PREHISTORIC TEMPERATURE UP TO 3 DEGREES WARMER THAN TODAY

Paper from here

Early Holocene climate variability and the timing and extent of the Holocene thermal maximum (HTM) in northern Iceland

By Chris Caseldine, Peter Langdon and Naomi Holmes

Abstract

The magnitude and timing of Holocene maximum warmth in the Arctic and sub-Arctic has been the subject of considerable recent interest, particularly in the context of future climate change. Although lying at a crucial location in the North Atlantic close to significant atmospheric and oceanic boundaries, terrestrial Holocene climatic data from Iceland are few and predominantly derive from glacial and palaeoecological evidence. Here we present new datasets from Trollaskagi, based on chironomid-inferred temperatures (CI-T), using sub-fossil chironomids from the same lake sediments supplemented by pollen data. July air temperatures have been derived using an Icelandic training set, and the data suggest optimal temperatures at sea level up to 1.5 degrees C above current levels around 8 k cal. yr BP, a time when birch woodland was well developed in Trollaskagi, but when woodland had still not fully developed in the more isolated NW peninsula. Our data thus suggest that optimal summer warmth did not occur in Iceland until 8 kcal. yr BP at the earliest, possibly lasting until 6.7 kcal. yr BP. The amount of warming for July was therefore at least 1.5 degrees C, but possibly up to 2-3 degrees C higher than the 1961-1990 average on the basis of the tree-line data. Comparison with data from elsewhere in adjacent Arctic regions, Greenland and Eastern Arctic Canada show peak warmth to be later in Iceland, and less pronounced. It also appears that there were enhanced temperature gradients during the first half of the Holocene between the two study areas Trollaskagi and the NW Peninsula and that they influenced patterns of vegetation colonisation, with current spatial temperature patterns only developing as Holocene climate deteriorated after around 6 kcal. yr BP.






HEAT WAVE OR BIG FREEZE, WE JUST LEARN TO ADAPT

In my work, I look at how societies throughout history have dealt with climate change. Britain has gone through extreme cold periods like the Ice Age. Then we had warm periods in the Middle Ages, cold periods again, and we are now in a warm period. All societies have different experiences with the weather. The question is: how can they become less vulnerable to climate change and build up their resilience? We have to look at coping with and adapting to these weather events, because - in the short term at least - we will not be able to change it.

I do not think anyone is questioning we are now in a period of global warming, so we should expect summers to get hotter. But there is no way that, in the next one or two generations, we will be able to do anything about global warming. Although Britain is trying to do something, most countries cannot. Even Europe as a whole is failing to control carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, in the Far East, China is building one coal-fired power station a week.

There is still a debate on how much of global warming is due to human input and how much is simply a case of natural warming cycles. However, we should forget about the science behind global warming - that is irrelevant. What matters is what people do to protect themselves when a hot summer is on the way. People say this is the hottest summer since 1911. All that means is they must have had a terribly hot heat wave 95 years ago. What caused that? There was no global warming in 1911 and carbon dioxide emissions were far below today's. Who did they blame back then? Perhaps God. Or maybe they just put it down to freak weather.

We have had periods in the last few thousand years where it was much warmer than it is today. It is nothing people cannot cope with. It is just unusual because individuals have such short memories.

Many years ago, societies were more rigid and could not cope with climate change. Many were agricultural, and if they had a drought, a failed crop could lead to starvation. But this is nothing we are concerned about today. A lot of people are not that unhappy about the warm climate. Older people suffer if they have not got support. But, by and large, children and normal people love it, and it is not causing an economic or social disaster.

I personally think, from a scientific perspective, it is irrelevant whether the current heatwave is due to a freak weather event or caused by a general warming trend, because there will always be heat waves. In the near future, whether global warming is man-made or not, we will still have to deal with the consequences. It is an illusion to think we can reverse that trend. To cut a long story short, people need to live with hot summers.

Source





Antarctic Snowfall Snafu Derails Climate Models



An improved method of measuring Antarctic snowfall has revealed that previous records showing an increase in precipitation are not accurate, even over a half-century. In the August 10 edition of Science magazine, researchers explain that their analysis of ice cores and snow pits revealed that precipitation levels in the Antarctic have in fact remained steady. The upshot of the study is that models assessing climate-change may need to be revised, as they can no longer be deemed accurate.

The multinational Antarctic team comprised 16 researchers who wanted to amass snowfall data going back 50 years to the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The data taken from the IGY is regarded as the first real study of the Antarctic, which has been ongoing ever since. This time around, however, the team found that their data contradicted computer models used to calculate global climate change, where most predict an increase in precipitation as atmospheric temperatures increase. "There were no statistically significant trends in snowfall accumulation over the past five decades, including recent years for which global mean temperatures have been warmest," said lead author Andrew Monaghan, a research associate with Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center.

During the expedition, the team used data from ice core samples, networks of snow stakes and meteorological observations. Not satisfied with this data alone, the team also included ice core records from the International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE), another multinational research program that began in 1990 in order to reconstruct the continent's climate history. The latest team's voracious accumulation of data coupled with a thorough analysis provides the most accurate study to-date of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and the thicker East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS).

Recent observations of the WAIS, a marine ice sheet with a base below sea level, show that vast quantities of ice are melting at a faster rate than previously recorded. Many observers consider this and an increase in calving icebergs along the Antarctic's margins to be evidence of global warming. The team's findings also counter climate-change skeptics who consider a thickening of Antarctica's enormous ice sheets has stemmed the gradual rise in global sea levels.

