Melting Arctic to kick global warming into overdrive

[bigfish]

Nice source you've got there bigfish. PR Watch

Dear Bernie Gunther

In your haste to change the subject and smear, you managed to conveniently overlook the fact that the paper by Hai Xu et al., "SOLAR ACTIVITY IS PRIMARY DRIVING FORCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE" was published first in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Volume 230, 17 January 2006, Pages 155-164.

To the best of my knowledge, this publication receives no funding from "evil" Exxon or any other entity on your rather extensive lists of proscribed organs and persons.

If you're unhappy with the link source then you can always use the one at Benny Peisner's Faculty of Science Liverpool Sir John Moore's University, which is here:

http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/CCNet-04-01-06.htm

I hope this helps.

By the way, I've pointed out to you on a previous occasion that Sourcewatch is funded by The Center for Media and Democracy. CMD's Board of Directors includes Joseph Mendelson. Mendelson is a lawyer for Douglas Tompkins' Foundation for Deep Ecology, which Tompkins created with a $17 million "gift".

Mr Tomkins made his fortune by cracking the lash in SE Asian sweatshops before selling the Esprit de Corp apparel label for $150,000,000 to a partnership that includes his wife. Today, Tompkins lives in a compound (complete with landing-strip and 3 gas guzzling airplanes) set in 800,000 acres of pristine Chilean/Argentinian wilderness that he controls.

Sweatshop Guy's Foundation also funds

1. the Center for Food Safety

2. the Turning Point Project

3. the International Center for Technology Assessment

Doug's message: 'Technological civilization is destroying nature and human life.'

Doug's solution: 'Dismantle technological civilization. Simple as that.'

bigfish translation: Doug wants to return civilization to the feudal relations of medieval times.

 

[bigfish]

wikipedia

Thanks DJ

The problem with wikipedia is that no one really knows whether the information it contains is reliable or not. For example, Michael Mann's MBH99 and the Mann and Jones (2003) proxy reconstructions still appear in spaghetti graphs today...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

...even though Mann's work has been comprehensively demolished by a number of different researchers including a special National Academy of Sciences Panel.

I don't suppose you can explain the physical mechanism to me in your own words can you?

Cheers.

 

[bigfish]

[....]
The clever trick about the Heidelberg Appeal was to make it sufficiently vague and to include wording about ecology that many reasonable scientists endorsed, including the 49 of their 72 Nobel Laureates who also signed the World Scientists Warning to Humanity at approximately the same time. The nature of the second document makes it very doubtful that the 49 laureates who signed both would have had much respect for the uses to which the Heidelberg Appeal was then put by the PR people who originally circulated and promoted it.

"Very doubtful"!

Does that mean to the best of your knowledge none of the 49 Nobel Laureates have announced publicly that they've withdrawn there support for the Appeal?

By the way, you never did come back to defend your "considerable correlation" between CO2 and temperature thesis. Do you now accept that it may be seriously flawed?

 

[MarkMark]

Thanks DJ

The problem with wikipedia is that no one really knows whether the information it contains is reliable or not. For example, Michael Mann's MBH99 and the Mann and Jones (2003) proxy reconstructions still appear in spaghetti graphs today...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

...even though Mann's work has been comprehensively demolished by a number of different researchers including a special National Academy of Sciences Panel.

You again!

You really don't like people pointing you towards the facts do you

The Earth was hotter in the late 20th Century than it had been in the last 400 or possibly 1,000 years, a report requested by the US Congress concludes.

It backs some of the key findings of the original study that gave rise to the iconic "hockey stick" graph.

The diagram, which shows a sharp upturn in temperatures in recent decades, has been a prime target for groups who doubt humans are warming the planet.

These sceptics had challenged the way the hockey stick data was assembled.

They argued it had been massaged to produce the distinctive shape.

The fall-out culminated in one US politician demanding to see financial and research records from the three scientists who had put the data together: Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes (sometimes referred to simply as MBH).

'Plausible' assessment

The new report, carried out by a panel of the US-based National Research Council (NRC), largely vindicates the researchers' work, first published in 1998.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5109188.stm

(BBC Story, Last Updated: Friday, 23 June 2006)

So even even US congress reports conclude, along with the IPCC & scientific community at large, that the Mann hockey stick study is valid.

