rigorousintuition.ca

The Scariest Climate Change Graph Just Got Scarier

—By Tim McDonnell
| Thu Mar. 7, 2013 12:05 PM PST


Average global temperature over the last ~2,000 years. Note the massive uptick on the far right side. Courtesy Science/AAAS

Back in 1999, Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann released the climate change movement's most potent symbol: The "hockey stick," a line graph of global temperature over the last 1,500 years that shows an unmistakable, massive uptick in the 20th century, when humans began to dump large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It's among the most compelling bits of proof out there that human beings are behind global warming, and as such has become a target on Mann's back for climate denialists looking to draw a bead on scientists.

Today, it's getting a makeover: A study published in Science reconstructs global temperatures further back than ever before—a full 11,300 years. The new analysis finds that the only problem with Mann's hockey stick was that its handle was about 9,000 years too short. The rate of warming over the last 100 years hasn't been seen for as far back as the advent of agriculture.


Marcott's team used ocean records to reconstruct global climate further back in time than ever before. Courtesy Science/AAAS

To be clear, the study finds that temperatures in about a fifth of this historical period were higher than they are today. But the key, said lead author Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University, is that temperatures are shooting through the roof faster than we've ever seen.

"What we found is that temperatures increased in the last hundred years as much as they had cooled in the last six or seven thousand," he said. "In other words, the rate of change is much greater than anything we've seen in the whole Holocene," referring to the current geologic time period, which began around 11,500 years ago.

Previous historic climate reconstructions typically extended no further back than 2,000 years, roughly as far back as you can go by examining climate indicators from tree rings, as Mann did. To dig even deeper, Marcott's team looked at objects collected from more than 70 sites worldwide, primarily fossilized ocean shells that have been unearthed by oceanographers. Existing research has shown that certain chemical tracers in the shells link directly to temperature at the time they were created; by studying oxygen isotopes in the fossilized plankton shown below, for example, scientists can deduce that it formed its shell at a time when Greenland was fully without ice. Marcott's task was to compile enough such samples to represent the whole planet over his chosen timeframe.

"There's been a lot of work that's gone into the calibrations, so we can be dead certain [the shells] are recording the temperature we think they're recording," he said.

Today's study should help debunk the common climate change denial argument that recent warming is simply part of a long-term natural trend. Indeed, Marcott says, the Earth should be nearing the bottom of a several-thousand year cool-off (the end-point of the rainbow arc in (B) above), if natural factors like solar variability were the sole driving factors. Instead, temperatures are rising rapidly.

Mann himself, who literally wrote the book on attacks on climate scientists, said in an email to Climate Desk that he was "certain that professional climate change deniers will attack the study and the authors, in an effort to discredit this important work," especially given the close ties between the two scientists' research. "It will therefore be looked at as a threat to vested interests who continue to deny that human-changed climate change is a reality."

Marcott admitted he was apprehensive about charging into the fully mobilized troll army, but said he was grateful scientists like Mann had "gone through hell" before him to build a support network for harassed climate scientists.

"When Michael came along there was a lot more skepticism about global warming, but the public has come a long way," he said. "I'm curious to see how the skeptics are going to take this paper."

slimmouse » Thu May 08, 2014 10:46 pm wrote:OK Doc, Now Im scared.

But what about those tempearature graphs and trends over a significant "timescale".

Do you have any?

Sounder » Thu May 08, 2014 5:46 pm wrote:I listened to that whole Mr. Whitehouse vid. Hey, if you guys like that sort of thing maybe you will like this also.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... orecasters

Yes our pres is SERIOUS about this crisis. The same fella that has stacked his administration with ex-Monsanto execs. When he campaigned he assured folk that food should be labeled, and of course he knew he was lying because he was already a Monsanto man. His State dept. functions as a front line sales force for Monsanto yet he is taken as being on the righteous side of this ‘crisis’. Get a reality check.

TV weather forecasters remain among the most trusted sources, according to opinion polls.

Some 89% of Americans rely on local television for their weather news, according to a 2012 report from the Pew research centre.

The same report said 62% of Americans trust television weather reporters on climate change far more than they do climate scientists.

