UPDATE – 4/7/13
At the time I wrote this post, April 4th 11:45AM, at ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/trop/quelccaya/
there was a placeholder file quelccaya2013.txt reading then:
“# Data will be added to this file upon publication of Thompson et al. 2013 Science”
It seems they listened. Good on them for doing so (assuming WUWT had an impact). Now there are several data files dated April 5th at 8:20PM.
Steve McIntyre offers some praise and some notes for this latest development here -Anthony
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From the Ohio State University , taken with a grain of salt since Dr. Thompson and his wife Ellen are serial non archivers of ice core data (even when asked for it), which prevents other scientists from checking their work.
Discovery of 1,800-year-old ‘Rosetta Stone’ for tropical ice cores
Find offers the most complete picture of Earth’s low-latitude climate history to date
COLUMBUS, Ohio—Two annually dated ice cores drawn from the tropical Peruvian Andes reveal Earth’s tropical climate history in unprecedented detail—year by year, for nearly 1,800 years.
Researchers at The Ohio State University retrieved the cores from a Peruvian ice cap in 2003, and then noticed some startling similarities to other ice cores that they had retrieved from Tibet and the Himalayas. Patterns in the chemical composition of certain layers matched up, even though the cores were taken from opposite sides of the planet.
In the April 4, 2013 online edition of the journal Science Express, they describe the find, which they call the first annually resolved “Rosetta Stone” with which to compare other climate histories from Earth’s tropical and subtropical regions over the last two millennia.
The cores provide a new tool for researchers to study Earth’s past climate, and better understand the climate changes that are happening today.
“These ice cores provide the longest and highest-resolution tropical ice core record to date,” said Lonnie Thompson, distinguished university professor of earth sciences at Ohio State and lead author of the study.
“In fact, having drilled ice cores throughout the tropics for more than 30 years, we now know that this is the highest-resolution tropical ice core record that is likely to be retrieved.”
The new cores, drilled from Peru’s Quelccaya Ice Cap, are special because most of their 1,800-year history exists as clearly defined layers of light and dark: light from the accumulated snow of the wet season, and dark from the accumulated dust of the dry season.
They are also special because of where they formed, atop the high Andean altiplano in southern Peru. Most of the moisture in the area comes from the east, in snowstorms fueled by moist air rising from the Amazon Basin. But the ice core-derived climate records from the Andes are also impacted from the west—specifically by El Niño, a temporary change in climate, which is driven by sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific.
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  IMAGE: This 2002 photo of Quelccaya Ice Cap, taken from the same spot as a previous photo in 1977, shows the retreat of the ice wall’s vertical margins.Click here for more information. |
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El Niño thus leaves its mark on the Quelccaya ice cap as a chemical signature (especially in oxygen isotopes) indicating sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean over much of the past 1,800 years.
“We have been able to derive a proxy for sea surface temperatures that reaches back long before humans were able to make such measurements, and long before humans began to affect Earth’s climate,” Thompson said.
Ellen Mosley-Thompson, distinguished university professor of geography at Ohio State and director of the Byrd Polar Research Center, explained that the 2003 expedition to Quelccaya was the culmination of 20 years of work.
The Thompsons have drilled ice cores from glaciers atop the most remote areas of the planet—the Chinese Himalayas, the Tibetan Plateau, Kilimanjaro in Africa, and Papua Indonesia among others—to gauge Earth’s past climate. Each new core has provided a piece of the puzzle, as the researchers measured the concentrations of key chemicals preserved in thousands of years of accumulated ice.
A 1983 trip to Quelccaya yielded cores that earned the research team their first series of papers in Science. The remoteness of the site and the technology available at the time limited the quality of samples they could obtain, however. The nearest road was a two-day walk from the ice cap, so they were forced to melt the cores in the field and carry samples back as bottles of water. This made some chemical measurements impossible, and diminished the time resolution available from the cores.
“Due to the remoteness of the ice cap, we had to develop new tools such as a light-weight drill powered by solar panels to collect the 1983 cores. However, we knew there was much more information the cores could provide” Mosley-Thompson said. “Now the ice cap is just a six-hour walk from a new access road where a freezer truck can be positioned to preserve the cores. So we can now make better dust measurements along with a suite of chemical analyses that we couldn’t make before.”
The cores will provide a permanent record for future use by climate scientists, Thompson added. This is very important, as plants captured by the advancing ice cap 6,000 years ago are now emerging along its retreating margins, which shows that Quelccaya is now smaller than it has been in six thousand years.
“The frozen history from this tropical ice cap—which is melting away as Earth continues to warm—is archived in freezers at -30ºC so that creative people will have access to it 20 years from now, using instruments and techniques that don’t even exist today,” he said.
Coauthors on the study include Mary Davis, Victor Zagorodnov, and Ping-Nan Lin of Byrd Polar Research Center; Ian Howat of the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State; and Vladimir Mikhalenko of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation’s Paleoclimatology Program and Ohio State’s Climate, Water and Carbon Program.
Poor devils may have figured out that the only way to save their reputations is to not archive. Ockham wonders.
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I believe I read that the Kilimanjaro icecap has been increasing recently, I wonder if that is true for other locations used in this study. Of course they had to write the obligiatory:
“The frozen history from this tropical ice cap—which is melting away as Earth continues to warm…”
It’s an unproved claim. They say this ice core looks good when compared to other cores that they’ve collected. But they haven’t made any of the data available, so why should they be believed?
Also, because they didn’t archive the other core data before this one, we can’t trust that this really is a Rosetta Stone because there is no unaltered archive of the other cores to compare against.
Why should someone get paid for something they can’t prove they’ve done?
Lonnie Thompson! I had the misfortune to attend a graduation ceremony at Lancaster University where Lonnie was being presented with an honorary doctorate for his work in alerting us all to the global warming disaster we are apparently facing (!). Examples supporting his honour were his involvement in Al Gore’s film and the loss of ice on Kilimanjaro – to which the comment ‘whatvwe can all expect to see in future’ was added. I wanted to shout ‘snake oil salesman’ and ‘sublimation’ respectively but being a reserved Englishman was too polite to do so.
It was an unnerving/frightening demonstration of how an ‘on message’ university could promulgate and add credibility to junk science.
Is there actually a paper, or just a press release?
I also recall reading that the ice-caps/glaciers are more affected by local/regional conditions than global conditions. I also wonder if they will dare to archive the data so intrepid sleuths like Jean S, Steve McIntyre, and Rud Istvan can analyze and audit.
If it’s not verifiable , it’s not science . It’s that simple.
Desitinguished professors of creative writing perhaps. Not distinguished scientists, that for sure.
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/quelccaya.htm
“… specifically by El Niño, a temporary change in climate, which is driven by sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific.”
Climate??? The warmistas consider anything less than 30 years as weather, or?
“In fact, having drilled ice cores throughout the tropics for more than 30 years, we now know that this is the highest-resolution tropical ice core record that is likely to be retrieved.”
Unadulterated hubris….sadly not lacking in the AGW world…
Did I read it right? The core was extracted in 2003 and these guys are only now getting around to publishing results? I think Thomas Young worked faster than that on the original Rosetta stone!
