By Larry Bell
Dr. Christian Schlüchter’s discovery of 4,000-year-old chunks of wood at the leading edge of a Swiss glacier was clearly not cheered by many members of the global warming doom-and-gloom science orthodoxy.
This finding indicated that the Alps were pretty nearly glacier-free at that time, disproving accepted theories that they only began retreating after the end of the little ice age in the mid-19th century. As he concluded, the region had once been much warmer than today, with “a wild landscape and wide flowing river.”
Dr. Schlüchter’s report might have been more conveniently dismissed by the entrenched global warming establishment were it not for his distinguished reputation as a giant in the field of geology and paleoclimatology who has authored/coauthored more than 250 papers and is a professor emeritus at the University of Bern in Switzerland.
Then he made himself even more unpopular thanks to a recent interview titled “Our Society is Fundamentally Dishonest” which appeared in the Swiss publication Der Bund where he criticized the U.N.-dominated institutional climate science hierarchy for extreme tunnel vision and political contamination.
Following the ancient forest evidence discovery Schlüchter became a target of scorn. As he observes in the interview, “I wasn’t supposed to find that chunk of wood because I didn’t belong to the close-knit circle of Holocene and climate researchers. My findings thus caught many experts off guard: Now an ‘amateur’ had found something that the [more recent time-focused] Holocene and climate experts should have found.”
Other evidence exists that there is really nothing new about dramatic glacier advances and retreats. In fact the Alps were nearly glacier-free again about 2,000 years ago. Schlüchter points out that “the forest line was much higher than it is today; there were hardly any glaciers. Nowhere in the detailed travel accounts from Roman times are glaciers mentioned.”
Schlüchter criticizes his critics for focusing on a time period which is “indeed too short.” His studies and analyses of a Rhone glacier area reveal that “the rock surface had [previously] been ice-free 5,800 of the last 10,000 years.”
More here: http://www.newsmax.com/LarryBell/warming-global-climate/2014/06/17/id/577481/#ixzz355f6L5y2
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On Pierre Gosselin’s “No Tricks Zone” we have this:
Distinct solar imprint on climate
What’s more worrisome, Schlüchter’s findings show that cold periods can strike very rapidly. Near the edge of Mont Miné Glacier his team found huge tree trunks and discovered that they all had died in just a single year. The scientists were stunned.
The year of death could be determined to be exactly 8195 years before present. The oxygen isotopes in the Greenland ice show there was a marked cooling around 8200.”
That finding, Schlüchter states, confirmed that the sun is the main driver in climate change.
Today’s “rapid” changes are nothing new
In the interview he casts doubt on the UN projection that the Alps will be almost glacier-free by 2100, reminding us that “the system is extremely dynamic and doesn’t function linearly” and that “extreme, sudden changes have clearly been seen in the past“. History’s record is unequivocal on this.
Schlüchter also doesn’t view today’s climate warming as anything unusual, and poses a number of unanswered questions:
Why did the glaciers retreat in the middle of the 19th century, although the large CO2 increase in the atmosphere came later? Why did the earth ‘tip’ in such a short time into a warming phase? Why did glaciers again advance in 1880s, 1920s and 1980s? […] Sooner or later climate science will have to answer the question why the retreat of the glacier at the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850 was so rapid.”
On science: “Our society is fundamentally dishonest”
CO2 fails to answer many open questions. Already we get the sense that hockey stick climate claims are turning out to be rather sorrowful and unimaginative wives’ tales. He summarizes on the refusal to acknowledge the reality of our past: “Our society in fundamentally dishonest“.
– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2014/06/09/giant-of-geologyglaciology-christian-schluechter-refutes-co2-feature-interview-throws-climate-science-into-disarray/#sthash.z6pKzqtQ.dpuf
Why am I confused as to just what the he!! we are talkng about?
I thought it was finding tree pieces in Swiss glaciers and the fact that it has to be warmer for those trees to get there, in the first place.
And as far as the BS argument about the statistics of the Arctic ice…there’s lies, damn lies and then there’s statistics.
H Grouse says
You flip your coin, I ll watch a sine wave go from peak to through.
Bob Boder says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:41 pm
,,,
” I Pick 1,000,000 years”
…
Great!!!
…
Please post a link to your first scientific paper you publish.
I’ll be waiting.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:34 pm
…
Remember, if you flip a coin five times, and it comes up heads five times in a row, the probability of that happening is 1/32
And yet, it happens all the time. It is very known thing that thing like coin tosses tend to cluster together. I suggest you try to throw a coin few time and record how often you get a clusters of 5 heads in a row…
H Grouse
And I won’t wait for yours because I already know it would be non sense.
The grouse says:
since the inception of this site, can you please show ALL OF US where I’ve made one single “prediction”
I never said you made a prediction. I said you were wrong about everything. There is a difference.
Next:
the data shows that the TREND for Arctic ice is clear, and convincing to anyone… If you call that “recovering”… &blah, blah, etc.
The trend is, in fact, clear: Arctic ice is recovering. Chalk up another “wrong” for birdbrain. Grouse is wrong about everything. He cherry picks random factoids that provide fodder for his confirmation bias. He is either stupid, or on someone’s payroll. Maybe both.
When will a mod delete “H Grouse” comments? He is certainly using multiple identities in his effort to be a site pest.
