The stupid, it burns like a magnesium flare.
Excerpt from the article:
Now, you can add yet another problem to the climate change hit list: volcanoes. That’s the word from a new study conducted in Iceland and accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. The finding is bad news not just for one comparatively remote part of the world, but for everywhere.
Iceland has always been a natural lab for studying climate change. It may be spared some of the punishment hot, dry places like the American southwest get, but when it comes to glacier melt, few places are hit harder. About 10% of the island nation’s surface area is covered by about 300 different glaciers—and they’re losing an estimated 11 billion tons of ice per year. Not only is that damaging Icelandic habitats and contributing to the global rise in sea levels, it is also—oddly—causing the entire island to rise. And that’s where the trouble begins.
Riiight.
Here’s the money quote:
“As the glaciers melt, the pressure on the underlying rocks decreases,” Compton said in an e-mail to TIME. “Rocks at very high temperatures may stay in their solid phase if the pressure is high enough. As you reduce the pressure, you effectively lower the melting temperature.” The result is a softer, more molten subsurface, which increases the amount of eruptive material lying around and makes it easier for more deeply buried magma chambers to escape their confinement and blow the whole mess through the surface.
“High heat content at lower pressure creates an environment prone to melting these rising mantle rocks, which provides magma to the volcanic systems,” says Arizona geoscientist Richard Bennett, another co-author.
Perhaps anticipating the climate change deniers’ uncanny ability to put two and two together and come up with five, the researchers took pains to point out that no, it’s not the very fact that Icelandic ice sits above hot magma deposits that’s causing the glacial melting. The magma’s always been there; it’s the rising global temperature that’s new. At best, only 5% of the accelerated melting is geological in origin.
So, Iceland has had melting glaciers, OK we’ll accept that, but Iceland is not the world, and a good number of volcanoes that have erupted in the last century are in the tropical parts of the world where there are no glaciers on the volcanoes or magma fields, yet somehow, this writer, Jeffrey Kluger, extrapolates Iceland’s glacier melt to volcano link up to to the entire world.
To the uniniformed (such as Time Magazine writers), graphs like this one might seem to be “proof” of such Icelandic-to-global extrapolation:
![volcano-2[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/volcano-21.jpg?quality=83)
Source data: http://volcano.si.edu/
Gosh, it sure looks like another slam dunk for carbon dioxide driven climate hell in a handbasket, doesn’t it? The VEI starts increasing right about the time of the industrial revolution.
For those unfamiliar: The volcanic explosivity index (VEI) was devised by Chris Newhall of the US Geological Survey and Stephen Self at the University of Hawaii in 1982 to provide a relative measure of the explosiveness of volcanic eruptions. (Wikipedia)
But, there’s a hitch, according to NOAA data, volcanic activity worldwide actually went DOWN in the 2000’s while the climate changing carbon dioxide went UP in global concentration:
![Volcanoes-figure-2[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/volcanoes-figure-21.png?quality=75)
![co2_data_mlo[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/co2_data_mlo1.png?quality=75)
Correlation isn’t causation, at least when it comes to CO2 and climate and volcanoes.
Something that DID increase during the study period was the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). Guess where Iceland is? In the North Atlantic, which has been in the warm phase since about 1980.
The Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) is a mode of natural variability occurring in the North Atlantic Ocean and which has its principle expression in the sea surface temperature (SST) field. The AMO is identified as a coherent pattern of variability in basin-wide North Atlantic SSTs with a period of 60-80 years.
![AMO_fig123[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/amo_fig1231.gif)
Source: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/catalog/climind/AMO.html
Gee, do you think maybe, possibly, that Iceland might have more glacier melt when the AMO is warmer? The authors don’t seem to be cognizant of it, preferring instead to cite the universal bogeyman “climate change”.