Again I ask what is the altitude of the freeze line for this glacier.
Front-page proclamations like this are mostly worthless. They only work for “The Team” because the “truth” only comes out much later on page 93, below the fold.
With Lonnie and Liz, I’m not even willing to accept the assertion that the two photos were taken “from the same spot” 35 years apart. In any event, it would be a remarkable coincidence that both photos were obtained with lenses of equal focal length and magnification (which would alter the appearance of distance, etc).
I don’t know much about tropical icecaps, but it strikes me as odd that a steep ice front (as shown) would just march upslope during 35 years of snowfall/melt/sublimation.
Just sayin’
Is there any residual capacity in the world to apply any standards – or intelligence, or plain common sense?
Why do you post this here? Except possibly within the context of an evaluation of the bogus as demonstrated in detail and degeneracy as rampant through the whole?
I did not read beyond the caveat that this “work” could not be verified by another living being. Why would anyone?
If someone makes a claim, and you ask them to demonstrate it, and they refuse, you are dealing with a con man. There is nothing more to it.
Science, penis size, buying a used car. It’s all the same. Show it or show that you are a fraud.
toml says:
“Is there actually a paper, or just a press release?”
Press release says the paper is published in Science Express:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/04/03/science.1234210
Anthony Watts asks:
“Will Lonnie Thompson archive THIS new ice core data?”
Paper says data already archived:
“The data are archived at the NOAA World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/trop/quelccaya/quelccaya2013.txt
“
Believe me, I am no defender of AGW, or man-made climate change theory. I always look for sane, objective reports to debunk all that craziness. But I’m a bit confused on this one. Is this being billed as “Will Lonnie Thompson archive THIS new ice core data?” because we expect a detailed analyses of these Andean cores to show that global temps were considerably higher (eg, Medieval Warming Epoc), long before industrialization? Or is there something more I’m missing? Please explain.
I found this paragraph very telling and says completely different things depending on the Glass half full, Glass half empty theory
“The cores will provide a permanent record for future use by climate scientists, Thompson added. This is very important, as plants captured by the advancing ice cap 6,000 years ago are now emerging along its retreating margins, which shows that Quelccaya is now smaller than it has been in six thousand years.”
This could also be written
The cores will provide a permanent record for future use by climate scientists, Thompson added. This is very inportant, as plants captured by the advancing ice cap 6,000 years ago are now emerging along its retreating margins, which shows that Quelccaya was smaller 6,000 years ago than it is now and that the climate there was likely warmer then than it is now
Has this been “peer reviewed,” “spouse reviewed,” or simply outgassed by OSU’s PR office?
So, they’re going to get “creative” with this and “prove” unprecedented warming using the “Rosetta Ice” as indisputable evidence? Without letting anyone check their findings? I wouldn’t trust them an inch.
We need more scientists on this. Real ones. You know, the ones actually interesting in discovery and truth and the scientific method, willing to share their data.
Great ice core. Let’s see it properly looked at. The Thompsons have tainted their own reputations, we need someone of clean reputation and intent to step up to the plate.
So … there has probably only been ice up there for about 2000 years? That seems about right as there was a rather significant climate regime change about 2000 years ago along the eastern Pacific and before that period it was probably too warm. It could be that that ice cap has only formed since the Holocene Climate Optimum.
If this spectacular find was made in 2003, why did they wait 10 years to tell anyone. That’s more than half of the most recent global non-warming period. And I suspect, the ice has had plenty of time to contaminate.
“The cores will provide a permanent record for future use by climate scientists, Thompson added. This is very important, as plants captured by the advancing ice cap 6,000 years ago are now emerging along its retreating margins, which shows that Quelccaya is now smaller than it has been in six thousand years.”
If there was live vegetation that was somehow caught under a glacier, wouldn’t that indicate a very rapid change to local conditions that led to glaciation?
BA April 4, 2013 at 12:26 pm
“Paper says data already archived:”
not yet, quelccaya2013.txt reads:
“# Data will be added to this file upon publication of Thompson et al. 2013 Science”
Year by year, can it actual been that good or are we looking at the ‘ish’ approach to measurement .
But to be fair to the Thompson’s they been avoided archiving data and refusing to allow others to probable check their work long before ‘the Team’ started playing that game . Indeed in their own way they could be called the grandparents of the ‘trust me on this ‘ approach to science.
Perhaps if they had been standing there holding a contemporary copy of one of the following rags (found in the possession of every _serious_ environmentalist) for each of the photos it would have lent that needed air of authenticity:
AdBusters
Farmers National Weekly
Grist Magazine
International Socialist Review
Kommunist
Left Turn
Marxist Group
Mother Jones
People’s Daily
Pravda
The Nation
The New York Times
Utne Reader
Workers’ Weekly
.
@ba 1226pm
“Paper says data already archived:”
If you follow that link there is a distinct lack of data supposedly archived as yet
What keeps amazing me, mindboggling, is the fact that the data have not been archived, the cores are not safeguarded for future reanalysis. Is this the sorry state of climate research ™?
In my branch of science, we have to submit our findings until the last basepair before we get even a possibility to publish. This is not science, this is an alibi to extract even more money from gullible citizens.
Count me out.
“Two annually dated ice cores drawn from the tropical Peruvian Andes reveal Earth’s tropical climate history in unprecedented detail—year by year, for nearly 1,800 years.”
For nearly 1800 years ice has been in this location, therefore two points mentioned below.
!) The ice presence indicates that the recent period is still cold enough to preserve it.
2) What happened to the ice that wasn’t present before 1800 years ago? Only indicates that the tropical location was too warm prior then to maintain it for this detail.
Therefore when considering these points the tropical location is colder over the recent period than the past. How can 6000 years ago the glacier be bigger when there is no ice data before nearly 1800 years ago? If the glacier was bigger than the more layers would have been preserved to measure this so called unprecedented detail. If any science can be determined from this and that being the glacier has been bigger over the last 1800 years because the layers can be carefully examined.
If the cores compact to 5% of the original snow volume to ice over 1500 years, wouldn’t this allow for considerable opportunity for gas diffusion between the layers, hence averaging apparent atmospheric concentrations over very long periods ?
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/quelccaya.htm
I don’t care what “science” they claim to have produced. Without verifiable evidence and independantly reproducible results they are full of “it”. As far as I am concerned anything they’ve offered up is no better than leftovers at a McDonald’s dumpster after a dog has rotated it through it’s bowels and left it as a gift on someone’s yard. At some point it was pretty tasty, but that is certainly not the case anymore.
Unsubstantiated trash until they provide the data and methodologies used to obtain results. Sad state of affairs for these hucksters. The parade is over.
we now know that this is the highest-resolution tropical ice core record that is likely to be retrieved.
Which tells me there has been snow and ice accumulation at this location every year for centuries. Which further investigation proves to be indeed the case. An average of around 1.2 meters of water equivalent per year, or about 35 feet of snow per year.
