I don’t have much time for a detailed post, a number of people want to discuss sea ice, so here is your chance. We also need to update the ARCUS forecast for August, due Monday August 6th. Poll follows:
Bill Illis writes,
“So let’s have more research from now on before people start calling a low pressure system something special.”
Unintentionally humor from someone who didn’t see the storm coming and reached for a conspiracy theory instead of physical reality when NSIDC nrt numbers (what kadaka, wrongly attributing the nrt discussion’s origin to Rob Dekker, dismisses as “incomplete data” above) jumped around. Zero research skills there!
But sure, I’m in favor of more research. Cyclones have occurred before in the Arctic, no one doubts that, but the summer ones tend to be relatively week. This summer cyclone is quite strong. And it is tearing up a thin and fractured ice pack that had was already at record low area and volume for the date, because of the warming trends discussed much above. Sounds newsworthy and scientific research-worthy indeed.
Crito
August 7, 2012 8:32 am
How many scientists does it take to demonstrate that you cannot stick your leg into the same river twice? Everything is flux.
Gail Combs
August 7, 2012 8:39 am
Rob Dekker says:
August 7, 2012 at 12:52 am
….Now, we know that the decline in temperatues during the Holocene is caused by orbital variations (I think that Gail mentioned a 9 % increase in insolation during summers of the early Holocene). So does anyone have a physical explanation for why this reduction in insolation over 8-4 thousand years suddenly (over ~150 years or so) is irradicated and replaced by a significant warming trend ?
_________________________
A) It is not “significant” There are other trends like the ~1470 yr Dansgaard-Oeschger /Bond events. fromWIKI (It is so well known it did not get torpedoed by warmists.)
Dansgaard-Oeschger events are rapid climate fluctuations that occurred 25 times during the last glacial period. Some scientists (see below) claim that the events occur quasi-periodically with a recurrence time being a multiple of 1,470 years, but this is debated. The comparable climate cyclicity during the Holocene is referred to as Bond events….
In the Northern Hemisphere, they take the form of rapid warming episodes, typically in a matter of decades, each followed by gradual cooling over a longer period. For example, about 11,500 years ago, averaged annual temperatures on the Greenland icepack warmed by around 8°C over 40 years, in three steps of five years (see [2], Stewart, chapter 13) – 5°C change over 30-40 yrs more common.….
So warming of 5-8°C in Greenland is not ‘Unprecedented’. Also if there has been no “warming for 2000 yr” then we were due for a Dansgaard-Oeschger event (rapid warming) over the last 500 years were we not?
Bond events are cold and /or arid (Drought) events and the last one was ≈1,400 BP (Bond event 1)
The sequence seems to be A cold spike, then a warm spike, then a few hundred years of cold. We had the cold spike (LIA) then a warm spike (Modern Optimum) so we are due for a few hundred years of cold.
What do the graphs say? Greenland Vostok, Antarctica
If nothing else they tell us the temperature swings at least (+/-)2°C
B) So what about any other Physical evidence?
OCEANS:
(Oscillation): AMO & NAO the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and The North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) The NAO is closely related to Arctic oscillation (AO) more graphs on AO
SUN:
NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records
Alexander Ruzmaikin and Joan Feynman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., together with Dr. Yuk Yung of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., have analyzed Egyptian records of annual Nile water levels collected between 622 and 1470 A.D. at Rawdah Island in Cairo. These records were then compared to another well-documented human record from the same time period: observations of the number of auroras reported per decade in the Northern Hemisphere….
The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common – one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years.
NASA: Solar Radiation & Climate Experiment (Sorce)
Analyzing the Sun and its affects on climate, however, is further complicated by the fact that the amount of radiation arriving from the Sun is not constant. It varies from the average value of the TSI—1,368 W/m2—on a daily basis…. Variations in TSI are due to a balance between decreases caused by sunspots and increases caused by bright areas called faculae which surround sunspots. Sunspots are dark blotches on the Sun in which magnetic forces are very strong, and these forces block the hot solar plasma, and as a result sunspots are cooler and darker than their surroundings. Faculae, which appear as bright blotches on the surface of the Sun, put out more radiation than normal and increase the solar irradiance. They too are the result of magnetic storms, and their numbers increase and decrease in concert with sunspots. On the whole, the effects of the faculae tend to beat out those of the sunspots. So that, although solar energy reaching the Earth decreases when the portion of the Sun’s surface that faces the Earth happens to be rife with spots and faculae, the total energy averaged over a full 30-day solar rotation actually increases. Therefore the TSI is larger during the portion of the 11 year cycle when there are more sunspots, even though the individual spots themselves cause a decrease in TSI when facing Earth….
Physics World: Solar activity reaches new high Dec 2, 2003
Geophysicists in Finland and Germany have calculated that the Sun is more magnetically active now than it has been for over a 1000 years. Ilya Usoskin and colleagues at the University of Oulu and the Max-Planck Institute for Aeronomy say that their technique – which relies on a radioactive dating technique – is the first direct quantitative reconstruction of solar activity based on physical, rather than statistical, models (I G Usoskin et al. 2003 Phys. Rev. Lett. 91 211101)
…The sun’s activity waxes and wanes on a cycle that averages roughly 11 years, though cycles as short as nine years and as long as 14 years have been observed. Chinese astronomers were already tracking the sun’s activity using sunspots more than 2,000 years ago; the modern record of solar output starts in 1755, with cycle 1, and runs through cycle 24, which began in late 2008. Generated by intense magnetic fields, sunspots have proven one reliable indicator of the sun’s overall output and its production of solar storms. SOURCE
…The Chinese have been keeping both sunspot and climate records for more than 2,000 years. They have recorded three periods of high to extremely high sunspot activity. The first was about the time Hadrian built a wall across England, roughly 150 AD. The second was some 900 years later, around 1050 to 1100. The third?
That waited another 900 some years, starting in the mid 1940’s and lasting at least until the end of the current sunspot cycle…. Press Release
Historical Sunspot Observations: A Review
…Nagovitsyn (2001) and Vaquero et al. (2002a) used catalogues of naked-eye observations of sunspots to construct time series showing the behaviour of the solar activity during the last two millennia. Figure 1a was constructed by calculating the 50-year moving average of the series. The strong 250-year period reported in Vaquero et al. (2002a) now stands out far more sharply, as do the known minima of Oort, Wolf, Spörer, Maunder, and Dalton. The Maunder and Dalton Minima are somewhat displaced from their original positions due to the moving average procedure. One also observes the Medieval Maximum centred in the first half of the 12th century….
