TEMPERATURE RECORD: Greenland's temperatures for the past 5,600 years were revealed in algal fat stored in lake sediment cores, like those recovered from Braya So, pictured here.
Image: Courtesy of William D'Andrea
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The Norse came to a new land around the end of the first millennium, borne on the backs of their Viking long ships and lured away from Iceland by the promise of Erik the Red's Greenland. The land was indeed green when they landed—and stayed that way for several centuries until natural variations in the planet's climate cooled the world's largest island by 4 degrees Celsius. Years of such cool summers doomed the Greenland Norse, and their outpost froze to death by 1500.
The Norse "were primarily farmers who relied on the summer hay production to feed their livestock through the long Greenland winter," says geologist William D'Andrea at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who presented new confirmation of this cooling and starving scenario in the May 30 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "If summers got shorter and/or colder than the Norse were used to and their hay production was not able to meet their demands—and if this happened over a sustained period of time—it would have been difficult for them to maintain their way of life."
Climate change has likely played a role in the shifting fortunes of all human civilizations in Greenland, from the Saqqaq who thrived there via caribou hunting thousands of years ago to today's Inuit, buoyed by a lengthening growing season and new discoveries of oil and gas. Using mud cores from two lakes in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland—Brya So and Lake E—D'Andrea and his colleagues found evidence showing that significant shifts in average temperatures correlate with the rise and fall of Greenland cultures.
The scientists specifically measured alkenone—a fat produced by blooming algae in the northern lakes under specific conditions—as a proxy for the lakes' water temperature, which in turn reflects ambient air temperatures. This record in algal oil shows that average summer temperatures in the past 5,600 years have varied by as much as 5.5 degrees C. A cooling swing in those temperatures coincides with the Saqqaq culture fading from the scene and the Dorset arriving—a culture that thrived in the cold thanks to snow knives, sledge shoes and other technologies. Back-to-back warming and cooling swings led to that culture's exit about 1800 years ago, perhaps following shifting hunting grounds, whereas general warming coincided with the Norse migration to Greenland a few hundred years later. Then 550 years ago, as average temperatures cooled again, the Norse were gone.
"You have an interval when the summers are long and balmy and you build up the size of your farm," says D'Andrea of the Norse interlude. "Then suddenly, year after year, you go into this cooling trend and the summers are getting shorter and colder and you can't make as much hay. You can imagine how that particular lifestyle may not be able to make it."
Greenland is still inhabited, of course, by Inuit people who migrated to the region as recently as a millennium ago. These people are currently enduring some of the most rapid climate change on the planet, which has had benefits ranging from a longer growing season, like the one that aided the Norse, to newly accessible oil deposits that promise potential financial independence. "The Arctic is undergoing major changes," D'Andrea notes. "Just like in the past, some people will benefit and others will lose out."
Of course, it is the burning of such oil that has led to this warming in the first place, thanks to increasing concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Already, those increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases are warming the planet's overall climate to the point that the meltdown of Greenland's ice sheet is speeding up, which could raise global sea levels a meter by 2100 at present rates, among other impacts. "This area of the Arctic has warmed significantly since the 1990s," says glaciologist Gordon Hamilton of the University of Maine, Orono. "If [the ice sheet] is responding to the warming ocean, that is going to persist for decades to come. That's not an easy switch to turn off."
That warming indeed looks set to continue and will ultimately doom, at the very least, Greenlanders' traditional way of life. But the changes in Greenland this time may prove to be global. "If we don't keep the Greenland Ice Sheet intact, we will lose a lot of coastline," argues Rafe Pomerance, a senior fellow at environmental group Clean Air-Cool Planet. Yet, earlier this month a meeting of the nine Arctic Council nations focused more on squabbles over newly accessible natural resources in the rapidly warming region than mitigating the causes of climate change. Pomerance adds, "The fate of Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets has an enormous impact on the world."
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47 Comments
Add CommentIf only the vikings hadn't driven their Escalades everywhere!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnbeliever Says: Sooo, what's the point in getting all moralistic over climate change, if it's going to happen anyway?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Allow me to extend this sort of reasoning. Why does everyone get all moralistic about murder when we are all going to die anyway?
