The Great Grist Battle of 2013

This has been a great week for anthropogenic global warming skeptics, like yours truly. The long period without global warming, 17 years and counting, is taking a toll on alarmists, and they are starting to ratchet down predictions of catastrophic warming to much lower, although still ridiculous, levels. Some were summarily cut in half, from 9° Fahrenheit by 2100 to 4.5°F. The decelerating rate of sea level rise, measured decreasing from 3 millimeters per year (12 inches per century) to half that, also makes it hard to support the “expert” projections for over five feet by 2100. To reach five feet by 2100, the rate of rise would have to suddenly increase by 11.3 times its present value and be sustained at that level for 88 years. Such an increase has not been seen even during the 30°F warming at the end of the Younger Dryas 12,000 to 8,000 years ago, when sea level rose an average of 4.5 feet per century and there were huge ice caps at low altitudes all over the Northern Hemisphere to melt. 

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I have especially enjoyed a two-week exchange of comments to an article in Grist Magazine: "How to respond to people who say the cold weather disproves global warming." As soon as I read the article I got excited, because while the author wrote with a  superior, condescending tone, his science didn't even meet middle-school standards. However, that didn't stop him from having many defenders amongst the Grist readership, who tend to be both leftist and climate alarmist. Grist comments luminaries such as "frflyer", J4zonian", and "TomSparc" leaped upon each of my comments with cut-and-paste commentary from alarmist websites such as "SkepticalScience" and "RealClimate", while exhibiting ignorance of climate history and basic physics while demonstrating poor reading comprehension. In my own comments I refuted theirs while always trying to support my points with charts and graphs. I had a huge advantage in that regard, since my research has led me to the many available to serious natural climate change students, and so few for alarmists. Understandable, because it's hard to chart baloney.

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This odd comment, which struck me as their defiant surrender to my tireless scientific rebuttals and an appeal to alarmist religious Gaia fervor, was posted by "J4zonian" and seemed to end my Grist battle: “Fellow Grist readers: We have responded. We've disproven every post this person has made, pointed out lies or errors and (he) has proved (himself) impervious to facts, reason, knowledge and science. (He) continues to post deceptive cherry-picked denialist nonsense devoid of context and when refuted simply moves on to other lies. (He) is comitting (sic) what will certainly come to be known as a crime against humanity and even more serious, Gaia. (He) and (his) sock puppets or fellow dupes and shills have zero credibility here. I'm not really concerned about others here believing the nonsense; more about (his) well-being.

Climate Catastrophe is real, happening, and human-caused. Unless we take massive, rapid action in the next 10-20 years at the very most it will destroy civilization, very likely cause the extinction of humans along with millions of other species and could possibly end all life on Earth by killing Gaia, the cooperative system of all life on Earth that regulates the conditions it needs to survive.

We must switch now to efficiency, solar, wind, low-meat local organic permaculture and reforest the world while equalizing our incomes and impacts, globally at a comfortablem (sic) sufficient level for all. This would still lead to a drastically reduced impact for humanity as a whole and would allow us to survive long enough to reduce population (the work of centuries) and heal psychologically.”

My reaction to this ringing manifesto began: "Gristers of the World, Unite!" Throughout my comments I reviewed the natural climate change history during many distant and recent periods, showing cycles of regular cooling and warming that have marched evenly through the past 900,000 years, and six cycles of cooling and diminishing warming during the past 10,000 years. I used charts of temperatures, sea level rise, hurricane and tornado frequency and strength, wildfire trends showing we are experiencing the lowest for 3,000 years, glacier retreat, agricultural productivity for warmer weather and higher CO2, and a lot more. Many of their response began by noting that I was dumb, idiotic, a fool, bent upon the destruction of humanity, and on the payroll of oil companies. If I was being paid by Big Oil, I wonder why they would want me to exterminate their customers, and I also wonder where are they sending my checks?

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To my embattled Grist opponents, please heed the words of Mark Twain: “Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”

Cap and Trade, an Exercise in Futility

Europe’s cap-and-trade system for carbon is in the news: the price for a metric ton of carbon just fell 27% since the start of the year to a new low of $6.37, almost a dollar less than an 8.3 lb. bag of Kingsford charcoal briquettes. Still, that’s over 120 times the price per ton on the Chicago Climate Exchange just before it collapsed two years ago.

California’s carbon trading price is substantially higher at $10 per ton, but its rules don’t allow the price to fall lower.

Getting back to Europe, a UBS analyst in Paris stated: “With current rules (the European Union Emission Trading Scheme) won’t work until 2045, thus carbon is worthless.”

I wonder when the same will be said about carbon on the California market? Unfortunately, it won’t collapse soon enough to prevent higher consumer prices and the exodus of good California jobs.

James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and one of the most virulent anthropogenic global warming crusaders in the World, thinks carbon trading is corrupt and ineffective. (It’s) a hidden tax … because cap-and-trade increases the cost of energy for the public, as utilities and other industries purchase the right to pollute with one hand, adding it to fuel prices, while with the other hand they take back most of the permit revenues from the government. Costs and profits of the trading infrastructure are also added to the public's energy bill."

"You are choosing the path focused on corporate greed," Hansen told carbon traders.

I agree with Hansen that carbon trading is useless, not just because it breeds corruption, but also is unnecessary. Climate change is natural, and no CO2-reduction scheme will result in a measurable reduction or even slowing. But that won’t stop futile efforts.

Natural Climate Change Ignorance is not Bliss

Knowledge is based on facts and logic, but is overwhelmed by opinions and emotion. The facts of natural climate change are well known: thousands of times climate has been warmer or colder than now naturally. In the 15,000 years since the end of the Ice Age, there have been five warmer periods, each demonstrated by science studies showing tree lines were further north and reached higher elevations than now; isotopes in ice cores showed past levels of atmospheric CO2 compared to corresponding global temperature; analyses of lake and ocean sediments did the same; and geology recorded sea level rise and fall and glacier retreat and advance.

