Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
A range of proxy records, supported by contemporaneous descriptions of the weather, all agree that the earth went through what is called the “Little Ice Age”. The coldest part seems to have been somewhere around 1700, at which time it was perhaps two or three degrees colder than at present. Akasufo, for example, estimates the warming to have been on the order of half a degree per century. Figure 1 shows the analysis of one of the many proxies, the Greenland ice core data:
Figure 1. Greenland temperatures from 1000 AD to 1950, as indicated by ice core records. Image from CO2 Science, based on an interesting study by Kobashi et al.
Modern thermometer records show similar results. For the most extreme example, the recently released (and still unverified) BEST temperature data shows a warming of nearly 2°C over the last two centuries.
Now, compare and contrast that with the opening salvo of the “Durban Platform for Enhanced Action“. That’s the two page document that was the sole and total result of the labors of the 10,000 delegates and camp followers at the recent Durban climate party. I busted out laughing when I read the following:
The Conference of the Parties, … Noting with grave concern the significant gap between the aggregate effect of Parties mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020, and aggregate emission pathways consistent with having a likely chance of holding the increase in global average temperature below 2 °C or 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels,
Now, “pre-industrial” in IPCC jargon means 1750. Which brings up the following question:
Given that temperatures have gone up on the order of 2°C since 1800, what are our chances of limiting the temperature rise to a degree and a half above the 1750 temperatures, as these folks insist that we should do?
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Lemmings jumping off cliffs and CAGW. Good link. The evidence for both stories was entirely manufactured by unethical people trying to make money.
JustMEinT Musings s actual humans have been cross breeding or selectively breeding animals for a very long time , similarly with cross pollinating plants all that is ‘artificial’ in the true sense.
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 17, 2011 at 1:49 pm
“Figure 1. Greenland temperatures from 1000 AD to 1950, as indicated by ice core records. Image from CO2 Science, based on an interesting study by Kobashi et al.
One notes the complete absence of solar activity related cycles in this graph…”
OK. Please educate me from your perspective. What, if anything, do they relate to?
Mike Williams, the problem is terminology. The term “genetic modification” is a broad one that covers both what humans have been doing for thousands of years and what we have only been doing recently in laboratories. Cross-breeding sub-species X with sub-species Y or choosing male X1 to mate with female Y1 for certain characteristics is still genetic modification. What happens in the laboratory is direct genome manipulation which is also genetic modification. Terminology is important and if you want communication with clarity, you need to get the terminology right.
Crosspatch:
Inserting foreign genes into foodstuffs is not natural selection or mutation. I don’t think that Mother Nature would insert a fish gene into a tomato somehow. I have no wish to eat tomatoes with fish genes in them either, much as I love both fish and tomatoes!
Why are they so concerned about their graves at this time in their careers?
I get this when clicking on AKASUFO.
Error 404: File Not Found
[REPLY: thanks, fixed. -w.]
I didn’t watch the proceeding, so perhaps I have an incorrect impression. But my Impression is that the “Durban Platform for Enhanced Action” was not adopted by a roll call vote, or even a voice vote, of the 190+ nations attending. It was adopted by some kind of “consensus.” Perhaps someone who followed the proceeding more closely could comment on the method used to get consensus.
From my reading the only agreement was to continue the partying of the Parties.
Well that 2 deg temperature rise hasn’t been so bad!
I guess this was the result of CO2 increasing from 280 to 390ppm (ie 40 percent). Being logarithmic, about 75 percent of the impact should occur after 40 percent of the forcing.
If a doubling of CO2 would increase temps by 3 deg (per the IPCC) then we should have experienced about 2.2deg by now. But about a tenth of that could well have been offset by aerosols.
QED
Enjoy your holidays, Leif. And as one who reads and looks forward to your comments, thanks for the education this year.
Given that temperatures have gone up on the order of 2°C since 1800, what are our chances of limiting the temperature rise to a degree and a half above the 1750 temperatures, as these folks insist that we should do?
I hate these mathematical perplexing questions. “what are our chances…” sounds like you are expecting an answer using a value expressed as a percentage, however, I’m not sure that “zero” is really a percentage of anything.
Or is this a philosophical question:
If one knows that they will fail, should they even try?
Paul Coppin says:
December 17, 2011 at 1:24 pm
That’s true. The first question then is: “What was the global population in 1750?” And the second question is: “Since these people are apparently the most concerned with their deleterious impact, wouldn’t they be willing to voluntarity “go” first?”
JustMEinT Musings says:
December 17, 2011 at 2:02 pm
“Everything is “genetically modified”. … does what you are saying equate to evolution ? naturally evolving versus round-up ready”
The active ingredient in Round-up is glyphosate, and glyphosate-resistant weeds are naturally evolving all the time. No qualitative difference.
” Given that temperatures have gone up on the order of 2°C since 1800…”
This premise is based on an estimate that you yourself put at an extreme. That’s what they do, so I s’pose it is ok turn this back on them. But I would be careful, even in jest. And there is in the data a great variation in the timing of especially in the MWP in various parts of the world, which suggest a much flatter global peak than often suggested.
Why not stick with what is a greater consensus on both sides: a rise of around 0.7 since the low point of 1860s. The silliness of such oh-so-ernest statements as quoted remain hopelessly unsupported by the evidence: they think that they have their hands on the global thermostat!
mike williams says:
December 17, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Normal breeding? What is normal about the big ears on modern corn or the size of carrots? Or even trees made out of one or more fruitstocks grafted on rootstock? Or monocultured row crops that will all ripen on the same day?
