Roman Warming (was it global?)

Gullible Rudd steps right in it

Rudd let slip a line in his frustration this week that reveals how little he knows about the topic he holds so dear. He has so completely swallowed the PR on climate science, that when poked, he reflexively fires back exaggerated scientific claims that would make even the IPCC blush. In 2007 the IPCC and Gore et al offered Rudd the perfect Election-Wedge-on-a-Platter. They’d primed the audience with propaganda; trained the crowd to recite: Carbon is pollution. It looked like a no-brainer. Yet having based his leadership and campaign on it, it’s obvious he had not done even the most basic of checks (and still apparently hasn’t).

It’s an abject lesson in the importance of doing some homework before rewriting a nation’s economy.

Roman Statue's aren't dressed for cold weather

Toga's don't keep you warm

Last week Tony Abbott (the Australian opposition leader) told school children that it was warmer ”at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth”. This banal line set off a flurry of denial and bluster.

Rudd was incredulous in the Parliamentary Hansard record to the opposition members last week:

…how is it that, in the 21st century, you could support this Leader of the Opposition, who says that the world was hotter in Jesus’ time? How could you actually hold to a belief, in defiance of total science around the world, that somehow in the last 2000 years the world has become cooler, not warmer? How could you stand behind a leader who says that the industrial revolution, in effect, did not happen?

In defiance of “total science”? Or totalitarian science?

It’s true it’s difficult to know the exact temperature of the globe in the year one (it’s difficult to know the exact global temperature in 1975, too), but there are scientists reporting in journals from all over the world that back up Mr Abbott. We know it really must have been warmer in Europe thanks to written historical records and artefacts that pop out of melting glaciers. As William Kinninmonth points out, Hannibal took an army of elephants across the Alps in winter in 200 BC. And we all know that the Romans are not known for wearing fur coats.

Rudd is apoplectic with the non-sequiteur about the industrial revolution: If temperatures were warmer in 10BC, somehow that nullifies the steam engine 1800 years later? In Rudd-land, no one can even imagine the parallel universe where  carbon might not control the climate.

A warmer world in Roman times?

A quick tour of peer reviewed research around the globe shows it was also warmer in China, North America, Venezuela, South Africa, and the Sargasso Sea 2000 years ago. And of course, Greenland tells an evocative tale.

Greenland temperatures – cooling for 3000 years

Greenland Temperatures - last 10,000 years

Long-term, temperatures have been declining for at least 3000 years. The graph stops about 100 years ago but even allowing for the extra rise in the last century, temperatures today are cooler than  in Medieval times and cooler than Roman times. It’s clear from hundreds of studies that the medieval warm period was a global phenomenon and was warmer than today. Some of the studies below may not include modern temperatures, but they show that the Roman era was comparable to Medieval times.

Thanks to the Craig Idso at CO2Science for compiling so many of these on his site.

Great plains of North America

Source (Nordt 2008)

Nordt, L., von Fischer, J., Tieszen, L. and Tubbs, J. 2008. Coherent changes in relative C4 plant productivity and climate during the late Quaternary in the North American Great Plains. Quaternary Science Reviews 27: 1600-1611.

Makassar Strait  (Indo Pacific)

Source: Oppo 2009

Reference: Oppo, D.W., Rosenthal, Y. and Linsley, B.K. 2009. 2,000-year-long temperature and hydrology reconstructions from the Indo-Pacific warm pool. Nature 460: 1113-1116.

China

East China Sea Warming Roman Times

Source: Fengming 2008.  For more: See also, and here and East China Sea.

Fengming, C., Tiegang, L., Lihua, Z. and Jun, Y. 2008. A Holocene paleotemperature record based on radiolaria from the northern Okinawa Trough (East China Sea). Quaternary International 183: 115-122.

Sargasso Sea (Atlantic Ocean)

The Atlantic was warmer too

Keigwin, L.D. 1996. The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea. Science 274: 1504-1507.

See also  Richter 2009

Richter, T.O., Peeters, F.J.C. and van Weering, T.C.E. 2009. Late Holocene (0-2.4 ka BP) surface water temperature and salinity variability, Feni Drift, NE Atlantic Ocean. Quaternary Science Reviews 28: 1941-1955.

Venzuela

Venezuela temperatures in Roman Times

Source: Black 2004

Black, D. E., Thunell, R. C., Kaplan, A., Peterson, L. C. and Tappa, E. J. 2004. A 2000-year record of Caribbean and tropical North Atlantic hydrographic variability. Paleoceanography 19, PA2022, doi:10.1029/2003PA000982.

South Africa

South African Cave last 3000 years

South African Cave last 3000 years

Source: Holmgren 2001. See also here and here in African reconstructions.

Holmgren, K., Tyson, P.D., Moberg, A. and Svanered, O. 2001. A preliminary 3000-year regional temperature reconstruction for South Africa. South African Journal of Science 97: 49-51.

The Southern Ocean 7000 year record also shows long term cooling as well as the Roman Warm Period.

Vostok Antarctica, last 12,000 years

Vostok seems to move according to it’s own local agenda (probably due to it being whiter, colder and more isolated than anywhere else). But none-the-less, the long term curve — the big swing — matches the Greenland record, and temperatures peaked thousands of years ago and are on a general long term slide.

LATE POST ADDITION: I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions from the trendline of Antarctic data, the graph is there for completeness. There’s a linear downtrend over the last 5000 and last 12,000 years as well, but I doubt it’s statistically significant. What matters for this post is that if many places around the rest of the globe were warmer 2000 years ago, to counter that, Antarctica would need to be dramatically cooling to keep the average the same. For Kevin Rudd to be right– and to claim the world has warmed from 2000 years ago, Antarctica would need to be very very cold. It wasn’t.

Vostok Antarctica, last 12,000 years

EXTRA NOTE
Charlie B and Chris both pointed out that a study in shells off Iceland shows the Roman Warm Period (RWP) and the MWP. (Can someone test shells around Australia?)

“No Scientists” eh Mr Rudd?

Name the scientist who claims it was globally cooler in Roman Times.

Thanks to Baa Humbug for finding the Hansard quote and helping with the graphs.

H/t Mattb for asking about the trend.

UPDATE: 8-12-2011 Headline changed to reflect the more useful long term point of this post.

9.9 out of 10 based on 14 ratings

370 comments to Roman Warming (was it global?)

  • #
    MattB

    If you have a source you should let Plimer know, because his claim in his book is unsourced, and the book is clearly Abbott’s source.

    Seriously you’d have to be pretty one-eyed to think that Abbott’s statement is not equally deserving of derision.

    31

  • #
    MattB

    What’s with the 2nd degree polynomial curves on the top and bottom graphs?

    31

  • #
  • #
    Brett_McS

    I’ll take the “equally derisive” view that doesn’t cost us billions of dollars, thanks.

    30

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    MattB: #1 #2 #3
    May 18th, 2010 at 12:18 am

    Aww c’mon Matt. Your link also links to realclimate full of graphs that go back to the year 200. Not year 0 (or earlier. The Roman Warming ended about 150-200 ad)

    Also how do you know “clearly” that Plimer was Abbotts source?

    Now we know that Rudds source is the IPCC. Can you show me where the IPCC says the Roman Warming period was cooler than the current warming?

    40

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Hey Matt. Any comments on the myriad of PEER REVIEWED papers the above graphs come from?

    40

  • #
    janama

    Thanks Joanne I was amazed not one journalist went to the trouble of checking the data on Abbott’s claim – they all chorused derision together because they are all as ignorant about historic climate as the PM.

    Stop being a troll MattB, you soil this site.

    40

  • #
    El Sledgo

    To think that Chairman KRudd, et-al stayed up 3 nights in “Jokenhagen” last year to think of yet another way to hoodwink the public on the “biggest moral challenge of our lifetime”. I guess “Mr Clean” is suffering from the same delusion as Lewandowski.

    30

  • #
    DougS

    Rudd is typical of the uninformed (the IPCC says it, so it must be true) AGW alarmists politicians, the slightest hint of scepticism and he goes ballistic – without thinking!

    It’s a shame he didn’t resort to accusing Abbott of being a ‘flat-earther’ or a conspiracy advocate.

    I think it would be a great idea if Abbott had a few sceptical ‘pokes’ at regular intervals, who knows what ludicrous responses Rudd might come out with?

    40

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    El Sledgo:#8
    May 18th, 2010 at 1:10 am

    Just a slight correction Mr Sledgo…
    “The greatest moral, political AND social challenge of our lifetime” thank you very much. lol

    20

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    DougS:#9
    May 18th, 2010 at 1:11 am

    hey Duggy, the first part of your comment is wrong. the second part is a great idea.

    The IPCC never mentioned the Roman warming in the AR4, so I don’t know where KRudd got his info from.

    I reckon your idea of “sceptical pokes” is a very good one. Why don’t you email Abbotts office with that one.

    20

  • #
  • #
    Baa Humbug

    chris:#12
    May 18th, 2010 at 1:17 am
    Good link Chris. Well done. Climate reconstruction from clam shells, who’d a thunk?

    Reminds me of a story of a couple of suited types in a wine bar. They’re sipping a variety of wines and betting money on who can nominate the style and vintage correctly.
    A drunk (MattB?) overhears these two, approaches them, offers his drink for evaluation. The suited types take a sip and immediately spit it out yelling “it tastes like piss!!!” The drunk says…
    “yeah it’s mine, but how old am I”?

    30

  • #
    El Sledgo

    Ah, yes, Baa Humbug 😉 I do stand corrected. I do still have a laugh at the little spat he had on the ABC last week. Notice how the lefties spun it such that they never saw him lose the plot? To think that he openly used the term “denier” in a speech at the Lowy institute speaks volumes about his delusion and obvious immersion into the cult of the manbearpig.

    20

  • #
    Bernd Felsche

    It’s true it’s difficult to know the exact temperature of the globe in the year one (it’s difficult to know the exact global temperature in 1975, too),

    It’s difficult to know the exact temperature of the globe last year.

    And even if you did, it wouldn’t be useful information. Temperature is not a good indication of the heat content of the active parts of the climate system. It’s a futile exercise trying to guess a “global temperature” because the number is a nonsense.

    Meanwhile, it is quite clear that it was warmer in Europe during Roman times. Based on historical records of agriculture and trade, it would have been quite a bit warmer in Northern Europe, and slightly warmer around the Med.. This is what one would expect with “global warming”; the heat moves more strongly to colder latitudes by convection to radiate to space.

    20

  • #
    BobC

    MattB:
    May 18th, 2010 at 12:05 am

    If you have a source you should let Plimer know, because his claim in his book is unsourced, and the book is clearly Abbott’s source.

    Uh… “If you have a source…”??? Jo’s article was full of peer reviewed sources — what are you talking about?

    If I can grasp your “reasoning” correctly, what you appear to be implying is that, because you think Abbot’s source is an unsourced book, then Abbot deserves to be derided even though there are many peer reviewed sources that back him up (none of which you appear to have noticed before writing your comment).

    I don’t know what time zone you’re in, but I strongly advise not writing these replies before your first cup of coffee.

    20

  • #
    DougS

    Baa Humbug:
    May 18th, 2010 at 1:17 am

    Baa: I think you’re correct – Hockey Stick and son of Hockey Stick only ‘got rid’ of MWP and the Little Ice Age. It wouldn’t be surprising though if AR4 didn’t mention the Minoan or Roman Warm periods – they’d be a bit ‘inconvenient’.

    21

  • #
  • #
    MadJak

    It is obvious to me that the our Prime minister get’s his scientific views from other failed politicians “documentaries”.

    It is obvious to me that he is a failed diplomat who after finding he couldn’t even make it in the public service, he decided to become a career politician pretending to lead one of the most pathetic rabbles of incompetent imbeciles seen outside of academic circles in quite a long time.

    Obviously the prospect of actually getting out there in the real world and contributing to the tax pool must have scared him somewhat?

    It is also obvious to me that even while other people have tried to point out his folly on this very subject (and others), he takes issues personally rather than having any decorum of professionalism.

    I would suggest that this prime minister we have is quite simply, lethally dangerous to Australias future. He is not a leader, he is a puppet who will parrot whatever his meagre intelligence can understand (do you have that on DVD?).

    Of course, these is just my observations, many other people just say they find his approach arrogant and condescending.

    20

  • #
    Richard

    Er .. what branch of science / education did Rudd specialise in? Was it Chinese language and Chinese history perchance.

    It was warmer in China 2000 years ago? It seems thats a bit of Chinese history that has escaped Kevin Rudd. I guess he gets his information from Nancy, who is always wrong.

    PS – I was in Rome from the 8th of April to the 13th. It was cold. You definitely couldnt get by in a toga. (I know I know – not that it proves anything but Europe was cold. When I left Paris on the 7th of May, the minimum was 6)

    20

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    I tried putting a comment severalties but nothing happened?

    20

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    The most favorite articles about the ice-hockey stick fabrication of mine with CRU e-mails about making the plots with disposal of MWP and LIA etc. – the 1st

    http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/08/dealing-a-mortal-blow-to-the-mwp/

    20

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    The most favorite articles about the ice-hockey stick fabrication of mine with CRU e-mails about making the plots with disposal of MWP and LIA etc. – 2nd

    http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/11/overpecks-hammer/

    10

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    The most favorite articles about the ice-hockey stick fabrication of mine with CRU e-mails about making the plots with disposal of MWP and LIA etc. – 3rd

    http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/20/hide-the-decline-ii/

    There are many of similar articles.

    10

  • #

    The months of January through March were the coldest three months in Florida (USA) in many, many decades. While it never got bitter cold, the daytime highs were well below normal and many record low high temperatures were set. Lots of wildlife perished in everglades and fish kills in lakes were unprecedented in memory of locals.

    Winters in the UK have been getting progressively colder for the past five years and last year there was complete snow cover at one time! Very rare. My wife’s sister and husband have been traveling in England for the past three weeks (they’ve taken these “cottage” holidays more than a dozen times in the last decade) and they report this trip has been the coldest they ever experienced.

    Record snows in the past few years across the southern hemisphere (especially South America). Record snow fell in the Middle East during the same period. Massive snowstorms and cold that hadn’t been experienced in decades in Asia, too.

    But the “usual suspects” claim that it’s getting warmer and last year was one of the warmest ever!

    But this claim comes with the background of Climategate and the machinations of Hansen (US-GISS) and Jones (CRU) to “adjust” past temperatures … and the original data cannot be found! How terribly convenient!

    The US temperature record is unreliable. Urban areas should never be included (why not use rural areas with same general location?).

    Claims of unprecedented warming are nonsense and posting RealClimate rubbish won’t change the reality.

    The wheels are flying off the global warming bandwagon, yet the diehard faithful continue to publish rubbish!

    What a spectacle!

    Bob Webster

    11

  • #
    A C

    Hey, How about someone out there emailing a link to this to Catalyst and suggesting making a program about the MWP and RWP instead of flogging the usual dead horse of the alledged Modern Warm Period. I’d do it myself but they are probably sick of me and my suggestions as to what they can do with the show.

    10

  • #
    Siliggy

    Matt B. @ 1
    “Jesus of Nazareth”
    So you think Ian plimer is the author of the book on that subject do you?
    How many lepers do you find about the place to heal in cold climates?
    Maybe he was reading about leprosy in China at the time from the same place as these quotes.
    “In contrast, prevalence rates are low (< 1 per 1,000
    population) in most temperate regions of the world, and
    are virtually nonexistent in cold climates.13"

    "In 1179, the Lateran Council decreed
    that lepers could not share church, cemetery, or even
    social life with the healthy. By 1220, it was a civil crime
    for a leper to live with a nonafflicted individual."

    10

  • #
    John Coochey

    I have been invited to a conference at the Australian National University at the end of this momth. When I questioned why all the speakers were warmists they said that they could not locate skeptical speakers. Can anyone help out here? [email protected]

    10

  • #
    Siliggy

    If you have a source you should let Plimer know

    Here is one you can tell him about.
    New technique shows Roman Warm Period Warmer than Present Day

    10

  • #
    Binny

    Anyone with a passing interest in ancient history knows that civilisations rise with the warmth and fall with the cold.

    10

  • #
    Sean McHugh

    MattB said:

    If you have a source you should let Plimer know,

    If Jo has a source? Apparently Matt is better at finding “2nd degree polynomial curves” than he is at finding poly-references. By the way, did anyone get the “polynomial” point, or was Matt just letting us know that he has dabbled in maths while tossing in some vague innuendo?

    Matt continued with:

    because his [Plimer’s] claim in his book is unsourced,

    The Roman Warming period appears on pages 59-60 of Plimer’s “heaven+earth”. There are a dozen footnote references occupying 26 lines. Apart from awkward ad hominem, Matt’s argument relies on falsehood.

    And then:

    and the book [Plimer’s] is clearly Abbott’s source.

    Well, whatever skills Matt lacks in locating clear sources from text, he makes up for it in “clearly” seeing them with ESP. Remarkable lucidity given that those “heaven+earth” pages don’t even mention “Jesus” or “Julius Caesar”.

    http://astroblogger.blogspot.com/2010/05/open-letter-to-honourable-tony-abbott.html is a fairly good appraisal.

    Just more evidence from Matt that the warmists are the real denialists. As badly as they want to, they won’t be able to make the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods quietly go away. There is plenty of evidence for those periods and the evidence is growing. Even Phil Jones, of Climategate fame, now admits to the probability of hotter temperatures in the past. If the warmists wish to continue to claim that today’s temperatures are unprecedented, the onus lies with them.

    10

  • #
    Grant

    It is interesting the scientific, artistic and cultural advancement that seems to accompany the warm periods. Presumably because there is an abundance of food and economic prosperity, society can afford to have people who are dedicated to these pursuits, rather than to food production.

    Given that the quality of science is currently going down the drain we must be going through a period of cooling. 🙂

    10

  • #

    @MattB 1,2 and 3

    Matt,

    When previously cornered you made it perfectly clear that you were not interested in empirical data. In fact, you made it clear to everybody that you were comfortable relying on an appeal to authority, namely to the IPCC.

    That being said, when Hannibal crossed the Alps to attack the Romans he did so without any North Face gear. Today, the route is impassible even using the most modern mountaineering gear. Lately, they have found evidence of medieval civilization as the glaciers and snows melt in the Alps.

    But hey, why let solid empirical evidence, logic and common sense get in the way of an appeal to authority? There are hundreds (see http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php for a list) of peer reviewed papers on the subject that show the MWP was global. Michael Mann is a fraudster who would have us all believe that the MWP was somehow confined to the Northern Hemisphere. Not only does the plethora of peer reviewed literature contradict the infamous hockey stick but the Wegman report ( http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf ) shows it to be sloppy statistical work at best and probably outright fraud.

    I am not going to comment on Australian politics but its nice to see Rudd instead of Gore stick his foot in his mouth!

    Yep, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink! Onward through the fog, Matt!!!

    10

  • #
    val majkus

    as to those ‘hottest decade’ claims check out these articles:

    1) http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/05/crisis-in-new-zealand-climatology
    a couple of quotes:
    The official archivist of New Zealand’s climate records, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), offers top billing to its 147-year-old national mean temperature series (the “NIWA Seven-station Series” or NSS). This series shows that New Zealand experienced a twentieth-century warming trend of 0.92°C.
    The official temperature record is wrong. The instrumental raw data correctly show that New Zealand average temperatures have remained remarkably steady at 12.6°C +/- 0.5°C for a century and a half. NIWA’s doctoring of that data is indefensible

    2) as to Australia’s BOM compares in accuracy check out:
    http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/the-australian-temperature-record-part-1-queensland/NASA GISS data does not back BoM hottest decade claim
    and these three from http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?cat=20
    NASA GISS data does not back BoM hottest decade claim
    How can it serve the Australian national interest by having the BoM mislead us ?
    Australian mean annual temperature reconstruction 1882-2009

    10

  • #
    crakar24

    Well lets see, KRudd does a nice deal with Malcolm to plug the holes in the budget. Then along comes Tony and throws a spanner in the works. Now KRudd has to tax the miners to plug the hole, a tax which is causing him to cop a lot of critisism (something KRudd does not have the mental capacity to handle).

    Is it any wonder KRudd and Tony do not get on very well?

    10

  • #
    crakar24

    Eddy,

    The correct phrase is “You can lead a horticulture but you cant make her think”.

    Apart from that its a very good post (no thumbs up for you this time) :-)))

    10

  • #
    janama

    Interesting remark by Richard Lindzen in his address to the conference. He suggested that we cease being called a sceptic – a sceptic is one who is sceptical about something – we aren’t sceptical – we KNOW it’s wrong!

    10

  • #

    @ val majkus 34

    Great Post and thank you for the links. As a gangster movie fan I am reminded of the movie, “The gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight” These “experts” can’t even agree with one another but I am supposed to trust them? At least when they pass the collection plate around at church I have a remote chance of getting something for my money but not with these climate criminals!

    Newsflash:Kevin “Ceasar died of hypothermia” Rudd and Al “The Center of The Earth is Millions of Degrees” Gore were seen boarding a plane together earlier today in Kansas, USA. Word around the campfire is that they are going to hook up with the scarecrow, fly to the Land of Oz (not Australia) and see the wizard about getting a brain. Even one split three ways would be an improvement!

    10

  • #
    pat

    as usual, follow the money:

    17 May: AirTransportWorld: Geoffrey ThomasClimate change may impact aviation safety, ICAO warns
    While most of the air transport industry is focused on aviation’s impact on climate change, ICAO held a conference last month in Montreal looking at the potential impact of climate change on aviation…
    ICAO warned that there is likely to be more frequent hostile weather and/or more intense weather systems and/or more widespread phenomena in the future. “An aviation weather hazard like a ‘supercell’ has features that include rain, wind, wind shear, hail, turbulence and lightning and safety is likely to face a challenge as a result of a growth in these intense phenomena.”..
    Two new EU-funded projects have set out to examine the effects of changing weather patterns on transport in Europe. Projects EWENT and WEATHER will carry out in-depth analyses, assess the hazards and propose response strategies. A two-day international conference is to be held Sept. 8-9 in Cologne under the auspices of the European Aviation Safety Agency.
    http://atwonline.com/eco-aviation/article/climate-change-may-impact-aviation-safety-icao-warns-0517

    17 May: NYT: NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD: Traders Are Up and Down Over Latest Version of Climate Bill
    In the emissions trading section of the proposed bill, lawmakers stipulate that primary trading and end-delivery of emission allowances and derived futures contracts would be restricted to a separately selected group of individuals or institutions, to be determined by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in conjunction with U.S. EPA and the Treasury Department. Companies facing caps on their emissions levels are also allowed in.
    That generally wouldn’t be a problem for firms and traders, except that the bill makes no attempt to define what a registered participants is…
    Even U.S. EPA’s sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide trading programs, the world’s first pollution trading systems, allow open access — insiders point out that in the past, school groups have even been involved in the trading of SO2 allowances….
    Some financial giants like Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and others seem likely to pass registration for carbon trading, but smaller institutions are particularly worried….
    There’s also strong opposition to the price ceilings and floors the bill would impose on federal allowances — $25 per ton at the top end and $12 at the bottom, adjustable against inflation.
    Derwent said the IETA is trying to figure out if this price range would even make it possible for the United States to obtain the 17 percent reduction in emissions by 2020 as intended…
    Although the bill only mandates that electricity generators acquire emissions allowances or offsets beginning in 2013, that would still double the physical size of the worldwide carbon market, even if trading activities in the United States would initially remain lower than in Europe, Barclays analysts say. Adding in natural gas distributors and large-emitting industries post-2016 would expand the universe of tradable carbon-based instruments even further.
    Market players are also celebrating the continued emphasis on cap and trade over a carbon tax or other means of reducing emissions…
    http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/05/14/14climatewire-traders-are-up-and-down-over-latest-version-70468.html

    10

  • #

    @ krakar24

    Thanks bro! Did you get you name from the old TV show with Telly Sevales, “Kojak” I remember Kojak always yelling “Krakar”! (Det. Bobby Crocker)

    Speaking of peer reviewed science, do you know the easiest way to make a hormone? Don’t pay her! A little off topic but unlike the harlots of climate science you get something for your money with a hooker. And yes, they will both “do” you for money! 🙂

    10

  • #
    pat

    still following the money:

    17 May: CalgaryHerald,Canada: Reuters:Europe’s top polluters earn billions from passing carbon costs to consumers
    Debate continues on industries’ ability to bear cost of emissions goals
    Europe’s most polluting industries have reaped billions of euros from carbon markets by passing on to consumers the cost of carbon permits they were given for free, consultancy CE Delft said on Monday…
    It (the report) was commissioned by environment group the European Climate Foundation…
    “Substantial windfall profits have been made by energy intensive companies that obtained allowances for free, but calculated their market value in the prices of the products,” it added…
    http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/Europe+polluters+earn+billions+from+passing+carbon+costs+consumers/3037547/story.html

    10

  • #
    Bob Malloy

    Sean McHugh: @ 31

    You’ve solved it Sean, Your link clearly indicates where MattB got his info linking Abbott to Plimer.

    From the bottom of your linked article.

    Tim Lambert traces Mr Abbott’s assertions to Ian Plimer. No wonder Mr. Abbott got it wrong.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    The top graph and the bottom graph are from David Lappi, and as far as I can tell are not reviewed or retrieved from literature of note. The point on the polynomial fits is a 2nd degree polynomial ALWAYS points the same way at each edge… either up or down… so the use above to suggest some sort of trend is absurd. But thumbs down all you want. Janama – the cheek of you to call me a troll!

    10

  • #
    PeterD

    Why do we persist in attributing Rudd with ignorance?

    The man is not a fool, although perhaps he thinks everyone else is. (He may be 50% right).

    Rudd exploited the global warming scam for the same reason other governments did- it was potentially a bottomless cash bucket and a road to absolute power. Rudd recklessly pillaged the Nation’s coffers and credit to splash cash with the clear intention that the ETS would pay. When the Emissions Trading Scam was thwarted he turned to pillage the mining sector. He will be thwarted on that gambit, too.

    Rudd is not ignorant; he is greedily impatient and incompetent. Pity help us if anyone with some street-smarts takes control of his agenda.

    10

  • #

    Matt,

    Good to see you are well and posting. Without you I would be like Inspector Javert without Jean Valjean. On reflection, perhaps without you I would feel more like Chief Inspector Charles LaRousse Dreyfus without his intrepid Inspector Jacques Clouseau!

    Matt, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEcsgbwBFRs 😉

    10

  • #
    crakar24

    Eddy,

    No i did not get the name from Kojak (much less extravagant actually)but if it is OK with you i will make such claims in the future :-

    Pete,

    Yes i believe you are right, its funny how some world leaders put their peoples best interests first whilst others are prepared to “sell them down the river” for fame, fortune and notorioty.

    Next thing you know Tony will make the audacious claim when talking to high school students that “back around the time you were born there was less Arctic sea ice than there is now”.

    KRudd will respond with passages from the bible and stories about men in white coats but he wont respond with this.

    http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=05&fd=16&fy=1995&sm=05&sd=16&sy=2010

    We need to get rid of this idiot now.

    10

  • #
    Frank Brown

    Eddy A…super kudos man. Just about filled my depends. Hearts up heads down, take good care.

    10

  • #
    Ross

    Crakar24 @ 45. Really like the link. Nothing like photographic evidence instead of models to prove a point.
    But the other side still seems to think 2010 to date is the “hottest year on record”

    http://climateprogress.org/2010/05/16/nasa-easily-the-hottest-january-and-hottest-jan-april-in-temperature-record/

    10

  • #
    Sean McHugh

    Hoping to salvage a couple of points, MattB replied:

    The top graph and the bottom graph are from David Lappi, and as far as I can tell are not reviewed or retrieved from literature of note. The point on the polynomial fits is a 2nd degree polynomial ALWAYS points the same way at each edge… either up or down… so the use above to suggest some sort of trend is absurd.