Poor Bigfish, once again you seem to be struggling to swim against the tide of reality

 

[MarkMark]

dont tell me...

"....that evil BBC news site is disinformation sponsored by a communist/liberal conspiracy"

 

[bigfish]

... You really don't like people pointing you towards the facts do you

On the contrary, Mark, I love being pointed towards facts. after all, facts are an irresistible force and speak with an eloquence far beyond the reach of mere words... especially those of the BBC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5109188.stm

(BBC Story, Last Updated: Friday, 23 June 2006)

So even even US congress reports conclude, along with the IPCC & scientific community at large, that the Mann hockey stick study is valid.

Poor Bigfish, once again you seem to be struggling to swim against the tide of reality

It is becoming increasingly apparent to a growing number of observers that a relatively narrow milieu of well funded IPCC/Hadley Centre type climate scientists, with open channels to certain mainstream media like the BBC, Guardian, Independent, etc. and supported by a phalanx of "environmental activists" (who funds them?), are engaged in a process of manufacturing "scientific consensus". Perhaps this helps explain why anyone looking for reliable climate information on the BBC website is likely to be disappointed or at least could be forgiven for assuming the debate is already over, as you seem to.

As for this so called consensus:

"Recently, a study in the journal Science by social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words "global climate change" produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it." (Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science MIT.)

I'm sorry, and I know it must have come as a tremendous shock to you, but the NAS panel found against Mann's conclusion that 1998 was the hottest year in the millenium and the 1990s were the hottest decade, stating instead that this conclusion is merely “plausible”. The NAS Panel endorsed almost every one of McIntyre and McKitrick's claims. Likewise, a specially formed panel of statisticians led by Professor Edward Wegman, chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, also found fatal flaws in Mann's statistical methodology. Believe me, there's no way back, MBH98/99 really has been comprehensively demolished.

Wegman Report: "Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported by the MBH98/99 analysis. As mentioned earlier in our background section, tree ring proxies are typically calibrated to remove low frequency variations. The cycle of Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age that was widely recognized in 1990 has disappeared from the MBH98/99 analyses, thus making possible the hottest decade/hottest year claim. However, the methodology of MBH98/99 suppresses this low frequency information. The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable."

===
Posted on the Climate Audit site by a reader:

"Our knowledge of the MWP leads to knowledge of natural temperature variability. This lessens fear of climate change. The MWP empowers the laity with knowledge with which they can challenge the experts. When presented with the hockey stick any average politician can reply, “But what about the MWP?” The MWP is powerful not because scientists discuss it, but because the laity believes in it."

It was for this very reason an attempt was made by IPCC and Mann et al. to expunge the MWP (and the LIA) from the historical climate record.

 

[Dr Jon]

I don't suppose you can explain the physical mechanism to me in your own words...

You suppose correctly.
As you remain unconvinced by all the published evidence, it is unlikely that I will be able to enlighten you. I won't waste my time, thanks.

 

[MarkMark]

... blah.. blah... blah... blah...

Listening to your completely-unbiased evidence, bigfish...I now realise that you are probably responsible for most of the post-industrial global warming.

 

[MarkMark]

Posted on the Climate Audit site by a reader:
....

The Earth is Flat and the moon is made of cheese etc.

"The Climate Audit website was brought to you today by Exxon Corperation and the letters.. B.. U.. L.. L.. S.. H.. "

 

[bigfish]

You suppose correctly.
As you remain unconvinced by all the published evidence, it is unlikely that I will be able to enlighten you. I won't waste my time, thanks.

It's not because you don't know how the mechanism really works, then?

 

[bigfish]

"The Climate Audit website was brought to you today by Exxon Corperation..."

That's a stone faced lie!

 

[moon]

i intend to buy the nicest bikini I can find and live in the sea.

 

[bigfish]

The Earth was hotter in the late 20th Century than it had been in the last 400 or possibly 1,000 years

To say the Earth was hotter in the late 20th Century than it was 400 years ago—when the Little Ice Age was at its coldest—is like saying it's warmer in August than it is in January.

