The following appears here
A 221-Year Temperature History of the Southwest Coast of Greenland
——————————————————————————–
Reference
Vinther, B.M., Andersen, K.K., Jones, P.D., Briffa, K.R. and Cappelen, J. 2006. Extending Greenland temperature records into the late eighteenth century. Journal of Geophysical Research 111: 10.1029/2005JD006810.
What was done
Combining early observational records from 13 locations along the southern and western coasts of Greenland, the authors extended the overall temperature history of the region – which stretches from approximately 60 to 73°N latitude – all the way back to AD 1784, adding temperatures for 74 complete winters and 52 complete summers to what was previously available to the public.
What was learned
In the words of the authors, “two distinct cold periods, following the 1809 ‘unidentified’ volcanic eruption and the eruption of Tambora in 1815, [made] the 1810s the coldest decade on record.” The warmest period, however, was not the last quarter century, when climate alarmists claim the earth experienced a warming that was unprecedented over the past two millennia. Rather, as Vinther et al. report, “the warmest year in the extended Greenland temperature record [was] 1941, while the 1930s and 1940s [were] the warmest decades.” In fact, their newly-lengthened record reveals there has been no net warming of the region over the last 75 years!
What it means
With approximately half the study region located above the Arctic Circle (where CO2-induced global warming is suggested by climate models to be most evident and earliest expressed), one would expect to see southwestern coastal Greenland’s air temperature responding vigorously to the 75-ppm increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration that has occurred since 1930, even if the models were only half-way correct. However, there has been no net change in air temperature there in response to the 25% increase in the air’s CO2 content experienced over that period. And this is the region the world’s climate alarmists refer to as a climatological canary in a coal mine? If it is, real-world data suggest that the greenhouse effect of CO2 has been hugely overestimated.
Reviewed 28 June 2006
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MEH:
Sorry I missed your previous comment about Rocco. Okay, I’m dense and provide simplistic answeres, but I’m afraid I didn’t really understand his point. Do you care to clarify (as he didn’t), or just to jab?
I’m no professional rhetorician, but I think you may have meant “bemoan” instead of “extoll” and perhaps “accept” instead of “except”. Yes, it will be a dire dire but of course the science is more than nascent, or you wouldn’t even bother to post on this thread!
Regards,
Tom
Yancey:
Thanks very much for your note.
If posting on this topic were a complete waste of time, then Dr. Reisman wouldn’t be posting and no one would be responding. He’s posting because he’s looking for ideological affirmation on an issue that obviously troubles him; I’d like to think that have him and others bang their heads on me might force some reconsideration.
As to the right “cure”, I favor cap and trade and fail to see the difficulties that concern you. A tax would put revenues in the hands of a government that would probably misues them, and practice has shown that tax levels are too often adjusted to provide clear signals in the long term. But what would you propose to tax and at where?
I would rather try to stick to what I see as the most Misean-friendly solution, which is to try to craft property rights by creating a right to pollute, just as we have SO2 credits and tradable fishing permits to divide up resources in air basins and fisheries. If one is worried about providing a windfall to polluters, then the permits could be auctioned and the revenues distributed as tax rebates to all citizens. In any case, post-allocation, creating a property right such as this would allow economic actors to make decisions based on known values. The cap level could be set at today’s emissions levels – or even generously at levels expected in several years. But then everyone would have incentives indirectly to lower GHG emissions, either because they have to purchase and hold permits (this could be upstream or midstream or a combination – fossil fuel producers/importers or utilities/major users) or because there is a price signal filtering through (consumers etc. would not need permits). The permits could be offset by sequestration or emission-reduction projects approved by the government. Having the permits or emission-reductions tradable would allow for least-cost reductions, so that those who could cheaply lower their emissions would do so and sell their permits to others with less flexibility. To the extent trades and offsets could be done internationally, costs would be even further lowered.
Then, because this is a property right, it would not be subject to government manipulation, except by purchase – so if the government decided to it wanted to lower the amount of emissions below the cap, it would have to purchase permits on the market, as would environmental groups.
You might be aware that the US Senate Energy Committee had hearings on how to structure a US program in April; a very brief conclusion is this:
“In both the written submissions and comments at the workshop, many participants and respondents expressed the view that the risks associated with a changing climate justified the adoption of mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions. While opinions varied on the stringency of initial limits, there was support for the notion that a program should begin modestly and strengthen gradually over time. Consistent with the success of the acid rain program and other market-based approaches, most participants supported a market-based approach that would set a “forward price” on greenhouse gas emissions in order to provide both the flexibility and incentive needed to accelerate technology development and deployment.”
