Story submitted by Eric Worrall
“…snowfall was much heavier than recorded before or since, and the snow lay on the ground for many months longer than it does today. Many springs and summers were cold and wet, but with great variability between years and groups of years. Crop practices throughout Europe had to be altered to adapt to the shortened, less reliable growing season, and there were many years of dearth and famine”
The quote above is attributed to Hubert Lamb, founder of the CRU, in the Wikipedia section on the Little Ice Age. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Alarmists who attempt to associate extreme weather with global warming, are glossing over the fact that the best evidence we have to date is that extreme weather is more likely to be associated with global cooling. The following Climategate email admits as much:
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0476.txt
The NYT reporter Andy Revkin proposed the following:-
“My sense is that Wally B’s notion that the ‘angry beast’ is a creature of colder eras but not of warmer times has some support.”
To which Athanasios Koutavas(?) replied:-
“… It’s true that by comparison with the glacial world, the interglacial climate has been less “angry”. …”
There is also the evidence of the “Year without a Summer”, a brutal volcanic weather disruption which occurred in 1816.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
” … Rapid, dramatic temperature swings were common, with temperatures sometimes reverting from normal or above-normal summer temperatures as high as 95 °F (35 °C) to near-freezing within hours. The weather was not in itself a hardship for those accustomed to long winters. The real problem lay in the weather’s effect on crops and thus on the supply of food and firewood. …”
Given the evidence that cold periods are “angry”, and the proposition that global warming will produce “angry” weather, we have two alternatives to consider:
1. Current conditions are a miraculous “optimum” – any deviation from current conditions, cold or warm, will cause increased incidence of extreme weather. This isn’t impossible, but as a scientific proposition it stinks.
2. Predictions that a warmer climate will produce increased incidence of extreme weather are just speculation. However, the proposition that a cooler climate would result in increased incidence of extreme weather is well supported by the evidence.
In conclusion, we know a cooler climate would lead to increased incidence of extreme weather, so spending vast sums in an effort to restore pre-industrial climatic conditions (i.e. the Little Ice Age) seems to be a less than sensible use of resources.
If we are causing a little global warming, and in doing so are putting some distance between global climatic conditions and the “angry” climatic conditions of the pre-industrial age, this has to be a good thing.
Richard111 says:
August 7, 2014 at 3:32 am
I read a tropical storm, Bertha, is due to hit the UK this weekend. Does that qualify for unprecedented or just normal ‘climate disruption’?
The storm, formerly known as Bertha, is slated to arrive in UK on 10 August, which in the past has been close to the start date of the Fastnet Race. The event is biennial and this year, fortunately, there is no race. In 1979, a similar storm coincided with the Fastnet Race and 18 people died, 5 boats sank and another 75 turned turtle (inverted) out of 303 taking part. In 2007, the race was postponed by 25 hours due to severe weather. Eventually, 207 of the 271 entrants retired because of the weather.
So not unprecedented, just weather.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastnet_race
http://www.met.ie/climate-ireland/weather-events/Aug1979_Storm.PDF
As regards ‘Bertha’ due to hit Britain on Sunday, I noted that a local rowing event on the sea next to our home has been cancelled on Monday 11th August. The reason?
A ‘dangerous super moon which will produce 5 metre tides.’
That is around half a metre more than we generally get at this time of the year.
Lets hope we don’t get Bertha and the super moon coinciding…
tonyb
Yeah, we know this. But somebody will probably have to create a computer model in order for you to accept it.
If you want to know the optimum temperature for the earth just ask Al Gore. He’s the one who claims the earth has a fever.
So Piers Corbyn is spot on in saying for some time that we are heading into a little ice age.
Does anyone know what was the level of CO2 back in 1287 AD?
In February that year England was struck by a “Great Storm” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_England_flood_of_February_1287
that caused the River Rother in Kent to change its course. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Rother,_East_Sussex#History
Then in December, both Holland & England were struck again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucia%27s_flood
The MWP was ending about then & the LIA followed. Let’s see what mid-winter in the northern hemisphere brings us over the next 9 years. The next glacial period beckons & lamb will definitely be off the menu.
Mosh says
“we know this?
ya, its settled science. I read it in a history book.”
