Guest post by Dr. J Storrs Hall
A bit over a year ago, in the wake of Climategate, I put up a blog post over at the Foresight Institute which got picked up and run here at WUWT. The essence of the post was that there was lots of natural variation in the ice core record of climate, so that it was reasonable to be skeptical of scientists who claimed that recent CO2 variations were “the only thing that could account for the recent warming trend” (quoting myself).
Apparently that got enough exposure — and was persuasive enough — that over a year later the alarmists still feel the urge to “debunk” it. Most recently, Rob Honeycutt at the “SkepticalScience” alarmist fanboi blog weighed in with this: Crux of a Core, Part 1 – addressing J Storrs Hall. Now the thing about this particular piece that jumped out at me at first was the fact that he associated me with a graph I never used, and he calls me “Mr. Hall” to make me sound less qualified than other sources such as “Dr. Alley” he refers to. It’s Dr. Hall (and yes, I am a scientist, not a nanotech engineer as he claims), a fact that he could have discovered in 3 seconds with Google. That told me about all I needed to know about Honeycutt’s bona fides (in the original Latin sense of acting in good faith).
The only substantive point in the post is that GISP2 (or any specific ice core) is a local as opposed to global temperature record. Is it misrepresentation to use it as a proxy for global climate? Well, the inconvenient truth is that I’m hardly the first person to use ice cores as climate proxies in popular presentations:
… but, on the other hand, it’s actually an interesting question and one worth looking at.
How Ice Cores Record a History of Climate
That’s not my title, it’s from this page at the GISP2 site. Not “a history of local temperature,” — of climate. Here are some quotes from the abstracts of papers by GISP2 authors:
“Ice cores provide high-resolution, multi-parameter records of changes in climate and environmental conditions spanning two or more full glacial- interglacial cycles. …”
“Polar ice contains a unique record of past climate variations; …”
“One of the most dramatic climate events observed in marine and ice core records is the Younger Dryas (YD), … High resolution, continuous glaciochemical records, newly retrieved from central Greenland, record the chemical composition of the Arctic atmosphere at this time. This record shows that both onset and termination of the YD occurred within 10-20 years …”
“The Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) core can enhance our understanding of the relationship between parameters measured in the ice in central Greenland and variability in the ocean, atmosphere, and cryosphere of the North Atlantic Ocean and adjacent land masses. …”
“High-resolution, continuous multivariate chemical records from a central Greenland ice core provide a sensitive measure of climate change…”
“The accumulation record from the GISP2 core as an indicator of climate change throughout the Holocene” (paper title)
So, sure, a single ice core is not a global average temperature record; but it is quite a bit more than one thermometer. It’s just mud-slinging to claim that using it for a climate proxy is “misinformation”.
… especially when I didn’t just use one ice core in my post but two, and the other one was from Antarctica. One way to cut past the verbiage is simply to look at a comparison of the Greenland and Antarctic data and see how well they correlate:
(This is GISP2 in green, NGRIP, another Greenland core, in cyan, and the Vostok Antarctic core in blue. The Vostok has been scaled and shifted for a best match with the others; the temperature in Antarctica is colder, with smaller variations, than in Greenland. Furthermore, there are some time-scaling issues — note the temporal divergence of the two Greenland records before about 40 kya. It’s possible that NH/SH actually match better than this plot indicates. Look here for data.)
Nowhere near a perfect match, but it’s pretty clear that these are all from the same planet. Even Vostok shows the Younger Dryas, which is generally believed to be a mostly northern-hemisphere event. The NH has more variability in ice ages, notably the Dansgaard-Oeschger events, but the SH more, on a relative scale, in the Holocene.
The GISP2 people also compared their core’s record with Antarctic ones; on this page they say that it “shows close correlation between GISP2 and Vostok in the delta 18O of air in these ice cores.” (That’s a key temperature proxy.) On this page they say “Holocene climate is characterized by rapid climate change events and considerable complexity. GISP2 Holocene ¶18O (proxy for temperature) (Grootes, et al., 1993) and EOF1 (composite measure of major chemistry representing atmospheric circulation) show parallel behavior for the Early Holocene but not for the Late Holocene (O’Brien, et al., 1995).”