Here is the publication that is cited in the Time article:
Climate driven vertical acceleration of Icelandic crust measured by CGPS geodesy
Abstract
Earth’s present-day response to enhanced glacial melting resulting from climate change can be measured using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. We present data from 62 continuously operating GPS instruments in Iceland. Statistically significant upward velocity and accelerations are recorded at 27 GPS stations, predominantly located in the Central Highlands region of Iceland, where present-day thinning of the Iceland ice caps results in velocities of more than 30 mm/yr and uplift accelerations of 1-2 mm/yr2. We use our acceleration estimates to back-calculate to a time of zero velocity, which coincides with the initiation of ice loss in Iceland from ice mass balance calculations and Arctic warming trends. We show, through a simple inversion, a direct relationship between ice mass balance measurements and vertical position and show that accelerated unloading is required to reproduce uplift observations for a simple elastic layer over viscoelastic half-space model.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL062446/abstract
Again, no mention of the world here, only Iceland. Compare that to the baseless claim made by the TIME writer Jeffrey Kluger:
The finding is bad news not just for one comparatively remote part of the world, but for everywhere.
Newsflash Mr. Kluger: Iceland is not “everywhere”, and the authors make no claim about the issue affecting the rest of the Earth.
WUWT reader Mike Bromley writes something on his Facebook page that I really can’t improve upon:
Plate tectonics….caused by climate change. No mention of the fact that Iceland has one of the highest geothermal heat fluxes on the planet, that its geomorphology is controlled by vulcanism, that many of the scientific terms for glacial melt features are in Icelandic Language, and oh boy, 11 billion tons of ice is really not that much, in fact, one eruption of Hekla or Eyjafjallajokull would release about that much ice.
These people have zero shame, and even less uniformitarian common sense. They elevate conjecture to the level of fact, for an uncritical media to spew around in alarming terms. This one takes the cake. Vote Green, everyone. Soon you’ll find out what living under nature is all about.
We’ll have more on this later, readers are encouraged to add comments regarding this inanity.
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Here is some more info on the state of their glaciers
http://earthice.hi.is/glaciers_iceland
Seems to have started in the late 1800’s.
Glaciers around the world have been in a general state of retreat since the end of the Little Ice Age (~1870). I vaguely recall that Icelandic glaciers have also been generally retreating with occasional advances.
What about land rise in Northern Sweden by as much as 3 feet per century. There are no volcanoes there.
It is still recovering from the last ice-age. The whole North Atlantic ridge from Jan Mayen to Svalbard is rising too, All that water has to go somewhere, hence the rising sea levels in the rest of the world.
It makes sense.
Volcanoes go with dinosaurs.
Glaciers go with mammoths.
Where dinosaurs stop you get mammoths.
So where volcanoes stop you get glaciers.
And vice versa.
QED.
Going with real science, volcanic activity and climate is the suns domain, the magma is in pools, balls of molten rock unconnected to the centre of the Earth. This makes them an electric-magnetic phenomenon caused by the moods of the sun.
I recommend reading the entire article (as usual), rather than only edited snippets:
http://time.com/3687893/volcanoes-climate-change/
A nice video documentary to boot!
I have read it and it is BS. They are speculating of the cause being man. It’s not.
How do I mess with NAO and AMO?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379113001145
Barry, as a matter of curiosity, have you EVER seen or read ANY thing that that supported your ardent belief in CAGW that you didn’t come and praise loudly? I’m sure if there was an article on ‘man-made global warming’ causing clowns make-up to run being ridiculed that you and Harry and David Socrates would all be there telling us how important it was, how foolish we were to laugh and what a nice video documentary it was.
Dave
Ist April coming up. Do tou think – –
Its complete bollocks and very misleading bollocks at that, An Isostatic rebound of an inch or so
a year can be found across most of northern Europe and America. It has NOTHING to do with current ice melting but is a reaction to the melting of the mile high ice sheets that used to exist.
See Journal of the Geological Society March 2010 vol. 167 no. 2 417-432
Take a look at the UK Met Office page on Iceland and you will see that eruption rates in the 20th century were LOWER than those in the 18th and 19th centuries when the region was still in the grip of the little ice age.
I’ll leave the last word to them.
“Iceland’s volcanism can be attributed to its location on the Mid Atlantic Ridge in the North Atlantic Ocean, where the Eurasian and North American plates are moving apart a few centimeters per year. In Iceland, this produces volcanic rift zones, regions where the Earth’s crust is being pulled apart and fractured, and here molten rock, or magma, rises up, and some reaches the surface and erupts as lava and/or ash. ”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/latest/volcano/iceland
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
Global warming is like the monster in a bad 1950s science fiction movie: there is nothing it cannot do. Nothing.
