A global temperature conundrum: Cooling or warming climate?
From the University of Wisconsin-Madison
MADISON, Wis. — When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently requested a figure for its annual report, to show global temperature trends over the last 10,000 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Zhengyu Liu knew that was going to be a problem.
“We have been building models and there are now robust contradictions,” says Liu, a professor in the UW-Madison Center for Climatic Research. “Data from observation says global cooling. The physical model says it has to be warming.”
Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today, Liu and colleagues from Rutgers University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, the University of Hawaii, the University of Reading, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the University of Albany describe a consistent global warming trend over the course of the Holocene, our current geological epoch, counter to a study published last year that described a period of global cooling before human influence.
The scientists call this problem the Holocene temperature conundrum. It has important implications for understanding climate change and evaluating climate models, as well as for the benchmarks used to create climate models for the future. It does not, the authors emphasize, change the evidence of human impact on global climate beginning in the 20th century.
“The question is, ‘Who is right?'” says Liu. “Or, maybe none of us is completely right. It could be partly a data problem, since some of the data in last year’s study contradicts itself. It could partly be a model problem because of some missing physical mechanisms.”
Over the last 10,000 years, Liu says, we know atmospheric carbon dioxide rose by 20 parts per million before the 20th century, and the massive ice sheet of the Last Glacial Maximum has been retreating. These physical changes suggest that, globally, the annual mean global temperature should have continued to warm, even as regions of the world experienced cooling, such as during the Little Ice Age in Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries.
The three models Liu and colleagues generated took two years to complete. They ran simulations of climate influences that spanned from the intensity of sunlight on Earth to global greenhouse gases, ice sheet cover and meltwater changes. Each shows global warming over the last 10,000 years.
Yet, the bio- and geo-thermometers used last year in a study in the journal Science suggest a period of global cooling beginning about 7,000 years ago and continuing until humans began to leave a mark, the so-called “hockey stick” on the current climate model graph, which reflects a profound global warming trend.
In that study, the authors looked at data collected by other scientists from ice core samples, phytoplankton sediments and more at 73 sites around the world. The data they gathered sometimes conflicted, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere.
Because interpretation of these proxies is complicated, Liu and colleagues believe they may not adequately address the bigger picture. For instance, biological samples taken from a core deposited in the summer may be different from samples at the exact same site had they been taken from a winter sediment. It’s a limitation the authors of last year’s study recognize.
“In the Northern Atlantic, there is cooling and warming data the (climate change) community hasn’t been able to figure out,” says Liu.
With their current knowledge, Liu and colleagues don’t believe any physical forces over the last 10,000 years could have been strong enough to overwhelm the warming indicated by the increase in global greenhouse gases and the melting ice sheet, nor do the physical models in the study show that it’s possible.
“The fundamental laws of physics say that as the temperature goes up, it has to get warmer,” Liu says.
Caveats in the latest study include a lack of influence from volcanic activity in the models, which could lead to cooling — though the authors point out there is no evidence to suggest significant volcanic activity during the Holocene — and no dust or vegetation contributions, which could also cause cooling.
Liu says climate scientists plan to meet this fall to discuss the conundrum.
“Both communities have to look back critically and see what is missing,” he says. “I think it is a puzzle.”
The study was supported by grants from the (U.S.) National Science Foundation, the Chinese National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.
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Imagine how many lives will be lost now that emergency level funding has been channeled away from medical research into climate “science” when a hospital visit becomes a massive risk due to bacterial resistance to idiotically overused antibiotics. We are at least a couple of centuries away from being able to quickly defeat infections, and are now an extra century away more due to this continued theft of research and development money into green banking schemes and boondoggles. That real concern for health is not actually on the mind of environmental activists and their academic and institutional enablers is revealed in their lack of basic Economics 101 concern for real hard science R&D, as they promote artificial energy rationing. Left wing politicians have become genocidal maniacs in sheep’s clothing. And the medical and biological sciences have themselves failed to defend themselves from this psychotic theft, to the ruin of all of us in the near future.
