The climate change misinformation at a top museum is not a conservative conspiracy
A sign at the American Museum of Natural History has outdated information about climate change
By Alessandra Potenza@ale_potenza Jan 8, 2018
Over the weekend, Twitter users — including some climate scientists — were upset by a plaque at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, which seems to be spreading misinformation about climate change. The panel, titled “Recent Climatic Changes and Extinctions,” misstates the role that human emissions of greenhouse gases play in causing global warming. It also says that, although we’re currently living in one of Earth’s warm periods, “there is no reason to believe that another Ice Age won’t come.” But it turns out, the panel was put up 25 years ago, according to the museum, so it contains outdated information that reads very differently today.
Images of the sign were first tweeted by environmental economist Jonah Busch, and were shared over 2,000 times. Busch tweeted that the panel is at the David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing, which was funded by right-wing philanthropist and fossil fuel magnate David H. Koch, and asked the museum to “separate this panel from its donor’s interest.” The tweet sparked outrage among scientists and the general public: “Dear @AMNH I bring my young kids to visit regularly because science & natural history is fascinating, inspiring and fun,” one tweet read. “Please do not misguide their curious minds. If we can’t even trust the AMNH to give us the facts who can we? Very sad.”
I am shocked and saddened to see the American Museum of Natural History @amnh promoting misinformation on climate change in its David M. Koch-funded Dinosaur Wing 1/
Here is one of the Tweets from a “climate scientist”…
My friends at @AMNH: I do think this requires both explanation and action. It suggests a breach of the firewall that is supposed to stand between the agenda of the donor and the objectivity of scientific content.
So… David Koch funded the Dinosaur Wing (really good with Buffalo sauce), the Ice Age exhibit has a plaque which says, “there is no reason to believe that another Ice Age won’t come”… And this is some sort of climate denier “misinformation on climate change” and a “breach of the firewall that is supposed to stand between the agenda of the donor and the objectivity of scientific content”???
Do these people not understand that the Dinosaur Wing and Ice Age exhibit are two different exhibits, separated by over 60 million years of geologic time? Setting aside the fact that we are living in an interglacial stage of an ice age… How is it misinformation to state that “there is no reason to believe that another Ice Age (glacial stage) won’t come”? Maybe we’ll get lucky and anthropogenic CO2 will forestall or mitigate the onset of the next Quaternary glacial stage… But I wouldn’t bet on it.
FORECASTING THE FUTURE. We can now try to decide if we are now in an interglacial stage, with other glacials to follow, or if the world has finally emerged from the Cenozoic Ice Age. According to the Milankovitch theory, fluctuations of radiation of the type shown in Fig. 16-18 must continue and therefore future glacial stages will continue. According to the theory just described, as long as the North and South Poles retain their present thermally isolated locations, the polar latitudes will be frigid; and as the Arctic Ocean keeps oscillating between ice-free and ice-covered states, glacial-interglacial climates will continue.
Finally, regardless of which theory one subscribes to, as long as we see no fundamental change in the late Cenozoic climate trend, and the presence of ice on Greenland and Antarctica indicates that no change has occurred, we can expect that the fluctuations of the past million years will continue.
Donn, William L. Meteorology. 4th Edition. McGraw-Hill 1975. pp 463-464
Even though the plaque is supposedly 25 years old, it clearly says that “human pollutants may also have an effect on Earth’s climatic cycles”… Well, they might have an effect.
Is their issue the phrase “recent climatic changes and extinctions”? In a layman’s sense, there is very little evidence that recent climatic changes have caused any extinctions. In a geological sense, “recent” generally refers to the Holocene. Although, more strictly, the “Cen” in Cenozoic means recent.
It really boggles the mind that so many people frequenting the geological exhibits of the AMNH could be so ignorant of basic Quaternary geology, particularly the alleged climate scientists who chimed in on this Twitter-storm.
Addendum: Cenozoic Temperatures and CO2
The Earth’s climate rapidly cooled about 34 million years ago. This cooling marks the transition from the Eocene to the Oligocene…
Cenozoic temperature anomaly. Older is to the right, x-axis is millions of years before present (1950 AD). Earth’s climate rapidly cooled about 34 million years ago.
Whereas atmospheric CO2 appears to have remained elevated for about 2 million years after the sudden drop in temperature…
Cenozoic atmospheric CO2. Older is to the left, x-axis is in millions of calendar years AD (BC). The Mauna Loa instrumental record is depicted by the solid black line at year 0. Oligocene CO2 levels drop from about 800-1,000 ppmv to about 600 ppmv from 32.5 to 30 MYA.
My apologies for the different x-axes. I made these graphs several years ago and don’t recall where I saved the Excel files.
The sign says “human made pollutants may have an effect on Earth’s climatic cycles”. Maybe that is what they object to. Surely no credible climate scientist would think human activity is going to stave off the next ice age. Milankovitch must be turning in his grave.
Arrhenius actually speculated that human CO2 emmission might save the planet from another ice age. I believe he thought that a good thing. Of course, Arrhenius did not accept the argument that the Michelson Morley experiment had demonstrated that there was no evidence of a luminiferous aether either.
Take a look at Plows. Plagues and Petroleum by William Ruddiman from 1995. Based on the data available at the time, he makes an interesting case for the thesis that agriculture and associated standing water methane is the reason we’re not in an ice age now. The alternate title of his book is How Humans Took Control of Climate.
I have listed some search results, but I suggest that the readers do their own search on the Rockefellers website, like “Global Warming” or “Climate Change”, “sea level” or similar and see how much cash is forwarded to advocates of AGW.
Most of the graduate study areas are more related to atmospheric, environmental and climate science then geology or geophysics.
Joe
January 9, 2018 7:12 am
I am quite surprised to see an allegedly scientific institution put that plaque up. Seriously, how does a plaque about ice ages get put in a dinosaur exhibit? Very concerning, and something that should be corrected.