    You’re still not with the programme, Matt. If you click on the top graph, it takes you to a page where she comments:

    With so much volatility in the graphs, anyone could play “pick a trend” and depending on which dot you start from, you can get any trend you want. — Jo

    So much for her trying to espouse trends, polynomial or otherwise. Your comment was a red herring, Matt. And as for the latest in your sourcing charges, Lappi’s graph bears this label:

    http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png

    Data: R.B. Alley, The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland. Journal of Quaternary Science Reviews 19:213-226

    So even though you would no doubt prefer East Anglia’s dodgy data and/or Mann’s Hockey Stick graph, the data for Lappi’s graph is clearly referenced.

    10

  • #
    tide

    Mattb @42:

    a 2nd degree polynomial ALWAYS points the same way at each edge… either up or down

    Yes, but that by no means rules out a 3rd or 4th degree (or higher) polynomial fit in these graphs. In fact, from the graphs alone, you cannot even conclude they are polynomial fits.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Yes Sean the data is reference, but is the trend line?

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Tide – any order polynomial fit would be erroneous to use as a trend line… the fit above is used to make it look like the trend at the end is down… but polys don’t work for such purposes, it is a bluff.

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    Jo and Humbug

    Excellent article – have you considered referencing this in the Sceptic’s Handbook?

    The question to ask our Warmist friends is – “If it could be warm or warmer in the Roman and Medieval times, why is CO2 to blame for this so-called warming?”

    Gotta go, Kevin’s on the line and I’ve got some news for him…

    Cheers,

    Speedy.

    10

  • #
    Grant

    Pat @39
    “…and/or more widespread phenomena” Huh? I sat here looking at the context in which that appeared and for the life of me I cannot fathom what it means. “More widespread phenomena” to me suggests that something will be happening everywhere. And it already is. So what will change.

    I suspect the dozy journalist was looking for something to scare people with and “phenomena” sounded scary enough. “Stay away from the cage kids; the phenomena will get you.”

    10

  • #
    Graeme From Melbourne

    @Eddy Aruda:
    May 18th, 2010 at 9:17 am

    Sorry – gotta correct this… “Michael Mann is a fraudster” should be “Michael Mann is a fraudstar“.

    10

  • #
    Bernd Felsche

    janama @37:

    I was only a sceptic for a short time – perhaps a few days.

    After that, I was an un-believer; an infidel.
    I believe that that is the appropriate terminology.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    “The question to ask our Warmist friends is – “If it could be warm or warmer in the Roman and Medieval times, why is CO2 to blame for this so-called warming?”” from Speedy

    Alternatively

    The question to ask our Skeptical friends is – “If it was warm or warmer in the Roman and Medieval times for whatever reasons, why would that preclude CO2 being to blame for this so-called warming?”

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Hannibal scrambling through the Alps with most of his elephants dying en-route is about as relevant as our recent debate about the north west passage being open before with you guys citing boats that took 3 years to do the trip!

    http://www.pass.to/HannaVision/Hannibal.htm

    10

  • #
    Grant

    MattB @ 56

    The question to ask our Skeptical friends is – “If it was warm or warmer in the Roman and Medieval times for whatever reasons, why would that preclude CO2 being to blame for this so-called warming?”

    Because if you can’t answer what caused the previous warming then you cannot discount that being the cause now. And since there is a history of warming and cooling, then there is a very likely change that this cycle is continuing and that the previous warming that cannot be attributable to GHGs but is totally attributable to something else is what is happening now. Until that has been discounted, then keep your finger off the panic button.

    10

  • #
    crakar24

    Ross @ 47,

    Yes thats becaue the simpletons dont understand the difference between temp and heat. Trenberth knows the difference thats why he is still stumbling around in the dark looking for it. Spencer has shown him his heat is not missing because it never existed but still he searches.

    The jewel in the crown of the AGW movement has been Arctic sea ice extent, the recovery over the past few years has severly tarnished this jewel. The link i provided is all the evidence needed, however the simpletons cannot accept this which is why the appearance of a gray whale in the Atlantic last week is proof that AGW is melting the Arctic, how else would a pacific whale get there?

    Of course grays inhabited the Atlantic as late as the 18th century before we killed them all, apparently they got there 3 million years ago when the panama canal was open water and got trapped there when it closed. Therefore the Arctic acted as a natural barrier for 3 million years but due to AGW the NTh West passage has now allowed them to pass through.

    You can see the incredible lengths they go to to defend the theory, i have seen this type of behaviour before but only in the realms of religion. I suspect KRudd et al are not religious, just drunk on power, fame and fortune and the common simpleton sees them as modern day prophets, reincarnations of Mohammed and Isaiah.

    10

  • #
    Jim Reedy

    I agree that Mattb seems determined to only follow that
    which fits his belief system.

    He’s got religion (of the climate warmist type) bad
    and that allows him to ignore all the contrary evidence.
    (Thats what BELIEF does for you)

    Matt, ok.. so you have issues with the graphs… what
    about all the published papers that support them?
    Or are you a science denier like Mr Rudd and Ms Wong
    What about all the medieval and Roman stuff thats being revealed as Glaciers retreat…nothing to say about that?

    The opinion of those who ignore emprical evidence is not
    really worth hearing.

    cheers

    Jim

    10

  • #
    Bernd Felsche

    MattB,

    On curve fitting:

    One can use whatever method best fits the data in order to interpolate or to look for a pattern of a particular type. A scientist knows better than to try to read past the end-points of a graph. The Soothsayers, Pundits and Luminaries Union could initiate a demarcation dispute.

    Interpolation is also of limited quality with these data; which is why fitting any type of curve should be treated with caution and raw data are much more important when making significant decisions.

    One cannot validly extrapolate beyond data that exhibit essentially stochastic behaviour. A trendline is meaningless if extrapolated. “Trend” is the operative part of the word that invites extrapolation.

    10

  • #
    john of sunbury

    Love the zinger at the end ….

    Name the scientist who claims it was globally cooler in Roman Times.

    Abbott should challenge Rudd to do exactly that.

    10

  • #
    El Sledgo

    @Mattb (comment 56)

    The question to ask our Skeptical friends is – “If it was warm or warmer in the Roman and Medieval times for whatever reasons, why would that preclude CO2 being to blame for this so-called warming?

    The burden of proof lies on the person/entity making the hypothesis. There are numerous citations on peer-reviewed research proving that the RWP and MWP existed. For you to question this is a sign you are simply deluded and are refuting for the sake of being no less than a troll. Having put up with your idiocy on thread after thread, this time you’ve compelled me to actually respond.

    NO, the onus is on YOU to prove the hypothesis you have made up, not otherwise.

    10

  • #
    crakar24

    MattB @56,

    To answer your question let us make some assumptions:

    a, Co2 does indeed drive the temps
    b, The roman warm period was indeed as warm or warmer than today
    c, Co2 levels were the same then as at the start of the industrial revolution (275ppm as per IPCC)

    We must ask ourselves two questions (1) what caused this warming and (2) what is its relevance to what is happening today.

    Lets try to answer (1)
    What could have caused the warming?

    1, It could not be from CO2
    2, It could not be from orbital variations (due to short time frame, 2000 years)
    3, It could not be from axial tilt or wobble (as above)
    4, It could not be from variations in Total Solar Irradiance as the IPCC have said small changes in TSI have little bearing on temp.

    So what could have caused the temp rise 2000 years ago?

    Lets try to answer (2)

    For the IPCC to attribute changes in temp they must have a full understanding of the complex interactions of the climate. To put it another way if the IPCC can attribute X temp rise to CO2 then they must be able to attribute all other temp rise to other factors.

    Therefore if we dont know what attributed to the temp rise 2000 years ago then how do we know that “something” is not attributing to the temp rise today? Another way of putting is “If you cant explain it then you cant model it”.

    I hope this clears things up for you MattB.

    10

  • #
    Milankovitch

    I notice most of Jo’s graphs are reconstructions from sediment cores and the like which have long resolution times and effectively eliminate the post 1970 warming.

    Sea level in Roman times was about 13 cms below the present level which puts the temperature close to the beginning of the 20th century ie: significantly cooler than now.

    So Tony Abbott is wrong

    10

  • #

    MattB:
    May 18th, 2010 at 12:16 pm

    The question to ask our Skeptical friends is “If it was warm or warmer in the Roman and Medieval times for whatever reasons, why would that preclude CO2 being to blame for this so-called warming?”

    Because there are no other factors that can explain the warming. Perhaps you can enlighten us as to what other factor caused it to be warmer then than it is now? If not enlightening your response should be entertaining!

    MattB:
    May 18th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
    Hannibal scrambling through the Alps with most of his elephants dying en-route is about as relevant as our recent debate about the north west passage being open before with you guys citing boats that took 3 years to do the trip!

    Well Matt, you are consistent. Hannibal made it and the worlds best mountaineers couldn’t, because the route is impassable now but was negotiated and traversed during the ROMAN WARM PERIOD by men who lacked the equipment we have today. The bottom line: the route was open then but is closed now because it was warmer then. You see Matt, generally speaking, the colder it gets in the mountains the more snow you get.

    Roald Amundsen took three years to negotiate the Northwest Passage because he stayed with the Netsilik Inuits for two years and also spent time doing research on the magnetism of the North Pole. Otherwise, the passage would have been done in weeks. See http://faculty.washington.edu/karpoff/Research/Amundsen.pdf.

    MacBook Pro: US$3,800, Cable internet access US$30 a month. Enlightening MattB: priceless! 😉

    10

  • #
    pat

    18 May: UK Daily Mail: The ash cloud that never was: Inaccurate Met Office forecast causes airport chaos for 50,000
    By the time the mistake had been realised, Heathrow had cancelled 169 arrivals and departures and Gatwick more than 200. An estimated 50,000 passengers were affected
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1279221/The-ash-cloud-Inaccurate-Met-Office-forecast-causes-airport-chaos-50-000.html

    10

  • #

    Milankovitch:
    May 18th, 2010 at 1:01 pm

    Sea level in Roman times was about 13 cms below the present level which puts the temperature close to the beginning of the 20th century ie: significantly cooler than now.

    Dude, sea levels have been rising at a fairly consistent rate since the end of the last ice age. If you want to avoid an endpoint fallacy construct a graph that starts at the end of the Younger Dryas and ends today. You will find that the Holocene interglacial hit its highpoint during the Holocene maximum in the Bronze Age. And yes, the peer reviewed literature shows the Roman Warm Period was as warm as it is today and that the medieval warm period was much warmer. All this while CO2 rates were lower.

    Don’t worry Mil, Jimmy Hansen is busy “adjusting” his numbers as we speak and the “facts” will change, once again. Does Jimmy ever get it right? If he were a weatherman in Los Angeles he could become the first weatherman to never get it right. Still, it would be interesting seeing him constantly “readjust” the weather!

    10

  • #

    pat:
    May 18th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
    18 May: UK Daily Mail: The ash cloud that never was: Inaccurate Met Office forecast causes airport chaos for 50,000
    By the time the mistake had been realised, Heathrow had cancelled 169 arrivals and departures and Gatwick more than 200. An estimated 50,000 passengers were affected

    Yes, Pat but the models (yep, the same ones they use to predict climate one hundred years from now) predicted, forecast and prognosticated doom and gloom if the planes flew and that there would be an aerospace apocalypse! Sure, they were wrong and what they conjured up flew in the face of observational data (i.e. Hannibal crossing the Alps, Roald Amundsen’s Northwest Passage, actual measurements of the air content in Europe, etc.) but hey, they still get all the money they need by scaring the hell out of everybody unnecessarily. You know, just like they do with the global warming scam?

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    MattB @ 58

    You are right. Absolutely right, and on the way to thinking sceptically. Well done! The fact that it has been as warm or warmer during the Roman and Medieval periods does not logically preclude the possibility that CO2 is responsible for the current “warming” after the LIA. In my defence, I never claimed that it did.

    Unlike the IPCC who are telling us it is “very likely” (i.e. a probability factor of 90% or greater) that man-made CO2 emissions are responsible for the temperature increase observed between 1850 and the late 1990’s.

    One wonders whether Michael Mann et al found the MWP embarrassing and whether this is why they have gone to some pains to excise it from history – when this current article clearly shows extensive physical evidence for these variations. And, by the way, warm is good…

    Cheers,

    Speedy.

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Has anyone else noticed that the Roman and medieval warms were important to warmists when their graphs didn’t show them, and they aren’t important now that they can’t deny they were warm?

    10

  • #

    The green faith continues to be exposed as lies. They are history revisionists. If the truth doesnt fit their global warming faith solution is to change it then attack anyone who points out their lies and fraud.

    10

  • #

    @ Mark D. 71

    Good to see you post again and you posed a great question. I am sure there is a mathematical formula that shows a ratio between the amount of “adjustment” of the facts and the amount of money gained in grants and the like. I saw a comedienne on TV who once commented on the question of whether or not a man would perform oral sex upon another “mann” for a million dollars. He said that if he were offered a million to do it you would have to pay him another half million just to stop. I think he now runs a prestigious climate institute! 😉

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Yes Eddy, I’m still hanging around. I just don’t argue with MattB anymore unless it is about beer.

    10

  • #
    crakar24

    Milkingit in post 65 said,

    “Sea level in Roman times was about 13 cms below the present level which puts the temperature close to the beginning of the 20th century ie: significantly cooler than now.”

    Whats interesting to note is that since the beginning of the 20th century the temps have risen by about 0.5C, so by Milkingit’s logic the RWP was about 0.5C cooler than today. If we factor in the error margins that accompany the sea level figures quoted it is quite concievable the RWP was indeed just as warm as today.

    They only part of your that you got wrong Milkingit was when you said Abbott was wrong.

    Seriously, you get a thumbs from me if you can explain why present day CO2 levels have contributed less than 0.5C since the RWP when all the models predict a climate akin to a blast furnace.

    Take your time…….

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Ed in 66 – good find – every other link to the voyage suggests he was stuck in ice most of the time and says nothing of it being ice free and navigable in weeks. Kinda diminishes the achievement no?

    10

  • #

    @Mark D.

    Regarding beer, if you ever get to Santa Rosa, California you have to try the beer at the Russian River Brewing Company. They have four of the top twenty beers in the world there. You don’t have to take my word for it because it is in the “Beer Reviewed” literature (e.g. Beer Advocate Magazine.) 🙂

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Aah the sane part of California!

    I’d love to stop there some time. I have been to Belgium twice and Russian River makes some good looking Belgian styles. Some where along the way I have had Pliny the Elder.

    But we’re off topic.

    10

  • #

    MattB:
    May 18th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
    Ed in 66 – good find – every other link to the voyage suggests he was stuck in ice most of the time and says nothing of it being ice free and navigable in weeks. Kinda diminishes the achievement no?

    Really? I googled the subject and here is what popped up:

    http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/a/amundsen.shtml
    http://www.gjoahaven.com/roald-amundsen-gjoa.htm
    http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9A05E6DB113AE733A25753C1A9649D946497D6CF
    http://www.mnc.net/norway/Amundsen.htm

    The only one I could find to mention the “MattB” version was from Wikipedia. Hmmm, what a coincidence?

    You see, Matt, the only reason to find the Northwest Passage was to shorten the time to circumnavigate the Western Hemisphere. It was a shorter route than the Panama Canal. See http://www.athropolis.com/map9.htm.

    10

  • #

    MattB:
    May 18th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
    Ed in 66 – good find – every other link to the voyage suggests he was stuck in ice most of the time and says nothing of it being ice free and navigable in weeks. Kinda diminishes the achievement no?

    Really? I googled the subject and:

    http://www.gjoahaven.com/roald-amundsen-gjoa.htm
    http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/a/amundsen.shtml
    http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A05E6DB113AE733A25753C1A9649D946497D6CF
    http://www.mnc.net/norway/Amundsen.htm

    The only link I could find that contained the “MattB” version was on the pro AGW site Wikipedia! What a coincidence?

    10

  • #
    Grant

    MattB @ 76

    So instead of acknowledging that Amundsen navigated an ice free North West Passage over a period of 3 years because he hung out somewhere to undertake scientific research and not as the warmists claim because he was stuck in ice, you say that he didn’t accomplish much because he did it with such ease.

    I suppose you would have been more satisfied if he rocketed round the NW Passage in a couple of weeks, took a couple of measurements for his scientific researched, approximated a few more datapoints and homogenised all the the data to satisfy his hypothesis.

    Get the facts. What is relevant is that the North West Passage was navigable between 1903 and 1905. It has been navigable in recent times too. But if you are going to assert that the recent warming is unprecedented then you need to explain Amundsen’s feat.

    10

  • #
    Brian G Valentine

    I sincerely feel sorry for Rudd. I think Rudd is a bandwagon jumper, doing what he can in Australia to promote himself as a meaningful UN leader.

    Rudd let the wrong people influence him on how to paint himself as UN leadership material, and he jumped on the wrong bandwagon. Rudd obviously never had a command of what the bandwagon was promoting, but he apparently believed that if he hurled the message he interpreted to be what the bandwagon stood for forcibly enough at critics, minor details that he mangled would be overlooked.

    I predict that Rudd will not be appointed Secretary General to the UN. I think the body of the UN now realises the seriousness of responding meaningfully to the sceptics of what the UN has itself created, and neither Ban-Ki, nor Rudd, are equipped to do that.

    [By the way I feel sorry for Matt B too. Matt unfortunately distinguishes himself as earning the most self-censorship of anyone posting comments on these pages. Sometimes I think Matt comments as he does just to make himself irritable. I cannot imagine that his comments reflect his true beliefs much of the time]

    10

  • #
    Grant

    Sorry. You don’t need to explain Amundsen’s feat, you need to explain why he was able to accomplish that.

    If GHGs are solely responsible for recent warming, then what was the explanation for the NW Passage being navigable 1903-1905?

    And while we are about itL
    If GHGs are solely responsible for recent warming:
    – what was the cause of the Roman Warm Period?
    – what was the cause of the Medieval Warm Period?
    – why is this cause not a factor today?

    Just explain that. The burden of proof is on the AGW lobbyists side. (Skeptics have these anomalies – they just have to explain them.)

    10

  • #
    crakar24

    Grant dont wear out the buttons on your keyboard, Matt and his cohorts are long gone.

    10

  • #

    While I am thinking about it, the warmist have claimed that the North Pole hasn’t been ice free in a long, long time. Hmmm.

    http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/a/amundsen.shtml (link no. 2 from #79
    “In 1904, Amundsen and his small crew continued on to the North Magnetic Pole, which had moved 30 miles since it was originally located by James Clark Ross in 1831.”

    Wow, the North Pole was ice free and CO2 levels were lower? Could it be that other factors affect the ice at the North Pole (PDO, AO)? The warmist claim that CO2 induced warming is causing the ice to shrink (it isn’t and it is about where it was in the ’70’s when they started measuring the Arctic ice). So, if CO2 levels are much higher now then they were in 1904, why isn’t the North Pole ice free as it was then?

    10

  • #
    Vince Whirlwind

    Crakar:
    “the models predict a climate akin to a blast furnace.”

    Name *one* that predicts what you say.

    Take your time…

    20

  • #
    BobC

    Milankovitch: (#65)
    May 18th, 2010 at 1:01 pm

    Sea level in Roman times was about 13 cms below the present level which puts the temperature close to the beginning of the 20th century ie: significantly cooler than now.

    Hey, that’s pretty a pretty precise number, given that the scatter in the data is ~2 meters (wikipedia–Current_sea_level_rise) — pray tell us, how do you do it?

    Interpreting data to 1/15th of the noise level, and using that to replace all actual temperature proxies (including historical records of passes in the Alps being open that are not now) — all I can think of is a crystal ball (or religious belief).

    Eddy Aruda: (#66)
    May 18th, 2010 at 1:03 pm

    MacBook Pro: US$3,800, Cable internet access US$30 a month. Enlightening MattB: priceless! 😉

    The terms “useless!” and “impossible!” also come to mind. MattB misrepresents, then ducks and weaves when found out and changes his argument. Every time he has tried to stand his ground on this blog he has been clobbered. He’s already made about half a dozen false statements on this thread alone — when confronted with evidence, he just shifts to another argument.

    If he’s of normal intelligence, then he must know he is supporting falsehood — whatever can his motivation be?

    10

  • #

    BTW, the magnetic and the geographic North Pole were both ice free!

    10

  • #

    Mattb makes a fair point. It doesn’t change the overall synopsis at all, but I could have explained the reason for the Antarctic Graph better. I’ve added a late note to the post which improves it. Thanks Matt.

    Here’s a linear (below) for the last 5000 years, with a down trend and a 3rd order poly there too. I doubt that the trend is statistically significant.

    The bottom line is that the Antarctic graph is just there for completeness. As I mentioned, it moves on a slightly different schedule to the rest of the world.

    There’s no Roman Warming period visible there, but nor is there a big counter-cooling. If most other continents show warming, to keep the Global Average down, Antarctica would have to be majorly cold.

    And the third order poly shows a similar “trend”.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Eddy none of:
    http://www.gjoahaven.com/roald-amundsen-gjoa.htm
    http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/a/amundsen.shtml
    http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A05E6DB113AE733A25753C1A9649D946497D6CF
    http://www.mnc.net/norway/Amundsen.htm

    back up your claim that the NW passage were navigable in one hit. They talk of perilous conditions, slow progress, and wintering due to being surrounded by ice. An example from the last link “After three weeks of mounting tension and excitement the expedition sighted a whaling ship out of San Francisco. The “Gjøa” had successfully navigated the Northwest Passage, the first vessel to do so. But shortly after this it froze into the ice, where it remained all winter. ”

    And look at this “Ice floes, violent winds, fog and shallow waters were constant hazards, but towards the end of the summer the expedition found a natural harbour on King William Island, northwest of Hudson Bay. ”

    So it took them the whole 1st summer to reach King William Island! So much for a few weeks trip. For reference here is a late summer NSIDC graphic showing it is the next bit that is the tricky bit. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2009/080409.html

    So I don’t really think you are putting your macbook pro to good use.

    10

  • #
    BobC

    Actually, I suspect MattB is simply a vandal — he doesn’t really try to argue logically or determine facts, but simply wants to create noise on the blog. The tactic is to just attack, more or less randomly, to get the most number of posters arguing with him. This is the equivalent of censoring those you don’t like by shouting them down.

    This has been an effective tactic on some blogs in the past — a few screamers (or just one, if dedicated enough) who attack everyone have driven away many who would otherwise be interested. It doesn’t work on this blog because of the rating system and because the people here are so well informed they can deflect juvenile attacks with aplomb.

    If I’m right about this, then MattB is just another religious fanatic standing on the corner trying to shout down those he wants suppressed.

    Instead, Matt, you’re just comic relief; A foil used to bring up interesting arguments and discussions, in which you are incapable of participating.

    10

  • #
    crakar24

    VW in 85,

    I knew it, i knew if i threw in a exaggeration like blast furnace you alarmists would pounce on it thus successfully bypassing the scientific question i posed. When will i ever learn…..

    VW there is no model that predicts a blast furnace, but of course you already knew that.

    I will bet all the bibles in the world that this will be your first and last post thus making no attempt to answer the question i posed.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Wow have I finally been put on an all posts moderated list?

    10

  • #

    Hey, MattB may frustrate me from time to time I refuse to engage in ad hominem attacks upon him. We need to rise above the likes of those at realclimate.

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    Crakar24 @ 90

    Mind you, there was a well-publicised press release last week claiming that global temperatures would exceed the level where human life would survive. Not quite a furnace-like temperature, but exactly the same result.

    The issue about the Roman warming and all the warmings before that is that the climate of the real earth is so immune to runaway greenhouse events. But it’s in model-world where we seem to have all the problems. Which one should we believe?

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Maybe there were too many links… anyway Eddy the point of a longer post I have made is that none of your links in #79 back up the claim that the NW Passage was navigable in a matter of weeks all in one summer as you claim in #66. The contents of the links simply does not back you up.

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    MattB @ 94

    Could I remind you that we were discussing the Medieval Warming and the Roman Warming? I thought that Jo’s post was excellent. What do you reckon?

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    10

  • #

    Matt,
    the passage was navigable without having to stay in the Arctic. They stayed because they wanted to, not because they had to. I am calling it a night.

    10

  • #
    wes george

    Prime Minister Rudd’s logic in deploring Abbott’s statement was impeccable!

    It’s the same spot-on logic that inspired Michael Mann, et al, to construct a 1,000 plus year climate stasis from which to launch modern warming, thus erasing the MWP…If it was as warm (or warmer!) during the Roman era or the MWP than it is today then the AGW hypothesis is thoroughly demolished. That’s the thousand pound elephant in the climate debate all the True Believers have agreed not to mention…just keep on pointing to the hockey stick gospel.

    After all, the foundational implication of the AGW hypothesis is that it MUST be warmer today than at any time in the recent past because CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are higher than the recent past. Otherwise, how can you put the Anthropogenic in front of GW without violating the logical principle of parsimony? Modern warming becomes just another cyclical turn in our ongoing interglacial age and well within historic parameters since it has been just as warm or warmer during the same climatological era. Modern warming requires no special one-off hypothesis if it’s entirely unexceptional in amplitude when compared to the historic/proxy T-record. Where’s the great moral urgency to raise everyone’s taxes in that?

    Obviously, Rudd isn’t a student of paleoclimatology, but he sure understands logic better than some folks posting here who seem to believe that it could have been warmer in the past at low CO2 levels than today (with the CO2 level double that of pre-industrial times) and the AGW hypothesis still carries water.

    Straight-talking Tony points out the elephant in the debate: A hypothesis is only as useful as its implications are at predicting empirical observations in BOTH directions of the time line. He’s such a dag!

    The fact that warmer climates than today have quite recently existed at low CO2 levels falsifies the AGW hypothesis.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    “If it was as warm (or warmer!) during the Roman era or the MWP than it is today then the AGW hypothesis is thoroughly demolished.”

    Funny you mention that Wes. I was just reading a post on another blog that quite rightly pointed out that even if the RWP or WP were warmer it has no bearing on the relationship between greenhouse gases and warming.

    “The fact that warmer climates than today have quite recently existed at low CO2 levels falsifies the AGW hypothesis.”

    Erm, no, it doesn’t.

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    Wes @ 97

    The IPCC are telling us that the recent warming was “unprecedented” and “very likely” due to man-made emissions, including CO2. It seems that at least the first of these statements is untrue and I bet the AGW guys would feel like dills at the moment. They (including our beloved Kevin) are looking pretty clueless.

    The AGW hypothesis is invalidated to the extent that it relies on CO2 as the primary driver of global temperatures. And seeing that the overwhelming climate control efforts by the IPCC are being directed at CO2 control, then I suppose you’re right.

    The hypothesis also suffers a credibility issue associated with the ice age period about 400 million years ago, when CO2 levels were about 7000 ppm. Clearly CO2 doesn’t drive temperature, at least once it gets over 200 ppm. Certainly not worth shredding Western Civilisation for.

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    10

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    MattB: “The fact that warmer climates than today have quite recently existed at low CO2 levels falsifies the AGW hypothesis.”

    Erm, no, it doesn’t.
    ———————-

    Considering Popper’s concept of science, that is standard now, each hypothesis in order to be scientific must be formulated as falsified against an alternative hypothesis. Even the simple fact that AGW doctrine claims are formulated as fact-proof – current 10 years of planetary cooling cannot refute it and its also immune to historical unexplained climate variability – excludes the AGW doctrine from science and shifts it between ideological or theological concepts of ideas. Taking view of Popper’s concept of science the clima-skepticism should be considered an effort for returning the AGW claims into science.

    10

  • #
    Ronnell

    The more the TROLL “MattB” posts on this blog the more that people can see just how brainwashed & deluded he is.

    He requires professional help, and our pity!

    10

  • #
    Keith H

    Milankovitch: @ 65
    May 18th, 2010 at 1:01 pm

    “Sea level in Roman times was about 13 cms below the present level which puts the temperature close to the beginning of the 20th century ie: significantly cooler than now.”

    Would you kindly tell us exactly where and when in the world the tide was measured in Roman times and whether it was measured in the same place for current (no pun intended) times? Also how it was ensured the measurements were taken at the same time of day in the corresponding season and/or at the same stage in the normal tidal ebb and flow?

    And are tide levels now the primary indicator of temperature variation?

