The Lancet response to Bjørn Lomborg

A Bjørn Lomborg Wall Street Journal article (Climate Change and the Lancet’s ‘Heat Death’ Deception With COP27 approaching, {Lancet} claims rising temperatures have killed people but ignores that they appear to have saved far more.) criticized a Lancet study that found a increasing heat deaths among old people without adjusting for the fact that there are a lot more old people now, thanks to medical and environmental progress as a result of fossil fuel use.

Lancet then responded by going wildly off topic: "Behind this discussion lies an ethical conflict. Older generations have enjoyed enormous benefits from industrialization, mostly based on fossil fuels. But global heating from fossil-fuel greenhouse gases leads to extreme weather events such as floods and droughts, wildfires, reduced crop yields, increased risk of infectious disease, biodiversity loss and sea-level rise, all with effects on health and survival. We are putting our children’s future in the balance. The generational injustice can’t be ignored."

Now it's not the old people, who are actually doing better because of fossil fueled progress, but the young in a distant future who are threatened by climate change events that, with all the scrutiny today, still haven't materialized. In fact, this chart shows that our children's risks caused by climate change have declined dramatically over the past 100 years of rapidly expanding fossil fuel use.

Heat and cold deaths?

The Lancet is hoist on its own petard.

Droughts?

Floods and droughts?

Extreme weather events?

Wildfires?

Reduced crop yields?

 

Increased risk of infectious disease?

Apparently the Lancet physicians never heard of the pandemics that killed hundreds of millions in colder periods of past centuries: the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) that killed 200 million over six hundred years ago; Smallpox killed 56 million about 500 years ago; Spanish Flu killed almost 50 million only one hundred years ago; the Plague of Justinian killed perhaps 50 million 1,500 years ago; and AIDS/HIV so far has killed around 30 million. 

Of the roughly 259 pandemics spanning the past several thousand years, the probable link to climate change is rapid increase in population and cities after the end of the last glacial period (Ice Age) about 11,700 years ago.

Sea level rise?

Historic sea level higher for most of the past 3,000 years.

Honolulu sea level?

Honolulu rate of sea level rise is six inches per century and steady.

The key points of the Lancet response are all unsupported.

So I wrote a letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal:

Editor

The Lancet response to Bjorn Lomborg’s article (Climate Change and the Lancet’s ‘Heat Death Deception’” was breathtaking in its deceptions. Its portent of fossil fuel doom didn’t acknowledge the 99% decrease in climate related deaths during the past 100 years due to wealth creation and development as a result of fossil fuel use. Placing the present in the context of the last 1,000 years, we find in the past greater weather events such as droughts and floods and over ten times the acreage burnt by wildfires annually. Rather than “reduced crop yields”, the world now produces record harvests without increased acres planted on an almost annual basis. Sea levels, now lower than during half of the past 10,000 years, are increasing at a rate of six inches per century with no signs of acceleration, per the world’s tide gauge records. 

 

The Lancet letter then goes off tangent about deaths caused by small particulate matter air pollution. Unmentioned by Lancet, these deaths are primarily due to burning wood and dung to cook and heat in enclosed spaces and have been since humans mastered fire. The growing use of natural gas and electricity generated from burning fossil fuels reduces these deaths dramatically.

 

“ Physician (Lancet), heal thyself!”

Blissful Intentional Science Ignorance - Encouraged and Promoted by Big Media

Over six years ago our local weekly newspaper, The Independent (big laugh) Coast Observer, emailed me that my letters would no longer be published. However, on rare occasions one of mine slips through, and this is the latest.

Editor

Believers in human-caused climate change argue that they follow the science, but then don’t. For example, sea-level increase; many Bay Area scientists predict a six-foot increase by 2100, but these predictions lack mention of San Francisco’s tide gauge, installed in 1854, the oldest in the Western Hemisphere. Its history is easily accessed online, as are those of all the world’s tide gauges, at psmsl.org. Per San Francisco’s 166-year record, sea level has risen six inches, at a steady pace of 3.6 inches per century. At the end of 2021 sea level was at its lowest for the past eight years, and 4.6 inches lower than its peak in 1983.

San Francisco tide gauge record since 1854 showing the 1983 peak 

and lack of significant change since then.

