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
rgbatduke says: August 13, 2014 at 5:32 pm
“The uncertainty in nearly everything “global” increases substantially as one moves back in time. There is a lot of debate over just what CO_2 levels were 150 years ago,…”
Limited knowledge of past forcings limits ability to hindcast. What we’d like, and I think have, is knowledge for long enough that the GCM’s can respond to climate alone, without troubles due to initial errors, or indeed, errors in long past forcing. “Long enough” would be 50+ years.
“I’ve also given, many times at this point, arguments that suggest that it would be surprising if the GCMs “work” to predict long term climate in a chaotic nonlinear system.”
I’ve spoken of CFD. That’s a nonlinear, chaotic system. Turbulent flow over a wing has all that, yet Boeing etc happily use the info about lift, drag etc.
“For one thing, they don’t have the computational granularity to be able to succeed given the known dynamical timescales of the system”
CFD doesn’t either. You can never resolve turbulence. But various conserrvation laws come to the rescue.
“I would gently suggest that this is because they have the wrong sign in the water vapor feedback, and have to “fix” this error by strengthening negative feedback from other things in order for the climate to not just run away.”
I keep hearing here what I think is a fallacy equating positive feedback with runaway. AGW theory says that wv feedback approx doubles the sensitivity. That isn’t runaway, and doesn’t require compensating negative feedback.
Nick Stokes says:
August 13, 2014 at 7:30 pm
There you go again with AGW “theory”. It’s not a theory, or even a supportable hypothesis. It’s a repeatedly falsified conjecture.
Michael 2 says
This is the comment that Cougar made
“And it has been my experience that females have a propensity for refusing to admit being “wrong” about anything and thus are noted for offering such “tripe n’ piffle” in their rebuttal commentary.”
This is what he states as scientific FACT!
He claims that based on this he could tell that someone (who i agree is clueless) must be a female.
I ask you are there no males here who act like that? By the by look at his response to my comments.
I am not saying men and women aren’t different they clearly are. I am say that Cougar doesn’t know how to deal with women so he has no clue how they behave and thus shouldn’t be making comments like above.
Want to defend what he said?
Bob wrote: “Want to defend what he said?”
As I recall it was a bit of snark better suited for twitter and thus not really important to challenge OR defend. I didn’t read it all the way through. This “meta-discussion” has been more interesting than what started it.
Bob Boder:
At August 14, 2014 at 1:11 pm you say
No, he presented it as his personal experience and not as “scientific FACT!”
On the basis of my own experience I do not agree with his claim that females have a greater “propensity” than males but I am not him so I do not share his experience.
And I also do not agree with your misrepresentation of Cougar’s statement.
Richard
He does state it as scientific fact in a later post
Richardcourtney says
Cogar also doesn’t say a “greater” propensity, he says a propensity and he doesn’t say some females he says females. This implies that all females have this propensity.
When I called him on it i said that he shouldn’t use his experiences with women as a basis to define the gender as a whole, pretty much as you say in your post. His response was that it was based in/on scientific FACT.
I have not misrepresented him and was very polite in my pointing out the error of his statement.
I told him he should judge people on their actions and not their being.
In general his implication was that H Grouse had to be a female, the implication being that being female was an issue to him. If you doubt me read the posts above.
Defend him if you want, but make sure you understand what you are defending.
PS H Grouse is clueless though and this is why I started my original post by saying that much of what Cogar says I agree with
Bob Boder says “Cogar also doesn’t say a “greater” propensity, he says a propensity and he doesn’t say some females he says females. This implies that all females have this propensity.”
“Propensity” already implies “some”.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/propensity “tendency, preference, or attraction”.
But the reason for making this identification seems to be to deprecate the authority of the writer. As such it is “ad hominem” and does not advance the discussion.
Miochael 2:
I completely agree your post at August 15, 2014 at 11:30 am .
ALL ad homs. and misrepresentations inhibit debate and do “not advance the discussion”.
But not all personal comments are ad homs. The personal comments being discussed here are ad hom.
Richard
Courtney says
Again Read my first response to Cogar initial comment and then his response to me.
He is wrong and you can defend what he said as long as you want it doesn’t matter his comment is still wrong. I am not attacking him and I do most often agree with him on relevant topics, but his response and your defense just proves the point you are both refusing to just admit a mistake and move on you have to argue a losing. This is exactly the behavior he claimed proved that H Grouse must be a female. Again you can’t say someone must be a female because they refuse to admit they are wrong.
Smokey 128 wrong name sorry
I want to read even more things about it!