The statement from which this summary was taken, the submissions and testimony are interesting reading and available here:
http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=235005&Month=6&Year=2006&Party=1 (press release with summary)
http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Conferences.Detail&Event_id=4&Month=4&Year=2006 (link to written submissions)
http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/senate08ch109.html (transcript of oral testimony)
Regards,
Tom
TT,
Truly, the except/accept error was a brain-lock.
I think Rocco’s point of asking: “There’s a 2 mile thick brown cloud over China, yet the world’s conscience, Canada is selling all of their coal to a country that has no conscience…and I wonder why?”, was to question: “Who benefits from the current schema predicated upon Waste? Who’ll benefit from the proposed “changes”? And, why do they seem to be the same?”–seems it’s all in his post, above.
nas·cent (nsnt, nsnt)
adj.
Coming into existence; emerging
pro·fes·sion·al (pr-fsh-nl)
adj.
1.
a. Of, relating to, engaged in, or suitable for a profession: lawyers, doctors, and other professional people.
b. Conforming to the standards of a profession: professional behavior.
2. Engaging in a given activity as a source of livelihood or as a career: a professional writer.
3. Performed by persons receiving pay: professional football.
4. Having or showing great skill; expert: a professional repair job.
Tom,
The cap itself is the major problem with your proposal. Since fossil fuels are the most flexible energy source, capping their use with a hard limit introduces inflexibility into energy production. As I outlined, many of the alternative sources are more variable in their reliability and you will need the “cap” on the most flexible source of energy to be variable; otherwise you will create shortages of energy- shortages whose occurance in time cannot be easily predicted and hedged against. In other words, politically, your cap would be close to useless since it would have to be repeatedly removed due to circumstances beyond the control of mankind.
As for creating rights to pollute, taxes on carbon users serve essentially the same purpose; and though I understand your concern about giving the government additional money (not my proposal, by the way), for the United States, for example, the total of the tax could be returned on an even per capita basis to the citizenry.
You too easily dismiss the problems associated with cap and trading mechanisms. As I pointed out, the possibilities for rent-seekers and thieves to manipulate such a system to their benefit is almost endless, the the very presence of such opportunities will require a vast government bureaucracy to regulate, even if the government officials were inclined to actually fight against such shenanigans rather than use their additional power to simply milk the system as well. You and others rely too much on the experience of the SO2 system used in electrical power generation when proposing a similar system for CO2. The SO2 can truly be removed and sequestered from the pollutant stream, and there are practically no other methods for SO2 reductions other than removal/sequestration at the source or the burning of clean fuels (methane, for example)- so the players involved are very, very few in number and the chances for rent-seeking are limited (but, I would point out that this still happens).
I realize that you feel it is absolutely mandatory the CO2 emissions be capped, and soon, but the system you propose will simply not work and will create chaos in its wake.
MEH, Rocco says he’s skeptical because some who profess to care about the environment have ties to energy interests.
Would it surprise you to know that I, who also care, use electricity without purchasing the voluntary offsets that are now available?
The point being that we all respond to pricing signals as they are, even as we recognize structural and institutional problems that it would be in the interests of all to resolve. But pending resolution, we all rush on, in our own self-interest.
When do you suppose the various aspects of science relating to climate not be nascent – when there is a consensus that it is not nascent?
By the way, you might note that 154 nations considered the science sufficiently developed to warrant the negotiation and signing of The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992. The US also signed and ratified it in 1992. What’s not agreed domestically and internationally are the political steps to deal with GHG emissions.
You’re still being ambiguous about “professional”. I don’t mind writing on this, but it’s certainly not my job.
Regards,
Tom
PS: Did you see my comment on the brown cloud thread?
Yancey, since you have an interest I certainly hope you’ll look through the Senate submissions and testimony.
I’m not an expert on the solution, but we need to be discussing one. I think cap and trade is more Misean and think it could work. I note that if there is a certifiable process for proving downstream GHG emission reductions and sequestration, then the need for permits could be satisified by these other methods, which would essentially create new emission rights. Accordingly, I don’t see how a cap would create shortages. It would simply affect market pricing.
Do you mind resorting in an appeal to authority and recommending any reading on the points of your concern?