    10

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    “Sea level in Roman times was about 13 cms below the present level which puts the temperature close to the beginning of the 20th century ie: significantly cooler than now.”
    ————

    AGW spooky story tellers always fed us with horror sea rise visions – e. g. US President Clinton at Kyoto Conference telling, that Maledivy are going to be swallowed by the ocean with a short period of time. Actually Maledivy sea level has been being retreated for so about 40 years. No wander Indian Ocean sea level decreases when global warming occurs due to evaporation and direction of oceanic currents. There were areas of globe in medieval and Roman times where sea levels were lower then today due to higher temperatures.

    10

  • #
    A C

    MattB The way I see it is that we can say that the RWP and the MWP were caused by something other that CO2 but we dont know what it is. You seem to be happy with that statement? The temperature does appear to be rising now and it could be the result of CO2. I’m sort of happy to concede that. But since neither of us know what caused the RWP or the MWP we cannopt rule out what ever caused either of them to be causing this temp rise as well. Therefore the science isnt settled. Until you can explain the RWP and the MWP, we are left with uncertainty and the science remains unsettled. So come up with a plausible explanation on the MWP and the RWP that rules it out as the cause of the modern temp rise or simply admit the science is not settled. Once you actually start looking for an explanation for ther RWP and the MWP, like the rest of us, you will start realising that a CO2 is only one of many plausible drivers of temeprature and since it doesnt help with the MWP or the RWP, not a particularly useful one.

    10

  • #
    wes george

    “Erm, no, it doesn’t.”

    Matt, want to add any evidence for that claim or do you require that we just take your word for it?

    It’s fascinating how the AGW argument has evolved over the last decade. As recently as October of 2009 (pre-Climategate) anyone who questioned the orthodoxy of a millennium long Mannian climate stasis (btw, that’s an oxymoron) would have simply met with MWP denialism from AGW acolytes. Obviously, we are making progress. Now the AGW faithful no longer even try to defend the nonexistence of the MWP or RWP and, I presume, the various minimums as well. Climate change (btw, that’s a tautology) really does happen all the time.

    The problem is that the AGW hypothesis apologists have gone from falsifying paleoclimate T-history, ie denying past warm periods with Mann’s hockey stick as their primary prop, to the logical incoherence of denying the very implications of their own hypothesis! Personally, I found the Piltdown Mann approach to be more aesthetically pleasing than sheer logical mayhem, even if it was shamelessly dishonest. At least Michael Mann paid homage to the rules of the scientific method and logic. Not so, MattB who is proudly post-logical.

    The AGW faithful are in a hell of a bind, either they must misrepresent the paleoclimate data to conform with their hypothesis or they must appeal to a kind of irrational logic where the implications of a hypothesis do not have to accurately reflect observed reality for the hypothesis to be useful. I’ve encountered exactly the same mental contortions when confronting Creationists.

    Obviously for MattB the AGW hypothesis even if it is falsified is still a useful “narrative” for specific political agendas, however, just as Creationism remains useful to certain religionists, we have wandered well beyond of the realm of rational, scientific debate.

    Maybe that’s why the AGW supporters don’t seem the least bit curious to construct a new climate hypothesis that might rational encompass both modern warming AND recent past cycles of warming and cooling? Now that would be scientifically useful! Silly me, that’s what I thought it was all about–curiosity and the desire to grasp how nature really works. Always reaching forward into the unknown, always ready to follow the hard evidence to where ever it leads.

    10

  • #
    allen mcmahon

    Ronnell @101
    MattB is neither a troll or brainwashed & deluded as Jo pointed out he had a point with regard to the graphs. Mind you Matt often posts on irrelevant issues, this is not the first time he has rabbited on about the NWP despite it being irrelevant to the thread or to the AGW hypothesis. This is a common problem and not limited to Matt. I think it is easier for Matt to nitpick it distracts him from the big picture of the AGW hypothesis being under serious pressure. When Santer finds the missing “hot spot” and Trenbath the “missing heat” Matt will probably provide the critique Richard Courntey’s work that he committed to some months back.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Seriously Ronnell I wager that if we had a vote more people here would think you were a complete nutter than me. That is just my opinion.

    And no Wes, I don’t feel obliged to provide evidence for my 1-line glib dismissal of your glib 1-line statement.

    And Allen – I take your point about the NWP – but if you read the whole discussion I mentioned it as a miniscule aside, to which Eddy replied with a swath of misinformation, and I was sucked in to the discussion. Hmm doesn’t that make Eddy the troll? (no offence Eddy).

    10

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Keith H: #102
    May 18th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
    here you go Keith, this is where they get their Roman sea level info.
    From the IPCC AR4 Chp5 pp413

    Oscillations in sea level from 2,000 to 100 yr
    before present did not exceed ±0.25 m, based on the Roman-
    Byzantine-Crusader well data (Sivan et al., 2004). Many
    Roman and Greek constructions are relatable to the level of the
    sea. Based on sea level data derived from Roman fish ponds,
    which are considered to be a particularly reliable source of such
    information, together with nearby tide gauge records.

    You see mate? it was the fish ponds and water wells that told the story.

    10

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    Off topic: I am in the Czech Republic. We have to face certain measure of climatic change without any doubt. In 1997 area of Morava has suffered catastrophic 1000-years water flood. 5 years later 1000-years water attacked great part of Bohemia area including capital city Prague. Mission Impossible movie shooting that was just running there became temporally impossible due to elements. O’Connor had to be evacuated two-times as water engulfed his hotels and furious river Vltava took away Nautilus submarine, which had to be built up again. The underground subway train tunnels were converted into water caves. Water killed also an elephant in zoo, created completely new lakes and one town had a huge steam-boat at its square. Old chronicles told us about such floods, but no one saw it later then in 15th century. Currently high water is here again. North Moravia Ostrava County suffers floods again. A complete city Karvina is out of any road connection as all ways are under water and some small towns are completely flooded.

    But interesting thing: In spite of all these events the official media don’t trumpet it is due to AGW! They probably know they would face people angry for their heinous behavior if they tried to misuse the catastrophe for a Goebles like political propaganda.

    10

  • #
    wes george

    The AGW hypothesis says that it MUST be warmer today than in the recent past because atmospheric CO2 concentrations are higher today than in the recent past.

    Yet, it was as warm as or warmer in Roman or Medieval times at half today’s atmospheric CO2 levels therefore the AGW hypothesis has failed to accurately predict observed data. For a scientific hypothesis to be falsified all it has to do is fail a single test against observations. This is why Michael Mann’s paleoclimate reconstruction showing a relative “climate stasis” with no MWP is utterly central the AGW hypothesis and why it was so passionately defended… because if the MWP did happen, then the AGW hypothesis must be radically modified or abandoned altogether and a new hypothesis developed to account for both past climate variation and modern.

    For those who imagine that the AGW hypothesis need not apply to paleoclimates and still be rationally valid science…imagine that MattB goes to a zoo and sees equine animals covered with black and white stripes and someone says they look like zebras as seen on TV. But MattB rejects this correlation and forms the hypothesis that since they’re not in Africa or on TV that some wanker must have anthropogenically painted strips on ponies, and then he dials 000 to summon the police and the RSPCA to report this hideous crime against nature. In this metaphor a frothing MattB is detained for a psychiatric evaluation by the cops. Unfortunately, in the real world comparable logical dissonance qualifies you to be Prime Minister…

    Hey, but who am I to say that the zebras at the zoo aren’t painted ponies? Paranoid, anyone?

    10

  • #
    Louis Hissink

    MattB:

    ““The fact that warmer climates than today have quite recently existed at low CO2 levels falsifies the AGW hypothesis.”

    Erm, no, it doesn’t”

    Arguing from authority are you MattB?

    Erm is quite correct in a scientific sense but quite wrong on a political one. So which are you dismissing as wrong, his scientific conclusion or his political one?

    10

  • #
    Bruce of Newcastle

    @MattB #56

    Hi Matt, here’s some data against your hypothesis that the Roman period was warmer due to CO2.

    http://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/2-75-million-years-ago/

    Now the graph admittedly does not estimate pCO2 at Year 1, but since it has been steady for 20My give or take a minute or two, seems reasonable to counter hypothesise that the Romans did not burn more coal than we do. So vanishingly remote that pCO2 was much more than 300 ppm and your hypothesis is falsified.

    There’s probably lots more apt papers covering the pCO2 in the last few ky, but I can’t be bothered. I read Nigel’s post this morning. Nicer if he’d never left New Scientist, the current editor appears to be a warmists’ warmist.

    I won’t bother with your other 20 odd comments, but you might wish to look at some data, there’s plenty about that’s not hidden behind door marked ‘beware of the leopard’.

    10

  • #
    chris

    This is an old article but it is inertesting in that it shows that one can use economics and historical records to look at climate in the past. eg the price of wheat an dteh observations of the ice in the harbour by the harbour master in Icelend – note that the harbpour was ice free from around 1000 to 1150

    http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html

    10

  • #
    Keith H

    Baa Humbug @ 108

    Thanks mate. I can always rely on you for the real info. Can’t argue with fish ponds as they should remain at a level constant with the rising seas over the centuries unless someone catches a few “biggies” out of ’em all at once every now and then.
    Guess that lets Milankovitch @ 65 “off the hook”. Silly me for ever doubting him!!

    10

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Keith H: #114
    May 18th, 2010 at 8:31 pm

    Thnx for the priceless chuckle Keith 🙂

    10

  • #

    @MattB, RE: Post 98

    MattB writes:

    I was just reading a post on another blog that quite rightly pointed out that even if the RWP or WP were warmer it has no bearing on the relationship between greenhouse gases and warming.

    Ahhhh. So a blog post is sufficient evidence that “even if the RWP or WP were warmer it has no bearing on the relationship between greenhouse gases and warming.” How silly of me to think logically!

    But what does AGW theory say about “the relationship between greenhouse gases and warming”?

    In the beginning (before blog posts), AGW theory predicted two very necessary consequences:

            1. That polar regions would show warming before lower latitude regions.

            2. That a strong greenhouse warming signal would develop in the tropical (+/- 30° latitude) mid-troposphere (~ 8km to 12 km altitude).

    The “scientific method” has a very nice way of exposing bad theory. Find a single contrary observation, and the theory fails. There is no facet of the scientific method that says if two contrary observations are found, then the theory is valid!

    Yet, both of these consequences of AGW theory have been shown by observation to not exist!

            1. Late 20th century Arctic Sea ice loss that ended ca. 2007 was not the result of atmospheric warming. Rather, it was a normal consequence of routine cyclic shifts in both atmospheric and oceanic global circulation patterns. Arctic sea ice extent has been used as a proxy for temperature changes, but such measurements by satellite only began in 1979. Over that more than 30-year record, there is little distinction between today’s Arctic sea ice cover and that of the past. The vast portion of interior Antarctica has been cooling for the past 50 years and shows no indication of warming. Perimeter Antarctic ice loss has been confined to small areas that jut into surrounding oceans where shifts in warmer currents have produced modest loss of ice cover (compared to the vast bulk of growing ice in the Antarctic). Global sea ice extent today is unremarkably different from what it was 30+ years ago when more precise satellite measurements began. In short, no evidence to support the required polar warming from greenhouse gases.

            2. Every effort by satellite and weather balloon (radiosonde) to measure even a trace of tropical mid-troposphere warming has failed to show any evidence of the predicted (and required) warming.

    In a sane world, these two observations alone would be sufficient to blow AGW theory out of the water. The fact that it doesn’t, and “true believers” simply change the subject (or quote blog posts claiming what is, is not) indicates how much AGW theory has become a matter of irrational faith. It is a theory built on assumptions and unproven hypotheses only supported by crude computer simulation models based on more assumption and insufficient knowledge driven by inadequate and “tweaked” (“fudged”) data.

    What brings rational people to believe such dogma? More than likely, it is fear built on ignorance and the kind of propaganda campaign exposed by “climategate” and revelations of IPCC improprieties.

    The capacity of “greenhouse warming” has been vastly over-portrayed to the public. Geologic evidence strongly indicates greenhouse warming has never been a significant contributor to climate change. Rather, the blanket of atmospheric warming provided by greenhouse gases serves primarily to provide a range over which natural cyclic climate changes occur.

    Any rational view of the vast climate swings throughout Earth’s climate history strongly indicates that climate is essentially a “stable” system in that large deviations of warming (or cooling) produce opposing forces that keep climate within the range that it has occupied since the first living organisms appeared (about 3.5 billion years ago). While these variations are considerable (by human standards), they are constrained within a range of roughly 20°C. Current global climate is below the average (thanks to the current ice era) in that range and Earth’s typical climate (more than 90% of Earth’s history of living organisms) is at the top of the range! Given this perspective of perfectly natural climate variations, AGW theory is so absurd as to be laughable!

    Unfortunately, politicians become the joke when they accept such nonsense and propose insane remedies to a non-problem at huge economic cost to their constituents!

    Bob Webster

    10

  • #
    wes george

    Bob, good points… as Mark D post71 sagely noted…

    Has anyone else noticed that the Roman and medieval warms were important to warmists when their graphs didn’t show them, and they aren’t important now that they can’t deny they were warm?

    10

  • #
    Siliggy

    Milankovitch: @65

    “Sea level in Roman times was about 13 cms below the present level which puts the temperature close to the beginning of the 20th century ie: significantly cooler than now.”

    “When corrected for this, using geologically constrained model predictions, the change in eustatic sea level since the Roman Period is −0.13±0.09 m.”
    Thats 130MM higher than now the way i read it.

    10

  • #

    @Mark D (72), Wes (118) and Siliggy (119),

    [Note: Comment numbers seem to have shifted up one notch!?!]

    I lack the brevity of each of you and appreciate your clarity. Astute observations!

    It is a bit surprising that warmists try to peddle their wares at this site. I suppose that is further demonstration of their lack of good judgement.

    Best to all,

    Bob Webster

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Bob Webster, Thank you.

    I meant to comment and return thanks for your post at 117.

    If you read here a lot, recall Tel mentioning something like; “warmists are constantly in need of correcting. (or to be watched for correctness)” {sorry Tel, if that is not accurately paraphrased}.

    Because (I think) it is a “religion” to them, they allow themselves the latitude of interpretation. What any observation means will always be included if in their best interest, or discounted if NOT in their best interest. They do so often without benefit of science (or invent science if necessary) to cover their story.

    10

  • #
    BobC

    MattB:
    May 18th, 2010 at 5:19 pm

    “If it was as warm (or warmer!) during the Roman era or the MWP than it is today then the AGW hypothesis is thoroughly demolished.”

    Funny you mention that Wes. I was just reading a post on another blog that quite rightly pointed out that even if the RWP or WP were warmer it has no bearing on the relationship between greenhouse gases and warming.

    “The fact that warmer climates than today have quite recently existed at low CO2 levels falsifies the AGW hypothesis.”

    Erm, no, it doesn’t.

    It doesn’t, but only if AGW is considered as a religious belief, not a scientific hypothesis. The blog MattB is reading is for religious devotees, not scientists.

    As Jo has pointed out many times, there is no direct evidence that CO2 is driving temperatures. The IPCC argument rests on the assumption that they have “taken all other drivers into account”, and only CO2 is left to explain the “unprecedented” recent warming.

    If the recent warming is not unprecedented, but similar (and greater) warmings have happened in the not too distant past where CO2 wasn’t a factor (4 or 5 in the last 7000 years), then the “argument from exclusion” (“We’ve eliminated everything else”) fails, since there is obviously “something else” that the IPCC and AGW alarmists don’t know about.

    For them to now argue that this “doesn’t matter” is a complete abandonment of any pretext to logical argument.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Wes at 111 you comment as follows is utterly false “The AGW hypothesis says that it MUST be warmer today than in the recent past because atmospheric CO2 concentrations are higher today than in the recent past.” Absurdly untrue. The AGW hypothesis is that recently observed warming is a result of CO2, and that it is (most likely) warmer than other times in the relatively recent past.

    Loius #112 – Erm is a figure of speech, not a person;) I don;t get your authority comment sorry?

    Bruce in 113 – I don;t have a hypothesis as follows: “Hi Matt, here’s some data against your hypothesis that the Roman period was warmer due to CO2.” I don;t believe evidence suggests the roman times were warmer globally, and if they were I don’t think it was due to CO2.

    Bob in 117 – no of course a blog post is not evidence. I was just having a conversation “funny you bring it up as my and my mate were just talking about so and so”

    10

  • #

    Please, try not to be too hard on Mattb, he’s being polite and he’s outnumbered. Sometimes he asks the questions that none of us could think of.

    Mattb, you’re right that the MWP (and Roman era) doesn’t defeat the theory of AGW per se, but (as A C and others have said) it is a problem for the models . The models claim they “considered all the forcings and ruled all of them out”. Other things can affect the climate and cause other warm periods (while CO2 is low), but we don’t know what forces were, we don’t know when they stopped, or if they are working now. Since there is no empirical evidence to support the theory, only the Argument-from-Ignorance line that the models can’t explain the modern warming without CO2, it follows that what the models say about this warming is unverified, unreliable, and highly suspect.

    Since the models don’t retrospectively replicate the MWP or the Roman era, the existence of these periods shows that the models are inadequate. In an ideal world our models would be so good they could rip back through the Holocene (and beyond!) and predict temperatures, then someone could dig up clam shells and measure them and say, yes! Look, the models predicted it would be warmer in the Sargasso by 1 degree circa 3000 BC, and Viola!

    And since there is no evidence bar the models, then the MWP and Roman era’s are indirectly a very real problem for the theory of man-made catastrophe.

    PS: Mattb, sorry, you were caught by the spam filter. I’ve freed it (Eddy got caught too).If you get caught again, please email me. And bummer, that means the numbers on comments will change, because those two comments will be dropped in somewhere above.

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    MattB @ 123

    Always enjoy your comments – a nice relief from reality!

    If Wes @ 111 is wrong, then why do the IPCC continue to rave on about minimising, reducing and sequestering CO2? The official IPCC line is, I believe, that the then-observed warming was unprecedented and “most likely” (i.e. >90% true) due to man-made CO2 emissions. I’ll leave it to you to discuss this on RealClimate. Good luck.

    Loius @ 112 – I think you’re just being obtuse on this one, frankly.

    Bruce @ 113 – So, in the case of the Roman Warming at least, other influences beside CO2 may have been at play. Perhaps you’d like to share what these influences are, and explain why they could not possibly have had any influence on the global temperature record 1980 – 1998. For bonus points, explain, from emperical evidence, why CO2 was the cause of this warming.

    Bob @ 117 – So you and your mate both think that Bob is wrong. Good Lord! Have you notified the IPCC yet? A glittering career in climate research awaits…

    One thing I also note is that when the Warmist types get pushed into a corner the level of language goes from obscure mumbo jumbo (e.g. climate forcing factors may result in more extreme interparticle interactions in the upper troposphere) to tautological abuse – e.g. “utterly false”? Is “utterly false” any different (or falser) than “false”? Perhaps it is indicative of a relativistic mindset.

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    10

  • #
    BobC

    MattB: The reason you “Don’t get no respect!” here is that your argumentation technique is strictly “hit and run”. You toss out an argument; When someone counters it with logic and references, you simply move on and pitch another argument. I can’t find a single instance where you actually try to defend your original argument in any substantial way — apparently you agree that they are paper-thin, unsupportable “shots in the dark”.

    Most people here (myself included) are very concerned that political agendas are being promoted on what appears to be fraudulent science. Jo’s blog is a dead serious attempt to uncover the real state of the science and expose the frauds and misrepresentations being used to support massive government spending and consolidation of power. Jo has done an enormous amount of work documenting this (e.g., The Skeptic’s Handbook).

    If you think she is wrong about something, the ethical and responsible way to proceed would be to make your argument and engage Jo and others squarely in logical debate. I guarantee you that, if you convince her she is wrong about something, she will change the Handbook. Instead, your “hit and run” tactics are unserious and irresponsible and are why I characterized you as a vandal.

    I’ve told you what my concerns and motivations are — I would be fascinated to hear what you say yours are.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Hey Speedy you actually genuinely have corrected me there! While wathcing Grey’s anatomy I’ve quoted the wrong bit of Wes’ post how embarrassing:)

    It is actually the next bit of his I meant to use my apologies… that suggests that it being warmer in the past at lower CO2 debunks AGW. Genuine apologies and thanks for picking that up Speedy. It does read rather funny so now I guess you all think I’m stark raving mad, unlike before;)

    10

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Wes George this ones for you.

    From IPCC AR4 Chp 6 pp 466

    Recent analyses of instrumental, documentary
    and proxy climate records, focussing on European temperatures,
    have also pointed to the unprecedented warmth of the 20th
    century and shown that the extreme summer of 2003 was very
    likely warmer than any that has occurred in at least 500 years

    I draw my friends attention to the line “focusing on European temperatures”

    Recall how alarmists dismiss any and all research that shows the MWP as warmer than the current period, by saying “it’s only localised” or “It’s not global”.
    Well it seems it doesn’t have to be global to refute the IPCC claim. They claim in the above quote that current European warming is unprecedented.

    Amazing isn’t it, 2000, 3000, 4000 scientists, (who knows how many) 6 years of work including workshops, seminars and meetings in exotic locations, a budget of millions, 3000 page glossy report launched to worldwide MSM fanfare and it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.

    10

  • #
    BobC

    Joanne Nova:
    May 19th, 2010 at 12:51 am

    Please, try not to be too hard on Mattb, he’s being polite and he’s outnumbered. Sometimes he asks the questions that none of us could think of.

    OK, I accept your decision. If MattB makes any real arguments I may respond — otherwise I’ll just do as everyone else and rate them.

    PS: Mattb, sorry, you were caught by the spam filter. I’ve freed it (Eddy got caught too).If you get caught again, please email me. And bummer, that means the numbers on comments will change, because those two comments will be dropped in somewhere above.

    That explains why the comment numbers people are quoting don’t make any sense. Perhaps it would be more robust if we just used the time stamp.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    BobC in 128 sorry I don’t think you are right. Sometimes getting hit from 20 different angles of varying scientific illiteracy may make it look that way. I like this site, I come here a lot, I learn plenty on the way, and I argue with what I think is rubbish. sue me. Me – I’m concerned that political agendas are being made on false science too – take Abbott for an example. On the flip side I’m concerned that political agendas are being made on the decent science too – take Rudd. Massive government spending and consolidation of power are a concern regardless of the science don’t you think?

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Baa you are confusing what the report says with the consequences of the report being wrong in that regard. I think their report is correct in terms of what you quote, my suggestion is that if they are wrong it is of no real consequence. Note the quote is of the extreme summer in 2003 in Europe, not a 2003 global mean temp. Do you really think that bit you highlight is important? It also only mentions 500 years! so it does not even related to MWP or RW.

    10

  • #
    BobC

    MattB:
    May 19th, 2010 at 1:18 am
    Massive government spending and consolidation of power are a concern regardless of the science don’t you think?

    We definitely have a point of agreement there. The science matters, though, since it is being used as the excuse for inciting fear in the public to advance the political agenda. The good news is that the public isn’t buying it — due in no small part to the work of people like Jo.

    MattB:
    BobC in 128 sorry I don’t think you are right. Sometimes getting hit from 20 different angles of varying scientific illiteracy may make it look that way.

    What it looks like is that you throw a lot of stuff at the wall to see if anything sticks. If you think you genuinely have a point, then stand and defend it. No one will get on you for that. We all have areas of more and less competence — an honest discussion tends to bring up the folks who are more knowledgeable in the relevant areas, benefiting everyone. (The “Wisdom of Crowds” effect.)

    10

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    MattB: #133
    May 19th, 2010 at 1:27 am

    Matt you’re confused as to who is confused. read my IPCC quote again.

    Recent analyses of instrumental, documentary
    and proxy climate records, focussing on European temperatures,
    have also pointed to the unprecedented warmth of the 20th
    century and shown that the extreme summer of 2003 was very likely warmer than any that has occurred in at least 500 years

    So, warmth was unprecedented, AND (or “as well as” if you prefer) a single summers T’s etc
    The 500 year reference relates to a single summer of T’s. They say 500 years because any further back in time the resolution isn’t detailed enough to compare SINGLE season T’s.

    Furthermore, I used this quote only. The word “unprecedented” appears over a hundred times in the AR4. It’s one of the most used terms after “likely”.

    I did an audit remember?

    10

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    MattB: #133
    May 19th, 2010 at 1:27 am

    Do you really think that bit you highlight is important?

    What is more relevant is that the IPCC believes it’s important. They put it into their seminal report, the gold standard of climate science and 800+ reviewers thought it was important enough to leave it in the report.
    What’s IRRELEVANT is that a tryhard from Perth named MattB doesn’t think it’s important.

    Furthermore, if the “bit I quoted” is NOT important, it then begs the question, what else is in this 3000 page report that is also NOT important.
    Maybe you can enlighten us.

    10

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    Baa Humbug #135

    Furthermore, I used this quote only. The word “unprecedented” appears over a hundred times in the AR4. It’s one of the most used terms after “likely”.
    _____________

    You have forgotten “robust”. 😀

    10

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Touche Mr Balik

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Geesh MattB even though I give you a thumbs up for “Massive Gov. Spend and consolidation of power @ 132 (or thereabouts)

    You have to say also @ 132 (or thereabouts) with:

    “Sometimes getting hit from 20 different angles of varying scientific illiteracy may make it look that way.”

    Where you could have used “literacy”, you chose the subtle but clear “illiteracy” which tells me that you look down upon EVERY one here. I doubt you have a sense of shame, really.

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Baa Humbug @ 135 (or thereabouts), Adolf Balik @ 137 (or thereabouts)

    “pointed to the unprecedented warmth of the 20th
    century and shown that the extreme summer of 2003 was very likely warmer than any that has occurred in at least 500 years”

    Thanks for quoting that to remind me how much bull and propaganda you can squeeze into one sentence.

    unprecedented

    WRONG

    extreme summer

    WRONG

    very likely

    WRONG

    any that has occurred

    WRONG

    in at least 500 years

    WRONG and “at least” twists the words just a little more….

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Sorry, Please substitute “politically contrived or religiously inspired propaganda” where you read; WRONG in the above post!

    10

  • #
    Mike Davis

    Brian:
    If that is what your Rudd is up to he is doing as good a job as any previous head of the UN. Right about now his comments are about equal to this Secretary General and the last one. I do think he needs to be a bit more alarmist though as the contenders for the position are currently attempting to outdo one another for most alarming position based on the least scientific support!

    10

  • #
    Mike Davis

    I see posters like Mattb are a necessary part of the discussion because they do more to support the Realist position than the alarmist position by their transparent comments and unsupported position statements. Just got to love the idea that the AGW proposition can not be falsified because it has not reached the “Hypothesis” state as yet after all these years!

    10

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    The iconic model for all green politics heads to public fund crash and collapse of economy as found by its creators who face national economy collapse jeopardy.

    http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/breaking-leaked-doc-proves-spains-green-policies-%E2%80%94-the-basis-for-obamas-%E2%80%94-an-economic-disaster-pjm-exclusive/

    10

  • #

    MattB:
    May 18th, 2010 at 7:18 pm

    And Allen – I take your point about the NWP – but if you read the whole discussion I mentioned it as a miniscule aside, to which Eddy replied with a swath of misinformation, and I was sucked in to the discussion. Hmm doesn’t that make Eddy the troll? (no offence Eddy).

    Sucked in? Wow! You stated at 91,”The “Gjøa” had successfully navigated the Northwest Passage, the first vessel to do so. But shortly after this it froze into the ice, where it remained all winter. ” Hmmm, the key part of the quote was”The “Gjøa” had successfully navigated the Northwest Passage”. Sure, the ice came AFTER they decided to stay. Are you saying that if they continued they would not have made it? At least you read the links which is a miracle in itself.

    The next pearl of wisdom from the MattB school of critical thought was this, “And look at this “Ice floes, violent winds, fog and shallow waters were constant hazards, but towards the end of the summer the expedition found a natural harbour on King William Island, northwest of Hudson Bay. ”
    So it took them the whole 1st summer to reach King William Island! So much for a few weeks trip.”