Any word on who, if anyone, is ‘Funding’ the Ice Age exhibit?
I’m assuming it ISN’T koch. This is just another example of the Climate Faithful playing Six Degrees of Fossil Fuel Funding, where anything the don’t want to hear is just ‘misinformation’ from the Climate denial machine.
But person on Twitter says it’s in the dinosaur exhibit, which is funded by Koch dollars. How can you get more definitive than that? Clearly scandalous! Besides, if it’s not in the dinosaur exhibit, how can we possibly create the link to Big Oil that is it takes to make the official narrative have the necessary impact? (Sorry, the sarc font has been disabled on my computer)
Thanks for the link, Alan. Very fascinating! Quickly scanning through the original journal article your linked story is based on, it’s not clear that there’s strong evidence for a true “ice age”, but I’m sure the earth residents of the time weren’t too thrilled about such a dramatic cool-down, regardless of whether it was accompanied by ice sheet formation. I’ll have to read it more in depth later. Thanks again!
OMG I am shocked and saddened to see the Smithsonian promoting misinformation on climate change blah blah blah.
My friends at the Smithsonian need to explain and act on this travesty. It suggests a breach of the firewall that is supposed to stand between Common Sense and the Agenda of the CAGW member church.
There is no better indication of the prominent role of statist media in the CAGW scam than Mann retaining any credibility after a career of 390x fraud, data hiding, FOIA/PR subjugation and ad hom attacks on real scientists. The systemic omission of reality has kept this massive statist gravy train intact while billions of dung-reliant humans live without clean water. Sad…
Well, if we had commercially developed thorium molten salt reactors, which we pioneered at Oak Ridge in the 60’s and 70’s instead of developing uranium water cooled reactors, the world might not be in a state of energy poverty. Instead we went with the reactors good for making bombs and fossil fuels, good for making wars.
We are not in a state of “energy poverty! We are in a state of energy stupidity!
If thorium reactors are safe, reliable and cost effective- bring ’em on! But that won’t cure the self promoting b.s. that oozes out of likes of Al Gore or Michael Mann.
I like the molten salt/molten fuel reactor designs for safety and potential cost savings (ability to operate at atmospheric pressure has a lot to do with both), and the ability to tremendously extend the nuclear fuel supply (that’s why Th is part of the mix). They don’t actually run on Thorium – they have to start up with some U235 (or another fissionable isotope such as Pu 239) – the Th232 is used to breed U233 which because of its smaller beta fraction is actually a bit jumpier fuel than U235. They can still be used to create bomb material, so I don’t count that as a selling point.
The water filled reactors got a head start because they were a practical solution for use on naval submarines and large ships – sailors had to be able to operate them safely and reliably under a variety of conditions – other proposed designs were harder for ship designers to adapt and meet requirements using the available 1940s/1950s tech. Once a good track record was established with PWRs and BWRs, it was easier use the available design and operating experience base to scale those up and get a commercial industry going. We have a very hard time getting non-water designs thru the regulatory approvals because of a lack of experience with other designs (CO2 GCR and Helium HTGR being the exceptions, and those were tough sledding initially – eventually those fell by the wayside).
Space program uses Pu238 for heat pellets. Can’t make Pu238 in a thorium molten salt reactor. Have to use a conventional water-cooled reactor, and uranium, to make it.
Speaking of safe and reliable, I spoke yesterday to Dr Thomas Qu, a member of the China-Canada team that is designing a new generation of CANDU reactors that uses plutonium-contaminated waste from high pressure light-water reactors as fuel. This design is now complete and bidding can start.
The new CANDU will take the leftovers from others and generate energy from it. Brilliant.
We’re entering a new Dark Ages if the Ignorati like Michael Mann have their way with the minds of our children.
I spent Monday (yesterday) wandering around Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas with my dog on the trails and the Paluxy River. (The park is about 3.5 miles west as the crow flies from the Glen Rose nuclear generating station, another bonus visit-trip awaits)
There are places where the dino tracks in the river bed rock look like they were made yesterday. In the early 1940’s, some of the best specimens (huge slabs of rock) were cut out of the river bed and hauled to NYC for the AMNH dino exhibit there. According to the park placards, the discovery of sauropod tracks there shocked the world’s paleotologists as only theropods were then believed to have existed at that time in dino history.
Very cool to see that and realize how the Earth’c geology and climate has convulsed and changed over the intervening 100 million years since those tracks were made in an ancient muddy shoreline during the early-Cretaceous.
The same could be said for Niccolò Machiavelli’s “The Prince”.
His indictment of those who seek power over the rest of us has been viewed as a how- to handbook.
The main assumption at the heart of the CO₂ hypothesis is that CO₂ does not only control climate now, but it has done so also in the past. Given its dominance this assumption is contaminating our traditional understanding of past climates as climate history is being rewritten to make it depend on CO₂.
Regarding the end of the interglacial the dominant hypothesis states that it is not going to end in at least 50,000 years. This is based on three assumptions without enough supporting evidence.
1. No glacial period in the Pleistocene has started with CO₂ levels above 350 ppm.
But that doesn’t say anything about the capability of CO₂ of preventing glaciations. It speaks of the very low CO₂ levels during the Pleistocene.
2. CO₂ levels are expected to rise further and won’t decrease below 350 ppm for thousands of years.
The long decay of atmospheric CO₂ is hypothetical. We really don’t know how fast CO₂ levels can decrease, as the biological response from the biosphere is unknown. Atmospheric CO₂ levels have raised much slower than expected, as the airborne fraction has been decreasing.
3. By the time CO₂ levels are low enough Northern summer insolation will be increasing preventing a glaciation.
Increasing Northern summer insolation has never prevented a glaciation. Glaciations take place due to decreasing obliquity (axis tilt), and obliquity is going to continue decreasing for the next 10,000 years.
However saying that our interglacial is due to end in the next few millennia has become a climate deni@r statement. That museum sign is accurate but offensive.
