[ale] [OT] Psychology of Denial about Climate Change

[drifter]

On Monday 14 December 2009 15:53:15 Greg Freemyer wrote:

<SNIP>

> The tree ring analysis from Briffa in the early 90's originally
> apparently matched the temp record from 1850-1990 fairly well, but it
> also showed the temps being even higher during the MWP than during the
> 1990's.
> 
> (MWP - Medieval Warming Period about 1000 years ago.  When Greenland
> was actively being farmed, etc.)
> 
> Apparently the emails show a discussion led by Dr. Jones that
> temperatures being that high during the MWP is in disagreement with
> either other data, or with CRU preconceived ideas.
> 
> (The emails I have read are not clear on why Dr. Jones felt the MWP
> was cooler than today, just that the MWP being warmer than today
> seemed wrong to Dr. Jones.)

<SNIP>

Let me describe myself as a liberal skeptic on the entire issue. More than 
25 years ago I reacted to climatic pressures by building a passive solar, 
all concrete, 3,600 sq.ft. house. Family and friends called it "The 
Bunker."  This was in a part of Virginia where snow drifts regularly were 
deeper than the tractor tires. At the time I was running a Christmas Tree 
farm, which is sustainable, low impact farming -- and we were doing it 
without using any chemical pesticides. So much for my "green" credentials. 
:)

And I know full well that the Northern Hemisphere has been getting warmer 
over the past 100 years at least.  At the turn of the last century farmers 
in northern Virginia (around Winchester, for example) were still cutting 
ice from ponds and storing same in ice houses (8'X8'X20'deep holes in the 
ground lined with straw).  As late as 1920 those farmers expected to have 
filled their ice houses by Thanksgiving.  Today in the same area it is the 
rare winter that is cold enough to permit ice skating more than a few days 
-- and none of them before Thanksgiving! It helps to remember that during 
the U.S. Civil War soldiers on both sides wore wool uniforms year round for 
a reason. It was a damn site colder then than now.

So, yes, the Northern Hemisphere is getting warmer and has been doing so 
throughout my own lifetime.  Denying that fact is like denying that smoking 
causes cancer. Only more stupid.

But has it been this warm within the past 3000 years? Yes. it has.
Have ocean levels been higher than they are now? Yes, they have.

That  said, I have some questions relative to the MWP.
1. Eric the Red and his buddies were run out of Norway for being too rowdy 
and then run out of Iceland for the same reason.  So they moved even 
further west and settled on the coasts of Greenland. Eric's son, Lief, 
helped his father talk hundreds of Norse into settling on those "green" 
shores.  These were farmers and they subsisted by growing wheat.  One of 
the larger settlements was more than 100 miles north of the Arctic circle 
on the West coast of Greenland.  About 1150 or so the climate began to 
drift colder and by 1200 AD most of these Norse settlements had been 
abandoned. By 1350 Europe was being hammered by the "Little Ice Age."

So my first question: 
Is it warm enough today to grow wheat 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle 
on the coast of Greenland?  The soil temperature data is available on the 
web, but I was a tree farmer, not a wheat farmer and I cannot make 
meaningful use of the data.  I have posed this question several times to 
heavyweights in this discussion and have yet to get any sort of reply at 
all.

And my second question:
When those Norse were living on the shores of Greenland, what was the 
status of the northern ice sheets? And the polar bears? :)

We know that over the past several decades the ice caps on Mars have been 
shrinking.  The only obvious cause is increased solar activity.

So my third question: 
What amount of increase in solar radiation is needed to cause the observed 
effects on Mars? And how would that increase in solar radiation affect the 
earth's climate?  I suspect this has been covered in "Peer Reviewed" 
journals, but I have missed the reports.

All of which gets around to what in the Global Warming debate has been 
getting to me:

A.  The insistence that the the earth is warmer than it has been at any 
time -- or any time within so many centuries (and burying in the fine print 
that the accurate temp. records only exist since the invention of the 
thermometer and that, yes, it is only warmer now than at any point in the 
past 150 years or so.)

B. Claiming that all of the perceived temperature increase in the past 
three decades must have been caused almost completely by man. That may be 
so, but "climate" is such a complex subject with hundreds, if not 
thousands, of variables that it must be nearly as hard to fully comprehend 
it as it is to understand string theory. The primary energy source driving 
the Earth's climate is the sun and I would feel much better about claims 
for Global Warming if solar scientists had a much more significant voice in 
the discussions. Certainly in the popular press their voice is nearly 
silent.

Sean

C. NASA has "adjusted" (some might say fudged) temperature data records 
without providing a reasonable explanation for the adjustments.  I find it 
hard to believe that thousands of thermometers across this country all had 
similar variations in accuracy.  Using the unadjusted data the warming 
curve is, I suspect, much flatter.

D.  At least one European climate sat. has been collecting data for some 
time and that data does NOT agree with NASA's "adjusted" data.

E. A Failure to admit that China is now the 600 pound gorilla in the room. 
Given the rate that China is increasing its CO2 output, all out efforts on 
the part of  Europe and the U.S. to reduce emissions of these gases will 
not stem the overall increase for the planet. China seems totally 
uninterested in reducing its carbon footprint.

Mankind has been influencing climate on a somewhat local scale for 
centuries. After Rome defeated Carthage, north Africa became the "bread 
basket" for the Empire. The Sahara didn't begin to encroach until Roman 
governors decided they had to control the nomadic tribes. Forced to stay in 
one place, the tribes' sheep, goats, and camels soon turned whole swathes 
of North Africa into wasteland -- changing the climate for the entire 
region. (that is, of course a great over-simplification of the political and 
horticultural events, but you get the idea)  The North African sandbox that 
Rommel was running around in 1942 wasn't a sandbox 2,500 years ago.


WE need to remember a lesson from logic:
If A, then B;
Not B;
then,
Not A

BUT
If A, then B;
B;
then
nada, zip, -- you cannot infer A when given B.

Sean