And like “The Blob”, it moves very slowly yet it can’t be outrun.
Iceland actually straddles the mid Atlantic rift. That is why almost all of it is so active, and also why so many of the eruptions are basaltic. One part of the rift on Iceland is the Reykjanes Ridge, and the spreading rate there is on order of 2.5cm/year! This also changes elevations, but that is cross fault block and side (west/east) dependent. No glacier there now. Popular tourist spot. My daughter went last summer.
I am not going to read the paper, since is is impossible to disentangle tectonic uplift from ice mass loss isostasis no matter how fancy the model calculations are. All a differential GPS can do is measure change in elevation. Not why
Techtonic uplift under the eastern cauldron under the Vatnajokul glacier has been measured as high as 9 cm/day prior to sub ice eruptions causing jokulhlaups. Part of the monitoring/warning system.
So the papers Iceland conclusions are more models all the way down. Let alone that Iceland is unique. Time’s extrapolation to the world just shows how braindead MSM have become.
Good point implicit in your last line, Rud. There seems to be a good correlation between increasing MSM stupidity and rising CO2 levels.
Does global warming cause journalists to become increasingly dumb? Or is it that increasingly dumb journalists hyperventilating more CO2 are causing global warming?
The question seems right up there with the other recent profundities considered in climate science.
Was waiting for someone to bring up the Atlantic rift. The ( computer) modellers will have fun trying to allocate the various forces at play in that part of the world. Blaming any isostatic rise to an minuscule increase in air temperature would be just a tad of a stretch. Was playing tourist there last year. 27 of 62 gps stations show statistically upward movement, that is, less then half. Climate change does not affect the other 35? Do they have any model to explain that?
Here’s a current report from Vatnajokul.
Might help if I put in a link.
http://en.vedur.is/media/jar/Factsheet_Bardarbunga_20150130.pdf
Isn’t this kind of publication part of the campaign to scare politicians into “doing more” at COP21 later this year in Paris? The “Armageddon around the corner” setup? Another example is this one: “Grassroots sports at risk from heatwaves due to climate change, report warns” here http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/30/grassroots-sports-at-risk-from-heatwaves-due-to-climate-change-report-warns
They’re onto something . . . or on something . . . Is anyone minding the store any longer?
“planet has a fever”???
Maybe it’s just hot flashes and moodiness. If it is a fever then get ready for some chills, too.
Mann-o-pause….. causes all symptoms.
Mann-Made Mann-O-Pause… I like it!
If this speculation is at all substantial, one would expect to find evidence of at least regional surges in volcanic eruptions during the MWP. If the chart above had shown that period and a rise during it, it might have gotten my interest, despite the evidence that a LACK of volcanic activity shared causality of the MWP.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/175842/medieval-warm-period-MWP
Can anybody point me towards a source of data on medieval volcanic activity to check this out?
If you google it you’ll see that 5 out of 10 of the largest volcanic eruptions in human history happened in the last two centuries, beginning with Tambora in 1815.
…and the only prescription is more cowbell.
Reminds me, I’m hungry. I’m going to go eat a hamburger. A mile high one at that. if you’ve seen the ad you’ll know what I mean..
I may have experienced a sever arithmetic break down, but … isn’t 12-billion tons about the equal of a cube of basalt 150 meters on a side? That is, if you assume the first “tons” are short tons, and you estimate volume based on 3,011.5 kg per cubic meter of solid basalt? That would be not merely a small but an absolutely trivial effect.
Why don’t they use a multiple of kg to avoid the metric ton/funny(*) ton issue?
(*) I am French, so the idea that a ton is sometimes not 1000 kg is funny to me.
I did the math in a reply to D.J. above and got 1.37psi change of his calculated 47,500psi of basalt. I believe that’s a few orders of magnitude below “absolutely trivial.”
That would be a “severe” arithmetic breakdown.
The relationship between melting ice (on a grand scale) and volcanism is nothing new at all, it’s been known for years.And while the results are completely unpredictable, volcanism is rarely a good thing for human populations.
Yes, having all that annoying basalt and granite intruding and extruding all over the place is a true curse.
If only we could just cool the poor Earth’s terrible fever, we could force that rock down into the magma.
