It crops up repeatedly: but there was no medieval warm period (MWP), therefore the modern warming is unprecedented.
The CO2 Science web site has a long-running project to examine records all over the world concerning temperatures in the medieval period. Their overview page makes a great introduction to the project. They cite material from hundreds of scientists and institutions. Really quite impressive.
So when will the warmists stop saying there was no medieval warm period?
Views: 747
Never. Because it ruins their story. Just like they will never stop accusing bloggers of being in the pay of “big oil”.
Hilarious eh.
Difficult to counter that sort of weight. I wonder why the alarmists always try?
I suspect they only read John Cook, so they have no idea just how useless he is.
Yes, this “little” project has been quietly ticking over in the background for several years and has grown into a strapping young fellow with very impressive credentials and surely a fine future ahead of him.
So,is it fair to say that there is a 97% consensus that the MWP exists, and therefore “the debate is over” and “the science is settled”?
Bob, if you actually believe Idso’s claims, then I have a bridge in Auckland you can buy real cheap…
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2008/08/more_for_the_annals_of_climate_1.html
A refutation of Idso’s claims would be more persuasive than just a cheap joke. If your link is a refutation, kindly give a summary of it in your own words so we know whether to visit it. – RT
1094 individual scientists here:-
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/scientists.php
From 627 research institutions in 46 different countries here:-
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/institutions.php
I’ve just been informed by Google that I have “1318 files waiting in Google Drive”. The major chunk of those are climate related and in addition to the pile on my home PC and a few in Dropbox.
Convenient headsup then, that all this MWP science is at one link. As is 1100+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarm:-
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
Poptech of course, raising the ire (and censure) of John Cook:-
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2012/09/personal-message-to-stephan-lewandowsky/#comment-116632
I would add that CCG Open Threads contains a wealth of out-takes and links too.
Skeptical Science: The Censorship of Poptech
“The impact of that ban on PopTech was to silence him.” – Sphaerica (Bob Lacatena) [Skeptical Science]
In March of 2012, the same computer illiterates at Skeptical Science who do not know how to use Google Scholar had their forums hacked and the contents posted online. In these I am mentioned in at least 65 discussions, with 17 forum threads started that specifically mention my name and one forum category devoted entirely to discussing the Popular Technology.net list of papers. These discussions involve almost entirely with how to “deal” with the list. One of the ways they attempted to “deal” with the list was by having a former bike messenger and man-purse maker Rob Honeycutt write a Google Scholar illiterate post. In it Rob failed to use quotes when searching for phrases, is unable to count past 1000 and failed to remove erroneous results such as, “Planet Mutonia and the Young Pop Star Wannabes” – believing it to be a peer-reviewed paper about global warming. After being unable to refute how Google Scholar actually works they resorted to an extensive censorship of my comments and eventually a site wide purge of all of them.
The forum thread on Rob’s post shows it initially started off with high hopes,
“Poptech and the other minions of denialdom will hate this …so naturally I like it.” – Daniel Bailey [Skeptical Science], February 13, 2011
This quickly descended into panic,
“Exit strategy for the Meet the Denominator thread: Do we have one? […] Poptech is indefatigable …Against such an adversary traditional methodologies are doomed to impasse. This makes the thread the Skeptical Science version of Afghanistan (substitute with many other protracted losing campaigns). I say we let Rob write up a closing synopsis …but giving Skeptical Science the last word. And lock the thread & throw away the key.” – Daniel Bailey [Skeptical Science], February 18, 2011
“Poptech will not go away. I’ve deleted a number of his …comments, but I feel no obligation to explain to him why they disappear.” – muoncounter (Dan Friedman) [Skeptical Science], February 19, 2011
Continues >>>>>>>>
http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/09/skeptical-science-censorship-of-poptech.html
“He kept repeatedly posting comments, one after the other, that had to be deleted. I wasn’t prepared to stay up all night deleting comments from that loser.” – Rob Painting [Skeptical Science], October 11, 2011
I can’t believe you’re so wrong. I’m backed by snopes, wikipedia, and a half dozen journals. You’re citing .net pages with black backgrounds and like 20 fonts each.
http://xkcd.com/1081/
Simon, what are you talking about?
Simon, your execution routine needs to be reset.
Go to your control panel, hit the ‘Pause’ button. Toggle ‘Random Comment Mode’ to “Off”.
Then hit the “Reset’ and “Resume’ buttons in that order.
That should fix it.
Toggle ‘Random Comment Mode’ to “Off”.
Probably the wrong diagnosis – I now think it’s Simon’s Select_blog_post subroutine that’s run amok.
🙂
Richard T, can you actually link to anything recent (last couple of years) by “warmists” (not a nobody) claiming there was no MWP?
Sure. Skeptical Science, today: http://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm.
Please notice that Mr Cook doesn’t say there was “no MWP”. He tries to have his cake and eat it, for he says the MWP was cooler than it is now. So, was it a warm period, or not? I’ll leave you to decide that for yourself.
But if he says the MWP was cooler than now, when the IPCC reported earlier that it was warmer than now, there’s no question that the “warm” period has been removed.
Of course, the old (Hockey Stick) argument is unaltered, for Cook can still say that present temperatures are unprecedented. The point of having the real MWP was being able to say that present temperatures were not unprecedented.
Ahh, you’ll have to do a heck of a lot better than that to justify “So when will the warmists stop saying there was no medieval warm period?” That Skeptical Science post is a total acknowledgement that the MWP existed,it seems that once again you’re putting words into other peoples mouths.
“But if he says the MWP was cooler than now, when the IPCC reported earlier that it was warmer than now, there’s no question that the “warm” period has been removed.”
Twenty years ago there was no basis in science to compare NH average temperatures during the MWP with NH average temperatures today, now there is, science progresses.
“The point of having the real MWP was being able to say that present temperatures were not unprecedented”
Well, your words not mine. So you cling to the belief that the MWP was warmer than today so you can argue that present temperatures are not unprecedented.
Here’s a link to that puppet site of the Warmists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
They don’t seem to be denying the existence of the MWP there either.
The main point to remember about the MWP is that it is clear from all the proxies, the historical and archeological records that it existed and was warmer than the present.
Now, the only counter-view to this was Mann’s infamous hockey stick paper [MBH1998]. Regarding this paper, the Wegman panel later had this to say:
“In general, we found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of [McIntyre and McKitrick] to be valid and compelling.”
This finding confirmed the NAS panel’s conclusions, where Bloomfield said that MBH98 usage of the PC analysis was “unconventional” and “problematic”, and contained “certain distortions”. This is why Mann refused to release his R-squared statistic for the verification period (it was close to zero).
When the analysis was later done correctly by McIntyre and McKitrick, the hockey stick shape disappeared, and the MWP re-appeared, warmer than the present day. This of course simply confirmed what everybody already knew. M&M were also able to confirm that MBH98 failed both the R-squared and the RE verification tests. The M&M analysis passed both.
Going back further, we know the Roman Warm Period was warmer again than the MWP, and the Minoan Warm Period was warmer than the Roman. This means the modern warming is by no means unprecedented.
“The main point to remember about the MWP is that it is clear from all the proxies, the historical and archeological records that it existed ..”
Correct
“…and was warmer than the present.”
The North Atlantic region was about as warm as it is today, the whole NH not as warm as today.
“Now, the only counter-view to this was Mann’s infamous hockey stick paper [MBH1998].”
MBH’98 is in agreement with subsequent NH paleoclimate reconstructions.
Regarding this paper, the Wegman panel later had this to say: “In general, we found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of [McIntyre and McKitrick] to be valid and compelling.”
This finding confirmed the NAS panel’s conclusions, where Bloomfield said that MBH98 usage of the PC analysis was “unconventional” and “problematic”, and contained “certain distortions”.
And yet, contrary to what is claimed in the “skeptic” blogsphere, the statistical methodological corrections recommended by M&M and NAS, made no difference to the “hockey stick” shape, though they increased the error bars (level of uncertainty) for the period of the reconstruction from more than 600 years BP.
“When the analysis was later done correctly by McIntyre and McKitrick, the hockey stick shape disappeared, and the MWP re-appeared, warmer than the present day.”
Wrong, but, link please.
“Going back further, we know the Roman Warm Period was warmer again than the MWP, and the Minoan Warm Period was warmer than the Roman. This means the modern warming is by no means unprecedented.”
” we know”? Link please.
Andrew W:
Incorrect. There are a multitude of studies showing that both the NH and SH were warmer than today during the MWP. The Roman WP was again warmer than the MWP, and the Minoan WP warmer again than the RWP. See the links at the top of this page.
The subsequent studies used the same proxies and the same methodologies as MBH98. It is therefore unsurprising that they got the same answers. In many cases the same authors shared papers. Definitely not independent studies. Briffa (1999) even remarked on the similarity of data proxies used, and warned against reading too much into the fact that they agreed with MBH98.
Incorrect. The hockey stick as defined using the 1-sigma rule disappeared. See The Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford.
For a full discussion of the problems with MBH98 and subsequent work by Mann trying to support MBH98, see here.
For discussions regarding the RWP and Minoan WP, see the links given at the top of the page. Also, see historical records regarding crops grown throughout these times, as a start (eg: vineyards in Britain and Northern France during the Roman Empire).
I personally visited the Medieval village at Hound Tor on England’s Dartmoor some years ago. There is evidence that they grew crops and had grazing stock. It is very hard to imagine living up there now because it is so cold and inhospitable
There are quite a lot of parish records from the time that document wine growing across England and Scotland, all indicating that the period was warmer then today in the British Isles.
CO2 science is hunting around for papers to support their theories, it’s called cherry picking, the reconstructions that go through peer review don’t cherry pick, if it’s a reconstruction of climate in Central Europe from 1800 to 2000 using Glacier Records they use all the Glacier Records in central Europe that cover the period from 1800 to 2000.
The more extensive NH reconstruction use over a thousand data sets.
From Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy#Subsequent_reconstructions
I have provided you with papers from over 1,000 scientists. You consistently respond with papers by ONE scientist.
And you accuse me of cherry-picking!
Bob, the proxy reconstructions over the last 14 years:
P.D. Jones, K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett, and S.F.B. Tett (1998). “High-resolution Palaeoclimatic Records for the last Millennium: Interpretation, Integration and Comparison with General Circulation Model Control-run Temperatures”. The Holocene 8: 455-471. doi:10.1191/095968398667194956
: M.E. Mann, R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes (1999). “Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations”. Geophysical Research Letters 26 (6): 759-762.
Crowley and Lowery (2000). “Northern Hemisphere Temperature Reconstruction”. Ambio 29: 51-54. Modified as published in Crowley (2000). “Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years”. Science 289: 270-277. doi:10.1126/science.289.5477.270
K.R. Briffa, T.J. Osborn, F.H. Schweingruber, I.C. Harris, P.D. Jones, S.G. Shiyatov, S.G. and E.A. Vaganov (2001). “Low-frequency temperature variations from a northern tree-ring density network”. J. Geophys. Res. 106: 2929-2941.
J. Esper, E.R. Cook, and F.H. Schweingruber (2002). “Low-Frequency Signals in Long Tree-Ring Chronologies for Reconstructing Past Temperature Variability”. Science 295 (5563): 2250-2253. doi:10.1126/science.1066208.
M.E. Mann and P.D. Jones (2003). “Global Surface Temperatures over the Past Two Millennia”. Geophysical Research Letters 30 (15): 1820. doi:10.1029/2003GL017814.
P.D. Jones and M.E. Mann (2004). “Climate Over Past Millennia”. Reviews of Geophysics 42: RG2002. doi:10.1029/2003RG000143
S. Huang (2004). “Merging Information from Different Resources for New Insights into Climate Change in the Past and Future”. Geophys. Res Lett. 31: L13205. doi:10.1029/2004GL019781
A. Moberg, D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karlén (2005). “Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data”. nature 443: 613-617. doi:10.1038/nature03265
J.H. Oerlemans (2005). “Extracting a Climate Signal from 169 Glacier Records”. Science 308: 675-677. doi:10.1126/science.1107046
(and others)
Were each based on many of the data sets you refer to, and many other data sets your CO2 link is blind to, in total the work of thousands of scientists.
Most of these papers have been dealt with by M&M as referenced in the Hockey Stick Illusion. Each one gets its own section, detailing where the data and/or methods have overlapped, and how these have affected the results. These are the dependent studies I mentioned before.
On the other hand, the CO2science references are independent, and deal with studies from all over the globe, and the oceans.
Bob, if you have several studies that take each use a huge chunk of the available data sets, yes, they’ll over lap, to avoid an overlap you’ll need to use the relatively small number of data sets that haven’t been used, but between them, those minority of data sets won’t give a proxy reconstruction of high confidence, especially if the people putting together that reconstruct are seeking data sets that support their preconceptions.
Do you think, even for a second, that what CO2 Science is putting together is an objective study?
“Do you think, even for a second, that what CO2 Science is putting together is an objective study?”
How is the project conducted?
As we discover new peer-reviewed scientific journal articles pertaining to the Medieval Warm Period, we briefly describe their most pertinent findings in the Study Descriptions and Results section of the project. The locations of all such studies are then plotted on a map of the globe, and the intervals of time they associate with the Medieval Warm Period are incorporated into a graph of the frequency distribution of all such time intervals, which is located just beneath the map in the project’s Interactive Map and Time Domain Plot feature. In extremely rare cases where only a single year is specified for the MWP, we assign it a 100-year timespan centered on the year reported by the study’s authors. For studies that allow the determination of an actual temperature difference between the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Current Warm Period (CWP), this number is incorporated into the frequency distribution of all such differentials in the project’s MWP-CWP Quantitative Temperature Differentials section. For studies that allow only a qualitative determination of the temperature difference between the MWP and CWP to be made, results are presented in the project’s MWP-CWP Qualitative Temperature Differentials section. Last of all, the names of all scientists and research institutions associated with the MWP Project studies we cite are included in our List of Scientists Whose Work We Cite and List of Research Institutions Associated With the Work We Cite.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/description.php
Nah, can’t be objective.
Not when the CO2 science mission is:
The project’s reason for being derives from the claim of many scientists — and essentially all of the world’s radical environmentalists — that earth’s near-surface air temperature over the last few decades was higher than it has been during any similar period of the past millennium or more. This claim is of utmost importance to these climate alarmists; for it allows them to further claim there is something unnatural about recent and possibly ongoing warming, which allows them to claim that the warming has its origins in anthropogenic CO2 emissions, which allows them to claim that if humanity will abandon the burning of fossil fuels, we can slow and ultimately stop the warming of the modern era and thereby save the planet’s fragile ecosystems from being destroyed by catastrophic climate changes that they claim will otherwise drive a goodly percentage of earth’s plants and animals to extinction. Since these are serious contentions, we feel that their underlying basis must be rigorously tested with real-world data.
It looks as if they are on a mission to eliminate full-stops as well.
Bottom line:-
“Since these are serious contentions, we feel that their underlying basis must be rigorously tested with real-world data”
Good idea don’t you think?