Are the historical naked-eye observations useful for space climate studies then? The high resolution of these observations, compared with other proxies, can be used in a coherent form by space climate researchers. Willis and Stephenson (2001) show evidence for an intense recurrent geomagnetic storm during December in 1128 AD using historical aurorae and naked-eye sunspot observations. Moreover, Willis et al. (2005) recently used a comprehensive collection of catalogues of ancient sunspot and auroral observations… Conclusions
We have reviewed historical evidence concerning the number, positions, and areas of sunspots during the last centuries. From this data, various authors have extracted some very important results for astronomy and geophysics in general, and for space climate in particular, about the long-term variation in solar activity….
So how is this type information handled by the IPCC?
On the basis of this “consensus of one” solar physicist, the IPCC proclaimed solar influences upon the climate to be minimal. Objection to this was raised by the Norwegian government as shown in the AR4 second draft comments below (and essentially dismissed by the IPCC): “I would encourage the IPCC to [re-]consider having only one solar physicist on the lead author team of such an important chapter. In particular since the conclusion of this section about solar forcing hangs on one single paper in which J. Lean is a coauthor. I find that this paper, which certainly can be correct, is given too much weight”… SOURCE
And who is this great ‘solar’ physicist?
Mr Vítězslav Kremlík (Czechia) discovered an interesting fact. The analyses of the influence of the Sun on the climate in the latest IPCC report relied on one solar physicist, Dr Judith Lean…. Her CV lists some lower-grade institutions and reveals she didn’t get an academic job at some point. And her education is in environmental and atmospheric sciences only – no solar physics etc…. SOURCE
Of course the WUWT resident solar physicist is still insisting the sun is completely constant…. Professor Emiritus Hal Lewis Resigns from American Physical Society citing corruption (Resignation Letter)
There are also albedo, clouds, relative humidity, Cosmic Ray/Solar Wind/Geomagnetic… and I do not want to write a book (or at least any more of one)
However trying to say CO2 is some sort of Climatic Control Knob is laughable ESPECIALLY since the relative humidity has DECREASED so you can forget the multiplier effect that is the underpinning of the IPCC reports of CAGW. That is inadition to logarithmic effect
barry
August 7, 2012 8:44 am
Is anyone still expecting arctic sea ice to “recover” to pre-90s extent/area? That kind of prediction was all the rage here only a couple of years ago.
kadaka writes,
“Why not toss in Hald et al 2011?”
Thank you, I had not seen this interesting paper. Let’s quote from it a bit more fully, in that part where the authors discuss what their data says about recent warming. I’ll add some emphasis too.
“Most of the records in the North Atlantic region (Figure 3) indicate a warming trend during the last 200 years, but they do not indicate that the recent warming is larger than during RWP or MWP. The pollen-based composite temperature record does not show any temperature peaks during the MWP either (Bjune et al., 2009). In contrast, the present study clearly shows that the warming during the last 100 years stands out as an unprecedented warming for the last 2000 years. Terrestrial records from the Northern Hemisphere also show that the last 50 years were the warmest in the last 2000 years (Kaufman et al., 2009) suggesting a close atmosphere–marine coupling. Compared with the Holocene temperature record from the Malangen fjord of Hald et al. (2003) and Husum and Hald (2004) the bottom water temperatures in the Malangen fjord during the last century are the warmest interval over the last 6000 years. This apparently different trend in recent warming may reflect the so-called polar amplification of the global warming as the present study represents the northernmost location of the records compared in Figure 10. Recent observations indicate that warming of the high latitudes is stronger than at mid and lower latitudes.”
Gneiss
August 7, 2012 9:23 am
Another quote from the Hald paper. The Little Ice Age stands out in their data, but they did not find much of a Roman Warm Period, and no Medieval Warm Period.
“The reconstructed climate changes in the Malangen temperature record can be compared with the informal historical time intervals commonly used in discussing the upper Holocene climate history: the ‘Roman Warm Period’ (RWP, 50 bc–ad 400), the ‘Dark Ages Cold Period’ (DACP, ad 400–800), ‘Medieval Warm Period’ (MWP, ad 900–1300) and the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA, ad 1300–1900). In the Malangen record the RWP was characterized by a period of stable warm temperatures, although not as warm as the temperatures during the last century. The DACP is reflected in the Malangen record by the temperature minimum around ad 400 and ad 600–800. The MWP is reflected as a period of rather stable temperatures with a cooling leading to the start of the LIA. The LIA is clearly reflected as a cold period in the Malangen record. A cooling leading to the LIA started around ad 1250 and a number of multiyear periods with unprecedented cold temperatures of the last 2000 years occurred until ad 1800.”
Bill Illis.
“This new low pressure system is called a “Polar Low” or polar “Cyclone”.”
Actually not. It’s too large for a polar low at more than 1000km in size.
This kind of weather has happened before. There is nothing special about it.
We conclude from that this this weather has nothing to do with the state of the ice.
Something else must have caused the loss of about 500km of ice.
skeptic logic.
The ice loss isnt unprecedented, the weather isnt unprecedented. nothing is unprecedented because it’s all happened before. Our explanation is “natural variation” which explains everything and can not be contradicted by any evidence, kinda like belief in god.
Anyway, I hope to win some quatloos over at Lucia’s http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current.png
Gail Combs
August 7, 2012 9:48 am
Gneiss, kadaka Whell I certainly hope you guys are correct because the record snowfalls that are not melting in Alaska could be a bit of a problem since that is how glaciation starts and we are at the end of the Holocene.
Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception
Ulrich C. Müller & Jörg Pross, Institute of Geosciences, University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
“Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago. Climate Change 61, 261–293], which proposes that early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started….
I still can’t figure out why anyone in his right mind prefers blizzards and ice to luxurious plant growth, rain forests teaming with life and sunny beaches. Perhaps you two need to pack your bags and move to Anchorage where the record snow fall is refusing to melt so you feel more comfortable. Or better yet Norilsk, I am sure they can use more labor in their mines. Me I left the north and moved south so I will not have to shovel the white stuff as often.
