Edited Photos, So What’s Real

Once upon a time the Navy took this photo:

Apparently the original caption read:

Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the North Pole, 17 March 1959

But it seems to have morphed to:

Skate (SSN-578),taken in summer, perhaps in August 1958.

The above is from Real-Science: Navy Changes Their Caption

Innocent error by some alarmist file keeper who couldn’t conceive of the upper caption being correct?

An adjustment to better suit the Global Warming hysteria meme?

CO2 means Life Started Recently

You know, this guy is onto something. This is a logical conclusion of the Al Gore version of Global Warming. Clearly life is a recent occurrence, so maybe the Creationists and/or Intelligent Design people are onto something. Either there was a creation event, after CO2 dropped to “reasonable” levels or life evolves much faster than we previously believed.

From Real Science:

CO2 levels were 10-20X higher for most of the last 600 million years.

Based on the expert testimony of our top climate morons scientists, we can be certain that all life forms were destroyed as quickly as they were created – because the weather was so extreme that no life could possibly survive. Sea levels must have been hundreds or thousands of feet higher than they are now, and hurricanes and tornadoes must have roared continuously across a drought and flood covered hot/cold landscape.

 

 

Greenland Temperature Trends

Update 3/12/13: New paper confirms Greenland is resistant to thaw

No, Greenland isn’t Melting

From a WUWT comment: (excerts added are mine)

Greenland air temps of the past:
—
“…the rate of warming in 1920–1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995–2005.”
Petr Chylek et. al.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL026510.shtml

We provide an analysis of Greenland temperature records to compare the current (1995–2005) warming period with the previous (1920–1930) Greenland warming. We find that the current Greenland warming is not unprecedented in recent Greenland history. Temperature increases in the two warming periods are of a similar magnitude, however, the rate of warming in 1920–1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995–2005.

“The annual whole ice sheet 1919–32 warming trend is 33% greater in magnitude than the 1994–2007 warming.”
Jason E. Box et. al.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2816.1

Meteorological station records and regional climate model output are combined to develop a continuous 168-yr (1840–2007) spatial reconstruction of monthly, seasonal, and annual mean Greenland ice sheet near-surface air temperatures. Independent observations are used to assess and compensate for systematic errors in the model output. Uncertainty is quantified using residual nonsystematic error. Spatial and temporal temperature variability is investigated on seasonal and annual time scales. It is found that volcanic cooling episodes are concentrated in winter and along the western ice sheet slope. Interdecadal warming trends coincide with an absence of major volcanic eruptions. Year 2003 was the only year of 1840–2007 with a warm anomaly that exceeds three standard deviations from the 1951–80 base period. The annual whole ice sheet 1919–32 warming trend is 33% greater in magnitude than the 1994–2007 warming. The recent warming was, however, stronger along western Greenland in autumn and southern Greenland in winter. Spring trends marked the 1920s warming onset, while autumn leads the 1994–2007 warming. In contrast to the 1920s warming, the 1994–2007 warming has not surpassed the Northern Hemisphere anomaly. An additional 1.0°–1.5°C of annual mean warming would be needed for Greenland to be in phase with the Northern Hemispheric pattern. Thus, it is expected that the ice sheet melt rates and mass deficit will continue to grow in the early twenty-first century as Greenland’s climate catches up with the Northern Hemisphere warming trend and the Arctic climate warms according to global climate model predictions.

“We found that northern hemisphere temperature and Greenland temperature changed synchronously at periods of ~20 years and 40–100 years. This quasi-periodic multi-decadal temperature fluctuation persisted throughout the last millennium, and is likely to continue into the future.”
Takuro Kobashi et. al.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/n567324n1n3321h3/

Future Greenland temperature evolution will affect melting of the ice sheet and associated global sea-level change. Therefore, understanding Greenland temperature variability and its relation to global trends is critical. Here, we reconstruct the last 1,000 years of central Greenland surface temperature from isotopes of N₂ and Ar in air bubbles in an ice core. This technique provides constraints on decadal to centennial temperature fluctuations. We found that northern hemisphere temperature and Greenland temperature changed synchronously at periods of ~20 years and 40–100 years. This quasi-periodic multi-decadal temperature fluctuation persisted throughout the last millennium, and is likely to continue into the future.

“The warmest year in the extended Greenland temperature record is 1941, while the 1930s and 1940s are the warmest decades. Two distinct cold periods, following the 1809 (‘‘unidentified’’ volcanic eruption and the eruption of Tambora in 1815 make the 1810s the coldest decade on record.”
B. M. Vinther et. al.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/greenland/vintheretal2006.pdf
[pdf]
—
1937
“Particulars are given regarding the big rise of winter temperatures in Greenland and its more oceanic climate during the last fifteen years.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.49706327108/abstract

The Arctic Ocean is Warming Up!

The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.

====================

Nov. 2, 1922, by The Associated Press and published in The Washington Post – 88 years ago!