In which case it should be a relatively trivial task for the likes of John Cook to put together a much larger list of papers all showing no MWP in each of the regions listed, and detailing why the MWPs that are shown are in each case a purely regional phenomenon.
Perhaps you should suggest it to him?
Already been done.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
That could hardly be construed as “a much larger list of papers all showing no MWP in each of the regions listed, and detailing why the MWPs that are shown are in each case a purely regional phenomenon”
Richard C
Those papers are the result of combining many data sets, in total the work of thousands of scientists.
Which is exactly what CO2 Science is trying to do.
Sorry, Bob, you’ve lost me – please provide the relevant links again, if they exist.
“….please provide the relevant links again, if they exist.” – Here’s the existence.
Links via CO2 Science “at the top of this page” (was that too hard?):-
List of Scientists Whose Work We Cite
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/scientists.php
List of Research Institutions Associated With the Work We Cite
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/institutions.php
Research Institutions include:-
New Zealand
– Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University, Wellington
– Chemistry Department, University of Waikato, Hamilton
– Gondwana Tree-ring Laboratory, Little River
– Joint Antarctic Research Institute, Victoria University and GNS Science, Wellington
– Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, Palmerston North
– National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd.
– School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland, Auckland
– Wildlands Consultants Ltd.
Oh come on, Richard, CO2science.org is nothing more than a paid mouthpiece for the fossil fuel industry:
http://www.desmogblog.com/craig-idso
Next, you’ll be quoting the Tobacco Institute on the health benefits of smoking…..
“…nothing more than a paid mouthpiece for the fossil fuel industry” – Shooting the messenger?
Even if it is – so what? The problem you have to address is the “weight of science” as Andrew puts it (papers), the sheer number of scientists involved, and the overwhelming participation and contribution of Research Institutions by virtue of the papers (8 from NZ alone).
All of the above research organisations concur that anthropogenic climate change is occurring.
“All of the above research organisations concur that anthropogenic climate change is occurring.”
All? Care to catalogue their positions as proof of that?
Even If they do – so what? That is another issue entirely. This is merely about the production of papers.
I know the directors of Wildlife Consultants Ltd well. They have never written any papers on climate change. There seems to be a lot of superfluous entity and scientist counting going on.
Andrew and Rob have tried to explain this to you but I will have a go. Meta-studies (like Mann’s) that include the data of as many studies as possible are superior to selecting a subset of papers and summarising them in a one line potted history, especially if that summary is vaguely worded and perhaps not what the author intended.
“I know the directors of Wildlife Consultants Ltd well”
Do they, as you say, “concur that anthropogenic climate change is occurring”?
“Meta-studies (like Mann’s) that include the data of as many studies as possible are superior to selecting a subset of papers”
What’s the CO2 Science Project vs Meta studies count Simon?
Ballpark figures will suffice to give us an indication of the “weight of science”.
CO2 Science lists T Martin and there’s a Dr Tim Martin at Wildland Consultants. Whether they’re one-and-the-same I don’t know.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/scientists.php
http://www.wildlands.co.nz/meet-the-team.html
Martin, T. in two CO2 Science citations
New Zealand’s Eastern North Island
Reference
Lorrey, A., Williams, P., Salinger, J., Martin, T., Palmer, J., Fowler, A., Zhao, J.-X. and Neil, H. 2008. Speleothem stable isotope records interpreted within a multi-proxy framework and implications for New Zealand palaeoclimate reconstruction. Quaternary International 187: 52-75.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l3_nzeastnorth.php
New Zealand’s Western South Island
Reference
Lorrey, A., Williams, P., Salinger, J., Martin, T., Palmer, J., Fowler, A., Zhao, J.-X. and Neil, H. 2008. Speleothem stable isotope records interpreted within a multi-proxy framework and implications for New Zealand palaeoclimate reconstruction. Quaternary International 187: 52-75.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l3_nzwestsouth.php
Possibly Dr Tim Martin of Wildland Consultants.
Simon
All of the above research organisations concur that anthropogenic climate change is occurring.
I also concur that anthropogenic climate change is happening. By my mere existence on this planet, i have an effect on the climate, as does my dog.
Vapid statements like these are very easy to make and very hard to refute
“Possibly Dr Tim Martin of Wildland Consultants” – Sure enough:-
Speleothem stable isotope records interpreted within amulti-proxyframework and implications for NewZealand palaeoclimate reconstruction
* Andrew Lorreya, b, Corresponding author contact information, E-mail the corresponding author,
* Paul Williamsb,
* Jim Salingera,
* Tim Martinc,
* Jonathan Palmerd,
* Anthony Fowlerb,
* Jian-xin Zhaoe,
* Helen Neila
* a National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd., NewZealand
* b University of Auckland, School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, Auckland, NewZealand
* c Wildlands Consultants Ltd., NewZealand
* d Gondwana Tree-ring Laboratory, Little River, NewZealand
* e Radiogenic Isotope Laboratory, Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis (CMM), University of Queensland, Australia
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618207003084
Simon you can have as many MWP Meta-studies as you like but none of them (including the CO2 Science Project) prove or otherwise, a CO2 forcing effect of any significance.
For that you will have to address the body of radiative heat transfer physics and science. The IPCC haven’t deferred to that body and as a result they’ve oversimplified CO2 forcing. That is inexcusable given the consequences of IPCC advocacy.
Oh you”re such a conspiracy junkie Rob. You’re so funny.
Still here, David?
Isn’t it past your bedtime, and does your mother know you’re wearing her undies again?
You’ve no evidence for that implication.
Ooh , nasty . Yep and my Mums undies were paid for and are sponsored by big tobacco. You are so funny to laugh at with your cute little zealotry and your undying belief in conspiracy theories.
Richard, read my lips – IT. IS. A. SCAM. FOR. SUCKERS.
Here is Alicia Newton, an Associate Editor of Nature Geoscience:
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2008/08/more_for_the_annals_of_climate_1.html
And you conclude “IT. IS. A. SCAM” by that – good for you Rob.
Now refute EVERY SINGLE ONE of those MWP papers.
Oh dear, you really have no idea how you are being played, do you, Richard?
This is just a variant of the old creationist “Gish Gallop” beloved of Monckton, et al – read the Nature Geoscience comment above to see how it works.
“The are none so blind as those who will not see”
One…more…time…;(I’ll…type…slowly…for…you….)
The… papers… used… in…. the… climate… reconstructions… I’ve…. linked… to…. vastly… out… number…. the…. papers…. listed…. in…. the…. CO2 Science…..project.
Got…that…this…time???
What’s the count Andrew? CO2 Science papers vs your links?
I’m not being facetious, just curious of the count – no more, no less.
CO2 Science: “Stott et al. conclude that the cause of the deglacial deep-water warming ‘does not lie within the tropics nor can its early onset between 19 and 17 thousand years before the present be attributed to CO2 forcing.’”
Stott et al: “The cause of this deglacial deep-water warming does not lie within the tropics, nor can its early onset between 19 and 17 ky B.P. be attributed to CO2 forcing. Increasing austral-spring insolation combined with sea-ice albedo feedbacks appear to be the key factors responsible for this warming”
CO2 Science: “And since the rate of deep-water warming after the start of the increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration did not increase (if anything, it declined), there is no compelling reason to believe that the deglacial increase in the air’s CO2 content had anything at all to do with any of the warming that led to the ultimate development of the current interglacial.”
Stott et al:- Deep-sea temperatures warmed by ~2°C between 19 and 17 thousand years before the present (ky B.P.), leading the rise in atmospheric CO2 and tropical–surface-ocean warming by ~1000 years
Stott et al:- The benthic d18O values from MD98-2181 began to decrease from the cold
glacial maximum values at 19 to 18.5 ky B.P. and decreased progressively by ~0.5‰ over the next 1000 years. If this 0.5‰ decrease was entirely due to temperature, it means that nearly all of the glacial/interglacial deep-water warming occurred before 17.5 ky B.P. and therefore before both the onset of deglacial warming in tropical Pacific surface waters and the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
http://climate.biol.sc.edu/Publications/2007/timmerman2007.pdf
Poor Alicia’s memory must be failing.
I’ll take it slowly, but do try to pay attention, Richard:
It is well understood that the trigger for warming was Milankovitch, amplified by ice-albedo feedbacks. Warmer water then caused atmospheric CO2 concentrations to rise via outgassing from the ocean / sediments, triggering further greenhouse warming, which led to increased outgassing and so on into to the full interglacial.
Idso misrepresents Stott’s discussion of the initial causes of the deglaciation, by saying:
As Alicia correctly points out, this is a false inference, as it ignores the greenhouse effect of the CO2 and consequent feedbacks.
Too subtle for you perhaps? In that case, keep drinking the Kool Aid, suckers!
“Warmer water then caused atmospheric CO2 concentrations to rise via outgassing from the ocean”
Thank you Rob Taylor.
Stott et al: “The cause of this deglacial deep-water warming does not lie within the tropics, nor can its early onset between 19 and 17 ky B.P. be attributed to CO2 forcing. Increasing austral-spring insolation combined with sea-ice albedo feedbacks appear to be the key factors responsible for this warming”
Get that? Nor can [deglacial deep-water warming] early onset ……. be attributed to CO2 forcing
Stott et al:- Deep-sea temperatures warmed by ~2°C between 19 and 17 thousand years before the present (ky B.P.), leading the rise in atmospheric CO2 and tropical–surface-ocean warming by ~1000 years
And did you get that? Deep-sea temperatures warmed……..leading the rise in atmospheric CO2
Then there’s the gigantic problem with this statement of yours:-
“….triggering further greenhouse warming, which led to increased outgassing”
Really? How did CO2 do that exactly (citations please)?
Richard C, read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record
Rob,
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that CO2 Science correctly describes the outcome of Lowell Stott’s paper. The paper’s final statement is:
“Retreating sea-ice would have led to enhanced Ekman transport in the Southern Ocean and decreased stratification due to stronger air-sea fluxes. We hypothesize that these forcings promoted enhanced ventilation of the deep sea and the subsequent rise in atmospheric CO2.”
So the paper presents no evidence, but a hypothesis of a rise in atmospheric CO2, nor can it say what, if anything, it might have accomplished – in short, it gives no reason to believe that “the deglacial increase in the air’s CO2 content had anything at all to do with any of the warming that led to the ultimate development of the current interglacial.” Because that’s not what they studied, and it’s not what they reported.
I see – “it remains unclear if this change [declining concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide] is sufficiently large to have caused the changes in temperatures”
But it is clear from the science of radiative heat transfer that CO2 concentrations above about 200 ppm have negligible forcing effect.
Well if that’s your major concern about that page you’ve obviously learned a lot in reading it.
I think it’s unclear if the CO2 decline over the last 3 million years has been a contributor to the temperature decline because the size of the declines in both temperature and CO2 have been small compared to the variability in temperature and CO2 concentrations over that period, put simply, we’ve had a temperature decline of 1 degree, but variations in temperature within that period (over the glacial-interglacial cycle) of several degrees, similarly the overall level of CO2 decline has been slight compared to the ~180 to 300 ppm variations in CO2 concentrations during the period.
I guess that would depend on your definition of “slight” and on your selection of blogs (or even climate science).
“I guess that would depend on your definition of “slight””
If you mean slight CO2 forcing, here’s the definition: ΔF =q-q0where q0 =q(278) {path length curve}
Graphed (note the difference between that and the IPCC simplification):-
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/eggert-co2.png
Why not take up the challenge Andrew? Refute (provide a credible null for) this hypothesis:-
The basis for it:-
An Unsettling Look at the Settled Science of Global Warming
Part 1: Scientific Discussion
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/agw-an-alternate-look-part-1-details-c.pdf
And here,
An Unsettling Look at the Settled Science of Global Warming
Part 2: Layman’s Discussion
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/agw-an-alternate-look-part-2-for-laymen.pdf
And here,
An Unsettling Look at the Settled Science of Global Warming
Part 3: Policy Maker’s Summary
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/agw-an-alternate-look-part-3-summary.pdf
The key point being the bogus “oversimplification” by the IPCC. Quoting Part 2:-
“The short summary of what it means is: CO2 increases will not increase the greenhouse effect. Full stop. That is it. CO2 is not a pollutant, it will not change the weather or climate. There is no basis whatsoever for trying to control the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The IPCC equation assumes a “logarithmic” or log relation between forcing and CO2. The path length curve more closely resembles a „log log‟ relation between forcing and CO2. That is the IPCC model is an oversimplification that results in overestimating the impact of CO2 at higher concentrations”
The AGW hypothesis-of-right in the absence of an actual documented AGW hypothesis.
Sure Andrew, more papers means its right ! Hilarious
Richard, it has somehow escaped your keen intellect that Stott et.al. are talking about the early onset of interglacial warming, i.e. the initial trigger (Milankovitch + feedbacks), whereas Idso expands this to infer that CO2 was not implicated at all in the current interglacial.
This is sleazy and dishonest; he is peddling denialist BS on the back of real research, in hope of “exploiting the scientific illiteracy of the general public” – that’s you, chum.
Rob, you fail to improve the discussion with “sleazy and dishonest” or “peddling denialist BS” (nor even, regrettably, because you don’t seem very chummy, “chum”). If you have a grievance, take it to Dr Idso, but don’t make empty allegations here. We’re hardly in a position to defend them, and it could be seen as cowardly of you not to give Dr Idso an opportunity to respond.
“Idso expands this to infer that CO2 was not implicated at all in the current interglacial”
Can’t improve on RT’s response up-thread except to ask:-
Please quote the passage of Stott et al that states that carbon dioxide IS implicated in the current interglacial according to your argument?
From the author himself:
“I don’t want anyone to leave thinking that this is evidence that CO2 doesn’t affect climate,” Stott cautioned. “It does, but the important point is that CO2 is not the beginning and end of climate change.”
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/uosc-cdd092507.php
The politest thing that I can say about CO2science is that it is intentionally misleading, not only in its potted summaries but also by implying that the scientists and organisations listed agree with what is stated on the website.
Very astute observation from Mr Stott.
“It does” – in a minor way
“…but the important point is that CO2 is not the beginning and end of climate change” – Exactly
“In addition, the authors’ model showed how changed ocean conditions may have been responsible for the release of CO2 from the ocean into the atmosphere, also accelerating the warming.”
Which has been the mainstream position for several years.
“…also accelerating the warming.” – this bit’s been the problem for years
By what process, and what is the physics basis for it?
Apparent correlation (over a brief time) does not causation make and the espoused basis (simplified forcing) has been found to be deficient.
This video will aid your understanding, Richard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY4Yecsx_-s&feature=youtu.be&t=6m4s
If you’re still confused, however, here is a detailed debunking of the MWP pseudoscience emanating from Exxon surrogates such as Jo Nova and the Idso family:
http://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/novas-warm-period/#more-915
Thanks to whoever wrote http://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/novas-warm-period/#more-915
It clearly demonstrates the cynical manipulation practised by CO2science and others.