After studying the issue I have come to the conclusion that there is a good window of opportunity for the next glaciation to start in ~2000 years, around 4,000 AD. Perhaps humans will be able to prevent it, or perhaps not. I would not count on it. The Earth axis is a huge climate forcing.
“We really don’t know how fast CO₂ levels can decrease”, indeed, but we do know that currently ~half anthropic CO2 is eaten up by sinks, meaning if we stopped sending C2 in the atmosphere, pCO2 would plummet as fast as they currently rise, so that in a century it would be back to preindustrial level. Or even quicker, depending on the delay needed for the biological response (photosynthesis) to take advantage of the boon CO2.
There’s also the formation of lime mud. The more CO2, the faster the process…
Lisa L. Robbins1, Kimberly K. Yates1
(1) U. S. Geological Survey, St. Petersburg, FL
Abstract: Microbial calcification: implications for marine whitings and inorganic carbon cycling
Microbial calcification has been identified as a significant source of carbonate sediment production in modern marine and lacustrine environments around the globe. This process has been linked to the production of modern whitings and large, micritic carbonate deposits throughout the geological record. Recent research has advanced our understanding of the microbial calcification mechanism as a photosynthetically driven process. However, little is known of the effects of this process on inorganic carbon cycling or of the effects of changing atmospheric CO2 concentrations on microbial calcification mechanisms.
Direct measurements of air:sea CO2 gas fluxes and carbonate sediment production rates were measured in whitings located on the Great Bahama Bank and in laboratory cultures of calcifying cyanobacteria and unicellular green algae. In situ gas flux measurements showed a reduction in atmospheric CO2 relative to adjacent waters outside of whitings. Similar results were also observed in laboratory cultures. Calcification rates in whitings and laboratory cultures ranged from approximately 0.06 to 34.5 g CaCO3m-3h-1. These results suggest that production of microbial carbonates may serve as a sink for inorganic carbon. Laboratory cultures of calcifying microbes were subjected to biological buffers to examine the role of photosynthetic uptake of inorganic carbon species in calcification. Results from these experiments indicate that microbial calcification mechanisms depend upon the species of inorganic carbon available to cells for photosynthesis and, thus, atmospheric CO2 concentrations. These results suggest fluctuations in Phanerozoic dominance trends for calcareous cyanobacteria and algae may be linked to fluctuations in atmospheric CO2.
meaning if we stopped sending C2 in the atmosphere, pCO2 would plummet as fast as they currently rise, so that in a century it would be back to preindustrial level.
No, that is an assumption too. You assume that sink rates will continue elevated even if we curtail emissions, but we don’t know that either.
The most logical interpretation is that sinks are proportional to atmospheric levels all else being equal, so as atmospheric levels decrease sinks should decrease too.
However it is more complex. During glaciations temperatures decrease while CO₂ levels remain sustained. Possibly because the vegetation dying from the cooling keeps releasing CO₂.
tonyb: Your prediction looked like a hoax, but then a robust certainty arose, so it must be science! Would say more, but I gotta get my broker to order mitten futures.
Good summary. As for the first item, I always like to point out that 450 mya, four THOUSAND ppm CO2 couldn’t stop the Earth from going into a full blown glaciation. So the mythical climate driving ability of CO2 is just that – mythical.
Excellent summary Javier, and kudos for being one of the only people in this debate who is comfortable with the (often correct) answer “we don’t know that.”
The vast gulf between long-accepted paleo geology and the “climate consensus” is really fascinating, in much the same way as a train wreck.
Mike,
It is offensive to consensus supporters because it contradicts their hypothesis main assumption. It is like questioning the virginity of Mary to a Catholic, the divinity of Jesus to a Christian, or the authorship of the Quran by Muhammad to a Muslim. Very offensive. You don’t mess with people’s core beliefs.
schitzree
January 9, 2018 7:35 am
When your religion or political movement requires the rewriting of history, especially GEOLOGICAL history, to avoid being proven wrong, then it has become a joke.
And not the funny kind.
~¿~
Griff
January 9, 2018 7:47 am
since dinosaurs evolved into birds, I’m willing to bet that dinosaur wing – and dinosaur generally – would taste pretty good with barbecue sauce.
I thought the birds were there before the KT event and while the dinosaurs died, the birds were able to adapt and survive. The evolution to birds occurred before the event, I believe.
Birds came first. There was a great presentation by the Royal Ontario Museum on Flight which traced the evolution of birds into dinosaurs. They were also the first I know of to show large dinosaur replicants covered in feathers. The velociraptor was one. It looks like a big chicken, not a plucked one as in Jurassic Park.
Flight evolved at least twice – with and without feathers. Non-feathered dinosaurs came after the feathered ones.
Years ago, there was a humour article in (I think) Analog SF magazine. Entitled “Survival of the tastiest”, it explained that Kentucky fried pterodactyl just didn’t work, and similar problems. I guess that Ice Age mammoth must have tasted pretty good (‘cos they’ve gone), but just couldn’t be domesticated!
The “continent” argument is logical, just as arguing that CO2 may effect planetary temperature based on a laboratory property of the gas. But, like the climate-CO2 linkage, there are empirical facts that at least raise some questions about the full adequacy of the idea that the joining of the Americas resulted in in the Pleistocene. The last time the planet was this cold and this impoverished with respect to carbon (as an average across both glacial and interstadial periods) was 250 million years ago at the end of the Permian. The final stages of the Permian were an ice age similar to the Permian. CO2 levels recovered following the Permian extinction and rose gradually for roughly half the Mesozoic before beginning another long downward trend to the present. We have no really good explanations for the end of the Permian or the extinction. However, what little evidence we do have suggests that the last gasp of the Permian was an ice age, an idea based on increased evidence of continental environments around marine margins. That indicates a significant drop in sea levels easiest explained by increased ice sheets. My own suspicion is that Permian extinction was triggered by low levels of CO2 leading to an ecological collapse. I believe this is supported by the extinctions during the last glacial. Instead of the abrupt event commonly presented in popular accounts, large mammal species gradually failed over a span of at least 10,000 to 20,000 years. Those extinctions occurred as CO2 was at its absolute lowest levels, very close to the point where primary production fails. Another line of evidence that supports the argument that CO2 is biologically rather than climatically critical is found in plant evolution. The appearance of C4 and CAMS cycle plants provides for a more efficient carbon cycling by these plant under conditions of drought and lower carbon availability. Older C3 plant forms such as coniferous trees lack this adaptability. Its worth note especially that grasses appeared about 40 million years ago and that Wikipedia (of all sources!) goes so far as to state: … The grasses, as well as many other groups, evolved new mechanisms of metabolism to survive the low CO2 and warm, dry conditions of the tropics over the last 10 million years. [emph. added].
