Climate was HOTTER in Roman, medieval times than now: Study
Americans sweltering in the recent record-breaking heatwave may not believe it - but it seems that our ancestors suffered through much hotter summers in times gone by, several of them within the last 2,000 years. Reconstruction of past climate. Credit: Insititute of Geography, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Phew, what a …
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Re: Damn I am late
If we can keep it in the "Goldilocks" zone for us for another, oh....200 years say, then we can have colonised a few outposts and the planet can get back to doing whatever it wants.
If it shits on us too quickly - we're boned.
"If it shits on us too quickly - we're boned."
Now there's a mixed metaphor that I don't wish to contemplate further...
Why?
Does the red trend line stop around 1900 just as recorded temperatures take a sharp upturn?
Re: Why?
because humans are recording temperatures and we have no idea what type of methodology some of the people making the logs used? Rounding up or down. Looking at it up close or just looking over and trusting the old peepers. There was no standardization. Isolated individuals doing the best they could. Not exactly a dream data set.
Re: Why?
Living in Florida, I have often wondered about the news saying the high for the day will be/is/was up to 10 degrees (F) different than what all the other thermometers display to me (home, car, bank signs). Guess which entry is saved in records.
Re: Why?
I wonder why 'they' haven't thought of that?
Perhaps they should go out and use uncalibrated thermometers from differnt lcalities for each recording, instead of measuring the temperature at one site using professional equipment.
Re: Why?
@Kwac - Don't forget different people reading them as well... You can get about 2C difference on the same thermometer, with different people reading it...
Re: Why?
There can be several reasons for the difference. Localized temperatures can vary depending on the thermometer's position, orientation, etc. Most thermometers used by the weather services are located at specific locations (airports and other airfields are common sites) with specific conditions so as to reduce variations. For example, if your thermometer was on an east-facing window, chances are it'll be hotter early in the day (when the sun's pouring down on it) than in the afternoon (when it's more likely to be in shade).
Also, local highs tend to occur around late afternoon, when the sun's had the most time to "bake" your area. After that, ground and water heat radiation tends to outpace the input from the sun and the temperature starts dropping.
^^ What Phil said... but what matters more is ...
... "We just don't know"
Yep, our activities on the planet are raising CO2 levels and there is a warming trend.
However, there are *many* other factors at work in what is a maddeningly chaotic global weather system.
The fact that it's hard to predict the weather a week, two weeks, a month in advance speaks volumes for trying to predict the impact we are having on the climate.
In reality, a significant natural volcanic event - lets say, Yellowstone - could impact the climate far more profoundly than our CO2 emissions.
I truly wish we would put this damn climate debate on the back-burner, as it's simply turned into a political football with vested interests on each side hurling insults at each other.
We know the science - and we know most reputable scientists are careful about making rash predictions. Unfortunately, the media will take a "this may happen" and embellish it to "OMG, this is going to happen!"
Then we get 'scientists' swayed by politics - and probably fame - putting stakes in the ground and spouting prediction as fact.
What's so much more important that climate change debate is that old chestnut we all seem to have conveniently forgotten about - the destruction of natural habits, of bio-diversity.
It matters not one whit whether the climate gets warmer due to CO2 emissions if we've gone and destroyed all the earth's natural habitats.
I'd take a bit of warming and some unpredictable weather any day of the year, so long as the rivers are clean, the forests are intact, the ocean is unpolluted and biodiversity remains.
Climate versus weather forecasting
Imagine you put a pot of water on a hotplate of your cooker and switch on the heat.
You can predict that the water will boil. Can you predict where each bubble will appear during the boiling process?
"You can predict that the water will boil. "
You can? That will depend on the size and shape of the pan and the kitchen, the amount of heat from the stove, and the initial temperature and quantity of water. It might evaporate before boiling, it might reach equilibrium, it might even cool down. You need a lot more information about the initial conditions before making any sort of predictions...
Re: ^^ What Phil said... but what matters more is ...
"However, there are *many* other factors at work in what is a maddeningly chaotic global weather system."
This. A thousand times this.
The state of the temperature of planet is something that is the result of a large number of variables and systems interacting with each other. No wonder it's taking a little time to figure out how it's going to change in the future.
Still. Nothing wrong with gathering more data and coming up with a contingency plan just in case the planet is reduced to an arid rock.
Re: ^^ What Phil said... but what matters more is ...
""However, there are *many* other factors at work in what is a maddeningly chaotic global weather system."
This. A thousand times this."