We hardly even know what subconscious forces are at work in the climate delusion since sociologists and psychologists refuse to face the facts of a revealed scam and instead turn Stalinist and pathologize everyday skepticism.
The left is destroying itself here and trying to take down Western civilization with it, but since delusions lift and actual temperature isn’t cooperating either, they merely destroy themselves. One thing is clear: the bulk of climate alarmists outside of the devious hockey stick team of sociopaths have their blinders on completely, and cannot be swayed by facts whatsoever unless strongly confronted and called out as enablers of f-r-a-u-d. Even that won’t phase fanatics like Nick Stokes above who claim Marcott has a valid result to offer when the proxies all fail to act as thermometers in the modern era, making a mockery of his deadpan claim that they represent temperature at all. This is grade school level logic here, anybody can now fully understand. It’s really no different from the fine art deception in which to this day an upside down urinal is worshipped as multimillion dollar “art” in order to seize control of a profitable market in arbitrary fashion, claiming everyday reasonable common sense no longer applies. What these activists forget is that such social oppression causes sudden youthful backlashes, as will be also so with the climate deception but this time taking the whole anti-intellectual left wing movement down with it.
“There is no law of progress. Our future is in our own hands, to make or mar. It will be an uphill fight to the end, and would we have it otherwise? Let no one suppose that evolution will ever exempt us from struggles. You forget, said the Devil, with a chuckle, that I have been evolving too.” – Dean Inge
Just a quick thanks to rgbatduke for his typically excellent comment. I feel like I learn more by simply reading his comments than I could spending days with textbooks and journal articles.
Again it comes down to saying “but the proxies say this” and the models, based on the proxies don’t seem to understand what is happening. I’ve made the comment before, and I’ll make it again – Proxies are someone’s best opinion of what things might have been, based on a correlation between what is measurable now and what, in the opinion of the “scientist,” the proxy relationship is. Proxies are not data, they are guesses. Yes, much seemingly good observations based on proxies hold up under current observations, but since the relationship between proxies and actual data has been tampered with every few years – the temperature records are “massaged” to better fit the message – how can you base a model on a moving target? Every study I read starts to say the same thing – “we have solved this problem” or “we have discovered this relationship” or “we have found a relationship between this isotope and temperature” and from there “the fact of the proxy relationship” is treated as an absolute. Maybe it can be, and maybe it can’t. I still contend that if we represented all the knowledge that man has accumulated – everything that he KNOWS to be true – and compared it to what he doesn’t know, it would be comparing a bucket of water to the contents of the Pacific Ocean. However, if you listen to the scientists, the comparison would be more like all the water in the Atlantic represents what they know and all the water in the Pacific would represent unknowns. Because E=MC (squared) seems to work, doesn’t even mean that the equation actually IS accurate to 20 decimal places, so to speak. Science has put itself on a pedestal that only Divine knowledge can occupy.
Nick Stokes says
Nick I have a question for you. i will not reply to it I just want your honest answer.
if we replace the entire atmosphere mass for mass with CO2 what would the average temperature (energy content) be compared to what we have now.
rgb at duke: rgbatduke says:
August 11, 2014 at 4:21 pm
This is only a small part of the problem. The Holocene is, after all, an interglacial in a protracted ice age.
excellent post!
“Both communities have to look back critically and see what is missing,” he says. “I think it is a puzzle.”
That strikes me as a huge step forward in communicating science.
Thus the so-called global climate models are effectively global weather models. It is woefully naïve to assume that all that is needed to turn a global weather model into a global climate model is to run it longer. http://consensusmistakes.blogspot.com/
hunter says:
August 12, 2014 at 4:56 am
Jennifer Marohasy ( http://jennifermarohasy.com/ ) insightfully points out that bad paradigms do not simply fade away.