Richard et. al., you have been had.
Thanks Rob, I’m convinced. Jo Nova along with Idso and Idso should be tried as heretics in a court adjudicated by the High Priests of Warmism.
/Sarc
Thanks Rob, that link to Itsnotnova is a real eye opener, “denialist” is the only term I could use to describe someone who reads that and still trusts CO2 Science.
Maybe you’d like to explain the Law Dome series to us and why this was excluded in the Gergis et al reconstruction for the Southern Hemisphere.
(and continues to be ignored by mainstream IPCC scientists even though the data is thought to be a very reliable proxy for temperature)
Quick, let’s change the subject!
We wouldn’t want the punters to see how they’ve been had, would we, Andy?
It is not changing the subject. The Law Dome series shows a strong MWP in the southern hemisphere. Researchers at the University of Melbourne decided to exclude this series from the SH reconstruction that supposedly showed a Hockey Stick.
This paper was subsequently withdrawn after statistical errors were shown to have occurred.
I would have thought this was right on topic
Just watched the video, also very good. It’s aprox a quarter hour long. So now RT now knows how much time he needs to find to watch it.
Thanks, Andrew, except that the only review we have so far is “very good”. Which isn’t persuasive.
Rob Taylor & Simon,
Dropping video links is an easy way to lecture people, isn’t it? Is that all you want, or do you want to change their minds? Your treatment of your audience is distinctly uncaring; I’ve seen other people when they cite a video give its length, allowing readers to plan their time, and they will include their own synopsis to entice readers to view it, in case their personal charisma alone proves too frail to sway them.
I clicked on the link and hit the back button as soon as I heard the nasally, patronising voiceover of Peter Hadfield.
Sorry, that guy just hits all the wrong buttons for me.
The truth hurts, Andy?
CO2Science don’t perform science, they draw their own conclusions from other people’s science.
The Co2Science analysis is not peer-reviewed, contains some serious flaws and it would appear they deliberately aim to deceive their readers.
(op. cit.)
Neither does the IPCC. You describe every literature review ever done.
Similar to the work of many amateurs on the internet, even yours? Though you haven’t addressed my comments on the specific paper we were discussing. I can see nothing wrong with that analysis.
Pure speculation; you must find evidence to prove this.
I notice that the reports they collate of independent temperature studies around the world are outside the scope of your comments.
Would you buy a used car from these guys?
For those who don’t have the time or inclination to read the debunking paper, I highlight the main points below.
(To anyone who can’t see the clear pattern of deception, have I got a great offer for you!)
CO2Science claim their analysis is legitimate because they use peer-reviewed science – let’s be clear about this. The papers listed in their analysis are peer-reviewed however CO2Science’s own analysis and conclusion are NOT peer-reviewed; they can and do make many mistakes.
The scientists that have produced the papers (here and here) do not postulate on whether the previous warming was greater than today or not because you simply cannot tell from the data gathered. CO2Science take liberty and a leap of logic to reach their biased conclusions. Either they are unaware of their mistake, or they are purposely trying to deceive the reader. Either way the lesson learnt is to read the original paper rather than the blogger’s own interpretation of the paper.
As mentioned before, the MWP is defined the time as between AD 950 to 1250 however CO2Science label this incorrectly in many of the graphs in order to fool you into believing the MWP is the higher section of the graph…
With NZ data, CO2Science move the MWP label forward in time to highlight the highest part of the graph. They also neglect to show the recent warming since 1900.
Remarkably CO2Science have NO Australian data despite some good information readily available in the paper Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium. Probably because it shows the CWP being warmer than the MWP.
Note how CO2Science deceptively move the label for MWP to hover over the higher peak. In the first graph they move it backwards in time, in the second graph the move it forward.
In Central Scandinavian Mountains, Sweden, CO2Science want to highlight just one small peak, ignore the deep depression next to it, and don’t realise the majority of the MWP was cooler than the CWP. And of course CO2Science also draw their own conclusions which differ from that of the original authors.
In Northern Fennoscandia CO2Science adds their own “Current Temperature Line” to the original graph and once again draw their own conclusions. The original paper does not agree with CO2Science, in fact they state quite clearly …
No consistent temperature peak is observed during the ‘Medieval Warm Period’.
In the Northern Icelandic Coast CO2Science slightly expands the MWP into the future to cover another peak and tells us that “the peak warmth of the Medieval Warm Period was about 1°C higher than the peak warmth of the Current Warm Period”. They fail to inform their readers that the lowest part of the MWP was almost 2° C COLDER and that on average, the MWP is below the CWP.
In the Northern Icelandic Shelf CO2Science move the MWP to be earlier in time in order to be over the higher part of the data. The “Current Temperature Line” has been added by CO2Science and as usual, the original paper does not agree with CO2Science’s conclusion.
In the Columbia Icefield, Canada CO2Science pick only the small peaks to highlight the MWP and ignore the fact that for the majority of the time the temps were much cooler than the CWP.
In Crête, Central Greenland CO2Science move the MWP to an earlier time and want you to know that “that peak Medieval Warmth was about 0.6°C greater than it is presently”. They avoid labelling correctly and avoid telling you the cooler part was more than a degree colder than the CWP.
In the GISP2 Ice Core, Greenland, CO2Science again only focuses on the highest part of the MWP and ignores the rest. On average it was well below the CWP.
In the Great Bahama Bank, Straits of Florida, CO2Science once again moves the MWP to be earlier in time in order to highlight the highest point of the data. When you look at the actual MWP it turns out to be entirely lower than the CWP.
In “Lake 4, Southampton Island, Nunavut, Canada”, CO2Science move the MWP to be later in time. Again most of the actual MWP was colder than the CWP.
In Pigmy Basin Mg/Ca Proxy, Northern Gulf of Mexico, CO2Science move the MWP to be earlier in time in order to avoid the colder section of data.
In the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool, CO2Science make up their own “Current Temperature” in order to make the MWP appear warm. The data from which they draw this conclusion ends around 1850 AD, and if Co2Science’s conclusion were correct, that’d mean we’ve had no warming in the last 150 years, something modern thermometers disagree with. So too does the original paper.
In the Makassar Strait, CO2Science once again draw their own conclusions … “we calculate that the Medieval Warm Period was about 0.4°C warmer than the Current Warm Period”. The scientists working on the original paper disagree saying …
Reconstructed SST was, however, within error of modern values from about ad 1000 to ad 1250, towards the end of the Medieval Warm Period.
In Nevado Illimani, Eastern Bolivian Andes, Bolivia , CO2Science did the best they could with unfavourable data. Unfortunately even moving the MWp period could not help their cause. The CWP is clearly warmer than any previous time.
In the study of the Eastern Bransfield Basin CO2Science have drawn their own conclusion instead of presenting the original author’s findings. They strangely present a graph of “magnetic susceptibility” rather than temperature. The original authors make no comments as to whether or not the MWP was warmer than today, but this doesn’t deter CO2Science.
Looking at the paper An ikaite record of late Holocene climate at the Antarctic Peninsula, CO2Science again jump to their own conclusion. The original authors state “This ikaite record qualitatively supports that both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age extended to the Antarctic Peninsula.”, but say nothing about the comparison to the CWP.
In Japan, CO2Science highlights the warmer peak, and forgets to mention that the paper says that from the tenth century, “Temperatures then fell until the 1180s“.
In Lake Qinghai, CO2Science again deceptively depict the warming. Below is the graph they have, but I have redrawn the zero baseline used in the paper. The original authors do not support a warmer MWP than today.
In Lake Teletskoye, CO2Science wish to move the MWP several hundred years into the future. The actual data shows that most of it was colder than today for this region.
In Mid-Eastern Tibetan Plateau, CO2Science claim the MWP was warmer, although they moved it earlier to between 875 and 980AD. Looking at the graph in the paper tells a very different story with the majority of the MWP well below current temps.
In Yakushima Island, Japan CO2Science move the MWP slightly back in time to include a larger peak. They forgot to include recent warming on this graph and they also fail to notice that the average temp for the MWP was well below the CWP.
Rob,
You’ve done a great deal of work here.
Your links are absent.
You say the temperatures cannot be compared with today’s, so in your comments on each study, which refer to the temperatures being higher or lower than the CWP, how do you know they’re higher or lower?
Who defined the MWP as “between AD 950 to 1250”? I missed it. And why might it not have slightly different periods in different places?
The site describes how the various definitions of the MWP follow the various authors, so are you correct to claim that CO2 Science “moved” the MWP?
Better read the paper, Richard, before you dig yourself any deeper!
Here’s the link again:
http://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/novas-warm-period/
The 15-minute video will test your faith as well (hint: more porkies from well-known AGW deniers).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY4Yecsx_-s&feature=youtu.be&t=6m4s
No thanks, Rob. I won’t waste my time on a video with that kind of recommendation. I’m reading what you posted here and you haven’t answered my questions.
RT, as someone who is interested in any arguments around the issues of AGW that I can understand, (I follow discussion at WUWT, Osullivans, Openparachute and HotTopic and other information sources on both sides) I found both the links easy to follow, informative, and as far as I know accurate.
I urge you to look at the links, and you will, if you’re able to consider information that doesn’t necessarily fit with your view.
Edit; Oh, and I have enough respect for others to follow the links they provide me.
If the MWP has different periods in different places, what would the effect on global temperatures be?
The current list of NH peer reviewed temperature reconstructions, because the cooler tamperatures would pull downs the NH average while other areas would lift it, the peak would be lower, (lower than the current warm period!) the base more spread.
That’s what the reconstructions show, and that’s what “skeptics” argue against!
Richard, you are defending the undefendable. What CO2Science does is sleazy and dishonest.
“What CO2Science does is sleazy and dishonest”
Compiles a database of MWP papers and writes commentary – despicable!
Simon, are you addressing me or the other Richard?
So after reading the itsnotnova link, would any of the “skeptics” here be prepared to say that the methods used by CO2 Science are despicable, or is hanging to the belief more important than showing integrity?
No response yet, Andrew; I guess they’re still asleep at Denier Central in the US, so Richard et. al. are still awaiting instructions.
Or, perhaps the CO2science call centre has been overwhelmed with panicky calls?
You still haven’t answered my questions.
You haven’t watched the video, because, like John Key and the police file, you know it will reveal that you have been lied to and played for a sucker.
You folk are not Galileos, but the opposition; the cardinals who, when offered the chance to look through the telescope and see for themselves, crossed themselves and fled, lest they be “drawn into sin”.
Yes, I am indeed likening you to hopelessly brainwashed religious fanatics, because your intellectual cowardice demonstrates that is exactly what you are….
or maybe we just couldn’t be bothered listening to Peter Hadfield droning on for 15 minutes.
Rob,
Your conclusion is arrived at without evidence. Since the video was last mentioned, I’ve been answering emails, responding to comments here, putting together two new posts (which you can see now all bright and fresh), eating dinner, talking with the family and moving about slowly, as I have a viral infection – like a cold.
I decided to view the video after reading Andrew W’s recommendation of it.
It’s a pity to hear you ranting like this. It would probably be advisable to spend a little time in data collection (i.e., asking how I am, what I’ve been doing and what my opinion might be) before concluding anything dramatic about a man you don’t know. I apologise if my day could not recognise your sense of urgency over this vital video, an urgency which, incidentally, you didn’t think to mention to me, thus I had no reason to expect such hostile abuse within eight hours. I hope to be up and about tomorrow with energy to view the video.
Oh, and a discussion consists of contributions from at least two sides. Queries, replies, that kind of thing. You haven’t answered my questions. prune
I was, of course, responding to your earlier statement, RT:
So my apparent refusal warranted that level of abuse? That’s like firing a cruise missile at a tagger.
Ah, well, it’s lucky I have such a thick skin, isn’t it? 🙂
It was still a hostile, precipitate rant and you still haven’t answered my questions. There are good courses, you know, in how to influence people. You’re relying on hitting them with various objects and I suspect you’ve experienced little success, although you haven’t stopped hitting them, no doubt hoping this time for a different result.
You’re a strange man. What is it you want here?
I just want the facts, ma’am, just the facts….
As for being strange, you appear to believe in an ever-widening conspiracy of scientists, politicians, journalists….
There is a name for this condition, Richard – would you like to know what it is?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_personality_disorder
No, Rob, I don’t mention conspiracy and I see none. It’s like digging a well in the desert; all kinds of people will come to make use of it in their own way. No conspiracy between them is required.
But that’s a side issue, really – the main proof of no crisis is the observation that, as CO2 rises, the temperature does not.
Have you thought about my questions?
Temperature will rise as CO2 rises ceteris paribus. There are of course other factors that affect temperature, particularly in the short-term. If we can agree on these two points then we can move on. I don’t think I am being controversial here, most serious sceptics would surely agree?
The “theory” says that global temperature should rise as CO2 increases, yet there has been no observable trend in warming for well over a decade when CO2 emissions have been at their highest levels ever since humans have inhabited the planet
We are expected to believe that the late 20th Century warming is attributable to human caused CO2 emissions, yet we cannot explain the early 20th C warming, the MWP, the LIA, the RWP etc.
We seem to attribute the record melting of the Arctic to AGW, yet we cannot explain the record high in Antarctic Sea Ice.
We are expected to believe that feedbacks due to CO2 warming are positive and high, despite the lack of any empirical evidence to support this.
So, despite all this lack of evidence, we are all holocaust deniers who think that the moon landings were faked and 9/11 was an inside job.
So where are the “serious” sceptics?
While there has been an increase in Antarctic sea ice, there has also been a decrease in Antarctic land ice. Sea ice is increasing even though the ocean temperature is warming. The reason appears to be due to changes in ocean circulation. Skeptical Science has done a good article on this but I know you don’t take them seriously.
This site shows some differences between Arctic and Antarctic sea ice
They note that Arctic ice has been declining and Antarctic ice on a slight increase
I have indeed thought about your questions, RT; have you watched “my” video?
Your questions show you grasping at any straw to avoid the embarrassing realisation that you have wasted your time, energy and credibility disseminating disinformation and falsehood fed to you by the likes of Jo Nova and “CO2science”.
This is a classic example of what Lewandowsky found:
Lewandowsky didn’t “find’ anything. His paper is a pile of garbage. Any self-respecting professional is distancing themselves from this embarrassing load of tosh, including authors on Skeptical Science
Your confirmation bias is showing, Andy…
Hey, RT, how about a post on the record Arctic melt this year?
You know, the usual rave about how the evil warmists caused it, but its perfectly natural anyway – the Sun is the hottest thing for miles, and – look, there’s Al Gore’s airplane!!!
Hey, RT, how about a post on the record Arctic melt this year?
We could, or perhaps it is getting so much coverage we could focus on the record high Antarctic sea ice.
Just for balance, you know
My dear Andy, has it not occurred to you that, when it is SUMMER in the Arctic, it is WINTER in the Antarctic?
Sheesh, what did you say your degree was in? Was it face planting or colonoscopy?