Gneiss
August 7, 2012 10:27 am
smokey writes,
“Well, DUH.”
Well said, Smokey.
In Hald et al’s reconstruction the MWP shows up as a period of stable temperatures well below those of the past 200 years. And by “past 200 years” they mean 1800 to 2000. And the trend was going up over those past 200 years, so the last 100 are warmest. And, stepping outside this paper to find more recent data (the authors mention no further fjord measurements), mean air temperature at Tromso for the decade 2001-2010 were the warmest in that station’s records. There’s just no way to get their data to say what you want it to say.
Gneiss says:
“And the trend was going up over those past 200 years, so the last 100 are warmest.”
Well, DUH.
As anyone can see, the planet has been naturally warming since the LIA. So of course current temperatures will be warmer than past temperatures. DUH.
But as we see, the warming is not accelerating. Therefore, CO2 has had no measurable effect. DUH, and QED.
It’s fun ‘n’ easy falsifying all the CO2=CAGW nonsense.☺
8.2 Kiloyear Event and You
…It misses our slow decline from the Holocene Optimum into ever lower optimums. So much so that the Modern Optimum hardly shows on the Ice Core at all (and Greenland is colder than it was when the Vikings landed there (on that peak about 1000 BP). We had a lower Little Ice Age compared to the prior 1/2 Bond event of about the time of Christ, even though it was only a 1/2 Bond Event, due to the lateness of the hour in this interglacial. That would imply that THIS Bond Event, that I’ve taken to calling Bond Event Zero (c) will likely be worse than the last one we had. The Dark Ages. It ought to be worse than the Little Ice Age too. It ought to have made the first stirrings of the turn about 2005, and be well underway about 2035. That this is in agreement with the projected depths of the present Solar Grand Minimum does not give me cheer…
I really wish he was a nutter but I am very very afraid he is not.
Gail Combs
August 7, 2012 11:33 am
OOPs wrong threat on my last post should be in: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/07/mit-the-economic-cost-of-increased-temperatures/
[REPLY: Gail, I don’t think you were threatening anybody, but your last comment definitely was on the wrong thread. We can’t move comments, but if you resubmit to the correct thread I will be happy to remove the comment that is in the wrong thread. -REP]
Gneiss
August 7, 2012 1:51 pm
Gail Combs writes,
” ‘So much so that the Modern Optimum hardly shows on the Ice Core at all (and Greenland is colder than it was when the Vikings landed there (on that peak about 1000 BP).’
I really wish he was a nutter but I am very very afraid he is not.”
And yet, you’ve just approvingly quoted Chiefio declaring one of those “zombie arguments” that has been debunked a thousand times but never dies. The Modern Optimum does not show in the GISP2 ice core reconstruction for one very simple reason: because the ice core reconstruction ends in 1855, during the Little Ice Age and before the modern warming even began. Also for this reason, Alley’s ice core reconstruction by itself cannot possibly show that temperatures in Viking times were warmer than present. It does suggest that at Summit, Greenland, medieval times were warmer than the Little Ice Age, which I don’t think has ever been disputed by anyone.
But if you compare real data from measured modern temperatures at Summit with the ice core reconstruction, it suggests the opposite: modern temperatures at Summit are warmer. Every graph you’ve ever seen showing the GISP2 temperature curve alone, and claiming this demonstrates that medieval times were warmer than the “present,” has been wrong in this way.
We may have a test case on our hands. Wang has hypothesized that the Arctic Dipole Anomaly is the cause of rapid ice loss. He found that the DA (negative West and positive East dueling dipole pressure systems) explains the majority of the ice loss variance out Fram Strait, and was true for 2007. Since we are tracking along the (eh em) catastrophic “dotted line” I pose the question: Do we have the same DA set up that we had in 2007 regarding the atmospheric pressure systems responsible for sending ice out of the Arctic? Or is Mother Nature shooting the bulls eye out of another catastrophic wild ass humans are to blame guess? http://neven1.typepad.com/files/2009-wang-et-al—dipole-anomaly.pdf
kadaka (KD Knoebel)
August 7, 2012 2:47 pm
From Gail Combs on August 7, 2012 at 9:48 am:
Gneiss, kadaka Whell I certainly hope you guys are correct because the record snowfalls that are not melting in Alaska could be a bit of a problem since that is how glaciation starts and we are at the end of the Holocene.
It’s not that I want to be correct, however… They scream “Arctic Amplification!” and I can’t find it in the temperature records (such as they are). It’s natural for the Arctic to occasionally be low on sea ice, so I’m not worrying about it. As far as human influence goes, we’ve already seen assorted papers placing about half the Arctic warming as caused by soot (black carbon).
Which puts me somewhat at odds with Smokey, as while what is happening is within natural variability, the extra human-caused warming from the “dirty” burning of fuels in China and elsewhere that is making the soot is making the current Arctic warming somewhat un-natural. Due to the soot, humans in general are causing more Arctic sea ice to be lost than would otherwise naturally happen.
But that’s a temporary effect. Nature has a simple way of dealing with it, let the dirty ice melt away, dump the soot into the water, and make clean fresh ice. When China and the rest clean up their emissions, and the natural cycles are in generally favorable phases, the sea ice will recover quite nicely.
Meanwhile it’s fun to watch the warm-mongers freak out over some melting ice cubes and demand sacrifices of blood and treasure at the Temple of Mann lest the terrible demon CO2 ravages the Earth unto seventy generations yet to be born.
It’s tough to find info on historic North Atlantic sea temperatures. I stumbled across Hald et al 2011, noted by the Google results it had already been mentioned at assorted warmist sites. I’m surprised Gneiss didn’t already know about it. It’s already out there, so mentioning it here now didn’t matter. It was amusing watching them hold it up like they miraculously found one of the Lost Books of The Prophet Hansen.
(It was also interesting how quickly Gneiss got through the paywall to a paper that they’re charging $25 a day for mere access. Someone’s got connections… And then he didn’t play fair! Throwing out cherrypicked parts from his side of the paywall while we don’t have access… How rude!)
It also makes a nice contrast to an earlier freely-available 2009 paper Hald co-authored: A Late Holocene climate history from the Malangen fjord, North Norway, based on dinoflagellate cysts http://www.geologi.no/data/f/0/19/91/0_2401_0/Rorvik_print.pdf
Abstract:
The periods from c. AD 500 to 790 and c. AD 1500 to 1940, stand out as cold periods. The period from c. AD 790 to 1500 is characterized by warm saline water, whereas the period from AD 1940 to present is characterized by decreasing inflow of warm, saline water.