What’s surprising is that snow accumulation increased substantially in the 20th century compared with the previous 2 centuries.
See figure 5 at the link.
As for the retreating glacier, the pictures tell me it is in a sun facing location, which would be north facing as this is in the southern hemisphere.
Just like pretty much everywhere else, sun facing glaciers are retreating and those that aren’t sun facing aren’t retreating. Which means warmer atmospheric temperatures aren’t the cause.
http://www.pnas.org/content/103/28/10536.full.pdf+html
nice try, BA
but we’ve learned to “watch the pea under the thimble” with these folk before (as noted above by Hans Erren)
Hans Erren says:April 4, 2013 at 12:09 pm
Thank you for your link. You don’t mention it, but everyone should know that you posted this nine years ago, Steve McIntyre looked at the data and pointed out a strange pattern in the early years.
As a graduate of the Ohio State University Department of Geology I’m ashamed that they haven’t denounced LonnieThompson and all of his climate scientology and dubious research methods and lack of transparency. They’ve changed the name of the department from Geology to “Earth Systems Science.” With a BS new name they seem proud of a BS artist like Thompson.
“Dr. Thompson and his wife Ellen are serial non archivers of ice core data (even when asked for it), which prevents other scientists from checking their work.”
After exposure of Ellen Moseley-Thompson’s role in the attack against Soon and Baliunas, I think, checking their work is a very important issue.
http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/25/behind-closed-doors-perpetuating-rubbish/
“Will Lonnie Thompson archive THIS new ice core data?”
It seems so. Following BA’s link, there is a placeholder with metadata, and forward dated to
# Contribution_Date
# Date: 2013-05-05
At the bottom there is a note:
# Data will be added to this file upon publication of Thompson et al. 2013 Science
There is an extensive database of the earlier Quelccaya data here.
So you should have everything you need.
BA writes (in part):
” Anthony Watts asks:
“Will Lonnie Thompson archive THIS new ice core data?”
Paper says data already archived:
“The data are archived at the NOAA World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology:”ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/trop/quelccaya/quelccaya2013.txt”
The data are not yet archived. Anthony is right to ask his question, for the lead author apparently has not responded to at least some prior data requests. The site linked by BA states data will be added when the paper is published, presumably the print version of SCIENCE.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation–meaning the US taxpayers. NSF requires data sharing, as described here:
From http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/dmp.jsp–
“Dissemination and Sharing of Research Results
“NSF Data Sharing Policy
“Investigators are expected to share with other researchers, at no more than incremental cost and within a reasonable time, the primary data, samples, physical collections and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of work under NSF grants. Grantees are expected to encourage and facilitate such sharing. See Award & Administration Guide (AAG) Chapter VI.D.4.”
‘This 2002 photo of Quelccaya Ice Cap, taken from the same spot as a previous photo in 1977, shows the retreat of the ice wall’s vertical margins.’
Ok, I don’t know that much about glaciers but doesn’t that 2002 photo, the caption appearing above, look sort of strange. Those are fairly rough looking rocks in the foreground considering they’ve had ice grinding down on them for, I dunno, a gazillion years before us nefarious humans came along and changed everything. Where’s the smooth pebbles, gravel, deposited boulders? Where’s the terminal moraine? Ok, if not the terminal moraine, where’s the recessional moraine? Glacial melt water lake? Like I said, ok typed, “I don’t know that much about glaciers,” but that sure doesn’t look quite like any retreating glacier I’ve ever seen. Where was that photo taken? It doesn’t seem to reveal much.
“This is very important, as plants captured by the advancing ice cap 6,000 years ago are now emerging along its retreating margins”
Can these climate scientists say why there was no glacier 6000 years ago, and then what caused the glacier to emerge and grow, and now retreat again presumably back to the natural state that existed prior to 6000 years ago?
“taken with a grain of salt since Dr. Thompson and his wife Ellen are serial non archivers of ice core data (even when asked for it), which prevents other scientists from checking their work.”
If this is the case, it is time to change from reaction to pro-action by independent scientists. This kind of behavior (hiding data to prevent checking) was made morally correct by Dr. S. Schneider who said it was okay to exaggerate and bend the truth if it serves the cause. I’m disturbed by the statement by Thompson that “history from this tropical ice cap—which is melting away as Earth continues to warm…”. This is prima facie evidence of a bias that ensures that the latitude available in the data WILL be interpreted in favor of CAGW. He is not going to reconsider even the “expected” intensity of 21st century warming in light of 16 yrs ( a sixth of a century) without significant warming. The “Schneider factor” in the data of the Marcott et al paper shows that there is little incentive by the true believers in CAGW to even hide the crude shenanigans that have been sanctified by Schneider’s statements. Getting their version of reality out there is all that matters – even withdrawing the paper after it has hit the news is even okay.
I believe funding of independent research, as in the case of the ground-breaking and highly effective surfacestations project, is necessary and doable – I’m on board.
Regarding the Thompsons, I second the reservations most have expressed here. But I can’t help but think how awesome it would be if this proves to be true:
“Patterns in the chemical composition of certain layers matched up (to other ice cores…retrieved from Tibet and the Himalayas), even though the cores were taken from opposite sides of the planet.”
“…they call (thier find) the first annually resolved “Rosetta Stone” with which to compare other climate histories from Earth’s tropical and subtropical regions over the last two millennia”
Wow! If true, this could salvage the reputation of the Thompsons, (which is all the more reason to hold their feet to the fire and force them to put up or shut up).
The best Lonnie Thompson, global glacier wonder-boy, article ever was an NPR hagiography in 2010.
They gave the Lon-Man the national stage to opine that the glacier he visited in Indonesia was “literally melting beneath my feet!”
“While Thompson and his team were there drilling cores, he says, they witnessed the glacier drop 12 inches in just two weeks.
So, Lonnie said, “If that’s representative of the annual ice loss on these glaciers,” he says, “you’re looking at losing over seven meters of ice in a year. Unfortunately, that glacier’s going to disappear in as little as five years if that rate continues.”
Well, Lonnie, how’s that prediction working out? It’s been 3 years, nearly 5. Is the glacier still there?
A real scientist would go back and check and report.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129652700
What would AlGore do? What would Michael Mann do?
GeologyJim says:
April 4, 2013 at 12:25 pm
With Lonnie and Liz, I’m not even willing to accept the assertion that the two photos were taken “from the same spot” 35 years apart….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A close look at the first photo seems to indicate a very steep/vertical slope of rock with some ice clinging in spots in the lower left corner. The second photo show a a foreground of moderately steep slope that does not look vertical at all. If it is the same spot the first shot was with a zoom and the second a normal or wide angle. The lack of definition of the ‘rings’ in the ice also indicates this is comparing apples and oranges. Deception is the word that comes to mind.
So, the glacier is 6,000 years old, representing a new interglacial, mid-Holocene-age ice advance near the Equator that is now retreating and is not a remanent of the last glacial period. Is that right?
GeologyJim says:
April 4, 2013 at 12:25 pm
With Lonnie and Liz, I’m not even willing to accept the assertion that the two photos were taken “from the same spot” 35 years apart. In any event, it would be a remarkable coincidence that both photos were obtained with lenses of equal focal length and magnification (which would alter the appearance of distance, etc).
