How the GW myth is perpetuated

[Tonington]

The saturation argument. Well, if the lower atmosphere bands were saturated, which they aren't, that is inconsequential, as it is in the absorption in the thin layer of the upper atmosphere where the infrared actually escapes Earth that determines Earth's heat balance. We know the bands are not saturated from an effect known as pressure broadening. The absorption lines get thinner as pressure drops, and similarly broader as the pressure increases. The majority of the spectrum lies between the lines and the absorption coefficient drops with a drop in pressure. These issues were satisfactorily dealt with 50 years ago, and are now included in models. Models which by the way are also being used to forecast the global warming on Mars.

With respect to water vapour, while it is the largest greenhouse gas by proprtions, it is not the strongest forcing, nor does it have as many positive feedback loops as the other gases. With particular importance again going to the upper atmosphere where there is very little water vapour to block escaping infrared. There is lots of CO2 and Methane however.

This saturation argument has recently surfaced on the blogosphere, as did the solar irradiance a while back. What's humorous is that models are bashed here on Earth, but when a study uses them to show warming on Mars, all of a sudden they're valid scientific tools. here

BC may have a glut of timber product, but global timber stocks are declining. Regional means squat. Aquaculture has been practiced for 4000 years now, it's my major at school, and unfortunately there are a large number of sectors across the globe that ruin it's reputation by acting improperly, there are plenty of examples in your neck of the woods.

Phillip Cooney is not an example of fraud... pffft. Links can be dragged up anywhere, it's the methodology of studies and the conclusions that are telling. Junkscience would be a good example of omitting relevant facts in their skewed representation of the science.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Let's try some incontrovertible facts, shall we?

The World Meteorological Organization reports on extreme weather and climate events

Geneva, 7 August 2007(WMO) - Weather and climate are marked by record extremes in many regions across the world since January 2007. In January and April 2007 it is likely that global land surface temperatures ranked warmest since records began in 1880, 1.89°C warmer than average for January and 1.37°C warmer than average for April. Several regions have experienced extremely heavy precipitation, leading to severe floods. The Fourth Assessment Report of the WMO/UNEP Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) notes an increasing trend in extreme events observed during the last 50 years. IPCC further projects it to be very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.

WMO and the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services of its 188 Members are working with other UN Agencies and partners towards the establishment of a multi-hazard early warning system. Furthermore, they are putting in place sustainable observation systems needed for monitoring and assessing the impacts of climate change and determining the adaptation priorities for the most vulnerable countries.

Heavy rainfall, cyclones and wind storms

During the first half (June-July) of the Indian summer monsoon season, four monsoon depressions (double the normal frequency) caused heavy rainfall and floods in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Many stations reported 24h rainfall exceeding 350 mm. These monsoon extremes and incessant rains caused large-scale flooding all over South Asia, a situation that continues even now, resulting in more than 500 deaths, displacement of more than 10 million people and destruction of vast areas of croplands, livestock and property.

Cyclone Gonu, the first documented cyclone in the Arabian Sea, made landfall in Oman on 6 June with maximum sustained winds near 148 km/h. Gonu moved through the Persian Gulf making a second landfall in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In Oman, the cyclone affected more than 20,000 people and was responsible for more than 50 fatalities.

Heavy rains during 6-10 June ravaged areas across southern China. Flooding affected over 13.5 million people with more than 120 fatalities due to floods and landslides.

In England and Wales the period May to July in 2007 was the wettest (406 mm) since records began in 1766, breaking the previous record of 349 mm in 1789. The extreme rainfall in June, with 103.1 mm of rain recorded in 24 hours during 24-25 June in northeast England, was followed by a similar event with 120.8 mm of rain on 20 July in central England. Both events resulted in extensive flooding across parts of England and Wales. At least nine people have died and damage is estimated at more than US$6.00 billion.
With 126 mm (normal for 1961-1990: 71 mm], Germany experienced its wettest May since country-wide observations started in 1901. In sharp contrast, the previous month was the driest April since 1901 with an average of 4 mm (7% of the 1961-1990 normal).

A powerful storm system affected much of northern Europe during 17-18 January 2007 with torrential rains and winds gusting up to 170 km/h. There were at least 47 deaths across the region, with disruptions in electric supply affecting tens of thousands during the storm. Initial estimates of losses were reported as 3-5 billion Euros.

The worst flooding event in 6 years hit Mozambique in February. An estimated 30 people were killed and 120,000 evacuated from the central Zambezi basin. Additional flooding and loss of life was attributed to the landfall of tropical cyclone Favio on 22nd February.

Abnormally heavy and early rainfall in Sudan since the end of June has caused the Nile River and other seasonal rivers to overflow, resulting in extensive flooding and damaging more than 16,000 houses.

In May a series of large swell waves (estimated at 3-4.5 meters) swamped some 68 islands in 16 atolls in the Maldives causing serious flooding and extensive damages.

In early May, Uruguay was hit by the worst flooding since 1959. Heavy rainfall in portions of Uruguay produced floods that affected more than 110,000 people and severely damaged crops and buildings.

