The Red Paint People, Doggerland and my DNA.

Over the last couple of months I have been putting up the occasional post on my own family tree, as it is becoming defined by DNA analysis, and at the same time have been looking at some of the early arrivals of Indians in Maine and the North East American continent. (My interest in the latter was initiated by the question of when Europeans first arrived on the continent in enough numbers to influence facial features of the locals).

Two weeks ago I was fortunate to be able to attend a lecture by Bruce Bourque, the Curator of Archaeology at Maine State Museum, and the authority on the Red Paint People, of whom I have written earlier with a follow-up post on their travels. His talk, and the book he just recently released (The Swordfish Hunters) provides much more detail on a people that have largely been neglected by “the archaeologists of Harvard,” who have tended to disregard significant developments this far north of Boston.

The Red Paint People are also called “the Moorehead Phase”, after Warren Moorehead, who first identified them as the “Red Paint” people, because of their custom of burying red ocher with the bodies in their cemeteries. They flourished in a small part of Maine, and their cemeteries have been found along the banks of local rivers. There is, however considerable evidence that they harvested fish and sea-food (their cemeteries have been found in large shell middens), with a peculiarity that they also hunted, ate and used the bones and rostra (the “sword”) of local swordfish. The latter, in particular, was used to provide a stiffened mount behind the harpoon and spear tips used in hunting. They appear to be the first to hunt swordfish, which would have been a dangerous prey for early Holocene man, since they have a nasty habit of attacking the boats of those who have just stabbed them with a harpoon.

Figure 1. Red Paint Cemeteries in North-East America (The Swordfish Hunters)

The book is a fascinating story of detective work, and archaeology as it builds a picture of a people that began around 5,000 years ago and suddenly disappeared around 3,800 years ago. Dr. Bourque points to evidence that it does not fit within an overall unified culture which has been described as the Maritime Archaic, but rather stands on its own, and emerges from the “Small Stemmed Point” tradition that preceded it. But is totally separate from the Ceramic period that follows.

One of the intriguing parts of the story lies in the thousand-mile link with the Ramah Peninsula in Labrador, that I discussed in a previous post, and Dr. Bourque also points to close similarities between the findings in Maine, and those at the Port au Choix site. One identifying characteristic lies in the development of stone gouges, for use in hollowing out the inside of dugout canoes.

Figure 2. A Stone Gouge from Maine, and an artist’s rendition of how it would be hafted. (The Swordfish Hunters).

The gouges, as the book argues, show that the Red Paint Peoples were building substantial canoes and boats around 4,000 years ago, that were substantial enough for voyages of a thousand miles, and that this would also make them viable for use in harpooning swordfish (an art in itself as the book illustrates).

The climate change around the time that this culture was flourishing in Maine is not seriously discussed in the book, but I think that it is worth looking at, in context, because it ties in a little with what was happening across the Atlantic, where the culture that built Stonehenge had moved into Britain.

Figure 3. Climate swings in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 10,000 years (the Holocene) (Consulting Geologist)

The significance of these temperature variations is often significantly discounted as climate scientists today would rather emphasize the point of the effects imposed by man, rather than the natural effects we cannot control. Yet the higher temperatures that did exist, even as recently as the last (Medieval) Warming Period are evidenced, for example, by the recent uncovering of an Eskimo village which has been buried under a glacier for the past 500 years. The inhabiting tribe of Yup’ik Eskimo lived, among other things, on caribou and lived at Quinhagak in Alaska. Without the protective ice cap that has covered the site from the time that the Yup’ik left there at the beginning of the Little Ice Age, the site is now rapidly being eroded into the Bering Sea (a fate that is similarly threatening the sites in Maine, where coastal erosion and sea level changes have covered most of the Red Paint People’s locations). But it indicates that we are only now reaching the temperatures at that site that prevailed in the Medieval Warming Period.

