Nature: Global Temperatures Are a Falling Trend 786
New submitter sosume writes "An article in Nature shows that temperatures in Roman times were actually higher than current temperatures. A team lead by Dr. Esper of the University of Mainz has researched tree rings and concluded that over the past 2,000 years, the forcing is up to four times as large as the 1.6W/m^2 net anthropogenic forcing since 1750 using evidence based on maximum latewood density data from northern Scandinavia, indicating that this cooling trend was stronger (0.31C per 1,000 years, ±0.03C) than previously reported, and demonstrated that this signature is missing in published tree-ring proxy records."
[gets popcorn] (Score:5, Insightful)
this should be good!
Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Global Temperatures Were a Falling Trend."
The long term graphs in TFA show a long term decline, but they all still kick up sharply at the end when we get to the industrial age.
Someone shoot the editors. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Article is flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter what the headline says.
Most importantly, humanity survived higher temperatures in the past.
Re:Water/rainfall not temperature (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps you should link up with the Creationist institute?
Read the paper (Score:4, Insightful)
Do not pick and choose words or results from scientific papers. The scientists who published this paper are part of the X who agree that CO2 emissions are warming the planet.
STOP IT (Score:5, Insightful)
Another in a long list of inflammatory and inaccurate articles from secondary sources.
Like yesterday's baloney about Obama's executive order.
The first thing you should learn as a thinking adult is to read the primary source. In this case the Nature article.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking at the graph you can see at least 6 instances of abrupt temperature increases that are identical to the last one and at least 5 times temps exceeded the trend.
In that context, our recent increases are not unique. If you want to pin the recent increases on Man and CO2, then you need to explain how the past increases came to be and why the current increases are not driven by the same forces.
Manmade climate change is centuries old (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that climate change took place centuries or even millennia ago doesn't prove that it was not caused by people. Humans have been doing things to affect the climate for a long time.
Charles C. Mann, in his excellent book 1493, discusses a theory that the "Little Ice Age" (a period of cooler than usual temperatures from roughly 1550-1800) was the result of the Columbian Exchange. Basically, the Native Americans had populated large portions of the New World, and in so doing had cleared most of the forest lands. After Columbus and his successors arrived, the Native Americans died at an insane rate from European diseases, and new forests grew across vast swathes of the Americas. This in turn resulted in far lower CO2 levels and consequently lower temperatures.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most importantly, humanity survived higher temperatures in the past.
Past humans didn't center their lives around global economies based in coastal cities.
When the water rose, past humans could just pick up their pointy stick and walk inland a bit.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if you are saying that tree rings are notoriously unreliable, you believe that this study is also pretty much worthless?
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet, we're supposed to take the claim that it will on faith...
Right in one...
Not even close, in fact your analogy is so far off that 'hyperbole' is a distant fading memory in the search for superlatives to describe it. Why? Because we have accurate long term models of orbital mechanics - and we do not have them for climate science.
True, but your emotionally charged rhetoric and numerous logical errors and appeals to faith aren't science either. Science is demonstrating a connection between the various scales, and backing up that connection with data - not saying "it's not our responsibility to finish up the job".
Note, I'm not a skeptic, but you need to learn a thing or three about science before even attempting to defend it. Confused smokescreens like yours do no one any favors.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think anyone has seriously suggested that global warming will bring on an extinction-level event. But I would say that a few million drowned Bangladeshi counts as a "catastrophe."
Re:Headline should say... (Score:3, Insightful)
Since the sceptics do not demand precipitate action as a result of their analysis, while the AGW proponents do, then surely the burden of proof is on the latter.
Beggaring the industrialised world on the basis of disputed science is not, I would submit, a wise course of action, however much it might appeal to the sense of guilt that the Left seem to nurture and treasure.