Science establishes one fact clearly: we are living in a moderately warm period, with a historically low level of atmospheric CO2. During the past million years 100,000-year-long ice ages have been interrupted by 20,000-year-long warmer periods. As oceans warmed, CO2 was released into the atmosphere, and as oceans cooled CO2 was reabsorbed. Changes in atmospheric CO2 then, as now, were caused by warming and cooling which preceded the changes, not were caused by CO2 changes. The 400,000-year record of climate change and CO2 levels contained in the Vostok (Antarctic) ice cores clearly demonstrate this pattern.

Those who believe that increased CO2 causes warming, please answer this simple question: what caused past levels of atmospheric CO2 to increase? We know what caused past warming: changes in the Earth’s orbit and its axis. We know the Earth was much warmer 125,000 years ago during the Eemian, when warming increased atmospheric CO2 and melted permafrost, releasing methane from the frozen tundra. Contrary to warmist predictions, there was no runaway warming, and soon we entered another long ice age that only ended 15,000 years ago.

Earth explains natural climate change to the blissfully ignorant.

Ignorance is not bliss.

Recently I invited myself to be the skunk at the Gualala Municipal Advisory Council (GMAC) party to rubber stamp GMAC’s support of the Consensus Statement on Climate Change and Coral Reefs. Before going I did what only one GMAC member did: I actually read the Consensus Statement. Not only read it, I prepared a point-by-point rebuttal complete with graphs copied from published peer-reviewed studies, and provided each GMAC member a copy. As far as I could tell, still only one of them has read the Consensus Statement, but this didn’t stop them from approving it 5-1.

The presentation by the advocate of endorsing the Consensus Statement was not only devoid of its actual wording, it was conspicuously devoid of science facts and studies supporting its need. His presentation included erroneous and meaningless statements, such as “Arctic sea ice lowest in 3 million years.” The rebuttal I presented demonstrated that Arctic sea ice was lower in the 1930’s, during the Holocene Climatic Optimum of 8,000 to 5,000 years ago, and during the much-warmer Eemian interglacial of only 125,000 years ago, when sea level was over 20 feet higher than now. Strangely, in a presentation about man-caused global warming, he presented three items only about temperatures this year, which were not only incorrect, but severely limited in geography and time period covered. His chart forecasted a spring El Niño, which are commonplace occurrences that were well known and documented long before we began our CO2 obsession.

I also presented a new study showing that increased atmospheric CO2 is a result of natural climate change, and is negligibly affected by burning fossil fuels since only 3% of CO2 discharged into the atmosphere is due to human activities.

Once again, in a Kangaroo Court ruled by emotions, beliefs trumped facts.

Natural Climate Change Deniers

A friend writes that I am a “climate-change denier”, and during a presentation, another friend angrily accused me of denying climate change. I call them “natural climate-change deniers”.

I often speak and write about five periods of natural climate change with warming greater than the present in the past 10,000 years since the end of the Ice Age. Thousands of science studies bear witness that “the only constant in climate is change”. Al Gore of “An Inconvenient Truth”, and Michael Mann of the “Hockey Stick”, both deny proven climate science: five periods in the recent past had natural warming much greater than now. The warmest was the Holocene Climate Optimum, 8,000-5,000 years ago, followed by the Egyptian, Minoan, Roman, and Medieval Warm Periods, each of which was cooler than its predecessor. Current warming is by far the least warm of the six, and seems exceptional only in light of historical climate science ignorance and the fact that it followed the longest and coldest period of the past 8,000 years, the Little Ice Age (1350-1850AD).

Climate records of the past 900,000 years show long glacial periods (ice ages) surrounding shorter interglacial (warm) periods. The previous interglacial was the Eemian, 125,000 years ago, with sea levels 20 feet higher and temperature 5°F warmer. Nature did then what Al Gore says humans are doing now. However, a Global and Planetary Change paper finds that changes in CO2 follow rather than lead global air surface temperature and that "CO₂ released from use of fossil fuels have little influence on the observed changes in the amount of atmospheric CO₂.”

Among many errors, my computer-literate friend missed that Anthony Watts won both the 2011 and 2012 Best Science, and 2012 Lifetime Achievement, on the Bloggies.

Natural climate-change deniers prefer their beliefs to the facts I present.

Man-Caused Global Warming Myth

Mr. George Bush of The Sea Ranch, natural climate change denier, chose a cartoon as his response to the science studies I include in my letters. From his description, it wasn’t a particularly clever cartoon. It’s amazing how the myth of the ostrich hiding its head in the sand has been around since Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79, who said it was in a bush, not sand), just as the anthropogenic global warming myth persists even after over 15 years of flat global temperatures, no accelerating sea level increase, and numerous reports of previous warmer periods.

NASA, with James Hansen famously leading its climate alarmism, just released a study of warming in the Arctic during the past century. According to a graph published on the NASA Earth Observatory site, Arctic temperatures were warmer in the 1930's than now. In addition, the graph shows the Arctic warmed 1.6C over the 19-year period from 1918-1937 at a rate of 0.84C/decade, 75% faster than the 0.48C/decade from 1980-2000. Between these two warming periods, Arctic temperatures dropped as CO2 increased. Thus, alarmist claims that recent Arctic warming is unprecedented or accelerating are bogus.

At the European Geosciences Union meeting, Authors Steirou and Koutsoyiannis, reported global warming over the past century was only about one-half [0.42°C] of that claimed by the United Nations IPCC [0.7-0.8°C].

A paper in the Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology journal finds that the Medieval Warming Period “was warmer than the late 20th century by ~1°C.” The paper adds to the peer-reviewed publications of over 1000 scientists in the Medieval Warm Period Project showing that the global Medieval Warming Period was warmer than the current warming period.

I’m pleased Mr. Bush apparently has accepted the debate offer I’ve had open for over three years. It’s about time.

Man-Caused Global Warming Defectors

The cataclysmic climate changers are casting handfuls of mud at the alarmist wall, hoping something will stick. They have just concluded Rio+20, agreed by one and all to have been a colossal failure. Of course they all agreed that “something must be done”, they just couldn’t agree on what to do, when to do it, and by whom.