========================================================================
Let’s say they did.
Ice melts.
So what?
We can’t cause or change it.
Gary Pearse says: April 4, 2013 at 2:30 pm
‘“taken with a grain of salt since Dr. Thompson and his wife Ellen are serial non archivers of ice core data (even when asked for it), which prevents other scientists from checking their work.”
If this is the case, it is time to change from reaction to pro-action by independent scientists…’
But it isn’t. I checked the NOAA icecore gateway. This has the databases for all ice-cores, polar and tropical, which is Thompson’s speciality. You can order them by contributor; Thompson’s wouldn’t fit on a page, but there are fifteen of them. This will make sixteen.
Is that a lot? I did some counting. There were 181 altogether (all ice cores). The next highest contributors had five each. Seems like he’s a star.
6000 years ago? Wasn’t that the year that the world was created? [/sarc]
After having read the paper, here’s my thoughts about various people’s comments:
toml: “Is there actually a paper, or just a press release?”
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/04/03/science.1234210
Bryan A: “This could also be written
The cores will provide a permanent record for future use by climate scientists, Thompson added. This is very inportant, as plants captured by the advancing ice cap 6,000 years ago are now emerging along its retreating margins, which shows that Quelccaya was smaller 6,000 years ago than it is now and that the climate there was likely warmer then than it is now”
Or maybe not even 6000 years ago. Basically they found plant material that is ~6000 years old in spots recently uncovered by the retreating glacier and conclude that the plants grew in that spot 6000 years ago, meaning that it had to have been ice free there. However, they don’t explain why they exclude the possibility that the plants grew in a spot at higher elevation (one currently covered in ice) 6000 years ago, were encased in ice, and have since been moved by the moving ice down the slope to where they found them.
crosspatch: “So … there has probably only been ice up there for about 2000 years?”
No. The paper describes how ice continues to accumulate at the top, while simultaneously melting where it contacts the ground. So there likely was a significant amount of ice up there 2000 years ago, but all the ice from that point and before has since melted. (Matt G, this addresses a portion of your comment also)
date: Sat Sep 18 08:48:09 2004
from: Phil Jones
subject: Re: kilimanjaro
to: “Jenkins, Geoff”
Geoff,
The data that are used for the grid box should be within the grid box. They will be low
elevation sites though, and this may be part of the reason. It might be worth seeing if
there is anything in the U/A data – but I reckon there won’t be much in that region.
I’ve heard Lonnie Thompson talk about the Kilimanjaro core and he got some local temperatures – that we don’t have access to, and there was little warming in them. The same situation applies for Quelccaya in Peru and also some of his Tibet sites. Lonnie thinks they are disappearing because of sublimation, but he can’t pin anything down. They are going though.
Lonnie’s email is “Lonnie G. Thompson”
You could try emailing Ellen as well both might be in the field.
Ellen Mosley-Thompson
I’m off much of the next 6 weeks at meetings.
I hear you’re retiring soon – hope all goes well ! I’m sure you’ll still be in the field somewhere.
Cheers
Phil
At 10:32 16/09/2004, you wrote:
phil
<>
we have been concerned that people often use the melting glacier on kilimanjaro as an
example of impacts of man-made warming. you may have seen some stories countering this on the sceptics websites.
I got philip brohan to look at temps there (see attached) and there isnt any convincing consistent recent warming in the station data. but your gridded CRUtem2V does show a recent warming. presumably that is because (as philip suggests) the gridded stuff has influences from quite a large radius, and hence may reflect warming at stations a long way from kilimanjaro?
would you agree that there is no convincing evidence for kilimanjaro glacier melt being due to recent warming (let alone man-made warming)?
be grateful for your help
cheers
geoff
Dr Geoff Jenkins
Head, Climate Prediction Programme
Hadley Centre
Met Office
FitzRoy Road, EXETER, EX1 3PB, UK
tel: +44 (0) 1392 xxxxxx
mobile: 0787 966 1136
[1]www.hadleycentre.xxxx.xx
Following Nick Stokes earlier link, there does seem to be an ice core archive for this glacier at NOAA. Could Anthony clarify what he thinks is missing? Otherwise I can’t really make sense of the post.
FWIW, I thought Hans Erren’s link to the earlier core analysis was great. Such a shame those rounding errors totally trashed the data around the 500-1000 years ago…
“We have been able to derive a proxy for sea surface temperatures that reaches back long before humans were able to make such measurements, and long before humans began to affect Earth’s climate,” Thompson said.
There it is in a nutshell. Irrespective of evidence and any reproducibility thereof, the conclusion is foregone.
I have found some reports of
climate changechangeable weather in Peru. Imagine if the following was caused by heat.Will the ‘layers’ show the above events?
> Nick Stokes at 3:19 pm
“Seems like he’s a star”
Riiiiight. Here Nick Stokes goes into his patented misdirection to defend the anti-science behavior of the catastrophe-mongers who call themselves “climate scientists”. Of course Mr. Stokes has a long history of this: He wants us to think Lonnie Thompson is an actual scientist.
Steve McIntyre has extensively documented the deceits of Lonnie Thompson and his refusal to allow his work to be replicated. In addition to the “serial non-archivers” citation above, McIntyre has actually looked into these so-called ice core databases Stokes cites: “Lonnie Thompson’s Legacy” http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/08/lonnie-thompsons-legacy/
Question for you, Nick Stokes: “When members of your scientific community lie, cheat, and steal to further their own ends, should other members refuse to say anything bad about the wrong-doers?”. That’s the question Willis Eschenback asked on Judith Curry’s blog July 25, 2011. It’s still a good question. What’s your answer?
I think we are entering into very very significant problem which is cooling. The only “climate” factor which is changing is solar activity.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/sunspot.gif
If Solar 25 is going to be zero. The next generations will have problems.
From Peru to Brazil in 2012 we had:
“Extreme Storm Takes Brazil From 108 to -30 and Snow!”
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/weathermatrix/brazil-goes-from-108-f-to-snow-in-three-days/79545
Is this a sign of climate change or global warming?
Changes in SH ice are now highly significant by any measure.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
I dont think its got anything to do with “Global warming” The UK met office has admitted that “there has been no significant warming for 15 years” correct?
The nearest road was a two-day walk from the ice cap, so they were forced to melt the cores in the field and carry samples back as bottles of water. This made some chemical measurements impossible, and diminished the time resolution available from the cores.
So this is….”high resolution”? or “high solution”?
Basically my friends the sun is dying (as it does every couple of thousand years). We have got a problem you are just beginning to see it now. Move to the tropics! LOL
2009
“Historic snow event in South America”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/23/historic-snow-event-in-south-america/
Will historians see the layers?
OK, I will put a brake on this weather nonsense such as actual snow in Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, Egypt, Mediterranean etc. in the past few years. I just want to point to what might be a changing climate.