Thats just what geothermal energy extraction does.
Actually many people locate farmland near volcanoes due to it being among the “richest agricultural lands on earth“. [University of California at Santa Barbara, Department of Geological Sciences] I assume the food they eat is good for them.
Well, that didn’t work out too well for the folks in Pompeii & Heracleanum
Not too mention almost all (if not all) the world’s coffee bean production comes from volcanic hillsides with rich dark mineral-laden soils.
– Joel, a caffeine coffee addict.
I had never thought of that! What I was addressing was this:
I showed evidence of widespread good for farmers who farmed rich volcanic soils near volcanoes. Food is “good”.
@HarryFlashmann
Quote: “…volcanism is rarely a good thing for human populations.”
That’s a rather shortsighted view which is typical for most warmists who usually have a poor understanding of the geological perspective.
Without volcanos, life on the continents would have gone extinct long before the first humans could have roamed the earth. That is because volcanos are the main source of getting back life-giving CO2 (for photosynthesis – remember?) from the sedimentation process into the atmosphere. Hence volcanos do close the global carbon circuit and consequently the circle of life itself. Without volcanism and its carbon-liberating effect in the lithosphere, nearly all carbon would be now deposited in the gigantic carbonate sediments of our planet and in coal, fossil oil and natural gas, as well.
But in the long run, carbon-liberation by volcanism was weaker than the carbon sedimentation process. This is the reason why the CO2 levels in atmosphere gradually declined since the jurassic and cretaceous eras until it reached a dangerously low level of about 180 ppm at the end of the last ice age. Life on the continents was then shockingly close on the brink of extinction which lies below a CO2 concentration of 150 ppm because photosynthesis will stop then!
Therefore, in the long run again, it is a very positive and honorable action of us humans to help the volcanos delivering CO2 – THE GAS OF LIFE – back into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels ! Otherwise who can tell whether life on earth would survive the next real and probably 100 ka long ice age, when the atmospheric CO2 level could decline even more ???
PS: And don’t forget as well: Without volcanism and a liquid Earth mantle as its reason, we would not have our geo-magnetical shield against cosmic radiation and the erosion of our thin atmospheric air layer…
One might add this quote from a description of Earth’s carbon circuit:
“Some have calculated that if no CO2 is added at all, the atmosphere and the oceans will be emptied for CO2 over about 2.5 million years and all photosynthesis and thus all life will then cease.”
Any questions?
On the basis of ” Pompeii & Heracleanum”, watermelons would evacuate all human settlements within 100km of every volcano. Thats how their mind works on every issue. think of the consequences.
without the heat of the mantle to turn water to steam, our oceans would have long ago drained into the earth, and life as we know it on earth would have long been extinct.
given the density of water, and its ability to flow downhill through even the smallest cracks, the oceans are only held in place by a layer of high pressure steam underneath them.
@fredberple
Very funny indeed, but I’m not sure if all warmists could understand your joke. So let’s be clear: Water has a smaller density than the lithosphere and the oceans don’t need the help of volcanism to keep their rightful place… 😉
Well, being atop an active volcano may not be good.
Being under an ocean is also not good.
Being under fertile, arable land isn’t good either.
I guess I’m missing something here…
You are missing the negative perspective. It makes change of anything a threat, instead of an opportunity.
Troll alert
“It was only later that we appreciated that a planet running a fever is just like a person running a fever, which is to say it has a whole lot of other symptoms: in this case, droughts, floods, wildfires, sea level rise, species loss, crop death and more.”
The symptoms that we need to be concerned about are the effects of schedule 1 drugs on an entire generation, and their subsequent use of drugs on school children to keep them quiet in their public schools.
+1
how is it that large numbers of boys are prescribed Ritalin to keep them quiet in school? In some private schools I’ve heard the number is well over 50%.
You should have seen how upset they were when I said no. He knew every Thomas the tank engine trains, every pokeemon ( at that time there were 128) , but somehow the teachers weren’t able to teach him anything? He wasn’t hyper either, he could stand at attention for an hour or more. (went to basic encampment at Ft Dix part of the civil air patrol) We took him and the rest out and homeschooled.
