Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.

10,000 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.”

1. manacker says:

   17/09/2009 at 1:58 pm

   TonyB / Barelysane / Peter Martin

   This got hung up in the spam filter, probably due to the many references cited, so I will post these separately.

   To your discussion about the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):

   For a recent study that shows that the global MWP was slightly warmer than today check:
   (see reference 1 and 2)

   This study concludes:

   The Medieval Warming Period (MWP) was significantly warmer than the bimillennial average during most of the period 820 – 1040 AD. The Little Ice Age was significantly cooler than the average during most of 1440 – 1740 AD. The warmest tridecade of the MWP was warmer than the most recent tridecade, but not significantly so.

   There are other studies coming to the conclusion that the MWP was warmer than today, most notably the one for China by Zhang (2005):
   (see reference 3)

   “As for the Medieval Warm Period, nominally assigned to A.D. 900 to 1300, its existence in China has also been established by reference to contemporary documents.”

   “On the basis of knowledge of the climatic conditions required for planting these species [cultivation of citrus trees], it can be estimated that the annual mean temperature in south Henan Province in the thirteenth century was 0.9–1.0°C higher than at present.”

   There is also the study by Broeker, showing that the MWP was part of a long series of climate fluctuations in the North Atlantic, which were likely global.
   (see reference 4)

   Broeker points out that the magnitude of the temperature drop over Greenland from the peak warmth of the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1200 A.D.) to the coldest part of the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1860 A.D.) was approximately 2°C. And he notes that as many as six thousand borehole records from all continents of the world confirm that the earth was a significantly warmer place a thousand years ago than it is today.

   Then there is the study by Keigwin for the Sargasso Sea:
   (see reference 5)

   “Results from a radiocarbon-dated box core show that SST was ~1°C cooler than today ~400 years ago (the Little Ice Age) and 1700 years ago, and ~1°C warmer than today 1000 years ago (the Medieval Warm Period). Thus, at least some of the warming since the Little Ice Age appears to be part of a natural oscillation.”

   There are many other regional studies confirming a MWP that was warmer than today, but the most comprehensive summary of much of this work was presented in the study of Soon and Baliunas:
   (see reference 6)

   “However, considered as an ensemble of individual expert opinions, the assemblage of local representations of climate establishes both the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period as climatic anomalies with worldwide imprints, extending earlier results by Bryson et al. (1963), Lamb (1965), and numerous intervening research efforts. Furthermore, the individual proxies can be used to address the question of whether the 20th century is the warmest of the 2nd millennium locally. Across the world, many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.”

   The evidence that the MWP was both global and slightly warmer than the late 20th century is overwhelming.

   This shows clearly that long-term cyclical natural factors play a major role in determining our planet’s climate, a point that both Professor Plimer and Dr. Taylor made in their two books, which questioned the global warming theory.

   It is clear that a MWP warmer than today presents a real dilemma for the postulation that the warming of the late 20th century was unusual and can be attributed to AGW, caused principally by human CO2 emissions, and thus for the premise that AGW is a real future threat.

   This is why the supporters of the AGW premise try everything possible to cover up the MWP or to downgrade it as “a purely local phenomenon”.

   Max
2. manacker says:

   17/09/2009 at 1:59 pm

   References 1 and 2:
   http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/AGW/Loehle/
   http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/AGW/Loehle/Loehle_McC_E&E_2008.pdf
3. manacker says:

   17/09/2009 at 1:59 pm

   Reference 3:
   http://www.springerlink.com/content/gh98230822m7g01l/
4. manacker says:

   17/09/2009 at 2:00 pm

   Reference 4:
   http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/291/5508/1497
5. manacker says:

   17/09/2009 at 2:01 pm

   Reference 5
   http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/274/5292/1503
6. manacker says:

   17/09/2009 at 2:02 pm

   Reference 6
   http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr2003/23/c023p089.pdf
7. manacker says:

   17/09/2009 at 2:03 pm

   The spam filter doesn’t like this reference, so have put parentheses around it

   Reference 5
   {http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/274/5292/1503}
8. manacker says:

   17/09/2009 at 2:05 pm

   Have put parentheses around this one, too:

   Reference 4:
   {http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/291/5508/1497}
9. Robin Guenier says:

   17/09/2009 at 9:05 pm

   Peter: interesting that, as the dangerous AGW hypothesis gets flakier, so your insults get shriller. Mind you, I’m flattered to be in company with Peter Taylor.
10. TonyB says:

    17/09/2009 at 11:22 pm

    Max

    Good references re MWP in response to Peter.

    You have posted dozens of such studies before . I have posted dozens of such studies before.