Agree with others-something is fishy about those pictures of the glacier ‘retreat”…
RERT says:
April 4, 2013 at 4:22 pm
Following Nick Stokes earlier link, there does seem to be an ice core archive for this glacier at NOAA. Could Anthony clarify what he thinks is missing? Otherwise I can’t really make sense of the post.
==================================================================
And what methods did they use to come to their conclusion of the paper?
Two points.
One, if this glacier is uncovering plant life, it was warmer than it is now.
Two, yet another opportunity waiting for a climate scientist to “re-date” the ice core.
I’m sure that before I go to bed some idiot will ask me for references for my last comment so here they are. All in the hottest decade on the record.
“Snow blankets Jerusalem – in pictures
The worst snowstorm in 20 years has shut roads and schools in Jerusalem as the harsh weather affects regions across the Middle East”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2013/jan/10/snow-blankets-jerusalem-in-pictures
“Snow hits Mediterranean coast”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8557570.stm
“Snow, cold, in Saudi Arabia: “worst in 30 years””
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/30/snow-in-riyadh-saudi-arabia/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/12/snow-in-saudi-arabia-in-may/
“Saudi Arabia Gets Snow in Midsummer”
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=80749&page=1#.UV4UVPWQn4w
http://www.arabnews.com/travel/it%E2%80%99s-snowing-saudi-arabia
Snow in Alexandria, Egypt
A serious suggestion. if this particular ice field is so important (cored in 2003, announced in 2013?) then good science requires someone go there immediately and take another core from the same general area. Scientific replication, you know. Then let all of both be put into the public domain.
Then we can determine whether it is a Roseeta Stone. But not yet.
The atmosphere mixes. Maybe that’s why volcanic aerosols reach around the planet.
Can I stop reading now?
Given the, ah, ‘track record’ of the ‘Thompson’s I’d not wait even one minute.
And I was a visiting graduate student in ’93-’94 at OSU and enjoyed Dr. Lonnie’s lectures.
There was one particular lecture in the spring by visiting Dr. **&&$$## that had the lecture hall in Mendenhall rolling in laughter after each sentence. A brilliant presentation !
Well. As far as ‘Reporting’ goes per NASA or NSF grant, the legal requirement (not even minimum) is to fill a final report to the funding body. Nothing Else ! NO Graduate Students
graduated, NO Post Docs Promoted, NO ‘Peer-Reviewed Papers’ published, NO data archived. NO DUI arrest records. NO Federal Espionage Indictments from DoJ and DoS and WH. No no no. Just file the final report and live happily ever after in Barbados drinking margaritas at sunset. A very nice sunset and very good margaritas there.
It is interesting that in their q83summ file for the Quelccaya ice core, there is a high particle count in the >.63 column for the year 1250. The particle counts for 1249 and 1251 are considerably lower in that size range. I am going to take a closer look at the rest. Thanks for the link.
as plants captured by the advancing ice cap 6,000 years ago are now emerging along its retreating margins, which shows that Quelccaya is now smaller than it has been in six thousand years.
===============
great…..now these bozos are telling us the past 6,000 years were too cold
only after just finding out we’ve been in the top 75%….
Make up your mind!………………………………….. /snark
I got philip brohan to look at temps there (see attached) and there isnt any convincing consistent recent warming in the station data. …
would you agree that there is no convincing evidence for kilimanjaro glacier melt being due to recent warming (let alone man-made warming)?
In private they admit, the evidence for increased temperatures causing glacier retreat is poor and it’s likely there is another cause, but in public, retreating glaciers are always proof of global warming.
With this level of dishonesty and deliberate deception, it’s no wonder there is widespread scepticism.
Looking at the many of the 71 posted comments to the time of writing is there really any need to be so dismissive and derogatory? Agreed that WUWT is far from the only climate blog that has dismissive and derogatory comments (think Tamino’s Open Mind) but why compete in a race to the bottom with sites such as that? Whatever the rapidity with which Lonnie Thompson and his wife report results and record ice cores they do at least go out and get them and then analyse them. You may not like their stance on Climate Science but you should be able to accept their right to have it even though this courtesy is not extended to those who are not ardent proponents of AGW by sites that are proponents of AGW. Comments like this damage WUWT as they appear knee jerk and unthinking providing a lot of ammunition to those such as Tamino and John Cook to denigrate those who don’t agree with their view of the world
On a related note, here is another take on the latest Hokey Stick.
I am intimately familiar with Thompson’s archive. The situation is not as bad as when I started. Many cores are there as a direct result of my requests and pressure. If the data is as valuable as represented, the archive should be comprehensive rather than patchwork. It’s a patchwork. I’ve listed the gaps and requested data for the gaps, but to little avail.
Ellen is even worse than Lonnie. I’ve done separate inventories of her non-archiving. It’s appalling.
I guess Lonnie and his missus are both “distinguished” professors in the sense that the normal rules of science don’t apply to either of them because they give the desired answers.
Andrew Russell says: April 4, 2013 at 4:39 pm
‘Question for you, Nick Stokes: “When members of your scientific community lie, cheat, and steal to further their own ends, should other members refuse to say anything bad about the wrong-doers?”. That’s the question Willis Eschenback asked on Judith Curry’s blog July 25, 2011. It’s still a good question. What’s your answer?’
Please document your accusaations of “lie, cheat and steal” wrt Prof Thompson. And not just a link to CA – your statement, please.
That’s the problem with CA diatribes that lead posts like this astray. “Thompson is a serial non-archiver” means he archives extensively, but not according to Steve McI’s exact requirements.
“This is very important, as plants captured by the advancing ice cap 6,000 years ago are now emerging along its retreating margins, which shows that Quelccaya is now smaller than it has been in six thousand years.”
So if Marcott is correct, and Thompson is correct, the ice “cap” was advancing during the peak temperatures, and began retreating as temperatures began to fall. Therefore lower earth temperatures produce glacier retreat, and higher temperatures promote glacial advance.
Perhaps higher ocean temperatures drive moisture over the mountaintops where higher snow rates promote higher volume and flow of the glacier down the valley. Likewise, lower ocean temps reduce moisture, decreasing deposition and flow, allowing ambient temperatures to melt the glaciers at a rate that overwhelms the slowed advance rate. Doesn’t seem that far fetched really… I was trying to be sarcastic.
So what we have learned today, folks, is that evidence of retreating glaciers is evidence of cooling, not warming. It should be obvious by now that these relationships are what trigger the ends of interglacials. Haha. Once again, a warmist makes another breakthrough that demolishes the settled science.
Wow, this even parallels the story this week that ice melt floating on the water creates more sea ice in Antarctica too, despite violent wave action and overturning for months of the year.
I seem to be “progressing” right along… Can I have my global warming merit badge now?
“This is very important, as plants captured by the advancing ice cap 6,000 years ago are now emerging along its retreating margins, which shows that Quelccaya is now smaller than it has been in six thousand years.”
That statement doesn’t make sense to me. If plants were captured 6000 years ago, that must have happened much further up the mountain, as the glacier slowly flowed downhill since then. Then the glacier must have been must shorter 6000 years ago than today.