Very thought provoking comments. But…could you Please put some paragraphs into your comments..they’re really hard to read otherwise and I suspect many won’t bother they way they are.
“Very thought provoking comments. But…could you Please put some paragraphs into your comments..they’re really hard to read otherwise and I suspect many won’t bother they way they are.”
You would be correct.
Andy Pattullo
January 9, 2018 7:58 am
I find it very encouraging that the dissembles of global warming crap leap at every opportunity to display publicly their lack of scientific credentials.
Sorry “dissemblers” -Apple likes to “correct” appropriate spelling to something other.
Walter Sobchak
January 9, 2018 8:00 am
It is just droll how crazy the Name Koch makes the leftist borg units. The Koches have been very philanthropic and have made major contributions to a number of important institutions in New York City beyond AMNH, including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Hospital and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. The New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, home of the New York City Ballet was renamed the David H. Koch Theater in 2008 following a gift of 100 million dollars for the renovation of the theater.
Each of those contributions has been followed by a leftist temper tantrum. It is to be noted that George Soros and Tom Steyer have kept their hands in their pockets.
Steyer spend millions trying to get liberals elected. Soros has Open Society, that he is said to have dumped billions into. They spend—on their own causes. The “right” causes, which is why no leftist objections.
Koch or no Koch another glaciation of the N. America will come sooner or later, Boston could be the harbinger of the ‘icing-up’. Boston mayor said the other day it’s due to global warming (?!) and now Russians may be on the way to rescue his citizens from freezing up.
“Russian gas that was imported to Britain late last year could be coming to the rescue of ice-bound Americans as freezing weather in the northeast of the US sends prices soaring.
A tanker carrying liquefied natural gas from storage facilities in Kent appeared yesterday to be heading to Boston, according to shipping data reported by Bloomberg, although its destination could yet change.” https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/russian-gas-heads-for-frozen-boston-via-isle-of-grain-907dqqplq
Needed because those idiots closed down and destroyed perfectly good coal plants, and now rely heavily on NG. But… they refused to increase pipeline capacity, so the NE is running out of NG.
Well played morons.
I think he’s more like Trofim Lysenko than Lenin. Lysenko did more damage than Lenin ever dreamed of with fraudulent science. Look him up.
TDBraun
January 9, 2018 8:38 am
I think what happened is this professor saw the sign that Koch was funding the museum and, full of prejudice for the guy, he went around looking for something politically incorrect that he could use to puff up his own ego by drumming up a controversy, and this innocent little paragraph was the best he could find. Pathetic but typical.
The Inquisition has always been very concerned with heretics. They burned heretical books, in some cases heretics themselves. Some things never change.
Moderately Cross of East Anglia
January 9, 2018 8:56 am
Since others have introduced a religious note you may all be slightly amused by the news that when it comes to making a fast buck the Church of England makes Wall Street’s Bank of Evil look slow off the mark amateurs . The CofE has just written to people who have purchased formerly church lands that they have no right to any minerals or fracked gas underneath “their” property.
Never mind planetary stewardship, eco responsibilities, or any of that right on crap, when it comes to money the church that likes to say yes will steamroller over anyone or anything that stands between it and money in the coffers like a steamroller flattening kippers (ok I just made that analogy up, but you get the idea).
None of this saveing the planet piffle for the CofE then!
Was this in the original contracts when the land was sold or is it a later money-making idea?
Sara
January 9, 2018 9:05 am
This tantrum of Mann’s looks like an episode of obsessive compulsive disorder manifested as angry tweets and bitter attempts at recrimination. If someone would just put the choke chain on that fat little dweebie, it would help.
This is another episode of ridiculous behavior by a set of control freaks who want to be the first in finger-pointing at NOTHING. Their credibility is rapidly diminishing. I can’t take anything they say seriously any more. Mann is the manifestation of idiotis supremis, in spades.
Can I get extra crispy dinosaur wings, potato wedges, and one of those fake ice cream sundaes with fake chocolate sauce?
The funds will more than likely be refused. Others have refused donations from the Koch brothers. The liberal club does not allow direct donations, though selling one’s TV station to an oil-rich country is apparently OK. Qutar is not the evil Koch Brothers, I guess…
In fact, as far as I can gather, the only observable manifestation of increased atmospheric CO2 is that the planet has greened by 14% in the last 30 years.
Rick C PE
January 9, 2018 9:33 am
So now the geological record regarding ice ages and glacial/interglacial cycles is misinformation? Talk about deni@l of “settled science”.
It would be interesting to see how these bozos (Busch & Mann) react if they discover the David H. Koch “Hall of Human Origins” at the National Museum of Natural History in DC. Trigger Warning: Don’t go if you’re a Creationist.
Funny how some alarmists claim CC is here now but some say it is still in the future.
John Mason
January 9, 2018 9:50 am
Similar desires to Stalinize well known but inconvenient scientific facts have actually been accomplished in regards to Glacier National Park. Their web site used to state the glaciers in the park all are about 3000 years old, which is still true. Just like the ice man that melted out of the Alps receding glaciers, both are obvious indicators it’s been much warmer in the past within this current inter glacial.