Unbeliever Says: It's really funny how "climate change", when it occurs far in the past, is a "natural cycle", yet when it occurs in recent times, it is an aberration to be avoided at any cost.
Trent Says: The scientific community can distinguish between natural climate cycles and human induced climate change. Are you aware of how that is known? Do you also realize that in the past several thousand years whole civilization have arisen that depend on agriculture? Humanity can not simply move out of the way like hunter gatherers.
Unbeliever Says: Humans are as natural as beavers or rain forests. Deal with it.
Trent Says: Lions are as natural as Humans and they eat people. Deal with it. Do you ever think before you write?
ScienceisNotOpinion Says: If only the vikings hadn't driven their Escalades everywhere!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: I nominate Scienceisnotopinion for the strawman of the year award.
What caused the earlier warming?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you can't answer that, then you certainly can not claim to know that it isn't causing the present warming.
Nuuk, Greenland just had their third coldest April on record.
Steve Goddard Says: What caused the earlier warming?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Here is whole chapter on paleoclimate from the IPCC. Read it:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6.html
Steve do you know what a argument from ignorance is? No? Well you are doing it.
Steve Goddard Says: Says: Nuuk, Greenland just had their third coldest April on record.
Trent Says: Here is the temperature anomaly map for the globe in April of 2011.
Take a look at Greenland. Notice how Steve neglected to mention the temperature anomaly on the east side of the island? Notice also that Steve want you to believe that one place and time is a trend. Conclusion: Steve is not an honest man.
Trent Says: Half-clever comebacks substitute for knowledge, so I win.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, but this is so transparent as to be laughable:
"If we don't keep the Greenland Ice Sheet intact, we will lose a lot of coastline," argues Rafe Pomerance, a senior fellow at environmental group Clean Air-Cool Planet.
Who is Rafe Pomerance? Well, his sole academic credential is a BA degree in history. Who is Clean Air-Cool Planet? An advocacy group comprising PR professionals with no academic credentials in science whatever, but lengthy resumes at other PR firms or advocacy groups -- in Mr. Pomerance's case, as "the coordinator of the National Clean Air Coalition."
Mr. Pomerantz thinks we can control the size of the Greenland ice sheet, a delusion of hilarious proportion, and presumption on a scale to be envied by a Qadaffi. Even the article that quotes him concedes that the sheet's size and Greenland's climate have been shifting well before any human impact on its ecology could be blamed.
This isn't science. This is nonsense. If Trent wants to poll ad agencies for his "expertise," fine, but he really shouldn't be making such a fool of himself, especially as Mr. Pomerance and his ilk already do it so well for him.
By the way, quoting the IPCC on climate change is like quoting the American Tobacco Institute. As for confusing a one-time event with a trend:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Anyone who has any doubts about climate change should go to Alaska and look around for themselves." That's Nancy Pelosi.
I can't comment on your map because it's not linked. Is this map anything like the ones that show temperature cells in the middle of Lake Michigan at 450 degrees?
The fact is, no one knows, or can know at this point, whether or not there is actual long-term warming (or "climate change") that is dependent on human activity. If you assert that you do know, QED.
This does not mean that we should not be doing our best to reduce pollutants. Even this will be a vain act, as China and India are hardly likely to defer their development. (please do not bother me about how China leads the world in ""green technology." They are more than happy to sell the gullible windmills, sollar panels, and all the rest of the hopelessly inefficient interim technology that we use to delude ourselves that we are "acting responsibly."
What II object too are vainglorious fools marching around waving their self-congratulatory banners of smug superiority, quoting opinion as if it were fact, drawing conclusions from flawed data, and attempting to persuade people that they must endure monstrous inconvenience, meaningless sacrifice and enormous wastes of money in the name of a phantom called "global climate change."
And let's not even get into the economics.
