Well humans where around 8000 years ago
So they still must be to blame.
Top boffins from the British Antarctic Survey say that the Pine Island Glacier - famous as a possible major cause of global-warming-powered sea level rises - was melting just as fast thousands of years ago as it is melting today. “This paper [just published] is part of a wide range of international scientific efforts to …
Ah yes - people died from cancer long before cigarettes were invented so smoking can't cause cancer.
Are you people for real.
This study just demonstrates how easy it is for us to melt the glaciers - as we are doing.
It is already warmer now than it was 8,000 years ago and it's not going to stop here.
"This study just demonstrates how easy it is for us to melt the glaciers"
Actually I think it gives us a hint as to how to slow down the ice-melt. If we can deploy metal spikes through the ice into the reefs below in enough places, it should slow the bugger down a bit.
Then, when we are faced with the man-made ice-age, we can remove the spikes :)
Meanwhile, in the Arctic:
Warming from Arctic Sea Ice Melting More Dramatic than Thought
Canada’s Arctic ice caps melting rapidly since 2005, according to documents
And in the Antarctic, only a weasel would try to claim that just because there was a natural warming around 6000BC - which is well known and much researched in climate science - any warming happening today is also 100% natural.
Because, opinion.
Ain't no honest climate scientist going to agree with that bit of lunchtime pub logic.
I was about to write "It goes both ways", but that would not be accurate.
Only a weasel would try to claim that today's changes are all due to man-made emissions because it has been more than a century since similar events occured.
Funny how warmists focus on the last century only (and not even then notice the 30 year warmup prior to the 1940s which looks a lot like the 30 year period leading up to 1997).
Bottom line is that the claim made, that trace amounts of CO2 causes (or will cause...) dramatic shifts in climate, that claim is quite bold. As such, it needs to be backed by solid evidence. The burden of proof rests with the warmists.
That said, I am all for cheap and clean energy production. Nuclear FTW.
As defined in the Bible of The First Church of the Science of Warmology (disclaimer to the sarcastically-challenged: conjecture)
Mind you, no one justified a war or massacre with Atheism (that I can think of right this second)...
There's a bazillion faiths and gods but there's only one non-belief. Mine's the one with Origin of Species in the pocket.
Soviet russia essentially justified massacres with atheism.
Marxist ideologies espouse the elimination of religion to be replaced with universal atheism. To this end 1200 Russian orthodox priests where executed in the newly formed Soviet Union between 1922 and 1926. I'd say that counts as a massacre justified by atheism.
I'm an atheist and I believe that atheism intellectually more defensible than believing in sky fairies. But that doesn't mean atheists can't be extremists, or that atheism can't be part of an argument for militancy and fascism.
> Can't burn them any more. What is a true believer to do?
Compost them? Oh wait, does that create more methane?
The issue is a serious one. Even if everyone did agree that the worst-case scenario was true, what are you going to do about it?
Hands up all those who will unilaterally give up things made in factories.
Well, yeah, if you say it's "THE WORST MELTING IN 8000 YEARS!!!!11!!", then we'd better ban all manufacturing, transportation, power generation, etc. etc.
Even though the last time this happened (8000 YEARS AGO) there was no manufacturing, transportation, power generation, etc. etc and it still melted.
I.E. humans didn't cause it to melt last time, so what's so special about this time?
I think possibly that Warmists and their ilk are possibly like that idea about Tacheon pulses...
They travel backward through time so any science contrary to the beliefs of the Church of Warmology that has happened in non-warmist (e.g. 'our') past has yet to happen in Warmington-Upon-Sea and therefore doesn't exist, provoking the usual LALALALA response. QED.
I remember 30 years ago 'people saying' that if the sea level rose just 2 inches (5cm) then the world would end. Yet it rose over 3x that last century? Clearly there's a history of Sandwichboard-Wearing Doomsaying entrenched in the 'culture'.
P.S. Dont panic Mr Mainwaring!
"And that's enough for flat earth believer Lewis to write..."
That's highly constructive criticism there Catweazle. Do you feel better for that? "Flat earth believer"... Really? Whatever's next, 'mouth breather'?
"Like the worst flood in 8000 years would be nothing to worry about. Just happens from time to time."
And that Sir is a fine, well balanced and detailed response to the article and it's deeper subject matter.
I congratulate you on the way in which you manage to convey complex issues such as climate change and AGW in so succinct a manner.
May I be so bold as to suggest that you may be well placed for taking up a public outreach position within the BBCs' science broadcast services.
And yes, you are right in what you are thinking... My response to your post is of little or no value either ;)
</sarc>
Well I think the proper response to that is : we don't have a fucking clue either way.
We're still learning this, people. We don't know everything, and the "models" we use to try and find out are flawed and incomplete.
One day, I am confident we will have the proper data and know how to model it to divine future trends properly. At that time, if the science (not data fudging) says global warming and we are responsible, then that's the deal. Right now ? We don't know.
Once upon a time, people thought the Earth was at the center of the Univers. Today, the same kind of people are steadfast in their belief that Humanity is at the center of everything that happens on Earth, and Earth's destiny is tied to our existence.
Bollocks either way.
"If we carry on burning hydrocarbons as we are we are going to run out before my Grandaughter retires."
This. Regardless of whether you believe the climate is changing or if any change is man made, making a scarce resource last a bit longer should be reason enough to minimise our usage of fossil fuels. When we add in the pollution & health impacts, it should make it a no-brainer.