And most proxies agree that in this inter-glacial it’s been warmer than now 5 times and our current blip out of the little ice age is the least warm of this total set of 6 warming periods.
That little key phrase ‘warmest year on record’ is quite deceptive. (and at most we are the 3rd warmest in the Satellite record for 2017)
All is well within, in fact swamped, in naturally variability. CO2 is not the thermostat of the planet. That’s the primary tenant of this religion and it’s false.
Looks like absolute accuracy!
The sign says “human made pollutants may have an effect on Earth’s climatic cycles”. Maybe that is what they object to. Surely no credible climate scientist would think human activity is going to stave off the next ice age. Milankovitch must be turning in his grave.
Bill Nye does…no joke.
Bill Nye The Science Guy; Catastrophic Ice-Age Averted, Man-Made CO2 Saved Mankind
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/bill-nye-the-science-guy-catastrophic-ice-age-averted-man-made-co2-saved-mankind/
Bill Nye “Is Not The Right” Guy Would Prefer an Ice Age Over the Current Warming
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/bill-nye-is-not-the-right-guy-would-prefer-an-ice-age-over-the-current-warming/
co2islife, Bill Nye has no credibility, scientific or otherwise.
Arrhenius actually speculated that human CO2 emmission might save the planet from another ice age. I believe he thought that a good thing. Of course, Arrhenius did not accept the argument that the Michelson Morley experiment had demonstrated that there was no evidence of a luminiferous aether either.
Take a look at Plows. Plagues and Petroleum by William Ruddiman from 1995. Based on the data available at the time, he makes an interesting case for the thesis that agriculture and associated standing water methane is the reason we’re not in an ice age now. The alternate title of his book is How Humans Took Control of Climate.
It is very one eyed to complain that the Koche Foundation is funding climate science in a negative fashion or otherwise.
In my blog I have an article on the Rockefeller Bros website who conveniently have a search option on their dispersion of grants.
https://thedemiseofchristchurch.com/2015/08/15/the-rockefellers-who-they-fund-from-their-web-site/
I have listed some search results, but I suggest that the readers do their own search on the Rockefellers website, like “Global Warming” or “Climate Change”, “sea level” or similar and see how much cash is forwarded to advocates of AGW.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Indeed. And Michael Mann’s PhD in geology needs to be rescinded. That, or it was from some diploma mill that’s no longer in business.
His degrees are from Yale’s Department of Geology & Geophysics … but not necessarily in geology.
https://earth.yale.edu/academics/graduate-program
Most of the graduate study areas are more related to atmospheric, environmental and climate science then geology or geophysics.
I am quite surprised to see an allegedly scientific institution put that plaque up. Seriously, how does a plaque about ice ages get put in a dinosaur exhibit? Very concerning, and something that should be corrected.
It’s not in the dinosaur exhibit. The ice age and dinosaur exhibits are in two different wings. They just happen to be on the same floor.
Any word on who, if anyone, is ‘Funding’ the Ice Age exhibit?
I’m assuming it ISN’T koch. This is just another example of the Climate Faithful playing Six Degrees of Fossil Fuel Funding, where anything the don’t want to hear is just ‘misinformation’ from the Climate denial machine.
But person on Twitter says it’s in the dinosaur exhibit, which is funded by Koch dollars. How can you get more definitive than that? Clearly scandalous! Besides, if it’s not in the dinosaur exhibit, how can we possibly create the link to Big Oil that is it takes to make the official narrative have the necessary impact? (Sorry, the sarc font has been disabled on my computer)
QED/SARC
How could they put the ice age and dinosaur exhibits on the same floor? That’s indefensible.
Do they know nothing about stratification?
Joking aside, there WAS at least one ice age during the Jurassic.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151211124428.htm
Thanks for the link, Alan. Very fascinating! Quickly scanning through the original journal article your linked story is based on, it’s not clear that there’s strong evidence for a true “ice age”, but I’m sure the earth residents of the time weren’t too thrilled about such a dramatic cool-down, regardless of whether it was accompanied by ice sheet formation. I’ll have to read it more in depth later. Thanks again!
There’s this one from 2009:
‘Global Cooling’ Exhibit Still on Display at the Smithsonian
“1890 to 1945 was abnormally warm” …
OMG I am shocked and saddened to see the Smithsonian promoting misinformation on climate change blah blah blah.
My friends at the Smithsonian need to explain and act on this travesty. It suggests a breach of the firewall that is supposed to stand between Common Sense and the Agenda of the CAGW member church.
It’s no good saying it here, get out on TwitBook my friend.
There is no better indication of the prominent role of statist media in the CAGW scam than Mann retaining any credibility after a career of 390x fraud, data hiding, FOIA/PR subjugation and ad hom attacks on real scientists. The systemic omission of reality has kept this massive statist gravy train intact while billions of dung-reliant humans live without clean water. Sad…
Well, if we had commercially developed thorium molten salt reactors, which we pioneered at Oak Ridge in the 60’s and 70’s instead of developing uranium water cooled reactors, the world might not be in a state of energy poverty. Instead we went with the reactors good for making bombs and fossil fuels, good for making wars.
“…reactors good for making bombs and fossil fuels, good for making wars.”
——————
So far, reactors have only made bombs good for stopping wars.
Other than that, what fossil fuels do reactors make?
We are not in a state of “energy poverty! We are in a state of energy stupidity!
If thorium reactors are safe, reliable and cost effective- bring ’em on! But that won’t cure the self promoting b.s. that oozes out of likes of Al Gore or Michael Mann.
pretty good for powering subs, ships ….
will the thorium process be able to be scaled for portability … boats, space, etc?
I like the molten salt/molten fuel reactor designs for safety and potential cost savings (ability to operate at atmospheric pressure has a lot to do with both), and the ability to tremendously extend the nuclear fuel supply (that’s why Th is part of the mix). They don’t actually run on Thorium – they have to start up with some U235 (or another fissionable isotope such as Pu 239) – the Th232 is used to breed U233 which because of its smaller beta fraction is actually a bit jumpier fuel than U235. They can still be used to create bomb material, so I don’t count that as a selling point.