"We cannot say with certaintiy that the present weather conditions are a result of global climate change but it is consistent with our models" was the response of a climatologist questioned the other day.
But we all now that it's a group of rogue climatologists that are conning most of their colleagues in different spheres of science (there's and odd psychologist or geologist working for oil companies that stands up for the truth) and national governments.
Don't we?
Re: Climate versus weather forecasting
In many cases the power/fuel needed is not reliable, making the event even more chaotic. Perhaps the only answer is that the water is & is not going to boil.
Re: ^^ What Phil said... but what matters more is ...
What you say is true, but you need to understand it isn't just that simple. Climate change doesn't only affect our way of life, it causes CLIMATE change globally. This means overall loss in biodiversity through habitat loss and habitat expansions. Polar bears will go extinct, most Arctic species will.
The warming, on a slow rate, can be adapted to. Species can evolve to additional heat, but not at the current rate we are warming things up... You also need to remember, there can be feedback loops we have to worry about. Yes, there may be some for cooling trends, but it seems as if the warming feedback loops are exceptionally stronger. Methane release from permafrost would rapidly accelerate warming trends. Loss of global albedo as a result of milder winters, and reduced Arctic sea ice, would accelerate warming trends.
It isn't just the warming you need to consider. Remember that thermal expansion can affect the water levels greater than the uprise of continents due to loss of glaciers. The glaciers currently don't impact the continents level to the amount continental glaciers do.
With the CO2 increase there is also acidification of oceans, which is something to worry about. Even a pH change of 1could kill most life in the ocean. The oceans absorb the majority of CO2 in the atmosphere, but that causes carbonic acid production, and then acidification. Worrying about warming is something to worry about. Venus has been suggested to look similar to earth a few billion years ago... That is climate change run amuc
Re: "You can predict that the water will boil. "
There's also the rare possibility of it not boiling at all but superheating instead. A smooth-enough pot made of materials that do not dissolve in water at around 100 degrees C combined with distilled water with no contaminants provides no way for steam to nucleate. Result: no boiling...though I wouldn't recommend dropping anything into that water. Superheated water is very unstable.
Re: "You can predict that the water will boil. "
So the denialists approach to boiling water on a stove is this:
Don't even try. Way too complicated. Way too chaotic. "It might even cool down."
Did I get this right?
Re: "You can predict that the water will boil. " @pklausner
no
re stated
SINCE we can not even model such a SIMPLE system as a pot of water on a hot stove; what makes you even start to think that we can model the infinitely more complex global climate ?
And they IGNORE the sea - which holds magnitudes more energy (not to mention 50 times per volume more CO2)
Re: "Did I get this right?"
No.
To summarize. Don't make life-changing knee-jerk decisions based on wild assumptions from a model where you clearly don't have enough information to get even close to the real world.
Needn't stop you from taking a coherent, reasoned course of action to safeguard scarce resources while improving the model, of course. Going "chicken little" won't help, and may make things worse in the long term. Unfortunately politicians and media pundits (an increasingly blurred distinction) get more instant publicity from being Chicken Little than from being calm and rational (my inability to immediately think of a suitable character name for the calm person is telling. Br'er Terrapin, perhaps?).
Is there climate warming? Dunno.
Is the human impact greater than whatever nature (i.e. non-human) itself is up to? Dunno.
Is dumping raw sewerage into the sea, sending toxic waste to be recycled by children in Africa, dumping vast quantities of plastic into the sea, slash and burn on a grand scale, killing off numerous species or any number of others things we get up to in anyway logical or sustainable? Feck no. Something has gotta give and considering that despite all our prowess, we are still smaller than a planet, it's probably going to be us. You can't eat money, y'know. It's only worth the value we grant it and we grant it w-a-y too much value.
> According to the scientists' new paper, published in hefty climate journal Nature Climate Change, the cooling effect of orbital shifting on the climate has been up to four times as powerful as anthropogenic (human-caused) warming pressures
This is the thing, we're currently experience a short warming snap despite an overall cooling trend, and the only variable that accounts for this is atmospheric CO2. Models say we should be currently getting cooler, not warmer, if not for an increase in CO2 levels.
It's not simply a matter of if the planet is warm or cold, there are so many factors.
The climate and weather systems of the planet are complex, you can't just say that being warm isn't a bad thing or that being cooler is good either.
There's a big agenda from businesses to destroy climate change science as it is incompatible with making shed loads of cash at the cost of destroying the plant.
Regression-to-mean denialists
There, you can use that to refer to Acolytes of Climate Change.
