft to 13 ft active layer above the permafrost to graze their livestock during the thawed months, and grow some marginal crops.
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/
Trading with Norway, under whose rule they eventually came, the Greenlanders exchanged live falcons, polar bear skins, narwahl tusks, and walrus ivory and hides for timber, iron, tools, and other essentials, as well luxuries such as raisins, nuts, and wine.
It’s not like they were big wheat farmers. Nor were the “Skraelings” (Inuit), who also managed to survive in Greenland before, during and after the Vikings lived there. The Viking economy was supported mainly by grazing and trading, not farming.
As the Greenlanders’ isolation from Europe grew, they found themselves victims of a steadily deteriorating environment. Their farmland, exploited to the full, had lost fertility. Erosion followed severe reductions in ground cover. The cutting of dwarf willows and alders for fuel and for the production of charcoal to use in the smelting of bog iron, which yielded soft, inferior metal, deprived the soil of its anchor of roots. Pollen analysis shows a dramatic decline in these species during the Viking years. In addition, livestock probably consumed any regenerating scrub. Overgrazing, trampling, and scuffing by the Norsemen’s sheep, goats and cattle, the core of the island’s livelihood, left the land debased.
“Skeptics” like to make fun of tree ring temperature proxies, but somehow think that Vikings grazing sheep 1000 years ago on some marginal coastland that they quickly degraded proves there is no global warming.
Wishful thinking is a powerful force.

Anu says:
June 4, 2010 at 9:32 am
….“Skeptics” like to make fun of tree ring temperature proxies, but somehow think that Vikings grazing sheep 1000 years ago on some marginal coastland that they quickly degraded proves there is no global warming.
Wishful thinking is a powerful force.
__________________________________________________________________________
Well you should know, me I prefer science.
Soils of Some Norse Settlements in Southwestern Greenland
G.K. RUTHERFORD1
CONCLUSIONS
“With respect to soil erosion as a cause of settlement abandonment, the Danish workers (Jacobsen and Jakobsen, 1986) on experience in the Vatnaverfi area, postulated that aggravated soil erosion was the major cause of general settlement abandonment. This author did not investigate soils in that area, but in the areas examined there was very little pedological evidence such as buried A and Bf horizons to indicate widespread soil degradation or deposition. Further, the chemical and physical evidence confirms the presence of monoperiodic soil formation. At the same time sedimentation in the tarn near Brattahlid appears to have greatly increased during Norse occupation. This deposition could have resulted from normal human activities together with those of hard-hoofed animals rather than from widespread vegetation loss. From the chemical and mineralogical evidence presented, there is no reason to suspect that the soils could not have provided adequate nutrients for the subsistence grade of agriculture practised by the Norse settlers.” http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/arctic48-4-324.pdf
Actually “grazing sheep” and horses is a very good way to BUILD the soil. THAT is based on buying a worn out leased tobacco farm and building it from no topsoil (analyse showed 98% to 99% pure mineral – clay) to four inches of black top soil in 15 years. It is vegetable farming that is bad for the soil because it leaves the soil open to erosion and wears it out.
AGW types want to say the Norse left Greenland because they wore out the soil. This allows them to divert attention from the real reason:
“New research reveals just how bad an idea it was to colonize Greenland and Iceland more than a millennium ago: average temperatures in Iceland plummeted nearly 6 degrees Celsius in the century that followed the island’s Norse settlement in about A.D. 870, a climate record gleaned from mollusk shells shows….
….The shells show a large amount of variation both within years and from year to year. For instance, the researchers say, winter temperature variability increased between 990 and 1120, a time when written records suggest that crops occasionally failed. By 1250, things heated up again and summer temperatures reached 10 degrees Celsius, possibly the highest in three centuries. Within decades, though, temperatures began to plunge again.
While Iceland remained settled through the modern day, Norse settlements in Greenland were abandoned by the early 15th century. Many researchers believe that climate changes played at least a minor role.” http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/norse-vikings-iceland-greenland.html
That agrees with the Greenland Ice cores. http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
How about we go further back?
“Recent mapping of a number of raised beach ridges on the north coast of Greenland suggests that the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean was greatly reduced some 6000-7000 years ago. The Arctic Ocean may have been periodically ice free...” http://www.ngu.no/en-gb/Aktuelt/2008/Less-ice-in-the-Arctic-Ocean-6000-7000-years-ago/
How about more recently?
Old DEW Line radars in Greenland, once elevated 20 feet, nearly buried in snow now:
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2008/12/old-dew-line-radars-in-greenland-once.html
Glacier Girl is a Lockheed P-38F-1-LO Lightning World War II fighter plane, that was recently restored to operable condition after being buried beneath ice on the remote Greenland Ice Sheet for nearly fifty years. On 15 July 1942, Glacier Girl, along with five other P-38 fighters and two B-17 bombers, was eventually buried beneath 270 feet of ice. Fifty years later, in 1992, the plane was brought to the surface after years of excavation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier_Girl