That is most profound, really !! It highlights what I have been saying for a very long time. The CO² scam is here to stay. Taxes that have been imposed based on this scam will not be relinquished. Most socialists countries (the whole of europe including the uk) have spent the money decades in advance.
I know its the elephant in the room but when Dr Lui says “Over the last 10,000 years, Liu says, we know atmospheric carbon dioxide rose by 20 parts per million before the 20th century, and the massive ice sheet of the Last Glacial Maximum has been retreating. These physical changes suggest that, globally, the annual mean global temperature should have continued to warm, even as regions of the world experienced cooling, such as during the Little Ice Age in Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries.”
Why do they all assume the Solar output is a constant?
Hold on there senores y senoritas– this guy is either honest or willing or both. He’s just set himself up for a Galileo Moment and there is nothing a savage as the beating an apostate takes. Since the hottie-hysterics won’t exactly man-up [?sp], he’ll suffer a whisper-Macarthyesque campaign. Those 2 words: ‘robust’ and ‘contradictions’ will have to be expunged. Either way, it’s a crack in the weak dam.
It is easy to make fun of some sentences from an interview. I think it show a scientific integrity to come out with the conclusions that Mr Liu does.
“When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently requested a figure for its annual report, to show global temperature trends over the last 10,000 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Zhengyu Liu knew that was going to be a problem.” http://www.news.wisc.edu/23050
Scientists who follow up their knowledge and present data that is not wanted, deserve respect and protection.
““The fundamental laws of physics say that as the temperature goes up, it has to get warmer,” Liu says.”
The economic laws of climate research say that as the temperature goes up, it gets you more money”.
Frederick Colbourne said @ur momisugly August 12, 2014 at 1:45 am
Much that was very enlightening and:
I take it that you meant Hansen et al were admitting that their prior statements re TOA energy imbalance were alarmist. Please correct me if I’m in error.
good grief people can’t you keep up?!? That’s why we changed to the phrase “climate change” it covers both plus any and all change.
kim says: August 12, 2014 at 4:50 am
“We have to disappear the Holocene Optimum,
that that young fool Marcott exposed to the world.”
The Holocene Optimum has been around for a very long time. Here is a Wiki 2007 article, edited by none other than William Conn olley. It had already acquired the alternative names of Hypsithermal, Altithermal, Climatic Optimum, Holocene Optimum, Holocene Thermal Maximum, and Holocene Megathermal.
Without the minuscule fossil fuel emissions CO2 portion of the greenhouse effect causing warming on it’s own which then increases water vapor there is no AGW.
Either that has happened or it has not.
Why can’t there be any consensus on where or not it has occurred?
When does consensus count?
Note for the record that Nick Stokes commented again while ignoring the fact that Marcott 2013 had no raw data correlation with actual temperature.
But at least you can adopt the Megathermal.
The Megathermal.
Yup.
The MEGA THERMAL.
Hey Nick, what about the Marcott lack of any deviation in the proxy data and the claim that that then represents a “super hockey stick”?
Hey NICK?
NikFromNYC says: August 12, 2014 at 7:36 pm
“Note for the record that Nick Stokes commented again while ignoring the fact that Marcott 2013 had no raw data correlation with actual temperature.”
Marcott used only proxies that were already calibrated in °C. There is no reliance on calibration against instrumental, which is impossible anyway, given the resolution.
I would suggest that Liu sue whoever granted him his degrees [because] it appears that he learned nothing about [science] if he doesn’t know that data beats models every time.
Stephen Richards says:
August 12, 2014 at 1:09 pm
hunter says:
August 12, 2014 at 4:56 am
Jennifer Marohasy ( http://jennifermarohasy.com/ ) insightfully points out that bad paradigms do not simply fade away.
=========
Okay, if you accept that a new paradigm is needed to sweep away the (mankind’s CO2) = CAGW paradigm, I’ve got one.