    Good point, Matt. The reason I cited the links was to show you that, outside of the Wikipedia link, the rest I found didn’t match the “MattB” version. During the summer melt there are always floating ice, wind and other hazards to contend with. In fact, the first link I sent you was quite explicit as it said, “The passage to the Pacific was ice-free that year, but Amundsen stopped near the south shore of King William Island on September 12, 1903 to perform the magnetic observations he had promised his scientific sponsors. This is noteworthy because it belies a claim commonly made about Amundsen, that his exploratory successes came at the expense of his scientific work.” Isn’t it amazing how he was able to take his ship to the magnetic North Pole? It is ice bound and frozen year round now despite what the AGW crowd calls “unprecedented warming.” Were there other factors at work besides CO2? You bet. Of course, the same is true now even though the AGW crowd ascribes it to the recent increase in atmospheric CO2.

    You are too smart a guy to be an AGW “useful idiot” Matt. Quit blindly believing and fearlessly following. If you are not the lead dog the view never changes.

    10

  • #
    Hammiesink

    “Name the scientist who claims it was globally cooler in Roman Times.”

    Craig Loehl. Anders Moberg.

    Loehle is a skeptic, and Moberg has the McIntyre Seal of Approval.

    Both reconstructions are similar, and both show a coolor RWP. Red line in the Wikipedia graph.

    To see whether it was warmer or not during the RWP, you have to have the global average, not individual sites, as both Loehle and Moberg have done.

    10

  • #
    Grant

    Hammiesink @146

    If you read the article the authors are agnostic as to which reconstruction is correct. They are reporting the works of others. And they insist on using that iniquitous term “Temperature Anomaly”. That should be expunged from scientific literature (or any literature that includes it should be deemed unscientific).

    10

  • #
    A C

    Are we still going this morning MattB?
    Can I point out that you desparately need to know what caused the pre-CO2 climate variations, eg MWP and RWP and little Ice Age since you need that to explain Trenberth’s lack of warming now. “We cant account for the lack of warming and its a travesty that we cant.” Some other even bigger forcing event is evidently over riding your CO2 warming and you need an explanation. Perhaps that overriding forcing will push us into an even more catastrophic cooling phase. I dont know – the science isnt settled.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Eddy in 145 – everyone wants you to move on from this NW passage discussion;) But just to set you straight, you are picking me up on:
    “Sucked in? Wow! You stated at 91,”The “Gjøa” had successfully navigated the Northwest Passage, the first vessel to do so. But shortly after this it froze into the ice, where it remained all winter. ” Hmmm, the key part of the quote was”The “Gjøa” had successfully navigated the Northwest Passage”. Sure, the ice came AFTER they decided to stay. Are you saying that if they continued they would not have made it? At least you read the links which is a miracle in itself.”

    Read it again, the “successfully navigated the NWP” was THREE YEARS after they started! And then they got stuck in ice before they could get anywhere useful.

    10

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Hammiesink: #146
    May 19th, 2010 at 7:09 am

    Hammie, good try, but no cigar.

    Only one of those graphs go back as far as the year 1. Two are from ad200 onwards (period had ended by then) 6 are ad 800 or more recent.

    I suggest you google “Roman Empire” and find out about the extend of the period.

    Also, of the ten graphs, eight are by the usual suspects i.e. Mann, Jones Briffa Cook.

    Mate, you keep buying used cars from the same shonky dealer.

    I recall a Turkish saying, “a monkey gets whipped but once”

    10

  • #
    Hammiesink

    Baa Humbug #150,

    As I said in my comment, the red line is the one from Moberg, which matches well with Loehle’s study. I’m talking only about the red line in the graph.

    This reconstruction matches well with Loehle’s, which does not use tree rings. It’s been vetted by McIntyre. Clearly, the RWP was cooler than today. From two scientists. One a skeptic and the other vetted by a skeptic.

    10

  • #

    @ MattB and other warmists – some things for you to ponder:

    Think about “global warming” logically. If it is truly “unprecedented” in the late 20th century (and, to believe some, in the early 21st century), then wouldn’t you expect to find that warming extremes would be inching upward?

    True, it is possible to have a global average temperature rise without setting new records, but is it plausible? To claim global warming has been rising precipitously (as Mann, et al, claim) for – what, 30-odd years? – without a single new continental high temperature record being set stretches credibility, wouldn’t you say?

    Or do you have a scientific rationale to explain the lack of new continental high temperature records during “unprecedented warming” (due to human emissions from using fossil fuels, according to the IPCC)?

    Here are the continental high temperature records and when they were set:

    Can you account for the lack of new continental high temperature records during the last 30 years of supposedly “unprecedented” warming?

    What many here are trying to explain to you, Matt, is that observations of real world temperatures (and geologic evidence for past temperatures) together with atmospheric CO2 history and the real limitations of greenhouse gases to drive climate change (rather than respond to it) are very significant inconveniences to AGW theory. If you are going to believe the theory, then you need to explain all the contradictory evidence to the theory. But that is a futile quest, not because those you try to convince are “illiterate”, but because you cannot substantiate a completely failed theory (AGW has failed).

    Earlier, I cited two pillars of AGW theory that real world evidence undermines. In a scientific world (one not driven by political agendas and stakes in alternate energy projects), the failure of these foundations of AGW theory would be sufficient to collapse the theory and compel true scientific curiosity to look for alternate theories why climate varies as it does. But in today’s insanely politicized “climate” of climate science, realities are simply ignored or explained away by yet another “model”. Do you see the problem using “models” to refute real world observations?

    May I suggest you create a better perspective for you interest in climate change? Study as much as you can of climate history going back at least 3.5 billion years. Do that objectively and I believe you will develop a very healthy skepticism for modern theories such as AGW. You’ll find it VERY interesting, too. And it will give you a perspective that will serve you well in trying to sort out what is real and what is pure speculation about modern climate variability.

    Bob Webster

    10

  • #

    Ok, in previous post the image did not appear, so here is the text version of all time continental high temperatures:

    Listed in order of temperature (descending)

    Continent – All-time High – Place – Date

    Africa: 136°F – El Azizia, Libya – September 13, 1922

    North America: 134°F – Death Valley, California, USA – July 10, 1913

    Asia: 129°F – Tirat Tsvi, Israel – June 22, 1942

    Australia: 128°F – Cloncurry, Queensland – January 16, 1889

    Europe: 122°F – Seville, Spain – August 4, 1881

    South America: 120°F – Rivadavia, Argentina – December 11, 1905

    Oceania: 108°F – Tuguegarao, Philippines – April 29, 1912

    Antarctica: 59°F – Vanda Station, Scott Coast – January 5, 1974

    Note that Antarctica didn’t have much in the way of temperature recording devices in earlier times (and still doesn’t).

    10

  • #
    Bruce of Newcastle

    @Speedy #127

    I think you got me wrong. My case is this: if pCO2 was no higher than baseline during the RWP then CO2 is shown not to be the cause of the warmer climate then. I don’t know why the Roman period was warmer than now. But the empirical data suggests it cannot have been due to CO2.

    Here’s another graph which suggests that pCO2 was pretty constant until recently:
    http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Kouwenberg_5_4.png

    Note the peak at 500 AD is thought to be an artefact of that dataset (see Kouwenberg’s 2004 thesis p65)

    As to the current warming I’ve said before that it is due to the 65yr PDO cycle topping out around 2005, plus UHI due to the increased urbanisation last half of 20thC (which includes an effect on UAH series due to prevailing winds – the urban heat doesn’t go straight up, it spreads & mixes in). I agree with various findings that CO2 has a small effect, around 1/7th of the IPCC estimate, which comes to about 0.3 C/century. So at 0.3 C/century, we fry when exactly?

    @MattB #125 – you said in #57: “The question to ask our Skeptical friends is – “If it was warm or warmer in the Roman and Medieval times for whatever reasons, why would that preclude CO2 being to blame for this so-called warming?””

    I’ve just answered your question/hypothesis. It wasn’t due to CO2. Jo shows by citing several sources that the RWP existed and was warmer than today. Therefore it was warmer AND not because of CO2. Why was it warmer? I dunno.

    10

  • #
    Hammiesink

    Bob Webster #152:

    Over time, the number of both record highs and lows decreases because as the number of records increases, it is increasingly difficult to break a record. However, in a temperature-flat world, there would be roughly equal numbers of record highs and lows, and in a warming world there would be increasing numbers of record highs vs record lows.

    This was quantified by Meehle 2009, which found an increasing numbers of record highs vs record lows: http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/maxmin.jsp

    10

  • #
    pat

    having avoided 7.30 report for the longest while, i foolishly switched it on for all of five seconds last nite to hear this line, and switched off:

    18 May: ABC 7.30 Report: Heather Ewart: Greens look to win over disaffected Labor voters
    DOUG EVANS: The big issue that’s turned it for me is climate change and their performance on that
    http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2010/s2903058.htm

    going to the transcript today, i see Ewart has her own peculiar view of ‘progressives’:

    “HEATHER EWART: But has this government made too many compromises for the more progressive elements of this diverse inner-city electorate? That includes high rise commission flats, blue collar workers and immigrants, along with students, academics and the upwardly mobile white collar constituency”

    yet this is immediately followed by:

    “NICK ECONOMOU: Now, where Labor decides it’s going to try to appeal to one of its constituency blocks on these issues, there’s the real danger of alienating the other one. And one of the interesting things about the last four months of the Rudd Government is that for reasons best-known to itself, it’s decided it’s going to try and consolidate its support amongst the blue collar constituency.
    HEATHER EWART: That leaves the disgruntled progressive voters in this electorate, providing fertile ground for the Greens.”

    funny how the ‘blue collars’ are in both groups, and funny how i know no ‘blue collars’ in favour of the ETS and cap’n’tax.

    as for ‘blue collar’ union ‘leaders’, that is another matter entirely and one which union members need to watch closely.

    10

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Hammiesink: #151
    May 19th, 2010 at 9:19 am

    And I’ll say it again, the reconstruction only goes back to year one. That’s towards the END of the Roman period.

    Where is the link to Loehle

    10

  • #
    Post hoc

    It would be beneficial if you so called skeptics could actually agree on a date for this Roman Warm period.

    It appears two of the “regional” graphs (ie not world wide graphs) indicate that at the time of Jesus 2000 years ago the temperature was a fair bit cooler than present. ie The Great Plains and Makasar Straight.

    10

  • #
    Bob Malloy

    Wrong Wong & Krudd K Rudd up the anti, launch new web site for the kiddies.

    Shout Out For Climate Change: http://www.shoutoutforclimatechange.com.au/

    The site promotes a competition for children to convince their peers, and pester their parents about the evils to come.

    Climate Change is a major issue facing all Australians.

    It is vital that all Australians understand the significance of climate change so we can act now to protect our future way of life.

    The Shout Out for Climate Change competition gives Australian students of all ages a creative platform to inform, engage and inspire others to discover more about climate change and take action.

    10

  • #
    Bob Malloy

    Pat: May 19th, 2010 at 9:48 am

    Your warning is well heeded, no ‘blue collars’ in favour of the ETS and cap’n’tax.
    as for ‘blue collar’ union ‘leaders’, that is another matter entirely and one which union members need to watch closely.

    As a card carrying union member, the ACTU and some of the major or more powerful unions are definitely not serving their members with their over the top support of the ETS>

    10

  • #
    wes george

    Other things can affect the climate and cause other warm periods (while CO2 is low), but we don’t know what forces were, we don’t know when they stopped, or if they are working now.

    We must assume the laws of physics and therefore climatology remain constant over time. So whatever mechanism forced recent past climate variation can be assumed as potentially the cause of modern variation. Of course, because the Earth climate is a dynamic, nonlinear complex system far from equilibrium there is also an evolutionary drift aspect to climate as well, Climate Change would be more accurately characterized as Climate Evolution.

    A basic logic precept in the formation of hypotheses is the principle of parsimony. Unless, modern warming can be shown to be anomalous, ie outside the amplitude of recent past warm periods, then a one-off hypothesis to explain just the last 100 years isn’t particularly useful. Especially since AGW theory can’t account for the mid-20 th century or early 21 st cooling nor can it predict climate variation in the coming post-hydrocarbon based economy. Furthermore, we know that so-called anthropocene warming coincidentally began near the bottom of the most recent minimum. How convenient.

    Obviously CO2 has a major role to play in climate theory. Nevertheless, whatever hypothesis one develops to explain modern warming must past the test of explaining recent past climate variation as well. Otherwise, you don’t have a useful scientific hypothesis that can issue insights into the observed data, all you have is a just-so story.

    10

  • #
    Bob Malloy

    As a follow up on my post on (Shout Out For Climate Change), If any of Jo’s visitors are Australian Students and sceptical of CAGW and qualify to enter a video to the site please do and encourage any like minded friends to do the same. Destroy the propaganda site from within.

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    Bruce @ 155

    We’re in violent agreement on this one. The RWP and MWP demonstrate we can have comparable or warmer periods without any influence of CO2.

    So, unless the AGW crowd (and a diminishing one it will be) can demonstrate why this current warming was any different, then dropping CO2 levels (even if this is possible) would probably achieve nothing.

    Besides mass starvation and the wholesale collapse of civilisation.

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    Bruce

    PS: I was discussing MattB’s comments on you at 113. The question was more directed to him.

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    10

  • #
    Axel Cooper

    Please see the video marked as …..

    “Richard Lindzen, Ph.D.
    1:27:24
    May 17, 2010
    Global Warming: How to Approach the Science”

    See the Art Robinson revelations in his video
    appearance near the start of this long clip.
    Lindzen then goes on to explain how the science
    became corrupted by politics, and why tenths of
    a degree “climate change” is trivial.

    10

  • #

    @MattB 149

    I seemed to have taken your quote in a previous post and accidentally “homogenized” it with another quote. My apologies. THe first link I sent you stated that the passage was ice free. I believe there were ice flows and the passage was navigable. He stayed with the natives to do research, not because he couldn’t make it. and yes, on the third year he got caught in the ice, whether or not it would of happened in the first year if he would have pressed on is a matter for speculation and we will never know for sure. For an interesting article on the other times the NWP has been successfully navigated see http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/09/bad-reporting-about-northwest-passage.html.

    I don’t know why I bother, Matt. I guess I am the eternal optimist. Sometimes I think that if God came down from heaven on the clouds of glory and told you that global warming was a scam you would still rely on the IPCC. Gee, did I just make an appeal to authority? 😉

    10

  • #
    Axel Cooper

    See the website for the latest Heartland
    videos, including the above Lindzen video.

    10

  • #
  • #
    Speedy

    Bob @ 159

    Recruiting kids to propagandise their parents? It sounds a lot like Maoist China, where innocent children were manipulated by the state for political ends.

    I find the best answer to these little “Captain Planet” types is to ask them to make some sacrifices themselves – maybe they’d like to turn off the lights in their room when they leave? Or perhaps turn off that heater? It soon brings the message back home.

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Eddie you’d need to find someone more reliable than God sorry mate.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Eddie – they left, the went as far as they could go that summer, they “wintered” for two years and hung out, then pressed on and got through, then got stuck in ice again, and went overland 500miles to send a telegram. They could not have gone on that 1st year, maybe they could the second year but hung around by choice… maybe they were stuck… maybe they could have gone a bit but chose not to… I don’t know, but I’m pretty certain they could not make it the 1st summer. NOne of your links suggest otherwise.

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Hey Bruce in 154… sorry some crossed wires.. when I said:

    ““The question to ask our Skeptical friends is – “If it was warm or warmer in the Roman and Medieval times for whatever reasons, why would that preclude CO2 being to blame for this so-called warming?”

    the last THIS in THIS so called warming… THIS means right here right now.

    Which was also the context that Speedy used it in the original post which I twisted around.

    10

  • #
    Post hoc

    So what are the acceptable dates for RWP to you guys?

    10

  • #

    Matt,
    You wrote,”They went they wintered…” PROVE IT! you were right when you said, “I don’t know,…”

    MattB:
    May 19th, 2010 at 11:30 am
    Eddie you’d need to find someone more reliable than God sorry mate.

    I was attempting a little levity MattB. In your case I suppose I should communicate in more simple terms. There is dense, there is real dense and then there is you, MattB. Are you being intentionally obtuse?

    10

  • #

    @ MattB

    After further reflection I am reminded of the old adage, “No good deed goes unpunished.” In the future, I am going to treat you in a manner befitting your chosen station in life. You apparently have mistaken kindness for weakness.

    Let the games begin.

    10

  • #
    crakar24

    Well i am feeling very special today because when i give a thumbs up the number increments by two.

    As the current RWP and MWP debate has descended into the usual quagmire of denial by our alarmist friends i thought i would take a different approach.

    According to the IPCC sales pitch CO2 drives the temp, it is the only thing that drives the temp which is why we are being told by those that frequent the cracked crab buffets to tighten our belts as they let theirs out.

    We have been told that CO2 causes temp rise, in turn increasing water vapour will cause temp rise, in turn we will get less low cloud and more high cloud this combined will cause temp rise, in turn we will get less albedo which will cause temp rise, in turn we will get more methane which will cause more temp rise. In other words a whole host of +ve feed backs

    The only thing that could be construed as a -ve feed back is the latency of water vapour, models disagree slightly on its effects and timing but all this merely does is reduce the +ve feed back of water vapour slightly.

    So now we all know that the only way temp can go is up if we increase CO2, lets apply the above knowledge to the current non warming period. We know CO2 has increased over this time period, probably more so than at anytime in the past and yet the temps have not risen. How can this be so? Well it cant be.

    The only feeble excuse to come from the mouths of the alarmists is “aw gee shucks thats just weather”. Is low and high cloud not weather? Is atmospheric water vapour content not weather? Does ice albedo effect weather? It seems to me the feed back mechanisms espoused by the IPCC are the factors that effect weather….yes?

    So the theory dictates that if CO2 goes up so must the temp and as CO2 drives all the feed backs then nothing else can be considered a driver (forcing)therefore the theory is falsified.

    Now with taking note of the above lets apply the theory to the RWP and MWP. If these two events were in fact global in nature and as warm or warmer than today then the theory is falsified, no ifs, no buts just falsified.

    Does anyone here deny the existence of the RWP and MWP? I could (well anyone) could produce countless studies who’s locations give us a very good world coverage which show beyond any shadow of a doubt that all these locations experienced a warm period during these time intervals. These studies when taken as a whole conclusively prove the temp went up without the aide of CO2.

    I challenge anyone here to dispute what i have written, i dont want results from computer models, i dont want the latest prophecy from Gore, i dont want opinions from mountaineers or school students and i certainly dont want the opinions of blog demigods. Just plain old ordinary emperical evidence will do just nicely.

    Thank in advance

    Crakar

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Geez Eddy!

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/ice/peopleevents/pandeAMEX87.html
    “The arduous journey took three years to complete as Amundsen and his crew had to wait while the frozen sea around them thawed enough to allow for navigation.”

    http://www.gjoahaven.com/roald-amundsen-gjoa.htm
    “On his voyages to find the Northwest Passage Amundsen wintered in the area know known as Gjoa Haven. Amundsen called Gjoa Haven the finest little harbor in the world. The harbour provided refuge from massive pack ice and stormy seas. Amundsen and his crew wintered here in 1903 and learned about the land from the local Inuit the Nattilik. The survival skills he learned here played a large part in the success of his exploration exploits.”

    your fave and mine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage#Amundsen_expedition
    “The Northwest Passage was not conquered by sea until 1906, when the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who had sailed just in time to escape creditors seeking to stop the expedition, completed a three-year voyage in the converted 47-ton herring boat Gjøa, after three winters trapped in ice.”

    Proof? maybe not… but there ya go.

    10

  • #
    A C

    Hi MattB at 172

    I dont think you are in any position to sit back and look smug suggesting its up to sceptics to prove that the current warming is due to CO2. Its the AGW crowd that are getting the multi million-dollar funding to do Climate research so Im guessing its the same crowd who need to make the case. Plus its the AGW crowd that want the trillions to solve the alledged problems. So its you that have to make the case.

    I think you should re-consider my propositions at 107 and 148. If you want us to put our hands in our pockets to pay for your trillion dollar fantasy, you need a computer model that covers all bases not just the little segment that is convenient to your argument. The real world data drifts dramatically away from modelling projections in both driections, forward and backwards – and that begs an explanation. There are two quotes I like. “Weather isn’t climate” and “Climate models aren’t Climate”

    10

  • #
    Grant

    Let’s see now. Has anyone completed a navigation of the NWP in winter? Only in summer? So it is not navigable all year round? Has it ever been? And at some times it is not navigable 12 months of the year.

    10

  • #
    A C

    Yes (post 178) line 2 should have been the negative

    “prove that the current warming is’nt due to CO2.”

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Eddy @ 175 (or thereabouts): “Let the games begin.”

    I think its dejavu all over again!?

    For the rest:

    The unknown cause of medieval and Roman warm periods are even more worrisome when added to today’s Co2 induced warmth. After all it has been getting hot enough without adding in the unknown….

    10

  • #

    @ MattB

    You are not getting my point. I am not talking about the NWP. I have been very fair to you and even stuck up for you in the past. Well, if you thought,’Dirty Eddy” was a handful, you’ve seen nothing yet.

    Regarding your post at 177, the fact remains that he decided to stay for scientific research. The harbor didn’t become icebound as soon as he arrived. It iced up a few weeks after he arrived. It is speculation as to how far he would have gotten if he pressed on. It is something we will never know.

    From the first link I gave you: “The passage to the Pacific was ice-free that year, but Amundsen stopped near the south shore of King William Island on September 12, 1903 to perform the magnetic observations he had promised his scientific sponsors.” The passage WAS ICE FREE. NONE of the quotes you used stated when the ice blocked the harbor! We will never know!

    Logic and deductive reasoning is a strong suit you have never demonstrated. If you thought I could “whip out quotes” before, you have seen nothing, yet. As I said before, let the games begin!

    10

  • #
    Hasbeen

    It has always been my experience that orators, & linguists are never very practical people. In fact I’ve yet to meet even one who could lay claim to having any common sense.

    I can not imagine why anyone expected our Rudd to have the ability to understand anything even slightly technical. I would be prepared to bet he has to have someone else reconcile his personal accounts.

    It is a worry that we have one of each of these people in the lead of both Oz, & the US, simultaneously

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Hey Eddy I didn’t realise we’d stopped being mates? I think you’ve misunderstood me no offence intended at this end bud.

    But you should re-read the discussion.

    You provided a link about it being ice free – I said I’d not seen that one – good find – as all the references I come across say he was stuck for a couple of years.. You provided a heap more references to back up your claim, and I demonstrated that none of them back up the claim.

    My logic and reasoning lead me to believe that he was a clever guy, and planned his route to have a safe haven at Goja – he got there and then waited for the next available summer of good conditions to proceed, which he got in 2 years time. Being a resourceful bloke he put his time to good use learning many skills that helped him in this and future endeavours.

    Even with your link that claims the passage was “ice free” (no reference?), the fact that Admunsen stopped at the end of summer suggests to me most clearly that he could not have continued. Your comment that he could have done it in a few weeks is pulled from nowhere and is in stark contrast with the genuine difficulties he faced on his trip – that is why he is a bloody famous explorer!

    I have learned through this that the route he took is completely commercially unviable, and that there is a more northerly NW passage trade route that is the real possibility in terms of trade, so I also comment that Admunsen’s NW Passage is not the same one that proceeding trips using ice breakers have taken – so when people get annoyed by news reports claiming the NW passage is going to open for the 1st time in a long long time… well I think it is is this more northerly route they are referring to.

    10

  • #
    Hammiesink

    crakar24 #176,

    According to the IPCC sales pitch CO2 drives the temp, it is the only thing that drives the temp

    The IPCC does not say this at all. Read the WGI AR4 and you’ll see tons of debate, uncertainty, and considerations of various possibilities. It concludes that it is very likely that CO2 is the strongest, but not the only.

    We know CO2 has increased over this time period, probably more so than at anytime in the past and yet the temps have not risen.

    The atmosphere is a tiny part of the climate system. 95% of the trapped heat energy goes into the oceans, and so there won’t always be a one-on-one correlation. The oceans continue to accumulate heat. In addition, climate is generally defined as weather averaged over ~30 years or more, so the only way you could claim that the correlation has broken down is to show 30 years of cooling with increasing CO2.

    These studies when taken as a whole conclusively prove the temp went up without the aide of CO2.

    Yes. There are several drivers of climate. Several of these could be the causes of the RWP and MWP. No one ever said that CO2 is not the only driver of climate.

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Hammy you are full of chit
    You can have it this way but you can’t have it that way.

    Proof of the oceans magically “accumulating heat” PLEASE?

    The atmosphere is a tiny part of the climate system.

    Yes and that is where all the nasty Co2 resides?????

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    Hammiesink @ 185

    Re. Those points you raised with Crackar24…

    1. Perhaps the IPCC may consider other factors beyond CO2, but they don’t seem to do much about them, unless you consider ignoring an input (such as cloud cover) as some form of activity. In effect the IPCC treat CO2 as the only thing that drives temperature. If you don’t believe me, jump onto RealClimate.com and try telling them that variation in the solar output characteristics can be a signficant driver of climate. And if you still don’t believe me, wait for about 10-15 years when Solar Cycle 24 starts taking effect. (Invest in wooly socks if I were you.:))

    2. Temperature does not equal heat. Two bodies (such as an ocean and an atmosphere) may have vastly different heat content but they will not undergo heat exchange unless there is a temperature difference between them.

    3. You accept that other things besides CO2 drive climate change. Good. Perhaps you could pass this on to the IPCC – they are acting as though they don’t understand this. And, while you’re there, perhaps ask them to tell us why the MWP and RWP temperature events occurred independently of CO2 concentration changes – whereas they are sure this most recent one (1980 – 1998) is “most likely” (i.e. >90% sure) due to CO2.

    And, by the way, I think you’ll find that the original time period that was used to determine that “Global Warming” occurred was much less than 30 years. Jim Hansen was arm waving about this in the early 1980’s. Pardon my cynicism, but there seem to be double standards operating at the IPCC.

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    10

  • #

    From Jo herself at post # 126,

    Mattb, you’re right that the MWP (and Roman era) doesn’t defeat the theory of AGW per se, but (as A C and others have said) it is a problem for the models . The models claim they “considered all the forcings and ruled all of them out”. Other things can affect the climate and cause other warm periods (while CO2 is low), but we don’t know what forces were, we don’t know when they stopped, or if they are working now. Since there is no empirical evidence to support the theory, only the Argument-from-Ignorance line that the models can’t explain the modern warming without CO2, it follows that what the models say about this warming is unverified, unreliable, and highly suspect.

    my emphasis

    The problem gets worse when you consider that CO2 levels for most of the last 10,000 years hovered around the 260-280 ppmv.Yet we have had several major temperature shifts come along anyway.

    The Holocene Optimism,The Minoan Warming,The Roman Warming,the Medieval Warming and the Modern Warming.

    While the CO2 level in all that time barely changed at all.

    Here is a revealing LINK to ponder over.

    Really there it is in living color.To show how irrelevant CO2 is,when it comes to significant temperature change.

    10

  • #
    Post hoc

    I understood this blog piece to be an attempt to help one Tony Abott out of a pickle, yet I still haven’t seenan agreed upon date for the RWP? Why is that? Is it becuase you googles hero’s don’t know?

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Hey Post Hoc: You don’t believe the RWP happened at all, why do you want a specific date?????

    10

  • #
    Post hoc

    Sunsettommy

    “The Holocene Optimism,The Minoan Warming,The Roman Warming,the Medieval Warming and the Modern Warming.

    While the CO2 level in all that time barely changed at all.”

    You call a rise of around 40 odd% barely changing?

    Very strange definition

    10

  • #
    Post hoc

    being skeptical scientist that I am, I am interested in what you have to say. So these dates?

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Oh yes I don’t see anything in this writeup (By Jo) that mentions Abbott.

    I understood this blog piece to be an attempt to help one Tony Abott out of a pickle

    Do you have a reference?