Has anyone else caught the story that the shrink who “invented” ADD & ADHD said it was a “ficticious disease”? They wanted to put my son on that Ritalin crap. Not only no but hell no. I put him on a full-spectrum liquid mineral supplement and the complaints about “figiting in class” stopped completely. Our soils are depleted; if you can add cold water extracted, plant derived minerals to your daily diet do so.
But that’s good for Iceland more hot magma rising to the surface more Geothermal Energy.
It’s nice to have the geothermal energy. On the other hand it has been estimated that the 1783 volcanic eruption in Iceland resulted tin the death of about 25% of Iceland’s populaition. So it’s definitely a mixed blessing.
Mother Earth is simply making more Iceland. Why don’t warmunists like Iceland?
Not really. You want it near the surface, where water can penetrate and then get can be cycled through a turbine by judicious drilling and ducting. On the surface it cools right off and then you are left with aggregate base source material.
“But, there’s a hitch, according to NOAA data, volcanic activity worldwide actually went DOWN in the 2000’s…”
That’s not a hitch, that’s consistent with what the models are telling us. Global Warming ♫ causes more volcanoes and fewer volcanoes.
Thanks for the H/T, Anthony. Reading that article actually cause physical pain…with its liberal admixture of frumpy ad hominem and junk science alarm. Stupendous.
Hold on a second guys. I’ve been arguing with my liberal friends about “global warming” for decades now. I’m a complete skeptic.
However!!! When my family lived in Sitka, Alaska we had a dormant volcano named Mt Edgecumbe that geologists think was caused by isostatic rebound. It last erupted 11,000 years ago after the last of the glacial (~3,000 ft. of it) ice melted. The geologists theorize this since the volcano isn’t located near any faults/rifts like most volcanoes are.
So, it might be possible in a few instances, eh?
Love your site and the work you do Anthony.
Marty
Marty:
“Mt Edgecumbe…last erupted 11,000 years ago after the last of the glacial (~3,000 ft. of it) ice melted.”
Are you sure?
http://www.sitka.com/Porky/porky.htm
Hey jps, my roadside geology book says 9,000 years.
Yeah, I’ve always wanted to recreate Porky’s stunt.
Bought a chainsaw from his son once..
marty
A masterful prank!
Thanks!
The complete melting of 1mile thick glaciar vs. a small % increas in the melt speed are two very different things.
It’s at the end of a fault that is presently a transform fault (Queen Charlotte) but may have had different modes of motion in the past. So, it’s in a bit of a different situation than the volcanoes on the Aleutian chain, but the entire coast of western North America has volcanism of all sorts. And, once there is an established plumbing system to store and transport magma, volcanism can go on for a few millions of years, anyway, after the primary cause is gone.
Ah, Marty, that whole landscape you lived in is defined by two major geological processes. One is glaciation. The other is tectonics. All the glacial rebound in the world can’t trigger a volcano unless there is a magma source very close to the surface (like Ice Land in fact, which has magma near enough to the surface to keep the island pretty warm considering where it is located latitudinally). More to the point look at the region on Googlearth from an altitude of about 2100 km. Find Denali. You will be able to trace a neat, smooth, approximately parabolic arc along the Alaska Range. Projecting the eastern side downward in a smooth, compatible curve will pretty much bulls eye Sitka and Mt. Edgecumbe. The Alaska range itself is a volcanic arc caused by the northern motion of the Pacific plate, which dive under the south coast of Alaska. Sitka, and thus Mt. Edgecumbe is sitting more or less on the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates.
hey duster.
of course you’re right.
what I remember was some geologists theory that mt. edgecumbe was unique. no other volcanoes within 100’s of miles. so perhaps isostasy and crustal rebound created a magma channel that terminated with mt edgecumbe..
marty
are you an isostatic rebound denier, duster?
sorry. it’s late..
Sitka, AK, is located near a diffuse transform plate boundary between the Pacific and North American plates. The islands and fjords of the Panhandle region are accreted and sheared slices of crust and their boundaries. Plenty of crustal weakness to provide conduits for magma movement. The big giveaway for subglacial to isostatic rebound vulcanism would be the presence of pillow lavas, as can be demonstrated by a similar Pleistocene eruptive phase in the nearby British Columbia interior, tectonically similar to the Alaska Panhandle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Mountain_(British_Columbia)
The mechanism is clearly known to occur, during and subsequent to the removal of more than a kilometer of ice….which would have the isostatic effect of removing 400 meters of rock load–in a geologically very short period–from a region fraught with a jumble of accreted crustal slices.