Yes I did understand that it is winter, well spring actually, in the Antarctic
it is a record for the winter sea ice in Antarctica
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/09/19/antarctic-sea-ice-sets-another-record/
Sorry to rain on your parade (OK, actually I’m not sorry) but that’s a record for day 256, it’s not a record for extent of Antarctic winter sea ice.
Yes it is a record for day 256
that is what I said
Well, Ok then, I’m just a bit surprised you thought it was worth mentioning, given that it was just a record for one day out of 365 days in a year, surely something like that (a record for one day) must happen now and then?
The reason that I thought it worth mentioning is that it is a record for one day out of what is a slowly increasing trend in Antarctic sea ice as I reported elsewhere.
If this were a record low for Antarctic sea ice for one day I am sure that we would have had the combined choirs of The Guardian, the BBC, Skeptical Science and who knows who else forming a global group hug singing our imminent doom.
Cameo roles for George Monbiot and David Attenborough of course would be guaranteed
Tru, but you forgot to mention Antarctic land ice.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2237
So, in denier fairyland, this all balances out, somehow? Let’s see – crippling drought in one place, horrendous floods in another simply shows that all is hunky-dory?
What does your Denial Echo Chamber have to say on the Arctic?
No I didn’t say it balances out. I said that there was a record high in the Antarctica set, as well as a record low in the Arctic
I didn’t say it balances out.
It is really quite simple Rob. I am not trying to rationalise it. I am not trying to find a physical explanation. I am not trying to overlay a moral narrative. I am not stopping you thinking of the children
I am simply stating facts.
If the mediaeval warming period is supposedly irrelevant because it is supposed to be regional, perhaps the same principle should apply to melting ice?
AGC, not only is it now warmer than in the MWP, but ice is melting globally. What’s YOUR explanation?
(from the link supplied by Simon).
The West Antarctic Peninsula is a separate issue to the main Antarctic continent.
The peninsula has experienced warming but this is not matched in the rest of the continent.
Of course it’s been warming. CO2 can only warm 1.2C per doubling of total atmospheric CO2 (not just man’s CO2 output) and there is no tropospheric hot spot as evidence of positive feedback from water vapour. If CO2 has such a minor effect on the temperature, what’s YOUR reason for thinking the temperature rises are due to man?
Hmm…. how about the congruence of theory, experiment, and observation over the past 150 years (otherwise known as the Scientific Method – perhaps you may have heard of it?)
This will help you catch up:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
“congruence of theory”
What theories are congruent?
I see this at your website linked:-
“Only one lone voice, the amateur G.S. Callendar, insisted that greenhouse warming was on the way. Whatever the cause of warming, everyone thought that if it happened to continue for the next few centuries, so much the better.
In the 1950s, Callendar’s claims provoked a few scientists to look into the question with improved techniques and calculations. What made that possible was a sharp increase of government funding, especially from military agencies with Cold War concerns about the weather and the seas. The new studies showed that, contrary to earlier crude estimates, carbon dioxide could indeed build up in the atmosphere and should bring warming”
“should bring warming” is a rather superficial theory don’t you think Rob?
And nothing of a basis in physics i.e. CO2 forcing by radiative heat transfer at this page that I can see:-
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm#L_0165
Hi Rob. This is what ‘theory, experiment, and observation’ has resulted in:
A missing tropospheric hotspot that disproves the positive feedback effect of atmospheric water vapour in the AGW theory:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hot-spot/hot-spot-model-predicted.gif
And the corresponding failure of the climate models that include positive feedback from water vapour:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hot-spot/mckitrick-models-observations-rss-msu-uah-radiosondes-flat.jpg
The question is, if there is no positive water vapour feedback (the biggest warming factor in the AGW theory by far), what evidence is there for AGW beyond the minute effect of man’s CO2 output?
As a result, man’s relationship to any melting ice caps or a warming world is practically non existent. Melting ice caps are not proof of AGW, but a tropospheric hot spot is.
“CO2 can only warm 1.2C per doubling of total atmospheric CO2”
Even that’s problematic AGC:-
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/eggert-co2.png
Sorry Richard, I meant to say 1.2C ‘maximum’ (best to go for the top number to avoid accusations of cherry-picking in my view). Even then it’s pathetically small though.
Quite correct. The Peninsula is often affected by these warm water effects.
“For this study we looked in detail at the last 15,000 years – from the time when the Earth emerged from the last ice age and entered into the current warm period. What we see in the ice core temperature record is that the Antarctic Peninsula warmed by about 6°C as it emerged from the last ice age. By 11,000 years ago the temperature had risen to about 1.3°C warmer than today’s average and other research indicates that the Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet was shrinking at this time and some of the surrounding ice shelves retreated. The local climate then cooled in two stages, reaching a minimum about 600 years ago. The ice shelves on the northern Antarctic Peninsula expanded during this cooling. Approximately 600 years ago the local temperature started to warm again, followed by a more rapid warming in the last 50-100 years that coincides with present-day disintegration of ice shelves and glacier retreat.”
-Dr Robert Mulvaney OBE, from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), talking about his recent paper in Nature
Meanwhile, the Antarctic ice sheet is expanding. Remember, this is the only one that really matters, since 90% of Earth’s ice is bound up here. Floating ice shelves don’t affect sea level rise in any way.
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120013495_2012013235.pdf
I’m glad Rob mentioned Antarctica, because it’s always been the elephant in the room for the warmists. Why? Because both poles are supposed to warm equally fast under CO2 warming, it’s called polar amplification, and is supposedly because the very cold, dry air contains little water vapour, so the effect of CO2 will be greatly enhanced.
Now the Arctic appears to have played along nicely, but the hypothesis has been contradicted by the Antarctic, which appears to be doing the exact opposite of what was predicted.
What did they do? They modified their predictions after the fact and claimed that models generally predict a wetter environment under warming, and therefore increased snowfall, which “might” be “offsetting dynamic ice losses”.
Except there hasn’t been warming, therefore no wetter environment. Oops.
We know they are worried the public will catch on, because of the disastrous Steig paper, which trumpeted the “fact” that suddenly, after all, Antarctica was in fact warming, following their original predictions. Suddenly they could drop the pretense that the lack of polar amplification in the South was as predicted.
Except Steig et al. was a dismal failure, when everybody pointed out how they’d stuffed up their PC analysis, and smeared the local peninsula temperatures across the whole of Antarctica. When done correctly, there was an overall cooling.
Whoops.
So now we’re in the interesting situation that the South is proving CO2 warming theory to be incorrect, and they’ve in the meantime disowned their own theories as to why. Not that they worked anyway.
Bob,
1. The GRACE satellites show substantial ice mass wasting from both Antartica and Greenland.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html
2. There are obvious asymmetries between the Arctic and Antarctic, including:
a. Antartica is an elevated continent, rather than open ocean
b. the ozone hole:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica
3. Wouldn’t you be better spending your time trying to find the systematic error in your NZ temp calcs – whoops, you were only out by 300%!
4. Are you feeling warmer yet?
Bob, in addition to Rob’s points, this couldn’t possibly, you know, just maybe, have something to do with the Arctic being surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is surrounded by ocean, could it? And your know, maybe, the fact that the NH has warmed considerably, while the SH only slightly, which might itself have something to do with the difference in land area in each hemisphere.
Rob,
So there are two counteracting effects in the same area. What is the net effect?
PDO+AMO vs Arctic Annual Mean Temperatures:-
http://images.intellicast.com/App_Images/Article/153_3.png
Arctic solar irradiance/temperature vs CO2/temperature:-
http://images.intellicast.com/App_Images/Article/153_4.jpg
Rob Taylor:
The GRACE satellites are the ONLY ones measuring this. GRACE is a very interesting, but as yet unproven technology. There are known problems with the geoids used, this is part of the literature. I’ve covered this in the past, no reason to redo the conversation just for you.
Regarding the differences between the Arctic and Antarctic (elevated, surrounded by ocean, etc.) this is irrelevant to the hypothesis that CO2 warming will be amplified at the poles. Both poles – it’s to do with the atmospheric physics, remember, not the ocean etc. Lower water vapour, more CO2 greenhouse effect – it’s really very simple physics, as the warmists keep saying. In fact, the Antarctic is significantly colder than the Arctic, so we would expect an even higher CO2 effect.
There is no known reason why the Antarctic should be free of greenhouse warming while the Arctic isn’t. No models predicted it, and there is still no good explanation for it. It is simply ignored by the warmists, who point instead to the peninsula, which we know is highly susceptible to changes in ocean currents.
Incorrect. The proper application of the RS93 method resulted in the correct value of 0.34°C/century, as opposed to NIWA’s incorrect 0.91°C/century. NIWA to date have done no RS93 analysis, preferring to use a crude and out-dated method that derived from a student’s thesis in 1981.
Not at all, the earth has not warmed in 15 years, and in the past decade has been cooling at over four times the rate it should have been warming. Not only that, the Antarctic hasn’t been warming at all over the past fifty years.
Isn’t that odd? Doesn’t that fact cause any of you alarmists to pause and think just a little? Probably not.
Andrew W,
This, in spite of the fact that it is the oceans that absorb and store insolation, but the land reflects most of it back to space, either at once or that night, and that it is the ocean that heats the atmosphere, not the other way around? Also, there is consistently more water vapour over the ocean than over the land, which means that the major portion (~75%?) of anthropogenic forcing (or feedback, according to the DAGW theory) acts overwhelmingly to warm the ocean, not the land.
There’s an imbalance somewhere – especially this century, with no atmospheric warming. Last I heard, Trenberth was still looking for the “missing heat”. So what mechanism warms the land more than the ocean, when the ocean does the warming?
No, silly, IT’S THE SUN!
As for Dedekind, if he had published even one peer-reviewed climate paper in his life – just one – he might have some credibility but, right now, he’s just another braying fool on the internet.
NZCSC have lost a huge amount of face with the general public by relying on his numerology, yet, even now, he puffs himself up as an expert of some kind…
Come on, boys, when’s the appeal? Please bring Jo Nova along as another bogus “expert witness”; it’ll be a pleasure to see her go down in flames as well!
At least Bob has done some actual work rather than just trolling abuse at people on internet blogs.
“As for Dedekind, if he had published even one peer-reviewed climate paper in his life – just one – he might have some credibility but, right now, he’s just another braying fool on the internet”
As for [Mullen], if he had published even one peer-reviewed [statistics] paper in his life – just one – he might have some credibility but, right now, he’s just another braying fool [in the coutroom].
Mullan, A.B.; Wratt, D.S.; Renwick, J.A. (2001). Transient model scenarios of climate changes for New Zealand. Weather and Climate 21: 3-43.
Mullan, A.B.; Bowen, M.; Chiswell, S. (2001b). The crystal ball: Model predictions of future climate. Water and Atmosphere 9, 10-11.
Mullan, A.B.; Porteous, A.; Wratt, D.S.; Hollis, M. (2005). Changes in Drought Risk with Climate Change. NIWA Client Report WLG2005-23, prepared for the Climate Change Office, Ministry for the Environment, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. 56p.
Salinger, M.J. and A.B. Mullen, 1999: New Zealand climate: temperature
and precipitation variations and their links lo atmospheric circulation. 1930-1994.
Manning, M.R.; Mullan, A.B.; Salinger, M.J. (1992). Comments on the paper “Global Warming: The origin and nature of the alleged scientific consensus” by Dr Richard Lindzen dated 29/3/92.
Manning, M.R.; Mullan, A.B.; Salinger, J.M. (1995). Science and the Greenhouse Effect. New Zealand Science Monthly 6: 11-12.
Fitzharris, B.; Manning, M.; Mullan, B.; Salinger, J.; Warrick, R. (1995). Climate change risk is genuine and serious. New Zealand Herald, Auckland. April 5 1995.
Fitzharris, B.; Manning, M.; Mullan, B.; Salinger, J.; Warrick, R. (1996). The risk of climate change is genuine and serious. The World of English. pp. 98-105. Ed. Y.-L. Chen. The Commercial Press, PO Box 1504, Beijing, Beijing, China.
Which of these papers and what qualifications makes Dr Mullen a statistical break-point expert?
Speaking of braying fools, Rob, have you found any statistical errors in my papers yet? And what about thermal analysis errors? You claimed I didn’t know what I was talking about earlier, yet silence from you so far.
I notice you’ve shifted your position from “not qualified in statistics” to “no climate papers”. Some interesting retreating going on.
“Last I heard, Trenberth was still looking for the “missing heat””
He now thinks he’s found most of it. Can’t recall the rationale exactly (fuzzy night-shifted brain) but I think it’s this paper:-
‘Model-based evidence of deep-ocean heat uptake during surface-temperature hiatus periods’
# Gerald A. Meehl,1
# Julie M. Arblaster,1, 2
# John T. Fasullo,1
# Aixue Hu1
# & Kevin E. Trenberth
2011
http://echorock.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/Meehl_Natureclimatechange2011-1.pdf
A key part of the rationale of course, being based on the assumption that NCAR model simulations equate to reality.
Bob D,
Also, in your Statistical Audit of NIWA’s Review of the Seven Stations, you show (p8) that both the correctly-applied R&S93 series and NIWA’s adjusted series show no warming in the last 50 years – a period when both series are practically identical, and entirely in line with David Wratt’s advice that, because the Pacific Ocean moderates temperature changes, New Zealand can expect less warming than the rest of the globe.
RT “no warming” hotlink is ‘Not found Sorry, but you are looking for something that is not here’
Thanks, RC, fixed. – RT
Jesus wept… you are relying on the work of a man who has been repeatedly pwned, not just by NIWA, but also by BEST, both of which found warming almost 3 times as great as Dedekind..
Whilst Bob may have pulled the wool over your rheumy eyes, in the real world, he’s just another crank with his very own perpetual-motion machine…
Mind you, it could be worse – you might have put your bets on Monckton!
Rob Taylor,
What on earth do you mean by “pwned”?
Heaven’s to Betsy! You might be occasionally amusing, but if you just checked Bob’s calculations you would see he’s done what he said he did, which was to follow the method set out in R&S93. But I seem to remember you’ve been told that already. Perhaps it’s beyond you, in which case you’re a hypocrite to criticise him so ferociously. Cut out the abuse and start refuting the science or maths with your mighty intellect and you could accomplish something, instead of rendering yourself irrelevant by this empty posturing. Talk some sense, and answer the questions we ask of you. You keep saying we’re wrong – kindly tell us how.
“Perhaps it’s beyond you” – Yes he’s all bluff in this discussion so far, I don’t think he’d know a break-point or step change if he tripped over one and he doesn’t look like advancing his knowledge either.
Now that the Statistical Audit has detailed R&S methodology so clearly in the Appendix we’ve got a basis to get to grips with break-point techniques widely used (far more than climatology) in other domains (e.g. econometrics and financial trading) and the difference between the Chow Test and R&S. I see Andy’s getting his head into things statistical too.