Note that bit about “rapid climate change events.” In the words of Jeffrey Masters here, “The historical records shows us that abrupt climate change is not only possible–it is the normal state of affairs. The present warm, stable climate is a rare anomaly.” (And he’s talking specifically about the lessons of GISP2 — although alas he takes home the wrong lesson from it.) See also this recent post here by Don Easterbrook.
Does GISP2 — or any other paleoclimate record — show us that climate change isn’t happening? No, of course not. It shows us that climate change always happens. The 20th-century warming was hardly unprecedented, and doesn’t call for unusual explanations.
Bill Illis says:
March 1, 2011 at 5:41 pm
If someone wants, I can give you any timeframe back to 635 Mya.
==============================================
Yes please Bill ,It would be interesting to see if there was a similar CO2 increase 65Mya.compared to now, as my research points to history repeating it’s self again.
Bad news – we are way past our ‘extinct by’ date
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/mar/13/research.science
We ARE in the SAME location as the end-Permian extinction…. AGAIN.
We ARE in the SAME spiral arm as the end-Permian extinction….. AGAIN
We are crossing the SAME thin magnetic disc of the Galactic Plane equator …..AGAIN
We ARE experiencing the SAME increase in Volcanic activity as the end-Permian extinction…. AGAIN
==================================================
We ARE experiencing the SAME increase in Co2 as the end-Permian extinction ….AGAIN
==================================================
We ARE experiencing the SAME increase in OCEAN temperature just before the end-Permian extinction …AGAIN
http://tinyurl.com/4kjw8fz
http://www.myspace.com/my/photos/photo/7971387/AllPhotos
Smokey says:
March 1, 2011 at 11:30 am
You do realize that graph you posted ends in 1855 right? The data literally ends in 1855 and the graph has just been manipulated to look like the red is the hockey stick when it isn’t. You lose all credibility when you post graphs that provide no evidence (or plausibility for comparison). Some people fall for it but I won’t. I think you should acknowledge now for the record that the graph you posted is not in support of your assertion.
You can’t post that without an attempt to compare the two. here are two attempts, neither are perfect but yours certainly is completely wrong.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/GISP.gif
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/Gisp2Graphedited.png
BA says:
“Of course you haven’t, I’m with citizenschallenge here. Find a quote where Mann or any scientist said there was no climate change before the mid-1800s.”
Hey, mind-reader. So you know just exactly how much I’ve read up on the charlartan Michael Mann? You must be rich from your stock market ESP.
I don’t need a Mann quote, all I need to see is Mann’s debunked Hokey Stick chart.
Only a credulous fool would believe there was no climate change before the industrial revolution. From your comment, that’s what you believe.
Smokey says: You accuse skeptics of “demonizing” the purveyors of this fraud, when in fact it is charlatans like Mann and his ilk who demonize “carbon,” by which they mean harmless, beneficial CO2.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Yea, put your kid’s favorite pets into a room with 1% Carbon Dioxide & 21% oxygen and see what your kids think of that beautiful CO2 and you.
The devil is in the details.
~ ~ ~
ps. I would image you do know a lousy 1% of that life giving CO2 will kill you… right?
robert,
Here’s a clue: click.
Want more? OK:
click1 [not from “1855”]
click2
click3
click4
click5
I have lots more if you’re interested. Just ask.
Michael Mann’s true believers have absolutely no clue about natural climate variability. They believe the climate was static until the industrial revolution. As if. CAGW is their religion, believed entirely based on faith – because there is no empirical evidence supporting their faith-based climate alarmist belief system.
This “Best Science” site has no use for that kind of religious conviction. Present verifiable facts, or go back to Pseudo-Skeptical Science.
citizenschallenge says:
“Yea, put your kid’s favorite pets into a room with 1% Carbon Dioxide & 21% oxygen and see what your kids think of that beautiful CO2 and you.”
You make it way too easy; six inches of water can kill you too.
Get back to us when you get up to speed. I recommend three months of reading WUWT archives first. An hour a day, minimum.
dodge and weave
The message of this thread should distilled and placed on a tee shirt or coffee mug…..
Climate Change ?
always has, always will.
vukcevic says:
March 1, 2011 at 11:00 am
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
vukcevic – what are the green, red, blue lines? the data looks very significant but I can’t find the key explaining what you are measuring.
