The Cooling Period of the Holocene

I often comment on the Holocene period and how we are in its cold phase. This is a succinct summary of those comments:

About 11,700 years ago the last 100,000-year glacial period ended, as did the four preceding it in the past half-million years. A 15,000 to 20,000 year interglacial period followed each glacial period, and each of these short interglacials had temperatures about 2 degrees Celsius higher that now plus higher sea levels, and we are presently in the cooling phase of our Holocene interglacial. 

There have been four warmer periods than now in the past 10,000 years. The earliest and warmest, the Holocene Climate Optimum, peaked 6,000 year ago, and was followed by successively cooler warm periods, the Minoan, Roman, Medieval, and our relatively cool present warm period. During the past 6,000 years temperature and sea level have ratcheted down and we just emerged from the coldest period of the past 10,000 years, the Little Ice Age. 

Since 1700AD global temperature has risen 2 degrees Celsius with relatively low levels of atmospheric CO2 (280ppm). As in the four previous periods of warming, atmospheric levels of CO2 played no discernible role in causing their warming or preventing periodic cooling. 

All of these climate changes occurred without benefit of human contributions, just as our present warming period was already 250 years along before human burning of fossil fuels after 1950AD caused a significant increase in CO2 levels. Of interest, the first period of rapid CO2 increase, 1950 to 1980, featured significant cooling from the very warm 1930 to 1950 period, and caused a Global Cooling panic. Over half the warming after 1980 has been a recovery from the drop in temperature 1950 to 1980. 

What can we do about current warming? Take advantage of it like our ancestors did. Civilization began and advanced rapidly during the rapid warming following the Ice Age. It's a good thing our ancestors didn't figure out a way to stop Global Warming then or we would still have mile-thick ice sheets covering all of Canada and a third of the US.!

"Haseya.guru" - wants us to "Rise up and stop climate change together"

According to the Haseya.guru website: "One hundred corporations are responsible for 71% of global carbon emissions."

      

Whatever the “100 corporations” are doing concerning CO2 emissions is irrelevant. Fossil fuels enabled the level of prosperity developed nations enjoy today and are the means for developing nations to achieve comparable prosperity. China is the best example, followed by India, and with reliable electrical power and water storage and distribution – attainable only with reliable electrical power from fossil fuel consumption now and in the foreseeable future – Africa will be next.

Burning biofuels in enclosed spaces (homes) – wood and dung – for heating and cooking is responsible for four million deaths each year from respiratory illnesses. Reliable electricity and LPG would eliminate most of these deaths.

Our annual human-created output of 29 gigatons of CO2 is tiny – only 4% - compared to the 750 gigatons moving through the natural carbon cycle each year.

Increase in CO2 emissions is caused by developing countries, not developed. The US and Europe have reduced their CO2 emissions.

CO2 is only a trace gas in the atmosphere – only 0.04%. “Earth's atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, and 0.04% carbon dioxide with very small percentages of other elements. Our atmosphere also contains water vapor.”

CO2 is also not the most important greenhouse gas. Water vapor comprises about 96% of greenhouse gases and CO2 only about 4%. Methane is a hardly measurable component of greenhouse gases. 

At atmospheric CO2 levels of 150ppm or lower complex life forms on Earth cease existence. At current increasing levels – roughly 400ppm – there has been measurable greening of the planet. During the past billion years atmospheric CO2 levels have normally been much higher – 4,000 to over 7,000ppm. 

Higher CO2 levels increase plant growth and reduce water consumption.

Greenland ice cores, ocean and lake sediment cores, tree lines, coral mounds, ancient beaches, and many other studies show that we now live in the coldest 1,000-year period of the past 10,000 years. Four previous warm periods – the Holocene Climate Optimum (9,000 to 5,000 years ago), Minoan (3,800 to 3,100 years ago), Roman (2,300 to 1,900 years ago), and Medieval (1,150 to 800 years ago) were all warmer than present and each became progressively cooler than its predecessor.

 Haseya.guru continues: "Biodiversity plummets as every twenty-four hours 175 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct." 

Here is a recent article debunking the mass extinction claims.

It highlights that recent extinctions, which have been moderate and declining in rate, are primarily on islands where non-native species were introduced. I saw the effects of that when I lived on Oahu for four years – mongoose, rats, cats, mosquitos, and plants such as trees, bushes, and fruit like blackberry vines.

To understand recent Great Barrier Reef (GBR) problems it’s good to look at the long picture; coral has existed for about 500 million years. During that time sea levels have varied by over 150 meters, atmospheric CO2 has been ten to twenty times higher, and global temperatures have varied over 10 degrees Celsius. Coral thrived, since it is a warm water organism.

Only 12,000 years ago, the GBR evolved its current form. Prior to that, sea level in the 100,000-year glacial period (Ice Age) was about 120 meters (roughly 400 feet) below the current level. In the 6,000-year period, 18,000 years to 12,000 years ago, sea level rose 120 meters, an average rate of two meters (over 6 feet) per century. Coral kept up with that rapid rate of sea level rise.

The best article I’ve found on the 2016 bleaching is by Jim Steele, Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism.

The significant findings are that the 2016 El Nino caused prolonged low sea level at low tide and that the upper 15 cm of reef coral was bleached. Coral at deeper levels were not affected. The Hughes study that reported coral disaster was an aerial survey and did not identify that the bleaching was only in the top reef level and had nothing to do with water temperature.

Coral exposed by low tides caused by 2016 El Nino

Here is  a comprehensive article about coral over time: 

Here’s a good article that includes summaries of many coral studies. 

I have dozens of studies that all support coral resilience and the causes of fluctuations – and that coral is doing very well, particularly in areas where scuba divers are rare.

Your statistics on rates of extinction are also totally out of whack, but that’s an item for a later look.

Climate Change Alarmists fiddle while California burns – “It’s the forest management, stupid!”

Even the LA Times figured it out. In fact, The Times and others noted that warnings to Paradise and other cities went back decades and predicted then what happened last year. 

Concerning wildfires and climate change: “The state’s climate alarmist politicians, media and climate activists have attempted to make nebulous and lame excuses that man made “climate change” is accountable for the poor forest conditions and increased wildfires but these claims are unsupported by climate data going back more than 1,000 years showing extensive periods of extreme droughts and precipitation in California have long existed and that no definitive change in this very long term climate record has been established as was noted in a Los Angeles Times article from 2014.”

As I have noted in several of my previous letters in the ICO, going back over a decade, Californians live in a Fool’s Paradise; the past hundred years have been much wetter – and cooler - than most of the past 7,000 years. 

Good forest management removes fuel and prevents small trees from serving as “fire ladders.” It also conserves water by removing small trees that take water from big trees. 

While you go on about stopping climate change, which has occurred naturally millions of times, the real work of preventing wildfire devastation needs to be done in California’s forests now!

"Homogenizing" the Way to Global Warming

Less than a decade ago I found some NOAA temperature charts for nearby cities in Northern California - where I've lived off and on since 1949. The cities are Santa Rosa and Ukiah, and  i remember old timers in the 1950s talking about how much hotter they had been in the 1930s and 1940s. The NOIAA temperature charts substantiated the old timers' memories - for awhile.

This was the Santa Rosa chart showing the hotter 1930s and 1940s:
This is the Santa Rosa chart that replaced it after "homogenization." The early years suffered a cold snap that lowered temperatures about one degree C for four decades and then raised later temperatures gradually.

How about Ukiah? Not surprisingly, Ukiah also found that its cooling trend became warming.

Before homogenization:

After homogenization.

It's funny that after over half a century since they passed on, the old timers were made liars about their memories of the hotter olden days.