Heat Waves

Two extreme heat waves affected south-eastern Europe in June and July, breaking the previous records with temperatures exceeding 40 °C. Dozens of people died and fire-fighters worked around the clock fighting blazes devastating thousands of hectares of land. On 23 July, temperatures hit 45°C in Bulgaria, setting a new record.

In May a heat wave affected areas across western and central Russia breaking several temperature records. In Moscow, temperatures on 28 May reached 32.9°C, the highest temperature recorded in May since 1891.

In many European countries, April was the warmest ever recorded with the temperatures reaching more than 4°C over and above the long-term mean in some areas.

Recognizing the severe health impacts of heat waves, the WMO and the World Health Organization (WHO), are at an advanced stage of preparing Guidance on the implementation of Heat Health early Warning Systems (HHWS).

Climate Change and Extremes

According to the most recent climate change scientific assessment reports of the joint WMO/UNEP Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) rank among the 12 warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature. The 100-year trend (1906-2005) is 0.74°C. The linear warming trend over the last 50 years (0.13°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the last 100 years. Paleoclimatic studies suggest that the average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely higher than during any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the highest in the past 1,300 years.

IPCC further notes that there has been an increasing trend in the extreme events observed during the last 50 years, particularly heavy precipitation events, hot days, hot nights and heat waves. Climate change projections indicate it to be very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.

Additional facts:

An unusual cold winter season brought winds, blizzards and rare snowfall to various provinces in South America with temperatures reaching as low as -22°C in Argentina and -18°C in Chile in the beginning of July.

On 27 June a winter weather front moved across South Africa bringing the country's first significant snowfall since 1981 (25 cm of snow in parts of the country).

In India, a heat wave during mid-May produced temperatures as high as 45-50°C.

Many European countries had their warmest January on record. January temperatures in The Netherlands were the highest since measurements were first taken in 1706, averaging about 7.1°C (2.8°C above 1961-1990 average) while in Germany the temperatures were 4.6°C above the 1961-1990 average.

An increase in intense tropical cyclone activities in the North Atlantic since about 1970 has been observed.

This information is based on inputs received from several WMO Members and with the collaboration of the NOAA National Climatic Data Centre (NCDC), USA, Germany's National Meteorological Service, the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) and the Met Office, UK. It includes an indicative but not exhaustive coverage of the observed weather and climate extremes. More comprehensive information on weather and climate anomalies observed in 2007 will be provided towards the end of the year.

WMO is the United Nations' authoritative voice on weather, climate and water

For more information please contact:
Ms Carine Richard-Van Maele <javascript:sendMail('cpa','wmo.int');> , Chief, Communications and Public Affairs, WMO.
Tel: +41 (0)22 730 83 15.

There you have it: many more extreme events, a predicted consequence of warming. There is no question that the climate is warming. The loss of arctic and antarctic ice cover, the increasing ranges of certain plants and animals and insects, all point to it. The issue is not that the global climate is warming, that's a simple fact, the issue is the human contribution to it, and that's an issue surrounded by spin and politics and vested interests. The climate's been warming for about 12,000 years, that's what ended the last Ice Age. 12,000 years ago the place where I live was buried under several kilometres of ice. It isn't now, so obviously the climate is warmer now. D'uh... It's also true that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has increased about 30% since the Industrial Revolution, that's clear from measurements on bubbles of the ancient atmosphere found in ice cores. Whether human activity is or is not the cause is still problematic, because the changes clearly attributable to human activities are approximately at the level of uncertainty in the data.

But I don't think that really matters anyway. Pumping carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere makes it warmer, that's a simple fact, and whether what we're seeing now is a natural cycle or human caused, we should make every possible effort to minimize our contribution to it.

 

[Karlin]

Duh

DUH , I was such a fool to believed that 650 million metric tonnes of CO2 would have any effect at all on the atmosphere. Gee I feel so stupid.

NOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.

 

[Walter]

Back to the OP:


Cold, hard facts take the heat out of some hot claims
Michael Duffy
August 18, 2007



Imagine if the American government agency responsible for temperature records had announced a fortnight ago that it had overestimated annual temperatures since the year 2000. Imagine if, at the time of correcting this error, the hottest year on record was mysteriously altered from 1998 to 1934. Imagine further that if you considered the 10 hottest years on record after these corrections, the hottest decade changed from the 1990s to the 1930s.
Would that change your views on global warming? It should, because climate change theory says increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere raises the temperature. Yet the hot 1930s was hardly a decade of carbon-spewing industrial growth.
Well, all these things have happened. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies calculates the average US temperature figures. It does this by processing data from land measurement sites. Earlier this year a Canadian mathematician named Steve McIntyre approached the institute and pointed out an error in its more recent calculations. Figures since 2000 had been inflated by about 0.15 of a degree celsius.
The institute thanked him and on August 7 quietly changed these figures, and some of the rankings on its list of the hottest years on record, which extends back to 1880. It did this without any public acknowledgment of the changes.
The Goddard Institute is a major supporter of the climate change orthodoxy, and the discovery that it got one of the central data sets of global warming science and debate wrong is embarrassing and disturbing.
Previously, McIntyre, along with the economist Ross McKitrick, had demolished the so-called "hockey stick" chart used in the third report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The graph incorrectly portrayed the history of the Earth's average temperature over the past millennium as essentially unchanged until a steep climb in the 20th century. This made a modest rise in temperature appear far more unusual than it really was.
The two men had difficulty gaining access to the data and methodologies used in creating the hockey stick, a difficulty facing many who want to question the most basic research on which the science of climate change rests. It was McIntyre's continuing interest in such basic questions, pursued publicly at his blog climateaudit.org, that led him to look at the problematic siting of many US land weather stations (see photos of them at the website SurfaceStations.org) and how the data they produce is processed.