 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website shows sea level at Los Angeles increasing at a steady rate of 3.8 inches per century. Neither San Francisco nor Los Angeles show any increase in the rate of sea-level rise for the past century, and if their current rates are sustained the forecasted six-foot increase will be reached after the year 3800.

The Los Angeles rate of increase of 0.96 millimeters per year is less than four inches per century (3.8 inches)

The San Francisco rate of increase of 1.94 millimeters per year is less than eight inches per century (7.6 inches ) and was achieved by a curious adjustment by NASA at ~1896 not found in the tide gauge data. 

 

Many scientists also ignore Greenland ice core studies that indicate that we now live in the coldest 1,000-year period of the past 10,000 years. 

(It's a pity that I wasn't able to put these charts and links in my letter to the editor, because as you can see, a picture is worth a thousand words.)

 

For (human-caused global warming) scientists, ignorance is bliss.

Before Michael Shellenberger "Saw The Light"

Break Through: Why We Can't Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists by Ted Nordhaus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is extremely well written and contains a lot of information about climate change that the author now completely repudiates in "Apocalypse Never." I was intrigued by his former position on wind turbines, particularly on the failed Cape Wind project, compared to his present understanding of the waste and futility of wind, solar, and biomass energy generation. Just to say "he saw the light" would be to understate the brilliance of his transformation. Still, this book is so well written and original, and his treatment of limit-constricted environmentalists so accurate, that it should be read after reading "Apocalypse Never" to give the reader an appreciation of the thought that has gone into both endeavors.


View all my reviews

Apocalypse Never - Everyone Should Read

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is must reading for everyone, but particularly environmentalists. Each concept - energy generation, plastic waste, adaptation, natural disasters, prosperity vs. preservation, and many others - are treated clearly and thoroughly, with copious footnotes. Of particular interest is Shellenberger's treatment of environmentalism as religion substitute, where each can feel that they by doing some small thing are performing heroic service to the world. He contrasts that with the needs of poor people to gain enjoyment and meaning from their lives, not be inhabitants of an elites' back to the-way-it-was vision of earthly paradise. He shows how agricultural modernization using machinery, fertilizers, and GMOs create food surpluses while freeing people to stop being low production farmers and to be city workers and dwellers. The economic clarity of his illustrations are among the most valuable contributions of this book to approaching and solving the environment of panic created and spread by environmental alarmists. Malthus, Ehrlich, McKibbins are all honored by the left and are all monumentally wrong. Shellenberger gives them the attention they deserve.


View all my reviews

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.!

"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.

Embarrassed Experts

After our return from Antarctica, a letter writer was embarrassed that I dared argue with the “experts.” Following her lead, I will feign embarrassment for the experts on our trip, James Balog and Dr. Robert Bindschadler. They, along with many glaciology experts, are alarmed by the “collapse” of the West Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet. The source of my embarrassment is that none of the experts mentioned that this ice sheet has been retreating, often at a much greater rate, since the Ice Age ended over 12,000 years ago. Since then it retreated over 545 miles, including a phenomenal 190 miles in only 800 years (7,600 to 6,800 years before present), according to a 1999 study. 

Dr. Bindschadler is an expert researcher of the Antarctic Pine Island glacier. I doubt  ignorance prevented him mentioning that this glacier retreated similarly 8,000 years ago.

James Balog did most of his “Chasing Ice” work on Greenland’s Jakobshavn glacier, a famously fast moving glacier that retreated 21 miles 1851-1964, and only 9 miles since.

Embarrassingly, all of these periods of previous larger glacier retreat were either not in their expert knowledge base, or the facts were inconvenient since atmospheric CO2 levels were then only 72% of current levels. I asked, and received no answer, how was current glacier retreat caused by increased CO2 when previous greater retreat wasn’t?

Mr. Wiesner writes we should only pay attention to the experts. Presently, the experts’ predictions for temperature and sea level rise are both embarrassingly far higher than observations. Karl Popper, Richard Feynman, and other critical-thinking scientists would have concluded the experts’ predictions have failed.

Charting a course of action “to save the World” based on failed concepts is illogical. Mr. Wiesner and Mr. Landecker, you do agree, don’t you?

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. 

(click the image below to enlarge it)

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.

(click to enlarge)

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?

(click to enlarge)

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

(Click on cartoon to enlarge it)

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.