In Scandinavia, North America and Russia, the arctic tree-line reached more northerly latitudes 1000 years ago than today, and trees grew at higher altitudes. I suppose some might argue that there is a time-lag between warming and higher tree-lines. However for there to be trees in 50 years, there should be saplings now. No one's observed any at previous latitudes so far.

Is it fair to say that it's "possibly" hotter in the late 20th Century than 1000 years ago?

I wouldn't bet your (self-sufficient) farm on it.

 

[Loki]

Well at least bigfish is confining his wibblings to just the one thread.

 

[The Pious Pawn]

Its what this planet does (heats up cools down) its all a load of cods wallop imho , Nothing we do will make a jot of differance .

 

[muser]

muser: With regard to the CO2 greenhouse effect, can you (or anyone else) explain the actual physics to me, i.e. the mechanism by which an increase in CO2 concentration translates into an increase in temperature?

Gathering from what I've read on the newsgroup there is no categorical connection between the two. Pristine levels of Co2 in the atomsphere is 275ppmv, and its currently running at 380ppmv. We do know that Co2 has a radiative quality which determines how much sunlight reaches earth.
Take into consideration the polar cap melting and the worsening air quality of future generations and it isn't hard to see why scientist are so concerned.
Do you want a planet that can only support anaerobic life?

 

[bigfish]

Anyone hear the story of a thousand soldiers marching? Left, right, left,right.
All of a sudden one was seen going right, left, right, left

A mothers voice was heard crying from the back " Look! Our Johnny is the only one in step!"

= Bigfish.

But that was because mum brought me up right and all the others were doing the eco-warrior goose-step.

 

[free spirit]

To say the Earth was hotter in the late 20th Century than it was 400 years ago—when the Little Ice Age was at its coldest—is like saying it's warmer in August than it is in January.

In Scandinavia, North America and Russia, the arctic tree-line reached more northerly latitudes 1000 years ago than today, and trees grew at higher altitudes. I suppose some might argue that there is a time-lag between warming and higher tree-lines. However for there to be trees in 50 years, there should be saplings now. No one's observed any at previous latitudes so far.

Is it fair to say that it's "possibly" hotter in the late 20th Century than 1000 years ago?

I wouldn't bet your (self-sufficient) farm on it.

how long do you thing it takes for a forest to establish itself from scratch?

In bigfish land there would be no need for the forestry commission to exist, all you'd need to do would be to leave nature to its own devices and in 50 years time the land would magically be covered in forest.

I take it you've taken into account the fact that if not protected by that pastic mesh stuff 9or equivalent) saplings growing in the open will mostly be eaten by sheep / goats / reindeer etc. before they get chance to grow into trees.

You've also got to allow time for the seeds to reach the areas etc.

basically it's not surprising that the treeline hasn't shifted several kilometres in a few years, it don't work like that as you ought to have been able to sus out if you'd taken your blinkers off.

If you want something that acts as a rapid indicator of climate change you really want to be looking at the snow line, which has been very obviously receding dramatically on mountains all over the world.

 

[bigfish]

Gathering from what I've read on the newsgroup there is no categorical connection between the two.

Actually there is, but it's pretty insignificant. CO2 absorbs mostly radiation emitted by the Earth in the infrared wavelength. The present atmospheric CO2 concentration is less than 400 ppmv. 66% of the CO2 greenhouse effect is caused by the first 50ppm. With each doubling of concentration—from 50 to 100 to 200 to 400ppm—the incremental advance of the greenhouse effect is reduced because of the saturation of the relevant absorption processes. Even for a further doubling to 800ppm—as projected by 2100 in the case of unabated hydrocarbon fuel consumption—the increased greenhouse effect will only be 10 percent of the present miniscule component attributable to CO2. From this it's plain that overall CO2 is a minor contributor to the greenhouse effect, which is dominated by variable water vapour and cloud formation in the atmosphere. Therefore increasing the CO2 concentration can have little additional effect.

Pristine levels of Co2 in the atomsphere is 275ppmv...

There is no such thing as a "pristine level of CO2 in the atmosphere". Historically, CO2 levels have moved both up and down. Up to about 0.720% and down to about 0.036% by volume, according the IUGS survey.

Take into consideration the polar cap melting...