Trent1492 is responding to the specious arguments from SteveGoddard and ScienceisNotOptinion and others. Mememine69 seems to think because Obama did not mention climate change in his state of the union address it is proof that "scientists" don't believe in Anthropomorphogenic climate change anymore. This is absolutely false. I find it ironic that while most of the deniers rightly denounce reports that a single weather event like a hurricane or tornado is "caused" by climate change they then find instances of colder than normal readings and use it as proof that there is anthropomorphogenic climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm quoting you Cannibal:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"What II object too are vainglorious fools marching around waving their self-congratulatory banners of smug superiority, quoting opinion as if it were fact, drawing conclusions from flawed data..."
My advice would be to look at your own words to check for hypocrisy before spewing venom at others. You offer NO data yourself to support ANY of your assertions / attacks on well-established climate science. The info at www.skepticalscience.com will easily demolish any of your "hypotheses" about climate science, if you even bother to look, that is.
Correction. That last sentence from my previous post should have read: "I find it ironic that while most of the deniers rightly denounce reports that a single weather event like a hurricane or tornado is "caused" by climate change they then find instances of colder than normal readings and use it as proof that there is no anthropomorphogenic climate change."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo say greenland was green is just plain ridiculous. Very poorly researched article. A very small part of southern greenland was green (some of the time during the year)during the norse settlement. Greenland is in fact a large place covered in ice and have never in human existience been green apart from a few small coastal regions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot quite clear with whom you are upset.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientists? Everyone else?
I guess you feel that fear mongering was occurring and only journalists and scientists had a yen for human caused global climate chaos, but it isn't real somehow.
Wonder then why insurance companies think it's real? Or, the Pentagon? Or the 46 Fortune 500 companies that are part of http://www.pewclimate.org/business/belc/members
They actually have a stake in the outcome...
I agree with you about population being the most serious problem. If there were fewer people, everything would be easier to fix (except the way we fund pensions).
Unfortunately any discussion of too many people quickly degrades into all sorts of wildly outrageous claims on both sides, since having children is the goal of every society - the continuance of a society is dependent on kids, after all...
Here's a few steps that won't be taken soon.
1. No child deduction on US income taxes and repeal of any other Pro-natalist regulation
2. Free Vasectomies for males 18 or older.
3. Free condoms and birth control (devices, drugs, whatever) for girls and guys.
4. World wide distribution of safe sex literature and free condoms
5. Establish rural clinics for women worldwide, and teach them ways to keep from getting pregnant.
There's a bunch more. Oh well.
Not going to happen.
Thermometers: http://oi52.tinypic.com/2agnous.jpg
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIce: http://oi52.tinypic.com/2upvlvm.jpg
Earth: http://oi56.tinypic.com/2reh021.jpg
Goddard needs to explain the 6 week heat wave in Greenland last winter that occurred in the dark.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNarsarsuaq, Greenland
Nov. 19th to Jan. 1 2011 set 19 new max high readings Some as high as 57F .
Narsarsuaq, first day of 2011, was 21F above average for a new record of 49F.
Nik you are spamming long debunked jpeg spam. Are you being paid to do this? If so the Koch brothers are getting their money's worth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Anyone who has any doubts about climate change should go to Alaska and look around for themselves."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInterior Alaska was 86F today .
"Across northern Europe, rainfall has been down 50 percent on normal levels since March," France's Farm Minister Bruno Le Maire wrote in a report to his European Union colleagues. Temperatures were about 4 degrees Celsius higher on average in April. The lack of rain struck particularly early in the year to affect crops.
Germany has had twice as many hours of sunshine as it would normally expect in the spring. Some German regions have had just 5 per cent of their standard rainfall. "We desperately need rain," said Andrea Adams, spokeswoman for the Farmers Association, in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Shanghai is also experiencing its longest period of no precipitation in 138 years, having received only 132.9 mm of rainfall since the beginning of this year, the lowest level since 1873, according to a report released on Monday by the Shanghai Municipal Meteorological Bureau.
Houston has not received a drop of rain in 4 months, meanwhile in just the last 4 days Texas, has booked 173 stations recording 100F or above , 18 of these stations recorded 110F and above.
UK has hottest Spring weather since records began
The world’s oldest continuous weather record, which covers a triangular area between London, Manchester and Bristol, dates back to 1659, 43 years after Shakespeare’s death.
