Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The quote above is from Lord of the Rings, an exchange between Gollum and Smeagol, and it encapsulates my latest results from looking into the Shakun 2012 paper, “Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation” (paywalled, at Nature hereinafter Shakun2012). I discussed the paper in my post “Dr. Munchausen Explains Science By Proxy“. Please see that post for the underlying concepts and citations.
When I left off in that post of mine, I had investigated each of the 80 proxies used in Shakun2012. I plotted them all, and I compared them to the CO2 record used in their paper. I showed there was no way that the proxies could support the title of the paper. Figure 1 recaps that result, showing the difficulty of establishing whether CO2 leads or lags the warming.
Figure 1. All proxies (green dots) from Shakun2012 (Excel spreadsheet). CO2 values digitized from Shakun 2012 Figure 1a. There is pretty good agreement between the warming and the changes in CO2.
Note that the proxies say the earth generally warmed from the last ice age, starting somewhere about 15,000 BC, and the warming lasted until about 9,000 BC. Since then, the proxies have the greatest agreement (darkest green). They say that the globe generally cooled over the length of the Holocene, the current interglacial period since the last ice age.
Today I was thinking about that single record that they used for the CO2 changes. I got to wondering what other ice core CO2 records might show about the change in CO2. So I went and downloaded every ice core CO2 record that I could find that covered the time period 26,000 BC to modern times. I found a number of ice core records that cover the period.
Then I collated all of them in Excel, saved them as a CSV file, opened the file in R, and plotted every ice core CO2 record that covered the record from 26,000 BC up to the present. I standardized them over the same period covered by the Shakun2012 CO2 data. There was excellent agreement between the Shakun2012 data and the ice core records I had downloaded … but there was also a surprise.
Figure 2 shows the surprise …
Figure 2. As in Figure 1. Black circles show Shakun2012 CO2. Additional colored dots show the ice core CO2 records which have data from 26,000 BC to the present.
Dang, I didn’t expect that rise in CO2 that started about 6,000 BC. I do love climate science, it always surprises me … but the big surprise was not what the ice core records showed. It was what the Shakun2012 authors didn’t show.
I’m sure you can see just what those bad-boy scientists have done. Look how they have cut the modern end of the ice core CO2 record short, right at the time when CO2 started to rise again …
I leave the readers to consider the fact that for most of the Holocene, eight centuries millennia or so, half a dozen different ice core records say that CO2 levels were rising pretty fast by geological standards … and despite that, the temperatures have been dropping over the last eight millennia …
And I leave everyone to ponder how far climate “science” has fallen, that a tricksy study of this nature can be published in Nature, and can get touted around the world as being strong support for the AGW hypothesis. The only thing this study supports is the need for better peer review, and at a more basic level, better science education.
My best to all, stay skeptical,
w.
Source data:
ICE CORE CO2 DATA: All ice core CO2 data are from the NOAA Paleoclimatology site, the “Ice Core Gateway” page, in the section “Gases”.
[UPDATE] A hat tip to Jostein, in the comments he points out that the original Shakun Nature paper is here (pdf).
There are cycles of warming followed by cooling and occasionally abrupt cooling that has a period of 1470 years +/- 500 years. The 8200 year BP abrupt cooling event, the Younger Dryas 12,900 BP year cooling event, 4200 year BP cooling event and so on follow this cycle. The Greenland ice sheet data show that atmospheric CO2 isn’t the driver of the Bond cycles and in fact does not change in response to the planetary temperature change.
Bond cycles, ≈1,470 ± 500 years, recorded in the Greenland ice sheet data.
http://climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://climate4you.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1500-year_climate_cycle
Bond events are North Atlantic climate fluctuations occurring every ≈1,470 ± 500 years throughout the Holocene. Eight such events have been identified, primarily from fluctuations in ice-rafted debris. Bond events may be the interglacial relatives of the glacial Dansgaard–Oeschger events, with a magnitude of perhaps 15–20% of the glacial-interglacial temperature change.