Polar ice-caps melt inwards from the edges of their extent. The rate of melt depends on the length and intensity of the prevailing summer months. In the North Pole summer temperatures rarely reach more than minus ~10C and in winter they fall to minus ~45/50C. Therefore, temperatures need to rise by at least 51 degrees C for the North Pole to melt completely and stay melted all year round. The South Pole is even colder. There, the increase would need to be more than 90 degrees C... according to the laws of physics.

...and the worsening air quality of future generations and it isn't hard to see why scientist are concerned.

But a good many scientists understand CO2 to be a benign product of respiration and an essential fertilizer for plants and vegitation. A good many more are not convinced by the claims being made by the IPCC, especially now that the famous hockey stick has been scientifically disposed of. In fact, it was the former divinity student and Vice President Al Gore who finally twisted the EPA's arm in to re-designating CO2 a pollutant. Gore's effort in turn was a response to vigorous lobbying from Enron (remember them?). Between 1994 and 1996, the Enron Foundation contributed $990,000 to the Nature Conservancy, whose Climate Change Project promotes global warming theories. All told Enron forked out roughly $1.5 million on various environmental groups supporting international energy controls to “reduce” global warming. And all because the company had determined that the Kyoto treaty could provide it with a fabulous financial windfall.

Do you want a planet that can only support anaerobic life?

The hysterical subjunctive doesn't work on me, I'm afraid.

 

[bigfish]

...
basically it's not surprising that the treeline hasn't shifted several kilometres in a few years, it don't work like that...

Professor Harvey Nichols Ph.D of the faculty of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado-Boulder says it works like this:

The comment which I think addresses your question is: does the present response of arctic tree-line to warming resemble those of the past?

The arctic tree-line in the Northwest Territories (NWT) of Canada has only just started to react to warming, so pollen release and cone formation is very apparent, but new spruce seedlings are sparse and are only a few metres distant from their parent trees. By contrast, in the Hypsithermal (the European “Climatic Optimum”) the tree-line was advancing at rates of 200 - 300 metres per year in NWT, attaining northward displacements of ~400 km beyond modern tree-line by 7 - 6000 BP. In the Medieval Warming between ~ 1500 BP and 700 or 600 BP the NWT tree-line extended ~70 km beyond modern. I keep wondering whether there has been too little time for the arctic tree-line to advance noticeably since ~ 1980, at a rate similar to the above, or whether it is possible that the previous warmings were even more substantial in the arctic than we currently recognise. Recall that the pre-Hypsithermal landscape was devoid of trees and their associated mycorrhizae, while now there are uncounted numbers of dwarf trees scattered all over the Low Arctic, ready to colonise the tundra.

I wonder whether the Hypsithermal warming was even more massive than we currently think, at least in the far north? At the same time the change over a 20 year interval (1970s to 1990s) from dwarf black spruce infertility to fertility at sites up to ~ 250 km beyond modern tree-line is very apparent.

I am certainly quite concerned about the well-known ‘hockeystick’ graph which so diminishes the Medieval Warming and the Little Ice Age, especially as reflected in the arctic.

http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/06/16/230/

 

[muser]

Actually there is, but it's pretty insignificant.

being pedantic, very unnecessary.

With each doubling of concentration—from 50 to 100 to 200 to 400ppm

I'm sure I gave the figure 380ppmv

—

the incremental advance of the greenhouse effect is reduced because of the saturation of the relevant absorption processes

.

you must mean the rainforest, what happens when they are gone. What happens to Co2 absorption rates, does the sea compensate for it all.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5298004.stm

There is no such thing as a "pristine level of CO2 in the atmosphere". Historically, CO2 levels have moved both up and down. Up to about 0.720% and down to about 0.036% by volume, according the IUGS survey.

A level at which there is no real adverse effect global warming effect, or that's what I'm led to believe.

Polar ice-caps melt inwards from the edges of their extent. The rate of melt depends on the length and intensity of the prevailing summer months. In the North Pole summer temperatures rarely reach more than minus ~10C and in winter they fall to minus ~45/50C. Therefore, temperatures need to rise by at least 51 degrees C for the North Pole to melt completely and stay melted all year round. The South Pole is even colder. There, the increase would need to be more than 90 degrees C... according to the laws of physics.

