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?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
TFIFY
Heh. Just noticed the other fix needed. There’s no direct evidence that LT’s computer screen is defective, after all.
Leif Svalgaard,
You constantly use your personal beliefs to validate an absolute statement,
as though your opinion makes it true. This is not a mark of true scientific debate e.g.
“I don’t think what you do is science…” a personal belief
some how implies ==> “so there is no adversarial issue” and absolute statement.
Unlike you, I do not use abuse, intimidation and trivial semantics to support my arguments. Nor do I try to insult you by claiming that what you do is not science. Indeed, I have posted emails on this and other sites praising your scientific contributions and achievements. I have also posted comments which highlight your tireless efforts answering questions from non-specialists on Solar Science. For that, I am continually thankful.
Prof. Hannes Alfvén, winner of the 1970 Nobel prize for Physics, taught me that a scientist should never stop questioning “established beliefs”. In addition, Prof Alex Rodgers, a former Director of the Mount Stromolo observatory from 1987 to 1992, taught me to never let
the abuse and intimidation from another scientist stop me from proposing a scientific result, particularly if I believed it was soundly supported by the available evidence.
I have access to a number of very experienced scientific researchers who have [what I believe is] very strong scientific evidence to show that some of the things that you claim on this forum are in fact completely wrong. These researchers are in the process of getting their results written up and published and they will soon appear in print. Once their collective work is out in the wider scientific community [this will take a few years], I believe that you will have to eat a very large serving of humble pie.
And lastly, in order to keep this post OT, if we are to overturn the phenomenon of “Durban Dementia”, so clearly enunciated by Willis [Eschenbach], skeptics [a redundant label if you are true scientist] need to stop insulting each other and maybe listen to some ideas with which we may disagree.
Ian Wilson PhD (Astronomy)
Australian National University 1983
Ninderthana says:
December 18, 2011 at 6:40 am
need to stop insulting each other and maybe listen to some ideas with which we may disagree.
Not sure Pope Urban would agree…
Ninderthana says:
December 18, 2011 at 6:40 am
I have access to a number of very experienced scientific researchers who have [what I believe is] very strong scientific evidence to show that some of the things that you claim on this forum are in fact completely wrong.
Unsubstantiated claims carry no weight. You got something, say it.
Ninderthana says:
December 18, 2011 at 6:40 am
I have posted emails on this and other sites praising your scientific contributions and achievements. I have also posted comments which highlight your tireless efforts answering questions from non-specialists on Solar Science
Before you get carried away by too much self praise, let me remind you of:
Ninderthana says:
December 2, 2011 at 11:22 pm
Is this the modus operandi of a person who professes to believe in and use the scientific method?
“..and I are conveners for a workshop designed to bring about a consensus [if possible] about the long term behavior of solar activity.”
“…so in a couple of years, mainstream science [!] might [hopefully] have a unified and thoroughly vetted view on this.”
Other than using words like the “the team” and “the cause”, you might think that this person was Dr. Mann or Dr. Jones. Consensus.., unified [view]….thoroughly vetted view… mainstream science… surely these are not the words of a scientist with an open mind?
Well, at least he does not stoop to smearing those who disagree with him on this issue like Mann and Jones has done.
“I’m busy right now. And most of the comments [on this post] are just the same old, tired sycophantic babble by the usual pushers of pseudo-science which we all have heard a million times.”
Isn’t it good to know that you can look forward to Dr. Leif Svalgaard telling what to think on this important topic. Don’t bother your little minds with any of those silly little independent thoughts that might lead you to stray from the party line……Dr. Svalgaard is here to save the day!
—–
I suggest you tone down the rhetoric a bit.
Anyone ever hear the expression, “Two cats in a bag”?
Willis,
To hop over to the opposite side of the fence for a minute, where does the IPCC say after 1750 represents “post-industrial” warming? I recall Gavin Schmidt refer to human warming as anything after 1980 (during his silly polar bear talk in Churchill).
The best estimate of how far we have warmed versus the (arbitrary) 1.5-2.0 degree limit is to plot fossil fuel usage (or CO2 emissions from fossil fuels) and then to (arbitrarily) select a starting point below which most thinking scientists would agree there is little effect. The starting point + 1.5-2.0 is the point of no return.
Also, some AGW believers are of the opinion that the pre-industrial CO2 was the main culprit for warming due to the logarithmic effect of CO2. Initial levels have a lot of effect, later additions less so.
It seems CO2 levels (man-made) have increased almost 50% in the last 20 years alone (if you believe Wikipedia). Either most of the warming was caused by non-fossil fuel CO2 or the atmosphere should be on fire by now. Whoops, I hopped the fence again.