Gerard C. Bond of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, was the lead author of the paper published in 1997 that postulated the theory of 1,470-year climate cycles in the Holocene, mainly based on petrologic tracers of drift ice in the North Atlantic.[1][2]
The existence of climatic changes, possibly on a quasi-1,500 year cycle, is well established for the last glacial period from ice cores. Less well established is the continuation of these cycles into the holocene. Bond et al. (1997) argue for a cyclicity close to 1470 ± 500 years in the North Atlantic region, and that their results imply a variation in Holocene climate in this region. In their view, many if not most of the Dansgaard–Oeschger events of the last ice age, conform to a 1,500-year pattern, as do some climate events of later eras, like the Little Ice Age, the 8.2 kiloyear event, and the start of the Younger Dryas.
http://sheridan.geog.kent.edu/geog41066/7-Overpeck.pdf
ABRUPT CHANGE IN EARTH’S CLIMATE SYSTEM
“The earliest Holocene abrupt climate changes occurred at 12,800, 8200, 5200, and 4200 B.P. . . .”The 8200 B.P. event, “lasted four hundred years (6400-6000 B.C.) and, like the Younger Dryas, generated abrupt aridification and cooling in the North Atlantic and North America, Africa, and Asia (Alley et al. 1997; Barber et al. 1999; Hu et al. 1999; Street-Perrot and Perrot 1990).
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/geos462/8200yrevent.html
The 8200-year Climate Event
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~peter/Resources/Holocene.vs.Stage5e.html
– The Holocene was punctuated by irregular 1500±500 year cooling events which have correlatives in the North Atlantic (deMenocal et al., 2000; Bond et al., 1997).
– When compared to the Holocene sequence at Site 658C, the results suggest we are overdue for an abrupt transition to cooler climates, however orbital configurations These results are consistent with other high-resolution records of the Last Interglacial from the North Atlantic and support the view large-scale climatic reorganizations can be achieved within centuries.
I tend to agree with Nick on his point that during the period under consideration, leading and lagging assumptions are questionable regarding the oft repeated notion that CO2 lags behind temperature increases. However, the authors over-state their case saying that CO2 leads temperature.
My big critism would be that they should have ended both data sets at the same point, leaving the recent past to someone else’s endeavors. Nick, you would have to agree with me on this point at least.
Pat Frank’s comment at April 8, 2012 at 2:38 am is perceptive and important.
If the Monnin data was padded with only the convenient data from Fluckinger, that is indeed damning.
“…I leave everyone to ponder how far climate “science” has fallen…”
In the end, they will have carried the flag in support of bankrupting the world and this country. And in that end will themselves meet their own end.
The most ridiculous and irritating consequence is in the meantime all that money could be going to science that would have a positive impact on our lives rather than to the villainizing of CO2 crap you so properly reveal.
Manfred (April 8, 2012 at 5:35 am) linked to Piers Corbyn’s note on statistical paradox: http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews12No20.pdf
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Phillip Bratby (April 7, 2012 at 11:41 pm) responded: “Hi Willis, could you make a plot with different colours for northern/southern hemispheric data to support/reject Corbyn’s analysis ?”
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Careful as follows if/when you do this Willis:
The current distribution of continents is NOT symmetric about the equator.
Earth’s asymmetric.
The equator is NOT the fulcrum for all key variables.
The sharpest gradients are over the Southern Ocean.
Here’s a visual reminder based on recent decades:
_ Isotachs & Pressure at 550K: http://i56.tinypic.com/14t0kns.png _
How about trying to understand the issues and making your own arguments. It seems to me that Wolff’s criticism doesn’t apply here. Here’s what Willis said in a previous comment:
wmconnolley, intellectual laziness such as what you just demonstrated is what turned me into a skeptic. There was a guest post on boingboing in which the author attacked the hockey stick because there was plenty of historical evidence that the MWP happened. The best the permanent editors could do was point to an article somewhere else and assert that the hockey stick was valid. In that very moment the skeptic in me was born.