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Mark D – hmm maybe I should not be surprised you have selective reading abilities. I suggest you read the lead article again.

    Hint: 3rd paragraph.

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Hey MattB! partly right What about the pickle?

    By the way are you also called post hoc? or do you just insert yourself where it does the least good?

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Post Hoc the dates are clearly in the graphs above.

    1st one says 2300 to 200 years ago
    2nd one says 2100 to 3100 years ago
    3rd one says very short spike about 1800 years ago
    4th one is about 1750 years ago with a massive cooling then warming again in preceeding 300 years
    4th one has a minor blip about 2000 years ago
    5th one – hmm doesn;t seem to show it – or is that it 2500 years ago?
    6th one has it about 1300 years ago for the entire 700 od years before
    7th one has a narrow spike about 2000 years ago
    it looks like it was 2500 years ago in the Vostok

    Hang on? How can these all be the same events?

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Mark D “Hey MattB! partly right What about the pickle?”

    you didn;t ask about the pickle. I’m entirely right you just missed the abbott reference go on admit it.

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    What I got is that you insert yourself where it does the least good.

    My excerpt quote: “I understood this blog piece to be an attempt to help one Tony Abott out of a pickle”

    So Mr. erroneous, where is the pickle?

    10

  • #
    Post hoc

    MattB

    Of course the event is where the warm bit occurs my bad.
    I don’t think they like the question.

    MarkD
    so you argue semantics rather than science, good to know.

    10

  • #
    Post hoc

    Mard

    The pickle of course is the claim that the time of Jesus Christ was warmer than now. Yet the evidence presented doesn’t really show that

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Mark D:
    “Oh yes I don’t see anything in this writeup (By Jo) that mentions Abbott.”

    Where’s the pickle?

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Post Hoc @ 199:

    MarkD
    so you argue semantics rather than science, good to know.

    Yes Post san, MattB is my master….

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    And MattB I have already said “partly right” to which if you were intelligent, would know that in fact out of over 1000 words in fact Tony Abbot does appear.

    The pickle does still elude you however MattB chan

    10

  • #
    A C

    Re post 186

    “The atmosphere is a tiny part of the climate system.

    Yes and that is where all the nasty Co2 resides?????”

    Actually, I believe that the oceans are the biggest part of the Climate system. In fact I think that the oceans should be considered as part of the extended atmosphere. Just because we are a land mammal I dont think we should allow ourselves to be too fixated on the phase change between liguid water and water vapour, or solid water either if it comes to that. We are a wet planet. The air has CO2 and water vapour “dissovled” in it and the water of the ocean has CO2 and air (if you like) “dissolved” in it with only a phase change separating them. Things clearly move with ease from one to the other. Not that much different to the atmosphere having both liquid and gaseous water in it or ice crystals too. What percentage of atmospheric CO2 is dissovled in the oceans? Quite a bit I’d wager. Probably why if you look at the Vostok cores you see CO2 concentrations rise as global temperatures rise as the oceans degas and why many scientists believe temperature drives CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and not the other way around. I think a genuine climate model would have to be integrated with whats happening in the oceans to be of any use whatso ever. And that unfortunately includes the Pacific Multidecadal Oscillations(!) and the like.

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    AC, reference 107 I think we are not disagreeing. I was making “fun” at 186 with “nasty Co2”

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    excuse moi, That would be Abbott

    10

  • #
    allen mcmahon

    Before being afflicted with Climatitious my interest was Roman history and if it proves one thing it is that global average temperature is a useless metric.
    During the Roman Warming the climate varied much like today there were areas of abundance and areas of scarcity. When the grain crops failed in Sicily there were riots in Rome. You had record crops, crop failures, expansion and contraction dependent on conditions. Climate at the regional level determined good times or bad.It is fair to say that overall the empire prospered but that was due to a combination of reasons not just climate. These including social, political, economic factors and Rome’s military capability.
    What is more interesting is the disintegration of the western empire over roughly 200 years leading up to 400 AD as colder conditions were a major factor. Apart for the economic effects it led to migration from the north and east which resulted in violence and turmoil in regions bordering the empire, notable on the Rhine and Danube frontiers. Both rivers presented formidable natural barriers but there were times where the rivers froze and allowed easier access to the Germanic tribes that were being displaced in there own territories and they proved difficult to dislodge. Coupled with this the cold conditions within the western parts of the empire led to severe crop failures, people were unable to pay taxes, lost their livelihoods and many became refugees or bandits. Cities became ungovernable, defenses deteriorated and after decades of decay the Western Empire eventually collapsed. It is fair to say that the empire prospered in warm times and suffered in cold times.
    Finally my pet hate – vineyards in Northern England. Roman troops were only issued with sour wine ie the dregs. The Romans planted vines in areas that were not commercial viable, harvests would have been small in comparison to suitable areas and the wine would have been absolute crap.

    10

  • #
    Post hoc

    c’mon people you are arguing over the RWP and not a single one of you can give me an actual date range.

    Isn’t google helping?

    10

  • #
    wes george

    “What percentage of atmospheric CO2 is dissovled in the oceans? Quite a bit I’d wager.”

    There is 50 times as much CO2 in the oceans as there is in the atmosphere, and it’s simple chemistry that the oceans release CO2 as they warm.

    http://joannenova.com.au/2010/04/the-debate-continues-dr-glikson-v-joanne-nova/

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Allen, great history lesson, remember beer would make up for crap wine…..

    Post Hoc, can you give me an exact date for the extinction of mastodons?

    10

  • #
    A C

    Thanks Wes George (209)

    I figured it was a lot.

    10

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Post hoc: # 173 #189 #192
    May 19th, 2010 at 3:00 pm

    The reason why you may have not been answered is because your question was a leading one, indicative of a troll like behaviour.
    You tried to pin somebody down to a specific date so as you can then nitpick.

    being skeptical scientist that I am, I am interested in what you have to say

    So you’re a scientist ha? a sceptical one at that. Pull the other one. If you are a scientist, then you would know that a period such as the Roman Warming, (or any other for that matter) doesn’t begin and end on december 31st of a particular year. The various warming and cooling cycles gradually develop in varying degrees depending on the geographical location. More importantly, due to the nature of most proxy data, any derived dates will always have margins of error i.e. 2300 yrsBp +or- 200 yrs (for example). A scientist would know that. But then, you’re a scientist, so you DO know that.
    Which begs the question, why did you frame your question in such a mischievous manner?

    I have a much much much easier question for you Mr Scientist.

    When did the current warming begin?

    p.s. I’ll even give you a big advantage in the debate by telling you my next move. Irregardless of the date you give, I will find some region or continent that doesn’t adhere to the date you give and tell you you’re (at least partially) wrong. (tip, Antarctica. tip, USA)

    p.p.s. I’ll get to your “the pickle” later

    10

  • #
    Post hoc

    MarkD

    Relevance?

    The claim is regarding the RWP, as far as I can understand it has nothing to do with extinct megafauna.

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Allen Mcmahon ref. 207 I am sorry my comment at 210 sounded somewhat insincere. I mean that was a GREAT lesson!

    (I have been to Roman occupied European locals) and I find the history fascinating)!

    10

  • #
    Post hoc

    Baa Humbug

    If you actually look at what i wrote I suspect you will find I asked for ranges, which would indicate that i am not really concerned with November 23 501 AD.

    So how about it Baa, are you able to give me some dates for the RWP? Surely it is not that hard of a question, this thread is making some claims on the RWP, and I am wanting you to justify them. Obviously that means I am a troll.

    Troll = someone who disagrees with you? interesting definition.

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Post san, the relevance is that when you look back into history you run into all kinds of little troubles like for example different calendars, interpretations, etc. such that exact dates may be a problem. You have yet to commit to whether RWP was real or not (regardless of date). Go for it!

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Baa @212 nicely done! I wait with (not baited breath) but…..a pickle….for their earth shaking answer…

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Post Hoc san, Troll = someone that doesn’t fit into the local megafauna

    10

  • #
    allen mcmahon

    Mark D
    Unfortunately the beer was crap as well. They made it by fermenting barley and it was more like porridge that was drunk through a sieve. Mead was popular as by adding honey it supposedly made the beer more palatable – if you have to add honey imagine what the original would have been like. In any event Northern England now produces a nice ale, Newcastle Brown.
    I spent some years wandering through Europe and I was constantly amazed at the Roman architecture particularly the precision achieved with what were only basic tools. To be able to construct viaducts with a fall of six inches per mile today would require great engineering and how they did it back then remains a mystery.

    10

  • #
    Speedy

    Mark D / Baa H-B

    I tend to ignore silly questions like those immediately above.

    Simple question: When Jesus was walking around Judea (say 0 – 30 AD) was it warmer than it is now?

    Answer: Yes. (Despite what Kev said.)

    Q. Was the atmospheric CO2 a significant factor in the warm climate?
    A. No.

    Q. Is there physical evidence to demonstrate that the late 20th century warming was due to elevated CO2 levels?
    A. No.

    And when we look a the recent temperature record we see that the same slope and duration of warming occurred in the latter part of the 19th century, in the early to mid 20th and in the latter 20th century. The only thing that’s “unprecedented” about this lot is the amount of public hysteria that has been generated.

    Cheers,

    Speedy.

    10

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    Well, I made an opinion on MWP and RWP a long time ago. Then there was no mystery to me about it that could be solved by the discussion. I found interesting only the attitudes and semantic discourses here. But a mystery rose to me here. What is the Troll in the sense used here? 🙂

    10

  • #
    MattB

    I’m glad Baa entered the fray as he is 100% correct when he says “More importantly, due to the nature of most proxy data, any derived dates will always have margins of error i.e. 2300 yrsBp +or- 200 yrs (for example).”

    I don’t have a reference sorry but works by Mann et al and Briffa et al provide excellent multi-proxy temperature reconstructions you may be interested in:)

    Here’s one: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann2003b/mann2003b.html

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Allen, I think crap is in the eye of the mead holder 🙂

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Adolf a Troll lives under the bridge and is best ignored when it sticks its ugly head up. On this site I’m considered a troll by many. If most here visited any warmist site they would be considered a troll. The term is also applicable like trolling a fishing lure – in that you cast out some bait and hope whoever picks it up puts up a good fight.

    That is to say I’m here to annoy and get in to a debate rather than with any genuine interest in the science.

    Normally, however, on this site the word troll means “This person knows what they are talking about I’m going to have to accuse them of being a troll so others think they don;t know what they are on about.” Impartial opinion honest;)

    10

  • #
    crakar24

    Hammiesink,

    Whilst others have replied credibly i feel as though i need to reply in person.

    Firstly

    According to the IPCC sales pitch CO2 drives the temp, it is the only thing that drives the temp

    “The IPCC does not say this at all. Read the WGI AR4 and you’ll see tons of debate, uncertainty, and considerations of various possibilities. It concludes that it is very likely that CO2 is the strongest, but not the only.”

    Despite the fact that this statement reinforces my point that the IPCC relies on nothing more than guesswork the statement is factually incorrect.

    Remember we are talking about INCREASING CO2 and its effects, yeah sure the IPCC apply caveats about not being able to predict major volcanic eruptions etc but there are NO -VE FEED BACKS FROM INCREASING CO2.

    So therefore if CO2 goes up the temp MUST GO UP. If it does not then there is something else at play here. As there have been no major eruptions then we must logically conclude the IPCC has got it wrong.

    Next

    We know CO2 has increased over this time period, probably more so than at anytime in the past and yet the temps have not risen.

    “The atmosphere is a tiny part of the climate system. 95% of the trapped heat energy goes into the oceans, and so there won’t always be a one-on-one correlation. The oceans continue to accumulate heat. In addition, climate is generally defined as weather averaged over ~30 years or more, so the only way you could claim that the correlation has broken down is to show 30 years of cooling with increasing CO2.”

    You are correct in saying 95% of heat goes into the ocean (80% in the upper ocean, ~5% in the deeper ocean the rest in the atmosphere) or so the theory goes. This theory has now been turned on its head by Trenberth (do you know who he is). He is the IPCC guy that is stumbling around in the dark somewhere trying to find over 50% of his missing heat. He now believes the deeper oceans hold most of the heat (the missing 50 plus %) as he cannot find it. I say believe because he has no way of measuring this missing heat so in the end it is just another guess.

    Of course the ARGO data has shown the upper ocean to be cooling slightly, you would think the ARGO data would show this missing heat transiting through the upper ocean to the lower ocean but it does not. This is where Trenberth adds another magic theory where our equipment is either “out of cal” or we are not processing (read torturing) the data correctly.

    I can show thousands ….no millions of years where the temp has been dropping whilst CO2 is rising, also from 1940 to 1970 the temps dropped whilst CO2 went up. No dont tell me you are invoking the magical theory of aerosols caused this are you?

    Next

    I pull your wiki link a new one.

    Plate tectonics

    “Over the course of millions of years, the motion of tectonic….” Nope the RWP and MWP was less than “millions” of years ago.

    Solar output

    Three to four billion years ago the sun emitted only 70% as much power as it does today….nope to long ago, the IPCC have stated catagorically TSI has had little impact on climate in recent times.

    Orbital variations

    Once again too long ago

    Volcanism

    The last major volcano to effect global temps was a quite some time ago also so it rules out recent cooling and of course RWP and MWP WARMING.

    Ocean variability

    Nice try, but ocean are not a heat source, examples are the sun and …..well just the sun.

    Human influences

    Isnt this what all the debate is about.

    Cheers

    10

  • #
    MattB

    Crakar24 – seriously you may be interested in this link: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/08/how-hot-should-it-have-really-been-over-the-last-5-years/

    It is a from basics explanation of the various forcings that are understood, showing that indeed there are other understood issues other than CO2.

    It specifically tackes your statement “So therefore if CO2 goes up the temp MUST GO UP. If it does not then there is something else at play here. As there have been no major eruptions then we must logically conclude the IPCC has got it wrong.”

    10

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    MattB #:

    Excellent reconstruction?! The ridicule ice-hockey stick fraud that compromised AGW evangelist more then the unveiled e-mail plot evidence? The miracle of statistic gaining so pure noise from signal achieving such noise signal rate that no signal contaminates the noise? :D:D:D

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Adolf @221

    “What is the Troll in the sense used here? 🙂

    MattB has answered mostly correct @224. A blog Troll is a troublemaker.

    In the case of MattB, he is a troll but has been here so long that people feed him from time to time thereby assuring his return.

    10

  • #
    crakar24

    I a previous post i asked for evidence and then listed what constitutes as evidence. One of the items on the “things that are not evidence” list was opinions from blog demigods.

    Give me an IPCC source and i will have a look.

    Remember we are talking about “-ve feed backs induced by rising CO2 levels”, not “what happens on a cloudy day” or “what happens when a volcano erupts”.

    Show me where the IPCC state the -ve feedbacks from rising CO2.

    10

  • #
    wes george

    To be able to construct viaducts with a fall of six inches per mile today would require great engineering and how they did it back then remains a mystery.

    They used Achimedean water levels, string, chalk markers and lots of slave labour.

    http://www.factsfacts.com/MyHomeRepair/WaterLevel.htm

    10

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    MattB:
    Thank you for the troll explanation!
    I admire your enthusiasm for fight for the true. But I am afraid you joined Lysenkist in the contention.

    10

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    In the case of MattB, he is a troll but has been here so long that people feed him from time to time thereby assuring his return.
    __________________

    I guess he gives certain measure of dynamic into the discussion.

    10

  • #
    Post hoc

    amazing, a simple question on what do the people on here agree to being the RWP has met with no answer, surely you lot are so full of information on this subject you can easily tell me the agreed date ranges, therefore we can progress the discussion.

    Why have you not been able to provide some agreed date ranges?

    10

  • #
    Mark D.

    Why have you not been able to provide some agreed date ranges?

    Why have you not admitted whether or not there was any RWP!

    (you know we can do this all day)

    10

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    So what are the acceptable dates for RWP to you guys?

    yet I still haven’t seenan agreed upon date for the RWP? Why is that? Is it becuase you googles hero’s don’t know?

    c’mon people you are arguing over the RWP and not a single one of you can give me an actual date range.

    Isn’t google helping?

    Yeah I read what you wrote, more importantly, I understand the mischevious intent of what you wrote you troll.

    “An actual date range” (which only appeared on your 4th post) is not the same as “ranges”. AD500-AD1000 is a date range for example.

    What you implied was that there should be a beginning and an end date to the RWP which we should know about. And you kept asking when no one bothered to answer you.
    So, in order to answer you, you need to clarify your question. Are you looking for a global beginning and end to the RWP?

    10

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    crancar24 #229:

    Remember we are talking about “-ve feed backs induced by rising CO2 levels”, not “what happens on a cloudy day” or “what happens when a volcano erupts”.

    Show me where the IPCC state the -ve feedbacks from rising CO2.
    _______________

    All the IPCC models are based on a positive feedback of water vapors that should bring more warming into climatic system then the mythical CO2 and is virtually unstoppable due to the positive feedback loop. The parameter of the feedback power is their cursed “climatic sensitivity”. The parameter is calculated from the assumption that all warming in the 20th century is a consequence of the CO2 rising and no PDO, AMO can have a warming effect.

    If the assumptions worked there would not be any life on the Earth as the positive feedback had destroyed the planetary climate after any temperature turbulence. While the positive feedback is an imaginative construct from Hansen and other alarmists there is a negative feedback that has been really measured by satellites – as positively found by Linzen & Choi and by Spencer.

    10

  • #
    wes george

    That’s a lovely link, MattB. LOL!

    Climate scientists…recognise that the Earth’s temperate is influenced by a whole range of forcings and feedbacks. Greenhouse gases, predominantly CO2, is one forcing causing gradual, inexorable warming. Transfer of heat from the oceans to the atmosphere is another and can cause temporary warming or cooling — perhaps the most important being characterised by the El Niño / La Niña oscillation. The solar cycle, lasting an average of 11 years, is yet another. A fourth powerful but occasional influence is large volcanic eruptions which cause temporary dimming (cooling).

    Basically, the man agrees with crakar2’s nutshell summary the IPCC certified AGW hypothesis. AGW is caused by CO2 forcing. More CO2 equals higher temps. Most other forcing agents–volcanoes, Ninos, solar cycles, cosmic rays, asteroids, plate tectonics, aliens are traditional classed as non-anthropogenic, thus can’t participate in the AGW hypothesis.

    It’s fascinating to watch the AGW faithful dissimulate. First they ditched Catastrophic Global Warming for the Climate Change Apocalypse, thus all bad weather can be blamed on one’s political opponent, whether ice storm, drought, flood or earthquake.

    http://www.google.com.au/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Earthquake+blamed+on+global+warming&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&ei=SJ_zS_7TO8mekQWH_d3TDQ

    Yesterday, MattB admits it could of been warmer in the RWP/MWP with CO2 at half today’s level and still his faith in Anthropogenic carbon based warming isn’t shaken!

    Now he wants to squirm out from under anthropogenic CO2 as the primary driving agent of climate! So, WTF was the bloody ETS moral urgency of our generation all about?

    Downgrading the foul carbon pollution aspect of the impending climate apocalypse doesn’t leave much left of the AGW theory does it? Kind of like a Catholic denying immaculate conception and the divine mystery of the trinity, then insisting we convert anyway.

    Turn the lights down!

    So this is how elaborate plans end, my only friend the end…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHFK1yKfiGo

    10

  • #
    Post hoc

    Baa Humbug

    Your making a comment that it was global, I am yet to be convinced, but if that is what you require to get a straight answer from you guys then that definition is fine for now.

    What are the rough age ranges for the start and end periods of the RWP?

    Of course I would like to see some peer reviewed agreement to those age ranges, so you are basing your comments on documented evidence.

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    Balik @ 236

    The trouble comes when you focus on 200 years of temperature data and basically ignore the other 4,499,999,800 years of our planet’s history.

    Like you said, if the climate drivers were that unstable, life on earth wouldn’t have got past square one.

    Cheers,

    Speedy.

    00

  • #
    MattB

    Wes you’ve lost me… either that or you’re making stuff up?

    00

  • #
    Post hoc

    it is called dynamic equilbrium

    00

  • #
    allen mcmahon

    Matt you are never going to sell me on models they are crude instruments and at the regional next to useless.Li et.al. did a comparison between the HadCM3 and the GISS-ER and they are completely at odds, you may as well flip a coin to decide what is going to happen by 2030 – 50 -2100.
    Better still see William Biggs’ post on Climate Model Uncertainty. The post is interesting but the comments are more enlightening particularly Gavin’s claims and Lucia’s rebuttal. Even if all of Gavin’s claims were true there is no way they should be used to promote alarm or drive policy. Gavin calls them useful I would call them something else.

    >http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2067

    00

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Post hoc: #238
    May 19th, 2010 at 6:45 pm

    Asia

    Yang et al. (2002), identified 5 distinct climate periods. Warm 0-240, cool 240-800, warm 800-1400 etc

    Bao et al. (2004), North West China between 2.2 and 1.8 kyr BP

    Feng and Hu (2005), “the data indicated it was significantly warmer than it was in the final two decades of the 20th century for most of the first two centuries of the record, which comprised the latter part of the Roman Warm Period”.

    Wei et al. (2004), “while from the Roman Warm Period portion of the record they obtained a mean annual temperature that was identical to that of the 1989-2000 period as measured at the Haikou Meteorological Station”. (530BC)

    Europe

    Berglund, B.E. 2003, ” great “retreat of agriculture” centered on about AD 500″ (indicating the end of the period in the NW of Europe)

    Grudd, H., Briffa, K.R 2002, The most dependable portion of the record, based upon the number of trees that were sampled, consists of the last two millennia, which the authors say “display features of century-timescale climatic variation known from other proxy and historical sources, including a warm ‘Roman’ period in the first centuries AD and a generally cold ‘Dark Ages’ climate from about AD 500 to about AD 900.” (again, ending about AD500)

    Desprat, S et al 2003, “first cold phase of the Subatlantic period (975-250 BC),” which was “followed by the Roman Warm Period (250 BC-450 AD),”

    Garcia, M.J.G 2007, “a cold and arid phase during the Subatlantic (Late Iron Cold Period, < B.C. 150), a warmer and wetter phase (Roman Warm Period, B.C. 150-A.D. 270),

    Holzhauser et al. (2005), Iron/Roman Age Optimum between c. 200 BC and AD 50,"

    South America

    Jenny et al. (2002), 200BC to 200AD
    Chepstow-Lusty et al. (1998), 100 to 200 years either side of the BC/AD break

    Haug et al. (2003), Roman Warm Period-to-Dark Ages Cold Period transition around 250AD

    North America

    Hu et al. (2001), Farewell Lake SWT [surface water temperature] was as warm as the present at AD 0-300 [during the Roman Warm Period],

    Willard et al. (2003), 200BC – AD 300

    Campbell (2002), BC 900-100

    Antarctica

    Roberts, D et al 2004, Period 2000-1700 14C yr BP. Based on the species of diatoms found in this sample, they inferred the existence of a multi-centennial period of warmth that was characterized by summer temperatures they describe as being “much higher than present summer temperatures.”

    Please note: Feel free to check out this link, (from where I got the above info) and follow further links to the relevant paper abstracts and in some cases the full text of the papers.

    At #238 you say you are not convinced that the RWP was global. Fair enough. Above are peer reviewed papers which suggest (and they can only suggest) a global warm period centred around the rise of the Pax Roman.

    From your comment, I could also conclude that you are not convinced that the current warming is “unprecedented”. Afterall, the “change” of evidence provided by the IPCC from their 2nd report to their 3rd report is no stronger than the ones listed above, remembering their first 2 reports did not claim “unprecedented” warming.

    Now, will you take the time to answer my question. When did the current warming commence?

    00

  • #
    RobJM

    while the existence of previous warm period (such as described in the famous figure in IPCC v2) does not falsify CAGW theory, many other observations do!
    For instance the 4% decrease in cloud cover seen in over a 10 year period is about 3.5w/m2 of extra energy reaching earth. This is the same forcing as a doubling of CO2 (3.7w) and so without feedback should have caused at least 1 deg C of warming, bet we only saw 0.4 deg C. That can only happen if negative feedback is happening!
    If big forces have small effects then small forces in the same system cant have big effects,

    As for sea level in the med sea, has anyone pointed out that its a geologically active region, not to mention the sea is being constantly filled by the atlantic due it high evaporation rate. 2000 years ago the hydrology/ geology were substantially different to be making any assumptions.!

    00

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    RobJM #244:

    As for sea level in the med sea, has anyone pointed out that its a geologically active region, not to mention the sea is being constantly filled by the atlantic due it high evaporation rate. 2000 years ago the hydrology/ geology were substantially different to be making any assumptions.!

    It is true. Above I mentioned that in medieval time there were huge floods common in my country the Czech Republic. Then no one could see it for 500 years. Then Current Warm Period came. Consequently 1000-years water stroke in 1997 and 2002 and just now floods with at least 100 years water is raging.

    00

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    The person number one in sea-level research Mörner has just delivered a presentation at ICCC debunking the spooky sea raising thread.

    http://www.heartland.org/events/2010Chicago/PowerPoints/Monday%20-%20Session%201/Track%202%20-%20Science%202/Nils-Axel%20Morner.ppt

    00

  • #
    Axel Cooper

    Adolf Balik Said:

    May 19th, 2010 at 9:06 pm
    The person number one in sea-level research Mörner

    How right you are Adolf.

    Dr. Mörner is a man who has actually spent some time on the actual seashore making actual measurements, unlike the “robber baron” Arnold “Al” Gore who is a charlatan by all accounts, and should be in jail making automobile number plates.

    00

  • #
    Hammiesink

    Wow! Even if you provide reasoned debate with citations, you automatically get downvoted if you don’t toe the party line around here, huh?

    Ironic, to say the least.

    00

  • #
    Hammiesink

    Mark D #186

    Proof of the oceans magically “accumulating heat” PLEASE?

    I linked to one paper making observations of the heat accumulation in the oceans in my comment.

    Here’s more: Murphy 2009: “Only about 10% of the positive forcing (about 1/3 of the net forcing) has gone into heating the Earth, almost all into the oceans.”

    Here’s another: Schuckmann 2009: “Global mean heat content and steric height changes are clearly associated with a positive trend during the 6 years of measurements.”

    00

  • #
    MattB

    Bahh – Feng and Hu 2005 http://snr.unl.edu/climate_change/research/2004GL021246.pdf

    How do you explain the statement in the Intro?

    “The late 20th century is the warmest period in the past two millenia… and later… consistent with Mann et al 1999, Mann & Jones 2002?

    00

  • #
    MattB

    Hammie – I get thumbs down for just showing where the lead article talks about Abbott… go figure?

    00

  • #
    Hammiesink

    Perhaps the IPCC may consider other factors beyond CO2, but they don’t seem to do much about them, unless you consider ignoring an input (such as cloud cover) as some form of activity.

    They do admit that models don’t model clouds very well, and they fully explain it. It’s research priority #1 for them to improve on, as they see it.

    In effect the IPCC treat CO2 as the only thing that drives temperature.

    Sitting down and actually reading AR4 will quickly cure you of that notion. It’s absolutely chock full of we don’t know yet, we’re not sure, could be, possibly, need more evidence before deciding, etc.

    You’ve heard Bertrand Russel’s quote: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” Well, the IPCC is full of doubt. In contrast, places like this blog shout at the top of their lungs how sure they are that “global warming is a hoax LOL!!!1!!eleven!!”

    …they are sure this most recent one (1980 – 1998) is “most likely” (i.e. >90% sure) due to CO2.

    15 years ago, most of the attribution of recent warming was from models, and being a skeptic (about attribution) was still rational. Nowadays the models are backed up by direct empirical observation at the top of the atmosphere:

    There is more heat coming into the atmosphere than is leaving it, as measured by satellites, and the heat that is not leaving the earth is of the same wavelength that CO2 absorbs: Harries 2001, Griggs 2004, Chen 2007 (PDF).

    In addition, heat of the wavelength that CO2 absorbs is increasing at the surface level: Wang 2009, Philipona 2004 (PDF)
    , Evans 2006.