2018-2019, Step 1:
Global temps begin to modestly decline as the confluence of natural factors, i.e. the AMO, PDO, and Gleissberg minima lead to 4 years of bitter cold winters and mild summers, both in NH and SH.
2020, Step 2:
IPCC adherents publicly admit crisis exists in confidence of models and paradigm, but still profess that more CO2 will increase temps. Biologists and agronomists demonstrate remarkable global greening using satellite measurements. OCO-2 data shows man is not the primary source, or even a significant source of CO2, it is the ocean’s degassing. Greening of thaw arctic permafrosts are major CO2 sinks. AR6 cancelled, IPCC disbanded.
2021, Step 3:
Governments faced with chilling cold, and the need for inexpensive energy seize upon the “CO2 really is good” paradigm. Licensing of coal-fired plants is accelerated. Fracking is encouraged. A 2nd industrial-age revolution begins.
New paradigm: CO2 is good. aka, Drill, baby, baby, drill.
What these activists forget is that such social oppression causes sudden youthful backlashes, as will be also so with the climate deception but this time taking the whole anti-intellectual left wing movement down with it.
And there are forces at work that will at the same time be taking down the anti-intellectual right wing.
The left has its “climate” the right has a certain five leafed plant.
Mooloo says: August 11, 2014 at 4:53 pm
“Says they used Marcott’s data, previously ripped to shreds by McIntyre & others
He never attacked the data. Nor even the real conclusion of the actual paper. What was ridiculed was the comparison of non-proxy to proxy measurements, mostly made in press releases and articles.”
……………………….
Mooloo, this is quite wrong. There are 9 articles on Climate Audit that mention Marcott in their title. The titles alone show that Steve McIntyre’s analyses went far beyond “a comparison of proxy to non-proxy.”
Marcott’s Dimple: A Centering Artifact
Marcott Monte Carlo (written by Roman M)
April Fools’ Day for Marcott et al
The Marcott Filibuster
The Marcott-Shakun Dating Service
How Marcottian Upticks Arise
Marcott’s Zonal Reconstructions
No Uptick in Marcott Thesis
Marcott Mystery #1
Now, please apologise so that I do not have to hang you out of the window by the feet in John Cleese style.
“Over the last 10,000 years, Liu says, we know atmospheric carbon dioxide rose by 20 parts per million before the 20th century, and the massive ice sheet of the Last Glacial Maximum has been retreating. These physical changes suggest that, globally, the annual mean global temperature should have continued to warm”
Both these factors are settling to the new, post-glacial conditions.
The ice cover takes millennia to equilibrate, parts of Antarctica are still adjusting. It does not mean temperatures “should have continued to warm”. WRONG.
20ppm rise is out-gassing of deep oceans. Again relaxing to the new warmer temperatures.
BTW how much warming are they expecting a rise of 20ppm to make ???
With that level of ignorance it’s easy to arrive at a “conundrum”.
Note again for the record that Nick Stokes refuses outright to even admit the blindingly obvious fact that you cannot have data “already calibrated in °C” when that data fails to track °C in the modern era, plotted here showing utterly no response to recent rising temperatures whatsoever outside of noise!
http://s6.postimg.org/jb6qe15rl/Marcott_2013_Eye_Candy.jpg
You see, folks, nothing is ever wrong with climate “science” not even compete fabrication of blades as artifacts and not even non responsive proxies as thermometers. He will simply not address this point, but offer obfuscation instead, for addressing it would amount to admitting that Marcott’s paper is a fraud. It would never have been published in top journsl Science without its faux blade, and had peer review there been functioning at all the lack of response to temperature would have resulted in a blunt rejection of it. This corruption destroys all of climate “science” claims, period, the entire field now being no better than astrology or homeopathy.
Reblogged this on Centinel2012 and commented:
The bottom line is that they have no clue as to what or why is going on with the “climate”!