Re:Simple Explanation: (Score:5, Insightful)
As you can see in the graph of TFA, it has been colder and warmer than the mean line (hint: its the red dots)
As you can see in the graph of TFA, it has been colder and warmer than the mean line without us doing a lot (hint: its the red dots)
The problem is that you WANT a warmer climate and when you are proven wrong then the "cautionary principle" is called in to underline your presumptions. Data, or it wont happen.
TFA --> (hint: its the red dots)
No 2000 years is nothing, let alone 50 years of industry by men. Yes, it has been slightly longer, but it was only until the postwar economic boom since we really cranked up the CO2 and other natural gases.
quo errat demonstrator
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure more CO2 in the atmosphere is very beneficial to plant life and will help it flourish in forests and agriculture
Only if CO2 is the limiting factor. If e.g. water or nitrogen are the limiting factor in plant growth, excess CO2 will lead to extremely minor benefits, if any.
The one issue I have with the global warming chicken littles is that there is no inherent reason that recent CO2 levels or temperatures are some kind gold standard that must be maintained at all costs.
What the "chicken littles" are saying is that our life and society has already adapted to existing CO2 levels. Anything much higher or much lower than existing levels will probably require further adaptations. For instance, the location of high-yield arable land can change.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as the current temperatures go, we're dealing with the same heat the Romans did. All *that* proves is it was fuck-off hot then, and it's fuck-off hot now. As for the trend, if you plot the data all the way out, we're still in a cooling trend, and the "hockey stick" is there, but a graph with this many historical deviations from the mean is utterly worthless for predicting the future, at least by itself. A hockey stick can turn into a plateau and come down, or just keep going up and up, but there's no way to know from that graph alone.
I wish people could understand that and look at the studies that actually investigate AGW instead of the ones that just measure past trends.
Re:[gets popcorn] (Score:4, Insightful)
it is interesting to see the tonal change of the comments over the years regarding AGW and friends.
not too long ago, just a few years or more, most comments here were vehemently lampooning skeptics of any kind whatsoever, even lumping skeptics and deniers together. skeptics were literally laughed at all over the place.
it was all large talk of IPCC glory, consensus, yellings that contradictory findings were *all* bought with dirty money, how our limited records are good enough, that how dare this one NASA guy question our belief in the contemporary climate as the golden standard, etc etc etc
just, fun to watch people.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's difficult to make generalized, unqualified statements, and that is the property that makes something difficult to prove, not the fact that it's negative or positive. Whether or not it's negative or positive doesn't matter, it's the fact that something is a sweeping statement that makes it hard to prove. Proving that something always happens is just as hard to prove as proving that something never happens.
Next, if you'll reread my post, you'll notice that what I was saying was qualified with the condition that we have a small scale example that is reproducible with a high degree of confidence. You then mis-represented what I was saying, by arguing against the idea that "the burden of proof is always on the skeptic". I didn't say that. I said, specifically, "The burden of proof is on "skeptics" to explain why a reproducible, verifiable model on a small scale won't work on a large scale. " That's VERY different than saying, "The burden of proof is ALWAYS on the skeptics." Your tactic is what is know as a straw-man fallacy, as you are making an argument against something that I did not say.
Look, one of the big differences between religion and science is that religion and mythology will often create new theories for everything. You have a god for lightning, thunder, volcanoes, etc. Or you have a single god who is doing a bunch of different things. The goal of science is to get to the essence of what is going on, and wherever possible, unify our understanding into as simple of a model as possible. We only create separate models when we absolutely have to, and any reasonable hypothesis for weather should start with the models that we already know and understand (such as the greenhouse effect on a small scale), not a blank slate. Then, when we see evidence that the small scale model does apply to larger systems, we should apply this model to both small and large systems (with less confidence for the large system) until we see evidence that says otherwise. We don't simply say, "Gee, we've only collected a few decades of official evidence, let's hold off for a few millenia."
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone has seriously suggested that global warming will bring on an extinction-level event. But I would say that a few million drowned Bangladeshi counts as a "catastrophe."