From Joe Bastardi, at AccuWeather

Along the same lines…

Warm is good, cold is bad.

Yes, It was Warmer Back Then

Yes, the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the modern period and it was global (and probably bounced around about as much as modern climate, despite being warmer. )

A peer-reviewed study documents the extremely warm temperatures of the Medieval Period that occurred in the California Sierra Nevada range. Scientists, working with dead tree trunks located above the current treeline, affirm California’s Medieval extreme warm temperature history, which still remains unprecedented.

The California Medieval Warming Remains Unprecedented: 3.0°C Hotter Than Modern Global Warming

The ideal, of course, would be for the world to be a couple of degrees warmer, for CO2 levels to be significantly higher, and for market forces to cause Mr. Gore’s” investments” to decline greatly in value.

The MWP Actually Was Warmer

Never mind that hundreds of peer-reviewed papers have shown that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was warmer than the present period, and word-wide, certain groups of people have scoffed at the idea that there is nothing unusual about modern times, climate-wise.

Now, even Jones, Briffa, and other unimpeachable sources say that it was warmer back then (at least in Greenland.) See: The Medieval Warm Period in Greenland

Catastrophic Ice Melt

In 1934

It Was Warmer Back Then

The Medieval Warm Period – A global Phenomenon

Stuff from my notes:

• CO2 Science’s Medieval Warm Period Project – Our Medieval Warm Period Project is an ongoing effort to document the magnitude and spatial and temporal extent of a significant period of warmth that occurred approximately one thousand years ago. Home
• Yes, it was warmer back then
• A graph
• Storm data from NZ
• Late Holocene sea-surface temperature and precipitation variability in northern Patagonia, Chile – Chilean paper, shows MWP
• Little Ice and and the Year Without a Summer (2003)
• It was witches that done it (serious paper) – This paper explores the possibility that the witchcraft trials are a large-scale example of violence and scapegoating prompted by a deterioration in economic conditions. In this case, the downturn was brought on by a decrease in temperature and resulting food shortages. The most active period of the witchcraft trials coincides with a period of lower than average temperature known to climatologists as the “little ice age.”
• Graph showing number of studies on MWP Vs today’s temps
• Paper: Sediment recorod shows MWP
• Critter measurements show MWP
• Mann and Company Still Malign the Medieval Warm Period
• JoNova finds the MWP
• More
• Atlantic Ocean Sediments Confirm Roman & Medieval Periods Warmer, Peer-Reviewed Research Determines
• Global Temps from 2500BC to 2040 AD

7-15C in Just Decades

The Al Gore View of Global Warming basically states that the world is doomed, unless (snarky remarks deleted.) The ward does seem to have warmed by  maybe .6C or so over the last 120 some odd years. The Gore crowd claims this is unprecedented, rational people point out that the historical record says that it isn’t.

As I mentioned in the previous post, 1500 year cycles, there were a number of times during the last ice ages where temps rose 7-8C in a matter of decades. Before SUVs were invented or any fossil fuel was being burned.

I found this in a WUWT comment:

“The Greenland (Arctic) and Vostok (Antarctic) ice cores are particularly informative, offering fine temporal resolution and continuity. This has revealed surprising oscillations of climate on a millennial scale within the main 100-kyr cycle. The Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) identifies some 24 interstadials through the last ice age with average temperature rising rapidly by ~7 C over just decades. Further ice and sediment cores from around the world are demonstrating the global scale of these major climatic events.”

From: Hewitt, G. 2000. The genetic legacy of the Quarternary ice ages. NATURE, Vol. 405, 22 June 2000 (www.nature.com)

Here’s a  2004 paper from the same author (and it’s a Royal Society paper)

Our climate has been cooling for ca. 60Myr, with the Antarctic ice sheet forming ca. 35 Ma and the Arctic icecap growing from ca. 3 Ma. The Quaternary Period has been dominated by Ice Ages, which involve repeated global cooling and increasing advances of these ice sheets. These oscillations are paced by regular eccentricities in the Earth’s orbit around the sun every 100, 41 and 21 kyr. The large ice sheets, surrounding permafrost, lower global temperature and reduced water availability caused great changes in the distribution of species, which can be seen in the fossil record (Bennett 1997; Williams et al. 1998). Recent work with cores from ice sheets and sea beds confirms the effects of millennial-scale change in climate nested within the main 100 kyr cycle. These involved changes of as much as 7–15 °C over a few decades, which then lasted for hundreds of years, and there is fossil evidence that these, including the Younger Dryas ca. 11 ka, caused shifts in species distributions.

Full paper (PDF) here: Genetic consequences of climatic oscillations in the Quaternary

7-15C over a few decades, from perfectly nature causes, and we’re supposed to hand over the world’s economies to Al Gore & Co over Zero.6C?

Adjustments

Here’s an interesting graph. It shows measured US temps Vs adjusted US temps, since 1880.

Also see the 1934 post on the same subject.