Does have an effect on the salinity of the world's oceans, which in turn kills off many species of marine life. I don't suppose you care anyway.

The hysterical subjunctive doesn't work on me, I'm afraid

.

It has already happened once in earth's history, you can argue that our climate is more robust than the archean era and no single factor can contribute to its decline, but climatologist are worried (and rightly so) about surface temperatures rises that don't fit with their models.
The empirical evidence is there.

 

[free spirit]

Professor Harvey Nichols Ph.D of the faculty of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado-Boulder says it works like this:

The comment which I think addresses your question is: does the present response of arctic tree-line to warming resemble those of the past?

The arctic tree-line in the Northwest Territories (NWT) of Canada has only just started to react to warming, so pollen release and cone formation is very apparent, but new spruce seedlings are sparse and are only a few metres distant from their parent trees. By contrast, in the Hypsithermal (the European “Climatic Optimum”) the tree-line was advancing at rates of 200 - 300 metres per year in NWT, attaining northward displacements of ~400 km beyond modern tree-line by 7 - 6000 BP. In the Medieval Warming between ~ 1500 BP and 700 or 600 BP the NWT tree-line extended ~70 km beyond modern. I keep wondering whether there has been too little time for the arctic tree-line to advance noticeably since ~ 1980, at a rate similar to the above, or whether it is possible that the previous warmings were even more substantial in the arctic than we currently recognise. Recall that the pre-Hypsithermal landscape was devoid of trees and their associated mycorrhizae, while now there are uncounted numbers of dwarf trees scattered all over the Low Arctic, ready to colonise the tundra.

I wonder whether the Hypsithermal warming was even more massive than we currently think, at least in the far north? At the same time the change over a 20 year interval (1970s to 1990s) from dwarf black spruce infertility to fertility at sites up to ~ 250 km beyond modern tree-line is very apparent.

I am certainly quite concerned about the well-known ‘hockeystick’ graph which so diminishes the Medieval Warming and the Little Ice Age, especially as reflected in the arctic.

http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/06/16/230/

cheers for the link... this bit from the actual summary of the full report would seem to indicate that his studies actually show evidence of widespread climatic warming...

“The arctic tree-line is sensitive to climatic changes as indicated by paleoecological studies and it is predicted by global circulation models to respond strongly to greenhouse warming. My Northern Canadian studies of tree-line reproduction in black and white spruce spanning two decades demonstrate a widespread switch from infertility due to cold summers (1960’s-1970’s) to pollen and cone production (1990’s), in line with climatic warming predictions. Ecotonal cone formation is usually sporadic and localized, but this large scale reproductive shift, along a 1500 km transect, suggests widespread biospheric response to climatic warming since the 1970’s across much of the Northwest Territories.

regarding the treeline thing, I'd expect that the figures given for the rate of advance of the treeline in previous warm periods to b fairly crude averages rather than an accurate reflection of the precise rate of advance every year through the warm period.

It's been a while since I studied forest ecology, but I'm pretty sure that the advance of a forest onto previously none forested land (ok land that hasn't been covered in forest for hundreds or thousands of years) would not follow a linear rate of advance. It would advance very slowly in the early years as the majority of new growth would be from pine cones dropping directly under their parent trees. For the seeds to travel larger distances requires them to be carried by animals etc. with a gradual dispersal beyond the treeline (most of the animals responsible for dispersal won't often stray far from the treeline, so dispersal beyond the treeline will be slow initially.

Gradually a few trees will start to grow in isolation at increasing distances from the original treeline (seeds spread by animals), once these reach maturity they will seed new growth in the area around them, and gradually these isolated islands of trees will expand, with ever more new isolated islands of trees developing (still being spread by animals) until eventually you have loads of different treelines all expanding towards each other to fill in the gaps until all the land that is now climatically suited to tree growth becomes mature forest.

The rate of expansion is therefore very slow at the beginning, and much greater at the end of the expansion.

Bear in mind also that we're talking about areas right on the edge of the point where it is climatically possible for these trees to grow, so it should be no surprise that forest expansion is slow.

see the bit in bold i nthe quote above for the evidence of climatic change related to trees on the edge of the arctic, I'm sure if you come back in a couple of hundred years you'll see the subsequent expansion of the treeline you're looking for.