The water filled reactors got a head start because they were a practical solution for use on naval submarines and large ships – sailors had to be able to operate them safely and reliably under a variety of conditions – other proposed designs were harder for ship designers to adapt and meet requirements using the available 1940s/1950s tech. Once a good track record was established with PWRs and BWRs, it was easier use the available design and operating experience base to scale those up and get a commercial industry going. We have a very hard time getting non-water designs thru the regulatory approvals because of a lack of experience with other designs (CO2 GCR and Helium HTGR being the exceptions, and those were tough sledding initially – eventually those fell by the wayside).
Space program uses Pu238 for heat pellets. Can’t make Pu238 in a thorium molten salt reactor. Have to use a conventional water-cooled reactor, and uranium, to make it.
Speaking of safe and reliable, I spoke yesterday to Dr Thomas Qu, a member of the China-Canada team that is designing a new generation of CANDU reactors that uses plutonium-contaminated waste from high pressure light-water reactors as fuel. This design is now complete and bidding can start.
The new CANDU will take the leftovers from others and generate energy from it. Brilliant.
Where there’s muck, there’s brass.
We’re entering a new Dark Ages if the Ignorati like Michael Mann have their way with the minds of our children.
I spent Monday (yesterday) wandering around Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas with my dog on the trails and the Paluxy River. (The park is about 3.5 miles west as the crow flies from the Glen Rose nuclear generating station, another bonus visit-trip awaits)
There are places where the dino tracks in the river bed rock look like they were made yesterday. In the early 1940’s, some of the best specimens (huge slabs of rock) were cut out of the river bed and hauled to NYC for the AMNH dino exhibit there. According to the park placards, the discovery of sauropod tracks there shocked the world’s paleotologists as only theropods were then believed to have existed at that time in dino history.
Very cool to see that and realize how the Earth’c geology and climate has convulsed and changed over the intervening 100 million years since those tracks were made in an ancient muddy shoreline during the early-Cretaceous.
‘We’re entering a new Dark Ages if the Ignorati like Michael Mann have their way with the minds of our children.’
See: Bill Nye.
The Apocalypse draws Nye — he is immanentizing the Exxschiton.
Rewriting history is what ‘1984’ warned us about, but these climate scam merchants use ‘1984’ as their bible.
“1984” was meant to be a cautionary tale, unfortunately too many people seem to see it as a how to manual, “Totalitarianism For Dummies.”
He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
The same could be said for Niccolò Machiavelli’s “The Prince”.
His indictment of those who seek power over the rest of us has been viewed as a how- to handbook.
The Chinese and the Egyptians both edited history in an effort to present a preferred narrative as the current usage goes.
The main assumption at the heart of the CO₂ hypothesis is that CO₂ does not only control climate now, but it has done so also in the past. Given its dominance this assumption is contaminating our traditional understanding of past climates as climate history is being rewritten to make it depend on CO₂.
Regarding the end of the interglacial the dominant hypothesis states that it is not going to end in at least 50,000 years. This is based on three assumptions without enough supporting evidence.
1. No glacial period in the Pleistocene has started with CO₂ levels above 350 ppm.
But that doesn’t say anything about the capability of CO₂ of preventing glaciations. It speaks of the very low CO₂ levels during the Pleistocene.
2. CO₂ levels are expected to rise further and won’t decrease below 350 ppm for thousands of years.
The long decay of atmospheric CO₂ is hypothetical. We really don’t know how fast CO₂ levels can decrease, as the biological response from the biosphere is unknown. Atmospheric CO₂ levels have raised much slower than expected, as the airborne fraction has been decreasing.
3. By the time CO₂ levels are low enough Northern summer insolation will be increasing preventing a glaciation.
Increasing Northern summer insolation has never prevented a glaciation. Glaciations take place due to decreasing obliquity (axis tilt), and obliquity is going to continue decreasing for the next 10,000 years.
However saying that our interglacial is due to end in the next few millennia has become a climate deni@r statement. That museum sign is accurate but offensive.
After studying the issue I have come to the conclusion that there is a good window of opportunity for the next glaciation to start in ~2000 years, around 4,000 AD. Perhaps humans will be able to prevent it, or perhaps not. I would not count on it. The Earth axis is a huge climate forcing.
“We really don’t know how fast CO₂ levels can decrease”, indeed, but we do know that currently ~half anthropic CO2 is eaten up by sinks, meaning if we stopped sending C2 in the atmosphere, pCO2 would plummet as fast as they currently rise, so that in a century it would be back to preindustrial level. Or even quicker, depending on the delay needed for the biological response (photosynthesis) to take advantage of the boon CO2.
There’s also the formation of lime mud. The more CO2, the faster the process…
http://www.usaragonite.com/docs/Oshenite_reports_2001-microbialLime.pdf
No, that is an assumption too. You assume that sink rates will continue elevated even if we curtail emissions, but we don’t know that either.
The most logical interpretation is that sinks are proportional to atmospheric levels all else being equal, so as atmospheric levels decrease sinks should decrease too.
However it is more complex. During glaciations temperatures decrease while CO₂ levels remain sustained. Possibly because the vegetation dying from the cooling keeps releasing CO₂.
After reading your series at Climate Etc, I think I agree. But none of us will be around in 2K yrs to see…. 🙂
Alcor is still a thing, is it not?
Javier
I have obviously studied this matter much harder than you have.. the next glaciation will start at 10am on 15th July 3276 AD.
unfortunately none of us will be around to prove me wrong but I am robustly certain of my predictions.
tonyb
Did you take day light savings time into account?
Better check my calendar. Ahh, it needs to be moved to next week, I have a timeshare meeting that day. The time is fine.