Drowned? Really? So entire generations are going to just sit there while the water around them rises? I think they'll have time to, you know, move.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no such thing as a "negative" impact on the biosphere. There are only changes, and these changes are neither positive nor negative, except from a distinctly human perspective. The biosphere doesn't give a rat's ass what happens to it. Life will adapt and evolve under any conditions, just as it did for 4+ billion years before us, and will long after we're gone.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a very recent exciting discovery with nano materials to both demineralize sea water AND mine the minerals from the sea water.
This allows water with the perfect salt level for irrigation- which opens up a lot of arable land. It's really exciting stuff. Common materials, under 1% of the current energy requirements, and the minerals extracted could well cover the cost of water purification.
Re:An inconvent truth (Score:3, Insightful)
It is always about the dose. A small amount of oxygen in the air is necessary for us, but too much oxygen will kill you.
A small amount of CO2 has prevented a Snowball Earth for the last couple 100 million years, but the recent rise has already reduced crop yields.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
One can never be certain, but whoever you're responding to is most likely human, perhaps even distinctly so. Could that explain their perspective?
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:[gets popcorn] (Score:5, Insightful)
I've noticed the same thing.
Attacks on skeptics were personal and vindictive, not only here on Slashdot, but on every blog, mailing list, or news feed where the issue came up. The term Settled Science was thrown around like a bitchslap.
Perhaps people have learned that Argument vicieux don't help, or perhaps people have opened their eyes to more data.
For what ever reason, the politically correct line hasn't wavered much (other than changing the terminology from Global Warming to Climate Change), but at least articles like the cited one get a) published and b) covered, where as they were often frozen out of publications or discussion [huffingtonpost.co.uk] in the past.
The discussion is changing, but the the politics are still in attack mode.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that we should start with two separate models, one for large scale and another for the small scale, is precisely the opposite of what science seeks to do, and is a severe mis-representation of science.
So much wrong with this it deserves two replies.
When modeling non-linear systems like the Earth's climate, multi-scale models are exactly what we do. Your analogy to a quasi-linear system like orbital mechanics is so completely wrong-headed as to be funny.
Furtheremore, there was actually a deeply serious debate in the orbital mechanics community in the late '80's as to whether the solar system was even stable. Due to extremely subtle defects in our models it appeared that our long-term integrations of orbits exhibited chaotic behaviour in the relevant mathematical sense... orbits were still "fairly" stable but acquired random phases and whatnot over time, and tiny changes in starting conditions in the early solar system resulted in substantially different orbital phases today.
This all turned out to be false, but it took a decade and some extremely careful mathematical and computational work to prove it.
Yet compared to modeling the climate the solar system is child's play.
So why do people like you believe climate models the way a fundamentalist believes the Bible? It can't be because of the quality of the science, nor your understanding of it, because while the science is good it is no-where near good enough to bear the weight of the conclusions you jump to.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:1, Insightful)
All the article says is that forcings related to orbital mechanics may have been larger on a millenium time scale than estimated before. Even that is speculation - the core of the paper is presenting a improved method for evaluating tree ring proxies. The paper, however, does not call into doubt that the industrial age has added a significant greenhouse gas forcing, which gets bigger as we continue to add CO2 and methane.
No, but it calls into question if CO2 forcing plays as large of a role as has been assumed. That's why Mann, et al, have worked so hard to kill the Medieval Warming Period, to create the shaft of the hockey stick: to make recent warming "unprecedented" and hence imply a very strong CO2 forcing. If the relatively recent past was in fact warmer than they would have us believe, perhaps today's temperatures are not unprecedented, and since we know that CO2 was well below present levels, perhaps CO2 is not as strong of a forcing.