Steve from Rockwood says:
December 18, 2011 at 11:34
The changes in e.g. greenhouse gas forcing is evaluated against “pre-industrial” conditions, which are usually taken as 1750.
It’s all over the IPCC reports, a quick google finds the following:
In the Summary of AR4 I find:
and
w.
Ninderthana says:
December 18, 2011 at 6:40 am
need to stop insulting each other and maybe listen to some ideas with which we may disagree.
Not sure Pope Urban would agree…
You have assumed the worst of my original posted comment – it was meant to mean that one of US (i.e. you or me) had to play the role of Pope Urban VIII …. not that you specifically were a modern day version of Pope Urban. All scientist know that they are not always on the side of truth and so I was raising the possibility that one of us would turn out to be a modern day version of Pope Urban VIII. I am sorry that you have misunderstood what I had posted. I should have made my intent more obvious.
The original post was simply meant to be a innocent message wishing you a happy holiday break.
My sentiments still apply despite your reaction.
Ninderthana says:
December 18, 2011 at 3:21 pm
I am sorry that you have misunderstood what I had posted. I should have made my intent more obvious.
From your previous postings, the intent was very obvious, with a predictable reaction on my part. ‘Poor old Leif’ as you often refer to me as, still has some teeth left, and a long memory to boot.
Leif says,
I have access to a number of very experienced scientific researchers who have [what I believe is] very strong scientific evidence to show that some of the things that you claim on this forum are in fact completely wrong. Unsubstantiated claims carry no weight. You got something, say it.
As you and every one else on this forum knows, I cannot reveal the unpublished research of scientific colleagues that has been shown to me in confidence. You will see these results in good time. There is nothing I can do to speed up the process.
Ninderthana says:
December 18, 2011 at 3:42 pm
There is nothing I can do to speed up the process.
Then you keep quiet until you the time comes.
Doesn’t the plot suggest that the 1940s/50s were a lot warmer than today? Given that manmade emissions of CO2 beagan to significantly escalate after the 1940s WUWT??
Leif Svalgaard at December 17, 2011 at 1:49 pm says that the plot shows no correlation with solar related cycles. Without joining issue on that point, I would observe that this is yet another plot that suggests there is no correlation between CO2 and temperature. The upshot of both these observations taken together is that the observed temperature fluctuations appear due to natural variations that are not known or understood .
Willis
Your comment made at 12:02 pm (see Willis Eschenbach says: December 18, 2011 at 12:02 pm) is well noted. Obviously, it is a question of historical fact as to when the industrial revolution took place (ie., first took hold) although there is some ambit of interpretation regarding factors such as changes in agricultural land use and precisely how localised/widespread the move to industrialisation became. That said, I consider that the IPCC have their dates a little early and indeed if one looks at the ‘accepted’ CO2 levels/eimissions this would also suggest that 1750 did not see any significant rise in CO2.
Whilst one has to be cautious as to the accuracy of what Wikipedia might have to say, it states:
“The First Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18th century, merged into the Second Industrial Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships, railways, and later in the 19th century with the internal combustion engine and electrical power generation. The period of time covered by the Industrial Revolution varies with different historians. Eric Hobsbawm held that it ‘broke out’ in Britain in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s,[7] while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830.”
I consider the better interpretation to be that one is looking more at 1800/1820s than at 1750 if the meaning of pre-industrial conditions is to be based upon historical fact. However, as we know Climate Science never allows historical (or archaelogical) fact to get in the way of a good story.
richard verney says:
December 18, 2011 at 5:23 pm
The upshot of both these observations taken together is that the observed temperature fluctuations appear due to natural variations that are not known or understood
I’ll subscribe to that, except perhaps add that any sufficiently complex system seems to undergo random internal fluctuations, see e.g. http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/ELIS-complexity.pdf
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!
+++++++
I gotta agree with the others, Annie. All sorts of genes pop into all sorts of plants and creatures. We are made up of the accidents and intentional choices for millenia, and probably more of the former and less of the latter. Genes and the junk DNA that control them are far more like a Lego set than some imagined pure lineal descent. Neurotoxin in fish, for example, appears in several species but is entirely non-fish in origin. If just transferred wholesale into existing fish, several times in fact. Diverse fish have exactly the same neurotoxin producing capabilities (gene set).
Man-induced genetic modifications at least have a purpose and direction! Yes there are dangers. No I don’t think they are all validly expressed. There are alarmists crying ‘wolf’ about anything and everything. It’s OK. Just don’t give them the keys to the car. I agree it is hard to separate the science from the knee-jerk opposition to it.
mike williams says: (December 17, 2011 at 2:00 pm)
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.