Leap years?
and as we say in Canada – “10:30 in Newfoundland“
I Heard a newfie say ” Go Ahead, Back up!”
tonyb: Your prediction looked like a hoax, but then a robust certainty arose, so it must be science! Would say more, but I gotta get my broker to order mitten futures.
Good summary. As for the first item, I always like to point out that 450 mya, four THOUSAND ppm CO2 couldn’t stop the Earth from going into a full blown glaciation. So the mythical climate driving ability of CO2 is just that – mythical.
Excellent summary Javier, and kudos for being one of the only people in this debate who is comfortable with the (often correct) answer “we don’t know that.”
The vast gulf between long-accepted paleo geology and the “climate consensus” is really fascinating, in much the same way as a train wreck.
Agreed. People tend to be uncomfortable saying “we don’t know”. Well done, Javier.
Javier – OK, I’m a bit slow at times, but I can’t see why “That museum sign is [..] offensive.“.
Mike,
It is offensive to consensus supporters because it contradicts their hypothesis main assumption. It is like questioning the virginity of Mary to a Catholic, the divinity of Jesus to a Christian, or the authorship of the Quran by Muhammad to a Muslim. Very offensive. You don’t mess with people’s core beliefs.
When your religion or political movement requires the rewriting of history, especially GEOLOGICAL history, to avoid being proven wrong, then it has become a joke.
And not the funny kind.
~¿~
since dinosaurs evolved into birds, I’m willing to bet that dinosaur wing – and dinosaur generally – would taste pretty good with barbecue sauce.
Launch that Jurassic park project right now!
Truth is stranger than science fiction…
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
I can’t help thinking about the giant ribs in the intro for The Flintstones.
8 to 10 inch Pterodactyl hot wings, and they’re one of the smaller flyers. I’m going to need a lot of blue cheese dressing.
^¿^
It’s funny. For a long time I thought that giant rib was some kind of chair……
Bronto Burgers…YUMMY
I think I’m starting to understand why they went extinct…and taste like chicken!
Griff,
Where I come from barbecue suggests, indeed requires, burning carbon-based fuel.
Are we to understand that you do that?
Uff da!
I get my charcoal from coppiced UK woodland… regrows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing
Griff,
Glad to see you do have a sense of humerus.
I’ll get my coat…
Yep, That is probably griff’s most sensible comment in , like 10 years. ! 🙂
Still absolutely zero science to back it, though
Just like AGW…. an unprovable supposition, just requiring “belief” and “gullibility”.
For dinosaurs to have evolved into birds, would require that some dinosaurs survived the KT event. Since none did, birds came from someplace else
I thought the birds were there before the KT event and while the dinosaurs died, the birds were able to adapt and survive. The evolution to birds occurred before the event, I believe.
Griff
Birds came first. There was a great presentation by the Royal Ontario Museum on Flight which traced the evolution of birds into dinosaurs. They were also the first I know of to show large dinosaur replicants covered in feathers. The velociraptor was one. It looks like a big chicken, not a plucked one as in Jurassic Park.
Flight evolved at least twice – with and without feathers. Non-feathered dinosaurs came after the feathered ones.
Apologised yet, you little liar?
Years ago, there was a humour article in (I think) Analog SF magazine. Entitled “Survival of the tastiest”, it explained that Kentucky fried pterodactyl just didn’t work, and similar problems. I guess that Ice Age mammoth must have tasted pretty good (‘cos they’ve gone), but just couldn’t be domesticated!
“a breach of the firewall that is supposed to stand between the agenda of the donor and the objectivity of scientific content”
He clearly meant.
“a breach of the firewall that we have worked so hard to achieve between the agenda of the IPCC and the objectivity of scientific content”
Good translation!
When the government does it, it’s objective.
My WAG is that we will continue to have glaciations as long as the continents are in their current configuration. link
The “continent” argument is logical, just as arguing that CO2 may effect planetary temperature based on a laboratory property of the gas. But, like the climate-CO2 linkage, there are empirical facts that at least raise some questions about the full adequacy of the idea that the joining of the Americas resulted in in the Pleistocene. The last time the planet was this cold and this impoverished with respect to carbon (as an average across both glacial and interstadial periods) was 250 million years ago at the end of the Permian. The final stages of the Permian were an ice age similar to the Permian. CO2 levels recovered following the Permian extinction and rose gradually for roughly half the Mesozoic before beginning another long downward trend to the present. We have no really good explanations for the end of the Permian or the extinction. However, what little evidence we do have suggests that the last gasp of the Permian was an ice age, an idea based on increased evidence of continental environments around marine margins. That indicates a significant drop in sea levels easiest explained by increased ice sheets. My own suspicion is that Permian extinction was triggered by low levels of CO2 leading to an ecological collapse. I believe this is supported by the extinctions during the last glacial. Instead of the abrupt event commonly presented in popular accounts, large mammal species gradually failed over a span of at least 10,000 to 20,000 years. Those extinctions occurred as CO2 was at its absolute lowest levels, very close to the point where primary production fails. Another line of evidence that supports the argument that CO2 is biologically rather than climatically critical is found in plant evolution. The appearance of C4 and CAMS cycle plants provides for a more efficient carbon cycling by these plant under conditions of drought and lower carbon availability. Older C3 plant forms such as coniferous trees lack this adaptability. Its worth note especially that grasses appeared about 40 million years ago and that Wikipedia (of all sources!) goes so far as to state:
… The grasses, as well as many other groups, evolved new mechanisms of metabolism to survive the low CO2 and warm, dry conditions of the tropics over the last 10 million years. [emph. added].
Duster
January 9, 2018 at 3:15 pm
Very thought provoking comments. But…could you Please put some paragraphs into your comments..they’re really hard to read otherwise and I suspect many won’t bother they way they are.
“Very thought provoking comments. But…could you Please put some paragraphs into your comments..they’re really hard to read otherwise and I suspect many won’t bother they way they are.”
You would be correct.
I find it very encouraging that the dissembles of global warming crap leap at every opportunity to display publicly their lack of scientific credentials.