Chow Test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chow_test
Quoting:-
“In econometrics, the Chow test is most commonly used in time series analysis to test for the presence of a structural break”
As time goes on free ready written software becomes available for easy computation of these tests (as with other algorithms). There’s one here complete with accompanying Asian girl ads:-
Python,Econometrics: Chow test for structural stability.
http://adorio-research.org/wordpress/?p=1789
Just a matter of pulling in raw CliFlo data for a Dummies test at home from what I can see (could be horrendously wrong of course).
Judith Curry featured Tom Quirk’s paper:-
************************************************************************************************************
Did the global temperature trend change at the end of the 1990s?
Tom Quirk
Institute of Public Affairs
Melbourne
Australia
http://ipa.org.au/library/publication/1339463007_document_break_paper_apjas_ipa.pdf
Chances of appearing in AR5 may be diminished by acknowledgment of 2 prominent sceptics:-
Acknowledgements: I have benefited greatly from discussions with William Kininmonth and in particular, David Stockwell who introduced me to the Chow Break Test.
Conclusion
There is a strong set of coincident events at or around 2000 that suggest the onset of a cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. This is supported by the decreasing humidity in the Northern Pacific Ocean after the break in 2000 (Figure 6) where the probability of the straight line fit showing no decrease is 3%. However for the global surface temperature this analysis has not established whether the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation dominates the warm phase of the North Atlantic Decadal Oscillation.
The variations in global temperature, atmospheric CO2, water vapour and atmospheric methane all indicate the importance of the Atlantic and Pacific Decadal Oscillations. This is not easily taken into account in General Circulation Models and until there is a better understanding of the long term behaviour of the oceans, it must be a significant difficultly in projecting future temperatures.
************************************************************************************************************
Links to JC’s article and Quirk paper here:-
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/climate-science/temperature-records/#comment-110554
Blair Trewin says this of break-points in CAWCR Technical Report No. 049 (page 54 pdf):-
************************************************************************************************************
Techniques involved in developing the Australian Climate Observations Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT) dataset
Blair Trewin
March 2012
7.2 The detection of inhomogeneities
For statistical detection of inhomogeneities, the principal problem is that of determining where a breakpoint exists in a time series that is larger than can be attributed to chance (to a defined level of confidence). This problem has a well-developed statistical literature. Most of the techniques that have been used in constructing large-scale climate data sets fall into two broad categories: the standard normal homogeneity test (SNHT) of Alexandersson (1986), and two phase regression (TPR), originally developed for climate use by Easterling and Peterson (1995), and with a number of refinements since, that have been implemented in the widely-used RH test software suite (Wang et al., 2010). In a review Reeves et al. (2007)13 found that the two methods achieved a broadly similar overall level of performance, with their ranking depending on user priorities (for example, accurately detecting the date of a breakpoint, or minimising the number of false alarms).
Since the ability to detect a breakpoint in a time series is a function of the ratio of the size of the breakpoint to the standard deviation of the data, a common technique to improve the signal-to-noise ratio is to apply statistical tests to the difference between the time series at the candidate site and that of a reference series that is representative of the background climate at the candidate site (Peterson et al., 1998). For locations that are highly correlated and have similar variance, this will tend to greatly reduce the variability in the test series by removing background noise arising from interannual climate variability, thereby increasing the signal to noise ratio for any tests.
http://www.cawcr.gov.au/publications/technicalreports/CTR_049.pdf
*************************************************************************************************************
I suspect without looking at the paper that “two phase regression (TPR), originally developed for climate use by Easterling and Peterson (1995)” is an adaption of the Chow Break-Point Test.
Strangely though (as with NIWA), I’m having difficulty identifying from CAWCR TR No. 049 what the specific methodology was for ACORN-SAT.
What on earth do you mean by “pwned”?
The term “pwned” is an expression that has come out of the computer gaming world.
According to Urban Dictionary
Unfortunately, I think this is very relevant to the so-called climate “debate” because it captures very well the mindset of certain people who think that is is all a big computer game with winners and losers.
There is no attempt to advance ones personal knowledge; it is all about point scoring.
Rob, Manfred/Bob has published a “climate paper” which was “peer reviewed”. It’s called “Are we getting warmer yet?” It was “peer reviewed by Vincent Gray who admitted afterwards that he should have picked up the mistake where Manfred and Richard claimed no site adjustments were necessary.
[Ken, everyone calls him Bob, as Bob himself has told you. There’s no need to use two names, just as nobody calls you Kenneth/Ken. It’s just irritating and makes you look stupid. – RT]
[We made no such claim. Our paper says on page 3 quite clearly: “What did we find? First, the station histories are unremarkable. There are no reasons for any large corrections.” Do you again deny that – are you going for the world record in denials of the truth? In addition, you asked Dr Grey a misleading question, as I’ve explained. – RT]
[Personal abuse removed. – RT]
Now they show their psychological denial by blaming everyone else for their ignorance – and smearing Justice Venning. They are typical conspiracy theorists – all of them here. [This is offensive, Ken. Now I won’t even indicate that I’ve deleted offensive material, because it’s quite time-consuming, so I’ll just remove it. So don’t write toxic nonsense any more because it’ll waste your time, just discuss the topic. OK? Good, I’m glad you understand. If editing your comments becomes too time-consuming I’ll simply remove your commenting privilege. – RT]
“Bob has published a “climate paper” which was “peer reviewed””
And a statistics paper from accounts.
Dedekind 1
Mullen 0
“The need for site adjustments are so clear that he can’t possibly have missed it”
He didn’t miss it.
The Statistical Audit documents the adjustments he made.
This has been explained to you over and over and over.
Stop your ignorant trolling.
Stop your fallacious innuendo.
Your monotonous repetition of slime (your specialty) reflects badly on you Ken
More unintended irony, RC?
“The need for site adjustments are so clear that he can’t possibly have missed it”
He didn’t. From ‘Statistical Audit of the NIWA 7-Station Review’ (page 29 pdf) AFTER PAGES OF SITE ADJUSTMENTS:-
Conclusions and Discussion
In conducting their review of the New Zealand 7-station temperature series, NIWA have stated repeatedly that Rhoades & Salinger (1993) was used as their adjustment method. We have found that this is not the case, and that the R&S method has not been used correctly in NIWA’s analysis.
Station, Unadjusted, NIWA Method, R&S Method (Dedekind)
Dunedin 0.53 0.62 0.24
Lincoln 0.08 0.83 0.21
Hokitika 0.44 1.14 0.21
Nelson 0 0.76 0.27
Wellington 0.01 0.86 0.59
Masterton 0.36 0.88 0.36
Auckland 0.69 1.53 0.48
Total: 0.23 0.91 0.34
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/docs/Statistical%20Audit%20of%20the%20NIWA%207-Station%20Review%20Aug%202011.pdf
So,
NO MORE IGNORANCE KEN
NO MORE MISUNDERSTANDING KEN
NO MORE SLIME KEN
NO MORE SLUR KEN
Rebut the paper specifically Ken i.e. PUT UP, OR SHUT UP.
Richard T, in your 4:50pm post you argue that the ocean moderates the warming in NZ, in your 1:43pm post you argue that the Antarctic should be warming as a result of the ocean around it. Please work out which theory you want to run with.
I understand its been found.
Heat flows in both directions, if you’re referring to “the LWR only penetrates a micron into water” line, you need to recognise that the oceans are turbulent.
If you’re arguing that oceans are usually warmer than air, you should understand that while more heat energy flows from warmer objects to cooler objects, there’s still some energy flowing from cooler to warmer objects, that’s why if you take two cups of coffee at 90C, stick one one the kitchen bench at 20C and the other in the freezer at -10C, the one in the freezer will cool faster.
O/T
How about a post called “What would it take”?
I think it would be interesting to ask people here:
What would it take for “alarmists” to accept that the IPCC prediction of warming is exaggerated, and that there isn’t going to be major climate change.
And
What would it take for “sceptics” to accept that the IPCC warming predictions are largely accurate, and are going to result in major climate change?
“the LWR only penetrates a micron into water”
About 10 in non-turbulent situations. Only enough power for evaporation which negates any LWIR ocean warming notions.
http://omlc.ogi.edu/spectra/water/gif/hale73.gif
Neglible otherwise.
“oceans are usually warmer than air” – About 3 C on global average.
“What would it take for “sceptics” to accept that the IPCC warming predictions are largely accurate, and are going to result in major climate change?”
A better performance than this:-
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622
And deference to radiative heat transfer science so we don’t see this:-
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/eggert-co2.png
10 microns is hundreds of molecules of H2O, so any molecule hit with a photon of IR is far more likely to lose that energy to its neighbours than to evaporate.
“any molecule hit with a photon of IR is far more likely to lose that energy to its neighbours
Then what happens? Energy sufficient for change of state, liquid to vapour (along with advection, insolation etc) but nothing else. The energy per photon and intensity of IR-C is too far along the EM spectrum to be an efficient heating agent.
It depends on the energy state of the molecules in question. If the other molecules have higher energy the evaporation option is more likely.
Besides, we know it’s a moot point. The 0-700m ocean heat content has NOT been increasing, and neither has the global temperature, neither have sea levels accelerated, nor is there any sign of a tropospheric hot spot, nor has the Antarctic (the largest store of ice on the planet) shown any warming – in fact it’s cooled.
Is there some genetic defect that makes you WANT to believe the worst, that REQUIRES you to believe everything every alarmist idiot from Greenpeace and the WWF tells you, in spite of ALL the evidence?
Can you not, in a nutshell, think for yourself?
Well, the first step is some warming. That would be nice.
Over the past 15 years the global temperature, as measured by the Hadley Centre (used in all the IPCC reports) has not warmed, it has been constant.
Over the past decade the global temperature, as recorded by the same organisation, has declined at the statistically significant rate of 0.9°C per decade. The warming that was supposed to have occurred over the same period was 0.2°C/decade.
According to NOAA (Climate Report, 2009), the flat-lining over the past 15 years nullifies the models’ predictions. If you don’t like that, go argue with NOAA, not with us.
Manfred, whilst Ken has demonstrated above how clueless you are wrt statistics, you now double-down by failing to distinguish between temperature and heat!
You really, really should get a grown-up to check your posts before you embarrass yourself any further.
Hey, maybe you could ask these people, them seem helpful:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Breaking_News_The_Earth_is_Warming_Still_A_LOT.html
Oh look, Skeptical Science again. Yawn.
I have the ARGO data on my computer, you can go and download it for free.
I can assure you that since the ARGO network went live, we have not seen any increase in OHC down to 700m.
And if you can please explain to us all how the heat by-passed the first 700m (considering that solar insolation only extends at most 200m down) we’d love to hear it.
Over to you – but no links this time – in your own words please.
Still waiting on those errors in my papers, by the way. If you make accusations, you have to back them up, or you look like a fool. Oh wait…
Papers you published 20 years ago are irrelevant, Bob; it is the glaring errors in your work for NZCSET that have led them to the current debacle…
“glaring errors in your work for NZCSET”
If they are “glaring” Rob, what are they?
Same as for Ken – put up or shut up.
I agree with Richard, Rob. If the errors are glaring, please tell us what they are.
Yes I agree with Bob and Richard, if the errors are glaring then please tell us what they are, Rob.
Another thing I’d expect to see is accelerating sea level rise. Instead, we see a deceleration.
Then there’s the tropospheric hop spot predicted by the models. No sign of it whatsoever.
We also have polar amplification. The Arctic shows some, but the Arctic is notorious for cyclic changes due to winds, storms and ocean cycles. History is full of dire predictions of an ice-free Arctic, dating back to 1877. The Antarctic, which has no such problems, has been cooling for fifty years. This is a very, very serious dent in the IPCC case.
Right now the case for global warming is on its last legs, fighting for breath as the facts keep pounding it from all sides.
Poor thing.
We’re still waiting to hear your explanation of the vanishing Arctic icecap, old bean…. or is it all down to “fluctuations”?
I like the way you claim that straw men of your own devising somehow invalidate AGW, which a child can observe in the natural world.
Poor chap, I suspect that recognition of your true genius is still a ways off…
I don’t have to explain it, all I have to do is point to numerous instances in the historical archives (start at the Vikings, who colonised Greenland in the MWP, then fast-forward to 1877 (coming out of the LIA), and work your way along. 1903 is good (Amundsen), and 1912, followed by 1922, and of course let’s not forget that wooden sailing yacht that went through the open NW passage in 1940 and back in 1944).
The scientific literature is full of references that state that Greenland had less ice back in the 1930s and 1940s (Howat, for example).
Since the changes now are not unprecedented, it’s now over to you to explain why you believe the current changes are human-caused.
And remember, all the while the Antarctic is cooling. Shouldn’t it be warming, Rob? And shouldn’t it be warming at the same rate or faster than the Arctic? Hmm?
Are you offering that as what evidence would be required to convince you?
A definite detection of the tropospheric hop spot, accelerating sea level rise and a warming Antarctic?
But over what time frame? Detection of the hotspot, but by whom, those dishonest scientist trying to get more funding, accelerating SLR over 10 years, 20 years, a warming Antarctic over 10 years, 20 years?
Well, we’re frequently told that these trends are “worse than we thought”, and that “we only have a few years to act”.
I take that to mean that the sea level deceleration should have been greater. We clearly should be expecting the sea levels to be dropping by now. The temperatures have flat-lined over the past 15 years, negating the models. I take it then that the temperatures should have been dropping.
Luckily, recently that’s exactly what they have been doing – over the past decade the temperatures have dropped by 0.9°C/decade. So presumably they should have dropped by even more, maybe 2°C/decade, I’m not sure.
How about anything at all? The hotspot isn’t there, the sea level is decelerating, the Antarctic isn’t warming, and has in fact been cooling over the past 50 years.
Are you saying that we must wait another 10 years, or 20 years to see whether even one of your predictions comes true?
But then what? You’ve been so spectacularly wrong up to now, why would anyone believe you in 20 years?
As Andrew W pointed out below, this should read 0.09°C/decade, not 0.9°C/decade. In the NIWA work everything is per century, here we are talking per decade, it gets confusing sometimes.
Andrew W,
1. They can both be true. 2. I don’t say that. I don’t even mention the Antarctic, you did. Read it again.
Line? It’s quite true, it’s a matter of physics. The statement is true whatever the state of turbulence, for the LWR strikes all water with identical energy. What changes with turbulence?
Nonsense – that doesn’t at all follow. I am asserting what is true, which is that most of the time the air is colder than the water. So the heat flow is from the water to the air, even granting that some minor amount of energy might flow the other way. I don’t understand how you’re trying to rebut what I say.
I believe you haven’t answered my question: “What mechanism warms the land more than the ocean, when the ocean does the warming?”
Zombie alert!
RC2, your memory is playing tricks on you again – we thrashed this out at hot Topic 6 months ago.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-Increasing-Carbon-Dioxide-Heats-The-Ocean.html
Why would I need an alert from a Zombie?
The title of the SkS article is:-
‘How Increasing Carbon Dioxide Heats The Ocean’
But the article actually describes a posited (not from literature) insulation effect – NOT a heating effect.