Did it really take 10 years to archive data they call a “rosetta stone” ? And is their paper now just in time and any “future use by climate scientists” too late to be included in AR5 ?
Steve M, it is thanks to your tireless efforts that any progress on such matters is being made at all. In the end, I suspect that a lot of papers based on unarchived data/unreplicable methods will end on history’s trash heap. Perhaps including theirs. The shame is, future scientists might be able to extract nuggets we cannot yet imagine, if only folks would preserve the data, or provide other means for replication and reanalysis, like in almost all other disciplines.
In my world, if we say the results are X, our customers had better produce X from our samples in their own labs, so long as they generally follow our device ‘recipe’ (energy storage materials is a young field, with lots of tricks practiced by famous academics, but not quite as bad as climate change.) At least in energy, volts are volts on a calibrated LCR, unlike station temperatures affected by siting, TOB, undocumented homogenization, and gosh knows what else..
The science is settled in invisible patches of non-archived ice…
NIck, please identify a single incorrect statement in the linked post http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/01/lonnie-and-ellen-serial-non-archivers/. As shown in the post, Ellen’s record is particularly bad.
“That’s the problem with CA diatribes that lead posts like this astray. “Thompson is a serial non-archiver” means he archives extensively, but not according to Steve McI’s exact requirements.”
It’s not steveMc exact requirements. Its the requirements of funding agencies. Its the requirement of journals. Its the requirement of science itself.
So if he collected and published about 100 cores and archived 18, while second best was 5 of 6,
that only means is a worse that someone who did less work.
There is no reason for non archival of a single record. No reason. No excuse. no scientif ethic that says 18 out of 19 or 18 out of 24 is “good enough”
The planet is at risk. we need the best minds on all the data we have.
Nick Stokes, 706 p.m.: “Please document your accusaations”
Oh, LOOK A SQUIRREL!…
How clever of you to dodge the question with your favorite technique. Answer MY question, Mr. Stokes, or just admit you are here only to shill for the catastrophe-mongers.
As for YOUR bogus question: Those who take taxpayer’s money to do science, and then blatantly violate the Scientific Method and deliberately refuse to allow independent verification of their “results”, are stealing. As so comprehensively documented by Steve McIntyre at CA (again, http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/08/lonnie-thompsons-legacy/ ), by Andrew Montford in “The Hockey Stick Illusion”, and in any number of places where someone with the slightest bit of intellectual honesty can find that evidence, as well as the massive amount of lying and cheating by The Hockey Team.
Answer the question.
Steve McIntyre says: April 4, 2013 at 8:54 pm
“NIck, please identify a single incorrect statement in the linked post http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/01/lonnie-and-ellen-serial-non-archivers/.”
Right at the top.
“the serial non-archiving couple of Lonnie Thompson and Ellen Mosley-Thompson, who, as it turns out, is an even worse offender than husband Lonnie, if such can be imagined. Their long career of non-archiving has flourished despite clear U.S. federal government policies dating back to 1991 which, on paper, require thorough data archiving by the climate community as a condition of receiving grants.”
And it goes on… and on .
In fact, they have lodged an extensive set of archives. Currently fifteen, and I think most predate last July. Lonnie is listed as as lead contributor, but Ellen is a frequent participant. And as I said above, the next most prolific ice-core contributors, Parrenin and Pedro, have five each. The Thompsons are by far the most prolific. This is not in accord with your characterization.
At least one of those fifteen was archived by Ellen.
Andrew Russell says: April 4, 2013 at 10:06 pm
“Answer the question.”
The question poses facts that I am supposed to respond to. But you give no substance to those facts. Someone, presumably Prof Thompson, is supposed to be “lie, cheat, and steal to further their own ends”. You are free with the accusation, but again all you can do to support them is to link elsewhere. There’s nothing you are capable of saying yourself to back them. But they are your accusations. I am sure Steve McI would deny that they are his.
http://www.dgf.uchile.cl/rene/ACCION/Friday/hardy.pdf
On Svalbard the glacier maxima last 10.000 years happened in the 1910s AD. Since then some has melted again and plants where found a few years ago dated to around the Roman warm period, 2000 BP(I think).
Having the 1970s, last global little cold period, as a starting reference to judge today’s situation on Quelccaya is a bit fetched?
Any reference for this glacier back to the 1930s 1940s?
Nick Stokes, 10:37 pm: “The question poses facts that I am supposed to respond to”
More “LOOK, A SQUIRREL!”
Your refusal to answer a straight forward question, well documented, pretty well answers another question: Is Nick Stokes intellectually honest?
Paper says data already archived:
“The data are archived at the NOAA World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/trop/quelccaya/quelccaya2013.txt
“
No, they aren’t. That is just a placeholder
“Data will be added to this file upon publication of Thompson et al. 2013 Science”
We’ll see.
Top photo seems to show approx 40 layers. Impossible to estimate the vertical extent, but a continuous core sample would require around 45 times this depth to cover 1800 years. Any idea what typical thickness of one year’s layer thickness might be? Just curious…
Jimbo says:
April 4, 2013 at 4:35 pm
“I have found some reports of climate change changeable weather in Peru. Imagine if the following was caused by heat.”
Actually, according to CNN International’s weather giants the latest flooding in Buenos Aries IS caused by heat, caused by climate change, which also causes record cold in the UK, “extreme snowfall” in Europe and any phenomena, natural or otherwise in between. They even show us a chart, desperately trying to look like a hockey stick to prove it. So it must be true, right, I mean they’d never try to deceive the public, right?
I don’t understand the attacks on Thompson in this article. Obviously it would have been desirable if he had archived all his earlier samples from different locations but he has archived this one. Presumably that means sceptics are free to examine the data and, if they find valid reasons, free to disagree with his conclusions? Shouldn’t he be praised for that?
So Lonnie, how do we know that this not just another Piltdown Mann artifact of selective reporting?
As Tom J says (April 4, 2013 at 2:10 pm) those photos are very suspicious.
The 1977 picture appears to show bare rock face at the base of the ice, which isn’t present in the same spot in 2002. But if you zoom in on the 2002 image, so that the height of the glacier is similar, you can see similar rock features at the base of the glacier.
I suspect that if the 1977 photo was taken from the same location, then it used with a lens with a much longer focal length, and the ice has actually retreated by at most 10’s of meters.
Not everyone who fails to archive data is a crook. Some researchers hang on to their data in the hope that the next field trip will gather further really important data that will allow a world-shattering paper – by them, not some other researcher who would profit from the release of the earlier data, without having done any of the hard work…
Nick Stokes you do understand that if they logged 15 but have collected far more they still be guilty of ‘non-archiving ‘ don’t you ?
Remember the requirements of science are that your work can be both checked and reproduced , their approach towards there data means that is not possible .
Try that claiming that its your data from an experiments and others cannot have it to check it when you hand in an essay has a undergraduate and your see your work failed. Has with other issues why the ‘professional’ working in this area cannot or will not meet the standards expected of students is a very good question.