Sorry “dissemblers” -Apple likes to “correct” appropriate spelling to something other.
It is just droll how crazy the Name Koch makes the leftist borg units. The Koches have been very philanthropic and have made major contributions to a number of important institutions in New York City beyond AMNH, including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Hospital and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. The New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, home of the New York City Ballet was renamed the David H. Koch Theater in 2008 following a gift of 100 million dollars for the renovation of the theater.
Each of those contributions has been followed by a leftist temper tantrum. It is to be noted that George Soros and Tom Steyer have kept their hands in their pockets.
Steyer spend millions trying to get liberals elected. Soros has Open Society, that he is said to have dumped billions into. They spend—on their own causes. The “right” causes, which is why no leftist objections.
Koch or no Koch another glaciation of the N. America will come sooner or later, Boston could be the harbinger of the ‘icing-up’. Boston mayor said the other day it’s due to global warming (?!) and now Russians may be on the way to rescue his citizens from freezing up.
“Russian gas that was imported to Britain late last year could be coming to the rescue of ice-bound Americans as freezing weather in the northeast of the US sends prices soaring.
A tanker carrying liquefied natural gas from storage facilities in Kent appeared yesterday to be heading to Boston, according to shipping data reported by Bloomberg, although its destination could yet change.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/russian-gas-heads-for-frozen-boston-via-isle-of-grain-907dqqplq
all the way from Yamal (M. Mann’s tree ring) peninsula
Needed because those idiots closed down and destroyed perfectly good coal plants, and now rely heavily on NG. But… they refused to increase pipeline capacity, so the NE is running out of NG.
Well played morons.
Yamal was Briffa’s baby, not Mann’s.
Since we can’t seem to stop tankers getting oil to the NK regime, maybe we can stop this one and let the “Bostonians freeze in the dark.”
This guy exemplifies the type of moronic and zealous cult behavior that we’ve come to expect from the pseudoscience environmental economists.
Micheal Mann’s profile is looking more like Vlad Lenin than diquc that he is
I think he’s more like Trofim Lysenko than Lenin. Lysenko did more damage than Lenin ever dreamed of with fraudulent science. Look him up.
I think what happened is this professor saw the sign that Koch was funding the museum and, full of prejudice for the guy, he went around looking for something politically incorrect that he could use to puff up his own ego by drumming up a controversy, and this innocent little paragraph was the best he could find. Pathetic but typical.
+1
The Inquisition has always been very concerned with heretics. They burned heretical books, in some cases heretics themselves. Some things never change.
Since others have introduced a religious note you may all be slightly amused by the news that when it comes to making a fast buck the Church of England makes Wall Street’s Bank of Evil look slow off the mark amateurs . The CofE has just written to people who have purchased formerly church lands that they have no right to any minerals or fracked gas underneath “their” property.
Never mind planetary stewardship, eco responsibilities, or any of that right on crap, when it comes to money the church that likes to say yes will steamroller over anyone or anything that stands between it and money in the coffers like a steamroller flattening kippers (ok I just made that analogy up, but you get the idea).
None of this saveing the planet piffle for the CofE then!
Was this in the original contracts when the land was sold or is it a later money-making idea?
This tantrum of Mann’s looks like an episode of obsessive compulsive disorder manifested as angry tweets and bitter attempts at recrimination. If someone would just put the choke chain on that fat little dweebie, it would help.
This is another episode of ridiculous behavior by a set of control freaks who want to be the first in finger-pointing at NOTHING. Their credibility is rapidly diminishing. I can’t take anything they say seriously any more. Mann is the manifestation of idiotis supremis, in spades.
Can I get extra crispy dinosaur wings, potato wedges, and one of those fake ice cream sundaes with fake chocolate sauce?
Perhaps Mann can be muzzled by the Koch organisation providing him or his university (then indirectly to him) with research funds.
The funds will more than likely be refused. Others have refused donations from the Koch brothers. The liberal club does not allow direct donations, though selling one’s TV station to an oil-rich country is apparently OK. Qutar is not the evil Koch Brothers, I guess…
“Qutar is not the evil Koch Brothers, I guess…”
Neither is Qatar.
Definition of “misinformation”: any fact that that disproves CAGW. Definition of “information”: anything (fact or not) that proves CAGW.
Definition of “expert”: Anyone who agrees that CO2 is gonna kill us all.
so there is a massive lack of expertise on this website. Just as I thoughted.
Ricdre
“anything (fact or not) that proves CAGW.”
Nothing so far has proven it.
In fact, as far as I can gather, the only observable manifestation of increased atmospheric CO2 is that the planet has greened by 14% in the last 30 years.
So now the geological record regarding ice ages and glacial/interglacial cycles is misinformation? Talk about deni@l of “settled science”.
It would be interesting to see how these bozos (Busch & Mann) react if they discover the David H. Koch “Hall of Human Origins” at the National Museum of Natural History in DC. Trigger Warning: Don’t go if you’re a Creationist.
They’ll go and demand to close the exhibit.
Funny how some alarmists claim CC is here now but some say it is still in the future.
Similar desires to Stalinize well known but inconvenient scientific facts have actually been accomplished in regards to Glacier National Park. Their web site used to state the glaciers in the park all are about 3000 years old, which is still true. Just like the ice man that melted out of the Alps receding glaciers, both are obvious indicators it’s been much warmer in the past within this current inter glacial.
And most proxies agree that in this inter-glacial it’s been warmer than now 5 times and our current blip out of the little ice age is the least warm of this total set of 6 warming periods.
That little key phrase ‘warmest year on record’ is quite deceptive. (and at most we are the 3rd warmest in the Satellite record for 2017)
All is well within, in fact swamped, in naturally variability. CO2 is not the thermostat of the planet. That’s the primary tenant of this religion and it’s false.
“That’s the primary tenant of this religion and it’s false.”
Does that tenant have tenets?
So Orwellian… completely accurate claims must be replaced by largely speculative claims. For Science!