Iceland, however, is a living, breathing cauldron of inflating and deflating magma chambers and fissures, as recent activity has shown. To declare a set unidirectional ‘rebound’ rate for the island due to ice melt is very amateurish because it does not acknowledge the volcano-tectonic overprint which is impossible to predict. Basically, Iceland bounces up and down like a leviathan basaltic bronco on a short geological time scale….which is far longer than the tiny and partial GPS record these fellows have used to “sort of” develop their hypothesis….before it runs smack dab into the required climate change link.
excellent breakdown, mike.
I’ll second that, nice job Mike. Makes perfect sense.
Indeed, rocks do melt under lowered pressures; but, the pertinent question is “what is the partial derivative of temperature with respect to pressure on an adiabat?” It is a very small quantity. I recall it being possibly a couple of hundred degrees (K) when the pressure changes are those of, say, 600 kilometers of dense rock (3500 kg/m^3). One mile of ice seems like a lot of pressure until one compares it to a mile of rock, and removing a mile of rock at Bingham Pit, for example, has not lead to a magma discharge. Perhaps this changes the subsurface temperature by a measurable fraction of a degree, but it is not a measurable contribution to magma production.
“led” not lead.
Not a led mine, you’re saying? 🙂
The Puffington Host had a similar observation back in 2010: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-matai/are-global-warming-volcan_b_550936.html … And my contemporaneous take on it: http://stevemaley.com/2010/04/26/552443908/
ok, I can’t find the exact citation in my “Roadside Geology of Alaska ” book, so I might be getting it wrong.
The only pertinent quote is, “Local tectonic structures such as the Chatham Strait fault and other northwest trending faults became inactive several tens of millions of years before the Edgecumbe volcano rock erupted and thus cannot be involved.”
marty
Increasing CO2 = rising global temperature = melting glaciers = more volcanoes = global cooling = thickening glaciers = less volcanoes = global warming, ad infinitum.
This goes beyond plain stupidity; it is as insane as Caligula appointing a horse as Consul of Rome.
in a contest of common sense, I’d place my money on the horse.
+10 to ferd
JKluger@time.com is indeed breathtakingly stupid on the issue of Climate Change with regards to human-produced CO2 causation. Trying to make the Iceland findings appear as a global climate change issue is idiotic beyond belief. Ignorance can be cured with education, but as AW notes above, Mr. Kluger’s climate change stupidity burns white hot. Even more sadly, Kluger willfully deceives his readers.
I find it quite humorous that this lawyer-turned-journalist is the Time’s senior science editor. His only real claim to fame is co-writing a book on Apollo 13 with astronaut Jim Lovell, that was used by Ron Howard to make the movie. Sadly Lovell did not sign the April 10, 2012 open-letter (link below to a copy with signatories) to NASA Administrator Bolden, but 7 of his fellow Apollo-SkyLab era-astronauts did, along with Dr Kraft and Mr Griffin, both Directors for many years of Johnson Space Center. The climate change alarmists tried to dismiss this letter but a review of the names and positions of the signatories, reads like a Who’s Who of NASA, including many science and engineering PhDs and senior staff of the 60’s-90’s.
http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-scientists-dispute-climate-change-2012-4
Joel O’Bryan, BSCE, PhD
An interesting observation . Just a few days ago certain individuals hostile to skeptics were dismissing the analyses of Lord Monkton because he was a classical trained graduate from Cambridge (no mean university ) turned journalist and therefore had no right to get involved in scientific debate.
I have not seen a similar dismissal from the same individuals , on equivalent grounds , of this lawyer-turned -journalist .
Hypocrisy is the word that springs to mind and risks devaluing any further contribution from those sources .
mikewaite, the whole argument of the form “he’s not a climate scientist” is bollox, no matter who makes the claim. It ignores the content, and offers no clear view of what those who make such an argument object to. I get pilloried often by this type of thing, because a geologist “is not a climate scientist”. Well, OK then. But a geologist deals with the rock record, a good proportion of which is sedimentary, and basically a data disk that recorded the actions of climate. Tree Trunks on Ellesmere Island sort of stuff.