Smokey says: Hey, mind-reader. So you know just exactly how much I’ve read up on the charlartan Michael Mann?
I don’t need a Mann quote, all I need to see is Mann’s debunked Hokey Stick chart.
~ ~ ~
How can you know if he is a charlatan if you haven’t investigated what he actually has to say?
How do you know that the folks who feed you that “debunked Hokey Stick” aren’t the charlatans if you are unwilling to familiarize yourself with the full spectrum of information?
~ ~ ~
At least I do the skeptics the courtesy of reading what they have to offer, but than I’m into thinking about the whole thing and not just proving my point-über-alles. Learning, after all, is the best part of science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
CO2 is toxic in higher concentrations: 1% (10,000 ppm) will make some people feel drowsy. Concentrations of 7% to 10% cause dizziness, headache, visual and hearing dysfunction, and unconsciousness within a few minutes to an hour.[7]
As of October 2010[update], carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is at a concentration of 388 ppm by volume.[1] …Taking all this into account, the concentration of CO2 grew by about 2 ppm in 2009.
So, at the current rate of increase, in about 4806 years some of us might start to feel drowsy. ENGAGE WORRY MODE.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11170&page=47#p20012eca9960047001
Submarine crew are reported to be the major source of CO2 on board submarines (Crawl 2003). Data collected on nine nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines indicate an average CO2 concentration of 3,500 ppm with a range of 0-10,600 ppm, and data collected on 10 nuclear-powered attack submarines indicate an average CO2 concentration of 4,100 ppm with a range of 300-11,300 ppm (Hagar 2003).
BA:
Find a quote where Mann or any scientist said there was no climate change before the mid-1800s.
Briefly, BA, “climate change” = “CO2=CAGW”. Right?
The current meaning of the term “climate change” is obviously the result of the specific and intended word game employed by the CO2=CAGW Climate Science Propaganda Operation to change the meaning of words and concepts as needed so as to create confusion and even to try to falsely establish fact, or most importantly somehow garner the support its manipulators need to accomplish their ulterior goals = various binges of looting and controlling or even Totalitarianism, partly via the confused meanings themselves which are really the product of an attempt to achieve thought control, from which all other control can follow.
So that, BA, at least as of right now, I’m afraid you lose if we apply the current useage of “climate change” as desired and established by Climate Science itself and as dutifully repeated by a lot of hapless and willing dupes .
Therefore, according to Mann, enc., voila, there was no “climate change” prior to the mid-1800’s.
But surely, BA you can’t want these sort of people to be running anything, much less your life, your country, or the whole world, can you?
Actually all this to-and-froing about the GISP record ending in 1855 is easily rectified since there is a weather station at Summit where the core was taken. The annual mean temperature there is -31 C (ref Journal of Glaciology 54:839 (2008)).
This means that the temperature has risen by about 1 degree since 1855, but is still colder than almost the entire Holocene.
f. berple says:
March 1, 2011 at 10:23 pm
vukcevic says: March 1, 2011 at 11:00 am
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
vukcevic – what are the green, red, blue lines? the data looks very significant but I can’t find the key explaining what you are measuring.
The graph is from magnetometer in Tromso, Norway. There are number of those in the Arctic area. Magnetometer measures components of the Earth’s magnetic field:
– Z vertical component –green line
– H horizontal –blue line
Total field strength is the vector sum of these two, units in nano Tesla.
– D declination in degrees.
When geomagnetic storm hits, magnetic field changes fractionally.
You can find more from our resident scientist:
http://www.leif.org/research/suipr699.pdf page 12.
@James Baldwin Sexton
“It seems, all Dr. Hall is asking for is to be afforded the same respect and treatment given to others. Is that really too much to ask? Do you think it likely he didn’t complain about WUWT because he was afforded fair treatment?”
No, I think it’s wrong-headed of Dr. Hall to expect to be treated as a serious climate researcher if his real expertise is with computer networks and nanotechnology.
My PhD research in an unrelated field would not make me qualified to argue that Dr. Hall’s concept of utility fog is utter balderdash – especially if all I knew about the subject boiled down to the equivalent of a single TED talk. However, Dr. Hall demands that he be afforded professional respect in an area where he is just another ignorant amateur.
citizenschallenge
“At least I do the skeptics the courtesy of reading what they have to offer, but than I’m into thinking about the whole thing and not just proving my point-über-alles. Learning, after all, is the best part of science.”
