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
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:10 am
But he didn’t give any support for saying that those were the accepted theories. And they weren’t.
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What purpose is served with your employment of a logical fallacy?
Mike M says: August 8, 2014 at 5:01 am
“To me such accounts as that and revelations of ancient forests under glaciers are all irrefutable evidence of periods of warmer times in the past that simply obliterate CAGW theory. They should all be FORCED to admit that their theory cannot explain those warmer periods… before Congress.”
AGW theory is about what happens when you dig up and release a whole lot of new carbon (as CO2) in the air. This hasn’t happened before. It is not about the complete climatic history, which has obviously varied a lot in the past, without fossil fuel release. Noone contests that. That doesn’t mean burning FF won’t make the climate warmer.
I think that the issue here isn’t that the facts here aren’t known, but the way they are treated. 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. This specific assertion is implicit (or, often, explicit) in all of the hypothetical dangers of SLR that are amplified out of all proportion to observation including these past intervals of thousands of years of greater warmth, implicit in all of the hypothetical risks to existing species and extinction, implicit in all of the supposed devastation warming will wreak on the most flexible and adaptable species on the planet (us) and generally presented without any discussion of the possible counterbalancing benefits. As you say, there is plenty of evidence that this is not true, that the Holocene Optimum lasted for thousands of years and was degrees Centigrade warmer than it is today. Yes, it was probably hard on wooly mammoths and certain other large furry mammals who had adapted to the preceding 90,000 year Wisconsin glacial episode, but the exploding human population had a lot to do with that as well. It certainly didn’t wipe out polar bears or seals or penguins, and it did not suffice to melt either Greenland or Antarctica to the point where they were “ice free” (although Greenland was more free of ice as late as the MWP before the LIA iced it up again — following an ancient natural fluctuation of the climate).
No the issue isn’t that there isn’t a rather lot of evidence for all of this stuff, just as even Briffa and Jones sniffed and turned up there noses at Mann’s initial “erasure” of the LIA and MWP in his cooked PCA of the tree-ring data because they had all published numerous papers, including some that appeared in the same AR, clearly showing the MWP and LIA, which were known and corroborated by multiple data sources. It is that the IPCC didn’t choose their graphs as cover art. Nor did Al Gore, when he promoted public panic that fed directly into his own pocket via his investments in to-be-subsidized alternative energy sources while continuing to drive his SUV and to live in his enormous, energy-expensive mansion and to fly all over the world to his many speaking engagements, burning kerosene all the way way up in the stratosphere where it can screw up the GHE and ozone. And when the news media incorrectly and repeatedly report that tired old meme — that the modern warming is “unprecedented” and hence requires CO_2 for explanation — where, exactly are the honest climate scientists who stand up and refute these assertions on television and say sorry, that’s just not true and here’s why?
Then there are the SPMs in the ARs — which can best be described as a pack of lies dressed up in the misused language of statistics and which are not written by the scientists whose work they supposedly summarize, but rather by a tightly-knit group committed to selling the belief that It Is All Our Fault, whether or not the data supports this. Indeed, in spite of data that does not support this. Where are the honest scientists who call them on this abuse of language? Sure, in Chapter 9 of AR5 it is acknowledged that taking the mean of multiple models is meaningless and presents “challenges” (understatement indeed) in providing any sort of axiomatic statistical basis for assertions of confidence, but who reads the one paragraph where this is acknowledged? Instead they read the SPM where they cheerfully rattle off pronouncement after pronouncement of doom, all supported by assertions of “confidence” that the naive or ignorant might think are tied into a computation of the error function like they are everywhere else in statistics, instead of being tied into the personal opinions of the people permitted to write the SPM, who are hand-picked so that they don’t make inconvenient assertions like “we have no idea how accurate the models are going to be in the long run, or if they have any predictive value whatsoever, either individually or collectively”.
rgb
A similar message has emerged in Alaska:
“An ancient forest has thawed from under a melting glacier in Alaska and is now exposed
to the world for the first time in more than 1,000 years.