But yes, you are right, the fact that those who skewer Monckton for his lack of credentials are not equality-minded in their distribution of targets.
Next week in Time “climate change causes sun spots.” You read it hear first.
Magma changes are under miles of rock, yet somehow the loss of a few feet of ice is critical.
These guys can’t do even simple math.
Well, climate mitigation in this case will be extra simple. First, gather the virgins…
If your climate control method inadvertently causes too much cooling, you can reverse the effect with timely bottle(s) of gin to propitiate Pele, the volcano goddess:
http://www.hawaiilife.com/articles/2011/10/visit-to-kilauea-volcano/
“We were told to bring a bottle of gin, flowers, fruits, and the song within us to honor the Goddess Pele, and when we went there, it was such a beautiful day! We could tell she was pleased to see us!”
I don’t know about the flowers, fruits, and song. When I lived there, it was gin. And it better not be the cheap stuff.
Before COP 21 Paris meeting this fall, if the lead post’s absurd kind of research garbage is a trend setting precedent, then I expect to see a paper entitled:
‘Climate Change caused by Changed Climate (Really so Run for Your Lives)’
If we see a paper like it, then what are the odds it would be favorably tweet peer reviewed by Dana, Cook, Ward, Oreskes and Mann?
John
Yes, but who could look forward to such a thing, as we would be swarmed by trolls- hating on us for questioning the “science”.
Alan Robertson,
On the brighter side, consider that anyone coming here to hate us is ‘sauce for the goose’ . . .
I enjoy your frequent comments on WUWT.
John
Alan,
Questioning science is fine. Required in my book. What causes this troll to swarm are the broad-sweeping, thinly evidenced (read:preposterous) allegations and insinuations of nefarious manipulation you are so fond of spewing. It’s difficult to have a properly skeptical evidence-based conversation when one party flatly and categorically rejects the empirical observations which don’t conform to their position.
Hey Brandon,
I think it’s doubly funny that mentions of trolls caused you to not only come out of the closet and admit that you are a troll, but that you also went on to mount an ad hominem attack against me. You weren’t even on the list of trolls I was thinking about when making those earlier remarks, but the shoe sure fit you, so you picked it up and put it on. Hilarious!
By the way, it’s almost heartwarming to see you recognize and list all of your traits and characteristics of which we’ve grown so wearily accustomed. For a moment, I almost had hope for your improvement, but I’m resigned that it won’t last… run along now and take your meds. The adults will still be here when you get back.
Alan,
I’ll put it in “scare quotes” next time. For ironically impaired donchaknow.
Says the guy who is fond of calling people trolls. See, I know my tu quoque too.
Of course the main point of my reply to you was the preposterous nature of your arguments about systemic data manipulation, and the near-impossibility of having a reasonable debate with someone when there is little or no commonly established basis for relevant facts.
Thphphththt …. “troll” is hardly encompassing of my most endearing qualities. Insufferably arrogant know-it-all is far more descriptive. And accurate.
How can I help but be perfectly charming with such good advice as that!
Brandon says “Of course the main point of my reply to you was the preposterous nature of your arguments about systemic data manipulation,”
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Since you have intruded yourself into this conversation, you’ve twice used those words and similar as a weapon of personal attack. Surely nothing I’ve said in this thread related in any way to your accusations. You pulled your smears out of thin air.
Your blatant defense of troll behavior makes me think that perhaps you are in fact, working in concert with some of the more ridiculous trolls who frequent these pages.
If you detest the term troll, then you should stop being a troll. You came out of the woodwork on this one, with sole point of making a baseless attack against me and now you’ve done it again.
Alan Robertson,
Not in this thread, but here’s a very current example from another one: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/29/a-sin-of-commission/#comment-1847758
Your manipulated graph and original statement did nothing but obscure the truth.
In response to a graph posted by rooter …
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/cCO2-to-T-volcano.jpg
… which if you click on you will find isn’t rooter’s graph at all.
You were saying something about pulling “smears out of thin air”?
I don’t detest the term “troll”, I object to its imprecise definition and selective, arbitrary application. Not just on WUWT but everywhere.