What you are doing, by pointing to Wolff, is confessing that you don’t understand the issues. You could at least try, otherwise we will all think you are just a garden variety troll.
Actually, figure 2 above is labelled temperature.
Willis, perhaps you will consider signing your posts as “Trixie?”
Having had first hand experience with a challenge of extremely poor science being published in Nature, I suggest Willis give them a very brief chance to retract the Shakun 2012 paper. Give them the above information and suggest immediate publication of your analysis of the paper in question or the retraction of the offensive paper.
In my case (Nature rejected our rebuttal stating it was too long if you can believe it) it wasn’t until the original paper was deconstructed by several groups and other journals published papers (including ours) demonstrating the serious flaws that eventually Nature did disavow the original paper.
I further suggest a landslide of comments to Nature from anyone who values real science, and see if (but probably when) Nature will reject your rebuttal of the Shakun 2012 paper,
I strongly suggest Willis seek publication in another journal and then wait for the further disgrace of the original peer review at Nature to be aired.
Once again Real Science takes another shot and its credibility suffers at the hand of the AGW team. Pity
Lincoln Sparrow, you seem capable of elucidating us on scientific method. So I will point out that 1) the words in the conclusion you quote includes oceanic circulation affects but this was not a part of the study, and that 2) you seem willing to speak of the word used by the authors -“generally”- as a statistical finding. The paper does not appear to support this word as a statistical finding (generally statistical findings are included in the section called “Results”). Might this word have been used by the authors when error bars and tests of statistical significance did not show promising results?
“I have further exhibits, but I hesitate to produce them.”
“Produce them, Mr. Gailey. Put them here on my desk.”
“But, Your Honor…”
“Put them here on the desk. Put them here.”
Willis I admire your admirable tenacity in pursuing this matter and further checking a paper which is trying to support the cornerstone of CAGW, that rising CO2 precedes warming, and showing it to be wrong.
There is a fundamental problem with those scientists involved in climate science who believe in CAGW. They seem unable to consider anything which does not agree with what they believe and have been told to believe.
Some scientists deliberately or inadvertantly manipulate their papers accepting only ‘data’ which agrees with the hypothesis they want others to accept as a theory.
For other scientists their errors are clearly an inability to allow any alternative view to change their understanding of reality. Unless these scientists are able to consider alternative views they will not be able to accept that they might be wrong. It takes great character and determination to oppose peer pressure and begin to address ideas that run contrary to personal beliefs and in this way start to make “the intuitive leap” needed to create new ideas. Those scientists who are able to open their minds to new ideas are inevitably the ones who make new discoveries.
WUWT is the informal forum for review of papers on climate science, which because of its openess and scrupulous analysis has, for me, become far more important and reliable than journals like Nature. The decline of rigorous peer review may partly explain why statistics comparing WUWT with Nature.com show that readers of WUWT spend about twice as much time on site than do readers of Nature.
wmconnolley says:
April 8, 2012 at 12:48 am
Thank you for your visits to WUWT. Your meaningless comments and links confirms to many budding skeptics that your CAGW religion is an appalling fraud.
Do keep returning. Lest we forget.
Life, not temperature, determines the CO2 concentration, so this lead-lag discussion is pretty irrelvant.
http://oldbiosci.snu.ac.kr/includes/download.php?file=777.pdf&path=bWVtYmVy
I really don’t understand the point of this….