Compounding the alarmists’ agony is the steady defection from their ranks. The latest was James Lovelock, “Gaia-ist” theorists, now says that global warming has not occurred as he and others, such as Al Gore, thought it would. In his article in The Telegraph,  Fritz Vahrenholt, one of Germany's earliest green energy investors, reports he is not convinced that humanity is causing catastrophic global warming. He was active on the UN climate change panel and found their science was wanting, cobbled together by activist organizations such as Greenpeace and World Wildlife Federation. Vahrenholt found that climate in the past 10,000 years varied greatly naturally, and that recent temperatures and weather are unremarkable in that context.

Front-page articles this week in The Chronicle and Press Democrat predicted sea-level rise of a foot by 2030, and several feet by 2100. However, the San Francisco tide gauge, the longest continuous tide record in the Western Hemisphere (since June 30, 1854), shows a steady increase of eight inches per century. Arena Cove’s record since 1978 shows a sea-level decline of an inch per century. None of the West Coast records show the acceleration necessary to raise sea level a foot in 20 years.

In the age of the internet, it is easy to find peer-reviewed science showing that our severe weather, sea levels, ocean acidity, temperature, and climate change itself are all well within historical norms.

See for yourselves (Second Thoughts of an Environmentalist ).

Driving a Nail into Man-Caused Global Warming

To the man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And so it goes with these tree-ring climate reconstructions: no matter what, you get a Hockey Stick, and somehow the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period (and the Holocene Optimum and Roman Warming) are relegated to climatic mythology.

That's when I seek clarity and open my volumes of Dr. H H Lamb, in particular "Climatic History and the Future." There I find that indeed these climatic periods had global existence; lives prospered where later they were devastated, crops were introduced during warm periods which failed during cold, glaciers retreated, advanced, and retreated again, tree lines and sea levels rose and fell, and all of this in the brief 10,000-year period following the Ice Age.

Worldwide, scientists have examined and documented thousands of studies that illuminate natural climate change. The chronicles of our ancestors, through such means as records of weather, population growth and decline, tax rolls, commodity prices, deserted cities and ports, famine and plague, and in many other ways, show that the flat Hockey Stick shaft does not depict the reality of the climate of the past 1,000 years (or before and beyond), and yet all this is lost in unending debate about the significance of tree-ring sample selection.

And after all this, nothing is settled, and the debate rages on: the tempest in a tea pot. Sound and fury signifying nothing (Lamb was British, so the Shakespeare is a small tribute to British genius). All sides claim victory, but continue the fight as if victory achieved nothing. And that is the reality of this debate. The tree rings left out of the debate speak as much to the problem of climate reconstruction as the ones included. They tell no tale, because they are as incapable of telling one as are the ones selected. But all that is heard is the yammering of the hammering.

Non Sequitur - A Natural Global Warming Denier Cartoon

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This Non Sequitur cartoon by Wiley Miller ran in our area newspapers the San Francisco Chronicle and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat yesterday (January 11, 2011). In the same newspapers, and in on-line news aggregators such as Drudge Report and Google News, were reports of record setting snow storms in Alaska, and the London Daily Mail reported that thousands of Britons were trapped by 18 feet of snow at Alpine ski resorts.

At Cordova, Alaska, the snow was so deep that 97 members of the Alaska National Guard have been put on snow shoveling duty. And they are struggling just to keep up.

Last snow season, we Californians were treated (or subjected) to a very long and heavy snow season. The Central Sierra Snow Lab reported 207 inches (17.2 feet), the fifth highest snow depth in roughly the past 100 years.

I hope Mr. Miller enjoys the snow-free days wherever he is, and counts his blessings that he isn't shovelling snow in Alaska, or trapped in the Alps. Since the Earth has been warming naturally and sporadically for 400 years since the Little Ice Age, and recently has been cooling as much as warming as CO2 steadily increases, perhaps Mr. Miller will stop denying that climate change is natural, and has been for billions of years.

I Agree with Dr Fred Singer - Global Warming is Bunk!

When was the last time you read that "controvesial speaker Al Gore" would be appearing? That's right, never, because the media has decreed the science of global warming is settled, and speaking on the side of a settled topic by definition cannot be controversial. So with great interest I went to the Coloradoan.com to read: Skepticism: Controversial speaker Fred Singer says that global warming and climate science 'bunk'

After reading the article, I was inspired to post the following comment, and this led to a rambling, polite discussion over a couple of days with Dr Scott Denning, Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, and occasionally less polite discussions with a couple of other commenters.

My opening comment:

Scott Denning's statement about all the heat generated by burning fossil fuels is quite foolish. What does he think caused five periods of greater warming than the current one in the past 11,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age? More recently, 39 of the 50 states records of hottest days were set over 50 years ago. Coral mounts rising ten feet above current sea levels show that temperature and sea level were much higher 4,000 years ago at the end of the Holocene Climate Optimum. Just 1,000 years ago the global Medieval Warm Peiod was warmer, sea levels were higher, and humanity prospered. We are now coming off the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850 AD) and the warming we are now experiencing is a natural rebound from the coldest period of the past 11,000 years. If you won't listen to skeptics, lend an ear to the Earth - it tells the story of natural climate change eloquently.


Zippy-1 (the first commenter)

Your logic is flawed. None of your examples negate the 'greenhouse effect' warming caused by rising CO2 levels from humans burning fossil fuels. And 39 states temperature records? Come on. Even if you're correct cherry-picked local examples are meaningless in the context of global average annual temperatures, which puts the most recent decade as the hottest on record. 2010 was tied for the hottest full year on record and the first half of 2011 is a record.

Dr Scott Denning's reply to my comment:

Hi Michael,

Simple question ... simple answer. Earlier climate changes were caused by heat coming into the Earth and heat going out from the Earth. Modern climate change responds to precisely the same physics that past climate changes responded to.

Is there some reason that you think the Earth warmed and cooled in the past when heat was added or subtracted, but that somehow the extra Watts of heat from CO2 "don't count?"