The Dark Ages Cold Period was the coldest in 1500 years. Warmer stable conditions during the Medieval Warm Period, which is suggested to be a global phenomenon, Medieval optimum appears split into two maxima by a cooler phase.
Bottom water temperatures in the Malangen fjord rose sharply around 1800 and continued to rise up to the Recent (Hald et al. in prep.)
Shockingly, “unprecedented” was not used once in this paper.
barry
August 7, 2012 3:19 pm
Gail:
you embolden this quote from a study, approvingly,
“…anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started..”
then you comment,
I still can’t figure out why anyone in his right mind prefers blizzards and ice to luxurious plant growth, rain forests teaming with life and sunny beaches.
So you are agreeing that anthro-added CO2 is powerful enough to prevent an ice age. This is at odds with your previous comments that CO2 can’t be some sort of climate “control knob” etc.
tjfolkerts
August 7, 2012 3:55 pm
Things that make you go “hmm” …
Smokey says: “As anyone can see, the planet has been naturally warming since the LIA. “
How many mistakes are packed into one sentence? The graph in his link …
1) .. not “anyone can see” what the graph is presenting, since neither axis is labeled.
2) … is NOT “the planet”. It skips both poles (although this is admittedly a minor problem).
3) … says nothing about the cause of the warming. That requires assumptions.
4) … is NOT “since the LIA”. The trend on the graph says 0.14 K/decade. The change is from ~ -0.1K to ~ + 0.3 K for a change of ~ 0.4K. At 0.14 K/decade, the graph apparently only covers about 3 decades. (In fact, the big spike is pretty clearly the 1998 El Nino warming and the tick marks are years).
As anyone can now see, Smokey’s link is COMPLETELY unable to make the point he was trying to make.
Continuing: “But as we see, the warming is not accelerating. ” The graph in his second link …
1) … is also not “the planet” (it is a small triangle in England)
2) … IS accelerating!. Acceleration is the second derivative with respect to time of a function (usually “position”, but in this case “temperature”). No acceleration would mean a straight line with no curve. The data is clearly above the linear fit at the very beginning and at the very end, which is a hallmark of “acceleration”! (A quick statistical analysis of the annual CET temperatures shows the acceleration of the warming is highly statistically significant.)
You’re right, Smokey, it IS “fun ‘n’ easy falsifying all the CO2=CAGW nonsense.”
I used to think tjfolkerts was a smart guy, but clearly his mind has been warped by the CAGW religion.
Although Tim is afflicted by serious cognitive dissonance, I don’t want someone reading this to conclude that tjfolkert’s response holds water. It doesn’t.
So, may I deconstruct? Thank you:
1. Neither axis is labeled in that particular graph, but I have posted dozens of graphs like this one showing the axes. Note the green line [the long term trend], which clearly shows that the natural warming trend is moderating. No acceleration there].
2. Agreed, that particular graph was not of the entire planet… as the graph made clear. Reading comprehension, Tim, me boi. You needs it.☺
3. Neither tjfolkerts or anyone else “knows” the cause(s) of the natural warming since the LIA. But the planet has been steadily warming. There is no doubt. And the warming is natural, because it has been along the same trend line whether CO2 was low or high. Thus, the one assumption we can make is that any effect from rising CO2 is insignificant; it is too small to even measure.
4. There are numerous temperature records from around the world, and all of them show the same gradual, natural warming. Some records are older than others. But ALL of them show the same non-accelerating trend.
Next, tjfolkerts says that my link is “… COMPLETELY unable to make the point he was trying to make.”
Plenty of others obviously understand, so for Tim’s sake, I will explain. Listen up, Tim:
1) See my link in #4 above. That is not “a small triangle in England”, that is observational corroboration from around the globe.
2) There is no acceleration of the global warming since the LIA. How manyy times do I have to post this chart? Or this chart? If there was any acceleration in the warming trend, recent temperatures would be breaking out above the long term parameters. As everyone but Tim can see, they are not.
Conclusion: there is no acceleration in warming, therefore ipso facto CO2 does not have the claimed effect. Even worse for the alarmist argument, CO2 follows rising temperature; it is not a cause of temperature rise.
kadaka (KD Knoebel)
August 7, 2012 4:37 pm
From Gneiss on August 7, 2012 at 1:51 pm:
And yet, you’ve just approvingly quoted Chiefio declaring one of those “zombie arguments” that has been debunked a thousand times but never dies. The Modern Optimum does not show in the GISP2 ice core reconstruction for one very simple reason: because the ice core reconstruction ends in 1855, during the Little Ice Age and before the modern warming even began.
…
ORIGINAL REFERENCE:
Kobashi, T., K. Kawamura, J.P. Severinghaus, J.-M. Barnola,
T. Nakaegawa, B.M. Vinther, S.J. Johnsen, and J.E. Box. 2011.
High variability of Greenland surface temperature over the
past 4000 years estimated from trapped air in an ice core.
Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L21501, doi:10.1029/2011GL049444.
…
GEOGRAPHIC REGION: Greenland
PERIOD OF RECORD: 4000 YrBP – present
Listing: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL049444.shtml
Leif has a copy: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL049444.pdf
Note how the reconstruction data with all fields (Mean temp, 1 sigma, High band, Low band) extends to 1950. That’s where they switch from the “Gas Method” to the “Forward Method”. That’s why from 1951 to the end of the data file at 1993 there is only the Mean temp listed.
From the Abstract:
The estimated average Greenland snow temperature over the past 4000 years was −30.7°C with a standard deviation of 1.0°C and exhibited a long-term decrease of roughly 1.5°C, which is consistent with earlier studies. The current decadal average surface temperature (2001–2010) at the GISP2 site is −29.9°C. The record indicates that warmer temperatures were the norm in the earlier part of the past 4000 years, including century-long intervals nearly 1°C warmer than the present decade (2001–2010). Therefore, we conclude that the current decadal mean temperature in Greenland has not exceeded the envelope of natural variability over the past 4000 years, a period that seems to include part of the Holocene Thermal Maximum. Notwithstanding this conclusion, climate models project that if anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions continue, the Greenland temperature would exceed the natural variability of the past 4000 years sometime before the year 2100.
