Geologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt found a Japanese tree-ring temperature reconstruction from 1995, one that should have been heeded by the IPCC and Michael Mann before they took the world on a 10-year joyride in the stolen car of “climate science”.
Here’s the Google translation of their article, with some fixes of my own to help it along written in [brackets]. I don’t vouch for total accuracy in the translation, but it is the best I can do.
UPDATE: 2:45PM PST Pierre Gosselin has graciously agreed to allow his translation to be posted here, so I’m eliminating the Google translate version – Anthony
By Sebastian Lüning & Fritz Vahrenholt
(Translated and reposted here at WUWT with permission, copyright English text NoTricksZone)
Leading representatives of the IPCC tried for years to have policymakers and citizens believe the pre-industrial temperature history was more or less uneventful and was the ideal climate ondition that we should all strive to maintain. The warming of the 20th century, on the other hand, was completely unusual, something dangerous. However, as we now know, the page turned a few years ago and the notorious Hockey Stick chapter ended. The flawed curve was taken off the market and the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age reappeared.
As is often the case in history, it is in retrospect difficult to comprehend how this historical joyride could have happened to begin with. It started at the end of the 1990s with a doctoral thesis by Michael Mann, and did not end until about 10 years later – thanks to the discovery of the scientific scandal by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (see the book The Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford). Today it is difficult to fathom how the main players and proponents of the Hockey Sticks are still able to act as experts and public opinion shapers.
One of the main excuses used back then was that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in Europe and North America were local phenomena. At other locations on the planet the temperature anomalies were more than evened out (e.g. Stefan Rahmstorf, Gerald Haug). For years we had to listen to their tales and we had to trust these “specialists” for better or for worse. Moreover, we paid them with our tax money so that they could deal exclusively with the climate and carry out the tedious work all this entails.
However, anyone who knew a little something about the scientific literature soon began to wonder. The Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age as a local North Atlantic phenomenon? A nutty claim. Naturally these characteristic temperature fluctuations had been described for other parts of the world. Here we report on a case study from Japan which had appeared in the Geophysical Research Letters already in 1995, in other words, in the years before the Hockey Stick episode.
In the early 1990s, Japanese scientists Hiroyuki Kitagawa and Eiji Matsumoto extracted eleven tree ring cores from cedars on the South Pacific southern Japanese island of Yakushima. The cores contained tree-rings going back some 2000 years. The researchers determined the carbon 13 isotope values and found the delta-13-C values fluctuated in a characteristic manner (see Figure 1).
What did these fluctuations mean? Carbon-13 amount is influenced by a number of factors, among them temperature. The Japanese scientists calibrated the isotope development on trees of different elevations (and thereby temperature level) above sea level. Using this method they were able to come up with a formula that could be used for computing the temperature value using the isotope change. The results showed that temperatures over the previous 2000 years in South Japan fluctuated over a range of 5°C. The course of the temperature fluctuations takes on a shape that is very well known to us (see Figure 2). A clear millennium cycle is depicted. The cold period of the Migration Period, the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and the Modern Warm Period are clearly recognisable. Moreover, this climate development is well documented in Japanese historical records.
Therefore, it is incomprehensible that with the clear Japanese data from the year 1995, the talk of a “local North Atlantic phenomenon” would go on for years after the data’s publication.
The two Japanese scientists even took it a step further. They carried out a detailed frequency analysis of their data and found characteristic cycles with periods in the range of several decades and centuries. Among others, they discovered a period of 187 years, which coincides with the known Suess/de Vries solar activity cycle. In a similar manner the 70 and 89-year Gleissberg-cycle was identified. In their results the authors saw a clear sign that the climate of the last 2000 years in southern Japan was predominantly influenced by solar activity fluctuations. The IPCC appears not to have been at all interested in the study. Indeed it did not fit with their climate catastrophe picture.
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NOTE: Commenter Peter Gulutzam made this observation in comments. The original Google translation correctly noted “…the southern Japanese island of Yakushima…” but Gosselin’s version incorrectly identifies it as a South Pacific Island. I’ve made the correction and notified Mr. Gosselin – Anthony
tonyb says:
June 17, 2012 at 1:56 pm
“Bearing in mind that we pour scorn on Manns tree rings as being an unreliable proxy for temperature for a myriad of reasons (limited growing season, susceptibility to local micro climates etc) we shouldn’t rush in to praise this study just because it tells us what we want to hear. ”
Mann did not just take some tree ring width data and interpreted it; he ran it through an algorithm of his own making to get the result he wanted. And then he invented Mike’s Nature Trick To Hide The Decline to get rid of that “divergence problem”. There’s so much wrong with what he did that it would be an extraordinary claim that any other proxy study is only half as wrong.