    Peter does not need any further references he needs to actually read them.

    tonyb
11. manacker says:

    17/09/2009 at 11:30 pm

    Tony B

    Here is an interesting study (which you may already have seen) by Timo Niroma (Finland) entitled: ”Sunspots: The 200-year sunspot cycle is also a weather cycle. A 2000-year historical perspective.”
    http://www.kolumbus.fi/tilmari/some200.htm

    Niroma links several historical events to cyclical changes in our climate, pointing to cycles of around 200/120/60/30 years, and tying these cycles to solar activity.

    He ties the fall of the Roman Empire to these cycles and shows that the Dark Ages in Europe coincided with the decline and end of the Mayan civilization. He then shows how changes in climate, driven by these solar cycles, resulted in Iceland and Greenland curiously getting their names.

    An interesting quote from the study:

    Considering the evidence it looks like a megalomaniac idea that the recent rise of half a degree would have been caused by man. So great are the natural variations. But man has always wanted to be in the center of the world.

    Amen.

    Max
12. tonyb says:

    18/09/2009 at 12:17 am

    Max

    I enjoyed reading that link and can endorse some of the stated periods as I have written articles on them. You may enjoy this-apologies if I have posted it before but it ties in with the papers observations:.

    According to an ice core, around the 7th century there was a cooling that was actually deeper than the LIA, and the MWP may have occurred as the climate bounced back from this sharp cooling.

    This document relates closely to that cooling reference and includes the remarkable contemporary observation as follows;

    “One huge iceberg crushed the wharf at the Acropolis, close to the tip of Constantinople’s peninsula, and another extremely large one hit the city wall, shaking it and the houses on the other side, before breaking into three large pieces; it was higher than the city walls.”

    “On the Continent eighth-century minor annals record the severe winter in the
    area from which they drew their information, Austrasia. This was the power center of the new Carolingian dynasty around the Meuse and Moselle rivers and west of the Rhine. In this region that “worst freeze” began on 14 December 763 and continued until 16 March 764.32 A generation later, the royal court still remembered the winter for its unprecedented bitter cold. About that time someone in the same or a related milieu wrote up the most detailed record, in the Chronicon Moissiacense. It observes under the year 762 that the freeze reached as far as the western provinces of the Byzantine Empire:

    “A great freeze oppressed the Gauls, Illyricum and Thrace and, wasted by the freeze, many olive and fig trees withered; the sprouts of the crops withered, and in the following year, hunger oppressed these regions very severely, such that many people died from scarcity of bread.”

    “In response to the Frankish king’s request for news about the papal and royal
    ambassadors whose return from Byzantium he had expected earlier, Pope Paul I protested that “it has assuredly not escaped you that because of the very cruel harshness of this winter season, no one is coming from those parts” with news of the envoys. In fact, the pope’s unusually specific expression of relief that the king himself, the queen, and their three children were “healthy and safe and unharmed” probably reflects the receding terrors of that extreme winter.”

    The special processions that King Pippin enjoined on the bishop of Mainz for God’s mercy for “the great and marvelous consolation and abundance of the fruit of the earth” after the terrible “tribulation for our sins” surely reflects the return to normalcy in 765. The economic impact on the Carolingian kingdom was serious enough to force Pippin to suspend his long-standing effort to conquer Aquitaine.

    Some 2,000 kilometers to the southeast, a well-informed observer at Constantinople recorded that great and extremely bitter cold settled on the Byzantine Empire and the lands to the north, west (confirming the Chronicon Moissiacense’s statement concerning Illyricum and Thrace), and east. The north coast of the Black Sea froze solid 100 Byzantine miles out from shore (157.4 km). The ice was reported to be 30 Byzantine “cubits” deep, and people and animals could walk on it as on dry land.38

    Drawing on the same lost written source, another contemporary, the patriarch of Constantinople, Nicephorus I, emphasized that it particularly affected the “hyperborean and northerly regions,” as well as the many great rivers that lay north of the Black Sea.39 Twenty cubits of snow accumulated on top of the ice, making it very difficult to discern where land stopped and sea began, and the Black Sea became unnavigable. In February the ice began to break up and
    flow into the Bosporus, entirely blocking it.

    Theophanes’ account recalls how, as a child, the author (or his source’s author) went out on the ice with thirty other children and played on it and that some of his pets and other animals died. It was possible to walk all over the Bosporus around Constantinople and even cross to Asia on the ice. One huge iceberg crushed the wharf at the Acropolis, close to the tip of Constantinople’s peninsula, and another extremely large one hit the city wall, shaking it and the houses on the other side, before breaking into three large pieces; it was higher than the city walls. The terrified Constantinopolitans wondered what it could possibly portend.