    All the above is direct, empirical observation of the greenhouse effect due to CO2 in action. It is irrational to be a skeptic about attribution anymore these days. If someone is, it’s for political or ideological reasons, not because of any evidence or rational analysis.

    And, by the way, I think you’ll find that the original time period that was used to determine that “Global Warming” occurred was much less than 30 years. Jim Hansen was arm waving about this in the early 1980’s. Pardon my cynicism, but there seem to be double standards operating at the IPCC.

    Hansen knew atmospheric CO2 was increasing, and knew CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so he created models to try to predict if this would have an effect. This was before any warming could be even seen yet. As evidence accumulated, it’s been confirmed.

    00

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    MattB: #250
    May 19th, 2010 at 10:26 pm

    MattB don’t you start. I’ve given you good latitude in the past month or so I’m sure you’ll agree. (and your regrettable comment re: “illiteracy at #132”, didn’t go unnoticed but I let it slide)

    Feng and Hu 2005 studied proxy data from 5 sites,

    Their work revealed the late 20th century to have been the warmest period in the past two millennia at two of the sites (Dasuopu, ice core; Dunde, ice core); but such was not the case at the other three sites (Dulan, tree ring; South Tibetan Plateau, tree ring; Guilya, ice core). At Guilya, for example, the data indicated it was significantly warmer than it was in the final two decades of the 20th century for most of the first two centuries of the record, which comprised the latter part of the Roman Warm Period.

    Now, you knew that.Why did you leave out the last bit? Was it the politician in you?

    00

  • #
    Hammiesink

    Crakar #225,

    So therefore if CO2 goes up the temp MUST GO UP. If it does not then there is something else at play here. As there have been no major eruptions then we must logically conclude the IPCC has got it wrong.

    Temperatures are going up. Climate is weather averaged over ~30 years or more. Show me 30 years of cooling and then you would be right. You can’t look at 5 or 10 or even 15 years of flat temperature and say that the correlation has broken down. 1986 to 1997 was also a flat period, within the overall upward trend. Despite a noisy (yes, noise can be 15 years long) signal, the overall trend is consistently upward.

    You are correct in saying 95% of heat goes into the ocean (80% in the upper ocean, ~5% in the deeper ocean the rest in the atmosphere) or so the theory goes. This theory has now been turned on its head by Trenberth (do you know who he is). He is the IPCC guy that is stumbling around in the dark somewhere trying to find over 50% of his missing heat. He now believes the deeper oceans hold most of the heat (the missing 50 plus %) as he cannot find it. I say believe because he has no way of measuring this missing heat so in the end it is just another guess.

    This is because satellites directly and empirically are measuring more heat coming than going. It isn’t a guess. It’s empirical measurement. It has to be going somewhere. Where? Trenberth’s travesty is that they don’t have a good enough tracking system to see where it’s going at any one time.

    This is where Trenberth adds another magic theory where our equipment is either “out of cal” or we are not processing (read torturing) the data correctly.

    Yes, because this happened before. Christy and Spencer’s satellite was not showing the correct warming for years, until they realized they forgot to correct for orbital decay. Oops! As with any science, you find new puzzle pieces and see how they fit into the picture.

    I can show thousands ….no millions of years where the temp has been dropping whilst CO2 is rising,

    Yes, because there are multiple drivers of climate: solar, orbital, tectonic, volcanic, oceans, etc. Even if CO2 goes up, orbital variations can override the warming from CO2.

    from 1940 to 1970 the temps dropped whilst CO2 went up. No dont tell me you are invoking the magical theory of aerosols caused this are you?

    Huh? But that’s what did cause it. Sulphur aerosols increased from 1940 to 1970 due to industry, and cleaner emissions standards then cleaned them up. From NASA: sulphur aerosol forcing increased mid-century, right in line with the observed cooling period.

    Three to four billion years ago the sun emitted only 70% as much power as it does today….nope to long ago, the IPCC have stated catagorically TSI has had little impact on climate in recent times.

    In recent times, yes, but TSI may have contributed to the RWP and MWP. Skeptics love to point to the Dalton Minimum as the cause of the LIA, and this is very possible. Regardless, just because climate changed due to natural influences in the past does not mean that it can’t change due to human influence in the present.

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    Hammiesink @ 248

    Do me a favour will you cobber? Just try posting a reasoned sceptical argument on RealClimate.com and see how you go. May I suggest something like a link to this article, a favourable reference to the issues Jo raises, and (for double bonus points) your personal sense of doubt in the integrity of the IPCC. Repeat every 2 hours for about a day. Good luck.

    After this experience you will probably acknowledge that Jo’s site is pretty tolerant of diverging opinions – but not of propaganda or the sloppy thinking that the IPCC accepts as fodder.

    I also direct your attention to the image of the statue in Jo’s article. Do you (personally) think that toga’s would keep you warm? Why are they not the rage in Italy today? If I’m not mistaken, I think the issue of Jo’s post raised queries about some assertions that the recent warm period was “unprecedented”.

    Cheers,

    Speedy.

    P.S. The bald assertion that your argument was reasoned was entirely your own. If you wish it to be classed as logical, please add some quantitative physical proof that mankind’s activities are resulting in elevated CO2 in the atmosphere, which will cause catasrophic and significant global warming – and that this would be any more harmful or any different to the non-CO2 related events that civilisation has undergone in the last 10,000 years.

    00

  • #
    Post hoc

    Baa Humbug

    Being the skeptical scientist I am, I like to check the references, now with the information you have given me it is a little difficult but lets start from the top shall we.

    Asia
    Yang et al only one to show it was warm but figure 3 in the results also show that the present ie 2000, was warmer than at 1AD so sorry wrong.

    Bao et al (2004) well I found a Bao Yang 2004 Quaternary Science Review, it says warmer moister period from sediments, but alas for you it is 38 – 40 K a BP, so no good there.

    Feng, Hu (2005) found in Geophysical Research letters, sorry to say you are so wrong on this one to quote from the abstract

    “The temperature variations show that 1) the late 20th century is the warmest period in the past two millennia,” So doesn’t really help to show that the RWP was warmer now does it.

    Wei eta al (2004) indicates that 500 years before christ the Sea surface Temperature of the south China sea was the same as 1999-2000. So again no proof that the RWP was warmer than now.

    So just for asia 4 of the 5 don’t actually support that the RWP was warmer, in fact they actually show it was the same. And 1 actually shows it was colder.

    So instead of just copying and pasting from CO2 Science, how about actually looking at the papers.

    I haven’t really got the inclination to look at the others if your first 5 indicate you have done no actual reading, but rather a cut and paste from CO2 Science. Please try a little better, maybe try some scientific research.

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    Baa H/B @ 253

    I hope you are not suggesting that MattB was anything less than crystal clear and scupulously honest with us?

    People need:

    The Truth.
    The WHOLE Truth.
    And Nothing but the Truth.

    Please do no say it is so!!

    MattB – It’s nice to win – but it’s better to be honest and right. What values are you passing on to your kids?

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    00

  • #
    BobC

    Post hoc: (@241)
    May 19th, 2010 at 12:18 pm

    So what are the acceptable dates for RWP to you guys?

    Here is a presentation of temperature from Greenland ice cores that might answer your question. The goal for the AGW crowd is to explain this temperature record (since the last ice age) which shows multiple periods that are significantly warmer than the current period, even though the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was supposedly much lower than now.

    There is no way this can be explained while preserving the IPCC canon: If the warming periods occurred when CO2 was low, then there were driving processes at work that are unknown and might be responsible for today’s warmth as well; If the CO2 concentration was higher then (despite the ice core gas measurements, which have significant problems anyway), then obviously mankind wasn’t responsible for that CO2 increase and hence might not be responsible for the current one either.

    It’s heads we (realists) win, tails you (alarmists) lose.

    When the alarmists were still pretending to be logical and scientific, they responded by denying that any such warming periods existed. Now that the evidence for past warming periods is undeniable (unless you want to look insane), the response that “it doesn’t matter for the present period” constitutes an abandonment of logic entirely. AGW has officially become a (UN-sanctioned) religion.

    00

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Post hoc:
    May 19th, 2010 at 11:09 pm

    You asked a question, i replied. Whether you’re happy with my reply or not, I replied.

    Now I’m asking you for the 3rd time. When did the current warming period begin?

    When you’ve answered that, we can continue and I’ll address your “pickle” comment like I said I would.

    p.s. see my reply to Matt re: Feng Hu

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    Pos Hoc @ 256

    Al you have done is demonstrate the uncertainty in climate records – not surprising given the limited information available after the erosion of the years. It is unfortunate that the IPCC et al do not accept that same degree of uncertainty when they declare that the latter 20th century was an episode of UNPRECEDENTED GLOBAL warming. For such it is declared, and on the basis of the flimsiest and most contrived data they could come up with. There is no reason to think you are any more correct, and I politely direct you to Jo’s post at the head of this page. Do you have any issues with that?

    Personally, I have some serious doubts about the scientific and philanthropic foundations of the AGW movement. Please try tell a starving child that you need her maize for ethanol production…

    And don’t even get me started about Climategate. Though perhaps you could invent a nice reason why the CRU’s Harry-Read_Me file had a fudge factor applied to the temperature data pre-1940 to drive the Northern Hemisphere temperature down to accentuate (or create?) the incline?

    Speedy.

    00

  • #
    Donald (S-E of SA)

    Mr Rudd claims he is “passionate” about climate change (whatever he thinks that means). Yet he seems strangely ignorant about any detail of it, beyond saying that the IPCC agrees with him and “humourless scientists in white coats” all concur. This last childish allusion is a favourite as it excuses him from having to outline any knowledge a passionate believer might be expected to hold. And he expects it to resonate with nodding awe among the scientifically illiterate.

    I suspect Rudd could not debate the topic for more than 30 seconds as he knows almost nothing. Such is his interest in his passion. He has avoided any attempt by the Opposition to engage him in debate, much in the style of a terrified Gore who sprints away at the speed of light from such an engagement.

    The “passion” of Rudd is an empty vessel and another vapid posture. In a word, a lie.

    00

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    By the way Hoc, you asked for the dates of the RWP. Whether Yang et al show the present (2000) was warmer or not is irrelevant. Not all warming epochs reach the same T’s in all regions.
    You asked for dates, I provided some studies (though not all) that show the range of dates of the RWP in relation to the geographic location of the studies. ISN’T THAT WHAT YOU WANTED? Now you’re slip sliding like a typical troll that I nominated you to be.

    00

  • #
    BobC

    Baa Humbug: (@ 259)
    May 19th, 2010 at 11:35 pm

    Post hoc:
    May 19th, 2010 at 11:09 pm

    You asked a question, i replied. Whether you’re happy with my reply or not, I replied.

    Now I’m asking you for the 3rd time. When did the current warming period begin?

    Baa: I can reply for PH — by the data I just referred him to (in post #258, repeated here ), the current warming period started rather suddenly in 1820, well before there was any significant emission of CO2 by humanity.

    Yet another inconvenient fact that can’t be explained by the AGW hypothesis. An honest assessment would be that the AGW hypothesis is falsified by this data alone.

    00

  • #
    Axel Cooper

    Hammiesink @ #249 said that :

    Here’s more: Murphy 2009: “Only about 10% of the positive forcing (about 1/3 of the net forcing) has gone into heating the Earth, almost all into the oceans.”

    This is a no-brainer surely since it is the case that
    The ocean covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface.
    http://www.noaa.gov/ocean.html
    In fact shouldn’t that statement above have read ….
    …(about 29% of the net forcing)…

    So how much public money and how many man-years of
    research went into this less than startling conclusion ?

    Here’s another: Schuckmann 2009: “Global mean heat content and steric height changes are clearly associated with a positive trend during the 6 years of measurements.”

    So then what Schuckmann is purported to have concluded is that
    the “steric height” is “associated with” a …
    “positive trend”, but what exactly is meant by this ?

    “The pressure in the water column increases with depth and depends on the vertical distribution of water density. We can calculate differences between pressures at different depths or depth differences between two surfaces of constant pressure. For the latter purpose a quantity called steric height is introduced….
    From steric height or dynamic height we can estimate the horizontal pressure gradient resulting in geostrophic water circulation.”
    http://www.eeb.ucla.edu/test/faculty/nezlin/PhysicalOceanography.htm

    This does not then mean that there is an observed or actual sea level increase at all, but merely that the pressure gradient may have increased to to a change in the relative salinity, or temperature gradient in a given location.

    Hammiesink @ #254 …

    “Temperatures are going up. Climate is
    weather averaged over ~30 years or more.”

    Where on earth do you get this arbitary figure from ?
    Websters dictionary defines climate as …
    “the average course or condition of the weather at a place
    usually over a period of years as exhibited by temperature,
    wind velocity, and precipitation”

    “a period of years”
    So then any period of years would be valid,
    say 15 years or 5 years, and the scorn which
    you placed on others in this blog is again
    misplaced and without foundation.

    Similarly, a cursory examination of the
    subsequent comments and references highlighted
    by you are mostly not relevant, because they are
    equally preposterous.

    00

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    In regard to Bao et al 2004

    Bao et al. (2004), who collected and analyzed various proxy climate data derived from ice cores, tree rings, river and lake sediments, lake terraces and paleosols, as well as historical documents, which enabled them to determine the climatic state of northwest China during the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties (206 BC-AD 220) relative to that of the past two millennia. As they describe it, their analysis revealed “strong evidence for a relatively warm and humid period in northwest China between 2.2 and 1.8 kyr BP,” during the same time interval as the Roman Warm Period.

    Which provided THE DATES you wanted re: RWP.
    There is also a Bao et al 2003 study which I didn’t cite. I didn’t expect to be SPOONFEEDING YOU. So maybe you try some research. touche’

    00

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Wei eta al (2004)…So again no proof that the RWP was warmer than now.

    You asked for DATES, not proof RWP was warmer than now.

    I haven’t really got the inclination to look at the others if your first 5 indicate you have done no actual reading,

    TROLL>>>

    In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

    00

  • #
    Axel Cooper

    Speedy wrote:

    May 19th, 2010 at 11:06 pm

    Hammiesink @ 248

    Do me a favour will you cobber? Just try posting a reasoned sceptical argument on RealClimate.com

    Yes that is right Speedy, I posted some stuff at “RealClimate” and had several “deletions” and a long e-mail exchange with the “Staff”, before grudgingly, a heavily edited version of my piece was posted under some other assumed name. This was immediately followed by an extreme, and unfounded printed diatribe by one … Gavin Schmidt

    I complained to Goddard Institute for Space Studies about
    this but did not even get a reply from them in six months !

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    Donald @ 261

    You make a very good point about our fearless leader Kevin Rudd. If he were to be “PASSIONATE” about global warming (the greatest moral etc etc etc of our time have the camera stopped running yet?), wouldn’t he at least take enough trouble to get his facts right?

    Apparently not. Which I though was what we paid him for???

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    00

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Axel Cooper: #264
    May 19th, 2010 at 11:49 pm

    What a good post. Hat tip 2u Axel

    00

  • #
    allen mcmahon

    Hammiesnk @249
    If you follow the recent email exchange between Pilkie snr and Trembath on Pilkie Snr’s site the most likely explanation is that there is no missing heat. The best that Trembath can offer is there must be a problem with Argo bouys. Of course the fact that the heat existed the atmosphere is just to bizarre an explanation for a skeptical scientist such as yourself. Forgive me but following your links as soon as I get to the term “simulated” I have trouble equating that to your statement referring to “empirical observations” and if you were skeptical you would treat such papers with caution rather than spraying citations like an indiscriminate tomcat. It never ceases to amaze me that when the instruments do not support the the warming hypothesis it is always an instrument problem and obviously wrong because it is at odds with “simulation world” and yet asinine reports like birds flying into cliffs, hyper-sexual butterflies etc. are proof positive of CAGW.

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    Post Hoc

    I love it! Every morning, I advise you to repeat this into the mirror as you shave:

    Being the skeptical scientist I am,

    Some day, you may even convince me. But, eventually, you will sound convincing.

    Don’t hold your breathe.

    Cheers,

    Speedy.

    00

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Re: realclimate.

    It’s been months since I saked them about Santers infamous 1996 “discernable human influence” graph. Still no answer.

    p.s. Santer conveniently dropped 1958-62 from the back of the graph and 1988-95 from the front of the graph to show a “discernable” rise in T’s. All done well after the final draft reviews were completed. His graph inserted into the IPCC report unbeknown to the reviewers.

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    Allen at 271

    I wish I could have given you a hundred thumbs up! So true!

    Radiosondes are rotten thermometers (even though that’s what they were bought for) and Argo’s don’t work unless they indicate global warming! The only consistent variable that appears to be wrong is the AGW thesis itself!

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    00

  • #
    Axel Cooper

    New Global Warming Skeptic Messiah – John Cleese
    predicted this leftist lunacy more than 30 years ago.

    “But Mr Figgis is no ordinary idiot. He is a lecturer
    in idiocy at the University of East Anglia.
    Here he is taking a class of third-year students….
    After three years of study these apprentice idiots
    receive a diploma of idiocy, a handful of mud and
    a kick on the head.”

    “Idiocy at the University of East Anglia”
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNBNqUdqm1E

    😀

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    Joanne

    If I can summarise the last 270-odd posts or so.

    It seems that none of the Warmists have pulled up Mann’s hockey stick – perhaps they all know by now that it is pure fantasy – or an invitation to defend the indefensible. The main issue of contention has been whether the Roman or the Medieval warming was the same or whether it was warmer than the late 20th century used to be.

    No-one is arguing that the late 20th century was “UNPRECEDENTED”. Simply, we accept it was quite normal.

    That must hurt.

    Even their own data shows that the atmospheric CO2 levels in the periods under question were LOWER when the temperatures were as warm or warmer than now.

    So you are quite correct in asking why the latest warming was due to elevated CO2. The obvious question is why dismantling industrialised society is a desirable means of preventing those same (and beneficial) warming patterms from recurring??

    Black Plague, anyone??? Anyone??? [Says Speedy, a gentleman to the last] After you, Post hoc…

    Cheers,

    Speedy.

    00

  • #
    Axel Cooper

    and …

    “In a state where corruption abounds,
    laws must be very numerous.”

    and …

    “Truth is confirmed by inspection and delay;
    falsehood by haste and uncertainty.”

    and …

    “Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth any cause to wonder that he does not hear it.”

    Roman Historian – Publius(Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (55-120 AD)

    00

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    …they are sure this most recent one (1980 – 1998) is “most likely” (i.e. >90% sure) due to CO2.
    15 years ago, most of the attribution of recent warming was from models, and being a skeptic (about attribution) was still rational. Nowadays the models are backed up by direct empirical observation at the top of the atmosphere:

    The modelers make me laugh. If you take a statistical program for $1,000 and feed it with a temperature time series then each ARIMA algorithm finds it an auto-correlated raw and provides a decomposition into the trend, seasonal and fluctuation residual components. The heating at the end of the 20th century will be identified as a regular seasonal warming, which must be followed by decreasing, that really at beginning of the 21st century came though being still weak. A model which cannot see the auto-correlation and seasonal character of the regular warming is worthless and its “explanation” absurd.

    Most of the warming was without any doubt seasonal. There was, of course, upward trend, too, but as only a tiny part of the heating, as the heating trend takes more then century but being kinked by regular seasonal waves like cooling in 1960s and 1970s and heating at the and of the century. If you want to measure whether an external value can explain an essential part of the time series being an external regressor then there are tests by which you may test the explanation power of the external values (magnetic activity index or CO2 concentration etc.). Co-integration tests are mostly used. If you use co-integration test for CO2 then you will find the CO2 effect is undistinguishable under resolution of noise caused by fluctuation residuum. If you cannot measure CO2 as a driving factor then all the physical model juggling is an irrelevant delusion. You cannot tell a significance higher then fluctuation residuum if co-integration test or other factor test doesn’t confirm significance of the regression. Waffling about physical models is just fogging if there isn’t statistical test of significance, thus, confirmation about 90% probability is a lay.

    The IPCC modelers admit insufficiency of their models on clouds. But recent satellite measurements tell us that clouds provide radiative forcing that dwarf also the frantic estimation that are arrogated to CO2 and can increase albedo by factor that can easily superfluous atmospheric gases even it there are not a different gases but the heat-trapping. Well the clouds have their own for the modeler unknown dynamic.

    Recently they fond owning to satellites the heat flow absorbed by Earth is higher then they thought it was in the 20th century, but the heat content in the upper ocean is not adequate to it. Thus, they are fabricating a myth about heat hiding in the very deep ocean layers where it lurks on us. Our sensors couldn’t see the heat hiding, though. There is much more natural explanation the models of the heat balance was pure being based on 20th century measurement and the heat imbalance is the only product of their unskilled modeling.

    00

  • #
    Hammiesink

    Axel Cooper #264:

    Murphy 2009: Positive forcing from GHG. Most of that is what’s going into the oceans. This was in answer to why the atmospheric temperatures are sometimes flat; because the accumulating heat goes into the entire climate system, not just the air, so fluctuations can occur.

    Schuckmann: “Global mean heat…clearly associated with a positive trend.”

    Again, in answer to the question about how they know that heat accumulation goes into the oceans. Talking about sea level rise is a tangent, irrelevant to my point.

    Where on earth do you get this arbitary figure from ?

    That’s what weather offices generally consider climate to be. Climate is weather averaged over long periods of time, and although there is no absolute figure, it’s generally agreed to be about 30 years. MetOffice: “Thirty years was chosen as a period long enough to eliminate year-to-year variations.”

    Skeptics continually focus on trends that are too short (< 30 years) in order to make their (incorrect) points. This is akin to criticizing a pair of loaded dice for not coming up 7 every single time, even though over the long term they will roll 7 more than anything else.

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    Baa Humbug at 272

    That is a shocking admission!!!! i.e. that the Warmists bodgied the story –

    All done well after the final draft reviews were completed. His graph inserted into the IPCC report unbeknown to the reviewers.

    So much for peer review and intellectual accountabilty!

    I’m involved in corporate responsibility, and from my experience there is no way – no way at all – that these guys would be allowed to pull the sort of rubbish you talk about – say – in an annual report – in such a trivial organisation as Rio Tinto. (Much less be given a government stipend for it.) Do that and under Australian corporate law you’d finish up with a twin – share cell featuring barred windows, an open, single toilet and a hairy-knuckled friend named “Thugster” – who is rapidly developing an affinity for you.

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    00

  • #
    Hammiesink

    allen mcmahon #270:

    Forgive me but following your links as soon as I get to the term “simulated” I have trouble equating that to your statement referring to “empirical observations”

    Huh? These studies are from satellite measurements of incoming vs outgoing radiation. One example, from Harries 2001: “Here we analyse the difference between the spectra of the outgoing longwave radiation of the Earth as measured by orbiting spacecraft in 1970 and 1997. We find differences in the spectra that point to long-term changes in atmospheric CH4, CO2 and O3 as well as CFC-11 and CFC-12. Our results provide direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth’s greenhouse effect that is consistent with concerns over radiative forcing of climate.”

    Satellites, measuring the incoming radiation at the top of the atmosphere. Directly. Empirically.

    It never ceases to amaze me that when the instruments do not support the the warming hypothesis it is always an instrument problem…

    Yes. That’s how science works. Find a new piece of the puzzle, and if it doesn’t fit in to the big picture, assume there is something wrong with the puzzle piece rather than the already half-completed picture. In biology, Piltdown Man never fit well into the evolutionary picture, and eventually it was discovered to be a hoax. By scientists. Because it never fit in.

    00

  • #
    Hammiesink

    The heating at the end of the 20th century will be identified as a regular seasonal warming

    What on earth are you talking about? You mean the summer (northern hemi or southern hemi?) caused the entire globe to warm for 30 years?

    00

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    allen mcmahon #270:

    I liked analysis of the problem by Spencer at his blog:
    http://www.drroyspencer.com/

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    Hammie at 279

    Please refer comment above – heat does not drive heat tranfer. Temperature does.

    Perhaps I should express this as ambiguously and with as much conceit as the IPCC do. Tough ask. Here goes:

    Negative temperature trending in the upper and mid-lower range regions of the saline aquatic regions may be indicative of net negative thermal transfer between the oceanic regions and the overlying gaseous overprint.

    See? Writing stuff so people don’t understand it is easy. But all I’ve just said that the oceans got colder and the atmosphere got warmer; you were probably guessing what was meant.

    Modus operandi for the IPCC – try reading one of their reports some day! Being incomprehensible does not make you correct! Quite the opposite…

    Cheers,

    Speedy

    00

  • #
    Hammiesink

    It seems that none of the Warmists have pulled up Mann’s hockey stick

    Because it’s irrelevant. Only skeptics are so obsessed with the hockey stick, because they (incorrectly) believe it to be some kind of core science of AGW and if they take it down, they take down the whole thing.

    Even the skeptic’s own Wegman report says: “In a real sense the paleoclimate results of MBH98/99 are essentially irrelevant to the consensus on climate change.”

    Ultimately, AGW rests upon these premises:

    * CO2 is a greenhouse gas
    * CO2 is rising
    * All other drivers of climate are weak or absent

    Proving that it was or was not warmer during the MWP addresses which one of these premises? None.

    00

  • #
    Axel Cooper

    Hammiesink: @ #280 quoted …

    “We find differences in the spectra that point to long-term changes”

    Weasel words, and they are not the same as a definitive unequivocal statement, are they. All that can be drawn from Harries 2001 is an inference, rather than empirical deduction, IMHO.

    … and you also stated

    “Yes. That’s how science works. Find a new piece of the puzzle, and if it doesn’t fit in to the big picture, assume there is something wrong with the puzzle piece rather than the already half-completed picture.”

    Not as far as I understand. I should like to point out that, for instance in the well known case of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), mathematician and astronomer who proposed that The Sun was stationary in the center of the universe and the earth revolved around it. At the time Copernicus’s heliocentric idea was very controversial, and his was a “puzzle piece” that was rejected.

    Later on Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) whose championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime, when a large majority of philosophers and astronomers still subscribed to the geocentric view that the Earth was at the centre of the universe. After 1610, when he began publicly supporting the heliocentric view, he met with bitter opposition from some philosophers and clerics, and was eventually denounced to the Roman Inquisition early in 1615. In February 1616, although he had been cleared of any offence, the Catholic Church nevertheless condemned heliocentrism as “false and contrary to Scripture”, and Galileo was warned to abandon his support for it. When he later defended his views in his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy,” forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

    Still the errant jigsaw piece MUST be FORCED to be rejected, even when we now that that it fitted all the time, and it was the rest of the “half completed picture” was actually wrong, in Galileo’s time.

    QED

    00

  • #
    Mark D.

    Allen Mcmahon @ 270 Re. Post Hoc

    Forgive me but following your links as soon as I get to the term “simulated” I have trouble equating that to your statement referring to “empirical observations”

    Thank you for saving me the time to post something like it.

    Further tropospheric aerosols are explained (in his links) to be a significant factor so we look here http://climate.gsfc.nasa.gov/research/aerosols.php (I trust an adequate ref.) and find the first paragraph to say: “Aerosol particles affect atmospheric radiation and cloud microphysics, and are considered a major uncertainty in climate forcing.

    Sounds pretty cut and dried to me…….

    Axel @ 264 yes nicely said!

    00

  • #
    MattB

    Baa in 253. It is pretty clear that Post Hoc and myself have quoted direct from the journal article’s abstract. There is no mention of Guilya being warm in the abstract. In fact the quote you provide does not seem to be from the article, but some other commentary, so how in the hell am I meant to know that?

    But I’ve read further and you are right, ONE reconstruction says that… whoop de dooo. I note that same site does NOT show the MWP – so can I use that one site to say there was no MWP? Will you agree with me?

    Humbug I’ve hardly been here for the past month, don;t patronise me with your given me good latitude claptrap. You sir are bad news for this blog. You are sloppy and ideologically driven and anything but a scientific skeptic, yet you see yourself as some all seeing demi-god of climate nutwackery. Good look to you sir.

    00

  • #
    MattB

    p.s. Humbug… note I’ve been kind enough not to point out in bold thus far that MY questioning of graphs that YOU sloppily sourced has been accepted. I just think maybe it is worth noting.