Strange as it might seem in a scientific field that spends some $6.4 billion a year on often abstruse research and computer modelling, the integrity of the basic temperature data is emerging as a serious problem. The Goddard Institute claims to correct data from poorly sited stations, but McIntyre says it refused to tell him how it does this in sufficient detail for him to check its results. When he obtained some of the raw data from specific sites and compared it with the processed temperatures created by the institute, he found problems. In one case data from a good site, at the Grand Canyon, had been changed to make the 1930s colder than they were.
Across the Atlantic, the British mathematician Douglas Keenan has claimed that two important academic papers on the reliability of Chinese weather stations are wrong. This is a major issue because one of the papers is cited by the IPCC to support its position that measurement errors owing to urbanisation and the "heat island effect" - which makes cities warmer than their surroundings - are insignificant. Keenan claims to have discovered that some of the Chinese stations have been moved a lot. One, for example, had five different locations from 1954 to 1983, over a distance of 41 kilometres. This makes the data largely useless.
It took several years to gain access to the information needed to reveal this fault with the papers, because the academics involved refused to release it. Keenan finally obtained it by the creative means of using Britain's Freedom of Information Act, on the grounds that an academic who had the information was a public servant.
The climate change establishment is represented by the website realclimate.org. Its response to McIntyre's success in getting the Goddard Institute to reduce US temperature figures for the period since 2000 has been to say that the implication for global averages is imperceptible, since the US is only a very small fraction of the global area. Strictly speaking this is correct, although America's figures are more important than its land area might indicate because they go back so far in an unbroken line, which is fairly unusual.
Since the break-up of the USSR, the number of weather stations in the world has declined by half. Many of them used to be in cold areas. The scientists who compile global averages presumably try to take this into account - although in light of some of the above stories you have to wonder just how well they succeed.
Whatever the scientific implications of McIntyre's revelation, the rhetorical one is huge. America is the centre of the global debate on climate change. No longer will Americans or anyone else be able to say the hottest year on record in their great nation was 1998. Looking at the new top 10, it's hard to see any signs of global warming. The ranking, starting from the hottest year, goes: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, 1939.
It's a sad thought, but maybe we and our weather are not as unusual as some want to believe.

 

[typingrandomstuff]

No proofs, no facts. Not trustworthy. Hum. Cooling trend in the earth's core have nothing to do with human activity. What's the next big thing? We live in a bubble and is not connect to the world? Keep on shreading ideas about fake stuff. One day you live to regret.

I know scientists are wrong a lot. A lot of times they make up stuff like how people post and argue, but I think the data is reliable. The data do not lie. If you do not believe me, you can research. This is turning to be an opinion rather than facts. I know there must be a global snowball trend. What cause the trend? I believe it is the electromagnetic forces and the weakening heat within the center of the earth.

People, you see, each planet have their own limit. They have a specific amount of energy and products to use. Using those products, the planet is able to live, make electricity, give planet life, change and durability. When those products are used up and there is no atmosphere or recycle parts, the planet dies. It cannot be proven, but do a star live and die? Do a planet live and die? Do we all live and die for the creation of the universe?

Another way a planet can die is through loss recycling. Although recycling do help the planet prolongs the life, some of the energy is escaped. For example, during a fusion reaction, the heat is escaped. As more of the similar energies disappear, earth grows weaker.

Does that mean recycling is evil? No. Recycling is better. It helps a lot. Recycling is the durable method to reuse items. Of course, the best method is to use less and do more by people's physical powers.

It's cold in the core and hot on the surface plus the electromagnetic flip to cool down the extreme heat. See how earth try to help? You guys and girls can do it. There's nothing to it.

 

[typingrandomstuff]

Universe created by force. Change by evolution and dies by the creation's laws.

 

[hermanntrude]

No proofs, no facts. Not trustworthy. Hum. Cooling trend in the earth's core have nothing to do with human activity. What's the next big thing? We live in a bubble and is not connect to the world? Keep on shreading ideas about fake stuff. One day you live to regret.

I know scientists are wrong a lot. A lot of times they make up stuff like how people post and argue, but I think the data is reliable. The data do not lie. If you do not believe me, you can research. This is turning to be an opinion rather than facts. I know there must be a global snowball trend. What cause the trend? I believe it is the electromagnetic forces and the weakening heat within the center of the earth.

.

I'm not arguing that global cooling isn't happening. I'm arguing that it's happening so unbelievably slowly that it has NO bearing whatsoever on this debate, which is about a million-times-faster process of global warming.

 

[typingrandomstuff]

Yay!