This spring was also the hottest for the UK as a whole and the driest in the East and South East.
Balmy temperatures and sub-tropical conditions saw New Zealand experience its warmest May on record, in a month that included floods, storms and a tornado.
Data from climate agency Niwa shows the month was almost 2.5 degrees Celcius warmer than usual, with rainfall double normal levels.
Peter Gleick says of the Mississippi: "There were multiple one-in-500 year or one-in-100 year flood events within a few years of each other. 1993, 2000, then again in 2008 and now in 2011.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLittle Missouri River reaches record high Tuesday, hydrologist calls it 500-year event
The Lake Champlain flood is a 500-year event, and it is the largest recorded flood in the state’s history.
The first typhoon of 2011 is also the globe's first Category 5 tropical cyclone of the year. Super Typhoon Songda intensified dramatically over the past 24 hours in an environment of light wind shear and warm sea surface temperatures of 30°C, to reach Category 5 status with top sustained winds of 160 mph. Tropical Cyclone Yasi, which devastated Queensland, Australia in early February, was the globe's previous strongest tropical cyclone of 2011, with 155 mph winds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article falsely assumes that "man made" global warning is the cause. Changes in the sun cycles causes the warming and cooling for the most part. Next, volcanic eruptions dwarf any "man made" contributions to warming or cooling. The global warming religion is back to deceive he public again!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPyrepaurn Says: Changes in the sun cycles causes the warming and cooling for the most part
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: False. The solar hypothesis has been falsified many times over.
1. Scientist have been monitoring the sun's irradiance and no increase has been detected for decades.
2. Scientist can predict what solar induced climate should look like. E.G:
A. If the Sun was warming the atmosphere we should see the top of the atmosphere warming first. It has been observed that the opposite is happening.
B. That part of the Earth (Tropics) that gets the most consistent part of the Earth's irradiance should warm up first. In fact we see that it the Arctic that is warming the fastest.
C. If the Sun is responsible then the diurnal temperature trend should diverge with days warming the fastest. Instead nights are warming faster than days.
So there you have four different falsification for the solar hypothesis.
Pyepaun Says: Next, volcanic eruptions dwarf any "man made" contributions to warming or cooling.
Trent Says: False. The U.S Geological Survey says the opposite the USGS from their web site we find the following:
"Human activities, responsible for some 36,300 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2008 [Le Quéré et al., 2009], release at least a hundred times more CO2 annually than all the world’s degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes (Gerlach, 2010).
The half dozen or so published estimates of the global CO2 emission rate for all degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes lie in a range from 132 million (minimum) to 378 million (maximum) metric tons per year (Gerlach, 1991; Varekamp et al., 1992; Allard, 1992; Sano and Williams, 1996; Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998; Kerrick, 2001). If estimate medians and author-preferred estimates of these studies are used to lessen the influence of outlier estimates, the range is restricted to about 150-270 million metric tons of CO2 per year. The current anthropogenic CO2 emission rate of some 36,300-million metric tons of CO2 per year is about 100 to 300 times larger than these estimated ranges for global volcanic CO2 emissions."
Volcanic Gases and Their Effects
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php
TheDilayCannibal - that is an excellent way of expressing a balanced and suitably sceptical view of the deeply flawed AGW claims and what we should do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is self evident to everyone that the Climate is changing in many parts of the world ... as it has done for millennia. Climate change made and destroyed many civilisations around the world and it will devastate human society from time to time in the future as well.
However the evidence simply does not support the claims that man is causing the change. There is a variety of circumstantial data. But on clearer examination all of this data is deeply flawed for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately the confluence of the AGW claims with the world wide desire to reduce pollution and improve our management of the planet has brought about a 'conspiracy of convenience' that has been adopted by all of the major commercial interests such as the UN and the elite Science establishment.
Trent says: Blah, blah, blah, blah.....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPostman1 says: Does anyone actually read anything trent puts on here?
