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
Michael 2 says: August 8, 2014 at 4:19 pm
“By whom was it known? For 50 years the only person that “knew” continental drift was Alfred Wegener.”
The IPCC AR3, in 2001, devoted sec 2.4.2 to “How stable was the Holocene climate?”. And they list much variability. Of this event they say:
“The most prominent event in both records occurred about 8,200 years BP (Alley et al., 1997; von Grafenstein et al., 1998; Barber et al., 1999) when annual mean temperatures dropped by as much as 2°C in mid-Europe and the European alpine timberline fell by about 200 m (Wick and Tinner, 1999).”
@ur momisugly Grouse
@ur momisugly nick Stokes
>>>>>>>>>
35 years and 1/3 of one degree of warming C….Significant? Go grab your panties, snort…
Heh, almost 400 comments and no one took my bait about the sun being to far away to affect Earth’s climate. Was I too obvious?
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Richard D says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:42 pm
____________________
“Meet the new boss Same as the old boss” The Who– “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
kim says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:53 pm
Heh, almost 400 comments and no one took my bait about the sun being to far away to affect Earth’s climate. Was I too obvious?
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Maybe if you didn’t go around with that sarc tag on our forehead…
pimf: “your forehead
And thanks, RGB@Duke for the insight about Leif. Awesome rigourous, ain’t he? He’s pondered these questions for a lifetime. I used to think he’d be the one to figure out the sun/climate connection, but now find that he’s the one to tell us what it isn’t. That’s very useful.
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Alan Robertson says:
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Indeed
Adam Gallon says: August 8, 2014 at 12:33 am
“http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7580294.stm,
The Schnidejoch glacier, produced evidence of Roman & Neolithic people being active in the high Alps, back in 2003. Took the BBC another 3 years to notice this.”
From that 2006 BBC report
“What fascinates scientists about the age of the finds is that they correspond to times when climate specialists have already calculated the Earth was going through an especially warm period, caused by fluctuations in the orbital pattern of the Earth in relation to the Sun.”
Dr. Schlüchter’s findings are not
“disproving accepted theories that they only began retreating after the end of the little ice age in the mid-19th century”
HGrouse says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:42 pm
Hopefully you and your offspring can adapt to rapidly changing temperatures.
…
No problem, I have electric central air and heating in addition to propane and a wood stove. You?
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:02 pm
If the Team recognize(s) that climate has always changed cyclically, on what possible basis can it, they and you conclude that the 20 years c. 1977-96 were any different? Even in the thermometer record, there have been longer periods of even more rapid rise (accepting the adjusted “record”, which of course has been heavily stepped on in both directions) than during the late 20th century, so why posit CO2 to explain it, other than that CO2 just happened to be increasing then? Of course there were also periods of falling CO2 and rising temperature, as during the 1930s, and, as in c. 1944-76 now, rising CO2 and falling temperature, plus flatness all around.
Nick stokes worked hard for his money in this thread, me thinks. Lets give it up for Nick!
Richard D says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:23 pm
The late, great Donna Summer, Queen of Disco, spoke excellent German.
Glacial retreat is a terrible thing for well over 13 thousand years. We must all act now. The climate is changing.
64 comments by H Grouse out of 389.
Ric Werme says: August 8, 2014 at 5:37 pm
64 comments by H Grouse out of 389.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Yep, how many more paid lackeys in addition to grouse and nick stokes I wonder?
I am stupefied, and it’s unprecedented. We must act now on co2. It all makes sense.
This is climate change. Coz that is exactly what the climate has always done. So let’s join hands and act. We never did it before, but let’s do it now so a few cunning fellow can make lots of money. You know it makes sense. (They think I don’t know who they are.) Oxurgh, Grantham, Al Bore (now dis investing), Pachauri former Glorioil et. al. There are many of them hiding, investing and claiming an emergency because they think people are just too dumb to see. Hello.
Nick Stokes says:
Do you have the orbital parameters that caused these warm periods? Did they apply to the Holocene Optimum? The Roman Warm Period? The MWP?
Oh look. Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit has a whole category on the Holocene Optimum and the efforts by the team to minimize the various warm periods:
http://climateaudit.org/category/holocene-optimum/
Let us not forget Alaska. Brrrr. Retreating glacier reveals 1,000 year old tree stumps. I have bee informed that it was all a northerly affair.
Treelines are just a pain in the arse. Children won’t know what a treeline is.
Proof this site is run by people that don’t have a clue:
REPLY: No, I think he’s right, especially since you used to go by “chuck” with a fake “c_u_later” email address. – Anthony
Richard Sharpe says: August 8, 2014 at 5:49 pm
“Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit has a whole category on the Holocene Optimum and the efforts by the team to minimize the various warm periods:”
Ah yes, the team. Do you know who was co-author with poor persected Wegener Schlüchter on these wood discoveries?
TF Stocker. Co-Chair WG1 (IPCC).
Joerin, U. E., Nicolussi, K., Fischer, A., Stocker, T. F., & Schlüchter, C. (2008). Holocene optimum events inferred from subglacial sediments at Tschierva Glacier, Eastern Swiss Alps. Quaternary Science Reviews, 27(3), 337-350.
Joerin, U. E., Stocker, T. F., & Schlüchter, C. (2006). Multicentury glacier fluctuations in the Swiss Alps during the Holocene. The Holocene, 16(5), 697-704.
HORMES, A., SCHLÜCHTER, C., & STOCKER, T. F. (1998). MINIMAL EXTENSION PHASES OF UNTERAARGLACIER (SWISS ALPS) DURING THE HOLOCENE BASED ON 14C ANALYSIS OF WOOD ANNE HORMES, 1 CHRISTIAN SCHLÜCHTER1 and THOMAS F. STOCKER2. Radiocarbon, 40(2), 809-817.
etc
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 6:49 pm
Yes, poor indeed.
As recently as 2008 he was a dues fully paid up, card carrying member of the Team. But now, cast into outer darkness for his heresies.
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:33 pm
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.
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…gobsmacked
They analyze forcings they don’t even know….and conclude it must be CO2..
What an incredible thing to say…..no one knows the forcings now
Latitude says:
August 8, 2014 at 7:04 pm
And yet that is exactly their procedure. None dare call it science.
Their antiscientific method was well summed up by Al Gore, with respect to Arctic sea ice: “What else could it be?”