 

[Tonington]

Back to the OP:


Cold, hard facts take the heat out of some hot claims
Michael Duffy
August 18, 2007



Imagine if the American government agency responsible for temperature records had announced a fortnight ago that it had overestimated annual temperatures since the year 2000. Imagine if, at the time of correcting this error, the hottest year on record was mysteriously altered from 1998 to 1934. Imagine further that if you considered the 10 hottest years on record after these corrections, the hottest decade changed from the 1990s to the 1930s.
Would that change your views on global warming? It should, because climate change theory says increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere raises the temperature. Yet the hot 1930s was hardly a decade of carbon-spewing industrial growth.
Well, all these things have happened. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies calculates the average US temperature figures. It does this by processing data from land measurement sites. Earlier this year a Canadian mathematician named Steve McIntyre approached the institute and pointed out an error in its more recent calculations. Figures since 2000 had been inflated by about 0.15 of a degree celsius.
The institute thanked him and on August 7 quietly changed these figures, and some of the rankings on its list of the hottest years on record, which extends back to 1880. It did this without any public acknowledgment of the changes.
The Goddard Institute is a major supporter of the climate change orthodoxy, and the discovery that it got one of the central data sets of global warming science and debate wrong is embarrassing and disturbing.
Previously, McIntyre, along with the economist Ross McKitrick, had demolished the so-called "hockey stick" chart used in the third report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The graph incorrectly portrayed the history of the Earth's average temperature over the past millennium as essentially unchanged until a steep climb in the 20th century. This made a modest rise in temperature appear far more unusual than it really was.
The two men had difficulty gaining access to the data and methodologies used in creating the hockey stick, a difficulty facing many who want to question the most basic research on which the science of climate change rests. It was McIntyre's continuing interest in such basic questions, pursued publicly at his blog climateaudit.org, that led him to look at the problematic siting of many US land weather stations (see photos of them at the website SurfaceStations.org) and how the data they produce is processed.

Strange as it might seem in a scientific field that spends some $6.4 billion a year on often abstruse research and computer modelling, the integrity of the basic temperature data is emerging as a serious problem. The Goddard Institute claims to correct data from poorly sited stations, but McIntyre says it refused to tell him how it does this in sufficient detail for him to check its results. When he obtained some of the raw data from specific sites and compared it with the processed temperatures created by the institute, he found problems. In one case data from a good site, at the Grand Canyon, had been changed to make the 1930s colder than they were.
Across the Atlantic, the British mathematician Douglas Keenan has claimed that two important academic papers on the reliability of Chinese weather stations are wrong. This is a major issue because one of the papers is cited by the IPCC to support its position that measurement errors owing to urbanisation and the "heat island effect" - which makes cities warmer than their surroundings - are insignificant. Keenan claims to have discovered that some of the Chinese stations have been moved a lot. One, for example, had five different locations from 1954 to 1983, over a distance of 41 kilometres. This makes the data largely useless.
It took several years to gain access to the information needed to reveal this fault with the papers, because the academics involved refused to release it. Keenan finally obtained it by the creative means of using Britain's Freedom of Information Act, on the grounds that an academic who had the information was a public servant.
The climate change establishment is represented by the website realclimate.org. Its response to McIntyre's success in getting the Goddard Institute to reduce US temperature figures for the period since 2000 has been to say that the implication for global averages is imperceptible, since the US is only a very small fraction of the global area. Strictly speaking this is correct, although America's figures are more important than its land area might indicate because they go back so far in an unbroken line, which is fairly unusual.
Since the break-up of the USSR, the number of weather stations in the world has declined by half. Many of them used to be in cold areas. The scientists who compile global averages presumably try to take this into account - although in light of some of the above stories you have to wonder just how well they succeed.
Whatever the scientific implications of McIntyre's revelation, the rhetorical one is huge. America is the centre of the global debate on climate change. No longer will Americans or anyone else be able to say the hottest year on record in their great nation was 1998. Looking at the new top 10, it's hard to see any signs of global warming. The ranking, starting from the hottest year, goes: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, 1939.
It's a sad thought, but maybe we and our weather are not as unusual as some want to believe.

I've already touched on this, but how does the temperature record of the United States, after a change of 0.02 in the hottest year(1998 went from 1.25 to 1.23) have anything to do with GLOBAL warming? A tiny portion of the globe with a small change from two different databases is hardly the duck in the barrel it's made out to be.

Most importantly, the long term US averages have not changed rank. 2002-2006 still beats out 1930-1934.

 

[typingrandomstuff]

I forgot to add that data is reliable unless people change the data.

 

[typingrandomstuff]

I also forget fluctuation must occur at this time of year in the graph except the people just roughly graphed the humphery-model.

 

[Extrafire]

I don't have much time. I'll reply to what I can and I'll get back to the rest on the weekend.

Now it seems to me, if solar irradiance were the driver of emmissions, the two graphs would show some form of correlation. They don't. There have been many studies in the past which claimed changes to solar irradiance was the largest contributing factor to global warming. The fact is, when the data is correlated, there is no way the solar irradience can be the largest contributing factor.