Doesn't mean that CO2 isn't an issue, doesn't mean that temperatures could be increasing. But would mean that the overall catastrophic scenario is questionable.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. We're already seeing this problem with Mexico and the USA. A lot of the illegal immigrants from Mexico are coming up to the US because there's not enough water going south in the Colorado river (LA is using it all up), making much of northern Mexico unusable for farming as arid areas like that depend on irrigation. So, with no economic opportunities, they're moving to the nearest place where opportunities exist, which is the USA immediately to their north. Problem is, many Americans (except for business owners looking to take advantage of dirt-cheap labor) don't want them here for various reasons.
When large groups of people want to migrate elsewhere, this is an inevitable problem in modern times where there's zero unclaimed livable land left. The people who already live on that land usually don't want a lot of newcomers, and if they do, they have very strict conditions and rules, such as Canada where you either need to deposit $300K into a Canadian bank account or you need to have some skill they want; dirt-poor, uneducated, unskilled people aren't welcome there.
Re:[gets popcorn] (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:[gets popcorn] (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest problem with ALL of that line of reasoning you just espoused is that to call it being driven by a "conservative denialist thinktank" is that you're not talking science at all with that remark- IT'S RELIGION WRAPPING ITSELF IN THE TRAPPINGS OF SCIENCE.
Quite simply calling someone that doesn't agree with the posited theory (because the data is UTTERLY insufficient or the model really and honestly doesn't match the actual data without dinking with it- which is what is going on) a "denialist" means you're not practicing science AT ALL.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, actually that's a farcical parody invented to let you blow off the people you disagree with. It has no connection to what they actually say.
Even the way you refer to them - "AGW proponents" - shows just how misleading your thought processes are. They are not "proponents" of global warming. In fact, they are not as group in favor of anything at all. The only thing they have in common is that they accept the overwhelming body of evidence really does show what it shows. That is their defining quality, just as the defining quality of "AGW skeptics" is that they deny the evidence shows what it really does show. You're trying to conflate two completely different issues: what are the facts, and what is a sensible response to them? Accepting the reality of global warming does not imply any particular policy, but you can't intelligently choose a policy until you accept the facts. You don't like particular policies that have been proposed, and you are using that as an excuse to ignore the facts.
And contrary to what you say, lots of global warming skeptics believe we should stop all R&D toward reducing CO2 emissions. After all, they don't believe there's anything wrong with CO2, so why should we waste money trying to reduce it?
Scientists and "skeptics" (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever you choose to call them, it is clear that there are a group of people who like to style themselves "skeptics" who reject the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists--a consensus that has been reviewed and endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences (along with nearly every elite professional scientific society in the world). It is also clear that this "skeptic" point of view has been supported by an extremely well-funded public relations campaign backed by individuals and organizations who have a financial interest in sales of fossil fuels.
A distinguishing feature of this kind of "skeptic" is that their "skepticism" is notably one-sided.
For example, a genuine scientific skeptic will read the scientific literature on historical climate reconstruction and will reach the following conclusions: Reconstructing global temperatures prior to actual temperature recording is difficult, and relies on the use of "proxies," which are indirect methods of estimating temperature. These are subject to a variety of errors and artifacts, and global coverage is spotty. In addition, there is limited information regarding factors driving temperature, such as atmospheric CO2 and energy output of the sun. This is an active area of research and quite interesting, but does not really shed a great deal of light on modern global warming, which has unambiguously been demonstrated to be the result of increased atmospheric CO2.
On the other hand, the "skeptic" will reject the great mass of climate reconstructions (generally with ad hominem remarks about climate scientists or scientists in general), but will accept as gospel truth a just-published article that yields divergent results suggesting that temperatures in the past might have been higher than previous estimates. Similarly, the "skeptic" will enthusiastically embrace the "evidence" of third-hand accounts of medieval agricultural practices in northern europe as indicating that there was a warm period during medieval times--and conclude (in a bizarre jump of logic) that if medieval times were warm for some reason that (with our very limited information about climate drivers of the time) we don't understand, that we don't have to worry about the fact that we are currently seeing exactly the type of temperature increases that are predicted as a consequence of the CO2 that we are adding to the atmosphere.