Mosh is right haven’t you watch the models run the more CO2 the more heat, the more severe storms. Why would you pay attention to a history book when you have a really good reliable computer model that tells you otherwise, because the are always right!
You bunch of nitwits, don’t read a book listen to an expert, because they know the real truth!
Tim says:
August 7, 2014 at 4:57 am
Mosh as usual is dead wrong.
Much of science is historical, but especially geology, the record of which is written in stone. Even more so paleontology, not to mention archaeology, which extends the record of human activity back before writing.
Historiography itself is scientific in method when properly conducted.
Mosh hates not only history but the scientific method, since both give lie to the myth of CACA.
As to the main point, I’d say that it is settled as anything can be in climatology or meteorology that in general colder conditions will be stormier & more extreme than warmer. Even on a theoretical level, this observation is valid. The greater the temperature difference between the tropics & higher latitudes, the more powerful will storms be. Glacial periods are much windier & drier than interglacials.
This applies not just to Earth. The colder the planet, generally the stronger its storms. Highest wind speeds in the solar system are on the windiest planet Neptune, with speeds up to 2000 kilometers per hour.
I don’t think global temperatures has much at all to do with extreme weather events. More likely the differences between tropical and polar temperatures fuel extreme weather events.
climatereason says:
August 7, 2014 at 4:45 am
Correct. Centennial scale cold spells like the LIA show decadal warming phases, just as the Medieval and other Warm Periods display cooling phases. That’s natural, so to speak.
It happens in all the centennial to millennial scale predominant cycles. In the early 18th century, the LIA experienced a warming more rapid than in the late 20th century. The Dark Ages Cold Period (after the Roman WP) had the pronounced Sui-Tang warming before climate dipped again, to be followed by the Medieval WP, which broke out above the S-T peak toward the Roman WP peak, but didn’t quite make it there, just as the Roman didn’t exceed the Minoan WP peak and the Modern has yet to exceed the Medieval.
It’s normal.
In 2002 MIchael Mann wrote, “The Little Ice Age may have been more significant in terms of increased variability of the climate” Now he argues increased warming will increase variability.
Read Michael E Mann (2002) Little Ice Age. Volume 1, The Earth system: physical and chemical dimensions of global environmental change, pp 504–509
As you suggest the period 1950-2000 must have been the peak of optimal climate conditions. And climate fools believe they can engineer the climate to be static and mimic a preferred time frame.
steveta_uk says:
August 7, 2014 at 2:59 am
“So it is logical to assume that more heat would result in more extreme weather…”
May be logical, but still wrong. As Jim Clarke August 7, 2014 at 5:33 am says (citing Stephen Skinner): temps at the equator don’t change much overall. It’s the differential between the tropics and the higher latitudes that generates variable weather patterns. During warming periods that differential lessens and during cooling periods increases. Thus, the cooling periods generate more variable and extreme weather. That’s also logical, and confirmed by historic records.
steveta_uk says:
August 7, 2014 at 2:59 am
Not logical at all. The weather system is a differential engine.
The cooler (but still hot by glacial Neogene standards) second half of the Late Cretaceous was stormier than its balmy, equable (less difference between equator and poles) first half, when a seaway ran from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean, by the shores of which basked crocodilians.
As I commented above, the colder the planet, the higher its wind velocities.
Mosh,
We just need to run those history books through a few rounds of adjustment so the climate in the LIA matches your prefered models.
Continuing the jump on Mosher posts, I will add that yes, colder times will bring more extreme weather, as that is caused by the steeper temperature gradient between the north pole and the equator. Mr. Mosher – that is confirmed by many excellent meteorologists possessing excellent data to support their conclusions.
jimmaine,
I’ve heard this done with New York City.
7,000,000,000 Texas – 268,820 square miles equals 26,039.7 per sq. mile
This wiki entry lists New York City at 27,778.7 for the 2010 census
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density
The tropics even in an ice age are still the tropics, as has been noted here the storms arise around 10 in the morning to cool the tropics, this would indicate that more heat is available than necessary to keep the tropics around 30C. When the sun is in a funk less heat is available to the poles but still ample for the tropics.
Thus a larger heat differential and nastier and more variable weather, this is not rocket science, but seems to allude the continually deluded global warmanistas.
Auguring (not augering) tree rings can be just as unreliable as history.