It is also a form of ad hominem argument. I don’t take kindly to “do as I say, not as I do” standards of behavior. If objecting to that is trolling, then I am guilty as charged.
Brandon, it’s simple, really… quit thinking of yourself as a troll and doing such things as outing yourself as a troll. Then, you won’t have to behave as a troll in order to maintain your self image and the rest of us won’t have to put up with it, either.
Alan,
I don’t think of myself as a troll. That I’m given to making ascerbic remarks about arguments which I think are crap does not cut it in my book. Especially not WUWT which is a gathering place for people given to verbally skewering arguments and people alike. Can you honestly tell me that my comments are any more a paint-peeling “personal attack” than your quote: Your manipulated graph and original statement did nothing but obscure the truth.? Are you ever going to acknowledge that it isn’t even rooter’s plot? Substantiate your assertion that it was somehow improperly manipulated?
Here’s my unsolicited advice to you. If you don’t want people to throw rocks at your arguments, don’t throw rocks with your arguments. I’m more a cinder block guy myself, dropped from a great height when I can manage it. The petty whinging you’re dealing on my alleged troll complex isn’t fit to be called gravel. You need a boulder here, and you’re not going to find it with amateur Internet psychoanalysis. I’d be heads-down in the data were I in your shoes.
“What causes this troll to swarm are the broad-sweeping, thinly evidenced (read:preposterous) allegations and insinuations of nefarious manipulation… ”
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Again, it is apparent that the only one who has called anyone a troll in this thread is you, Brandon. You interjected yourself into a lighthearted banter about trolls and then also dragged another person into the conversation. It’s too bad that you haven’t yet realized that by your effort to besmirch and intimidate me for using the term “troll”, that you subtly and indelibly branded that other person as a troll. Surely, that couldn’t have been your intent?
Enough about trolls. That graph and rooter’s statements really do need more than my opinion given in passing…
First, I don’t care who made the graph originally, or where it was found. When rooter posted it and commented, he owned it and the graph became “your (rooter’s) graph” for purposes of discussion. Your machinations about ownership are a strawman, but you know that (don’t you?) Semantics aside, any graph could be viewed as a manipulation (hint: the “fitted” label in this case is a big tipoff.) That graph isn’t too bad, but was used by rooter to make a point about a causal logarithmic relationship between CO2 and temperature. If rooter’s statement and the graph’s correlation were together meaningful, then the ideas that atmospheric CO2 had no warming impact before 1950 and thus, could be responsible for only half of any warming since that time, would be wrong. By attacking my opinion of both the graph and rooters smartypants comment(s) at the time, you are saying that what we think we know of atmospheric physics is wrong, effectively claiming- CO2 was the driver which brought the planet out of the Little Ice Age. If causality attributed to the graph’s correlation were correct and the physics is wrong, then any early 21st century warming would have continued in step with increase in CO2atm and there might have been a closer “fit” during other periods covered by the graph. Is that what happened?
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” the broad-sweeping, thinly evidenced (read:preposterous) allegations and insinuations of nefarious manipulation you are so fond of spewing…”
Really?
Alan Robertson,
Yes, please, by all means, enough.
More of a positive ad hominem in the form of an appeal to good reputation, if not authority. And yes, I’m fully aware of it. It was intentional.
A logical possibility, sure. It just happens that I’ve done that particular fit myself a number of times, so I natively trust it.
Here’s the plot again:
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/cCO2-to-T-volcano.jpg
1850-1950 shows about 0.15 K of predicted warming, so yes I agree that “the ideas that atmospheric CO2 had no warming impact before 1950” is challenged on the basis of this plot alone.
That is not my position.
Magic didn’t bring us out of the LIA either. Here’s one well-known contributing factor to both the LIA and the rising temperature trends following it:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itsi_wls_ann.png
It’s difficult to answer that question because it hinges on the implicit conclusion that the physics is wrong. Look at 1880-1920 and 1940-1980, and then look at this:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iamo_hadsst.png
Yes, really. I don’t keep a tally, so perhaps I overstated. It’s a common enough theme in these parts and I do have my own prejudices working against me.
Just when I thought this was becoming an interesting discussion. Alas.
And there I was thinking that the linked song was exceedingly interesting (and ever so apropos.)
Mwahahaaa