The new study shows that current climate-change models need to be revamped if scientists are to have a more accurate representation of Antarctic weather patterns. "The year-to-year and decadal variability of the snowfall is so large that it makes it nearly impossible to distinguish trends that might be related to climate change from even a 50-year record," said Monaghan.

Source






Getting off on global warming

A new report labels alarmist reporting about the environment as 'climate porn'. But it takes a missionary position on changing our lifestyles.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) recently commissioned Linguistic Landscapes, a consultancy specialising in applying discourse analysis to business and marketing issues, to analyse current conceptions of climate change in the UK and to stimulate ‘climate-friendly behaviour’. The conclusions were summarised in the report Warm Words: how are we telling the climate story and can we tell it better?

The authors of Warm Words, textual analysts Gill Ereaut and Nat Segnit, were surely aware that their characterisation of alarmist climate change stories as ‘climate porn’ would generate headlines. They must be pleased to have made a rather dry and academic paper so newsworthy, even though the main message passed unnoticed by the general public.

Pornography literally means the writing of harlots. However, Ereaut and Segnit would not go so far as to say that the green doom mongers are in it for the money. After all, the authors appear to have signed up to the cause themselves. Instead, they believe the problem is with the level of excitement that climate porn creates. While ’secretly thrilling‘, climate porn ’excludes the possibility of real action or agency by the reader or viewer‘. Ereaut and Segnit do not have a problem with the content of climate porn, rather their concern is that it doesn’t elicit the right response.

For the IPPR, the time for talking about climate change has come to an end; the arguments have been won, the matters have been settled and now it’s a question of manipulating people to follow the message. That’s why the IPPR have employed textual analysts to write about climate change policy, rather than experts who might actually know something about it. But in doing so they’ve exposed the flaw in their own position – there isn’t a consensus on climate change. A minority of people continue to challenge the basic theory and scientific evidence of climate change and others challenge the evidence that humans are a factor in it. Even after dismissing these views, the IPPR paper lists the many and varied options of what to do about them, analysing the various ‘linguistic repertoires’ in debates around climate change.

There is ‘settlerdom’ – represented by the Daily Express and the Daily Mail - where climate change is taken as so large and fantastic that it cannot be part of people’s lives, which are based on everyday experience and common sense. For ‘settlers’, climate change will only be worth addressing when it has a direct and tangible impact on their lives and until then there is no need to do anything.

There are those who are concerned about the negative effects of measures to counter climate change; people such as Bjorn Lomborg whose argument goes something like ‘in the sum total of human well-being, money spent on battling climate change could be better spent elsewhere’. Ereaut and Segnit characterise this stance as ‘free market protection’, which is disingenuous as one doesn’t have to be a free marketeer to be concerned about humanity’s best interests.

Another ‘repertoire’ is ‘warming is good’, which displays ‘apparently informed optimism’ with a tendency to construct a model of continuity, rather than sudden and violent change. There is also ‘techno-optimism’ according to which technological answers will be found either from existing or new interested parties. And then there are a whole range of active mitigation approaches such as, ‘David and Goliath’ and ‘small actions’.

However, rather than recognising that the existence of these different positions show a lack of consensus on climate change, the authors criticise them for being ’unproductive‘. Presumably they mean unproductive to the IPPR’s message, which is right, unlike the others, which are wrong. As the paper states, ’the facts need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken‘. This Orwellian doublethink is remarkable for an institute which claims on its own website that ’deepening democracy underpins all of IPPR’s work’.

The IPPR’s message is that ’if dangerous climate change is to be avoided, the public’s contribution to it will need to be reduced dramatically‘, and Warm Words shows the insidious campaign being waged to change individuals’ expectations and attitudes. With climate porn doom-mongering we at least know where we stand but this new campaign is designed to get under our skin and into our heads.

‘Warm Words’ starts by saying: ’Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing mankind this century‘. It has surely overtaken some pretty big concerns, including unemployment, disease, the secularisation of society, communism and poverty to name a few. This can be seen as a generational change, embodied by the different worldviews of Marxist theorist Ralph Miliband’s, with his concern for class-consciousness and his son, secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, David Miliband’s concern for carbon consciousness.

Last month, Miliband proposed that we should all carry carbon swipe cards to tot up and moderate our individual carbon emissions (1). We have been told that carbon must dominate every aspect of our lives. Recent examples include being urged give up cheap flights (2), pop stars worrying about making their gigs carbon neutral (3) and suggested carbon audits for our homes (4). We have reached a point where the only good thing we discuss about nuclear power is its low CO₂ emissions, and where you can worry about the carbon footprint of your doorbell (5).

It is generally presented as unquestionable that carbon must dominate our lives and that we don’t need evidence or arguments to decide whether this will be an effective or appropriate thing to subject ourselves to – and we certainly don’t need a vote on it. As Warm Words has it, the ‘facts’ shall be unspoken.

The energy we access through carbon-based fossil fuels has taken us a long way from pre-industrial life. The energy that fossil fuels contain will still make a tremendous difference to people’s lives around the world. Even though we can’t use them forever, and whether or not a change is required sooner or later, a celebration of what they’ve given, and continue to give, would be apposite. Most people choose to continue with life despite the climate change doom-mongers. But life with carbon swipe cards will encourage a sense that we should apologise for everything we do, to be meek and make acts of contrition by planting trees when we go on holiday. At least climate porn allowed for some guilty pleasure. This is a whole lot worse.

Source

***************************************

Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************