So in the past it was nearly 1°C warmer than current for about a century at a time, and the ice is still there. Natural variability has not been exceeded over the past 4000 years.
But the climate models warn us that natural variability could be exceeded if anthropogenic GHG emissions continue. Sometime before 2100. You better take heed, as we all know just how finely tuned and perfectly accurate those climate models really are.
kadaka writes,
“And then he didn’t play fair! Throwing out cherrypicked parts from his side of the paywall while we don’t have access… How rude!”
This is a good example of something we keep seeing: people using the term “cherry picking” without understanding what it means. They know it means something bad, perhaps even something they have been accused of themselves, so they toss it around as a general dismissal whenever data (or in this case, Hald’s paper) doesn’t show what they wanted it to show.
What cherry picking actually refers to in this context is arbitrarily picking an unrepresentative subset from the available data, that is contradicted by the rest of that data but in isolation seems to support the point you want to make. Classic cherry picks around here include “no warming since 1998” (a starting point chosen because a “super El Nino” made it a warm outlier, especially if you pick certain datasets) or “ice recovery since 2007” (likewise, a starting point chosen because it’s an outlier). On this thread we saw one failed attempt to do that with global sea ice since 2000. On the other hand calling satellite data since 1979 a cherry pick shows confusion; that’s how much satellite data we have. (And its trends are supported by other longer-term but different kinds of data.) Or Smokey saying my “2,000 years” was a cherry pick; that’s how much data Spielhagen had. (And again, the conclusion has been supported by many other kinds of data.)
If kadaka understood what the term meant, then his statement that I cherry picked those quotes from Hald’s article would imply him believing that I picked out unrepresentative pieces, instead of the main things the authors said on these topics. And that if kadaka could see the whole paper, he’d find a bunch of other comparisons of historical with modern temperatures that lead to opposite conclusions. But that would be a pretty foolish claim for him to make, still without having seen the paper, so it’s easier to believe that kadaka just doesn’t know a cherry pick when he sees it.
For a more complicated test of understanding we might try to figure out whether Rorvik et al (2009), where kadaka is happy not to find the word “unprecedented”, or Hald et al (2011) where he is unhappy to learn that word occurs, present more extensive data and analysis about that fjord.
tjfolkerts
August 7, 2012 5:36 pm
Gail says: “You are not quite correct. (But neither was I …)” [about solar energy to the arctic]
And she also quotes a paper:
The 100,000 year stretch: The orbit of the earth gradually stretches from nearly circular to an elliptical shape and back again in a cycle of approximately 100,000 years. This is called the orbit’s eccentricity. During the cycle, the distance between earth and sun varies by as much as 11.35 million miles. [So distance from the sun and therefore insolation does change for the earth as a whole – G.C.]
I don’t think either of us was 100% clear about what we were saying, but I still think that I was “quite right”. It comes down to what exactly we mean by “insolation does change for the earth as a whole”
1) The insolation for the earth decreases and then increases again each year. Currently the earth is closest to the sun in January and farthest in July, so the sun sends the most energy in January and the least in July. But this is not what the original paper was talking about, nor is it what the quote above is describing,
2) Precession leads to changes for when during the year we are closest to the sun. 13,000 years ago earth was closest in July and farthest in January (the reverse of now). This is the “9%” change in the original paper.
3) Precession doesn’t change the average distance, so therefore insolation AVERAGED OVER A YEAR does NOT change due to precession.
4) Changes in eccentricity (as discussed in your quote at the start of this post) affect the maximum and minimum distances during the year, but do not affect the average distance (the semi-major axis). This affects how much the solar energy input swings during the year, but does not affect the average solar energy input.
So if you meant “So distance from the sun and therefore MONTHLY insolation does change for the earth as a whole due to eccentricity” then you were right.
But if you meant “So distance from the sun and therefore MILLENNIAL insolation does change for the earth as a whole due to eccentricity CHANGES” then you were right.
But the eccentricity changes do NOT lead to a net change in the annual incoming solar energy, so a NET change in incoming solar energy cannot be the cause of net warming or cooling (which seems to be what you were implying). On the other hand, the LOCATION where that same solar energy falls can matter, which IS the point of the original article you quoted.
Bill Illis writes,
“So let’s have more research from now on before people start calling a low pressure system something special.”
Unintentionally humor from someone who didn’t see the storm coming and reached for a conspiracy theory instead of physical reality when NSIDC nrt numbers (what kadaka, wrongly attributing the nrt discussion’s origin to Rob Dekker, dismisses as “incomplete data” above) jumped around. Zero research skills there!
But sure, I’m in favor of more research. Cyclones have occurred before in the Arctic, no one doubts that, but the summer ones tend to be relatively week. This summer cyclone is quite strong. And it is tearing up a thin and fractured ice pack that had was already at record low area and volume for the date, because of the warming trends discussed much above. Sounds newsworthy and scientific research-worthy indeed.
How many scientists does it take to demonstrate that you cannot stick your leg into the same river twice? Everything is flux.
Rob Dekker says:
August 7, 2012 at 12:52 am
….Now, we know that the decline in temperatues during the Holocene is caused by orbital variations (I think that Gail mentioned a 9 % increase in insolation during summers of the early Holocene). So does anyone have a physical explanation for why this reduction in insolation over 8-4 thousand years suddenly (over ~150 years or so) is irradicated and replaced by a significant warming trend ?
_________________________
A) It is not “significant” There are other trends like the ~1470 yr Dansgaard-Oeschger /Bond events. fromWIKI (It is so well known it did not get torpedoed by warmists.)
So warming of 5-8°C in Greenland is not ‘Unprecedented’. Also if there has been no “warming for 2000 yr” then we were due for a Dansgaard-Oeschger event (rapid warming) over the last 500 years were we not?
Bond events are cold and /or arid (Drought) events and the last one was ≈1,400 BP (Bond event 1)
The sequence seems to be A cold spike, then a warm spike, then a few hundred years of cold. We had the cold spike (LIA) then a warm spike (Modern Optimum) so we are due for a few hundred years of cold.
What do the graphs say?
Greenland
Vostok, Antarctica
If nothing else they tell us the temperature swings at least (+/-)2°C
B) So what about any other Physical evidence?