“Stumps and logs have been popping out from under southern Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier — a 36.8-square-mile (95.3 square kilometers) river of ice flowing into a lake near Juneau — for nearly the past 50 years. However, just within the past year or so, researchers based at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau have noticed considerably more trees popping up, many in their original upright position and some still bearing roots and even a bit of bark, the Juneau Empire first reported last week.”
http://www.livescience.com/39819-ancient-forest-thaws.html
John Finn says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:17 am
Alan Robertson says:
August 8, 2014 at 4:56 am
Bell did not suggest that experts were caught off guard, but instead, was reporting Schlüchter’s own words, which in proper context, do not say that the experts were caught off guard that such a discovery could be made…
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“So Bell reported that part of the interview “out of context”.. I’d say that’s misleading. ”
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Nope. Bell did not report that portion out of context. That’s your own misinterpretation of what I said in rethe article content and comments here.
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“Bell did also write
Dr. Schlüchter’s report might have been more conveniently dismissed by the entrenched global warming establishment…… ”
_____________
That’s right, but your reason for including that snippet remains unclear. Is there some conclusion to be drawn from those words?
Oh, you silly skeptics. This is just another example of regional climate change. Proxy studies indicate that this warming was strictly confined to Europe and the Arctic….and parts of North America…..and much of Asia….maybe the North Atlantic….the Pacific too….and some in the Southern Hemisphere, although not as much. REGIONAL! And it was offset by other ‘regional’ areas that were colder (although we haven’t really found those yet).
Today’s warming is GLOBAL! Granted, it is mainly been in Europe and the Arctic….and parts of North America…..and much of Asia….maybe the North Atlantic….the Pacific too….and some in the Southern Hemisphere, although not as much. But it is certainly GLOBAL! (You can tell the difference by my use of capitalization!)
(sarc off)
rgbatduke says: August 8, 2014 at 5:24 am
“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.”
Examples?
Where’s Mosh??
Oh well, I’ll carry on for him:
“one site”
/sarc
Nick Stokes says: August 8, 2014 at 5:22 am “AGW theory is about what happens when you dig up and release a whole lot of new carbon (as CO2) in the air. ….That doesn’t mean burning FF won’t make the climate warmer.”
No… it means that not only does there remain no empirical evidence that burning FF makes the climate warmer, there is abounding evidence that, whatever role ALL of CO2 plays in driving earth’s temperature, it is undeniably miniscule, unmeasurable and irrelevant – let alone the weenie amount we add to it by burning FF.
Nick Stokes says: August 8, 2014 at 5:22 am
That doesn’t mean burning FF won’t make the climate warmer.
Nor does it mean that burning FF will make the climate warmer.
Onus probandi. It’s up to AGW theorists to prove that burning FF will make the climate warmer.
Well they can certainly explain the mid-Holocene warming – right down to the exact regional warming pattern. I don’t know about the Rush Limbaugh silver mines, though. Do you (or does he) have a link?
@ur momisugly Nick Stokes
Quick Question. CAGW / AGW is based on the hockey stick.
10,000 years of stable temperatures with a sharp current warming.
i.e the period were in is completely outside the realms of normal and the only thing that can be causing it is CO2……
If the historical climate has been just as warm as todays climate, if not far warmer….. AS these tree rings show.
We can’t prove than our current climate is unusual in any way at all.
Thus the theory of AGW fails.
Alan Robertson says: August 8, 2014 at 5:21 am
“What purpose is served with your employment of a logical fallacy?”
What is that fallacy?
t brandt: “Julius Caesar, in his “De Bello Gallico,” took great pains to describe in detail the flora, fauna and geographic encountered in his military campaign north of the Italian peninsula. He never mentioned glaciers- which surely would have been noteworthy features.”
Not that it’s important, but would you by any chance be able to cite an example by book and chapter?
Schlüchter has been finding stuff for a while, as have other people. My interest was piqued by two or three articles I read within a week’s time, and recorded them, and later ones, in Glacial Retreat of 5,000-7,000 Years Ago
Events are not limited to the Alps, for example, in Peru Lonnie Thompson found
Oetzi died during this period, his final resting spot was exposed 5500 years after his death.
A common theme of these articles is to report how anomalous our current temperatures are compared to the past. (Warmest in 7,000 years! Disaster is near!) Surprisingly absent is speculation that there may be more botanical and archaeological remains to be found should glaciers retreat further.