Well that's a very simplistic and incomplete idea of solar variances. The sun has many differing cycles. Sunspots vary over an 11 year cycle, but also on a longer (maybe irregular) changes. During the "Little Ice Age" there was almost no sunspot activity at all, yet that 11 year cycle was still there. I've also heard that there's a 50 year cycle, but I can't remember anything about it. Then there's a 1500 year cycle that's been there regular as clockwork for 900 thousand years, even through ice ages and interglacial periods. Dennis Avery describes that kind of stuff in an audio.

Here's a graph of CO2 and sunspot and temperatures. Notice how the temperature fluctuations are almost in lockstep with sunspot activity, but not CO2.

Ice cores have revealed that CO2 increase follows temperature increase. Notice that Al Gore used them in his movie, covering a few hundred thousand years, one huge graph above the other. Usually in this kind of graph, the two are superimposed so the relationship is very clear, just like in the graph I pasted here. Al Gore didn't do that. Could it be because if he had, it would clearly have shown the temperature increases preceeding the CO2 increases. And he wouldn't have been able to make his movie.

Temperatures preceed CO2 increases by 800 years. I don't know why the time delay, but that's what happens. Let's see, CO2 is increasing now, what was happening to the temperature 800 years ago? Oh right! The medieval climate optimum, when temperatures were much warmer than now.

 

[typingrandomstuff]

Wow, the sun is gigantic and the earth is like a small coin.

 

[Tonington]

Well that's a very simplistic and incomplete idea of solar variances. The sun has many differing cycles. Sunspots vary over an 11 year cycle, but also on a longer (maybe irregular) changes. During the "Little Ice Age" there was almost no sunspot activity at all, yet that 11 year cycle was still there. I've also heard that there's a 50 year cycle, but I can't remember anything about it. Then there's a 1500 year cycle that's been there regular as clockwork for 900 thousand years, even through ice ages and interglacial periods. Dennis Avery describes that kind of stuff in an audio.

Here's a graph of CO2 and sunspot and temperatures. Notice how the temperature fluctuations are almost in lockstep with sunspot activity, but not CO2.

Ice cores have revealed that CO2 increase follows temperature increase. Notice that Al Gore used them in his movie, covering a few hundred thousand years, one huge graph above the other. Usually in this kind of graph, the two are superimposed so the relationship is very clear, just like in the graph I pasted here. Al Gore didn't do that. Could it be because if he had, it would clearly have shown the temperature increases preceeding the CO2 increases. And he wouldn't have been able to make his movie.

Temperatures preceed CO2 increases by 800 years. I don't know why the time delay, but that's what happens. Let's see, CO2 is increasing now, what was happening to the temperature 800 years ago? Oh right! The medieval climate optimum, when temperatures were much warmer than now.

I was responding to the article which cited solar irradiance, not sun spots. Solar irradiance does not correlate to the noted rise in greenhouse gases. End of story.

I'm not sure where you found that graph, as the graphs I've seen are markedly different. Your graph appears to be plotting the length of cycles versus years with a temperature overlay, which is absurd. The average sunspot cycle is about 11 years, but there is some variance. If we want to plot the sun spot numbers we get very different graphics:

Also, sunspots tend to increase in number as the suns irradiance increases, which as I've discussed already has no discernible effect on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.

The medieval warm period, is annecdotal evidence of warming, which doesn't even equate to a global scale. Regional warming, no doubt. But the idea that the medieval warm period was globally warmer than today is incorrect. All proxy reconstructions agree that it is warmer now, and warming faster. There are numerous studies listed here from the NOAA, with accompanied data if you wish to fact check. Specifically, the NOAA says this about the medieval warm and little ice age:

Medieval Warm Period - 9th to 14th Centuries

Norse seafaring and colonization around the North Atlantic at the end of the 9th century was generalized as proof that the global climate then was warmer than today. In the early days of paleoclimatology, the sparsely distributed paleoenvironmental records were interpreted to indicate that there was a "Medieval Warm Period" where temperatures were warmer than today. This "Medieval Warm Period" or "Medieval Optimum," was generally believed to extend from the 9th to 13th centuries, prior to the onset of the so-called "Little Ice Age."

In contrast, the evidence for a global (or at least northern hemisphere) "Little Ice Age" from the 15th to 19th centuries as a period when the Earth was generally cooler than in the mid 20th century has more or less stood the test of time as paleoclimatic records have become numerous. The idea of a global or hemispheric "Medieval Warm Period" that was warmer than today however, has turned out to be incorrect.

For larger viewing version of graph, please click here or on image.

There are not enough records available to reconstruct global or even hemispheric mean temperature prior to about 600 years ago with a high degree of confidence. What records that do exist show is that there was no multi-century periods when global or hemispheric temperatures were the same or warmer than in the 20th century. For example, Mann et al. (1999) generated a 1,000 year Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction (shown above) using data from multiple ice cores and tree ring records. This reconstruction suggests that the 1998 annual average temperature was more than two standard deviations warmer than any annual average temperature value since AD 1,000 (shown in yellow). (For complete scientific reference of this study, please click here. Link to Mann 1999 FTP Data.)

In summary, it appears that the 20th century, and in particular the late 20th century, is likely the warmest the Earth has seen in at least 1200 years. To learn more about the so-called "Medieval Warm Period", please read this review published in Climatic Change, written by M.K. Hughes and H.F. Diaz. (For complete review reference click here.)