That insulation effect supposedly acts via Hs but when we look at Fairall et al 1996 (the definitive ‘Cool-skin, warm-layer’) Table 5 we find that Hs is minor heat loss, the major being Rnl and Hl.
Therefore, the major oceanic heat loss by radiation and evaporation is uninhibited by any Hs insulation (negligible anyway).
So much for being “thrashed”, And I don’t recall you participating much in the “we” Rob. The only one that even came remotely close to understanding (but doesn’t yet) is Rob Painting.
I should point out too that Hl is a cooling of the surface as are the other heat loss mechanisms.
Hence the term – “cool-skin”.
Bob, I’ll go with Tamino’s statistical skills over yours thanks, especially when it comes to climate.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080409021707/http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/you-bet/
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut3/diagnostics/comparison.html
0.9°C per decade? Definitely not going with your ability at statistics.
You ARE aware that Grant Foster is a computer data analyst, not a climate scientist?
Better not tell Rob, he would never listen to Tamino again. 🙂
Not quite clear what point you’re trying to make here, except validating what I said. The past decade has seen a statistically significant cooling rate (-0.9°C/decade), which is shown quite clearly on those graphs.
Anything else to say about my previous questions?
Well, I guess I’d better look again, Ahh, the anomaly for 2002 looks to be around 0.4C, and correct be if I’m wrong, but 0.4C-0.9C would mean an anomaly of negative 0.5C for 2012, … it doesn’t look quite that low…
The graph stops in 2011.
What on earth are you blathering about, Andrew? Are you really trying to eye-ball a trend off that graph?! And you accuse ME of statistical incompetence!
Go to the Hadley site, download the data as I did, plot your own graph and work out the trend with the 95% confidence intervals.
For heaven’s sake! Or don’t you know how to do that?
Wow, I can’t believe you’re so wrapped up in your own ego Bob, I don’t no any other way to put it. How about you actually think about what you’re claiming, think about where on the graph 2012 (or 2011) would be if it was 0.9C colder than a decade ago. It … would … be … NEGATIVE 0.5C.
I knew his attention was elsewhere 😉
Sorry, typo, 0.9/century. Same applies though, we see cooling not warming. What happens when you’re typing and watching TV at the same time. 🙂
But not statistically significant cooling.
Are we now going to argue over the level of cooling? I thought we were supposed to be seeing Global Warming? What explanation do you have for the lack of warming? The current cooling excludes the possibility of a 0.2°C/decade warming, no? In century terms that would be at least 2°/century?
You’re right though, the cooling is itself not statistically significant. The significance argument came from earlier, when we were discussing the mean model predictions.
So when NIWA claim 0.9°C warming for NZ over the last 100 years, that’s statistically significant, but when the Hadley data indicate an equal cooling, it isn’t?
Or is that because we’re extrapolating from only a decade?
Oops, no I was right first time. It is statistically significant, of course. The 95% confidence interval is -0.04 to -0.14°C/decade.
Bob, could you post the links to your statistics paper and thermal paper again please?
Can’t find that comment again anywhere and I would like to read them.
OK, to get it all clear: the cooling rate over the past decade is 0.09±0.05°C/decade, based on the Hadley monthly values. This IS statistically significant.
The models predicted a 0.21°C/decade increase in temperature over the same period.
So not only are the models invalidated, we have a statistically significant cooling going on.
Certainly:
http://researchspace.csir.co.za/dspace/bitstream/10204/1656/3/dedekind_1994.pdf
http://researchspace.csir.co.za/dspace/bitstream/10204/591/1/dedekind_1996.pdf
They’re not a stats and a thermal paper, though, rather they both contain stats and thermal (together with stress and non-linear TMF [thermo-mechanical fatigue] and creep analyses).
My challenge to Rob Taylor was to find statistical errors in them, since I’m apparently not qualified in stats, and as a bonus I asked him to find my thermal analysis errors too, since he claims I make “schoolboy howlers” in thermal physics.
To date there have just been crickets, though.
Well, you’re in disagreement with just about everyone else doing climate science then.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Phil-Jones-says-no-global-warming-since-1995.htm
No “sceptics” were disagreeing with Jones then, 10 years statistically significant? I think your leaving something out.
Thanks for links and clarification Bob. I’m sure I’ll figure it out when I read them.
Andrew W,
Phil Jones was using annual values, not sure why, but the confidence intervals would necessarily be larger as N is smaller. The standard deviation is not that much lower on the annuals to make enough difference relative to the N. I think Lucia commented on this at the time.
Graph of Hadley over the past decade.
http://i45.tinypic.com/34sf2ty.png
Bob:
Aha, I think we’ve just found the systematic error in your NZSCET calculations, old boy!
BTW, being out by a factor of 10 – and not even realizing it when led by the hand – does not exactly inspire confidence in your mathematical ability / climate bloviations…
Andrew W, can you point me to the place in the reference you cite where the UK Met Office do a detailed analysis of the NZ seven station series?
I appear to be missing this vital piece of information in this rather weak character assassination attempt on Bob
Manfred, wasn’t it Goebbels who said :
“If you must lie, make sure it’s a big one”?
You’re incessantly irresponsible.
Godwin’s Law applies. Just barely, but it applies.
It absolutely qualifies, for Goebbels was a Nazi.
Really? It’s just possible that Hitler may have been one as well…
Speaking of Hitler, here he is, as confounded as you are by the loss of Arctic ice:
http://denialdepot.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/arctic-sea-ice-downfall.html
BTW, does this sound familiar?
Andrew, does the “W” in your nom de plume stand for ” wriggle”?
You seem to be doing a lot of that as Bob and Richard pin you down!
Ha
David, this must be some new meaning of the phrase “pin you down” that I have not previously heard….
IMHO, Bob and Richard have proven themselves to be bungling amateurs – we even have a High Court judgement to that effect!
Found that missing heat yet Rob?
Re the “glaring errors” in Bob’s work for NZCSET, he has come up with a value for delta T that is 1/3 rd of the actual value, which is why NZCSET were laughed out of Court!
Have you not read the judgement, or, more likely, not understood it?
Here’s a slice of reality for you to eat with your humble pie, fellas…
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jKKr0IRUKbR6Se7mFZu_qfcFWZTw
he has come up with a value for delta T that is 1/3 rd of the actual value
I don’t think NIWA actually disagreed with Bob’s analysis, they just claimed it was “too rigorous”
Incidentally, we can discuss the NZ temperature series and its accuracy without being fed scare stories about the other side of the world that are irrelevant to the point in question.
Andy – may be a little subtle for some – but in this context “too rigorous” is a polite way of describing the use io a technique in a naive or inappropriate way. As for example using too few data points but still going through a routine calculation which requires more data to be meaningful.
Or it could just be NIWA trying to excuse their sloppiness.
Or it could just be NIWA attempting to justify their sloppiness.
Or it could just be NIWA trying to divert attention from their sloppiness.
Or it could just be NIWA attempting to justify their advocacy-based method.
Or it could just be NIWA trying to divert attention from their advocacy-based method.
Or it could a combination of these.
“too rigourous” as I understand, refers to (from ‘Statistical Audit’ Appendix) how the difference series y(i) are calculated, for 12-month (k=1) and 24-month (k=2) cases when applying R&S93.
NIWA don’t want to be held to that rigour – doesn’t give the result they want.
Ken:
You mean like the example in RS93 (Table II) where k=2 is used, and the authors (Rhoades and Salinger) make the obvious (yet according to Ken, subtle) mistake of relying on these values to make decisions about Lincoln in 1944 and Christchurch Airfield in 1975, using the statistical significance tests specified in the same paper?
You’re right, Ken. Better tell them immediately – RS93 is broken! Don’t use it, Ken says so!
Now we wait for Ken’s breakthrough paper nullifying RS93, and thereby the 7SS, which (according to NIWA) was based on RS93.
Man up, Andy; there is no “other side of the world”.
There is but one atmosphere and ocean, and no escape from what we are doing to them.
So you think that the “record low” in Arctic sea ice justifies second rate government science in NZ?
I can play this game too, Andy; are you still in denial about the causes and consequences of global warming?
If so, here’s some remedial reading for you:
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/23/why_it_matters_global_warming/
I can play this game too, Andy; are you still in denial about the causes and consequences of global warming?
Which “game” is this Rob?
Why did you give me a link to Salon.com?
What has this got to do with the adjustments for the 7SS?
Citing Borenstein’s litany of falsehoods, half-truths and favourite warmist ideologies fails to impress us with your scholarship, Rob. I’m surprised you risk such a low-quality response option here. You can do much better.
Borenstein: “Sea levels are rising while Arctic sea ice was at a record low in September. Scientists blame global warming for more frequent weather disasters” No, they say no weather event can be assigned to global warming.
“It’s worsening. In the U.S. July was the hottest month ever recorded and this year is on track to be the nation’s warmest.” This is not a measure of global warming.
“Sea levels are rising while Arctic sea ice was at a record low in September.” They’re not related and are both caused by natural forces.
Hilarious.
“Arctic sea ice was at a record low in September.”
Helped along by an Autumn Arctic cyclone that broke up the ice.
RT:
The argument is that no single weather event can be assigned to AGW, but a significant trend in the overall number of severe events can be attributed to climate change.
Fair enough, but neither is a cold august in Noddyland evidence against AGW, and if “sceptic” sites were to ignore individual cooler events as evidence against AGW they’d have nothing to write about, “sceptics argue this sort of thing at least as often as “Warmists”.
Is this you way of demonstrating your knownedge that ice floats?
Borenstein isn’t claiming that one leads to the other, you’re just seeing what you want to see in that sentence.
Richard C:
You think this is the first Arctic autumn storm in the last 30+ years?
It’s a new minimum in at least a century by any measure and would have been with or without that storm.
“It’s a new minimum in at least a century by any measure and would have been with or without that storm”
And because there’s no Arctic temperature/CO2 correlation you’re barking on about a natural phenomenon.
Andrew W:
Evidence please?
“Evidence please?”
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/more-cherry-ice-from-joe-daleo/
The Walsh & Chapman reconstruction is very unlikely. Note how it stays completely flat throughout the whole period, then as soon as decent measuring techniques come in the values start to vary. This is why combining different measuring systems seldom works, and frankly is a poor method. If one combines datasets, one should not show them as one graph, rather each dataset must be distinct, so calibration errors are easier to spot.
Even Grant Foster (not a climate scientist, by the way, but a computer data analyst) admits: “Of course the data are less certain prior to the satellite era, less certain still prior to 1953, and even more uncertain before 1900. ”
Now we know from actual climate scientists (Howat, for example) that the Arctic region had less ice than now in the 1930s and 1940s, so it seems Grant’s data may be wrong in more ways than one.
Walsh and Chapman 2001 (via Tamino)
Conclusion
“….sea-ice extent has decreased substantially in the Northern Hemisphere…..likely driven by decadal-scale variations of the NAO or its broader manifestation, the so-called AO”
ftp://psc.apl.washington.edu/incoming/PolarFridays/2-walsh_2001.pdf
Natural phenomenon attribution
Well, this will be a link I’ve gotta see!
Where is it??
“This is why combining different measuring systems seldom works, and frankly is a poor method. If one combines datasets, one should not show them as one graph, rather each dataset must be distinct”
Case-in-point; this is what happens when the disparate Law Dome and Mauna Loa CO2 datasets are separated and Mauna Loa plotted distinctly:-
Mauna Loa CO2 vs HadCRUT3
http://climaterealists.com/attachments/database/2012/Climate%204%20u%20300__540x341.jpg
I can’t find the exact paper at the moment, but here is a quote from another of his:
It is fair to say that the current Arctic changes are unprecedented in the last 50 years though.
Going further back to the MWP, they are nothing unusual.
Richard C (NZ) says:
September 24, 2012 at 1:01 pm
Richard, you’re either dishonest, or seeing what you want to see, you’ve taken pieces from two sentences and combined them to create a different meaning. from the second sentence: “winter time decrease in the eastern North Atlantic, this is largely offset by increases else where and is likely driven by decadal-scale variations of the NAO or its broader manifestation, the so-called AO.”
Bob, be honest, that quote refers to Greenland glaciers, not arctic sea ice extent.
Andrew W,
The paper refers to the marine termini of Greenland, which are of course sea ice, since the shelves extend out to sea. They are a very useful proxy of the whole region, since we don’t have direct measurements of the whole area going back past the satellite era.
That’s why the W&C results look wrong – we know the region was subject to equal warming in the 1930s and 1940s. Now if you are arguing that sea ice is retreating due to anthropogenic global warming (I presume here you are) then previously recorded high warming rates in the 1930s and 1940s must surely be of interest, since they imply (as Howat stated in 2007) that these changes could simply be natural variation, and have nothing whatever to do with AGW.
Howat in interview with NY Times:
Andrew W,
Why am I not being honest? Read what I said when I introduced Howat above:
I’m talking here about the Arctic region in general, using Greenland as a useful proxy.
“Now we know from actual climate scientists (Howat, for example) that the Arctic region had less ice than now in the 1930s and 1940s,” “Well, this will be a link I’ve gotta see! Where is it??”
‘Rapid Changes in Ice Discharge from Greenland Outlet Glaciers’
ftp://www-ftp.tucson.ars.ag.gov/Tucson-Abs-Pres/Smith/Howat_et_al_2007.pdf
NYT article:-
‘Greenland isn’t melting as fast as we feared.’
It was big news when the rate of melting suddenly doubled in 2004 as ice sheets began moving more quickly into the sea. That inspired predictions of the imminent demise of Greenland’s ice — and a catastrophic rise in sea level. But a paper published online this afternoon by Science reports that two of the largest glaciers have suddenly slowed, bringing the rate of melting last year down to near the previous rate. At one glacier, Kangerdlugssuaq, “average thinning over the glacier during the summer of 2006 declined to near zero, with some apparent thickening in areas on the main trunk.”
I asked the lead author of the paper, Ian Howat of the University of Washington, for some perspective. Here’s his take:
“Greenland was about as warm or warmer in the 1930’s and 40’s, and many of the glaciers were smaller than they are now. This was a period of rapid glacier shrinkage world-wide, followed by at least partial re-expansion during a colder period from the 1950’s to the 1980’s. Of course, we don’t know very much about how the glacier dynamics changed then because we didn’t have satellites to observe it. However, it does suggest that large variations in ice sheet dynamics can occur from natural climate variability.
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/greenlands-glaciers-take-a-breather/
In the paper he and co-authors state:-
“…special care must be taken in how these and other mass-loss estimates are evaluated, particularly when extrapolating into the future because short-term spikes could yield erroneous long-term trends. Rather than yielding a well defined trend, our results are significant in that they show Greenland mass-balance can fluctuate rapidly”
Good grief. Glaciers are not sea ice.
Glacier growth is more a function of precipitation at high altitude.
The NATURAL PHENOMENON ATTRIBUTION (NAO, AO) is in respect to “The primary conclusion”.