Andrew says:
June 17, 2012 at 12:50 pm
“why is this site listed as lukewarmer here?
http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/climatechange/Science
”
It’s a remnant of the days when Joe Bastardi was there. Yes, it should be recategorized now.
Anthony,
Check your spam filter. Pierre sent you permission.
Ed I did, and there’s no email from earlier, but he sent me a direct email a few minutes ago and I updated the post thanks to him – Anthony
A tree sequesters C13 just like it makes rings….only when it’s growing
The size of the ring or amount of C13, neither can tell you climate or temperature….only the length of that periods growing season…..
Thanks very much for this Anthony and thanks to Pierre. Even I can understand this info and graph.
BTW have a look at these two charts of SLR showing all the models from Antarctica and Greenland, i.e. 99% of the planet’s ice. This is out to the year 2300.
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1844/1709/F4.expansion.html
Greenland ( 10%) is positive for the next 300 years but Antarctica is negative. ( 89%) So where is all this dangerous SLR going to come from I wonder?
But why isn’t info like this used to counter the likes of alarmists Gore and Hansen, Flannery etc.
The subtitle of the article is Since when is Japan located in the North Atlantic?
Well, in the days of Apartheid the South African regime ensured that visiting Japanese people were treated as honorary whites. It would have been bad for business to do anything else. Similarly, for the purpose of saving the planet, the Japanese islands can be treated as North Atlantic islands. After all, we have got to get rid of the medieval warm period, haven’t we?
Well, the MWP was obviously still a strictly local phenomenon. Just local to the North Atlantic, Antarctica, and Japan. Maybe Australia, and Russia. Also the Middle East, Africa. Possibly North and South America. And some oceans.
…
It’s local to Earth. Just local!
“Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium”…..”
–National Academy of Science report on the Mann Hockey Stick Graph, page 4
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=4
They didn’t measure tree rings? If so then this is an outrage! Carbon-13 I tells ya!!!
Now onto some past related events. The MWP was a global phenomenon.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
(Lots of peer reviewed papers)
M. Mann’s Hockey Stick is a figment of his delusional imagination.
I think it’s reasonably well known that Sebastian Lüning & Fritz Vahrenholt have recently written a book which at present is available in German. I believe it reached number 1 (22,000 sold) on Amazon’s listing of books about ecology and the environment. It is called ‘Die kalte Sonne: Warum die Klimakatastrophe nicht stattfindet’ or ‘The Forgotten Sun: Why the Climate Catastrophe is not taking place’.
Hopefully it will become available in English.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Die-kalte-Sonne-Klimakatastrophe-stattfindet/dp/3455502504
This is one of the interviews given by Fritz Vahrenholt about the book and his views on climate change together with another article which is a debate between Rob van Dorland and Bart Verheggen v Sebastian Lüning & Fritz Vahrenholt. Fritz Vahrenholt is an interesting and dialectical figure in Germany: The book has been criticized in German newspapers and a lecture he was due to give at the University of Osnabrück was cancelled because the subject of the book was considered too controversial.
http://www.europeanenergyreview.eu/site/pagina.php?id=3681
http://www.europeanenergyreview.eu/site/pagina.php?id_mailing=282&toegang=6a9aeddfc689c1d0e3b9ccc3ab651bc5&id=3740
I was confused by the statement that the Hockey stick chapter ended. I was under the impression that the IPCC and the “team” still believed in it.
All this unprecedented wamth rubbish leaves me cold.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/alley20001.gif
I was just thinking the same thing? Come on Mann let’s give it a shot. Briffa? Heh, heh.
By Sebastian Lüning & Fritz Vahrenholt: “…However, anyone who knew a little something about the scientific literature soon began to wonder. The Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age as a local North Atlantic phenomenon? A nutty claim.”
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I am afraid it goes beyond that with nutty claims. Yes, the MWP and the LIA as a local phenomenon is a nutty claim, but at the same time the MWP and the LIA as a global phenomenon is a nutty claim, too. The same goes for the present “global warming”: a nutty claim. But maybe we have a global cooling instead? No, it would be a nutty claim. What about “neither cooling, nor warming” then? Sorry, a nutty claim again.
Why? Because the data available is not sufficient to draw any conclusion of the kind.
tonyb, need I remind you we are in guerrilla warfare. Let Warmists find fault with C13 and post it here. Let them show how tree rings are a better proxy than C13. We are in a David V Goliath situation and David cannot afford to be Mr. Fair Guy. Warmists can afford to be Mr. Fair guy yet they are certainly not but they are still losing.