Some of these products came about by irradiating seeds or cloning desirable plants to spped up nature’s rate of spontaneous mutation.
None of these can survive “in the wild”.
Or do you mean this is the new normal?
mike williams says: Sigh..Genetically modified food in modern parlance means gene insertion by human intervention. It is mere sloppy sophistry to confuse that with normal breeding.
Sigh….. Perhaps you can grace us with what word we may use to describe mutagenic and fusion techniques in plant breeding. No sloppy sophistry please.
mike williams says:
“Sigh..
Genetically modified food in modern parlance means gene insertion by human intervention.
It is mere sloppy sophistry to confuse that with normal breeding.
How people can still not understand the difference is mind boggling.”
Mike, is that last sentence a typo?
Shouldn’t it read ‘How people can still not understand there is no difference is mind boggling.’
And perhaps at the end ‘Sigh…’
Yes, well, obviously Warmer Is Better. Nobody wants a return to the Little Ice Age, or the big one either. All this foofarah and handwringing over improving climate is stupid. Authoritarian-inspired, crisis-driven expense and control inflicted over a boon to the planet and to Life Itself is utter rubbish.
My computer model says temperatures should be rising dramatically.
My satellite data says temperatures are adjusting within historical norms.
Gradually models yield to the dictates of data.
Fear not, the Eco Greenie industry will dream up some new fear mongering hairy scary ponzi scheme to replace AGW, just as AGW replaced the Club of Rome and the CoR replaced the Population Bomb.
I was thinking it would be something to do with water, but it looks like the UN is lining up some con job based on biodiversity to replace AGW.
Fred from Canuckistan
Don’t forget acid rain!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://notrickszone.com/2011/05/26/documentary-on-the-german-waldsterben-hysteria-looking-back-30-years/
And, yes, looks like Biodiversity is their next project. Bit of a problem flogging that one in Canada but they are trying, and have been for decades.
Annie says:
…
Inserting foreign genes into foodstuffs is not natural selection or mutation. I don’t think that Mother Nature would insert a fish gene into a tomato somehow. I have no wish to eat tomatoes with fish genes in them either, much as I love both fish and tomatoes!
But if you become diabetic, will you take insulin from GM safflower? Or will you insist on (worse quality, more expensive) pig insulin?
Food can be safe and nutritious, or not. Plants can be safe to the overall environment, or not. The origin of the food and the plants is entirely irrelevant to the criteria of nutrition and safety.
The repulsion with GM food is just a taboo, and like all taboos it has no other validity. Like the way the French eat horse quite happily and Koreans eat dog, yet apparently most Anglos consider that vile! Those taboos are quickly overcome when life depends on it – as with diabetics and their insulin. Starving Africans are unlikely to feel that they should continue to starve because you have an issue with fish genes in tomatoes.
When they set targets to keep temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees it is assumed that the rise comes from adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Would someone please tell me exactly how you get that number by starting only with the amount of carbon dioxide in the air? This is important when they tell you to keep the temperature rise down but don’t tell you how that converts to the amount of carbon dioxide involved. Is there a standard formula IPCC gives out or does it depend upon individual climaticians who give out these temperature numbers? Is there a consensus about it or is it debated? Also, is there just one theory or several for predicting temperature rise? You need to know all this if you believe that emission controls are required. Apparently those who want us to keep the temperature rise down don’t want us to know where these numbers come from.
“Given that temperatures have gone up on the order of 2°C since 1800”
Willis, I beg to differ.
The Central England temperature series is one of the oldest instrumental records in the world and shows a linear increase since 1750 of just 0.26degC per hundred years. That would be a rise of only 0.68degC between 1800 and 2010. See:
http://www.thetruthaboutclimatechange.org/tempsCentralEngland.html
Even the (very highly suspect) HadCRUT3 world temperature series from the Climate Reasearch Unit at the University of East Anglia shows a linear increase since 1850 of just 0.41degC per hundred years. Even that would be a rise of only 1.4degC between 1800 and 2010. See:
http://www.thetruthaboutclimatechange.org//tempsworld.html
So where do you get your comparatively alarming figure of 2degC from?
Now, “pre-industrial” in IPCC jargon means 1750. Which brings up the following question:
————
But Durban is not the IPCC, so who knows what the delegates had in mind for their base temperature. It could be the start of industrialization during the Victorian era: 1850s. Or it could mean the post world war 2 period.
Good for a slight ironic smile maybe but not a whole article.
Annie says:
December 17, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Crosspatch:
Inserting foreign genes into foodstuffs is not natural selection or mutation. I don’t think that Mother Nature would insert a fish gene into a tomato somehow. I have no wish to eat tomatoes with fish genes in them either, much as I love both fish and tomatoes!
Unfortunately Mother Nature (or evolution or whatever) seems to do exactly that on its own. See
Nature Reviews Genetics 9, 605-618 (August 2008)
doi:10.1038/nrg2386
Horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotic evolution
Patrick J. Keeling & Jeffrey D. Palmer
The right question about genetic modification technology under development is not whether it does something “unnatural”, but how thoroughly the new variants are tested before getting into the food chain and more importantly, what specific intentions are hiding behind the umbrella term GMO.
For example, genetic use restriction technology is plainly evil, especially if unintended cross-breeding is taken into account between GMO plantations of this kind and neighboring populations.