Off Topic, but get a load of the kind of congenital idiots who are in the UK Government.This particular lunatic is in change of the Energy Department.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/4/5/the-numptocracy.html
Some non-archivers are waiting for their next field trip in the hope that it will produce genuinely bobby-dazzling data that will revolutionise the field. I’ve known one or two to do that for twenty years.
6000 years ago the last ice age was failing, the planet warming, so ice retreat is expected. kilimanjaro is indeed collecting more ice as precipitation in the area rises so replenishing the sublimated ice loss.
Andrew Russell on April 4, 2013 at 11:19 pm
“Nick Stokes, 10:37 pm: “The question poses facts that I am supposed to respond to”
More “LOOK, A SQUIRREL!”
Your refusal to answer a straight forward question, well documented, pretty well answers another question: Is Nick Stokes intellectually honest?”
Why bother? It’s obviously a religion to Nick, meaning faith based. That is far different than being a scientist that demands an open mind.
As I scientist I’ve given up on these lost souls long ago. You just can’t convince closed minded people to have an open mind and challenge their own beliefs.
Lonnie, himself, wrote in 2003
For the Quelccaya Ice Cap (13.93°S, 70.83°W), this work revealed that peak temperatures of the MWP were warmer than those of the last few decades of the 20th century.
And back in 1986, discussing ice cores on the same glacier in Peru
The fact that the Little Ice Age (about A.D. 1500 to 1900) stands out as a significant climatic event in the oxygen isotope and electrical conductivity records confirms the worldwide character of this event.
Meanwhile he is now coming across plant remains as the Quelccaya recedes which are dated to 3000BC.
Unprecedented warming?
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/another-wild-alarmist-prediction-bites-the-dust/
“Unprecedented warming?”
No. Marcott, for example, famously said “Current global temperatures of the past
decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of
the Holocene temperature history.”. And if you look at his Fig 1B, about 3000BC (maybe 3500) is close to the most recent high point
AR4 has a section on warmth at about this period, though they don’t seem to have data on S America. Fig 6.9 has it.
I’m sure some of you will find this comment amusing, over on the James Delingpole thread.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100209502/hayes-fallon-deckchairs-titanic/#comment-852918222
I quote;
Why do I find myself laughing at the idea of the illiterates at WUWT ‘shredding’ peer-reviewed science? They attack it alright, but they don’t understand it.
I’ve suggested he pops over to enlighten you all but you shouldn’t hold your breath.
@donaitkin says:
April 5, 2013 at 2:14 am
People can collect, compile or stockpile what they like. Build their case in privacy or secret if someone is prepared to indulge that with support.
If they make a claim to others that relies in any way on this stockpiled data they must make it -any parts required to validate a claim – available. Surely that is obvious.
Is it possible to obtain aerial photos back to the 1979’s or thereabouts?
Ian says:
April 4, 2013 at 6:46 pm
Looking at the many of the 71 posted comments to the time of writing is there really any need to be so dismissive and derogatory? …..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
1.) They have a history of not releasing their data so it can be checked. Therefore they have established themselves as secretive non-scientists.
2.) US Scientists Significantly More Likely to Publish Fake Research, Study Finds
3.) They claim some very unconvincing photos show the retreat of the glacier. My house as a kid sat on a Recessional Moraine. know what they look like photo. There is no debris showing in that 2nd photo – NONE. As the glacier melts it should look like this photo. Moraine is material transported by a glacier and then deposited. The first photo shows a near vertical cliff face. Any climber will tell you there is normally a lot of debris at the bottom of a cliff face, Again where is the debris? The second photo does not show that steep an angle so there should be debris If the rock had been scrapped clean it would be rounded instead of looking like “$hitty Shale” photo that crumbles as soon as you put weight on it. (You can see the uplifted bedding planes) photo and photo
I decided to check the actual geology to see if my SWAG was correct:
The Quelccaya Ice Cap is located in the Cordillera Oriental section of the Andes mountains of Peru, link
Cordillera Occidental (Western mountain range) link
• Includes Apolobamba,
Munecas, and Real
Cordilleras
• Quartzite, Slate, shale,
with intrusions of
granodiorite causing
some metamorphism
• High relief primarily
from faulting
So yes the rock shown probably is shale/slate and not a ‘durable’ rock like granite. So where is the debris?
Don Aitkin says:
April 5, 2013 at 1:36 am
Not everyone who fails to archive data is a crook….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
They may not be a ‘crook’ but they are not a scientist either. If the work is funded by grants from the public purse as most of this CAGW work is, then it is NOT THEIR DATA, it belongs to the people who funded the study, the tax payer.
If the work is done for a private company in industry then yes “…fails to archive data…” does not mean they are a crook. However the company, if the findings are important, are going to request verification from a second lab. The key words in science is REPEATABLE and verified.
Personally, as a scientist, I am disgusted with the new ‘post-normal science’ which is just another name for Lysenkoism/propaganda.
The second photo the rock doesn’t look like slate to me – more like granite that has a fracture system making it weather out ledgy. There isn’t a lot of till, well none to speak of really, which suggests this area has been exposed for quite a long time
Gail Combs, thank you for the information wrt the local geology. Looked it up on Google Earth. Their image is from 12/31/1969! We should be able to find something more recent to compare that image to.
Gail Combs says:
April 5, 2013 at 4:23 am
Dynamite post, thanks.
As regards the press release, reading it does not remind me of used car salesmen, as some have suggested; rather, it reminds me of small town gossips who are talking about a neighbor and showing photos.
RE: Nick Stokes says:
April 4, 2013 at 10:30 pm
Steve McIntyre says: April 4, 2013 at 8:54 pm
“NIck, please identify a single incorrect statement in the linked post http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/01/lonnie-and-ellen-serial-non-archivers/.”
**Right at the top.**
As usual Nick does not answer the question.
Steve has stated that they have done SOME archiving.
So, Nick, WHAT IS INCORRECT ABOUT STEVE’S STATEMENTS?
SPECIFIC ANSWER PLEASE.
Sounds like a bid for more public funds to pad their estate planning.
Bryan A says: “This could also be written. The cores will provide a permanent record for future use by climate scientists, Thompson added. This is very inportant, as plants captured by the advancing ice cap 6,000 years ago are now emerging along its retreating margins, which shows that Quelccaya was smaller 6,000 years ago than it is now and that the climate there was likely warmer then than it is now.”
But we know it was. That was the Marcott paper last month, remember?
Gail Combs says:”They claim some very unconvincing photos show the retreat of the glacier.”
This is the current press release for their science paper and there is a cool slider pict in it that is pretty convincing. I don’t know if this http will work, but here’s a try:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/world/americas/1600-years-of-ice-in-perus-andes-melted-in-25-years-scientists-say.html
But you can google “andes 1600 year thompson” and get it too.
Nick Stokes,
“No. Marcott, for example, famously said “Current global temperatures of the past
decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of
the Holocene temperature history.”. And if you look at his Fig 1B, about 3000BC (maybe 3500) is close to the most recent high point.”
