Mike Bromley writes in: BBC has the explanation for the European LIA… it wasn’t really an ice age at all. See this strange quote.
“The Little Ice Age wasn’t really an ice age of any kind – the idea that Europe had a relentless sequence of cold winters is frankly barking” – Dr Mike Lockwood Reading University
No real discussion of the mechanisms that I could understand, referenced some papers your front line team would profitably have a go with. The BBC has solved the whole riddle. this has nothing to do with Global warming and it’s all local variability.
Full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15199065
Local variability, Solar variability, a few months back it was dirty coal burning in China that was being blamed for a ‘masking’ any evidence of recent warming. Next they’ll be having to say that global cooling is only ‘masking’ mans contribution to climate change, that is before they start blaming CO2 for causing the cooling… How much crazier is it going to get ?
Neil McEvoy says:
October 11, 2011 at 12:05 am
“Likewise, the LIA had been obliterated by Mann et al.”
____
The ignorant statements continue. Despite my repeated posting of a study done a decade ago by Mann himself (along with Phil Jones, et. al.) that came to the conclusion that the LIA was solar related. I hardly think that saying something was solar related is obliterating it! Get your facts correct when accusing someone of something.
For those who don’t want to remain ignorant about what scientists like Mann do or don’t actually think about the LIA, see:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/z/zita/articles/solar/MaunderMin04Shindell.pdf
And of course this quote right from Mann and Jones 2001:
“These results provide evidence that relatively
small solar forcing may play a significant
role in century-scale NH winter climate
change. This suggests that colder winter temperatures
over the NH continents during portions
of the 15th through the 17th centuries
(sometimes called the Little Ice Age) and
warmer temperatures during the 12th through
14th centuries (the putative Medieval Warm
Period) may have been influenced by longterm
solar variations.”
Hardly sounds like any denial of the LIA.
Agreed! Thanks for the clarification. GK
Gates says:
“The ignorant statements continue… Mann admitted that the sun influenced the Little Ice Age and the MWP (putative or not, he admitted it was warm period)! … Hardly sounds like any denial of the LIA.” Maybe Mann isn’t disputing the existence of the LIA any more [how could he?], but it sounds like he’s still trying to deny the existence of the MWP. Mann writes:
The word “putative” changes the meaning of Mann’s statement entirely, to mean ‘the LIA and the supposedly warm MWP’. [putative = “supposed”].
Recall that thirteen years after MBH98, when Mann mendaciously attempted to erase the LIA and the MWP, he still stonewalls requests for his complete methodology, data, metadata and code. The scientific method absolutely requires transparency for replication, therefore Mann is being anti-science, as are the rest of the “Team”. They are pseudo-scientific climate charlatans in it for the money, for the prestige, for their fat expense accounts and endless travel to vacation venues, for their speaking fees, and in general for their own personal aggrandizement. The one thing they’re not interested in is scientific truth.
I’m just pointing out what they, and you, won’t.
R Gates
I do think Manns work is sometimes unjustiably criticised by those who have never read his work. The Mann et al 98 reconstruction to 1400 ad and MBH99 reconstruction to 1000AD which subsequently got included in the IPCC assessment of 2001, together with the paper you cite are all interesting pieces of work.
However, the number and type of proxies is extremely limited as is the geographic coverage they provide. In the 1998 reconstruction that was a total of 24 proxy indicators back to 1450 with 22 multi proxy to 1400. There are some 1100 temperature records from 1902 onwards with additional grid points shown in figure 1b back to 1854 (most appear to be SSTs)
This is an incredibly small number of proxies to purport to be a NH record and many of us need to be convinced that tree rings, coral sediment and ice cores can provide annual indications of temperatures accurate to fractions of a degree. SST’s are also not a scientific measurement of the historic ocean temperature prior to around 1960 or so.
So Mann is certainly guilty of overselling his research, which is not surprising as his reputation relies on others believing in his methods and results.
tonyb
As the warmists are finding out, any lies you tell eventually start to unravel. When this happens you have a choice, either tell the truth or tell more lies to try and cover up the original one. With reputations staked on emphatic statements of man’s impact on climate through CO2 emissions, and having ignored the mounting evidence that refutes their position, the hard-line warmists are now in a descending spiral of compound lying and sophistry. Things are going to get even more interesting as time passes. If you think the insults thrown at skeptics are harsh, wait until the ‘Team’ turn on each other.
I have previously posted criticism of Black on his blog comments. Recently when trying to post I would receive a message saying there was a problem but that they were trying to fix it. Generating a new ID from the same computer got around that little problem. My e-mail to the BBC asking for clarification as to what happened has yet to be answered 3 weeks later.
climatereason says:
October 11, 2011 at 2:41 pm
R Gates
I do think Manns work is sometimes unjustiably criticised by those who have never read his work. The Mann et al 98 reconstruction to 1400 ad and MBH99 reconstruction to 1000AD which subsequently got included in the IPCC assessment of 2001, together with the paper you cite are all interesting pieces of work.
_____
I simply wanted to point out the fact that Mann, Jones, etc. etc. etc. are all quite willing to admit the role of solar influences in the climate and have even done some excellent research into connections between the sun and events like the LIA. I gets annoying when extremist posters come here blathering on about Mann denying the existence of the LIA and nonsense such as that. It might, in fact, do them well to both study the research Mann has done on solar influences on climate, and then find out what might lead him and others to think that CO2 levels now play a bigger role in influencing the climate than solar cycles.
Finally, the net take away from the UV/Little Ice Age connection is that there is more than one way the sun can influence climate, and that every influence doesn’t necessarily have to mean dramatic changes in overall global temperatures. Though certainly the LIA saw some global effects worldwide, they were not all as dramatic as in Europe, and when averaged over the globe, were certainly not as dramatic. The Little Ice Age, is, as we all know, a misnomer, for it was primarily a period of cold for Europe because of shifts in atmospheric circulation due to UV influences on ozone, but it did not mean a dramatic decrease in the overall energy from the sun reaching earth.