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:45 pm
…
“t is very known thing that thing like coin tosses tend to cluster together. ”
The probability of heads is 1/2, the probability of tails is 1/2.
…
The coin is Markov….there is no “clustering”
(Reply: You are using more than one screen name; a violation of site Policy. Post under your real name, or watch your comments get deleted. First warning/last warning. ~mod.)
dbstealey says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:48 pm
” I said you were wrong about everything.”
I wasn’t wrong about 50 mm of sea level rise.
…
So, your statement is false.
H Grouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:43 pm
Bob Boder says:
August 8, 2014 at 3:41 pm
,,,
” I Pick 1,000,000 years”
…
Great!!!
…
Please post a link to your first scientific paper you publish.
I’ll be waiting.
_________________
Again, good job! You are on top of your game.
Demand that others act like google. It’s a well known trick, but well played!
This explains how Hannibal was able to cross the Alps with elephants, I remember seeing artist’s rendering of the great crossing with the elephants slogging through the snow and ice, the freezing soldiers, etc. and I marveled at how he was able to make those poor tropical animals do that.
There was no snow and ice.
Funny thing happened on the way to WUWT – it’s become the H Grouse site. Why do you people let him into your brains? His tireless posting has diverted you all into his maelstrom and your counter-bickering only triggers a reflexive response of more his/her blather.
(Reply: Good point. If he continues to use a sock puppet name, his comments will be deleted. ~ mod.]
H Grouse
Based on your knowledge of AGW theory can you tell me something that it predicts that will happen in the future?
Can you also explain how AGW causes the oceans to warm, causing your thermal expansion?
H Grouse says:
I wasn’t wrong about 50 mm of sea level rise. So, your statement is false.
You tied that number in with your flat wrong statement about no lag time in thermal expansion. I corrected that. So once again, you were wrong.
You can’t even cherry-pick your own statements without stumbling.
[Snip. No more warnings. Use your correct name. ~mod.]
Db says
It’s just amusing to me, my wife is watching the same movie for like the tenth time in a row. Also if I keep him here he is not ruining one of the new posts.
H Grouse –
You are a troll. Truly. If you can not answer a question, you change the subject. You redirect and quote out of context, you modify quotes so you can answer a question that was not asked.
So, here is one last chance for you to show that you have any credibility left – answer me the question I was asking many time:
why should we care about any of those unimportant to general public issues when we know that climate was much warmer in the past?
wow this thread has really gone to hell.
(Reply: Yes, it has. Thread bombing violates site Policy. So does sock puppetry. We now return you to the article’s topic. ~mod.)
rgbatduke says: August 8, 2014 at 9:58 am
You had said
“One can find literally hundreds of places where climate scientists who — given inconvenient facts like these — should know better assert that the modern warm period is the warmest in the entire Holocene.”
and now you have listed various news reports, blog posts etc, none of which, as far as I can see, has a scientist asserting that the modern warm period is the warmest in the entire Holocene. There are variants of Mann’s claim that they are the warmest in the last millennium, but this head post is about a discovery from the mid-Holocene.
Udar says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:01 pm
“You are a troll.”
….
That is your opinion.
REPLY: No, I think he’s right, especially since you used to go by “chuck” with a fake “c_u_later” email address. – Anthony
Mods, please tell us his real name. It helps to know the trustworthiness of ones interlocutor.
Nick Stokes says: “The sudden cooling around 8200 years ago has been known since about 1960. It even has its own Wiki page.”
By whom was it known? For 50 years the only person that “knew” continental drift was Alfred Wegener. Now of course it is very easy to say, “Well, I knew about it all along!”
And so it shall be with climatology as it becomes mature, mistakes made in the past will be forgotten as scientists say they’ve known about this or that all along.
AGW or not, my insanely high heating bill was “man made” in this Australian winter
Richard Sharpe says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:16 pm
Mods, please tell us his real name. It helps to know the trustworthiness of ones interlocutor.
_________________
One man enters, one man leaves.
Leonard Weinstein says: August 8, 2014 at 10:11 am
“First, it IS the position of the majority on AGW and CAGW that CO2 (and CH4) is the main control knob, and that nothing else can explain the temperature rise over the last 150 or so years.”
A typical statement from IPCC is in AR4 9.1.3:
“Based on the available studies and understanding of the uncertainties, the TAR concluded that ‘in the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations’. Since the TAR, a larger number of model simulations using more complete forcings have become available, evidence on a wider range of variables has been analysed and many important uncertainties have been further explored and in many cases reduced. These advances are assessed in this chapter.”
They analyse the known forcings for the last 50 years, and show that alternatives could not produce the observed warming. This is by successive elimination, and confidence grows gradually.
But that is given knowledge of all forcings during the last fifty years. It does not claim that CO2 must have caused warmings in the past, when forcings were different, and not well known. It says that CO2 is the only remaining “control knob” in that 50-year period, when others have been eliminated.
No scientists, for example, seriously believe that the major glaciations were caused by CO2.
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:33 pm
Actually, there are “scientists” who do think that CO2 causes the glacial/interglacial cycles.
Please list all the other alternative explanations for warming during the past 50 years which we considered and why they were ruled out by your buddies on the “climate science” Team. On what basis did they reject the Null Hypothesis, other than ideological, career and financial interest, of course.
Thanks.