As we just had the whole month's rain in the 5 days during a drought....
Ah Lewis...
If it is the case that actually the climate has often been warmer without any significant CO2 emissions having taken place - suggesting that CO2 emissions simply aren't that important - the case for huge efforts to cut those emissions largely disappears.
If A can happen without B, then B being able to cause A is unimportant? What a masterpiece of a fallacy: « Hey, you could still get a cancer without smoking, so it doesn't matter whether you smoke or not! »
Ah Lewis, there's definitely no end to the entertainment you give us.
Before I even clicked this I guessed it would be a Lewis Page article
It's a bit predictable.
So it was warmer in the past.. it was also colder too. This doesn't really add much to the argument. As a data point it's interesting (warm climate then didn't cause mass extinction, so why should it this time?) but doesn't say anything about what's happening *now* is (a) man made, or (b) significant... which is what the argument is actually about.
Climate BOLLOX
i have been saying this for years. Climate change is utter crap. Its the Planet being; (shock) A PLANET
Read This: http://climateaudit.org/2005/11/18/archaeological-finds-in-retreating-swiss-glacier/
So there was no glacier there thousands of years ago. Now that its melting, the nutjobs say that its because of global warming, conveniently ignoring that it wasnt there to begin with, then it came and now its gone again. See the pattern? A "CYCLE"
Climate Change should be classed as a nutjob Religious Cult at this stage. Belief based on no facts and make up / change history to suit what propaganda you want to push, but ignore logic...
Re: Climate BOLLOX
This is the tactic of global change deniers.
NOT ONE PAPER has been published in a peer-reviewed journal that states that AGCC is not taking place.
In 2001 Science magazine commented that there is only very rarely the scientific concensus on any subject as there was on GCC then.
The deniers have used the same tactics as the tobacco companies - we can't discredit the data, so we discredit who/what we can and try to obscue the facts.
Why bother about what happened 2000 years ago? There's no comparison with what is happening now.
Re: Climate BOLLOX
"Why bother about what happened 2000 years ago? There's no comparison with what is happening now."
Oh dear.
Re: Climate BOLLOX
"The deniers have used the same tactics as the tobacco companies - we can't discredit the data, so we discredit who/what we can and try to obscue the facts."
Not just tobacco companies but creationists, 9/11 truthers, holocaust deniers etc. They all employ cherry picking, pseudoscience, quote mining, conspiracy theories and assorted other non-evidence as a form of denialism.
For reasons completely unknown the Register is involved in this too and it's manifested in virtually every single piece it puts out on the topic. Cherry pick some paper regardless of its relevance or quality, distort its conclusions beyond what the authors said and pretend climate change isn't happening.
Re: Re: Climate BOLLOX
I think that what DrXym is saying is that in his ideal there would be no dissent, no freedom to question or even want to put ideas to empirical test. In short, a World free of science. All hail Emperor DrXym, Saviour of Mankind!
Don't hold your breath, Xymmerbrain.
Re: Climate BOLLOX
@Matt Bryant -- so science for you is picking a small detail from a scientific paper and twisting it to make an unfounded hypothesis sound credible? DrXym was criticising methods used by some pretty dodgy groups who indulge in pseudo-science and religion... And you stand up for them? It is somehow non-scientific to criticise them and their use of those methods?
I'm not sure there are words to explain how stupid that is... But if there were you probably wouldn't understand anyway.
Re: Climate BOLLOX
"I think that what DrXym is saying is that in his ideal there would be no dissent, no freedom to question or even want to put ideas to empirical test. In short, a World free of science. All hail Emperor DrXym, Saviour of Mankind!"
I should have included strawmen in my list to anticipate your ridiculous response.
Re: Climate BOLLOX
@kwac
"NOT ONE PAPER has been published in a peer-reviewed journal that states that AGCC is not taking place."
Not one paper has been published in a peer-reviewed journal that states that the under-pants gnomes are not stealing all our underpants at night
So we must believe that it is happening.
Re: Climate BOLLOX @Oolons
except
why do the CAGW people refuse to release the data ?
WHy is the hockey stick graph substantial based on ONE cheery picked bristle cone pine from Yamal instead of the whole dendrochronological series available.
Ask about the tropospheric Hotspot which is predicted by ALL the climate models - but can not be measured ? Where is it ?(but don't bother asking on a CAGW site; they will 'moderate' the question; how a-scientific is that ?) Since the models all predict it as a necessary result of CO2 based warming; and since empirical science can't measure any such hotspot; wouldn't a SCIENTIST deduce that the models are at best flawed; if not catastrophically wrecked ?