Regards,
Tom
Paul Edwards:
I just got an email from the author – who posts at RealClimate.com – of a peer-reviewed paper just accepted for publication about the lack of evidence for a contribution by global cosmic rays in the current warming.
“GCR has been purported to affect Earth’s surface
temperatures through a modulation of the cloud cover [Marsh and Svensmark, 2000; Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, 1997]. However, the lack of a significant trend in the GCR, as well as in Rz, SCL, and 10.7 cm flux, suggests that there is no empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that solar activity can explain the recent global warming.”
The abstract is here; please email me (or the author) if you’d like the full piece:
http://www.blogger.com/profile/18093129
Regards,
Tom
Paul Edwards:
I just got an email from the author – who posts at RealClimate.com – of a peer-reviewed paper just accepted for publication about the lack of evidence for a contribution by global cosmic rays in the current warming.
“GCR has been purported to affect Earth’s surface
temperatures through a modulation of the cloud cover [Marsh and Svensmark, 2000; Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, 1997]. However, the lack of a significant trend in the GCR, as well as in Rz, SCL, and 10.7 cm flux, suggests that there is no empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that solar activity can explain the recent global warming.”
The abstract is here; please email me (or the author) if you’d like the full piece:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL023621.shtml
[If my first version of this post made it through; obviously the link was wrong. Here's the correct one.]
Regards,
Tom
Hi Tom,
Thanks, I’d be interested in looking at the article.
I notice in the abstract, that it is data obtained since 1950 that seems to be the basis of the analysis concluding that galactic cosmic ray flux is not connected with global temperatures. But i’ll have to read the article to see how this could be evidence to cast doubt on the conclusions of Shaviv and Veizer who are basically saying that the earth is coming out of a CRF induced ice age from supernova activity both in the very distant past, millions of years ago, and i believe, the more recent time of the 1300′s. My understanding is that it is the very lack of the cooling influences of CRF, in more recent times, that allows the earth to continue on its moderate warming trend.
The corollary to this is that any increased incidence of CRF on the earth’s atmosphere from supernova activity, if it were to occur, which it is expected it will eventually, would cool the earth once again, moving the earth back in the direction of another ice age.
Abstract
New estimates of the solar cycle length are calculated from an up-to-date monthly sunspot record using a novel but mathematically rigorous method involving multiple regression, Fourier approximation, and analytical expressions for the first derivative based on calculus techniques. The sensitivity of the estimates to smoothing are examined and the analysis is used to identify possible systematic changes in the sun. The solar cycle length analysis indicates a pronounced change in the sun around 1900, before which the estimates fluctuate strongly and after which the estimates show little variability. There have been speculations about an association between the solar cycle length and Earth’s climate, however, the solar cycle length analysis does not follow Earth’s global mean surface temperature. A further comparison with the monthly sunspot number, cosmic galactic rays and 10.7 cm absolute radio flux since 1950 gives no indication of a systematic trend in the level of solar activity that can explain the most recent global warming.
TT,
You were asking if I saw your post on the brown cloud thread, did you mean that thread from the WMT puff-piece? If so, yes, I saw it.
Also, maybe a different thread, but you were giving answers like WTO, UN, NAFTA, et al, as examples of “successful instances of trading Sovereignty for “greater Harmony” (and a copy of Kumbahya(sp?), no doubt)
Bud, are you serious with answers like that?
Who have those orgs helped?
Good to see you about, thought that Brown Cloud Anthropomorphized, and Swallowed you whole…
Tom,
Seriously, do you really not see how a cap on fossil fuels could create shortages? I don’t need to appeal to authority on this- it is self-evident. The only way to maintain a cap with practically no chance to create shortages is to set the cap well above the actual usage of fossil fuels. The alternatives, outside of nuclear, are much more variable, by their very nature.
Yancey:
The point is to establish some property rights and then let a market function through purchase and sales transactions that actually place more than a zero value on emissions. In the US, CO2 increases have been tailing off so it would be rather simple to set a cap at some amount greater than total emissions today and establish emission rights within that cap. More rights could be created through accredited sequestration projects.
If the government or individuals decided it wanted to reduced emissions, they could then do so simply through purchasing and holding permits.
This is the same solution we apply to fisheries, and should apply to whales (yeah, we have to get others to agree to, but it’s better than a simple moratorium).
Paul, if you want the article you’ve got to get me your email address. You can get mine at my blogger profile.