    At 66 ppb, the spike in the GISP2 sulfate deposit on Greenland dated 767 is
    the highest recorded for the eighth century (see Fig. 5) and shows that this terrible winter in Europe and western Asia was connected with a volcanic aerosol that left marked traces on Greenland.
    http://www.medievalacademy.org/pdf/Volcanoes.pdf

    I think modern people in their air conditioned cars or centrally heated homes believe that climate is relatively constant and forget that throughout our history we continually experience extremes of heat and cold caused by entirely natural forces.

    This is nowhere better illustrated than in the climate references from the Byzantine Empire 383 to 1453AD which includes considerable detail on the events described above, and provides drawings of the various irrigation systems devised to beat the droughts during warm times, and the famine that ensued during cold times. It is remarkable to think that the Holy Roman Empire can still teach modern man a thing or two-in this case that there is nothing new- climatically-under the sun.

    Tonyb
13. manacker says:

    18/09/2009 at 9:55 am

    TonyB

    Thanks for your 7562. Very interesting.

    All of these observations with references should be summarized in an updated book on the climate history of our planet.

    This book could also cover some of the anthropocentric myths that “man is the cause” for whatever climate disaster happened, starting with the Sumerian accounts of the Great Flood, going to the witch-burning days of the most bitterly cold years of the early Little Ice Age to today’s AGW scare (which, unlike the other climate disasters, has only happened in the virtual reality of the computer model world, rather than in real life).

    Are you working on such a summary?

    It believe it could become a best-seller as the world, in general, is becoming aware of the AGW hoax and the multi-billion dollar interests that stand behind it.

    Max
14. barelysane says:

    18/09/2009 at 10:47 am

    Will someone please explain to me how a 2 year increase in sea ice from the minimum re-inforces a 30yr downward trend ??????

    http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html
15. manacker says:

    18/09/2009 at 11:43 am

    Barelysane

    I agree. The NSIDC sentence below is a classical oxymoron:

    “While this year’s minimum extent is above the record and near-record minimums of the last two years, it further reinforces the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent observed over the past thirty years.”

    Why not say:

    “This year’s minimum extent shows a continued recovery from the all-time minimum of 2007, but it is too early to tell whether this recovery will continue long-term or whether the negative trend in summertime ice extent observed over the past thirty years will resume.”

    That would be a true statement with the “hype” removed, while the other statement is actually silly, because a significant two-year increase in sea ice, as reported by NSIDC, does not “reinforce the strong negative trend”.

    Max
16. barelysane says:

    18/09/2009 at 2:39 pm

    Encouraging news

    “SHARP RISE IN CLIMATE REALISM IN THE UK ”
    http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/
17. Brute says:

    19/09/2009 at 2:16 am

    Looks like a global temperature dataset…………

    

    Carbon offset kiosk at SFO sells carbon credits at 60 times the market rate

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/18/carbon-offset-kiosk-at-sfo-sells-carbon-credits-at-60-times-the-market-rate/
18. tempterrain says:

    19/09/2009 at 2:22 am

    Barelysane,

    You ask ” how a 2 year increase in sea ice from the minimum re-inforces a 30yr downward trend”

    Well I could explain but a good teacher tries to coax the answer from the one who asks the question.

    Lets take another look at the graph. (It will give me chance to see if Tony’s scaling tip works.)

    You are saying is that the increase in sea ice from 2007 to 2009 should be considered as evidence of lack of AGW?

    So there was no AGW between 1981,1982 and 1983?

    But there was between 1983, 1984 and 1985? Right?

    Perhaps you could look at the graph and indentify the 7 periods when the AGW theory was incorrect and 11 periods when it was correct?

    This reminds me of a politically incorrect joke about an Irish guy, who when asked to say whether a car’s indicator was working, answered “yes it is”, “no it isn’t”, “yes it is”, …..

    So maybe you could look at the graph and express in your own words whether the overall evidence is in favour, or against, some form of warming, doesn’t have to be anthropogenic of course, in the Arctic.

    Or are you really of the opinion that its a case of “yes its warming’, “no its cooling, “yes its warming”….. ?
19. tempterrain says:

    19/09/2009 at 2:31 am

    That didn’t work. Another try!

    
20. Robin Guenier says:

    19/09/2009 at 8:01 am

    I suggest we might pay attention to the views on climate change of the world’s largest emitter of CO2 – China. First, have a look at this Guardian interview with Xiao Ziniu, Director General of the Beijing Climate Center. For example he said this:

    Climate prediction has only come into operation in recent years. The accuracy of the prediction is very low because the climate is affected by many mechanisms we do not fully understand.