Anu says:
June 4, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Gail Combs says:
June 4, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Your soil paper does not address the issue of having felled all the little trees available. The same thing happened on Easter Island – once humans kill all the available trees, there goes the firewood, even if the soil is fine ( http://tinyurl.com/34qfyof ). The Vikings were not that adaptable – they refused to eat seafood like the Inuit – they were determined to force their European lifestyle on a new land. When European trading patterns changed (e.g. elephant ivory replacing walrus ivory), it was harder and harder to trade for timber and food.
Good Lord! You’re ignorance is becoming legend!
The Norse DID INDEED eat fish. The fact that no bones are found is simple: The way they cooked their fish softened the bones to make them edible, just as the do today.
Oh, and another thing: The landscape on Greenland is a close approximation for that which exists in many places Norway.
And finally, in NO PLACE of the Greenlander’s kept records did they mention trees, for the simple reason that there were none when they arrived. But their recored DO INDEED mention the importation of lumber for buildings.
Come on back when you might get your act together.

Anu says:
June 4, 2010 at 9:32 am
“Skeptics” like to make fun of tree ring temperature proxies, but somehow think that Vikings grazing sheep 1000 years ago on some marginal coastland that they quickly degraded proves there is no global warming.
Wishful thinking is a powerful force.
“Skeptics,” you say?
Doesn’t that then make you out to be a crass propagandist?
You keep trying to shove your cheap religion down everyone else’s throats because you realize that’s the only way you can get them to swallow your line of hogwash.

To comments just above…
Sediment proxies are sometimes of rather ambiguous indicative value, although I know very little of those of Arctic floor. For the last project I worked-on (in N. Meixo), mostly from alluvial settings, two entirely contradictory modes of interpretation (but both peer reviewed in good journals) exist. In such cases, it is important to introduce other independent proxies (as was my job). It is important also that scientific workers police themselves, as that review process is subject to the usual biped errors. The emotive basis for this self-examination is curiosity. This should be a stronger pull than self-interest or the political setting of study. However, one gets the sense, from the context of glib press releases etc., that these particular bipeds out of Ohio might not be acting with scientific curiosity as an over-riding motive.
Bruce

Phil. says:
June 5, 2010 at 8:38 am
899 says:
June 4, 2010 at 11:18 pm
Phil. says:
June 4, 2010 at 8:24 pm
[–snip utter nonsense–]
And YOU are STILL incorrect! Too bad you can’t read a graph properly.
Sure I can, unfortunately David Lappi has problems using Excel and messed up the time axis and misread the data file and added 50 years ( the latter may be due to an ‘improvement’ by Joanne Nova)! You on the other hand have no clue, I suggest you read the datafile:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
But now you’re just trying to finesse your argument, ain’t that right, Phil?

Mike says:
June 6, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Sediments reflect conditions above. This has been done in other oceans, seas and lakes for a long time.
In a fixed body of water, that is largely the truth.
BUT, in a MOVING body of water –such as ocean– that is NOT the truth.
If the currents in a large body of water experience a change in current direction, or even become static for whatever reason, then your hypothesis flies out the window.
All you’re left with is ‘What’s happening now?’
The Arctic Ocean has so many different currents that any kind of evaluation MUST consider all of the variables, and as soon as you do that, then your theory becomes worthless. You might just as well measure cow farts for content and predicate those on the quality of the grass they consumed, even when you don’t know from which pasture they munched.
Geez!