Regards,
TT
Both Global Warming and The Theory of Evolution are hoaxes. Why are all these scientists talking about 500,000 year old “core samples?” The earth is only 6,000 years old anyway. There are many facts to back that up. Plus all the ice they take samples from came from Noah’s flood, so the “data” that the scientists try to get out of it is bogus.
Take Back the Country From the Damned Lying Liberals!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A carbon tax is a much better method to accomplish what you wish, that does not affect flexibility as much, and minimizes the avenues of rent-seeking- and it does all of this with the minimal amount of new government bureaucracy.
Dear Everyone, I think the fact that we don’t know is simple cause enough for immediate action. You don’t send your children to a school where you don’t know if they’ll be safe. Why are we going to send our children to a world which may be on its way, whether it’s in 5 years or 500, to self-destruction?
There’s no reason we can’t switch our nation’s automobiles to electric cars and cut 70% of the greenhouse emissions from the 1/3 of total CO2 in the atmosphere from man-made sources. There’s no reason we can’t switch our Government’s and National focus to sustainable energy and resources and to mass production of sustainable technologies. There’s no harm from it actually, and it makes us better neighbors with the rest of the world.
What I think the debate here should be about is not ‘if global warming is happening’ but ‘why are we taking any chances?’
The fact that we don’t know is cause enough for NON-action, not action. Further study is warranted for understanding not only what is happening, but also just what we can do (if anything) to change that (if we need to do something).
I remain leery of governmental or international solutions like carbon taxes. The “solution” might be more dangerous than the problem. I mean really, what OTHER problems have governments successfully solved with regulation, taxes and the like??
Instead, let’s look at how rights exist and are protected without government to get ideas about how environmental and climate problems can be solved.
Today, Dec. 8th 08, it seems that CO2 science has once again been wiped from the Internet. Another attack against free speech and scientific argument. As a geologist I can confirm that CO2 NEVER drove climate in the geological past and it does not now. Read the data sets from round the globe and look at the science. The theory of GHG’s is flawed and breaks one of the basics of Thermodynamics. Heat cannot flow from cold to hot which is what this theory says is happening. Complete rubbish. This planet has temperature regulated by water vapour and this temperature is driven by solar input and the Milankovitch Cycles. I think that CO2 Science is not supported by Exxon. But everyone is paid by someone. If you think that Science as related by Greenpeace is true then you are thinking simplistically. Greenpeace tells lies to get the public to pay them money so that they can live in luxury! They are a charity and survive only by frightening the public. Climate alarmism is just such a fright and a complete sham.
C02 Science should not be used as a source for anything. They are shills for the Western Energy Cooperative and have been paid nearly $100,000 that is documented by Exxon. They’re one of those groups owned by shady characters whose job it is to plant doubt. Not a single thing they write can be trusted.
There’s strong evidence that Climate change is purely natural regardless of Man
Scientists are measuring CO2 output at Mt. Redoubt, an Alaska Volcano ready to blow. I was informed the Volcano is pumping out 10,000 tons of CO2 daily as we speak.
Natural Climate Change Phenomenon:
REVISTING MAGNETIC INTENSITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE: A STRONG CORRELATION
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AGUFMGP11A0709M
AND
http://www.gsaaj.org/articles/TempPaperv1n22007.pdf
P.S. Neither side wants to prove the other right or wrong: THERE’S NO MONEY IN IT……
“Since the fall of 2008, AVO has flown 13 gas measurement flights, and of these, 5 have occurred since the eruption began on March 15, 2009. …. Starting in late January 2009, and coincident with a strong increase in seismicity, gas emission rates rose to a level (> 5000 tonnes/d) suggesting significant unrest at the volcano, and emissions stayed at this level until the eruption began. Since that time, emissions of both CO2 and sulfur dioxide (SO2) have been very elevated, sometimes reaching levels in excess of 10,000 tonnes/d. These volcanic gas emission rates are among the largest ever measured in Alaska, though such high values are consistent with an openly degassing volcanic system that is actively extruding lava. Based on measurements and observations from Redoubt’s previously observed eruptions, these gas emission rates are likely to drop substantially when the eruption wanes.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Mount_Redoubt_(Alaska)_eruptive_activity
http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/reliable-sources-climate-realists-craig-idso-ocean-acidification-edition/
Hi,I have added this blog to my google reader. Nice article.
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