We all know even Phil Jones admits there is no statistically significant current warming AND he DOES NOT know why - lets see CO2 still increasing almost linearly; no predictions regarding MEASURED warming; or sea level rise have been found; to me that sounds like a falsified theory.
Theorise; predict; measure - compare measurements to predictions ; amend theory - and repeat and repeat and repeat ... note Model outputs do NOT count as measurements
Re: Climate BOLLOX
@ Matt Bryant "I think that what DrXym is saying is that in his ideal there would be no dissent, no freedom to question or even want to put ideas to empirical test."
What a whiner. It sounds exactly like Matt Bryant's ideal world to me. The one he holds the copyright on..
Now he's sore about DrXym's fair use of it.
Re: Climate BOLLOX @Oolons
Want the data? Go to the NASA web site. Also the Met office web site. There are a very few proprietary datasets which aren't available, the vast majority are.
What the CRU guys did, was refuse to process the information, package it and send it to people who were sending thousands of requests for their data all formatted slightly differently. They did have a job to do and that job wasn't responding to FOI requests to the detriment of their research.
Again, though, this is a zombee argument, you point out it's not the case and it gets parroted back to you by the same people again and again.
Be a climate-denier or tree-hugger..
...why don't we all just get together, hold hands and say it together - we have ufck-all clue how this climate thing works
Roman Vineyards
Quote: "The Romans had quite extensive vineyards around York so we've 'always' known it was a bit warmer back then."
It's called COLD CLIMATE VITICULTURE and still practised today in UK vineyards, nothing to do with whether it was warmer then. It just means you grow grapes up on wires to keep them off the cold ground. So that's an irrelevance.
Re: Roman Vineyards
Even Canada has a wine industry. So called "ice wine", as it's name suggests is harvested in winter when temperatures are subzero and the grapes are actually frozen on the vine.
Re: Axis!
Particularly when quite a bit of information from the source graph has been removed.
Seriously still?
"and a long-term cooling trend (dashed red curve; linear regression fit to the reconstruction over the 138 BC–AD 1900 period)."
Did any of you even seem to figure out that the trend line stops once we get the most up to date data?? Can you ever wonder why that is.... Also, this graph also shows the highest temperatures are still in the newest part of the century. The trend line does not follow past 1900, because that is where the trend ENDS. The data also shows that the highest temperature was not during the Roman times, but now (figure 2.b in the paper).
The graph showed an overall cooling trend which we are now, no longer following. The climate does work in cycles, but we put a big middle finger up and said, not any more.
Oh wouldn't it be ironic!
Just imagine the irony if CO2 actually played a beneficial role in keeping the global climate relatively stable through some feedback mechanism, and we only found out too late!
Re: Oh wouldn't it be ironic!
Of course it would be relatively straightforward to release a large amount of CO2 quickly if it was found that reducing / slowing the rate of increase of our output was having a negative effect.
Tell that to the melting ice caps.....
Sceptics on global warming who suggest there has been no impact of the SIX BILLION people on the planet, where the last 100 years has shown massive industrialisation hitherto unseen in the time scales of Man's existence on Earth, are fucking morons.
Re: Tell that to the melting ice caps.....
Which ice caps? Some in the north may be melting but some in antarctica are growing.
Climate has always changed wildly and unpredictably long before Humans arrived on the scene, do you think we can measure our impact in such a chaotic system?
I agree with the other posters, its too complex for us to wrap our monkey brains around and too political to get any truth out of.
Re: Tell that to the melting ice caps.....
There's only one ice cap in antarctica. The antarctic ice cap...
It's the water, Bubba!
Water vapor is a much better 'greenhouse' gas than carbon dioxide. There is roughly three times as much sufrace area of the wold covered by water as there is land. Our planet is misnamed Earth. It should be named Sea. Water has an enormous capacity for the absorption of heat. Take care of the water and we'll be taking care of the entire planet.
not just CO2
I'm so tired of the environment debate being dominated by the CO2 issue. There are plenty of other good, well known, urgent, undeniable reasons to get rid of coal-fired stations and petrol engines as quickly as possible - why is everyone fixating on something poorly understood that may or may not cause trouble in a hundred years' time? If the media invested half as much time talking about how many people get killed every year by coal and petrol, we'd have electric cars powered by nuke plants by now.
Re: not just CO2
Actually there was a luvely post on this very website which did quite a good stab at pointing out the H20 was actually to blame. (Can't find it, but it did make me chuckle).
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