    00

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    Hamiesing #281:

    PDO and AMO oscilation season. Both the oceans spreads across both hemispheres and affect also adjacent places.

    00

  • #
    MattB

    Speedy at 257:
    “Baa H/B @ 253
    I hope you are not suggesting that MattB was anything less than crystal clear and scupulously honest with us?”

    yes he was, and he was lying.

    00

  • #
    Axel Cooper

    Nobody in here talked about the Moon’s role in oscillation of sea levels, yet the variation in the Earth’s axis and precession and
    the relative variability of Lunar orbit must exert, a force which is orders of magnitude greater than feeble thermohaline circulations by comparison.

    After all it IS THE MOON which is principally responsible for the twice daily ocean tides all around the planet Earth.

    Discuss

    00

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    Hemmiesink #280:

    Huh? These studies are from satellite measurements of incoming vs outgoing radiation. One example, from Harries 2001: “Here we analyse the difference between the spectra of the outgoing longwave radiation of the Earth as measured by orbiting spacecraft in 1970 and 1997. We find differences in the spectra that point to long-term changes in atmospheric CH4, CO2 and O3 as well as CFC-11 and CFC-12. Our results provide direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth’s greenhouse effect that is consistent with concerns over radiative forcing of climate.”
    ___________

    You can study spectra from the measurement but they are insufficient for heat balance measurement. Now, there are much better satellites which can measure also the heat fluxes. They can also measure changes in heat fluxes due to changes in clouds but they are not sufficiently precise to read CO2 etc. influences on the fluxes. There are only these things clear: the heat fluxes are not consistent with the models, the changes in fluxes dwarf estimations for greenhouse gases and they show negative feedback due to clouds responses to changes.

    See: http://www.drroyspencer.com/

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    Hammie @ 281

    But a lot of very respectable and well-funded scientists continued to support the Piltdown Mann hoax for a long time. What fixed this up was a sceptic. And very correctly, you label this group as “scientists”…

    By the way. If you are appealing that every Radiosonde and Argo device is wrong, then you are fighting Occam’s razor. Good luck.

    Question refering to the text “signicificant” in terms of that report. Did it mean “statistically” significant or “climatically” significant? Given that the existing concentration of CO2 is enough to absorb the overwhelming majority of the 14.5 micron wavelengthe emitted from the earth’s surface, then I have a hard time understanding why doubling the CO2 concentration would result in twice times the overwhelming majority being absorbed. (And by majority I’m talking over 99% of the relevant wavelength absorbtion.)

    I think what you are describing could be (perhaps) statistically significant – but physically irrelevant.

    Now – a piece of the puzzle for you to ponder. Why did temperatures fall on a decadel basis in some periods after 1850, even if the atmospheric temperatures continued to rise throughout? Do you think, perhaps, that CO2 had such a low or insignificant effect on temperature that it was irrelevant, and could (and should) be considered irrelevant in our present environment? Is it possible that global warming from the Medieval Warming Period (WMP) resulted in the discharge of soluble CO2 from the earth’s oceans. That global]temperatures are more a driver of atmospheric CO2, rather than the other way around???? [Clue; Vostoc]

    Cheers,

    Speedy.

    00

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    Hammiesink 284:

    * All other drivers of climate are weak or absent
    ______

    Open coronal magnetic flux of the Sun rose on factor 2.3 within 20th century and that is the most powerful factor of the climatic changes unlike to the trace gas, which cannot be resolved from a noise if tested by co-integration test.

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    Baa H/B @ lots.

    Speedy at 257:
    “Baa H/B @ 253
    I hope you are not suggesting that MattB was anything less than crystal clear and scupulously honest with us?”

    yes he was, and he was lying.

    It appears that poor old mattyB has taken to refer to himself in the third person. The madness of George III all over…

    Nice article, by the way. It seems to have really got some of the warm-mongers really peeved. The work “Unprecedented” has been stricken from their dictionary.

    Cheers,

    Speedy.

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    MattB @ 287

    Maybe we need a bit of a rest and a good lie down eh?

    Good night,

    Speedy

    00

  • #
    MattB

    Speedy “It appears that poor old mattyB has taken to refer to himself in the third person. The madness of George III all over…”

    ???

    00

  • #

    […] facts as the Roman and Medieval warm periods, both of which were clearly warmer than today. See HERE for temperature graphs from all over the world which display such […]

    00

  • #
    Mark D.

    Axel @ 291

    Some of us have broached the subject of the moon and it’s influences, on other threads. It seems to be another unknown (discounted) variable by most AGW fans. It seems to me that there is a significant input through friction (via tides) that also has been missed in the calculations of “budget” and ocean heat. Another poster here “Siliggy” has pondered this too.

    00

  • #
    Speedy

    Hammie at 284!

    I really need to go to bed – but you keep on printing dumb stuff!! Please… I’ve got a day job!

    OK, Right – you say:

    Ultimately, AGW rests upon these premises:

    * CO2 is a greenhouse gas
    * CO2 is rising
    * All other drivers of climate are weak or absent

    No drama’s on the first two points. Arhenius 1896 covered the first, Beer-Lambert showed it has an logarithmically diminishing effect. (Can you spell SFA beyond 200 ppm?). CO2 is rising. It does that after a rise in global tempertures – refer Medieval Warming – after the ocean eject CO2 due to reduced solubilty of CO2 in water at higher temperatures. Durrr!

    Did you know that the oceans contain 50 times the tonnage of CO2 as the oceans? Maybe wonder what would happen if the oceans lost (say) 2% of its CO2? Maybe the atmospheric CO2 concentration would double??? Gosh. Vostok showed a lag of about 800 years, which would put the next rise after the MWP starting at about …1850.

    Being less facaetious, if CO2 is the major driver of global warming, why did it get warmer during the Roman and Medieval times, despite an effectively constant CO2? And, without any significant change in CO2, why did it get colder during the Dark ages and Little Ice Age periods? All of which were some hundreds of years duration, by the way…

    And the other question for you, is: Why do you think that elevated CO2 (relatively speaking) was responsible for the late 20th century (say, 15 – maybe years)? And why it would cause a greater and more extended warming in the future? How (as Crackar24 notes) did life survive on earth when the CO2 was 8000 ppm. (And before you give me that solar luminescence rubbish, I’d advise you to consult Mr. Boltzman.)

    Apologies if I’m less than charitable at the moment. I’m really a lovely chap – just ask me – but I’m thinking how I’ll feel tomorrow morning when I roll out for work.

    Grumpily yours.

    Speedy

    00

  • #
  • #
    BobC

    Hammiesink:
    May 20th, 2010 at 12:55 am

    Axel Cooper #264:

    Murphy 2009: Positive forcing from GHG. Most of that is what’s going into the oceans. This was in answer to why the atmospheric temperatures are sometimes flat; because the accumulating heat goes into the entire climate system, not just the air, so fluctuations can occur.

    Schuckmann: “Global mean heat…clearly associated with a positive trend.”

    Again, in answer to the question about how they know that heat accumulation goes into the oceans. Talking about sea level rise is a tangent, irrelevant to my point.

    How they know that heat accumulation goes into the oceans is by ignoring the state-of-the-art Argos float system, and adhering to their models. When measurements and theory diverge, they (and you, apparently) stick to the theory.

    In a fantasy world, this might work. In the real world, it is a psychosis. The rest of us will pay attention to what is while you wait for engineers to perfect the “politically correct thermometer”.

    (Good luck finding any engineers who are interested.)

    00

  • #
    Hammiesink

    Speedy #300:

    It does that after a rise in global tempertures

    Sure, but the current rise in CO2 is from fossil fuel use. Fossil fuels have a higher C13/C12 ratio than natural CO (Ghosh 2003) Also, estimates of how many gigatonnes of CO2 are being dumped into the atmosphere.

    if CO2 is the major driver of global warming, why did it get warmer during the Roman and Medieval times, despite an effectively constant CO2?

    It is only the major driver of warming since ~1980. At other times, any of the other drivers (solar, volcanoes, orbital, tectonic, ocean, GHG, etc) can come into play and each warm or cool period has to be taken on a case-by-case basis.

    And, without any significant change in CO2, why did it get colder during the Dark ages and Little Ice Age periods?

    It’s difficult to track down the precise cause of each change in climate, but for instance the LIA is hypothesized to be a combination of the Maunder Minimum and increased volcanic activity.

    Why do you think that elevated CO2 (relatively speaking) was responsible for the late 20th century (say, 15 – maybe years)?

    Satellites directly measure radiation at the top of the atmosphere, and there is a large drop in outgoing longwave radiation since 1970, which is the type of radiation that CO2 is known to absorb. This provides direct evidence of CO2 forcing. Before that, it was mostly models, which accurately reflected the climate only when CO2 was added to the mix (on >30 year trends only, not the short (<15) trends that skeptics love to point out as supposed evidence of model inaccuracy).

    And on top of all that, there is simple correlation as well. Sun and temperature have been moving in opposite directions since 1980. Volcanoes are quiet. Orbital and tectonic variations are too slow. GHG are rapidly rising.

    If someone still doesn’t accept this, then I point them to slothful induction.

    How did life survive on earth when the CO2 was 8000 ppm? (And before you give me that solar luminescence rubbish, I’d advise you to consult Mr. Boltzman.)

    No one is saying life isn’t going to survive. If skeptics would actually bother to read the AR4, they would see that some of the primary concerns are the displacement of large groups of people within the context of a modern economy. “End of the world” hooey comes from the sensationalist media, not the science.

    00

  • #
    Post hoc

    Baa

    The point is, your dates don’t actually match up to a Global RWP which is what the argument is about, the papers you have cited show a warming yes, but the RWP seems to be anywhere there is a rough warming period 2000 odd years ago.

    That is why I asked for a date range, to ilustrate that you can’t just find some warming somewhere and call it part of the RWP, when the dates vary so greatly.

    This is especially evident in the graphs that Jo posted at the start.

    00

  • #
    Vince Whirlwind

    The problem with D [SNIP] ists is quite clearly that they are not used to dealing with multiple unknowns.
    If CO2 is the unknown in question, they don’t understand how there can be other simultaneous unknowns.
    This explains their constant repetition of the logical mistake Speedy has made above:
    “…if CO2 is the major driver of global warming, why did it get warmer during the Roman and Medieval times…”
    This logical error is what is known as a *non-sequitur*.

    [don’t say that again ED]

    10

  • #
    Post hoc

    Speedy

    Not sure what your point with this is

    “Beer-Lambert showed it has an logarithmically diminishing effect. (Can you spell SFA beyond 200 ppm?). ” Are you trying the saturation argument? Do you actually know what the beer-lambert law is?

    00

  • #
    sunsettommy

    Post hoc states at post # 191:

    You call a rise of around 40 odd% barely changing?

    Very strange definition

    LOL,

    No it is your inability to understand what I wrote,from post # 188:

    The problem gets worse when you consider that CO2 levels for most of the last 10,000 years hovered around the 260-280 ppmv.Yet we have had several major temperature shifts come along anyway.

    The Holocene Optimism,The Minoan Warming,The Roman Warming,the Medieval Warming and the Modern Warming.

    While the CO2 level in all that time barely changed at all.

    I then posted the link showing that CO2 levels (that FLAT green line across the middle of the chart) barely changed for many thousands of years.

    How come you ignore 99% of the green flat line?

    He he…

    00

  • #

    Post Hoc,

    While you are being silly with your 40% cherrypicking.Try this link that is based on “peer reviewed” published papers:

    LINK

    00

  • #
    crakar24

    This is the last post from me on this subject as to be honest i find squabbling with bloggaggedon alarmists rather boring, although i must say the ones here are rather polite which is something you dont find to often.

    It is important to understand the difference between a forcing and a feed back, if yellow stone volcano erupted ash would spread far and wide (this is a forcing) the resultant cooling of the Earth would be a feed back. Conversely if the sun doubled its out put (a forcing) the resulting warming of the planet would be a feed back.

    A -ve feedback is something that acts in the opposite way to the forcing, a +ve feed back is something that adds to the forcing.

    Currently we are adding CO2 to the atmosphere (a forcing) from this forcing we will get a number of feed backs. The IPCC make the claim that we will only get +ve feed backs (those that add to the forcing) and they are less low cloud and more high cloud, increase in WV, increase in Methane, reduction in albedo etc.

    All these feedbacks work to add to the initial warming of increased CO2. So therefore in a perfect (model) world the temps must be going up. We now know this is not the case, the IPCC have played their “get out of jail free card” and claim it is caused by natural variability or as some call it weather. Whatever the name you wish to associate with this lack of warming the only way it cannot warm (with rising CO2 levels) is if there is a -ve feed back at play.

    Many responses to this are that we need 30 years to see a trend, the problem with this approach is that we fall subject to the end point fallacy, what 30 year period would YOU like to pick? I can produce many 30 year trends which will show falling temps whilst CO2 levels are rising albeit from 1 million years ago etc. Is this an acceptable 30 year trend?

    Now back to the time of Jesus, we know since then we have had many warm and cool periods whilst CO2 has remained fairly flat. From this we can logically deduce there were other factors at play both -ve and +ve feedbacks to forcings controlling the climate that do not include CO2.

    Do not fall for the trap of thinking CO2 is some great big thermostat control knob, CO2 is a bit part player in the grand scheme of things.

    A special note on Trenberth in response to Hammisinks post 254.

    Hammy said

    “This is because satellites directly and empirically are measuring more heat coming than going. It isn’t a guess. It’s empirical measurement. It has to be going somewhere. Where? Trenberth’s travesty is that they don’t have a good enough tracking system to see where it’s going at any one time.”

    Incorrect, sats measure the amount of OLR or lack thereof, the OLR amount leaving the atmosphere has reduced. The assumption is then made that increasing CO2 levels are absorbing more. From this the models calculate how much additional heat is being trapped. Spencer has shown the amount of SW from the sun being reflected back has increased, ie less energy in. It is his opinion the heat is not missing as it never existed. I have informed other alarmists of this and their response was to belittle him on the grounds of his religious beliefs, what are you going to do?

    You said “Yes, because this happened before. Christy and Spencer’s satellite was not showing the correct warming for years, until they realized they forgot to correct for orbital decay. Oops! As with any science, you find new puzzle pieces and see how they fit into the picture.”

    This would have a very small effect on temps less than one decimal place, we are talking about over 50% here. Are you telling me our sats, radio sondes, land and ocean based thermometers have a greater than 50% error?

    You said “Huh? But that’s what did cause it. Sulphur aerosols increased from 1940 to 1970 due to industry, and cleaner emissions standards then cleaned them up. From NASA: sulphur aerosol forcing increased mid-century, right in line with the observed cooling period.”

    So now that the aerosols are gone and we have had no major volcanos what is causing the current cooling? Your theory cant explain it so you revert to “aw gee shucks thats just weather”. Not good enough Hammy.

    You said “In recent times, yes, but TSI may have contributed to the RWP and MWP. Skeptics love to point to the Dalton Minimum as the cause of the LIA, and this is very possible. Regardless, just because climate changed due to natural influences in the past does not mean that it can’t change due to human influence in the present”

    TSI is the incorrect metric to be using, i know you use it because the IPCC do but they do it so they can blame CO2. You need to look at solar winds (among other things) which control cosmic rays hitting the Earth. A quiet sun will produce less solar wind which allow more cosmic rays which in turn can produce more low cloud creating a higher albedo effect on Earth. Lets assume you are right and this is the process that has driven temps over the years, then it makes sense when we see the sun being most active leading up to 2000 (perfect timing for your CO2 theory) we now see the sun in a very quiet mode, cosmic rays are increasing and what did Spencer say? Oh thats right more SW reflected back it must be an increase in albedo.

    I will leave you with this one last thought “Avoid the Lemming factor, think for yourself”

    00

  • #
    Rod Smith

    Look at the name of this post. Does it not imply that AGW/Climate Change may be as much about politics as science? And remember, in most of the world’s countries weather observations used by climate “scientists” are maintained by some arm of government and managed at least to some degree by politicians. Also note that much of the “science” done by “academics” is funded by governments.

    And having known a lot of weathermen over my lifetime, and several politicians, I’m afraid I’m prone to trust weathermen more than politicians. Your mileage may vary, but I feel much of the hot air concerned with climate change is purely political.

    00

  • #
    Post hoc

    Crakar24

    Sorry to drag you back, I wont have a problem if you don’t rply, you made it clear you have had enough of this thread. But I do have an issue with something you said

    You have built a strawman with your feedback.forcing argument, nd fail to think that instead of a mysterious -ve feedback, that there is or are -ve forcings also occuring.

    00

  • #
    Post hoc

    Sunsettommy, you are making the assumption that C)2 is the only thing that affects the climate, very narrow and might I say completely incorrect position.

    00

  • #

    Post Hoc,

    Here is my reply to your post #208:

    Roman Warm Period (Europe – Mediterranean) — Summary

    Wow for a guy who claims to be a scientist! you sure fail utterly to notice that this “Modern Global Warming” is not GLOBAL at all,since the Tropics and Southern Hemisphere has not been warming since at least 1979.It is only the Northern Hemisphere that has been warming.

    Thus your absurd nitpicking on whether the Roman Warm Period was global or not means that you are never going to be rational about it.

    I see that Baa Humbug post #243 showed that indeed RWP was evident in many regions of the world.

    You need to stop moving the goalposts.

    00

  • #

    Sunsettommy, you are making the assumption that C)2 is the only thing that affects the climate, very narrow and might I say completely incorrect position.

    No I did not make that assumption.You need to stop trying to put words in my mouth.

    I simply showed that CO2 levels barely changed (260-280 range)for almost the ENTIRE 10,000 years.

    Once again from post # 188:

    The problem gets worse when you consider that CO2 levels for most of the last 10,000 years hovered around the 260-280 ppmv.Yet we have had several major temperature shifts come along anyway.

    The Holocene Optimism,The Minoan Warming,The Roman Warming,the Medieval Warming and the Modern Warming.

    While the CO2 level in all that time barely changed at all.

    I then posted the LINK to the chart showing the flat line of CO2 against the 10,000 year temperature history.That are big in changes from warm periods to cold periods.

    The funny thing is that it is AGW believers who have for YEARS insisted that CO2 levels for many thousands of years hovered around the 280 number.Now it is that same level that help destroy your silly AGW hypothesis.By showing that temperature changes greatly through out the last 10,000 years,while CO2 does not.

    Not once in those 10,000 years does CO2 show that big change to influence at least big temperature change.


    The point made is that CO2 hardly change at all,but temperatures did,….. many times.

    You are being absurdly dense.

    00

  • #

    This should be:

    Not once in those 10,000 years does CO2 show that big change to influence at least ONE big temperature change.

    Left out the crucial number.

    00

  • #
    Post hoc

    Sunsettommy

    Actually you are, you are ignoring any other forcings over the past 10K a and concentrating on CO2. You are trying to construct a strawman argument.

    00

  • #

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

    00

  • #
    Post hoc

    As for the no warming in the SH since 1979, care to cite any evidence for this?

    00

  • #

    I thought you are a scientist?

    This is from the satellite data:

    LINK

    I wonder why you could not google it up?

    00

  • #
    Mark D.

    crakar24: @ 309

    Thank you for your posts.

    I hope you will stay around even though these transients are boring. Give it time and they will move on. (only to be replace by new “believers”

    Sunset, you have been doing a stand up job.

    00

  • #
    crakar24

    Post Hoc 311

    You have a genuine question worthy of a response.

    Firstly let me say the IPCC version of AGW is completely flawed as there is not one -ve feed back to increasing CO2, therefore if CO2 goes up the temp goes up, if the temp goes up due to WV going up then CO2 must go up (ocean heating etc). Throw in the reduction of ice and low cloud(less albedo) then there is nothing to stop the temps from ever increasing. We know not just by what we are seeing now but by what we see in historical measurements this is not the case.

    In regards to the sun (which i think is where i may have confused you), the sun on average has an 11.8 year solar cycle. I say average because not many are 11.8 years they can vary between 8 and 14 years. Anything from 8 to 10 years is considered a strong cycle in that UV, xray, magnetic field, CME and solar winds etc will be very strong and the sunspot number (SSN) will be as high as 160 to 200 approx. Conversely a cycle of 12, 13 or 14 years length will be a weak cycle with all the above metrics being very low and a SSN of about 50 to 80 approx. Interestingly the IPCC believe the only thing from the sun that effects the climate is TSI and wether it be a strong or weak cycle the TSI remains very constant. Thus to the IPCC the forcing from the sun has not changed very much and has had little effect on climate in recent times.

    So to sum up if the forcing from the sun has not changed and CO2 levels have been increasing then why are the temps not rising?

    A bit more about the sun, cycles 19, 20, 21 and 22 have been very strong, infact the last 30 to 40 years of the 20th century have shown the sun to be at its most active in 11 thousand years, all very short and strong cycles. Cycle 23 has just finished and lasted 13 years cycle 24 has just begun and shows all the hallmarks of being very low and weak (all this was predicted to happen and cycle 25 will be even weaker). Svensmark has a theory in that as the sun goes quiet solar winds decrease (they have been at all time lows for some years)thus more galactic cosmic rays will strike the Earth.

    This will cause more low cloud cooling the planet, GCR’s have increased and Spencer now claims more SW from the sun is being reflected back (Trenberths missing heat). If this is true then we may be seeing a change in forcing (sun) which is causing feedbacks (GCR and low cloud) to cool the planet.

    This theory was looked at by the IPCC and rejected, i suspect it was rejected because it would devalue the role of CO2, large solar winds, less GCR’s, less cloud cover = warmer planet leading up to the 21st century.

    Can there be another explanation of why we have had 10 years of no warming? As the Sun continues to slumber its time to place your bets, i am betting the temps will continue to defy the computers.

    00

  • #
    MattB

    Crakar in 321. My understanding is that because the solar cycle is a regular cycle, but of uncertain length (as you say 8-14 years), then it is meaningless to include it in a forward projection for a particular year as who knows where the cycle will be in say 2062? Unfortunately you then get, as in recent times, a solar cycle that creates the impression of not a lot of cooling in the last 5 or so years. The same goes for El Nino/La Nina. So you have for example the greenhouse impact, plus or minus those regular cycle impacts.

    Do you get my point… they are not omitted from the models as some sort of ignorance, or thinking they don’t have an impact, it is just that they are a fairly regular cycle that adds a bit or takes a bit away over time.

    DO you see – the TSI is constant as in a given year in the future the IPCC has literally NO IDEA what stage the cycle is at. No one does. Well maybe they have a decent educated guess but you get my drift. That does not mean that the IPCC is wrong when a stage of the cycle lowers temps a bit in real terms. That link I provided to bravenewclimate above explains all this.

    00

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    Hammiesink: #252
    May 19th, 2010 at 10:44 pm

    There is more heat coming into the atmosphere than is leaving it, as measured by satellites, and the heat that is not leaving the earth is of the same wavelength that CO2 absorbs: Harries 2001, Griggs 2004, Chen 2007 (PDF)….

    ….All the above is direct, empirical observation of the greenhouse effect due to CO2 in action. It is irrational to be a skeptic about attribution anymore these days. If someone is, it’s for political or ideological reasons, not because of any evidence or rational analysis.

    Do you stand by the above statement and the papers you rely on for the statement?

    00

  • #
    Adolf Balik

    MattB 322:

    Solar cycles (the Sun is subjected to a complex system of various cycles) are virtually regular in length but rather variable in intensity of various features of solar activity. The coronal activity, especially the open coronal magnetic flux as a significant value of it, is the most important driver of planetary climatic variability – much more important one then TSI, which is extremely stable also within the solar variability. Actually it’s the solar weather in the outer solar atmosphere – corona – that drives Earth weather. Our weather is subsidy of the solar one. No one could make a test of statistical significance of CO2 as an external explanatory value for time series of Earth temperature so to it come out to be stronger then noise. If you make it with an interplanetary magnetic field then you find it’s a very significant climate driver and using paleo-proxies you can do it hundreds of thousands years to the past.

    00

  • #
    wes george

    Speedy @ 275 notices a remarkable phase shift in the climate debate:

    “If I can summarise the last 270-odd posts or so. It seems that none of the Warmists have pulled up Mann’s hockey stick…The main issue of contention has been whether the Roman or the Medieval warming was the same or whether it was warmer than the late 20th century used to be. No-one is arguing that the late 20th century was “UNPRECEDENTED”. Simply, we accept it was quite normal.”

    As a veteran of a decade of climate debates, this is truly an UNPRECEDENTED development in the AGW debate, which formally depended largely on a paleoclimate reconstruction that depicted anomalous modern warming ascending from a platform of relative (if imaginary) climate stasis a la Mann, et al.

    http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/slides/large/05.24.jpg

    Now that modern warming has been shown to be within recent historical parameters the CAGW argument has descended into nonsense. Witness Hammiesink @ 303 who attempts to explain why it was as warm or warmer during the MWP with atmospheric CO2 concentration about almost half of today’s, yet still honour and respect the sacred cow of AGW doctrine…

    “It (CO2) is only the major driver of warming since ~1980. At other times, any of the other drivers (solar, volcanoes, orbital, tectonic, ocean, GHG, etc) can come into play and each warm or cool period has to be taken on a case-by-case basis.”

    Oh, righto! Modern warming is within the parameters of recent warm periods like the MWP and the RWP, is no longer UNPRECENTED in the whole history of the Holocene, but it still needs a special one-off anthopogenic explanation, that obviously can’t apply to the last, oh, say billion years of life on Earth. A truly novel feature of this hypothesis is that it can NOT be tested!

    This is getting tedious.

    00

  • #
    MattB

    Sorry Speedy and Wes – I brought up the hockey stick in 222.

    But Wes – I think what you have noticed is that, in fact, the reasons warmists are willing to rationally discuss those issues is that we always have been, it is just skeptics who fabricated that we were not.

    00

  • #
    wes george

    MattB, you lost me there.

    00

  • #
    wes george

    This is the rational basis that the Warmistas used to always base their discussions upon…

    http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/slides/large/05.24.jpg

    MattB, who is doing the fabricating here?

    00

  • #
    MattB

    The error bars could accommodate a MWP above the red line though Wes. Look the temp record is what it is, but that does not imply that if the MWP was shown to be as warm, or warmer, globally, that AGW is false. Similarly the flatter red line doesn’t care if greenland was green or of lousy wine was grown in northern england in the MWP.

    00

  • #

    Been away awhile, but I want to respond to the comment at 155:

    Over time, the number of both record highs and lows decreases because as the number of records increases, it is increasingly difficult to break a record. However, in a temperature-flat world, there would be roughly equal numbers of record highs and lows, and in a warming world there would be increasing numbers of record highs vs record lows.

    The writer missed the point.

    At any given location, it is harder to establish records in either extreme. However, if the planet were truly warming one would expect to find at least one new CONTINENTAL-wide high temperature record set during “unprecedented” warming.

    It would be interesting to look at the data to determine how many local record highs were set in urban areas, for which temperature histories are meaningless to this point, thanks to the urban heat island effect.

    00

  • #
    val majkus

    sorry if this has been mentioned before –
    http://www.climatechangefraud.com/enviro-extremists/6989-nero-was-hotter-than-al-gore?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climatechangefraud%2FnkcO+%28Climate+Change+Fraud+news%29
    Nero was hotter than Al Gore Written by Washington Times | 20 May 2010

    quoting from the first two paras:

    The planet has never been warmer than it is right now, if you believe what global warming alarmists have to say. Mankind’s selfishness in producing “excessive” amounts of carbon dioxide has set us on a path toward global cataclysm, they insist. The problem with this tale is that it neither fits with the historical record nor with a growing body of scientific evidence.

    The alarmists must imagine that 50 years before the birth of Christ, men like Julius Caesar spent their summers strolling the streets of Rome wearing sweaters to guard against catching a chill – instead of abandoning the sweltering capital in favor of temperate seaside villas. A study published in the March 8 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science casts further doubt on the warmist premise by concluding that the sun beat down more harshly on the Caesars than it did on anyone else in the past 2,000 years.

