I must have had 20 tips and notes/contacts over the past 24 hours like this one:
New temperature proxy discovered
An article (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2120512/Global-warming-Earth-heated-medieval-times-human-CO2-emissions.html) in the Mail Online describes a paper (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X12000659) detailing a new temperature proxy that indicates that the Medieval Warm Period was global, not merely regional.
WUWT had the story first, 5 days ago on March 22nd. Somehow a lot of people missed it, so I’m linking to it again. Read it here: More evidence the Medieval Warm Period was global
And I have more graphs and information from the actual paper than the Daily Mail has.
UPDATE: 3/30/12 Since a number of commenters that are getting bent out of shape over the issue can’t apparently be bothered to read the paper, and since the authors at Syracuse themselves are under pressure because the alarmosphere has gone ballistic over the possibility that Mike Mann’s “there is no MWP much less global” gospel might be challenged, I offer readers this passage from the actual paper:
The resolution of our record is insufficient to constrain
the ages of these climatic oscillations in the Southern
hemisphere relative to their expression in the Northern hemisphere, but our ikaite record builds the case that the oscillations of the MWP and LIA are global in their extent and their impact reaches as far South as the Antarctic Peninsula, while prior studies in the AP region
have had mixed results.
I realize that because the authors chose a really poor place to publish it, in Elsevier, which is being boycotted worldwide for their draconian policies on scientific publishing, that many people haven’t read the actual paper, but instead rely on others to interpret it for them, sparing them the effort of having to think or investigate for themselves. Of course the same sorts of people that claim my headline is wrong won’t believe the passage I’ve cited above, therefore I’m reproducing page 114 of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters 325–326 (2012) with the relevant passage highlighted:
Some media (The Daily Mail for example) have oversold the conclusions of the paper, and thus this is why the authors have issued a statement. Based on their words above in their own paper, I stand by my headline. Note that the authors at Syracuse have NOT asked me to change my headline nor any part of my post on the issue. – Anthony
and during the “Medieval Warm Period,” approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago.
====================
someone needs to re-write the history of the Incas and Machu Picchu
“And I have more graphs and information from the actual paper that the Daily Mail has.”
That’s not difficult is it? But sincere congratulations on breaking this news WAY first! This is why I come to WUWT everyday, and not the Daily Mail.
I figured you’d be inundated with that story, even Drudge ran it! Also, found it interesting that a former hedge fund manager is planning a huge vineyard/winery to produce sparkling wine in England. They are supposed to compete with the better champagnes. Someone is betting on ‘global warming’ sticking around for a while! I don’t think European wineries did so well during the solar minimums. Interesting times
Global, but not synchronous.
Izen:
Wrong. Synchronous.
@Izen
And Mann just happened to pick the only trees where the MWP didn’t occur – what are the odds ….
@MangoChutney
Cut Mann some slack. It isn’t like there’s any theory, let’s call it the Law of the Maximum, that he and his pals could have applied to test whether tree growth could have been affected by something else.
Antony, just when we though we had atmospherics worked out:-
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/03/nuclear-lightening.ars?clicked=related_right
Lightning strikes produce free neutrons, and we’re not sure how
Read it the first time. This is a good example of why it pays to read WUWT.
Hockey stick wielding Michael Mann KO’d by Kaolinite crusader, Dr. Lu.
What will Supermanndia do next?
Pardon me for being a very stupid, totally no climate science ordinary person, but my problem with the issue called “global warming” is the word global. I have no trouble with the idea that climate changes, but I do have a problem with the, in my opinion utterly stupid idea, that it changes all over the globe in the same direction at the same time. Ice ages do not involve a world covered in snow and ice. It gets cooler pretty much everywhere, but it does not freeze everywhere, self evidently as nothing would have survived and many things did. Pleeeeeese can we stop talking about “global” climate, please, please, pretty please!!!!
Another good proxy shown on the WUWT more than a year ago
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm
Time someone paid a bit of attention
Which first time? I don’t pay too much attention to this subdebate any more. Guess I’ve been here too long. 🙂
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/the-medieval-warm-period-a-global-phenonmena-unprecedented-warming-or-unprecedented-data-manipulation/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/02/woods-hole-embraces-the-medieval-warm-period-contradict-manns-proxy-data/
This is the abstract of the paper:
Calcium carbonate can crystallize in a hydrated form as ikaite at low temperatures. The hydration water in ikaite grown in laboratory experiments records the δ18O of ambient water, a feature potentially useful for reconstructing δ18O of local seawater. We report the first downcore δ18O record of natural ikaite hydration waters and crystals collected from the Antarctic Peninsula (AP), a region sensitive to climate fluctuations. We are able to establish the zone of ikaite formation within shallow sediments, based on porewater chemical and isotopic data. Having constrained the depth of ikaite formation and δ18O of ikaite crystals and hydration waters, we are able to infer local changes in fjord δ18O versus time during the late Holocene. This ikaite record qualitatively supports that both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age extended to the Antarctic Peninsula.