    Then have a look at this abridged translation of a recent article by Wang Jing in China’s Science Times. (The original can be found here – if you can read Chinese!) He based the article on a paper written by Ding Zhongli, vice president of the Science Academy of China. This extract is interesting:

    … human activity is not the only factor to cause the global temperature increase. Up to now not a single scientist has figured out the weight ratio of each factor on global temperature change.

    However, the massive propaganda “human activity induced the global temperature increase” has been accepted by the majority of the society in some countries, and it has become a political and diplomatic issue. Why do the developed countries put an arguable scientific problem on the international negotiation table? The real intention is not for the global temperature increase, but for the restriction of the economic development of the developing countries, and for keeping their own advantageous positions.

    The article continues:

    If the global temperature increase indeed is the result of human activity, controlling the CO2 concentration should be the historical responsibility of each country that has already emitted CO2. About 70 to 80 percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere has been emitted by the developed countries. … the obvious conclusion is that the historical emission of the developed countries directly resulted in the global temperature increase, if the claimed correlation is to be accepted.
    Nevertheless, after emitting greenhouse gases for over a century and imagining a horrible consequence, the developed countries now strongly require that the developing countries also bear the historical responsibility. … It is truly hegemony.

    Hmm … it may prove just a little difficult to persuade China to toe the line at Copenhagen.
21. peter geany says:

    19/09/2009 at 10:40 am

    Robin

    WoW that is an interesting quote from China there. From whatever way you look at it you can’t argue with it from a Political perspective. Copenhagen is going to another waste of money contrived flop. They may as well call it off now.
22. James P says:

    19/09/2009 at 12:11 pm

    Good to see the Chinese being so pragmatic. As they used to say of US/Soviet negotiations, observe the national pastimes – the US game was Baseball, while the Russians’ was Chess. The Chinese hobby is Mah-Jongg (the real game is more complicated than the solitaire version you see on computers, BTW).

    Has anyone a comment on the navigation of the Arctic NE passage in the news today? As you might expect, the BBC was making hay with it today and forgetting (if it ever knew) that it was clear last year too, and that Amundsen used it in 1903. You’d think arts graduates would at least know some history…
23. Robin Guenier says:

    19/09/2009 at 12:31 pm

    Attention all Brits: on Thursday, 12 November, the Spectator is hosting a public forum in London where Professor Ian Plimer and other sceptics will “square up to their opponents” in a debate to be chaired by Andrew Neil – aka brillo pad.
    For booking details see this.

    BTW (Brute, JZ (if he’s still here) and others in the US) on Tuesday next, Mrs G and I will be getting out from under the yoke of the tyrant, Elizabeth 2, and travelling to the Land of The Free for a couple of weeks – LA to be precise, where we have an American grandchild. No doubt I’ll be emitting tons of CO2 in the process.
24. manacker says:

    19/09/2009 at 12:41 pm

    Peter

    Your graph on Aug Arctic sea ice extent is beautiful, but, Peter, you have to be a bit more observant.

    No one denies that the 30-year trend since 1979 (starting at a high level of sea ice extent after a 30-year recovery from the 1940s low) shows a recurrent trend of sea ice loss.

    What made the NSIDC statement so silly is that they stated that the recovery of the last two years (2008, 2009) “further reinforces the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent observed over the past thirty years”.

    It obviously does not, as Barelysane correctly pointed out. Had they written (as I suggested to Barelysane:

    “This year’s minimum extent shows a continued recovery from the all-time minimum of 2007, but it is too early to tell whether this recovery will continue long-term or whether the negative trend in summertime ice extent observed over the past thirty years will resume.”

    This statement would have been true and made sense. But to state that a partial recovery reinforces a downward trend is absurd.

    Get it?

    Max
25. manacker says:

    19/09/2009 at 12:56 pm

    Peter,

    When the all-time low extent of Arctic sea ice was reached in late-summer 2007, there was an inordinate amount of ballyhoo, hype and figurative wringing of hands out there (largely fueled by NSIDC) that this was clear evidence of AGW (how in the world can Arctic ice experts have any notion of the root cause of their observations?). Dire forecasts of “ice free summers” and the demise of the polar bears were everywhere to be seen, based to a large extent on this record low reading.

    Now there has been a recovery from this very low late-summer sea ice extent, which has (so far) lasted two years in a row. It has obviously not reversed (in 2 years) a shrinking trend that has lasted 30 years (starting at a very high ice level in 1979, which itself was the result of 30 some years of recovery from the last cycle of shrinking Arctic sea ice in the 1930s and 1940s).

    Will the recovery continue (as it obviously did in the 1950s to the 1970s)?

    Who knows?

    You do not know.

    Marc Serreze (who has erroneously forecast continued shrinking) certainly has no notion, either.

    So let’s wait and see what happens, Peter. It will be interesting.

    Max

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