They cherry picked a date at the end of the ice age, when CO2 levels were at their lowest, and had no place to go but up…either that or die….CO2 levels increasing can be explained biologically, because it was limiting…..and did exactly what it should do at the time…..the second the weather gave it a break, the process started….irregardless of the weather after that
You can’t pick an extreme like this and try to compare it to not extreme…and get anything meaningful out of it
mwhite says: April 8, 2012 at 2:16 am
[Graphs showing solubility of gases in water]
“Solubility of Helium – He – in Water”
Helium seems to walk to the beat of a different drummer. Really hot, really cold and in between; it does unexpected things. I did not realize that it had this step change happening between 20-40 C in water. Weird. I wonder if anyone ever correctly predicted anything helium does. I wonder what effect its non-liner actions have on things around it.
Learned something again today. Thanks.
Now that WUWT/Eschenbach are extending temperature and CO2 records up to the present time, we appreciate the significance of the unchallenged scientific fact that CO2 levels are dominated by a huge spike in the last century.
If we take the Shakun2012 conclusion seriously, that Northern Hemisphere temperature lags CO2 concentration by about seven centuries, then we conclude that the temperature record *should* show “Hockey Stick” increases in quantities like global surface temperature, ocean temperature, and sea-level … portending global temperature rises of many degrees C and sea-level rises of tens of meters.
Thanks therefore are due to WUWT/Willis Eschenbach, for vividly and clearly, with every detail set forth, showing the entire skeptical community precisely how it comes about that the paleoclimate data support, plainly and simply, all of James Hansen’s main climate-change predictions.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Summary: The paleoclimate analyses of WUWT/Willis Eschenbach and James Hansen are rapidly converging toward a consensus that AGW is real, serious, and destined to accelerate in coming decades.
Kudos therefore go to WUWT, Willis Eschenbach, and James Hansen!
Reblogged this on sciencenothotair.
Willis Eshenbach wrote:
“Dang, I didn’t expect that rise in CO2 that started about 6,000 BC. I do love climate science, it always surprises me … but the big surprise was not what the ice core records showed. It was what the Shakun2012 authors didn’t show.
I’m sure you can see just what those bad-boy scientists have done. Look how they have cut the modern end of the ice core CO2 record short, right at the time when CO2 started to rise again …”
This is meaningless nitpicking to cover up the fact that your previous criticisms didn’t stick. Shakun2012 did not set out to explain the evolution of temperature and CO2 during the holocene period. They were interested in the period of deglaciation.
The rise over 7900 years, until the onset of the industrial age was about 20ppM or 8% This is very small compared to the 100ppM or 45% rise that the authors were looking at during the period of deglaciation. As a forcing, an 8% change in CO2 is minscule, and other forcings such as orbital and axial forcing could be at work here.
Your comment has no bearing on the validity of the paper you are trying so hard to impugn.
Thanks Willis,
What an inconvenient fact for Shakun 2012 you have uncovered!
Congratulations!
The rise in CO2 over the last 6000 years could be associated with deforestation due to man. So, I don’t think that rise is any kind of a smoking gun. Of course, that also allows for some of the modern warming to be assicated with deforestation rather than emissions.
Once again the complexity of this subject is way above the level where we can make any reasonable assessments given the data we have. There could have been so many other factors involved which makes this entire field of study pretty much a SWAG.
I seem to be missing something. Shakun et. al imply that the ice core data is local. Don’t the O18 levels in the ice cores represent GLOBAL levels of O18? If not, just why should O18 levels be a local phenomenon?
I assume I must be wrong about O18 being global since averaging a bunch of local proxies in an attempt to overturn a global proxy would be nonsensical. Would someone please give me the ‘elevator speech’ explanation why O18 isn’t global?
Keith says:
April 8, 2012 at 3:27 am
Per the paper:
I have several problems with that procedure, which I may write about later.
w.
Keith W says:
April 8, 2012 at 3:31 am
From the paper:
It is shown as the black circles above in Figs. 1 and 2. It fits well with the NOAA source data.
w.
Dave says:
April 8, 2012 at 3:34 am
I addressed this question in a comment to my previous post, “Dr. Munchausen Explains Science By Proxy”, here’s the graphic from that comment.
w.