Here is how the BBC reported that the Sun is guilty of causing warming in 1998. 🙂 Even a warning of a mini ice age risk.
Friday, February 13, 1998 Published at 19:25 GMT
Sci/Tech
Scientists blame sun for global warming
Climate changes such as global warming may be due to changes in the sun rather than to the release of greenhouse gases on Earth.
Climatologists and astronomers speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Philadelphia say the present warming may be unusual – but a mini ice age could soon follow.
The sun provides all the energy that drives our climate, but it is not the constant star it might seem.
Careful studies over the last 20 years show that its overall brightness and energy output increases slightly as sunspot activity rises to the peak of its 11-year cycle.
And individual cycles can be more or less active.
The sun is currently at its most active for 300 years.
That, say scientists in Philadelphia, could be a more significant cause of global warming than the emissions of greenhouse gases that are most often blamed.
The researchers point out that much of the half-a-degree rise in global temperature over the last 120 years occurred before 1940 – earlier than the biggest rise in greenhouse gas emissions.
Using ancient tree rings, they show that 17 out of 19 warm spells in the last 10,000 years coincided with peaks in solar activity.
They have also studied other sun-like stars and found that they spend significant periods without sunspots at all, so perhaps cool spells should be feared more than global warming.
The scientists do not pretend they can explain everything, nor do they say that attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be abandoned. But they do feel that understanding of our nearest star must be increased if the climate is to be understood.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/56456.stm
gallopingcamel says:
October 10, 2011 at 10:43 pm
It has been almost 200 years since the Thames froze over…
No it hasn’t. It froze in 1891. And again in 1895. nowhere near 200 years in either case
Wow. They are really hanging on by a thread.
Richard Black looks a lot like Michael Mann without the beard. Not only do they look alike they gush similar garbage. If Black can explain away the LIA he could also explain away the lack of a hotspot or the fact that the Maldives are not sinking.
Gates, dont forget the Climategate email where the Team discussed how to get rid of MWP.
Manns Hockeystick really got rid of the MWP for Kyoto, didnt it?
EUV levels even with the recent uptick in activity are around one third of the peak levels of SC23. The NH winter will still be affected by the modified jet streams and differing pressure patterns.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/?q=node/128
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/?q=node/224#comment-598
The Ville says:
More precisely, the research says UV variability modulates the warming Northern hemisphere climate. It’s a bit like having a DC signal gradually increasing in amplitude with an AC signal added to it. The troughs of the AC signal will subtract from the DC signal, making it ‘colder’ than would be the case if the AC signal were not there.
But surely we don’t know that there are two and only two signals who add up to such a pattern. That is merely one out of thousands of possible interpretations.
Furthermore who cares? We’re not interested in the individual “signals” that add up, but only the result, the actual weather. If the overall result is cooling, the supposed danger of warming, assuming it is even dangerous, is not there.
” “The key point is that this effect is a change in the circulation, moving air from one place to another, which is why some places get cold and others get warm,” said Adam Scaife, one of the researchers on the paper, who heads the UK Met Office’s Seasonal to Decadal Prediction team.
“It’s a jigsaw puzzle, and when you average it up over the globe, there is no effect on global temperatures,” he told BBC News.”
Adam’s got the latter part wrong. Probably his statement is unconsciously conditioned on the wrong variable. More than one type of asymmetry GUARANTEES natural spatiotemporally-heterogeneous LEVERAGING of statistical summaries.
Adam, please feel welcome to contact me to discuss this further.
Best Regards.
Sometime during the LIA, the Swedes were returning from a military campaign down in Germany. Seeing that the sea between Sweden and Copenhaven, Denmark was frozen solid, the Swedes decided to have a go at the Danes. They invaded Denmark.
This is history. Naturally occuring climatic forces impinging on human history, not the other way round, as being banded about by the AGW snake-oil merchants.
In the CET record the main difference between the LIA and the recent modern warm period (excluding a little the last few years) was the English winter. There were frequent much cooler winters that occurred numerous in length over periods. The summers on the other hand especially during the warmer periods in the LIA were little different to today. Spring and autumn were not much different from recent periods either. Hence, the main difference between English yearly seasons from the LIA and the recent years, were just generally down to the winter season.
Therefore this recent model study by the Met Office claiming uv only affects winter weather, could also if found out in future to be correct, an explanation for the LIA English winters too. There is serious doubt that this recent finding is any different to this cooler LIA period, when winters were the only main difference in the climate. There is no current science reasoning that this can behave the same way, while global temperatures continue to increase. Note, these recent much cooler English winters have occurred during a period of no warming generally in global temperatures for a while. If anything this more likely signals a shift in the change of the climate with a cooling period ahead.
It’s funny to read the Ineson et al. 2011 paper and see how they are unable to propose a process that would control circulation in the lower troposphere. They use means, indexes that are themselves based on means but cannot come up with a synoptic process!
There are too many warmer UK winters around solar cycle minimum`s, and common occurrence of colder winters around solar cycle maximum`s for this to be correct, or any use as a forecast tool.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2011/10/met-office-finally-wakes-up-to.shtml
@TomRude (October 12, 2011 at 2:40 pm)
If/when you can, please share with us your speculation. Your perspective may add something of critical value for those with complementary backgrounds.
Geoff Sharp says:
October 11, 2011 at 11:28 pm
EUV levels http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/?q=node/128
There is no evidence [when error bars are taken into account] that EUV this past minimum was any different from any previous minima. See also Figure 1 of this JGR paper 2011JA016567