OCEANS:
(Oscillation): AMO & NAO the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and The North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) The NAO is closely related to Arctic oscillation (AO)
more graphs on AO
SUN:
paywalled paper abstract: Solar observation in ancient China and Solar Variability
So how is this type information handled by the IPCC?
And who is this great ‘solar’ physicist?
Of course the WUWT resident solar physicist is still insisting the sun is completely constant….
Professor Emiritus Hal Lewis Resigns from American Physical Society citing corruption (Resignation Letter)
There are also albedo, clouds, relative humidity, Cosmic Ray/Solar Wind/Geomagnetic… and I do not want to write a book (or at least any more of one)
However trying to say CO2 is some sort of Climatic Control Knob is laughable ESPECIALLY since the relative humidity has DECREASED so you can forget the multiplier effect that is the underpinning of the IPCC reports of CAGW. That is inadition to logarithmic effect
Is anyone still expecting arctic sea ice to “recover” to pre-90s extent/area? That kind of prediction was all the rage here only a couple of years ago.
“What’s not to like? There’s unprecedented warming. Sure, there is a long cooling trend attributed to insolation changes, just natural variation.”
Yes, the recent reverse of the long term cooling in the arctic has been confirmed by the multi-proxy study of Kaufamnn et al (2009) (caution ! hockey stick inside ! 🙂 )
Recent Warming Reverses Long-Term Arctic Cooling
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/325/5945/1236.short
http://denverclimatestudygroup.com/OTHER-MISC/ArcticCoolingScience200909041236.pdf
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/Kaufmannetal.2009.png
kadaka writes,
“Why not toss in Hald et al 2011?”
Thank you, I had not seen this interesting paper. Let’s quote from it a bit more fully, in that part where the authors discuss what their data says about recent warming. I’ll add some emphasis too.
“Most of the records in the North Atlantic region (Figure 3) indicate a warming trend during the last 200 years, but they do not indicate that the recent warming is larger than during RWP or MWP. The pollen-based composite temperature record does not show any temperature peaks during the MWP either (Bjune et al., 2009). In contrast, the present study clearly shows that the warming during the last 100 years stands out as an unprecedented warming for the last 2000 years. Terrestrial records from the Northern Hemisphere also show that the last 50 years were the warmest in the last 2000 years (Kaufman et al., 2009) suggesting a close atmosphere–marine coupling. Compared with the Holocene temperature record from the Malangen fjord of Hald et al. (2003) and Husum and Hald (2004) the bottom water temperatures in the Malangen fjord during the last century are the warmest interval over the last 6000 years. This apparently different trend in recent warming may reflect the so-called polar amplification of the global warming as the present study represents the northernmost location of the records compared in Figure 10. Recent observations indicate that warming of the high latitudes is stronger than at mid and lower latitudes.”
Another quote from the Hald paper. The Little Ice Age stands out in their data, but they did not find much of a Roman Warm Period, and no Medieval Warm Period.
“The reconstructed climate changes in the Malangen temperature record can be compared with the informal historical time intervals commonly used in discussing the upper Holocene climate history: the ‘Roman Warm Period’ (RWP, 50 bc–ad 400), the ‘Dark Ages Cold Period’ (DACP, ad 400–800), ‘Medieval Warm Period’ (MWP, ad 900–1300) and the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA, ad 1300–1900). In the Malangen record the RWP was characterized by a period of stable warm temperatures, although not as warm as the temperatures during the last century. The DACP is reflected in the Malangen record by the temperature minimum around ad 400 and ad 600–800. The MWP is reflected as a period of rather stable temperatures with a cooling leading to the start of the LIA. The LIA is clearly reflected as a cold period in the Malangen record. A cooling leading to the LIA started around ad 1250 and a number of multiyear periods with unprecedented cold temperatures of the last 2000 years occurred until ad 1800.”
Gneiss says:
“The MWP is reflected as a period of rather stable temperatures with a cooling leading to the start of the LIA.”
Well, DUH.
Bill Illis.
“This new low pressure system is called a “Polar Low” or polar “Cyclone”.”
Actually not. It’s too large for a polar low at more than 1000km in size.
This kind of weather has happened before. There is nothing special about it.
We conclude from that this this weather has nothing to do with the state of the ice.
Something else must have caused the loss of about 500km of ice.
skeptic logic.
The ice loss isnt unprecedented, the weather isnt unprecedented. nothing is unprecedented because it’s all happened before. Our explanation is “natural variation” which explains everything and can not be contradicted by any evidence, kinda like belief in god.
Anyway, I hope to win some quatloos over at Lucia’s
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current.png
Gneiss, kadaka Whell I certainly hope you guys are correct because the record snowfalls that are not melting in Alaska could be a bit of a problem since that is how glaciation starts and we are at the end of the Holocene.
I still can’t figure out why anyone in his right mind prefers blizzards and ice to luxurious plant growth, rain forests teaming with life and sunny beaches. Perhaps you two need to pack your bags and move to Anchorage where the record snow fall is refusing to melt so you feel more comfortable. Or better yet Norilsk, I am sure they can use more labor in their mines. Me I left the north and moved south so I will not have to shovel the white stuff as often.
smokey writes,
“Well, DUH.”
Well said, Smokey.
In Hald et al’s reconstruction the MWP shows up as a period of stable temperatures well below those of the past 200 years. And by “past 200 years” they mean 1800 to 2000. And the trend was going up over those past 200 years, so the last 100 are warmest. And, stepping outside this paper to find more recent data (the authors mention no further fjord measurements), mean air temperature at Tromso for the decade 2001-2010 were the warmest in that station’s records. There’s just no way to get their data to say what you want it to say.
Gneiss says:
“And the trend was going up over those past 200 years, so the last 100 are warmest.”
Well, DUH.
As anyone can see, the planet has been naturally warming since the LIA. So of course current temperatures will be warmer than past temperatures. DUH.
But as we see, the warming is not accelerating. Therefore, CO2 has had no measurable effect. DUH, and QED.
It’s fun ‘n’ easy falsifying all the CO2=CAGW nonsense.☺
For a decent study of the subject of climate and civilization, E. M. Smith has done a bang up job. He shoots this study completely out of the water. (Tony B. probably could too.)