——————————————————————————–
I’m sorry, but the reliability of that proxy seems in doubt. The calibration experiments have to replicate actual conditions. The crystals must have not been contaminated and the 18O concentrations have to vary only with temperature. The sediments must not have mixed or moved over time. And after all that, the results are only qualitative, in that the proxy seems to be higher a thousand years ago than it was five hundred, and so on.
If the last line of that abstract read “This idaite record qualitatively supports that neither the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age extended to the Antarctic Peninsula,” then everyone who reads this blog would have jumped on the doubtful reliability of the proxy.
WUWT is not supposed to be Selectively Skeptical Science.
If I’d read it in the Daily Mail first would I have found it credible? Probably not.
It’s worth pointing out that this is important primarily because of Mann et al.’s work. Mann’s method does, and will always, find very little variation in all periods that aren’t ‘the test period’. There are extensive historical treatises on extent and intensity for both the LIA and MWP that were relegated to ‘anecdotal evidence’ by Mann. Even thousands of actual proxies are devalued to near-zero impact by the technique applied.
That is: If you break the hockey stick into two pieces, the ‘shaft’ and the ‘blade’, it really doesn’t matter -what- was going on during the ‘blade’ years, you’re fundamentally going to find a flat shaft.
Finding good agreement during the blade years is hardly shocking. But the ‘shaft’ is both an extrapolation and an assumption that ‘the divergence problem’ hasn’t happened before in periods where we do -not- have satellites to tell us “hey, that tree isn’t working as a temperature proxy.”
Which is why it is important to catalog scientific contrary positions about the ‘globality’ of the MWP/LIA.
John W. says:
March 27, 2012 at 8:21 am
Not sure that’s a viable argument–certainly not a viable excuse. Mann put his selfish interests ahead of science and resorted to all sorts of devious methods–including refusing to be vetted by more capable scientists and mathemeticians in augmenting fields. Mann’s motivation could have been several of the seven deadly sins, but I haven’t wanted to delve deeply into a dude that’s so disturbed.
Right now, Mann’s situation reminds me of a WWII general who famously stated:
“I knew we were in trouble because our glorious victories kept getting closer to Berlin.”
We’ll see if Mann (supposedly a geologist) will bow to geological evidence and withdraw and disavow his hockey stick. Otherwise, even his closest colleagues will abandon and eventually despise him.
My first thought when I saw it on Drudge… Tell Anthony…nope, click the link…read the article…then tell Anthony…then I think…What’s the date on the article…and they are talking about some scientific article…I am sure I will find something on WUWT in the morning…
Yo Drudge…keep up the good work, but check out WUWT, maybe even add a link. Sorry, no Page Six girls or Transgender beauty queens… maybe something about hermaphroditic nematodes or something. Oh…and even Vampire Bats!
What I don’t understand is when you are making a case that co2 drives temperature, why would you use a proxy like trees, which are affected by both temperature and co2 concentration? It seems too confusing to make sense of.
Edit:
“And I have more graphs and information from the actual paper
thatthan the Daily Mail has.”“And I have more graphs and information from the actual paper than the Daily Mail has.” Necessary because you know you’re addressing a MUCH smarter audience.
🙂
Something geologist have taught for years in South America.
Ah, but I thought they had eradicated the MWP? There’s that Hockey Stick thingamabobyou see! PROVES it never existed! I was under the impression that there was plenty of alternative evidence demostrating that the MWP was global, from northern Europe to Australia, from South America to China. This new breakthrough simply endorses that earlier evidence rather spectacularly!
Mr. Watts, modesty is a virtue. That said, congratulations for remaining objective in the face of an overwhelming “consensus.” History does indeed repeat itself. This time, the establishment is in the minority.
REPLY: wasn’t really trying to blow my own horn, just appeasing the people who keep writing and saying “why aren’t you covering this!!??” – Anthony
Uh, well, the hockeyschtick blog covered it on March 21, one day before WUWT:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/03/new-study-finds-medieval-warming-period.html
REPLY: I bow to the leader, thank you for pointing it out – Anthony