Interesting theory. I guess as a scientist I have to be a bit skeptical of the logic though.

Most of us understand that adding heat to things warm them up. Always has. Always will.

Best regards,

Scott Denning
Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science

My reply to Dr Denning:

Dr Denning

The portion of additional CO2 created by the burning of fossil fuel is only a tiny part of the CO2 created naturally by oxidation by plants, animals, and decay of plant matter. And in all that, CO2 is only 0.04% of the atmosphere by volume, of which only 3% is produced by human activity. In previous periods of warming, when CO2 was 10 to 20 rimes current levels, the Earth has plunged into ice ages while CO2 was still at high levels. The Holocene Optimum of 8,000 to 4,000 years ago was much warmer than now and followed the Ice Age which ended 11,000 years ago, yet CO2 was much lower. The additional warmth of the Holocene Optimum did not come from burning fossil fuels, just as hundreds of other periods of warming were not caused by increased CO2.

There is now good scientific reason to doubt the existence of a "greenhouse warming effect."

The Monterrey science research institute also recreated Wood’s test into the effect of longwave infrared radiation trapped inside a greenhouse. Unlike Pratt it found that Wood’s findings were correct, absolutely valid and systematically repeatable. The Bio Cab man affirms, “ the greenhouse effect does not exist as it is described in many didactic books and articles.”

Put simply, one of the aforementioned professors has their reputation perilously on the line and Nahle is gunning for an explanation from his U.S. Rival. A clue to the outcome: Pratt isn't even qualified in science - he's a (warmist) mathematician specializing in computers.

Professor Nahle’s findings will come as no surprise to anyone who is up to speed with the other big climate story that has raised huge doubts over any so-called greenhouse effect. NASA now admits global warming just isn’t happening despite ever-rising levels of CO2.

Laughably, the once illustrious U.S. space agency is blaming no warming this century on China."

A closing point - current warming started 300 years ago

My reply to Zippy-1:

"39 of the 50 states records of hottest days were set over 50 years ago."

Zippy-1

These are not cherry-picked. I simply googled heat records by state and found a table from USA Today. The initial reason I did this was because Al Gore and His Acolytes have now adopted a new appoach to alarmism by claiming all severe weather events are evidence of man-caused climate change. Kevin Trenberth also has made this claim. As far as this being the hottest period on record, I noted in a previous post that Greenland ice cores for the past 10,000 years show that not one of the past 100 years were warmer than 9,100 of the past 10,000. So much for exceptional warmth.

Current warming is "unprecedented" only if you think climate began after Al Gore earned his D's at Harvard.

The next reply from Dr Scott Denning

Good morning Michael,

I asked you why past climate changes can be explained by changes in heating, and you replied that there isn't much CO2 in the atmosphere. (Note: that's what I said and it's true; CO2 is only 0.0387% by volume) Then you said most CO2 doesn't come from combustion. (Note: that's also true, since 96% of CO2 is produced by natural, not human sources)Then you claimed the greenhouse effect doesn't exist (Note: this is not exactly true, since I only provided quotes from the scientists that say the greenhouse effect doesn't exist.

I'll ask you again: if changes in heating produced ice ages and warm periods in the past as you mention, why on Earth do you expect extra watts of heat from CO2 to have no effect now? Have the laws of thermodynamics changed? (Note: thousands of times in the past cooling began when CO2 was high; enormous quantities of CO2 were being added to the atmosphere from the warming seas and from decay - that's oxidation - of vegetable matter, and heat is heat)

We don't expect global warming because 39 states are hot today. We expect global warming because adding heat to things changes their temperature. Don't believe me? Put a pot of water on the stove and see what happens! (Note: conversely, we expect global cooling when the orbital dynamics that caused global warming are reversed)

Have a great day,

Scott Denning

My reply to Dr Denning:

Where did all the extra heat come from when the temperatures were much higher five times in the past 10,000 years since the end of the Ice Age than they are now? CO2 was much lower then. In fact, even now it is close to its lowest level in parts per million going back about a billion years. Several things are undeniable: CO2 levels have been over ten times current atmospheric levels previously without causing run-away warming; in all instances, warming began before CO2 increased, and cooling began when CO2 was high and before it started dropping; CO2 and the rest of the atmosphere is warmed by convection, just as trapped air in a greenhouse is - unlike a greenhouse, the warm air rises and mixes with the cooler air above; CO2 has neither the volume nor properties to cause a difference in temperature to the point that it could be distinguished from natural environmental noise.

A thought I am now developing is that the current production of heat by the Earth is very small compared to periods when plants grew, died, decomposed to form huge deposits of coal and oil, and along the way emitted enormous quantities of CO2 - which further fed plant growth. Of course, the same is happening today, only the naturally produced CO2 is much less because the plant mass is so much smaller, although it is over thirty times what is produced by human activity.

A comment from Elmer Jones:

I haven't heard anyone explain why the earth's glaciers are melting at a pronounced rate according to those that have studied them . I give little weight to those people whom have not studied them. Where did the North polar ice cap go?

Why is the Greenland ice cap melting at an advanced rate? If heat is being generated internally by the planet then what is the cause? There is too much body of evidence to prove that "yes indeed the ice deposits are melting."

My reply to Elmer Jones:

A map of Glacier Bay, Alaska, shows glacier retreat of 60 miles from 1760 to 1912, and only about six miles since. Glacier retreat and advance during the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age has been extensively studied and documented by such climate experts as H H Lamb, "Climatic History and the Future", and the founder of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, now famous for its role in Climategate. A study of glacier history shows glaciers are not now retreating at an advanced rate, and neither is the Greenland ice cap. In fact, Greenland ice cores show that Greenland was warmer for 9,100 years of the past 10,000 than for any year of the past 100. Glaciers in the Alps retreated further 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period than during the recent warming. The Alpine glaciers advanced during the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850 AD) then began retreating over 100 years before significant increases in atmospheric CO2. Current retreat is uncovering man-made artifacts that were created during the Medieval Warm Period, then covered during the Little Ice Age, and are now being exposed again. Russian Arctic studies have determined there were several periods in the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age when there was less Arctic ice than now, particularly during the much warmer Holocene Climate Optimum when it was so much warmer than present that sea levels were over ten feet higher than now at the peak of Holocene warming about 4,000 years ago. There are coral mounts ten feet higher than the current sea level that prove it was much warmer and sea levels were higher then - corals don't grow out of the water, you know, and they grow particularly well in warm water. I hope I answered your questions, Elmer. This information, and a lot more, is written clearly in the Earth for all to see that seek it with open minds and scientific curiosity.