    00

  • #
    JPA Knowles

    If it was cooler in Roman Britain those Italians must have been ultra hardy. In 1970 I was at a boarding school on the N. Wales coast, built on the site of a Roman barracks. The place was damp and miserably cold and to make matters worse, for some Pythonesque reason we were made to wear shorts all year round.
    As far as we can tell, the soldiers wore a sort of long buttonless shirt gathered at the waist by a belt. They probably had long woollen socks or leggings in winter but most indications suggest only basic clothing which would have been quite unsuited to the 1970s climate.
    To keep the Krudds happy I’ll admit the Romans did have an an indoor heated bath house next to their barracks but I suspect this was one of their superior cultural traditions rather than a necessary response to climate.

    00

  • #
    Sean McHugh

    MattB @51

    Yes Sean the data is reference, but is the trend line?

    Yes, it is. The data is its reference!

    MattB @52

    Tide – any order polynomial fit would be erroneous to use as a trend line… the fit above is used to make it look like the trend at the end is down… but polys don’t work for such purposes, it is a bluff.

    Any trend line can be used to bluff. As Jo alluded, trend lines can be quite arbitrary. As it happens, in the top graph, a curve is more representative than a straight line. One can actually see the curve in the data plot. That doesn’t mean it will continue downward and/or that the section of curve is necessarily a strict 2nd order polynomial. Neither does mean it can be extrapolated as such. Be aware, Matt, that it is the alarmists who propose an accelerating trend. One does not hear of sceptics proposing runaway cooling for this epoch.

    As far as I am concerned, trend plots aren’t really necessary. If the trend can’t be seen in the data plot, it probably isn’t too significant. Even when significant, the significance has more to do showing what has transpired rather than what will transpire. The top graph, including the ‘trend’ line, shows what has occurred. If you don’t like it, then you need to change the data. Your friends at GISS and East Anglia might be able to help you with that.

    So tell me, Matt, what trend would you assign to the top graph? Recall that you accepted the data as referenced. I’d also like to know what you think of this little beauty from the IPCC’s AR4:

    http://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/_/rsrc/1259250343991/faq3.1fig1.jpg

    It actually manages to imply an increasing acceleration that is outside the data. That it uses tangents to an undrawn curve, doesn’t exonerate it. The exponential curve is clearly implied. Probably the only reason it isn’t drawn in is because it would make the BS and dishonesty too obvious. As shown on this page, where the IPCC’s new New Calculus is discussed, they could have performed the same nonsense on a sine wave:

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2492260/posts

    Somehow, I suspect that this brother of the Hockey Stick would meet your approval, as would the original Hockey Stick.

    00

  • #
    Mark D.

    Sean @ 333, it probably is a sine wave! (a little noisy perhaps)

    00

  • #
    Sean McHugh

    Mark D @334:

    Sean @ 333, it probably is a sine wave! (a little noisy perhaps)

    Yep, probably.

    00

  • #
    Mark D.

    Sean, of course you know it isn’t the upslope we need to worry about right?

    00

  • #
    el gordo

    They also found Roman warmth in Tibet:

    ‘On a centennial scale, the redness proxy records not only the Little Ice Age, but also the Medieval Warm Period, the Dark Ages Cool Period and the Roman Warm Period. Time series analysis of the redness record indicates a 200 yr frequency, which corresponds to the de Vries solar cycle suggesting that, in addition to insolation changes resulting from orbital variations, solar forcing also results from cyclic changes in the sun’s luminosity.’

    Junfeng Ji et al 2005

    00

  • #
    MattB

    “One does not hear of sceptics proposing runaway cooling for this epoch.”

    cue Graeme Bird…

    00

  • #
    Sean McHugh

    MattB @338:

    “One does not hear of sceptics proposing runaway cooling for this epoch.”

    cue Graeme Bird…

    Can’t say I know him, but if that’s what he proposes, his position is neither common nor representative.

    We ‘denialists’ deny denialist consensus.

    00

  • #
    MattB

    go on – google him. He is like a fishermans friend for the mind.

    00

  • #

    From post # 388,

    “One does not hear of sceptics proposing runaway cooling for this epoch.”

    cue Graeme Bird…

    MattB,

    It would help a lot if you actually QUOTE him for allegedly saying that.

    Otherwise you have nothing.

    00

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    So all those statues really do depict the Romans as they actually dressed. How could that be?

    Written history might be revised to suit an agenda. But statues from the actual time in question are immutable.

    00

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Mark D. @334,

    I don’t know if there’s enough data there to make the sin curve assumption. The time between peaks would need to be constant. There is no rally good way to find out either unless the time between data points is constant (can’t tell if it is). Then you could run an FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) on it and see the frequency domain content. But even then you aren’t guaranteed that it’s really what you see in the result because the FFT always has an a priori assumption of a constant frequency for all components in its input.

    00

  • #
    Richard S Courtney

    Hammiesink:

    I have only limited and expensive internet access until I return to my base in a week or two. But your fatuous posts are so silly that I have been roused to refute them.

    For example, you assert:

    the current rise in CO2 is from fossil fuel use. Fossil fuels have a higher C13/C12 ratio than natural CO (Ghosh 2003) Also, estimates of how many gigatonnes of CO2 are being dumped into the atmosphere.

    Rubbish!
    The 13C:12C isotope change in recent decades is in the direction consistent with an anthropogenic source of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration in those decades. But the change has a 50% chance of being in that direction or the other. Importantly, the magnitude of the 13C:12C isotope change is not consistent with a mostly anthropogenic cause of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration: the magnitude of the isotope change indicates that at least two thirds of the rise is natural and – since most of it is natural – all of it could be natural.

    Nature “dumps” 34 molecules of CO2 into the atmosphere for each molecule of CO2 that humans “dump into the atmosphere”. It really is an implausible assertion that this tiny human addition can overwhelm the natural system that has been dealing with the natural CO2 emissions for billions of years. Furthermore, the oceans contain almost all the CO2 that is not locked-up in biota, and each summer they release tens of times more CO2 than than the annual emission from humans, then they take it back each winter. There is no reason to suppose that the oceans cannot cope with the little addition from human activity, and the rates of change to atmospheric CO2 concentration measured at localities indicates that they can absorb all the humans’ addition near to its human sources.

    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and there is no evidence – none, zilch, nada – that the miniscule human addition of CO2 from fossil fuel useage has disrupted the natural carbon cycle.

    And you persistently insist that climate data is determined over a 30-year period. That is a confusion of (a) the 30-year ‘normal period’ and
    (b) what constitutes a period of climate.
    Any length of time can be – and is – used as a period of climate provided it is stated. Indeed, a moment of thought would have told you this is so.
    The GISSTemp, CRUTemp and etc. global temperature time series each start at ~1880 so if only 30-year periods were useable as climate data then those time series would each contain only 4 data points. They each present single years as climate data. And the 1994 IPCC Report used 4-year periods to compare climate changes when considering hurricanes.

    Every assertion you have made above is mistaken. I have stated enogh for you to check two of your errors. Please do not accept what I have written here but – instead – check my statements for yourself. Then, having found that I have told you the truth concerning two of your assertions, check your other assertions because they are all – without exception – plain wrong. Simply, check things for yourself instead of parroting falsehoods from propoganda websites such as RealClimate.

    Richard

    00

  • #
    Larry Fields

    No discussion of the Medieval Warm Period is complete, without mentioning the outstanding research of Connie Millar. The work of Dr. Millar et. al. suggests that in the Eastern Sierras of Mono County, California, the year 1350 AD was appreciably toastier than recent ‘unprecedented’ years. Millar’s result contrasts sharply with the claims of Michael Mann, creator of the infamous Hockey Stick Graph.

    Late Holocene forest dynamics, volcanism, and climate change at Whitewing Mountain and San Joaquin Ridge, Mono County, Sierra Nevada, California, USA

    Constance I. Millar, John C. King, Robert D. Westfall, Harry A. Alden, Diane L. Delaney

    Abstract

    Deadwood tree stems scattered above treeline on tephra-covered slopes of Whitewing Mtn (3051 m) and San Joaquin Ridge (3122 m) show evidence of being killed in an eruption from adjacent Glass Creek Vent, Inyo Craters. Using tree-ring methods, we dated deadwood to AD 815– 1350 and infer from death dates that the eruption occurred in late summer AD 1350. Based on wood anatomy, we identified deadwood species as Pinus albicaulis, P. monticola, P. lambertiana, P. contorta, P. jeffreyi, and Tsuga mertensiana. Only P. albicaulis grows at these elevations currently; P. lambertiana is not locally native. Using contemporary distributions of the species, we modeled paleoclimate during the time of sympatry to be significantly warmer (+3.2°C annual minimum temperature) and slightly drier (−24 mm annual precipitation) than present, resembling values projected for California in the next 70–100 yr.

    http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/millar/psw_2006_millar027.pdf

    00

  • #
    Mark D.

    Larry Fields @ 345, Interesting link! Thank you.

    Three excerpts (bold emphasis mine):

    The range of dates for the deadwood samples, AD 815–1350, coincides with the period identified from multiple proxies in the Sierra Nevada and western Great Basin as the Medieval Climate Anomaly.

    Does anyone still dispute the existence of MWP?

    Coupled vegetation–climate projections for 2070–2099 inferred significantly reduced spring snowpacks and earlier runoff. Based on those conditions, Hayhoe et al. (2004) estimate 75–90% reduction in California subalpine forest by AD 2070–2099.
    Recognizing significant CO2 differences between future projected and Medieval climates, our empirical findings of significant increase in subalpine forest extent and diversity during similar climate conditions nonetheless raise questions about modeled results of future forest reductions in the subalpine zone.

    Does that say models are wrong?

    The diversity and number of samples spanned the Medieval period and dated AD 815–1350 with no indication of older samples. This suggests the forest established rapidly, and possibly the earliest trees colonized the summit after a previous eruption of the Inyo Craters.

    And it would appear that the flora are able to rapidly accommodate a change in “climate”. (contrary to the prevailing CAGW warmist beliefs and fears).

    00

  • #
    Bush bunny

    It seems amazing how these scientists or so called scientists change their minds, depending on who is paying for their research and what outcome they are supposed to find.

    Back in the 1970s Stephen Schneider was screaming the next ice age was upon us. (Its on U Tube) Now he used
    James Hansen’s computer programme to prove his point. And of course James and Steve were Al Gore’s main scientific advisers.

    Now it will come, and the significance for Northern America, Asia and Europe will be eventually dreadful.

    Now in my opinion, surely these scientists are not trying to blame an ice age on AGW. Because it is already here with us. We will get cold periods now until probably in the next thousand years it will become
    apparent we can’t feed the number of people on this planet.

    So, don’t throw away your Ugg boots yet LOL, and now can you see whey they are rushing to make money out of clean energy and carbon credits. When it will get colder we will need more electricity and heating. Because petrol freezes too, as the Germans found out in Russia during WW11. Also the Southern Hemisphere will be a better place to live in, hence immigration will increase.

    As far as Great Britain being cold, I’m British, and I remember how bloody cold it was without central heating.
    In 1963 after 2 1/2 years in Cyprus we returned in February, and from Greece onwards to Gloucestershire it was snow bound. Our flight was delayed one day, because the plane couldn’t land in GB. But the pilots wanted to get back for their winter officer’s ball, so we landed with thick blocks of ice shoved to the side of the runway. That’s cold. And like parts of Canada,
    Alaska, Europe, Northern Scotland and the Hebrides have
    the land of the midnight sun, so – they are in the artic
    circle.

    These AGW’s are out to make a quick quid. Trillions are
    involved. Europe is in financial trouble it’s a very serious global problem. So if Rudd is not in anyway
    commisserate with this, he shouldn’t be leading a nation
    of people. I doubt if he will get in again.

    00

  • #
    Bush bunny

    Tree levels on higher altitudes reduce during a full ice age. All top soil is disturbed. Look at the topography of Scotland and then the Lake district and compare with South England. The Scilly Isles, and also South West UK including Around Bournemouth, where palm trees can grow too. Temperate palm trees not date palms.

    Grapes were grown in England and the mini ice age stopped that, however, the wine or grape presses were converted into the first printing presses.

    We should start to prepare for sustainability and study how they survived in Europe and America during that mini
    ice age. What crops they grew etc. I’ve always thought
    Canada was a good place to study. Like UK, Parts of the USA, they have had some awful winters in recent years. The AGW theorists almost got away with it, didn’t they?

    00

  • #
    Bernd Felsche

    Bush bunny (348)

    Grapes were grown in England and the mini ice age stopped that, however, the wine or grape presses were converted into the first printing presses.

    No change in produce, then: wine vs whine. I suppose that the first to complain were the Union of Scribes. 🙂

    00

  • #
    wes george

    Since the AGW trolls are weak and witless, perhaps we should lend them a hand!

    If I was going to argue for CAGW against the last 340 comments of this thread, this is how I would do it:

    Sure, the MWP and RWP might have been warmer today, although there is still some doubt that warming was global in extent. For instance, if it was so bloody hot why weren’t sea level higher during Roman times? We know sea levels were about the same as today.

    But let’s just say it has been warmer in the recent past at about half today’s CO2 level. Heat could be the least of our worries.

    We are still executing an unprecedented experiment upon our entire biosphere by raising atmospheric CO2 levels by about 2ppm per year and increasing. This isn’t a double blind experiment so there is no “control” biosphere we can all shift to should something horribly unexpected go wrong.

    If old comrade Al is wrong and the science isn’t settled, then are we suppose to feel secure in the knowledge that we are ignorant about the effects an extra 150 to 600 ppm CO2 concentration will have upon the biosphere in 2050?

    Sure, I know what you’re going to say. We know nothing will happen because climate sensitivity is less than the AGW theory proposes, therefore methane won’t be released from permafrost, there is no hot spot in the upper tropo and because the negative feedback homeostatic loops the atmosphere has used for a billion years to regulate the temps are still functioning.

    I wonder about that homeostasis argument thing. I wonder if the higher CO2 levels couldn’t in someway interact with other mega-environmental changes human kind has wrought—land clearing, brown clouds, whatever—to disable just enough of those feedback loops to be a real problem. And it’s important to remember it doesn’t have to be a life-threatening problem to Gaia to be a killer to the gossamer web of our global hi-tech civilization.

    What if in a weaken state, Gaia running a low AGW (or natural interglacial high if that makes you happy?) fever, saturated with CO2, is further perturbed by, say, a really big volcano or a collision with a small 200-meter rock? Will the late Holocene’s climatic strange attractors hold? Who knows? Even a short-lived phase shift in our climate would be an apocalypse.

    Ignorance may be bliss, but it isn’t great foundation for environmental policy.

    http://www.varchive.org/lec/671206pri.htm

    00

  • #
    Larry Fields

    I should mention my independent research on climate history in the Northern part California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. This was published as a guest-post at Anthony Watts’ blog last November. My quick-and-dirty technique, called Seat-of-the-Pants Dendroclimatolgy, cannot distinguish between the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period. Nevertheless the conclusion is that the Northern Sierras were appreciably warmer at some time during our present interglacial than they were in the ‘unprecedented’ warming of the 1990s.

    My research site, Round Top Lake, in Alpine County, is North of Connie Millar’s research site, Whitewing Mountain, in Mono County. I mentioned Connie Millar’s excellent research earlier in this thread. Now we have two independent studies coming to similar conclusions about the climate history of the Sierras.

    Northern Sierra Trees Falsify Claim of ‘Unprecedented’ Global Warming

    Posted on November 15, 2009 by charles the moderator
    Guest post by Larry Fields

    The last Ice Age razed all of the coniferous forests in Finland. After the ice sheet retreated, trees from elsewhere–like the Scots Pine–gradually colonized the vacant niches. On a smaller scale, the same thing happened in many high mountains of the Earth’s temperate regions, including the Sierra Nevada Range of California. We can learn a thing or two about climate history from Alpine dendrology.

    Round Top Lake, at 9340 feet elevation in the Northern Sierra near Carson Pass, is my favorite place for informal climate history research. Whitebark Pine trees grow in tight clumps around the North half of the lake.

    Read more here. http://tinyurl.com/y9jl8c6

    00

  • #
    Baa Humbug

    wes george: #350
    May 24th, 2010 at 5:13 pm

    If you were going to argue all that Wes, heres what Id say. (maybe)

    MWP and RWP was as global as the Current Warm Period (CWP) because as Phill (I lost my data) Jones said in one of the East Anglia Emails, only 10-20% of the cells show significant warming. (These are the cells used to determine the globes T anomaly).
    Considering the weight of peer reviewed literature spanning every continent, showing as warm or warmer MWP and RWP, IT”S GLOBAL ENOUGH.

    Atmospheric CO2 levels are NOT rising by 2ppm. Where’d you get your info? References please.
    p.s. How do you know what our emissions will be in 20-30-50 years time? Show me your crystal ball and I’ll show you how to become the richest man on earth.

    As to the rest of your “I wonders” and “what ifs”, I got just one thing to say to you….

    “If my auntie had balls, she’d be my uncle”

    00

  • #
    wes george

    Atmospheric CO2 levels are NOT rising by 2ppm. Where’d you get your info?

    From a big volcano god in Hawaii.

    http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/programs/esrl/co2/img/img_mlo_co2_record_2007.gif

    Of course, it could be a communist conspiracy to overthrow the US government. Wait, no, the commies are all ready in charge over there!

    No need for a crystal ball, all you need is a ruler and a pencil. Put the ruler on the trend line slope of the above Mauna Loa graph and draw a line forward. That’s your base line. Now recall that the Chinese are building a new coal fire plant every 6 days and plan to continue, if not accelerate, that pace over the next couple of decades. Then subtract all the CO2 emissions saved by the Rudd government’s insulation fraud scheme. You do the math.

    My point is no one knows what a world with 600ppm up to 1200 ppm atmospheric CO2 concentrations will be like. CAGW is merely one of many possible scenarios, but given the fragility of our present civilization almost any kind of perturbation is likely to be catastrophic. In fact, a single really strong solar flare resulting in a big EMP could shut down the grid tomorrow for a rather extended period, resulting in some pretty serious social chaos. It’s happened before, but before we weren’t so dependent upon electricity and various kinds of networks, like supermarket food distribution chains. I know a massive solar flare isn’t a CO2 related problem, but the fragility of our increasingly overextended systems is. We are kidding ourselves if we pretend that our current existential socio-economic arrangements are robust, even over a relatively short period of time, say like the next 30 to 100 years.

    The CAGW theory in its present form has lost credibility, but that doesn’t mean that ecological Pollyannaism is a rational or even useful position. We would be wise as a people to both fear and respect mother nature as our ancestors once did.

    It’s shocking how the environmentalist claptrap of a benign and loving natural environment seems to have permeated our culture so deeply that even the skeptical community have unconsciously absorbed the meme as a background theme to their everything-is-in-a-perfect-stasis argument.

    00

  • #
    Mark D.

    Roy Hogue @ 343, My comment at 334 was part humor (attempted) because the sine wave is a frequent natural occurring waveform. I didn’t mean to suggest that there was enough data there to indicate a Sine.

    The sine wave or sinusoid is a mathematical function that describes a smooth repetitive oscillation. It occurs often in pure mathematics, as well as physics, signal processing, electrical engineering and many other fields

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_wave

    00

  • #
    Bush bunny

    I suspect I’m preaching to the converted, well mostly.

    The last full glacial period that ended sometime between
    the 12 – 8 thousand years ago, depending where we are talking about. Definitely effected Northern America, Asia and Europe all within the arctic circle and down further south.

    The sea levels were very low then, and land bridges were
    everywhere. Bering Straights, Torres Straights (between
    Papua New Guinea and Northern Australia) Bass Straights between mainland Australia and Tasmania, Northern Ireland and UK, and the continent of Europe (France) and
    Southern England.

    However, no one lived in Canada and the USA until about
    10,000 years ago. The original inhabitants were Asian
    from probably Siberia. Few people lived in England too
    probably ventured across, from continental Europe, as Mammoth bones have been dredged up from the Channel.
    The Mediterranean was a series of swamps and lakes.

    On hiccup though in Archaeological research, there were
    according to what could be dodgy dating methodology, people in South America before this. The glacial cover
    ended at the Great lakes.

    But in Australia, and Flores people were living from about 60,000 years ago, and they would have got there
    on shanks pony when sea levels were very low, or by some type of rafts.

    Australia in the last glacial period, was different than
    now, and it is thought that there was more surface water
    and less rain forests. The weather was slightly cooler
    but the desert areas were not as arid as they are now.

    So thinking that the last ice age wasn’t global is a bit
    speculative, it depends on what degree of severity you mean. But the southern hemisphere was not as cold as the Northern Hemisphere.

    People lived in Africa for sure, they migrated up to Europe and Asia about 50,000 years ago. And Australia
    was inhabited too.

    Vikings or their genetic pool, inhabited Greenland too,
    and there is archaeological evidence that during the mini ice age, their civilization collapsed. Was incapable of sustaining human occupation. Skeletal evidence showed the Greenlanders lost their robust features and degenerated as a race. Probably from lack
    of food and nourishment.

    Other than normal sea erosion, sea levels do rise and drop since the last full glacial period. Atolls do sink, as against volcanic islands. However as the mini
    ice age really only effected the Arctic circle the sea levels could have dropped.

    And the melt of sea ice is known to divert the gulf
    stream that initiates an ice age. But as we all know
    CO2 does not effect climate, a volcanic eruption if it is big enough can create colder weather because the dust levels in the higher atmosphere block out the sun.
    Like the Toba eruption 70,000 years ago, it was supposed
    to eventually kill off a great percentage of people and animals, but only in certain parts of the world.

    00

  • #
    Bush bunny

    B Flesche @ 349. Ha, Ha, Ha, winging POMS?

    That’s not a Hitler Youth uniform I see on you avatar is it? LOL

    00

  • #
    Bernd Felsche

    Bush bunny … it’s a Navy uniform. Somebody else mentioned it out a couple of days ago.

    I was about 4 at the time. A long, long time ago, in a land, far, far away.

    The picture is chosen because any old picture is better than the cock-eyed caricatures.

    00

  • #
    Bush Bunny

    Hi – I was only joking, in fact it looked like a Boys Brigade uniform.

    But had to take a nudge re Whinging Pommies comment.

    Cheers

    Pat from Oz

    00

  • #

    @Bush Bunny #355:

    The glacial cover ended at the Great lakes.

    Actually, ice cover in the US was a mile thick close to the terminator that reached down into northern New Jersey, then followed a course westward just below the Great Lakes (which are themselves remnants from glacial melt), then swooped up into Canada to about the latitude of the top of Lake Superior, then dropped down again where the western mountains begin and reached the coast along the border of Washington and Oregon.

    Glacial boundaries covered much of the UK, all of Scandinavia, and the northernmost area of Europe. Antarctica was slightly enlarged with the Ross and Weddell Seas completely covered by glacial ice. The mountains of the Andes were completely glacial covered except at the equator. New Zealand’s south western flank was covered in ice as was southwestern Tasmania (which was connected to the mainland thanks to the lower sea levels).

    There is no question that ice age cycles are a global event. Obviously, with most of the land mass in the northern hemisphere, the impact on each hemisphere is markedly different. Even during ice age cycles, oceans are a strong climate moderating force.

    Bob Webster
    Vero Beach, FL

    00

  • #
    Bush Bunny

    Hi Bob,

    Your right, but some are trying to say that the last full glacial period and the mini ice age wasn’t global.

    Well of course it was but in varying degrees. Well British actually colonized NSW in 1788, and by 1830s they were moving up to where I live now on the Northern Tablelands. Where today in late autumn it is cold but bearable. Temps drop sometimes at night to minus. Depending if you live in the valley or on the higher ridges surrounding it.

    Yet history notes, Sydney was bleeding hot for the first
    colonists having all come from UK before the end of the
    mini ice age, I would say they hadn’t acclimatised. Yet
    it was pleasant on the Northern Tablelands. For them.

    However, Florida must be OK, eh. Al Gore has bought a
    home there I believe. (Another one?) But I read, your
    last winter was rather chillier than normal.

    Is this true?

    00

  • #
  • #

    Bush Bunney (#360),

    We had an extremely cold winter in Florda (January through March). A number of record cold high temperatures were set and fish and wildlife perished. Many exotic tropical animals (including pythons) that were sold in pet stores and then turned loose in the Everglades by irresponsible owners perished from the cold … a good thing because they were ravaging the local wildlife. Uncountable fish died from small lakes and ponds getting too cold. Good feeding for the vultures, though! Many subtropical/tropical palm trees that had been planted in borderline areas of central and northern Florida were severely damaged and may not survive the hot summer. Local residents claim it was the coldest they can remember in terms of prolonged cold (not deep cold). I wish I’d kept track of the days when the temperature reached 80°F. I wouldn’t have had to use much paper! We had long spells without reaching 70°F and a considerable number of days when temps only reached into the 50’s.

    Fortunately, temperatures have been pretty much normal since April.

    It is odd that people seem to think that for a global event to occur, it must manifest itself identically in every single quarter of the globe. Even ice ages, which are most certainly global by any reasonable standard, do not impact all areas uniformly. Topography, latitude, and oceans have a huge impact on climate even in ice ages. With land dominating the northern hemisphere and ocean dominating the southern hemisphere and the south pole covered by a continent while the north pole is covered by the Arctic Ocean, it should come as no surprise that there are major distinctions in climate between the northern and southern hemispheres. But those distinctions hardly form a legitimate basis for claiming major climate variations are strictly “local” when they are not!

    Always enjoy reading your comments!

    Best,

    Bob Webster
    Vero Beach, FL

    00

  • #

    […] one can even imagine the parallel universe where carbon might not control the climate.read more @ JoNova var a2a_config = a2a_config || {}; a2a_config.linkname="Roman Warming (Gullible Rudd steps right […]

    00

  • #
    Bush bunny

    Hi all, Bob – what people well alarmists don’t under stand
    is that interstadials are flutters in between extremes.

    I would hazard at a guess, the mini ice age was a flutter
    after the MWP – and this recent 130 years is a short flutter again. It will gradually warm up for your spring and summer, then you will or may have another cold period from autumn to the following spring.

    It would seem that if countries ie. UK, Asia and USA
    being recipients of the gulf stream warming influence, and I believe it has changed in the last few years, hence cooler temps. If 10 -15 years of colder than average winters, you can say you are beginning to return
    to a mini or eventually full glacial.

    However it always warms up before another cold period.
    Nature of the planet.

    Another volcano is causing havoc in Indonesia, what’s new. Earthquakes etc, etc., there is an asteroid due to return in 1936, came very close to earth last time. And they couldn’t see it coming, as it was coming from the direction of the sun.

    People forget we are a little lively planet in the suburbs of the milky way, and humans propose and Nature
    deposes.

    00

  • #
    Bush bunny

    I mean 2036 sorry. It’s on the web, it came between the moon and us, that’s close by universal mileages. However if we have the technology then and can see it earlier enough they can divert it away from Earth. So don’t build your bomb shelters or aim for the mountains yet.

    00

  • #

    Bush Bunny,

    You are correct. Natural climate variations rule. That has been the essential position of those who do not simply accept IPCC dogma.

    Basically, alarmists concocted a theory, AGW (anthropogenic global warming).

    The theory is built on assumptions and it has predicted certain consequences.

    The assumptions have been shown to be grossly in error.

    The certain consequences have been shown to be completely non-existent.

    Therefore, as any reasonable person would, I reject the AGW theory.

    It’s all quite simple if all the noise is removed!

    Best,

    Bob Webster
    PS: We’ve been having a normal spring! Not particularly hot. Not particularly cool. Just typical.

    00

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    MarkD. @354,

    I think I owe you one on that — took you too literally.

    00

  • #

    DavidR – check your email. I’ve written to you. JN

    00

  • #

    To me all this is pretty well explained by what an author wrote in the 1070’s: there are three principal kinds of corruption, Power, Wealth and Status. The “Climate Change”/”Global Warming” campaign illustrates them. AlGore acquired all three, (he seems to have a lot of money,power and wealth). The UN gang wants power; wealth and status will come with it. And anything goes (lies, false “science”) and by any means necessary.

    00

  • #