 

[typingrandomstuff]

A persuasion theory fight.

 

[Extrafire]

I was responding to the article which cited solar irradiance, not sun spots.

And I was explaining that there are many variations in solar output that affect temperatures on earth. Sunspots are important because they correspond to the strength of the suns magnetic field, which affects the amount of cosmic radiation reaching the earth, which affects the amount and elevation and characteristics (water or ice) of cloud formation, which has a huge influence on global climate.

A team at the Danish National Space Center has discovered how cosmic rays from exploding stars can help to make clouds in the atmosphere. The results support the theory that cosmic rays influence Earth's climate.

An essential role for remote stars in everyday weather on Earth has been revealed by an experiment at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.
It is already well-established that when cosmic rays, which are high-speed atomic particles originating in exploded stars far away in the Milky Way, penetrate Earth's atmosphere they produce substantial amounts of ions and release free electrons.
Now, results from the Danish experiment show that the released electrons significantly promote the formation of building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei on which water vapour condenses to make clouds.
Hence, a causal mechanism by which cosmic rays can facilitate the production of clouds in Earth's atmosphere has been experimentally identified for the first time.
The Danish team officially announced their discovery on Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, published by the Royal Society, the British national academy of science.
.....
"We were amazed by the speed and efficiency with which the electrons do their work of creating the building blocks for the cloud condensation nuclei," says team leader Henrik Svensmark, who is Director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research within the Danish National Space Center. "This is a completely new result within climate science."
A missing link in climate theory

The experimental results lend strong empirical support to the theory proposed a decade ago by Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen that cosmic rays influence Earth's climate through their effect on cloud formation.
The original theory rested on data showing a strong correlation between variation in the intensity of cosmic radiation penetrating the atmosphere and the amount of low-altitude clouds. Cloud cover increases when the intensity of cosmic rays grows and decreases when the intensity declines. It is known that low-altitude clouds have an overall cooling effect on the Earth's surface. Hence, variations in cloud cover caused by cosmic rays can change the surface temperature. The existence of such a cosmic connection to Earth's climate might thus help to explain past and present variations in Earth's climate.

More info on sunspots:

Incidentally, the Sporer, Maunder, and Dalton minima coincide with the colder periods of the Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1450 to 1820. More recently it was discovered that the sunspot number during 1861-1989 shows a remarkable parallelism with the simultaneous variation in northern hemisphere mean temperatures (2). There is an even better correlation with the length of the solar cycle, between years of the highest numbers of sunspots. For example, the temperature anomaly was - 0.4 K in 1890 when the cycle was 11.7 years, but + 0.25 K in 1989 when the cycle was 9.8 years. Some critics of the theory of man-induced global warming have seized on this discovery to criticize the greenhouse gas theory.
All this evokes the important question of how sunspots affect the Earth's climate. To answer this question, we need to know how total solar irradiance received by the Earth is affected by sunspot activity.
Intuitively one may assume the that total solar irradiance would decrease as the number of (optically dark) sunspots increased. However direct satellite measurements of irradiance have shown just the opposite to be the case. This means that more sunspots deliver more energy to the atmosphere, so that global temperatures should rise.

Solar irradiance does not correlate to the noted rise in greenhouse gases. End of story.

You're ignoring this:

Temperatures preceed CO2 increases by 800 years.

And where does all of our heat come from? Right. The sun. It does correlate. Even Al Gore used the evidence (only he distorted it to fit his theory).

The medieval warm period, is annecdotal evidence of warming, which doesn't even equate to a global scale. Regional warming, no doubt. But the idea that the medieval warm period was globally warmer than today is incorrect.

:lol: I know that a lot of doomsayers have tried to pretend that the Medieval Climate Optimum was a local weather pattern, but really, that's such a pathetic attempt to manipulate established history and geology. And the infamous Mann Hockey Stick Graph????:lol::lol: That's been so thoroughly exposed as a fraud, not even the IPCC tries to defend it anymore! In fact, they totally ignore it in their latest report, after prominently using it 6 times in the previous report.
Check out the story of the expose:

So Steve starts digging. First, he read's Mann's original report. He finds it an exercise in obscurity. From what he published, it's very, very hard to tell just what statistical methods Mann used, or even what data he operated on.
This is wrong -- it's not supposed to be that way. Scientists are supposed to leave a clear path so other people can follow them up and replicate their research.
The fact that it's so obscure suggests that Mann does not want anyone checking his work.
But Mann used government grants in his research. Which means he has an obligation to disclose. Steve contacts him, asks for the information. He gets a runaround. He gets pointed to a website that does not have the information. He tries again, and again gets a runaround -- in fact, Mann sends him a very rude letter saying that he will no longer communicate with him.
Why should he? Steve isn't a legitimate researcher in that field. He's just a businessman.
But Steve is now sure there's something fishy going on, and he doesn't give up. He gets other people to help him. Finally they are pointed to a different website, where, to their surprise, they find that someone has accidentally left a copy of the FORTRAN program that was used to crunch the numbers. It wasn't supposed to be where Steve found it -- which is why it hadn't been deleted.
Also, there was a little more carelessness -- there is a set of data labeled "censored." Steve can't see, right away, what's significant about it, except that a score or so of data sets are left out of the censored data.
Steve looks at the program. He finds the glitch rather easily. He tries the program on random numbers and realizes that it always yields the distinctive shape that has caused all the stir.
Sorting out the data sets is much harder. He contacts a lot of people. He does what anyone checking these figures would have to do, and he realizes: If anyone had tried to check, a lot of this information would already have been put together.
He realizes: I am the first person ever to attempt to verify these astonishing, anomalous, politically hot results. Out of all the researchers in this field who had a responsibility to do "due diligence" before accepting the data, none of them has done it.
Finally he has all the original data put together. It includes more than just real numbers -- it includes "extrapolated" data, which means that sometimes, where there were holes, Mann just made the numbers up and plugged them in. This is sloppy and lazy -- but it's just the beginning.
What's crucial is that Steve now understands why the "censored" data sets are smaller than the ones Mann used. The full source data includes those misleading results that shouldn't have been used. But the "censored" data sets leave it out. This means that Mann knew exactly what he was doing. This was not an accident. Mann ran the program on the data without the misleading numbers, and then he ran it with the misleading numbers. What he published was the results that made his ideological case.

"To disprove the `Hockey Stick', it is sufficient to merely demonstrate conclusively the existence of the Medieval Warm Period and/or the Little Ice Age in proxy and/or historical evidence from around the world."

In the Sargasso Sea (an area popularly known as the `Bermuda Triangle'), radiocarbon dating of marine organisms in sea bed sediments by L. Keigwin [SIZE=-1][12][/SIZE] demonstrates that sea surface temperatures were around 2°F cooler than today around 400 years ago (the Little Ice Age), and around 2°F warmer than today 1,000 years ago (the Medieval Warm Period). In addition, the data also demonstrates that the period before 500 BC (the so-called Holocene Climatic Optimum) saw temperatures up to 4°F warmer - and without any greenhouse gas component to cause it.

In Taiwan, Kuo-Yen Wei et al. performed lake sediment studies similar to those in Kenya, which again revealed the imprint of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age[SIZE=-1] [13][/SIZE]. According to their summary -

• "The interlaminated dark and light colored lake sediments obtained from several mountain lakes appear to reflect large-scale wet and dry cycles over the past 2400 years (Chen et al., 1993; Lou et al, in press). The detected 450-years periodicity is similar to that of the solar oscillation. The Medieval Warm Period (1000-1300 AD) and the Little Ice Age (1300-1850 AD) were recognized (Lou et al., in press). These two epochs were also identified from palynological records from the Central Range (Liew et al., 1995)"

They also referred to studies of annual to seasonal records from tree-rings

• "Studies of tree rings of Taiwan fir allowed to reconstruct past summer and winter temperatures of the alpine mountain area during the past 300 years. It is demonstrated that cold climate prevailed during the Little Ice Age (Tsou and Liu, 1995)."

Finally in a synopsis of the various proxies studied in and around Taiwan -

• "During the past 2000 years, the climate has become warmer and wetter, intervened with the conspicuous Medieval Warm Period (1000-1300 AD) and the Little Ice Age (1300-1850 AD). Tree-ring data confirmed also the effect of the Little Ice Age in alpine Taiwan mountains. Fluctuation of humidity over the past 2,400 years as derived from lake sediments suggests that the recognized dry/cold periods coincide with major historical commotion events in Chinese history."

In a recent paper in the South African Journal of Science, Tyson et al [SIZE=-1][27] [/SIZE]developed a climate history from oxygen 18 isotopes (a temperature proxy), carbon 14 isotopes (a proxy for solar activity), and colour density data obtained from a well-dated stalagmite in a cave in the Makapansgat Valley. According to the authors -

• "The climate of the interior of South Africa was around 1°C cooler in the Little Ice Age and may have been over 3°C higher than at present during the extremes of the Medieval Warm Period. It was variable throughout the millennium, but considerably more so during the warming of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Extreme events in the record show distinct teleconnections with similar events in other parts of the world, in both the northern and southern hemispheres."

They dated the Medieval Warm Period at pre-1000 to 1300 AD, with mean temperatures 6 to 7°F warmer than today, and dated the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1800 with mean temperatures up to 2°F cooler than today.
The authors then proceeded to attribute a cause to these two events.

• "The lowest temperature events recorded during the Little Ice Age in South Africa are shown to be coeval with the Maunder and Sporer Minima in solar irradiance. The medieval warming is shown to have been coincided with the cosmogenic 10Be and 14C isotopic maxima recorded in tree rings elsewhere in the world during the Medieval Maximum in solar radiation."

The variability of the sun causing impacts on earth's climate, was reaffirmed by this South African study. All the climate changes they noted correlated with known changes on the sun.

Published multi-proxy studies by Villalba in 1994 [SIZE=-1][30] [/SIZE]and Cioccale in 1999 [SIZE=-1][2][/SIZE] confirm the existence of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in Argentina.
In the central regions of Argentina, there was a warm climate from 600 AD up to around 1320 AD, allowing human populations to settle and cultivate higher altitude areas, matching the Medieval Warm Period. After 1320, two cold `pulses' were noted. During the second pulse (the main phase of the Little Ice Age), glaciers in the southern Andes began to advance and residents abandoned settlements in the higher altitudes. According to Cioccale, "Both cold pulses can be related to the Sporer and Maunder Minimums respectively". Again the sun was held responsible for these events.