Then I passed this reply on to Dr Denning:

Some more musings about current natural climate change. Where did the heat come from over 200 years ago when CO2 was low?

A map of Glacier Bay, Alaska, shows glacier retreat of 60 miles from 1760 to 1912, and only about six miles since. Glacier retreat and advance during the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age has been extensively studied and documented by such climate experts as H H Lamb, "Climatic History and the Future", and the founder of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, now famous for its role in Climategate. A study of glacier history shows glaciers are not now retreating at an advanced rate, and neither is the Greenland ice cap. In fact, Greenland ice cores show that Greenland was warmer for 9,100 years of the past 10,000 than for any year of the past 100. Glaciers in the Alps retreated further 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period than during the recent warming. The Alpine glaciers advanced during the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850 AD) then began retreating over 100 years before significant increases in atmospheric CO2. Current retreat is uncovering man-made artifacts that were created during the Medieval Warm Period, then covered during the Little Ice Age, and are now being exposed again. Russian Arctic studies have determined there were several periods in the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age when there was less Arctic ice than now, particularly during the much warmer Holocene Climate Optimum when it was so much warmer than present that sea levels were over ten feet higher than now at the peak of Holocene warming about 4,000 years ago. There are coral mounts ten feet higher than the current sea level that prove it was much warmer and sea levels were higher then - corals don't grow out of the water, you know, and they grow particularly well in warm water. This information, and a lot more, is written clearly in the Earth for all to see that seek it with open minds and scientific curiosity.

Then I replid to Zippy-1:

"Your logic is flawed. None of your examples negate the 'greenhouse effect' warming caused by rising CO2 levels from humans burning fossil fuels."

Your logic is flawed. Current warming began over 100 years before human activity caused any significant increase in CO2 levels. The Little Ice Age ended by 1850 or earlier, and there were two periods of much more rapid warming than now from 1850 to 1945. Ironically, as CO2 increased steadily after 1950, there was a cooling period that lasted until 1975, then warming, then cooling the past decade.

And I further reply to Zippy-1:

Concerning "hottest on record" temps, if you go to: http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/cag3/hr-display3.pl  (which is a government website) you will see a chart of contiguous US temperatures for the past 115 years which show an increase of about 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit during that period, roughly half before 1950 and half after. This NOAA chart also shows no warming for 12 years, and that 2009 and 2010 were the lowest annual temperatures since 1994. As far as a decade being the hottest on record, you are lucky science can't break out any but the most recent warm periods by decade. Suffice it to say, since Greenland ice cores show 9,100 of the past 10,000 years were warmer than any of the past 100, there were centuries 4,000 to 8,000 years ago that were hotter than the past decade.

Then Dr Denning replied to me:
Michael,

The Earth's surface receives virtually all of its heat from only two sources: incoming radiant energy from the Sun and from the warm air above us. Believe it or not, almost two-thirds of the total comes from the air. This is easily measured by comparing the total energy in at night to that during the day. It's not in dispute. Energy leaving the surface is mostly through radiant energy as well, with about 20% going up as convective heat transfer and evaporative cooling.

Whenever more heat comes in than goes out, the Earth's surface warms up. Whenever more heat goes out than comes in, the Earth's surface cools off. This is what explains the difference between day and night, summer and winter, Miami and Minneapolis. Pretty simple.

In fact, this simple physics also explains EVERY CLIMATE CHANGE THE EARTH HAS EVER EXPERIENCED. So all of your examples of warmer and colder periods in the past, the Little Ice Age, the Big Ice Age, the Age of the Dinosaurs, everything.

Precisely the same physical laws also govern the changes that will certainly occur if the amount of radiant energy delivered to the Earth's surface increases by 8 Watts per square meter when China and India build modern industrial economies using coal.

Look, I'm not selling something smelly here: adding heat warms things up. Removing heat cools things off. That's how climate has worked for billions of years. That's how it will continue to work for the rest of our children's lives.

I do appreciate your interest in the science. Contrary to your original comment, there's nothing foolish about this!

Sincerely,

Scott Denning
Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science
Colorado State University

I persist in disagreeing with Dr Denning:

Where did the heat come from over 200 years ago when CO2 was low?

A map of Glacier Bay, Alaska, shows glacier retreat of 60 miles from 1760 to 1912, and only about six miles since. Glacier retreat and advance during the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age has been extensively studied and documented by such climate experts as H H Lamb, "Climatic History and the Future", and the founder of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, now famous for its role in Climategate. A study of glacier history shows glaciers are not now retreating at an advanced rate, and neither is the Greenland ice cap. In fact, Greenland ice cores show that Greenland was warmer for 9,100 years of the past 10,000 than for any year of the past 100. Glaciers in the Alps retreated further 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period than during the recent warming. The Alpine glaciers advanced during the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850 AD) then began retreating over 100 years before significant increases in atmospheric CO2. Current retreat is uncovering man-made artifacts that were created during the Medieval Warm Period, then covered during the Little Ice Age, and are now being exposed again. Russian Arctic studies have determined there were several periods in the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age when there was less Arctic ice than now, particularly during the much warmer Holocene Climate Optimum when it was so much warmer than present that sea levels were over ten feet higher than now at the peak of Holocene warming about 4,000 years ago. There are coral mounts ten feet higher than the current sea level that prove it was much warmer and sea levels were higher then - corals don't grow out of the water, you know, and they grow particularly well in warm water. This information, and a lot more, is written clearly in the Earth for all to see that seek it with open minds and scientific curiosity.