Trent says more: Blah, blah, blah, blah.....
ad nauseum
Shorter Postman: I got nothing to offer but invective.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRight on!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“Speaking of history, here's an idea. I propose we set up a wiki to serve as the "Climate History Book" as in, "will you go down in history as a climate hero or a climate criminal?" Every politician who knowingly shirks his/her responsibility for the sake of getting re-elected should be prepared to go on record with that position in the Climate History Book. Likewise every climate denialist. Come Judgment Day, and by that I mean the day when our children and grandchildren ask us what we did to protect their futures, back in the time when catastrophic climate change was still preventable, the record will speak for itself."
Source: “Countdown to 2012: The Road to Rio 20+” by Kelly Rigg, Huffington Post, May 31, 2011
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-rigg/rio-climate-summit_b_868894.html#postComment
What caused the 5.5 C variability in 5,600 yrs? Why only in Greenland? Or was that global?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince you insist on refering to others who disgree with you as "deniers", it's time to give you a tag.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow about "Chicken Littles". From now on you will be know as the "Chicken Littles"
pass it on
Now that is good! I've always called them 'warmers', or 'true believers', but 'chicken littles' is so much more descriptive! Thanks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reason everybody calls you deniers is that you are able to look at the mountain of scientific evidence supporting man-made climate change and dismiss it almost immediately, citing long-debunked junk science and baseless attacks against the world's entire scientific establishment. Really, how are the talking heads on TV and Exxon's mouthpieces more knowledgeable than 97% of the world's climatologists? How is it possible that we have increased the CO2 concentration of the ENTIRE ATMOSPHERE almost 45% above pre-industrial levels, 1,000 times faster than it has ever changed in Earth's history by the way, and somehow NOT expect anything bad to happen? Finally, how can we show such disrespect and disregard towards the Scientific Method and still expect to be a world power in the 21st Century? Ignoring these questions and their implications is the most dangerous form of denial I can think of.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissault- Still using that 97% stuff, huh? You should look here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/that_97_solution_again/
or here:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
Nuff said.
This is additional evidence supporting the contention that previous variability in the historic past is at least as great as that realistically predicted by those presenting human related climate change as a crisis which must be met with extraordinary response and that human cultures successfully adapted to those earlier periods of substantial change. The Inuit managed to adapt to the colder climate quite well, the Norse inhabitants less so, as they attempted to maintain previous patterns - a recipe for failure for an isolate community.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo postman: WOW! The money quote on Popular Technology supposedly refuting Sen. John Kerry and VP Al Gore is some dude named "John H." commenting on RealClimate.org. Who is "John H." and what are HIS qualifications to be put in the same category as Sen. Kerry and Gore? Seriously!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere IS a consensus among active climate scientists. See here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm
I would definitely trust an active climate scientist on climate issues over economists and other scientists taken out of context on those misleading "there is no consensus" lists of papers or supposed scientists. The "icecap" website has an anti-science agenda and is trying to mislead you. They didn't even get the meaning of the word "significant" in the question, "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?". Therefore, their subsequent analysis is not to be trusted.
Adiff, I have no contention with what you said, but it has little relevance on today's man-made climate problem. The fate of the Vikings in Greenland IS a good example of our fate if we continue the same patterns we have always done as an industrial society. Our infrastructure is extremely immobile compared to ancient peoples. It is much easier to pack up your hut in a Viking ship and go back to Iceland than to move Miami or New Orleans. Also, the world has no more open spaces where a large number of climate refugees can flee too. Just look at the resistance to North African immigrants in Europe or illegal immigration into the U.S. to guage the current appetite for massive influxes of people into foreign lands. Climate disruption will only make this worse as financial and natural resources are expended to cope with it.
Sault- Thank you for offering intelligent and respectful comment and discussion. A refreshing change for this site. While I disagree with much of what you say, I appreciate the manner in which you say it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe can't really compare today's Inuit with those of centuries or millenia ago. Inuit today are Westernized and have full access to Western diets, clothing, fossil fuels and all the rest. They are unlikely to "lose out" in competition with Westerners unless, of course, humanity loses out by "virtue" of poisoning the planet to the point where it becomes incompatible with human life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSault -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this<It is much easier to pack up your hut in a Viking ship and go back to Iceland than to move Miami or New Orleans.>
Iceland is an extremely literate society that values and preserves its past. If the Greenland Norse had gone there (not "gone back," since by the 15th century they were all born in Greenland), we would know it and we would know why. More likely, they set sail for Iceland and perished at (iceberg-laden) sea.