People are exploring the remain of an ancient wood that was growing thousands of years ago when the climate was much warmer. No doubt that this proves:
a) Nothing except that climate does change and has changed.
b) There is nothing new under the sun
c) That even the ancients caused global warming
d) That we still do not fully understand what is going on with climate and that taking any extreme position simply makes you an extremist, whichever side of the extreme you inhabit.
Chose your own guess, for the moment it is still a semi free world, (in spite of the recent panorama programme on the floods).
Co2 levels rose noticibly at that time, Geologist William F. Ruddiman suggested some years ago that this was due to large scale land clearance by early farmers though that view is not generally accepted, A combination of earths orbital changes & some other effects generally being considered responsible. A team led by T. Stockmann (co-chairman of IPCC Working Group I) found evidence that carbon from cleared vegetation being released into the atmosphere was not responsible though Ruddiman disputes their findings
"The data presented here demonstrate that thinning of PIG at a rate comparable to that over the past two decades is rare but not unprecedented in the Holocene. Moreover, in contrast to previous glacial-geological work in Antarctica which has provided average thinning rates only over millennial timescales, our data are precise enough to show that rapid thinning of PIG was sustained for at least 25 years, and most likely for much longer. In summary, these data provide a long-term context for contemporary thinning of PIG, suggesting that ongoing ocean-driven melting of PIG ice shelf can result in continued rapid thinning and grounding line retreat for several more decades or even centuries."
Recent geological history reveals several very rapid thaws followed by much slower re-cooling.
I thought the mechanism was well-understood: runaway global warming caused by methane released from methane hydrates in permafrost (and/or ocean floors).
The warning to the human race is obvious. Cause a small amount of global warning and it could become a runaway process. There are VAST amounts of methane trapped in permafrost in the Canadian and Russian tundra. Thaw the ice around the edges of that zone and the methane escapes, which causes more global warming, which causes more thawing ... a positive feedback loop.
When you know avalanches have happened before without human intervention, perhaps it's still best to avoid going off-piste?
There would certainly seem to be factors which would exagerrate any increased temperature. Methane as you say, reduced average albedo due to shrinking ice surface, and so on. But the permafrost methane from areas like the Northern US were presumably released as glaciers retreated without a complete runanway effect or the permafrost would all be gone. There may also (though this always seem to involve more hand waving) be some buffering effects - more CO2 = more locking of greenouse gases into plant growth, etc.
It's clearly possible for natural events to drive large scale climate change - they got us into our current ice age for example - and once you start higher albedo and locking in of methane into permafrost will presumably accelerate cooling. It's disconcerting that while there are various theories as to what may have started our current series of ice ages it seems there is little agreement on which cause was the most important.
"Our findings reveal that Pine Island Glacier has experienced rapid thinning at least once in the past, and that, once set in motion, rapid ice sheet changes in this region can persist for centuries."
Good to have Lewis, with his deep understanding of climate science, reassure us that we haven't triggered an irreversible change that will result in sea levels rising by metres from all that melting ice.
I, for one, am totally confident in drawing conclusions from this article, because it is clear that Mr. Page is just totally unbiased and wouldn't possibly cherry-pick papers whose results he likes and ignore ones which might counter his opinion.
Because, you know, that's the way you can tell people who are confident in the rigorousness of their opinions - they *seek out* information which challenges their own point of view, because they know that by doing so they will refine and strengthen their own arguments, and thus make a stronger point to those whom they wish to convince.
Oh, wait, my bad - actually you're just supposed to cherry-pick and yell loudly and who the fuck cares if you've made the world less knowledgeable and more polarized; your ax is ground and that's all that matters, baby!
I'd really like to know what caused that warming some 8000 years ago and if we are doing our best to copy it so we too can enjoy the results of such a warming.
How do people fall for these 'it was warm before so therefore what we're doing to the env now is fine" propaganda efforts? I was at the Natural History museum a few months back and heard a father of 2 your kids say loudly something like this, "See it was very warm back then. What machines and cars did they have then to make it so warm? There's no such thing as global warming." and he said it pretty obviously to let others hear. Unfortunately those kids couldn't pick their parents because he's so ignorant he doesn't even know it. Crazy.
From the look of the abstract I don't think it suggests that there was warming (in the sense of Capital G Global) in that period, just that the glacier became rapidly thinner. In terms of why, they don't particularly comment, except to suggest that it might well be that there was less of an ice shelf to buttress the glacier. So the sea water could get at it more.
Re the propaganda, there does seem plenty on both sides of the argument. So much so that the central questions of "how much of this is caused by us?" and "depending on the first answer, how important is it to change what we're doing, because that change will come at an enormous cost?" seem hard to answer. Or perhaps easy to answer with what the 'other side' would call 'dogma'.
The parent you heard clearly views the answers to the questions as "not much" and "not at all". Some view it as "almost all" and "essential".
It does seem to me that it will be really, really difficult to persuade the great majority of governments to put in place and stick to decades long programs without very clear answers to those questions.
What strikes me as somewhat odd in these debastes is that the assumption is that the way to fix this is, e.g., to stop burning fossil fuels at such a rate. It seems highly unlikely we'll do that in any meaningful way. It might be a better strategy to put things in place to cool the planet - e.g. positive action rather than reducing negative action.