And Dr Denning replies:
You've asked where the heat came from 200 years ago when we began warming from the Little Ice Age. You've also told me to look at the Earth for answers. Fine. Notice that there's no need to yell at me or insult me. I'm being pretty reasonable and answering you politely.

Regarding the warming that began at the end of the Little Ice Age the answer is the Sun. The warming actually began more like 300 years ago following a period when the sun dimmed by about 1 Watt per square meter (compared to 1367 Watts per square meter today) during the Maunder Minimum. As the sun gradually brightened, even that tiny change (1 W out of 1367) steadily warmed the Earth's climate and produced all those changes you wrote about.

Regarding listening to the Earth, I've been doing it professionally for almost 30 years now. My undergraduate degree was in geology and I used to work in the oil industry. I'm not the crackpot socialist you might imagine! Paleoclimate has always been fascinating to me and I've read thousands of pages of that material over half my lifetime.

Natural climate change shows us a very clear picture of the response of the Earth to changes in the amount of energy coming in and going out. During the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago ice sheets covered much of North America, Europe, and Asia which made the albedo much higher so that sunlight was reflected to space. Cold oceans and fertilization by iron in dust at that time allowed the oceans to dissolve nearly 1/3 of all the CO2 in the air. Together the brighter surface and lower CO2 levels reduced the energy input by about 7.5 Watts per square meter (7.5 times as much as the Little Ice Age). And the changes persisted much longer, allowing climate to cool drastically.

By the time my children are old, Earth's surface will receive 8 Watts per square meter more energy than it did in 1800 (if India and China go big for coal). Do you see why I'm concerned?

Sincerely,

Scott Denning

Again I respond to Dr Denning

Thank you for your replies. I won't SHOUT AT YOU or write insulting things (some pointed comments in this thread are addressed to a Zippy-1), although physics I've learned has convinced me that a colder object (air) does not warm a warmer one (earth), or a smaller one (air) a massive one (ocean), The air does not have the mass to contain heat sufficient to provide two-thirds of warming. On a contrary note, the Sun warms the earth, and after sundown the earth warms the air. My sense of touch confirms this daily.

Of course, increasing levels of CO2 only correlate with temperature 22% of the time, and as Kevin Trenberth said, it's a travesty that the current lack of warming can't be explained. That is why China aerosols have been plugged in to explain the lack of warming, even as the aerosols are due to the enormous quantities of coal the Chinese are burning. Aerosols seem to be a wild card, played when the climate models don't add up.

I have no concern for my grandchildren in a warming world. As Bjorn Lomborg suggests, "Cool it" and adapt. Adaptation has been the genius of humanity for thousands of years, through much warmer and much colder periods. My reading of H H Lamb's "Climatic History and the Future" makes me welcome the idea of a warmer, higher CO2 environment because of high food production. The lessons of the Little Ice Age, of crop failures and starvation and population displacements, incredibly violent and ruinous storms, horrendous flooding and loss of millions of lives in the Yellow River region of China, flooding and enormous erosion on the coasts of England and the Netherlands, and many more disasters than you would get in a warm climate.

Civilization thrived in recent warm periods. The Holocene Climate Optimum of 8,000 to 4,000 years ago, the Roman Warm Period of 200 BC to 500 AD, the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1300 AD), and the current warm period following the Little Ice Age. Fear cold, not warm.

Pacific Islands Cope with Sea-Level Rise

Sea levels have risen a lot in the past 12,000 years since the end of the most recent Ice Age - over 400 feet, or an average of over three feet per century. In recent centuries the rate of sea-level rise has been much lower, about six inches per century. The reasons for sea level rise and the changing rates are obvious: we're currently in an inter-glacial, the period between Ice Ages, so the melting since the last Ice Age continues; and sea-levels rose the fastest just after the end of the Ice Age because there was a lot of terrestrial ice to melt.


Now the good news about drowning islands in the South Pacific: they're not.


Readers of this and other skeptic blogs already knew (1) the rate of sea-level rise was natural and moderate, and (2) coral islands have been keeping up with rising sea levels for millions of years.


Now even New Scientist acknowledges the obvious, which you can avail by clicking the following link to New Scientist article.

I wonder what anthropogenic global warming alarmists think about fluctuating sea levels and coral? Are they aware that large changes in sea levels in a short time period - over 400 feet in 12,000 years - are natural? What do they think corals were doing when the sea levels were 420 feet lower? Or what corals did as levels rose over 400 feet? Do they think that today's Pacific atolls were just sitting there waiting for sea levels to come up and inundate them?

Do the alarmists know that coral growth kept pace with rapid sea-level rise during those thousands of years? Do they know that corals grow faster in warmer water than in colder, and have thrived for millions of years in a variety of warmer and colder sea temperatures, and in an environment when CO2 levels were 20 or more times higher?

These things are all voluminously documented and available to even a layman researcher, such as myself.

It's not brain surgery or rocket science.

Damn! I Want Global Warming!

Alice and I moved to the northern California coast in 1998, when we were each 56 years old. We knew the weather on the coast was cool, but with expectations of global warming, as promised by Al Gore, we thought it would warm as we aged.

Old people need warmer, you know.

If you don't believe me, go to Florida and Arizona.

Anyway, each year we look for the warming signs.

Last summer it was so cool on the coast that the blackberries we pass on our daily walks to the beach never ripened. We watched them hungrily, day after day, and they never made it past "too bitter to swallow."

They were at their best twelve year ago just after we moved here from hot and sunny Livermore. That also happened to be the last real warm year we've had here, thanks to the strongest El Nino in the past hundred years.

Now a very respected scientist finds that we're in for more cooling until around 2030.

Whoa just a ding dong dang minute! In 2030 Alice and I will be 88 years old, and in need of all the warming we can get!

No one seems to like cooling, least of all our elders. If you look at a map of population trends in the United States, you will see massive movement from the colder regions to the warmer. In effect, we've been voting for global warming with our feet for the past century.