I don’t agree with that at all. The problem with Marcotts dataset is the very low resolution. Quite simply, there is no way of knowing what short term spikes occurred, either upwards or downwards. Therefore, there is no way you can claim that about 3000BC is close to the recent high, when the recent high is based on ultra high resolution measurements. If there is a spike at 3000BC, it would likely be higher than the modern high, but we wouldn’t be able to see it in Marcotts proxy.
Gail Combs says: “They claim some very unconvincing photos show the retreat of the glacier. My house as a kid sat on a Recessional Moraine.”
Moraines left by glaciers in recession reflect hesitations in the retreat. If the retreat is rapid, only the rock actually in the glacier at the time it melted is left, and that can be very little, esp if it was a rapidly moving glacier. The Hayden glacier (above Bend, Or) is a great example, there is just bare rock with a few eccentrics left where we once had glacier school classes in the 80’s. The terminal moraines are much lower, where the glacier used to terminate.
It’s still a pretty cool glacier, and you can easily walk there in a few hours. It has also pulled away from the lateral moraines on the North side of the glacier and last time I was there you could walk up for several hundred feet alongside the glacier and in one case walk sideways into the bottom of a crevice.
Nick Stokes says:
April 4, 2013 at 10:30 pm
Steve McIntyre says: April 4, 2013 at 8:54 pm
“NIck, please identify a single incorrect statement in the linked post http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/01/lonnie-and-ellen-serial-non-archivers/.”
Right at the top.
“the serial non-archiving couple of Lonnie Thompson and Ellen Mosley-Thompson, who, as it turns out, is an even worse offender than husband Lonnie, if such can be imagined. Their long career of non-archiving has flourished despite clear U.S. federal government policies dating back to 1991 which, on paper, require thorough data archiving by the climate community as a condition of receiving grants.”
And it goes on… and on .
In fact, they have lodged an extensive set of archives. Currently fifteen, and I think most predate last July. Lonnie is listed as as lead contributor, but Ellen is a frequent participant. And as I said above, the next most prolific ice-core contributors, Parrenin and Pedro, have five each. The Thompsons are by far the most prolific. This is not in accord with your characterization.
At least one of those fifteen was archived by Ellen.
###########################################################
Nick, Imagine your wife cheated on you every even month of the year.
And in divorce court you argued that she was a serial cheater.
Then Imagine her lawyer stood up and asked you?
Did she cheat in Jan? No
Did she cheat in March? no
Did she cheat in May ? No
Did she cheat in July? No
Did she cheat in Sept? No
Did she cheat in Nov? No
Then, how can you call her a serial cheater?
or imagine an employee of yours who came in to work every other week
and you go to fire him for serial non attentence.. What would your reaction
be to his defense ‘ But I was here every other week!!
If your 10 year child pooped his pants every other day and your wife said,
“its time to toliet train him hes a serial pants pooper” would you respond
Hey, wait. he didnt poop his pants yesterday!
I suspect you would see through these lame defenses.
Why? Why would you see through these. Its pretty simple. When it is expected
or required to perform an action X, and expected to perform that action continously
and diligently, a repeated failure to do this is best described as ” he is a non Xer”
Even though factually he may do X on occasion
Your wife may only cheat on you ON OCCASION, but describing her as faithful is
misleading.
Your employee may show up ON OCCASION, but describing him as a work attender
as opposed to a truant is misleading.
Your son may only crap his pants every other day, but to describe him as toilet trained because he occasionally drops a bomb on the right target is misleading.
Not only plants but tropical plants, thus indicating it was warmer and cooled very rapidly. No link but discovery channel program covered it. They reported it but obviously did not make or draw attention to the connections/implications
Re: Jimmy says:
April 4, 2013 at 4:08 pm
Jimmy,
You make a good point about the veg material likely being transported DOWN the slope. But this only means that 6000 years ago the Ice Cap had to be even smaller and temperatures even warmer to allow for the growth to have occured higher up the slope
Steven Mosher says: April 5, 2013 at 10:06 am
Steven,
It may be that their archiving is not keeping up with youir demands. But why is all this venom heaped on the people who have done by far the most archiving in the field?
Vince Causey says: April 5, 2013 at 9:39 am
“I don’t agree with that at all.”
Vince, my point was simply that Marcott’s curve shows relatively high values in about 3000BC, so it is not surprising if the glacier bottom shows signs of plant remains then. Maybe it was even warmer for periods at other times.
Nick Stokes says:
April 5, 2013 at 1:02 pm
————————————————
Steven Mosher says: April 5, 2013 at 10:06 am
Steven,
It may be that their archiving is not keeping up with youir demands. But why is all this venom heaped on the people who have done by far the most archiving in the field?
—————————————————–
As I indicated above and Steven has done in detail – YOU ARE NOT ANSWERING THE QUESTION!!
Again, Nick – it is what they got paid for and have not done.
SO, ANSWER THE ###### QUESTION!!!
At the great risk of appearing a little cynical, I must admit I have been an avid follower of Dr Thomson. I guess I’m a little jealous of him. As a keen mountaineer and weather boffin, I would love to have his job! Travelling around the world studying glaciers and mountain ecology, all on big juicy research grants would be great. I don’t think I would care too much whether or not most people believed my conclusions or not, so long as the grants keep on coming!! But then, I guess I don’t have high enough ethics to be entrusted with such funds – and that’s partly why the honoured Drs Thomson, Mann, Hansen et al get the job and I don’t?!!
“To be or not to be….to tell the truth or to lie….to archive or not to archive- just in case the truth comes back one day to bite you in the bum: these are the questions”!
Someone on this site once pointed out (not me!), that the one thing that science and religion have in common, is the search for the truth. Well, I guess we are all too aware of how much organised religion has often fallen well short of adhering to its own compassionate message of truth. But, is it that we are now witnessing much of science falling foul its own message? In any search for any truth, there will always be one essential starting point – the integrity of the searcher. Be it the search for God or the search for the causes of climate change, or any other phenomena, we must be honest – most of all with ourselves! We must rely on any research paper that we read being presented openly and honestly, with no agenda other than the genuine search for truth.
If that agenda is there, then we would expect much more in the way of open dialogue on any issue to do with climate science. In other words, open admissions of misplaced reliance on certain assumptions; or open admissions of not telling the whole truth; or open admissions of telling outright lies; or even open admissions of telling any combination of these! Instead, what we see is absolute denial of any wrong doing or of any failings in the methodology.
We must assume therefore, that all current predictions of AGW scientists should be bang on or at
least within some form of recognised tolerance. Only time will tell, but things already look a bit marginal to me. I will be truly relieved though if, or when, at least one of the main proponents of AGW steps forward and admits making a few mistakes. Only then, will my trust be restored in his, her or their genuine search for scientific truth.
Go Moshpit!
The pictures alone show they’re con artists.
Maybe it’s no lie the two shots are from the same spot but only a liar would try to convince someone they’re the same shot. Obviously the zoom is different. You can see the dark spots on both pix. This is their proof of CAGW and their Rosetta Stone?
What charlatans.
cn
Looks like we are not going to get an answer to the QUESTION.
Pushing conclusions derived from secret data is the essence of the witchdoctors’ craft. And these two are crafty, indeed.