<Just look at the resistance to North African immigrants in Europe or illegal immigration into the U.S. to guage the current appetite for massive influxes of people into foreign lands.>
In Europe it's more cultural than economic. Europeans forgot how to make babies - heck, they aren't even replacing themselves - and they are dependent on foreign labor for survival. But not foreign labor seeking to turn them into a seventh-century theocratic nightmare state governed by sharia.
Few things are as hypocritical as America's immigration policy. We don't want Mexicans here - unless they are content to work long hours in unsafe conditions for below-minimum wages. If we wanted to solve the illegal immigration "problem," we could. For starters, how about a social security card that is prohibitively difficult and/or expensive to fake?
Sault- You might care to look at this essay by Lord Turnbull which I linked to through Judith Curry's site:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/lord-turnbull.pdf
I found the essay and Judith's article informative, perhaps convincing. Also:
http://judithcurry.com/
I'm just going to post a few of my thoughts as I read Lord Turnbull's paper:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Although there is agreement among scientists that global temperatures have been rising (around 0.8°C in the past 150 years), that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that CO2 concentrations have been rising; that other things being equal a doubling in CO2 concentration would on its own generate about a 1°C increase, there is little agreement beyond that."
This is contrary to several lines of evidence and see here for a detailed explanation:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity-advanced.htm
The "Hockey Stick" graph Turnbull criticizes is still valid and repeated through many lines of evidence:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm
The paper also indirectly tries to repeat the canard that global warming stopped in 1998, but that is debunked here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm
Yeah, I stick to skepticalscience exclusively here, but it is the best clearinghouse to fight against disinformation in the climate change political debate and the site also links directly to the scientific papers so you can look them over too if you want. Lord Trunbull doesn't say anything that hasn't already been debunked to death by actual scientists.
@Sault,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEverything you have offered as a rebuttal to Postman has been told to him multiple times over a period of years to no affect. Take for example you noting that multiple lines of evidence have reconfirmed the Hockey Stick over the years: I have shown this character a spaghetti graph of multiple papers that use different techniques and proxies with citations all showing roughly the same history of temperature. His response? Insult and offering up different and distracting argument. In short you are dealing with a ideologue who has no interests in reality.
2nd to the last paragraph, "Of course, it is the burning of such oil that has led to this warming in the first place... ". It is this very unscientific foregone conclusion that always drives me nuts. The article stresses the rapid warming and cooling that determined the activities of the Viking Colonies. However, today, are we no longer looking at solar cycles? I guess there is no need as we already know the cause of all evil on this planet....anthropogenic C02.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWsugiad Says: . However, today, are we no longer looking at solar cycles?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: Yes, solar cycles have been looked at and falsified for a large variety of reasons that are listed in comment #21.
Darn, he was acting so much nicer than the usual deniers that I thought I might actually get him to listen even just a little bit. I looked over Turnbull's paper and it was the usual heap of debunked arguements and I was hoping that he would give skepticalscience.com the same courtesy. Oh well, we'll just keep up the good fight so that undecided people looking into the issue aren't misled by the deniers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article starts by providing hard evidence that Greenland was much warmer than it is now in the middle ages warm period. It then goes on to speculate that current global warming caused by man-made greenhouse gases will be disastrous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI note that many of the climate scientists fell over themselves with claims that 2010 would be the warmest year yet. It didn't happen because, as I predicted in June 2010, la Nina induced cooling set in before the end of the year. On the same basis, I'm sure that 2011 will be a cold year. How many climate scientists warned us of that?
http://web.me.com/bryanleyland/Site_3/Global_Cooling.html
The climate changes naturally and the sunspot record tells us that the chances are that we are in for a period of cooling.