However, Alice and I love our home, and we don't want to move south, particularly to the idiocy and stupidity of Los Angeles, where I was born and Alice grew up. Alice and I are looking forward to the lights going off in Los Angeles when LA votes to boycott Arizona. We're already boycotting San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley because of their fatuous boycotts. Now we've added LA to the list. So far our boycotts have resulted in almost $1,000 of our funds not being spent in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We're doing our part to cool them off.

"Unprecedented" Warming for 160 Years

Like the dollar, "unprecedented" just doesn't go as far as it used to.

Believers in anthropogenic global warming argue that current warming is unprecedented. The gist of my counter-argument is that numerous studies show warming was greater during the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1300AD), and that it was even warmer during the Holocene Climate Optimum 9,000 to 5,000 years ago. These studies will show that warming during those periods was global and persistent, was reflected in ice cores, lake and ocean sediments, in the distribution of plants by latitude and elevations, and evidence from human settlements and historical records.

Arrayed against this record of natural climate changes going back over 11,000 years to the end of the Ice Age, the alleged evidence of man-caused global warming spans 60 years when global temperatures both rose and fell while atmospheric carbon dioxide increased. Now the “Climategate” e-mails show that alarmist scientists had to “hide the decline,” admit that the Medieval Warm Period was as warm or warmer, and that it is a “travesty” that their computer models can’t explain recent cooling.

CO2 Tail Can't Wag Climate Change Dog

A May 15 letter to our local weekly paper, the Independent Coast Observer of Gualala, California, referred to one of my letters and began: “A previous letter falsely stated that increased CO2 concentrations can’t initiate a warming trend.” The writer then followed this by admitting that the Vostok ice core samples proved that solar cycles initiated previous temperature increases and subsequent CO2 rise (an inconvenient truth Al Gore got backwards), “but that is not the case in our present warming trend.”

That’s false. Our current warming trend began over 400 years ago, long before atmospheric CO2 increased significantly (Moberg et al, published in Nature, Vol. 433, No. 7026, pp. 613 - 617, 10 February 2005). From the end of the Little Ice Ages, approximately 1860, until 1940, the global temperature increased about 0.6º C. From 1940 to present, it’s only increased 0.4º C, and the Globally Averaged Satellite-Based Temperature of the Lower Atmosphere from January 1979 through April 2009 has only increased 0.2º C. The past four years show a cooling trend; 2008 was the 14th coldest year of the past 30, and 2009 could be even colder.

Returning to the Vostok ice core samples, they not only proved solar intensity initiated warming and subsequent CO2 increases, but equally as important showed that increased CO2 levels do not prevent cooling. That’s right. In every instance, as CO2 remained high, cooling began, and then CO2 levels decreased as the cooling oceans absorbed it.

These facts make logical sense. CO2 is only four percent of greenhouse gases, compared to water vapor which is over 90%, and it would be foolish to attribute warming to a trace gas instead of to the extensively documented prowess of the sun. Solar fluctuations result in heating and cooling of the oceans, and the warmer or cooler oceans release or absorb CO2.

The CO2 tail can’t wag the climate change dog.

Global Warming: Gore Confuses Coincidence with Cause

Al Gore has made great use of a coincidence that the end of the Little Ice Ages, approximately 1850, and the natural increase in global temperatures coincided with the early stages of the Industrial Age and increased atmospheric CO2.

However, simply researching climate changes during the past 20,000 years shows that our current warming is modest, includes periods of cooling as CO2 increased, and correlates closely with solar fluctuations, not with CO2. Al's famous "hockey stick" has been totally discredited as it omitted the Little Ice Ages and the Medieval Warming Period. Even Al's guru James Hansen let him down, as NASA revised its temperature record for the past 100 years to reflect that six of the ten warmest years were over 50 years ago.

Al Gore has already made millions, and stands to make millions more, if Congress passes "cap and trade" legislation (learn about it here). The only approach to climate change that makes sense is adaptation, not expensive and vain efforts to reverse natural (and overwhelming) climate forces. Although the Earth is usually much warmer and polar ice free, at this moment in vast geological time we are in a rare ice age, and it looks like we will be plunging back into a period of true catastrophe, global cooling, before we in millions of years return to a "normal" Earth ten to twenty five degrees Fahrenheit warmer than present.

We should never confuse "coincidence" with "cause and effect."

Hot and Wet

Anthropogenic global warming alarmists are strident and misuse “undeniable,” “unprecedented,” and “catastrophic.” However, man-caused global warming is easily deniable, there are hundreds of natural precedents to our current warming, and previous cold periods, not warm ones, have been catastrophic for mankind. During the past 300 million years, about 90 percent of the time the Earth was much warmer than today. Even in the comparatively cooler Jurassic Period (199.6 to 145.5 million years ago) there was no polar ice. Glaciers on Antarctica didn’t form until almost 35 million years ago.

Naturally, warmer Earth had much higher sea levels; today’s are near the lowest ever, 400 to 1,000 feet below “normal.” If we had “normal” sea levels now, Gualala Ridge would be atop an island or submerged.

For more than half of the past 299 million years the Earth has averaged over 20º F warmer, and our present cool climate is the exception. In fact, the Holocene Climate Optimum, only 9,000 to 5,000 years ago, averaged over 4º F warmer than today. The Medieval Warm Period, 900 to 1350 AD, was also significantly warmer. Tree and snow lines were 1,000 feet higher, crops flourished, and civilizations advanced rapidly. Then the Little Ice Ages, 1350 to 1850 AD, featured severe storms, droughts, crop failures, plague, and the collapse of civilizations. Global cooling, not warming, would cause a “collapse of our lives.”

Fortunately for humanity, the Earth will normally be much warmer. Unfortunately, in the short term we’re going to plunge back into an Ice Age. Since six of the ten hottest years were over fifty years ago, the warmest year was 1934, and we have and are experiencing cooling as CO2 rises, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to escape global cooling by pumping up greenhouse gases.

Hang on to your warm coat!

Al Gore is a Climate Change Denier

It’s strange to be called a global warming denier, when I’m a climate change believer. I think man-caused global warming activists are the ones in denial – in denial of natural climate change.