Jim Clarke says: August 8, 2014 at 5:33 am “Oh, you silly skeptics. This is just another example of regional climate change. Proxy studies indicate that this warming was strictly confined to Europe…”
Yeah.. and only for a few hundred years!
Nick, either CO2 is the control knob for warming or it is not. If the early Holocene was warmer than present, and periods later in the Holocene were close to if not as warm or warmer than present temperatures, and CO2 was not the driving factor for any previous times, then the claims that the present is unique, and CO2 is the main cause is not supportable. Even recent high rates of heating or cooling as being unique are not supported, and the current temperature flattening is a strong contradiction to claims of human effects being dominate. While the previous published reports do include some admissions of previous warm periods, the so called main stream conclusions still say that only human activity could be the cause for the present warming, and that we have to do something. It is the consensus position that seems to go against the clear facts that is the issue here.
kim says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:46 am
The sun? What could the sun possibly have to do with the Earth’s climate? It’s literally(I could look it up) millions and millions of miles away.
Yeah, and just go outside and look at it (but not too long) and you’ll see it is really quite small too.
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:38 am
Alan Robertson says: August 8, 2014 at 5:21 am
“What purpose is served with your employment of a logical fallacy?”
What is that fallacy?
__________________
My hard drive recently burned a valve and threw a rod, so I no longer have my lists of fallacies available. Why don’t we just call it the “move the goal posts” fallacy.
Wait for it … wait for it …But it’s only regional, not global.
Mike M says: August 8, 2014 at 5:35 am
“there is abounding evidence that, whatever role ALL of CO2 plays in driving earth’s temperature, it is undeniably miniscule, unmeasurable and irrelevant”
No, there is no such evidence. There has been nothing to change the amount of carbon in the environment in the last millions of years. Recently we have dug up 400 Gtons and burnt it. Radiative physics says that the extra CO2 will impede outgoing IR and cause warming. And indeed it has warmed. And we’re on track to burn a lot more C.
Kind of makes the recent paper posted here “Recent paper finds 1950-2009 Solar Grand Maximum was a ‘rare or even unique event’ in 3,000 years” look a little short sided.
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Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:22 am
“AGW theory is about what happens when you dig up and release a whole lot of new carbon (as CO2) in the air. This hasn’t happened before. It is not about the complete climatic history, which has obviously varied a lot in the past, without fossil fuel release. No one contests that. That doesn’t mean burning FF won’t make the climate warmer.”
Yes, Nick but warmer isn’t bad at all. And as you mention it is just a theory, and a failing one at that. Perhaps, as this article and other evidence shows, that temperatures since the LIA have been less than the norm for an interglacial and that the climate is getting back to where it should be (for an interglacial that is). So why the gigantic push to pretend to stop the warming? To instill a certain agenda which includes more government control. Does anyone still doubt that?
Nick Stokes says:
August 8, 2014 at 5:34 am
rgbatduke says: August 8, 2014 at 5:24 am
“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.”
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“Examples?”
____________________
Oh, that’s a neat, albeit well known trick. Why should we play Google for you? You already know of many instances which we could mention. After all, aren’t such examples found on your own website?
John Finn says: August 8, 2014 at 5:36 am “Well they can certainly explain the mid-Holocene warming…”
Huh? They never had to explain it because Michael Mann disappeared it! Yeah, “regional warmth” in places like in Europe, Machu Picchu, Alaska, Greenland, Tibet and the Vostok ice core record…
Nick Stokes (and indeed others) seem to be missing the point here: the evidence presented demonstrates that climate changes abruptly without human intervention. Indeed a great deal of evidence has accumulated by now (as can be seen if you browse WUWT) that world climate has changed abruptly many times without that intervention, and in spite of apparent atmospheric CO2 levels.
Stokes claims that the current warming is different in some way, when it is neither unprecedented nor unusual. Of course if you start from the assumption that climate change is caused by CO2…
But that assumption rests on the claim that current change is unprecedented, when the evidence demonstrates it isn’t, which leads to a circular argument now presented by Stokes: that the release of CO2 makes this change unprecedented, and that the unprecedented nature of that change is evidence that the release of CO2 is the cause.