Of course, a real scientist will have a very different reaction: We don't know if there was some unexplained process that warmed things up during medieval times--there isn't enough information to figure out for sure that that really happened, or if it did, what the cause was. But what if it did? That's even more disturbing. We know what the modern warming is due to--it's due to increased CO2. What if there is some other process that could produce a comparable warming in the absence of increased energy from the sun (because we've measured that, and we know it's not increasing)? Wow, that's really scary! What if that unknown process were to suddenly kick in on top of CO2? The projected warming from CO2 is bad enough, but add in some warming from some other unknown mechanism on top of that, and we could have a real catastrophe! This makes controlling CO2 even more important than I thought!
Re:[gets popcorn] (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no way on earth you can possibly prove that statement. It's completely vacuous on it's face and history is not on your side w.r.t. it being true.
^^ That, however, is pure deception. The branding change was chosen by those doing the selling because what was being sold was no longer so "simple" as temperature increase. It suddenly included anything that the earth threw at us that was bad. Furthermore, the major selling point for the past 6 years at least was that we are now in the warmest period in earths history for the past 1000 years. This was stated so many articles, journals, scientists, UN-bandit-organizations in so many venues that it is literally beyond count. Now this article essentially directly contradicts that thought, and you say the facts aren't changing?
Right.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:4, Insightful)
It calls into doubt the idea that global warming itself is a catastrophe. It suggests that humanity thrived on a significantly hotter world than any living person has known.
Possibly. The actual paper is far less glib in its conclusions than the article linked in The Register. It suggests that data from Scandinavia might require climate researches to recalibrate their tree ring models -- which if true makes the scenario you describe *a possibility*, but that is far from proof. That possibility is interesting, but obviously it'll take more than tree ring data from one small corner of Europe to overturn the scientific consensus.
It's silly to jump up and say "aha!" when something like this comes up, because things like this have come up in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Every theory has contradictory data; in fact 5% of papers can be expected to report spuriously significant results. That's why individual papers can't overturn the scientific consensus, because that asks: where does the current preponderance of evidence lead? There's always been some evidence that weighs against AGW. For example I remember a similar back in the 80s (before AGW was a political football) about t unhe accuracy of Royal Navy sea temperatures recorded in the 1700's and 1800's. They collected the water to be measured in canvas bags, which would have cooled their contents by evaporation. When something like this comes up you've got to ask (1) is it real? (2) how practically significant is it?
This paper may or may not prove to be scientifically important. But what is unquestionably important is that this paper shows it *is* possible to publish papers which weigh against the scientific consensus in climate research, and to do so in a prestigious peer reviewed journal. Researchers will pig pile on this researcher's claims, because that's the way the process works. If the paper stands up to that, then it *might* be the start of a shift in consensus. But I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. Papers that *might* be the start of a shift are far, far more common than lines of inquiry which successfully lead to such a shift.
Re:Simple Explanation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Over the last century and half the climate has warmed as the the planet comes out of the Little Ice Age.
Over the last half a century you have AGW on top of the natural variations due to forcing by C02, Methane, Soot, reduction in SO4 and feedback from changes in water vapour in the atmosphere.
Over the last decade and a half the planet hasn't warmed because due to low solar radiation and less El Nino events.
No Nature doesn't care about us and will most likely freeze us to death. In the short term we may cook ourselves first though.
Re:Headline should say... (Score:2, Insightful)
They are not "proponents" of global warming
No, they are proponents of portraying it with as much hysteria as possible, in order to gain influence (academic, political, financial) through the resulting baseless fear. The agenda pushed by these types include encouragement to make use of the carbon credit schemes they are positioned to exploit for cash, to redistribute wealth and political power, and the like.
lots of global warming skeptics believe we should stop all R&D toward reducing CO2 emissions
What, like 9 of them? 12?