If you truly practiced science, then you would practice the art of skepticism. After another month of worldwide below normal temps (and many more to come), the catastrophic CO2 theory will be falsified. btw “than” should be “then”… and I also read what the denialists of natural climate change have to offer,but then I am into looking at the whole thing and not proving my point-über-alles. Whatever that means.
From citizenschallenge on March 1, 2011 at 10:25 pm:
How can one know that Communism doesn’t work if they haven’t read The Communist Manifesto?
How can one claim the political system of Germany during WWII was evil and wrong without reading Mein Kampf?
Just because what came from those works was garbage and failure, doesn’t necessarily mean what is in those works was wrong! How can you know that those who said those results were garbage and failure aren’t charlatans, when you haven’t studied those works yourself?!
(/mock)
citizenschallenge says (March 1, 2011 at 9:17 pm): “Yea, put your kid’s favorite pets into a room with 1% Carbon Dioxide & 21% oxygen and see what your kids think of that beautiful CO2 and you.”
Well, that would depend on the other 78% of the air in the room. If it’s fluorine, carbon monoxide, or any number of other substances, the pets are screwed. If it’s something relatively benign, like nitrogen, then as ferd berple pointed out above, the pets are probably fine. Unless the room is hyperbaric, because then they could suffer from nitrogen narcosis. Then there’s the temperature of the room…
Dang, this science stuff is complicated! 🙂
Help us to ban the Inconvenient Truth from schools. Zero background in any subject does not make you automatically wrong. Look at the Moon and not the finger. ;O)
The essential problem with Mann is that his flawed 98/99 work was embraced and front-paged by the IPCC when it should have been ignored. Surely Briffa and others knew that. As a result a good chunk of the hockey team was forced to prevaricate and stonewall for years as they gradually rectified Mann’s conclusion. Perhaps they believe that is how science is supposed to work but from my perspective and many other people who have studied this for years, it isn’t working. How many more pictures of bore holes starting in the LIA do they expect us to swallow?
BA says:
March 1, 2011 at 7:58 pm
“…Of course you haven’t, I’m with citizenschallenge here. Find a quote where Mann or any scientist said there was no climate change before the mid-1800s….”
Since we can’t find a quote from Mann et al. asserting there’s never been climate change in the past, I can assert they believe there’s been climate change in the past? Then the hockey stick graph is definitely a fabricated lie. Or climate change can occur without a change in global mean temperature. Which way would you have it?
In addition, can I also assert that they know climate change in the past was far larger than anything humans could do, since they made no statement that climate hadn’t happened in the past?
Oh how the warmists twist logic into all sorts of contortions to torture their meme out of thin air.
re: eadler
“Now 0.5C is the approximate average global temperature increase since that time. The actual temperature increase in Greenland over the past 95 years was actually 3 C , according to the following thermometer record:
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/rs_Greenland.htm
So the actual 20th century temperature increase in Greenland is unusual with the 3C increase on top of the ice core record.”
I see your 3 degrees warming in 95 years and raise you 8 degrees in just forty. That’s just one of more than two dozen rapid warming episodes during the last glacial period known as Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Typically temperatures in Greenland rose by up to about 10-12 degrees in a few decades. D-O events were first detected in GISP2 but on re-examination were also found in the earlier ice core. Indications that these were indeed widespread climate fluctuations have been shown in many other paleo proxies. Note that the Antarctic ice cores show a much smaller cooling at the same time but whether the two poles really are connected in some kind of seesaw effect is still contested.
I really do recommend you look more closely at the Greenland ice core records and read up on Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Dr Alley is among many scientists who have published work on these abrupt climate changes. The papers on this are truly fascinating, especially if you read them in order of their publication date, as you will witness the gradual acceptance that these Dansgaard-Oeschger events are indeed a marker for widespread, likely hemispheric, if not global climate disruptions. What causes these events is hotly contested as well as the proposed cyclicity of 1470 years. I favour the suggestion that they are caused by atmospheric-oceanic mechanisms we do not yet fully understand.