By the way, Andrew W, can you spell out what your concerns are regarding the Arctic sea ice extent? I’m just curious, because apart from some general hand-wringing about polar bears, I’d like to know exactly why we should be worried.
I mean, I understand the issues regarding ice sheets re sea level, but why the alarm at the sea ice? It floats, and doesn’t affect sea level rise at all.
Who cares if a minimum is greater or lower than average? It all re-freezes again in winter. The winter extent just six months ago was one of the highest in the same record.
We had people going on a few years back in 2007 about “multi-year ice”, and how “new” ice could never survive season-to-season, etc. The years after 2007 shut them up, of course. A LOT of multi-year ice grew again, completely ignoring the predictions.
Now we have the same hand-wringing, but I’d like to know exactly why the panic?
It’s good to see Simon has finally learnt something from us. 🙂
Andrew and Simon (echoing Bob to a degree), if there’s no anthropogenic attribution for sea ice extent – what’s the problem?
Not for nothing is the word “passage” included in Northwest and Northwest Passages e.g.:-
08/28/2008
A Navigable Arctic
Northeast and Northwest Passages Both Free of Ice
By Christoph Seidler
For the first time ever, both the Northwest and the Northeast Passages are free of ice. Shipping companies have been waiting for this moment for years, but they will have to wait a little while longer before they can make use of the Arctic shortcut.
Shippers in Bremen are getting impatient. The Beluga Group, a shipping company based in the northern German city, had planned to send a ship through the Northeast Passage — or the Northern Sea Route, as Russians call it — this summer, according to spokeswoman Verena Beckhausen. The route leads from the Russian island Novaya Zemlya, off the northern coast of Siberia, through the Bering Strait between far eastern Russia and Alaska.
This route is radically shorter than the normal trip through the Suez Canal. From Hamburg to the Japanese port city of Yokohama, for example, the trip using the northern route is just 7,400 nautical miles — just 40 percent of the 11,500 nautical mile haul through the Suez
[…]
The ever-thawing Arctic represents a potentially major opportunity for the shipping industry. Currently, there are only between 20 and 30 days a year in which the Northeast Passage is 50 percent covered by ice or less, according to current statistics. But the Arctic Climate Assessment from the year 2005 estimates that such days will become increasingly frequent — with up to 120 largely ice-free days by the end of the century. And that is likely a conservative estimate.
As the ice disappears, the previously impossible becomes potentially profitable. Shipping companies are even looking beyond the Northeast Passage to its counterpart along the north coast of the North American continent — the Northwest Passage.
As of a few days ago, this route is also ice free, Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “The route that Roald Amundsen navigated in 1903 has been open for the last few days.”
>>>>>>>
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-navigable-arctic-northeast-and-northwest-passages-both-free-of-ice-a-574815.html
“…special care must be taken in how these and other mass-loss estimates are evaluated, particularly when extrapolating into the future because short-term spikes could yield erroneous long-term trends. Rather than yielding a well defined trend, our results are significant in that they show Greenland mass-balance can fluctuate rapidly”
Given the loss of Arctic sea ice mass has been far more dramatic than the reduction in extent:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
I’d wager ice free by the end of the decade, and I’d expect the disappearance of late summer/autumn sea ice north of Greenland to show that indeed “Greenland [ice] mass-balance can fluctuate rapidly”
Reflections on the Arctic sea ice minimum: Part II
Posted on September 17, 2012 | 468 Comments
Judith Curry
Pursuant to Part I, i ask the following questions:
* Whence an ‘ice free’ Arctic?
* Does an ‘ice free’ Arctic matter?
Whence an ‘ice free’ Arctic?
‘Ice free’ is put in quotes, because ‘ice free’ as commonly used doesn’t mean free of ice, as in zero ice. The usual definition of ‘ice free’ Arctic is ice extent below 1 M sq km (current minimum extent is around 3.5 M sq km). This definition is used because it is very difficult to melt the thick ice around the Canadian Archipelago. And the issue of ‘ice free’ in the 21st century is pretty much a non issue if your require this thick ice to disappear.
>>>>>>
http://judithcurry.com/2012/09/17/reflections-on-the-arctic-sea-ice-minimum-part-ii/
Richard C (NZ) says:
September 24, 2012 at 8:22 pm
Well, I’m sure there must be some point to that comment.
“1/3 rd of the actual value”
“actual” value? According to what methodology?
Big problem now Rob is that NIWA 7SS and NZCSET 7SS are actually two very close series but BEST NZ has come along and it’s the manic outlier.
Comparing averages:-
Comparing averages:-
11.93 NIWA 7SS 1913 -1922
10.80 BEST NZ 1913 -1922 (approx) (Diff -1.13 )
12.69 NIWA 7SS 2001 – 2011
11.40 BEST NZ 2001 – 2011 (approx) (Diff -1.29)
1910 NIWA NZCSET Diff +0.5 (-1.13 NIWA BEST)
2010 NIWA NZCSET Diff -0.01 (-1.29 NIWA BEST)
Makes your “actual” value look a bit silly doesn’t it Rob?
Using 10.80 BEST NZ 1913 -1922 and 11.40 BEST NZ 2001 – 2011
0.9 C NIWA 7SS (99 yrs with all 7 stns)
0.6 C BEST NZ (99 yrs)
0.336 C NZCSET 7SS (99 yrs with all 7 stns)
0.3 NIWA BEST Diff
0.26 BEST NSCSET Diff
I find it interesting that the models relied upon by the IPCC predicted warming during 2001-11 at the rate of 2.1°C/century.
That’s a pretty alarming rate of increase, when you compare it with the official figure of 0.7°C/century for the twentieth century. Those modellers were expecting the rate to have trebled by now!
In this context, the predictions would have been disproven if warming had continued at the same old rate of 0.07°C/decade. The fact that the century-long trend has now been turned on its head to cooling of 0.09°/decade is truly remarkable.
The rate of cooling in the 21st century (so far) has about the same value as the rate of warming in the 20th century. And the latter caused a global panic!
What could have caused such a spectacular switcheroo? The solar minimum hadn’t begun 10 years ago, had it? And human-caused aerosols are said to be much reduced. And the physics determining what goes into the deep ocean haven’t changed.
I suppose it’s possible that HadCRUT is using modern records nowadays rather than endlessly adjusting 100-year-old figures. What does UAH say about the 21st century trend?
“What could have caused such a spectacular switcheroo?”
Possibilities by Tallbloke here Clarence:-
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=10259
Snippet:-
Since the Sun only varies by around 0.1% over the 11 year cycle, and increased by around the same again over the C20th, it’s additional output must be amplified by changes in cloud cover, and this is indeed what prof. Nir Shaviv of Tel Aviv university found in his study on using the oceans as a calorimeter to measure the effect of increased insolation at the surface. His findings were published in a paper at the Journal of Geophysical Research, but you can read it for free here:
http://sciencebits.com/calorimeter
The increase in OLR proves that this must have had a bigger effect than an increase in co2 can have, and so less cloud and more sunshine must be the majority cause of the warming we saw in the late C20th. That this is so is also backed up by studies which compare changes in sunshine hours to changes in surface temperature. The correlation is much closer than that between temperature and co2 levels.
Congratulations, Bob, you have raised willful ignorance to the status of an art form!
Let me give you a clue: reduced ocean albedo -> increased heating -> warming permafrost -> methane emission -> increased heating -> warming permafrost -> methane emission -> increased heating -> warming permafrost -> methane emission -> increased heating -> warming permafrost -> methane emission -> increased heating and so on.
This is called POSITIVE FEEDBACK and no, its not like saying “hey, I like your tie…”
Clearly, you and NZCSET deserve each other!
Positive feedback on what?
Positive feedback on natural variability is still natural variability.
And before you start raving feverishly about GHG emissions you will have to explain these series in terms of CO2 levels:-
Fairbanks
Nuuk
Akureyri
Svalbard
Ostrov Dikson
Hatanga
http://climate4you.com/images/ArcticTemperatures.gif
Then explain away the AO-Arctic temperature influence (including Nuuk) wrt to CO2
http://acsys.npolar.no/meetings/final/abstracts/posters/Session_1/poster_s1_009.pdf
Then explain away the polar sunspot/temperature correlation wrt CO2
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sunspot_demise_fig3.png
Then explain away the Arctic solar irradiation/temperature correlation wrt CO2
http://climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu/scripts/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/imagemanager/files/Wilson.jpg
Then explain away the IPCC CO2 forcing problem:-
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/eggert-co2.png
And so on.
For pete’s sake Richard C, the first thing you offer is data for 6 cherry picked weather station sites.
Here’s a map of the globe, you can click on it till your hearts content to get station data from the entire globe, including lots of sites in the Greenland – North Atlantic area, most of which you’ll find far less useful to your cause that the sites you mention.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
“the first thing you offer is data for 6 cherry picked weather station sites”
Arctic weather station sites Andrew. I thought that was appropriate given the stream of discussion had meandered to the Arctic.
Curiously, those stations don’t exhibit CO2-forced-like characteristics. Did you notice that Andrew?
Neither does this Box et al Greenland summer temperature plot:-
http://hot-topic.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Greenland_summer_air_T_update_to_Box_et_al_2009.png
Unless of course, there’s an as yet undisclosed anthropogenic event that occurred in the late nineties to cause the spike.
Do you really believe that?
Positive feedback has never yet been observed to occur in this way. In fact, we can state quite definitely that it doesn’t happen, because if it could it would have happened in the past, when the temperatures were significantly warmer, and for longer.
Besides, I was asking Andrew W, not you.
The current Arctic sea ice extent is six standard deviations from the mean, and you are arguing that there is no positive feedback? You’ve just been bitten by a low albedo black swan.
The reduced albedo can only have an effect over the next few weeks, until the ice refreezes. Last maximum was almost as high as any in the recent years, so the current minimum was in fact NOT due to reduced albedo.
I’ve just been reading what WG1 says on the issue, and they’re significantly less alarmist than you guys. They talk about permafrost melting only near the end of the 21st century, but they make the point that methane has a very short residence time, and the projection under A1B is for a reducing methane concentration after 2050.
The IPCC says:
Stop getting all worked up over nothing.
We saw in 2007 there was a low minimum, yet the next few seasons were quite normal. We know the winds were responsible for that low minimum, and this year too.
No positive feedback, no released methane, no runaway warming, or anything even close to that.
If you have some evidence that this year’s minimum is due to reduced albedo and positive feedback, please provide it.
I suspect too that the IPCC methane forcing expression (simplified as it is) is as imprecise as the carbon dioxide forcing expression.
And because the initial process that a methane feedback acts on (supposedly as a result of warming) is reducing albedo, that whole positive feedback argument is put on ice (Ha!) over winter.
RC2, do you really think your parade of denier sites matters to anyone?
Why not throw in some creationist and Flat Earthers into the bargain?
Seriously, though, I suggest you read a basic science text, such as “Global Warming for Dummies” before you embarrass yourself any further….
“do you really think your parade of [evidence refuting alarmism] matters to anyone?
Yes. But not to you obviously because you don’t address any of it.
Did any of the “serious skeptics” here watch this video regarding the MWP?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY4Yecsx_-s&feature=youtu.be&t=6m4s
It has been posted up thread but the only person who appears to have watched any of it is Andy and his rebuttal to it was pure ad hominen. I think the video raises some interesting points about the provenance of some of the data behind the MWP and I would be interested if someone could provide a more reasoned analysis than Andy’s.
My arguments were not ad hom, because I didn’t present any arguments.
I listened to about 5 seconds of ex-Guardian journalist Peter Hadfield droning on in his irritating nasally voice and decided that I had better things to do with 15 minutes of my life.
UPDATE – I did fast forward to a random segment in that video and found a “hockey stick” graph for the southern hemisphere. How is Gergis at al going by the way?
but if he is correct, the whole MWP > current temperature argument is a manufactured crock achieved by cynical manipulation of other people’s charts.
Presumably his argument requires some kind of faith in the hockey stick and related paleoclimatic reconstructions.
No, just some actual diligent science, which is why you are afraid to watch it… what are you going to tell your kids, Andy?
Having now watched 6 minutes of this video, this is what it claims –
– no, so far, mention of any science about the MWP
– plenty of arguments around the hockey stick graphs, the Wegman report etc
– arguments that the MWP graphs are being doctored, whilst at the same time showing several graphs of paleo reconstructions with the instrumental record spliced on, and no mention of the “divergence problem” (i.e “Hide the Decline”)
Does it get any better?
This video claims that the graphs showing a warmer MWP have been “doctored”.
The argument for this is that they have removed the instrumental record part of the hockey stick graphs and rely on the proxy data alone.
The proxy data, or at least the tree ring data, shows a decline in proxy-deduced temperature in recent decades,
I would argue that the graphs that were originally shown – the instrumental record spliced onto the proxy series to “hide the decline”, are the ones that were doctored, not the other way around
If the modern instrumental record has been removed (and the x axis edited to hide the fact) how can these graph say anything about the MWP in comparison with today?
Replying to Nick. Do you think that it is an appropriate scientific practice to splice instrumental records onto proxy data in the same graph?
Sure Andy, so long as it is labeled as such. Do you think it is OK to remove such data and then modify the x axis hide the fact that the data has been removed?
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2012/09/the-unstoppable-mwp/#comment-118125
(my bold)
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2012/09/the-unstoppable-mwp/#comment-118192
To me that was the end of informed debate on what CO2 Science is doing, and in my opinion, nothing of substance has been added by “sceptics” since then, Andy doesn’t have the foggiest idea what “hide the decine” means, and Richard C thinks the data from 6 cherry picked near Arctic weather sites counts for more than the data from the hundreds of others.
“Hide the decline” refers to the splicing of instrumental records onto the paleoclimatic reconstructions to hide the apparent decline in temperature records as shown by the proxy reconstructions post 1960 (otherwise known as the “divergence problem”)
I stated this before. Do you disagree with my interpretation?
Thank you for the confirmation.
“Thanks for the confirmation”
Confirmation of what?
Since you love SkS so much, here is the great Oracle stating exactly what i did
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline-intermediate.htm
Note the use of the term “divergence problem”, and the reference to the apparent decline in temperatures in tree-ring proxy data
So I have just pulled a whole article from SkS that backs up my comments about Hide the Decline.
Do you still claim that I don’t have a clue?
Congratulations on finally using a decent source, if you’d done it earlier you’d have known that the “divergence problem” does not refer to “the apparent decline in temperature records as shown by the proxy reconstructions post 1960” but ONLY to tree ring proxies and since Mann’s ’98 paper the avialable range of proxies other than tree rings has grown to the point that tree rings are no longer required to do paleoclimate reconstructions to high levels of confidence (we now have way better data to work with than Mann did back then, which is why he had no alternative, if he wanted high confidence going back even 600 years other than to rely on the tree ring data and work aroud the divergence problem as best he could with the data then available to him).
So now that you agree I might actually have a clue about the divergence problem, go back and look at the video where Hadfield talks about “doctored graphs” whilst showing a graph that has instrumental data spliced onto the paleoclimatic series.