Because “normal” breeding is a very dubious concept whan you look at where our food crops came from…
For example:
Wheat is a hybrid of several wild species of grass, thereby mixing in genes that would not “normally” be together in the same plant. Back in the 40s and 50s, I believe they were mutating wheat repeatedly (via radiation and chemical mutagens) to shuffle the chromosomes and add new mutations. Select from the shufled pack, them repeat. Rust resistance got inserted from yet other species of grass by cross breeding, and somewhere in its history, wheat chromosomes got doubled up. Twice, I think, if tetraploid means what I think it does.
So what is “normal breeding”? We’ve been eating genetically modified food, billions of us, for decades (or even centuries).
And now they have methods of inserting a single new gene into the shuffle rather than mixing all the cards from another pack. So what? Wheat is an artificial construct, about as natural as a pentium processor. And that’s how it can it feed us all. It’s not just rising CO2 that’s made that possible –the wicked chemical industry and the Haber Process also gets some of the blame. Or credit.
And modern maize doesn’t look much like Teosinte either.
Willis:
Thankyou for your fine demolition of the nonsensical IPCC assertion concerning
“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.”
You rightly use the IPCC’s definition of the end of the “pre-industrial” era as being 1750 and consider global temperature rise since then.
But there is a more fundamental objection to the IPCC assertion; viz.
Mean global temperature rises by 3.8°C from June to January each year and falls by 3.8°C from January to June each year. This natural variation results from the different proportions of land and ocean coverage in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
So, every year the increase in global average temperature IS NEARLY DOUBLE 2 °C above the levels which existed in June of each year during the pre-industrial era. Of course the decrease within each year is of nearly the same amount. But the 3.8°C rise within each year has no disastrous effects and does not induce a “tipping point”.
Importantly, natural variation provides nearly double 2 °C increase to known pre-industrial levels within each year and this natural variation cannot be stopped.
Richard
I have never understood how IPCC can claim that the industrial era started in 1750. What we call industry was limited to some small factories mainly in UK, and the emissions from these can hardly have been of any importance to the climate. It is hard to see how real industrial age before the end of the 19th century in Europe and USA, even later worldwide.
The real substance, if it can be called that, is in this pathetic little two pager. This conference was supposed to close the deal on post-Kyoto. And what have they done? Why nothing more than extend the Ad Hoc Working Group for ONE year.
Even if you take the supposed threat of greenhouse gases seriously, this was a pathetic outcome for two years of negotiations. What it shows is what I have stated in many posts prior to this. Irrespective of the science, the COP/MOP process is dead, deader than Marley’s Ghost, and it died frozen to death in a Copenhagen snowstorm.
This was an outcome that a colleague and I predicted back in 2003 after the Hague COP conference. It can only fail because it is a UN process, and it brings in all of the baggage and uselessness of the UN with it.
Zero, since it is already too late!
Crucial ideas and processes began developing then, but the economy, population, and distribution of “industrial” systems were all very small fractions of mid-20th C levels. Even by IPCC figures, human activity was far too trivial to leverage the climate till then.
1750 probably coincides with the enclosures of common land, and the slow drift from rural areas
to large cities. Poverty was rife, partly because of famines. England was becoming intolerable
with crime rates climbing, no prisons only hulks from which they sent convicts to Canada and America, west Indies until – Australia. Social discontent, petty theft (sometimes to survive, not always, petty crime was a way of life. Certain parts of London, the few cops they had Bow Street Runners, weren’t game to enter). Then America gained their independence and wouldn’t accept our convicts any more. So the weather and climate did have a vast effect on social disorder.
However, folks, you will have do some in depth social history and see what was going on around the world, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. They had gas then, but no electricity. Coal of course was the chief energy source, and steam started to turn turbines from coal burning, I believe. But hardly an industrialised country or countries. If they want to be accurate, China was burning coke since the 1400s. Then of course the big volcanic eruptions? They are striving and cherry picking, a sign that they are running out of logical explanations. Actually the mini ice age hasn’t really ended. Just that we’ve enjoyed some warm interludes. 1947 and 1963 were very extreme cold years and winters. The Thames froze up to Windsor in 1963. And that was when London made it a smoke free zone, that stopped the SMOGS, from which thousands died in the 1950s.
Have a good Christmas and New Year, I believe Texas is having some bad snow and cyclones are circulating around Australia. I hope we don’t have a repeat of the Darwin cyclone of the 1970s.
Wiped out Darwin, and two are circulating now off Australia’s Northern shores.