The article refers to “the South Pacific island of Yakushima”. But wikipedia says Yakushima is latitude 30 North. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakushima
[REPLY: You are, of course, correct. Anthony’s original Google translation correctly referred to “…the southern Japanese island of Yakushima…” but Pierre Gosselin’s version, which replaced it, contains the error. Anthony has been notified. -REP]
Interesting curve! I’d be inclined to guess that the fast wiggles before the Völkerwanderungspessimum were an abnormal period requiring a catastrophic explanation, and everything after that is a return to a nice periodic pattern that doesn’t need any special handwaving.
Can’t have that, of course; the modern period has to be the abnormal catastrophic tipping-point, because only the modern period contains nasty sinful Western civilization.
Incidentally, Pessimum is a wonderful word. It’s the logical counterpart of Optimum, but for some reason it never formed in English.
mfo says:
June 17, 2012 at 4:10 pm
I think it’s reasonably well known that Sebastian Lüning & Fritz Vahrenholt have recently written a book which at present is available in German. I believe it reached number 1 (22,000 sold) on Amazon’s listing of books about ecology and the environment. It is called ‘Die kalte Sonne: Warum die Klimakatastrophe nicht stattfindet’ or ‘The Forgotten Sun: Why the Climate Catastrophe is not taking place’
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/06/germany-in-skeptical-turmoil-on-both-climate-and-windfarms/
Thank you Pierre Gosselin, for bringing this to our attention and translating it.
Are there any papers analyzing the data from the Emperor’s gardens?
omnologos says:
> Have a look at the wiki entry for the Migration period for a laugh about the absurdist use of “global warming” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period
I find it curious that the English page on migration is the only one that looks stupid, out of half-a-dozen I checked. The Italian page, for example, fails to mention climate among the causes of migration; others do it in a tentative way: “Los hunos eran un pueblo nómada … que empezó a emigrar hacia el oeste en el siglo III, probablemente a causa de cambios climáticos.”
Comparing various national versions of Wikipedia pages is a source of endless fun; even though the pages are linked, their authors seem to be unaware of each other’s efforts.
I’m just not sure that d13C has been well established as a T proxy. I was able to find some evidence that it served as a proxy for RH in a species of tamarisk in North Africa. Unless Rubisco has been shown to have a preference for d13C at either higher or lower temperatures I can’t see this relationship as holding.
The proportion of d13C in the atmosphere has no relation to T except for the changes which are attributable to burning of fossil fuels, so the action of Rubisco would be the mechanism. Anyone have any refs which might proved or disprove this point? I found one which might explain something but can’t read it until I am on campus tomorrow.
@Otter
I made a point of linking to this, as soon as I saw it at P. Gosselin’s page. Expect the usual drivel from stokes, connolley et al. They’re most lazyteenagers, after all.
Do you think this is a helpful way to advance the discussion?
Thank you Pierre and Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt and Anthony. One sometimes wonder with all this CAGW drivel in the MSM, could i be wrong? After reading history for most of my life all of a sudden the MWP and the LIA disappears? Could all those starving Europeans during the LIA have been faking it? And it appeared in the Geophysical Research Letters in 1995? And the GRL never noticed? Where are the editors? Replaced by the Team?
But thank you so much. Faith in the fairness and honesty of scientists is slowly being restored.
Jimbo;
tonyb, need I remind you we are in guerrilla warfare. Let Warmists find fault with C13 and post it here>>>>
No need to stoop to their level, in fact doing so causes more harm than good because the warmists influence the MSM heavily, and any misstep by skeptics gets magnified as a result.
That said, I cannot completely agree with tonyb. He is absolutely correct that C13 cannot possibly measure temperatures during the non growing seasons. That said, for the growing season, the only influence on C13 (based on my reading on the matter anyway) is temperature. If the warmists insist on using trees as thermometers, it makes more sense to be critical of their methodology on both counts. First regarding the growing season and second that tree ring thickness is influenced by disease, pestilance, precipitation, cloud cover, foraging animals, late frosts and many other factors.
If we pursue a methodology that ACTUALLY measures temperatures that trees were exposed to during their growing season, and it confirms the tree ring growth, so be it. But I’d give rather long odds that it won’t.
Rick Lynch says:
June 17, 2012 at 4:16 pm
I was confused by the statement that the Hockey stick chapter ended. I was under the impression that the IPCC and the “team” still believed in it.
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I’m sure I’ll corrected if I’ve got this wrong. Mann and “The Team” are the only ones who appear to be publicly defending it. IPCC no longer does … but they keep acting like it’s true. They’ve just found other equally “vaild” one-study-wonders to justify the actions they’ve always wanted to take.