Lots more studies from around the world demonstrating conclusively that the Medieval Climate Optimum was a world wide event. Scientific references are provided at bottom.

Try the Global Warming Test. There's lots of explanations as you go along. Caution: This section contains sound science, not media hype, and may therefore contain material not suitable for young people trying to get a good grade in political correctness.

 

[Niflmir]

I remember reading that precise temperature measurements didn't begin until about the 1980's and that is when the "cycle length vs temperature anomaly" graph stops plotting data. I have two fundamental questions: what is the magnitude of the error bars on that graph and how is the "temperature anomaly" calculated? Without good answers to those questions, the results are what we in the business call spurious.

 

[typingrandomstuff]

Found the relation on cold and position of the universe. Still convinced global warming is by Carbon dioxide excess. Universes take years after all to shift from one place to another.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/25/MNGCIDSL4R1.DTL&type=science

 

[Extrafire]

"A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable.” - The New York Times, 1975
_____________________________________________________________
"There is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition."
- Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Meteorology, MIT
___________________________________________________________________
"The polar icecaps of Mars are receding at several miles a year, much faster than ours and that the moons of Saturn and Jupiter are melting, in fact several of their moons were ice and are now liquid seas - how are SUV's causing that David Rothschild?" - Alex Jones

"Because those planets are closer to the sun, my friend." - David de Rothschild, Author '77 Essential Skills to Stop Climate Changes'
__________________________________________________________________

There you have it: many more extreme events, a predicted consequence of warming. There is no question that the climate is warming.

There is no question that the climate has warmed. There is a question whether it is still warming.

The loss of arctic and antarctic ice cover, the increasing ranges of certain plants and animals and insects, all point to it.

Arctic sea ice is declining. This is nothing new, it was also in decline the last time it was this warm in the late '30's, only then it was considered a good thing. Also sometime around the end of the 19th century, also considered a good thing. And in 1421 (I think that's the correct year) the Chinese navy sent a polar expedition that encountered no ice.

However, while ice is currently receding on the southern portion of Greenland it's still nowhere near as benign a climate as it was when the Norse farmed there, and ice over the northern part is increasing, as is ice on Antarctica.

The issue is not that the global climate is warming, that's a simple fact, the issue is the human contribution to it, and that's an issue surrounded by spin and politics and vested interests.

So true.

The climate's been warming for about 12,000 years, that's what ended the last Ice Age. 12,000 years ago the place where I live was buried under several kilometres of ice. It isn't now, so obviously the climate is warmer now. D'uh...

I don't think that's all that correct. I recall reading somewhere that other interglacials have been much warmer than now. Also, we know there were old growth forests 7,000 years ago in some areas that today are buried under glaciers.

Ulrich Joerin, a wiry Swiss scientist in his late twenties, is part of a small group of climatologists who are in the process of radically changing the image of the Swiss mountain world. He and a colleague are standing in front of the Tschierva Glacier in Engadin, Switzerland at 2,200 meters (7,217 feet). "A few thousand years ago, there were no glaciers here at all," he says. "Back then we would have been standing in the middle of a forest." He digs into the ground with his mountain boot until something dark appears: an old tree trunk, covered in ice, polished by water and almost black with humidity. "And here is the proof," says Joerin. Radical new theory
The tree trunk in the ice is part of a huge climatic puzzle that Joerin is analyzing for his doctoral thesis for the Institute for Geological Science at the University of Bern. And he is coming to an astonishing conclusion. The fact that the Alpine glaciers are melting right now appears to be part of regular cycle in which snow and ice have been coming and going for thousands of years.
The glaciers, according to the new hypothesis, have shrunk down to almost nothing at least ten times since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. "At the time of the Roman Empire, for example, the glacier tongue was about 300 meters higher than today," says Joerin. Indeed, Hannibal probably never saw a single big chunk of ice when he was crossing the Alps with his army.

It's also true that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has increased about 30% since the Industrial Revolution, that's clear from measurements on bubbles of the ancient atmosphere found in ice cores. Whether human activity is or is not the cause is still problematic, because the changes clearly attributable to human activities are approximately at the level of uncertainty in the data.

I've already addressed how minuscule the human contribution is compared to the natural variation. Here's the graphs that Al Gore wouldn't superimpose in his film

But I don't think that really matters anyway. Pumping carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere makes it warmer, that's a simple fact, and whether what we're seeing now is a natural cycle or human caused, we should make every possible effort to minimize our contribution to it.

Very little warmer. Mostly it mitigates the extremes of temperature swings. And the efforts to minimize our contributions would have no effect, while putting the money elsewhere could do great good.

 

[s_lone]

Very little warmer. Mostly it mitigates the extremes of temperature swings. And the efforts to minimize our contributions would have no effect, while putting the money elsewhere could do great good.

Minimizing our contributions would have no effects? How about cleaner air? How about no more SMOG?!