The problem is, however, that there is a strong current of climate scepticism among weather forecasters. Some of the most prominent television meteorologists deny a human cause in climate change – or insist there is no evidence of climate change.

A 2010 study by George Mason University's centre for climate change communications found that only 19% of TV weather forecasters accepted that human activity was the main driver of climate change.

“Many TV meteorologists remain climate change sceptics, in part because they are skilled at forecasting weather over short time periods, which can make them doubt long-range projections from climate science computer models,” wrote Andrew Freedman, who covers climate change for Mashable. "Many TV meteorologists also lack specific training in climate science."

Sorry,

AGW is nothing more than a money spicket and social engineering project

same as war on Cancer

terror

drugs

911

and now a pending panopticon.

Now, being how an all, you folk are so well trained, I’m a thinkin it’s about the right time for you to do some barking.

Sounder » Thu May 08, 2014 5:46 pm wrote:Sorry, AGW is nothing more than a money spicket and social engineering project, same as war on Cancer, terror, drugs, 911, and now a pending panopticon.

I know, right. Get em all scared so you can pick their pockets. Those fucking Rockefellers again!

Cancer is real.

Terror is real. We're just the greatest practitioners and purveyors of it.

Ya, ain't that one a fucker. They get ya coming and going.

Unless you think that was a project blue beam hologram then that was real too.

Not pending. Quite real. You're soaking in it.

And now being as you are all uneducated and everything, you'll have nothing sensible to say.

What a greedy, lying fuck. Eh?

This rhetorical devise is lame though because I never said it wasn’t ‘real’.

AGW is nothing more than a money spicket and social engineering project

Sounder » Fri May 09, 2014 12:46 am wrote:I listened to that whole Mr. Whitehouse vid. Hey, if you guys like that sort of thing maybe you will like this also.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... orecasters

Yes our pres is SERIOUS about this crisis. The same fella that has stacked his administration with ex-Monsanto execs. When he campaigned he assured folk that food should be labeled, and of course he knew he was lying because he was already a Monsanto man. His State dept. functions as a front line sales force for Monsanto yet he is taken as being on the righteous side of this ‘crisis’. Get a reality check.

Sorry, AGW is nothing more than a money spicket and social engineering project, same as war on Cancer, terror, drugs, 911, and now a pending panopticon.

Now, being how an all, you folk are so well trained, I’m a thinkin it’s about the right time for you to do some barking.

DrEvil » Fri May 09, 2014 2:21 pm wrote:Can someone please ban BenD already? He's been trolling, obfuscating, lying and twisting the facts in this thread for years now. I think it's abundantly clear that he has no interest in an actual debate.

Ben D » Fri May 09, 2014 7:37 am wrote:

DrEvil » Fri May 09, 2014 2:21 pm wrote:Can someone please ban BenD already? He's been trolling, obfuscating, lying and twisting the facts in this thread for years now. I think it's abundantly clear that he has no interest in an actual debate.

Wow..the irony...I just offered to debate AGW science with you AGW alarmists and you want me banned...wait for it....because you think that I have no interest in an actual debate.

C'mon....I say to you that there is no proof that AGW is real...if you think otherwise...show me the correlation between the increase in human derived CO2 emissions and global temperature increase.

DrEvil » Fri May 09, 2014 3:41 pm wrote:

Ben D » Fri May 09, 2014 7:37 am wrote:

DrEvil » Fri May 09, 2014 2:21 pm wrote:Can someone please ban BenD already? He's been trolling, obfuscating, lying and twisting the facts in this thread for years now. I think it's abundantly clear that he has no interest in an actual debate.

Wow..the irony...I just offered to debate AGW science with you AGW alarmists and you want me banned...wait for it....because you think that I have no interest in an actual debate.

C'mon....I say to you that there is no proof that AGW is real...if you think otherwise...show me the correlation between the increase in human derived CO2 emissions and global temperature increase.

Ben, the thread is 71 pages long. Take out roughly 30 pages of your trolling and there's your proof.
And no, I don't think you have no interest in a real debate, I know it. This thread is pretty much all the proof I need. Now fuck off you lying piece of shit.