Of Time and Temperatures: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/of-time-and-temperatures/
Dry China: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/dry-china/
Intermediate Period Half Bond Events: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/intermediate-period-half-bond-events/
All of past history show:
A) the earth was warmer during the holocene
B) Civilization flourished when it was warm
C) Civilizations collapsed when it was cold
And his real zinger
I really wish he was a nutter but I am very very afraid he is not.
OOPs wrong threat on my last post should be in: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/07/mit-the-economic-cost-of-increased-temperatures/
[REPLY: Gail, I don’t think you were threatening anybody, but your last comment definitely was on the wrong thread. We can’t move comments, but if you resubmit to the correct thread I will be happy to remove the comment that is in the wrong thread. -REP]
Gail Combs writes,
” ‘So much so that the Modern Optimum hardly shows on the Ice Core at all (and Greenland is colder than it was when the Vikings landed there (on that peak about 1000 BP).’
I really wish he was a nutter but I am very very afraid he is not.”
And yet, you’ve just approvingly quoted Chiefio declaring one of those “zombie arguments” that has been debunked a thousand times but never dies. The Modern Optimum does not show in the GISP2 ice core reconstruction for one very simple reason: because the ice core reconstruction ends in 1855, during the Little Ice Age and before the modern warming even began. Also for this reason, Alley’s ice core reconstruction by itself cannot possibly show that temperatures in Viking times were warmer than present. It does suggest that at Summit, Greenland, medieval times were warmer than the Little Ice Age, which I don’t think has ever been disputed by anyone.
But if you compare real data from measured modern temperatures at Summit with the ice core reconstruction, it suggests the opposite: modern temperatures at Summit are warmer. Every graph you’ve ever seen showing the GISP2 temperature curve alone, and claiming this demonstrates that medieval times were warmer than the “present,” has been wrong in this way.
SMH
We may have a test case on our hands. Wang has hypothesized that the Arctic Dipole Anomaly is the cause of rapid ice loss. He found that the DA (negative West and positive East dueling dipole pressure systems) explains the majority of the ice loss variance out Fram Strait, and was true for 2007. Since we are tracking along the (eh em) catastrophic “dotted line” I pose the question: Do we have the same DA set up that we had in 2007 regarding the atmospheric pressure systems responsible for sending ice out of the Arctic? Or is Mother Nature shooting the bulls eye out of another catastrophic wild ass humans are to blame guess?
http://neven1.typepad.com/files/2009-wang-et-al—dipole-anomaly.pdf
From Gail Combs on August 7, 2012 at 9:48 am:
It’s not that I want to be correct, however… They scream “Arctic Amplification!” and I can’t find it in the temperature records (such as they are). It’s natural for the Arctic to occasionally be low on sea ice, so I’m not worrying about it. As far as human influence goes, we’ve already seen assorted papers placing about half the Arctic warming as caused by soot (black carbon).
Which puts me somewhat at odds with Smokey, as while what is happening is within natural variability, the extra human-caused warming from the “dirty” burning of fuels in China and elsewhere that is making the soot is making the current Arctic warming somewhat un-natural. Due to the soot, humans in general are causing more Arctic sea ice to be lost than would otherwise naturally happen.
But that’s a temporary effect. Nature has a simple way of dealing with it, let the dirty ice melt away, dump the soot into the water, and make clean fresh ice. When China and the rest clean up their emissions, and the natural cycles are in generally favorable phases, the sea ice will recover quite nicely.
Meanwhile it’s fun to watch the warm-mongers freak out over some melting ice cubes and demand sacrifices of blood and treasure at the Temple of Mann lest the terrible demon CO2 ravages the Earth unto seventy generations yet to be born.
It’s tough to find info on historic North Atlantic sea temperatures. I stumbled across Hald et al 2011, noted by the Google results it had already been mentioned at assorted warmist sites. I’m surprised Gneiss didn’t already know about it. It’s already out there, so mentioning it here now didn’t matter. It was amusing watching them hold it up like they miraculously found one of the Lost Books of The Prophet Hansen.
(It was also interesting how quickly Gneiss got through the paywall to a paper that they’re charging $25 a day for mere access. Someone’s got connections… And then he didn’t play fair! Throwing out cherrypicked parts from his side of the paywall while we don’t have access… How rude!)
It also makes a nice contrast to an earlier freely-available 2009 paper Hald co-authored:
A Late Holocene climate history from the Malangen fjord, North Norway, based on dinoflagellate cysts
http://www.geologi.no/data/f/0/19/91/0_2401_0/Rorvik_print.pdf
Abstract:
The Dark Ages Cold Period was the coldest in 1500 years. Warmer stable conditions during the Medieval Warm Period, which is suggested to be a global phenomenon, Medieval optimum appears split into two maxima by a cooler phase.
Shockingly, “unprecedented” was not used once in this paper.
Gail:
you embolden this quote from a study, approvingly,
then you comment,
So you are agreeing that anthro-added CO2 is powerful enough to prevent an ice age. This is at odds with your previous comments that CO2 can’t be some sort of climate “control knob” etc.
Things that make you go “hmm” …
Smokey says: “As anyone can see, the planet has been naturally warming since the LIA. “
How many mistakes are packed into one sentence? The graph in his link …
1) .. not “anyone can see” what the graph is presenting, since neither axis is labeled.
2) … is NOT “the planet”. It skips both poles (although this is admittedly a minor problem).
3) … says nothing about the cause of the warming. That requires assumptions.
4) … is NOT “since the LIA”. The trend on the graph says 0.14 K/decade. The change is from ~ -0.1K to ~ + 0.3 K for a change of ~ 0.4K. At 0.14 K/decade, the graph apparently only covers about 3 decades. (In fact, the big spike is pretty clearly the 1998 El Nino warming and the tick marks are years).
As anyone can now see, Smokey’s link is COMPLETELY unable to make the point he was trying to make.
Continuing: “But as we see, the warming is not accelerating. ” The graph in his second link …
1) … is also not “the planet” (it is a small triangle in England)
2) … IS accelerating!. Acceleration is the second derivative with respect to time of a function (usually “position”, but in this case “temperature”). No acceleration would mean a straight line with no curve. The data is clearly above the linear fit at the very beginning and at the very end, which is a hallmark of “acceleration”! (A quick statistical analysis of the annual CET temperatures shows the acceleration of the warming is highly statistically significant.)