Whatever causes them, whatever they might signify, at the very very least, one can conclude at a bare minimum, that these rapid warming events put paid to any claim that Greenland has experienced “unusual” or as often claimed unprecedented warming in the last 100 years.
re: eadler
“Now 0.5C is the approximate average global temperature increase since that time. The actual temperature increase in Greenland over the past 95 years was actually 3 C , according to the following thermometer record:
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/rs_Greenland.htm
So the actual 20th century temperature increase in Greenland is unusual with the 3C increase on top of the ice core record.”
I see your 3°C warming in 95 years and raise you 8°C in forty. That’s just one of more than two dozen rapid warming episodes during the last glacial period known as Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Typically temperatures in Greenland rose by up to about 10-12°C in a few decades. D-O events were first detected in GISP2 but on re-examination were also found in the earlier ice core. Indications that these were indeed widespread climate fluctuations have been shown in many other paleo proxies. Note that the Antarctic ice cores show a much smaller cooling at the same time but whether the two poles really are connected in some kind of seesaw effect is still contested.
I really do recommend you look more closely at the Greenland ice core records and read up on Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Dr Alley is among many scientists who have published work on these abrupt climate changes. The papers on this are truly fascinating, especially if you read them in order of their publication date, as you will witness the gradual acceptance that these Dansgaard-Oeschger events are indeed a marker for widespread, likely hemispheric, if not global climate disruptions. What causes these events is hotly contested as well as the proposed cyclicity of 1470 years. I favour the suggestion that they are caused by atmospheric-oceanic mechanisms we do not yet fully understand.
Whatever causes them, whatever they might signify, at the very very least, one can conclude at a bare minimum, that these rapid warming events put paid to any claim that Greenland has experienced “unusual” or as often claimed unprecedented warming in the last 100 years.
@David, “Since we can’t find a quote from Mann et al. asserting there’s never been climate change in the past, I can assert they believe there’s been climate change in the past?”
Re the first, you can’t find a quote because they never said that.
Re the second, of course it’s true, they believe there has been past change and have written much about it.
“Then the hockey stick graph is definitely a fabricated lie.”
Here you jump off the board. That does not follow at all. Mann’s reconstruction and many others show climate change in the past. Newer reconstructions by different research teams show more agreement about past climate change than the older ones did. That’s one sign that they’re tending to get better as more data come available and improved methods are applied. When new data supercede the old, as Mann (2008) does Mann (1998), that does not mean the old data were a “fabricated lie.” It’s the normal progress of science.
“Or climate change can occur without a change in global mean temperature.”
Sure it could, but that would show up in contrasts among regional proxies, not (by definition) in a global composite. Climatologists including Mann have written a lot about that too. You’ve read none of it?
“Which way would you have it?”
None of your “if … then” formulations make sense to me. I don’t know why you think they do.
“In addition, can I also assert that they know climate change in the past was far larger than anything humans could do, since they made no statement that climate hadn’t happened in the past?”
You can assert anything, obviously.
“Oh how the warmists twist logic into all sorts of contortions to torture their meme out of thin air.”
That’s what your post did.
@JPeden, “Briefly, BA, “climate change” = “CO2=CAGW”. Right?”
Wrong.
“The current meaning of the term “climate change” is obviously the result of the specific and intended word game employed by the CO2=CAGW Climate Science Propaganda Operation to change the meaning of words and concepts as needed so as to create confusion and even to try to falsely establish fact, or most importantly somehow garner the support its manipulators need to accomplish their ulterior goals = various binges of looting and controlling or even Totalitarianism, partly via the confused meanings themselves which are really the product of an attempt to achieve thought control, from which all other control can follow. ”
Wow.
“So that, BA, at least as of right now, I’m afraid you lose if we apply the current useage of “climate change” as desired and established by Climate Science itself and as dutifully repeated by a lot of hapless and willing dupes.”
I know a lot of climate scientists and read what they actually write. Your description bears no connection to reality, but I can see that you’re certain it’s all true.
“Therefore, according to Mann, enc., voila, there was no “climate change” prior to the mid-1800′s.”
That “voila” only happened in your head. Mann writes much about old climate change. I recommend reading his 2008 or 2009 papers, just to learn what they actually say.
“But surely, BA you can’t want these sort of people to be running anything, much less your life, your country, or the whole world, can you?”
I’ve never met a scientist who wants to run my life, my country, or the whole world. Movie villains do that.