If he wanted to make a stronger case, he wouldn’t have shown the instrumental record grafted onto the paleo series if, as you claim, these are not needed.
Furthermore, he shows a SH reconstruction showing a hockey stick. The only one of these that I am aware of is Gergis et al which has been withdrawn, temporarily at least, from publications after statistical errors were pointed out (and acknowledged by the paper’s authors).
Also, you say I used a “decent source”. I didn’t actually use any source before. I was using my own words. This might be a bit of weird thing for those that like to spray SkS and Wikipedia links everywhere
You’re funny.
You can’t intelligently talk about the divergence problem without mentioning that it pertains only to tree ring proxies.
some people call that “making it up as you go along”
So remind me Andrew, when you said I didn’t “have a clue” about the divergence problem, which statement of mine did you specifically have a problem with?
“Richard C thinks the data from 6 cherry picked near Arctic weather sites counts for more than the data from the hundreds of others”
Baloney, I don’t “think” that at all. I’ve merely provided a sample of Arctic stations that don’t exhibit CO2-forced characteristics and since then the Box et al Greenland summer record that doesn’t either.
Care to present the “hundreds of others” (individually) that you seem to imply do so Andrew?
I’ve supplied you with the link. Go look.
Barrow WSO Airport, Alaska, daily temperature 1949 – 2012:-
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/g1sod.pl?500546+19490902+20120924+0+50+0+-20+80+0000100000+12
Barrow, Alaska, CO2 concentration:-
http://serc.carleton.edu/images/introgeo/teachingwdata/examples/BarrowCO2.gif
Houston, we have a problem.
Indeed you do.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425700260000&data_set=14&num_neighbors=1
Data Tampering: GISS Caught Red-Handed Manipulating Data To Produce Arctic Climate History Revision
http://notrickszone.com/2012/03/01/data-tamperin-giss-caught-red-handed-manipulaing-data-to-produce-arctic-climate-history-revision/
Houston, we have another problem.
Barrow has turned into an interesting exercise. Barrow WSO Airport for which I extracted a series from the Western Regional Climate Center website up-thread is a station from NCDC Station Historical Listing for NWS Cooperative Network but GISTEMP seems to use a different site:-
500546-9 BARROW WSO AIRPORT [Lat] 7118 [Lon] 15647
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?akbarr
700260000 BARROW/W. POS lat,lon (.1deg) 713 -1568
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/station_list.txt
Both however are urban, hence:-
THE URBAN HEAT ISLAND IN WINTER AT BARROW, ALASKA
KENNETH M. HINKEL,a,* FREDERICK E. NELSON,b ANNA E. KLENEc and JULIANNE H. BELLa
2003
5. CONCLUSIONS
Analysis of winter temperatures yields the following preliminary conclusions:
1. Based on spatial averages for the period 1 December 2001 to 31 March 2002, the urban area is 2.2 °C warmer than the rural area.
http://www.cas.umt.edu/geography/documents/Hinkel_etal_2003_winter_UHI.pdf
When just Arctic rural (isolated) sites are considered, the temperature as measured at stations isolated from any UHI is simply tracking the AMO:-
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/AMO-and-Isolated-Stations.jpg
From ‘Arctic isolated versus “urban” stations show differing trends’
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/22/arctic-isolated-versus-urban-stations-show-differing-trends/
Barrow WSO Airport last decade:-
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/g1sod.pl?500546+20021001+20120925+0+50+0+-20+80+0000100000+12
Barrow WSO Airport last 30 yrs:-
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/g1sod.pl?500546+19821001+20120925+0+50+0+-20+80+0000100000+12
From this website:-
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/coop-inventory/
“When just Arctic rural (isolated) sites are considered, the temperature as measured at stations isolated from any UHI is simply tracking the AMO”
From Wikipedia (sorry Andy):-
Periodicity and prediction of AMO shifts
Assuming that the AMO continues with its quasi-cycle of roughly 70 years, the peak of the current warm phase would be expected in c. 2020,[13] or based on its 50–90 year quasi-cycle, between 2000 and 2040 (after peaks in c. 1880 and c. 1950).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_multidecadal_oscillation
Richard C (NZ) says:
September 25, 2012 at 6:40 pm
I suspect I’ve worked it out already, but please tell, what are you waffling on about this time?
The latest propaganda video from Peter Sinclair managed to mention the large storm that broke up the ice plus the AO ,and then “fades to grey” with some scary words of content free wisdom from a scientist called Jennifer Francis
“GISTEMP seems to use a different site”
No, the metadata coordinates are dodgy but looks like Barrow airport is the same for both GISTEMP and NCDC.
Search for NCDC BARROW WSO AIRPORT (Wiley Post Will Rogers Memorial Airport) using 71.18, -156.47 returns a point “Unknown Rd” about 15 kms SE of the airport.
Search for GISTEMP Barrow/W. Pos (Wiley Post Will Rogers Memorial Airport) using 71.3, -156.8 returns a point in the ocean about 2 kms NW of the airport.
Search for Wiley Post Will Rogers Memorial Airport using 71.2856, -156.7661 returns a point next to the airport runway.
Just focus on this part if you’re lost Andrew:-
When just Arctic rural (isolated) sites are considered, the temperature as measured at stations isolated from any UHI is simply tracking the AMO:-
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/AMO-and-Isolated-Stations.jpg
And going by the Wiki link ‘Periodicity and prediction of AMO shifts’, expect current Arctic temperature conditions to continue until c. 2020.
Jennifer Francis: Linking weird weather to rapid warming of the Arctic
http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.co.nz/2012/06/jennifer-francis-linking-weird-weather.html
“Jennifer Francis is a research professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, where she studies Arctic climate change and the link between Arctic and global climates. She has authored more than 40 peer-reviewed publications on these topics.”
40 papers but missed the AMO-temperature correlation and cycle.
The article’s quite good though, including “it’s difficult to point the finger at Arctic amplification in causing any of these weather events”. Quite right, just look up “What are the impacts of the AMO?” for that
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/amo_faq.php#faq_3
“40 papers but missed the AMO-temperature correlation and cycle”
These guys didn’t:-
# Odd Helge Otterå,1, 2, 3
# Mats Bentsen,1, 2, 3
# Helge Drange1, 2, 4
# & Lingling Suo
‘External forcing as a metronome for Atlantic multidecadal variability’
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n10/fig_tab/ngeo955_F1.html
Figure 1: Observed and simulated northern hemisphere temperature and Atlantic multidecadal oscillation.
Figure 1c, AMO correlation with HadCrut3v (global) R = 0.90.
Earlier I said
A few “sceptics” replied after a fashion, but not with anything of substance like “ice free actic”, or 20 years of warming despite a quieter Sun, etc. They responded only with waffle.
So here’s what I think it would take in each case:
What would it take for “alarmists” to accept that the IPCC prediction of warming is exaggerated, and that there isn’t going to be major climate change?
It would take the end of warming for 20 years, and in fact a decline in temperatures by the amount they’ve risen without an explanation consistent with AGW theory as to why no turnaround.
and
What would it take for “sceptics” to accept that the IPCC warming predictions are largely accurate, and are going to result in major climate change?
barring a climate catastrophe, I think the only thing that would convince “sceptics” they were wrong would be a carbon free energy source as cheap and versatile as fossil fuels, with the supply of this energy not being Government controlled.
I say this because I believe the “sceptics” opinions are independent of climate events.
“A few “sceptics” replied after a fashion, but not with anything of substance like “ice free actic”, or 20 years of warming despite a quieter Sun, etc. They responded only with waffle.”
Your question Andrew was:-
“What would it take for “sceptics” to accept that the IPCC warming predictions are largely accurate, and are going to result in major climate change?”
My response was:-
A better performance than this:-
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622
And deference to radiative heat transfer science so we don’t see this:-
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/eggert-co2.png
If you dismiss that as “waffle” then you’re merely arguing from your own authority, in your own little bubble, and there never will be anything that can be said that will sway you.
Meanwhile the climate refuses to play IPCC ball. I’m inclined to agree with the commenter who somewhere wondered if the “W” in Andrew W is for “Wriggle”.
“A better performance than this”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/comparing-ipcc-projections-to-observations.html
The CMIP5 vs Obs is the up-to-date situation for AR5
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622
All on the wrong trajectory.
If that’s the best that state-of-the-art CO2-forced models can achieve then they’re irrelevant (as are the forcing expressions they employ) and we have to look at other models that do mimic observations e.g. Scafetta’s Empirical Model.
Hi Richard C,
Can you provide attribution for your figure please.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/02/2011-updates-to-model-data-comparisons/
Shows a rather good match between model predictions and observed data so I’m trying to figure out how the data you have provided was derived.
“Can you provide attribution for your figure please”
Sure:-
Written Statement of John R. Christy
The University of Alabama in Huntsville
Committee on Environment and Public Works
1 August 2012
2. RECENT CLIMATE MODEL SIMULATIONS (page 12)
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=66585975-a507-4d81-b750-def3ec74913d
The RC article is AR4 plotted against land stations, the Christy plot is CMIP5 for AR5 (supersedes AR4 simulations) plotted against UAH and RSS. Christy has since added land series but it doesn’t help the model cause a great deal.
“Christy has since added land series”
Written Statement of John R. Christy
The University of Alabama in Huntsville
Subcommittee Energy and Power, U.S. House of Representatives
20 Sep 2012
2. RECENT CLIMATE MODEL SIMULATIONS (page 17)
Figure 2.1 Global CMIP5 RCP45 38 Models (page 19)
http://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/files/Hearings/EP/20120920/HHRG-112-IF03-WState-ChristyJ-20120920.pdf
He has added 4 more models since the EPW testimony, one of which (37, an outlier) looks like it might be on the right trajectory. I’m curious as to which model that is and what they’re doing differently to the rest but 1 out of 38 is not a good ratio of success.
BTW, CMIP3 was the AR4 ensemble.
Hi Richard C,
As the Real Climate link shows the current temperatures are within the bounds of model uncertainties. Christy’s graphs do not show the model uncertainties so do not tell us anything about how successful the models have been.
“The CMIP5 vs Obs is the up-to-date situation for AR5”
you are so far out at sea it’s risible.
“…you are so far out at sea it’s risible”
Really?
CMIP5 – Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 – Overview
It is expected that some of the scientific questions that arose during preparation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) will through CMIP5 be addressed in time for evaluation in the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5, scheduled for publication in late 2013). The IPCC/CMIP5 schedule (pdf ) is now available and the three key dates are as follows:
* Februrary 2011: First model output is expected to be available for analysis,
* July 31, 2012: By this date papers must be submitted for publication to be eligible for assesment by WG1,
* March 15, 2013: By this date papers cited by WG1 must be published or accepted.
The IPCC’s AR5 is scheduled to be published in September 2013
http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/
34 of the latest CMIP5 climate model simulations of global temperature that will be used in the upcoming IPCC AR5 assessment on climate change are now accessible via KNMI Climate Explorer as per the Christy plot.
NASA have produced a nice visualisation showing the cyclone that broke the Arctic sea ice up in August
BH succinct as always:-
Arctic ice loss was hyped
There’s a terrible sense of deja vu about this story (via Climate Depot):
In a September 18 video posted by NASA on its website, they admit that the Arctic cyclone, which began on August 5, “wreaked havoc on the Arctic sea ice cover” by “breaking up sea ice.”
This is exactly what happened in 2007, when weeks of hype was followed by a quiet admission that the root cause of the loss of ice was winds and ocean currents.
Storms of a similar magnitude and timing have occurred 8 times over the 34 year satellite record but none have resulted in sea ice extent as low as it is this year.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/arctic-storm.html
How does this storm which is unusual but not unprecedented explain the downward trend of sea ice extent over the last 30 years?
“How does this storm which is unusual but not unprecedented explain the downward trend of sea ice extent over the last 30 years?”
It doesn’t. It explains the 2012 extent relative to recent levels and to the 2007 level especially because the same thing happened then.
Re “the downward trend of sea ice extent over the last 30 years?” see:-
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2012/09/the-unstoppable-mwp/#comment-119377
And down-thread but specifically this:-
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/AMO-and-Isolated-Stations.jpg
Rob Taylor,
Crippling drought, horrendous floods – you accuse us of approving of these things? And to follow up with something truly insane, you suggest we can prevent them? The bloody weather? Mr Taylor, take a deep breath because your mind has become unhinged from reality.
These weather events are not hunky-dory, because a lot of people could be miserable, homeless or dead. Who could approve of them, you twit? But this is Mother Nature. This is God’s will. There’s nothing new here – not for thousands of years. This is life. This is how it goes.
We can only adapt. Or at least, the wise ones adapt, and they manage it without crippling each other with guilt over their evil deeds.
Hi Richard T,
“this is Mother Nature. This is God’s will” is that really what you believe? I had been conducting these discussions on the assumption everyone accepted that science rather than divine intervention could explain the weather. Please correct me if my assumption is false.
Does anyone else here think that any changes in the climate are “Gods will”? It would be helpful to understand the roots of peoples perspective on these issues.
Reminds me of a story Sir Bob Jones recounts in his book Travelling:
“I..struck up a conversation with my seat companion, a … pilot [whose] job included training Arab pilots. He [said] they were first-class – but only so long as nothing went wrong.
On two separate occasions, then in a supervisory role with these pilots, something had gone wrong eliciting an identical response from the Arab trainees. Both had leapt from their seats, crouched on the floor and prayed to Allah. That’s a fair enough policy for Moslems convinced of the eternal heaven awaiting them, but less satisfying to the atheistic western mind.”
I agree, Andrew, fundamentalism comes in many guises, and is a great way of avoiding individual responsibility for one’s choices in life.
In particular, the choice to remain ignorant and gullible…
A nice study looking at lake sediments in Svalbad:
“We find that the summer warmth of the past 50 yr recorded in both the instrumental and alkenone records was unmatched in West Spitsbergen in the course of the past 1800 yr, including during the Medieval Climate Anomaly, and that summers during the Little Ice Age (LIA) of the 18th and 19th centuries on Svalbard were not particularly cold, even though glaciers occupied their maximum Holocene extent.”
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/2012/09/18/G33365.1.abstract?sid=97d2d392-b80d-4c0f-
9eb2-6277b09b779c
The Reverse Hockey Stick In Svalbard
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/the-reverse-hockey-stick-in-svalbard/
Careful, Simon, you’ll fall foul of Andrew W if you’re not careful. He had a lot to say about people cherry-picking single studies:
The interesting thing about this paper is that is claims to be the first use of Tephrochronology to lake sediments in the area.
This is based on 210Pb, plutonium activity
Tephrochronology is based on events from volcanic eruptions, and has been used mostly in Iceland, which of course is a volcanic country
It does seem quite a stretch to make these statements about temperature reconstructions in Svalbard based on this rather untested concept.
But hey – this is cutting edge research
An interesting paper dealing just with the NH, using 120 proxies including 49 with annual resolutions:
Ljungqvist et al. (2012) “Northern Hemisphere temperature patterns in the last 12 centuries”