Kiwi Buzz Says: The article starts by providing hard evidence that Greenland was much warmer than it is now in the middle ages warm period.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrent Says: It does not say that anywhere in the article. Did you read it?
Kiwiw Buzz Says" I note that many of the climate scientists fell over themselves with claims that 2010 would be the warmest year yet.
Trent Says: And it was. 2010 tied with 2005 for the two warmest years on record. Is there a reason why you feel entitled to your own set of facts?
From NASA:
"Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York."
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20110112/
Kiwi Buzz Says: On the same basis, I'm sure that 2011 will be a cold year. How many climate scientists warned us of that?
Trent Says: Cold in what sense? do you mean to say it is going to be among the 65 coldest years on the record?
Name a ranking. You do know that even with a La Nina and very quite sun this has been (so far) the 14th warmest year on record?
What percentage of the temperature increase is man responsible for, and what percentage is caused by nature?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI turn up the heat in my house and car when it's cold out. But the temperature on Mars also increased -- oh I forgot, man put a couple of rovers on Mars.
Just don't look into the sun, or you may see the light.
At what point are you clowns going to learn that we have instruments that can monitor the Sun's total solar irradiance? They are on these tidy little inventions called satellites and have monitoring the Sun's output for decades. Guess what? For decades no increased output from the Sun has been detected.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou said these tidy little inventions called satellites and have monitoring the Sun's output for decades. How many decades Trent?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/ast22jul99_1/
Although sunspots are cooler areas on the solar surface, the Sun is actually hotter when sunspots appear and cooler when they are absent. Scientists believe that a long period of solar inactivity may correspond with colder temperatures on Earth. From 1645 to 1715, astronomers observed very little solar activity. This time period coincides with an era known as the Little Ice Age, when rivers and lakes throughout Europe (and perhaps the world) froze.
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During the past 20 years, global mean surface temperature has been rising at a rate as large as any that has been observed within the historical record. [ http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/seminars/000505FO.html ], however, until as recently as two years ago, the latest estimates of this so- called "tropospheric temperature trend" based on satellite data since 1979, were indicating a slight cooling from 1979 onward. About a year ago, the algorithms used to process the satellite data were modified to take into account changes in viewing geometry due to the decay in the satellite orbits. As a result of these rather small corrections, together with the extraordinary warmth associated with the 1997-98 El Niño, the satellite data are now indicating a warming trend, but it is still much smaller than the trend in surface temperature.
And we only started taking the temp with satellites since 1979.
------ Did you read this about sunspots? ---
http://news.discovery.com/space/is-the-sun-running-out-of-juice.html ". . .I've been following Penn and Livingston's research for some time, and it is fascinating to say the least. Although they are the first to admit their work is far from conclusive -- two decades-worth of solar data isn't a lot after all -- this downward trend in magnetic field strength is a conundrum. . ."
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They admit far from conclusive on their 20 year study of the Sun, but we have only started using the satellites for the earth's temp since 1979. Coverage increases with time and is better after 1950, and global after 1982, when the capability of satellites to measure sea surface temperatures was added. Biases occur through changes in observing practices and changes in land use, such as the urban heat island effect. And we have barely one hundred years of sparse data.
Unless you can show proof, not theory, but proof, then the jury is still out. Admit it, I can.
@The Right2kno,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you read your own links? From the first NASA link you gave:
"Although there are good records of solar activity since the invention of the telescope in 1610, scientists have to look toward other sources to determine if there were even earlier periods of low solar activity. Because it is believed that sun spot activity correlates to the amount of Carbon 14 and Beryllium 10 in the environment, scientists can use ice core samples on Earth to determine solar activity levels."
Do you read your own links?
Your second link says that satellite data has been adjusted to account for factors such as the decays of its orbit and after doing so other means of recording the temps and satellite measurements are in agreement. Further the articles has nothing what so ever to do with monitoring solar activity. Once again, do you read your links?
Your third link talks about a prediction of solar activity using solar magnetism. You have conflated Total Solar Irradiance with the magnetic activity. Why do you not read the articles you post?
For those still concerned about climate change, you should watch those videos...
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