It is ridiculous to think that our current climate is stable, or that we must or even are capable of maintaining it in its current state, or changing it for better or worse.

Only 18,000 years ago, so much water was trapped in ice sheets over the northern hemisphere that sea levels were over 400 feet lower. From Gualala it would have been a six-mile hike to the Pacific shore, and from San Francisco you would have to walk over 27 miles, past the horizon and the Farallon Islands, to reach the beach.

However, about 125,000 years ago sea levels were about 25 feet higher than today, and ocean temperatures averaged almost four degrees Fahrenheit warmer. Northern hemisphere winters were generally warmer and wetter than now. Trees grew as far north as the southern portion of Baffin Island, several hundred miles north of the current tree line in the Nunavik region of Quebec. Similarly in Europe, forests grew in Norway well above the Arctic Circle, where they don’t now.

In more recent years – in fact, less than 1,000 years ago – the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today. Al Gore’s claim our warm weather is “unprecedented” only holds if you define weather as not including the three warmer periods of the Holocene, which began 10,000 years ago and continues today. The Holocene is an interglacial period in our current ice age, and when it ends soon (in geological terms), our climate will be once again very cold.

Less than 1,000 years ago it was so warm that vineyards flourished in England, where they don’t now. The British say the way to make a small fortune is to have a large one and invest it in vineyards in England.

Al Gore makes fools of many, convincing them that our global warming is unprecedented, but you can’t fool Mother Nature.

A Sensible Statement about Global Warming

Sensible statements about global warming are very rare, and I was amazed to find this one lurking among typical alarmist statements.

If the temperature of the Earth’s surface is changing, something needs to be done to mitigate the effects.

Of course, that is what humans have been doing for thousands of years. Actually, adapting to change is what humans do best.

What do we know about the temperature of the Earth’s surface that is incontrovertible?

Simple.

We know that it is constantly changing.

And we know that we must do something to mitigate the effects of these constant changes.

In Minnesota we put on a thick coat. In Alaska we put on a couple of thick coats. In Oregon and Washington we wear rain clothes and carry umbrellas. In Hawaii, we take off almost everything. In California we complain about everything, demanding perfection in our weather as we do in all things.

Looking back in time, less than 20,000 years ago North America to points south of the Great Lakes was covered by mile-thick ice sheets. Come to think of it, the Great Lakes were a product of that Ice Age.

Obviously, humans mitigated the effects of that climate change by waiting for the ice to melt before living in Chicago.

In more recent years, Americans living in the populous northeastern states found they could find employment and live more comfortably in the warmer southern and western states, and a massive exodus from the colder states ensued. This movement in favor of global warming was abetted by the invention of air conditioning, which mitigated the effects of voluntary climate change.

In the 1930s heat and drought afflicted the Plains States – in particular northern Texas, western Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota, and eastern Colorado and New Mexico. Many of the residents of the Dust Bowl area took action to mitigate the effects of the climate change – they loaded up their trucks and moved to Californy.

Today Canadian and New England “Snow Birds” migrate to Florida and Arizona each winter to mitigate the effects of climate change. For them, warmer is better.

People also move in great masses to mitigate the effects of political climate change, but that’s for another article.

Carbon Offsets, the Pet Rocks of Environmentalism

San Francisco has come up with a great idea to tap into the idiocy that once fueled the Pet Rock buying craze, combined with the ancient Catholic Church malpractice of selling indulgences: purchasing carbon offsets at kiosks at San Francisco International airport to atone for the guilt of flying.

The carbon offsets are even an improvement over purchased indulgences and Pet Rocks. Unlike an indulgence, purchased to take away a sin you don’t want anyone to know about, that you also promise not to repeat, the carbon offset can be proudly displayed. Rather than hiding your sin, you want the whole world to know how environmentally sensitive you are. Another improvement over purchasing indulgences, you really don’t have to stop flying – you just keep flying, and keep buying.

And the Pet Rock? After the first chuckle, most people realized what a dumb waste of money they were. The joke got old fast. Carbon offsets, on the other hand, are a constant reminder to others that you are “holier than thou.”

All you have to do is pay your money and play the farcical game that what you are doing “makes a difference.” Forget that the developing nations of the world are going to keep pouring out CO2 at ever increasing rates as they progress. Ignore the fact that man-produced CO2 is a tiny component, a fraction of one percent, of the natural greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (water vapor is over 95 percent). Be oblivious that ice core records cited by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth” actually showed temperature increases preceded, not followed, increased atmospheric CO2.

Most of all, be clueless that carbon offsets, unlike Pet Rocks, are a monumental scam because there are no effective mechanisms to measure and audit their promises.

However, in this time of economic travail, let it not be said that I tried to discourage the efforts of sincere individuals to pump some of their excess cash into the economy. Pet rocks, indulgences, and carbon offsets are proof that some fools have too much money.

And that a fool and his/her/its money are soon parted.

More Proof of Global Warming

As Al Gore and his Acolytes report, any unusual weather is proof of man-caused global warming.

This year, and particularly right now in the United States, we are getting proof up to our hub caps, and beyond. After a year of unseasonably cold weather worldwide, with many record new low temperatures set, the American midwest followed by the northeast are being battered by heavy snow and cold.

The cheery forecast for Christmas? "It looks as if this parade of storm systems will continue through much of the holiday week."

Not to take any wind from the sails of global warming alarmists, but have you noticed how it is much more diffucult to cope with cold than with warm?

Only a thousand years ago, during the Medieval Warm Period, there was a long period when people thrived with average temperatures up to seven degrees F. higher than today.

Just over two hundred years ago, during our Revolutionary War, the world was a lot colder, and right now we're in the long cycle of warming that always comes after a cold period.

And we're on just about to start the next, inevitable, cold period.

When it happens, and it in all certainty will, mankind will wish that they could cause global warming.

And then mankind will adapt, just as the earth has adapted through all the hundreds, even the thousands, probably the millions of periods of natural climate change.

In a universe where change is the only constant, why should climate be different?