You’re right, Smokey, it IS “fun ‘n’ easy falsifying all the
CO2=CAGWnonsense.”I used to think tjfolkerts was a smart guy, but clearly his mind has been warped by the CAGW religion.
Although Tim is afflicted by serious cognitive dissonance, I don’t want someone reading this to conclude that tjfolkert’s response holds water. It doesn’t.
So, may I deconstruct? Thank you:
1. Neither axis is labeled in that particular graph, but I have posted dozens of graphs like this one showing the axes. Note the green line [the long term trend], which clearly shows that the natural warming trend is moderating. No acceleration there].
2. Agreed, that particular graph was not of the entire planet… as the graph made clear. Reading comprehension, Tim, me boi. You needs it.☺
3. Neither tjfolkerts or anyone else “knows” the cause(s) of the natural warming since the LIA. But the planet has been steadily warming. There is no doubt. And the warming is natural, because it has been along the same trend line whether CO2 was low or high. Thus, the one assumption we can make is that any effect from rising CO2 is insignificant; it is too small to even measure.
4. There are numerous temperature records from around the world, and all of them show the same gradual, natural warming. Some records are older than others. But ALL of them show the same non-accelerating trend.
Next, tjfolkerts says that my link is “… COMPLETELY unable to make the point he was trying to make.”
Plenty of others obviously understand, so for Tim’s sake, I will explain. Listen up, Tim:
1) See my link in #4 above. That is not “a small triangle in England”, that is observational corroboration from around the globe.
2) There is no acceleration of the global warming since the LIA. How manyy times do I have to post this chart? Or this chart? If there was any acceleration in the warming trend, recent temperatures would be breaking out above the long term parameters. As everyone but Tim can see, they are not.
Conclusion: there is no acceleration in warming, therefore ipso facto CO2 does not have the claimed effect. Even worse for the alarmist argument, CO2 follows rising temperature; it is not a cause of temperature rise.
From Gneiss on August 7, 2012 at 1:51 pm:
GISP2 Ice Core 4000 Year Ar-N Isotope Temperature Reconstruction
Abstract and data:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2-temperature2011.xls
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2-temperature2011.txt
Listing:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL049444.shtml
Leif has a copy:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL049444.pdf
Note how the reconstruction data with all fields (Mean temp, 1 sigma, High band, Low band) extends to 1950. That’s where they switch from the “Gas Method” to the “Forward Method”. That’s why from 1951 to the end of the data file at 1993 there is only the Mean temp listed.
From the Abstract:
So in the past it was nearly 1°C warmer than current for about a century at a time, and the ice is still there. Natural variability has not been exceeded over the past 4000 years.
But the climate models warn us that natural variability could be exceeded if anthropogenic GHG emissions continue. Sometime before 2100. You better take heed, as we all know just how finely tuned and perfectly accurate those climate models really are.
So what is there to worry about?
kadaka writes,
“And then he didn’t play fair! Throwing out cherrypicked parts from his side of the paywall while we don’t have access… How rude!”
This is a good example of something we keep seeing: people using the term “cherry picking” without understanding what it means. They know it means something bad, perhaps even something they have been accused of themselves, so they toss it around as a general dismissal whenever data (or in this case, Hald’s paper) doesn’t show what they wanted it to show.
What cherry picking actually refers to in this context is arbitrarily picking an unrepresentative subset from the available data, that is contradicted by the rest of that data but in isolation seems to support the point you want to make. Classic cherry picks around here include “no warming since 1998” (a starting point chosen because a “super El Nino” made it a warm outlier, especially if you pick certain datasets) or “ice recovery since 2007” (likewise, a starting point chosen because it’s an outlier). On this thread we saw one failed attempt to do that with global sea ice since 2000. On the other hand calling satellite data since 1979 a cherry pick shows confusion; that’s how much satellite data we have. (And its trends are supported by other longer-term but different kinds of data.) Or Smokey saying my “2,000 years” was a cherry pick; that’s how much data Spielhagen had. (And again, the conclusion has been supported by many other kinds of data.)
If kadaka understood what the term meant, then his statement that I cherry picked those quotes from Hald’s article would imply him believing that I picked out unrepresentative pieces, instead of the main things the authors said on these topics. And that if kadaka could see the whole paper, he’d find a bunch of other comparisons of historical with modern temperatures that lead to opposite conclusions. But that would be a pretty foolish claim for him to make, still without having seen the paper, so it’s easier to believe that kadaka just doesn’t know a cherry pick when he sees it.
For a more complicated test of understanding we might try to figure out whether Rorvik et al (2009), where kadaka is happy not to find the word “unprecedented”, or Hald et al (2011) where he is unhappy to learn that word occurs, present more extensive data and analysis about that fjord.
Gail says: “You are not quite correct. (But neither was I …)” [about solar energy to the arctic]
And she also quotes a paper:
I don’t think either of us was 100% clear about what we were saying, but I still think that I was “quite right”. It comes down to what exactly we mean by “insolation does change for the earth as a whole”
1) The insolation for the earth decreases and then increases again each year. Currently the earth is closest to the sun in January and farthest in July, so the sun sends the most energy in January and the least in July. But this is not what the original paper was talking about, nor is it what the quote above is describing,
2) Precession leads to changes for when during the year we are closest to the sun. 13,000 years ago earth was closest in July and farthest in January (the reverse of now). This is the “9%” change in the original paper.
3) Precession doesn’t change the average distance, so therefore insolation AVERAGED OVER A YEAR does NOT change due to precession.
4) Changes in eccentricity (as discussed in your quote at the start of this post) affect the maximum and minimum distances during the year, but do not affect the average distance (the semi-major axis). This affects how much the solar energy input swings during the year, but does not affect the average solar energy input.
So if you meant “So distance from the sun and therefore MONTHLY insolation does change for the earth as a whole due to eccentricity” then you were right.
But if you meant “So distance from the sun and therefore MILLENNIAL insolation does change for the earth as a whole due to eccentricity CHANGES” then you were right.
But the eccentricity changes do NOT lead to a net change in the annual incoming solar energy, so a NET change in incoming solar energy cannot be the cause of net warming or cooling (which seems to be what you were implying). On the other hand, the LOCATION where that same solar energy falls can matter, which IS the point of the original article you quoted.