The Red Paint People lived at the beginning of what is now referred to as the Minoan Warming Period. And, from data obtained from the Greenland Ice Cores, it is possible to note a couple of facts about the time that the tribe appears to have vanished. First, if the temperatures, as derived from the Ice cores recovered from Greenland are examined in a little more detail:

Figure 4. Temperatures in the region over the last 5,000 years (from the Greenland GISP2 Ice core)

Perhaps more to the point, if the extent of sea ice at the time is considered (from the same source) it fell to an historic low during the Minoan.

Figure 5. Sea Ice extent over the Holocene (The Ice Chronicles ) (Note the plot has been flipped, relative to the original, in order to conform to the consistency of showing the older period to the left of the plot in the rest of the post).

With this considerable warming the ice retreated from the shores of Greenland, and it became an even more hospitable place that it was at the time almost 3,000 years later when Erik the Red came calling. This warming had another consequence, because it led to a steady rise in the levels of the sea. This is shown in the book as it affects Maine, important since it shows how the shoreline dwellings from the period have since been inundated.

Figure 6. Sea levels off the coast of Maine over the Holocene (The Swordfish Hunters)

But in Europe that sea rise from the beginning of the Holocene had another consequence. It flooded the land-bridge (known as Doggerland) between what became the isle of Britain and the continent.

Within the British Isles, by 4,000 BP the country had been colonized for about a thousand years by the arrival of an agricultural movement that displaced the earlier hunter-gatherers and, in turn. rapidly changed from a “slash and burn” land clearance into the development of a “celtic arrangement of fields. Colin Burgess in "The Age of Stonehenge" has noted that the settlements towards the end of that transition were already being constructed defensively.

A more recent unmarked burial pit at Fengate contained three disarticulated burials and one, crouched, the latter with a leaf-shaped arrowhead still sticking between the eighth and ninth ribs.

The warmer clime was conducive to the spread of agriculture and an increasing density of population. The cutting of the land bridge, and the slow flooding of what later became the Dogger Bank, in the North Sea, had a personal consequence.

Figure 7. The location of Doggerland about 7000 BP (Bryony Coles via doggerland)

My Y-chromosome has been designated as R1b1b2a1a1d*, which is a variety of Celt, that, as I have mentioned in an earlier post, had come down from Cro-Magnon man. The analysis that has evolved over the past few years (apparently starting at 23andme suggests that this a “Freisian” variety of Celt and there is a body of thought moving to the conclusion that they were the inhabitants of Doggerland that were driven to Britain when the final inundation occurred around 5500 years ago, just before the first circles at Stonehenge were constructed. (And here I now discover that maybe I wasn’t the first of my lineage to work on a Stonehenge).

The first circles at Stonehenge were developed about 5,000 years ago (at the left side of Figure 4). But around 2150 BC or some 4000 BP the Beaker People arrived. In contrast with those, maybe us, who had first developed the site and were moon worshipers, they worshiped the sun. What made the Stonehenge site become what it did was that the simple markers already there to align critical lunar phases could, by moving around the circle ninety degrees, also align to the major solar alignments at mid-winter, mid-summer etc. The ruling elites of the time became more powerful, and with the warmer climes helping sustain agricultural production, society became more static. And the more powerful had enough manpower available to develop, over the next millennium or so, the full glory that became Stonehenge. They also grew into the Wessex Culture with its elaborate and rich graves.

The Beaker People were Celts and still, at the beginning of this time, used stone axes and flint-shaped arrowheads. But copper daggers are found even in the earliest graves and this was the time where the culture was moving into the Bronze Age in Britain, some time after it had developed elsewhere in Europe.

Given that the Red Paint People were aware of native copper deposits, (and were starting to make small ornaments with them) had they known of the metal forming traditions developing in Europe then metal objects would have shown up in the graves. They did not, and even to the time of Champlain stone tools were in use.

So it is logical to conclude that seafaring though the cultures were on both sides of the Atlantic they did not communicate at this time, at least not well enough to teach metal craft, at a time when it might have been easier to travel, from one side of the Atlantic to the other. On the other hand, it might be possible to conjecture an explanation for the long and narrow bayonet points which Dr. Bourque points out as a significant feature of Red Paint burials. He notes that these are too weak to have any great utilitarian value in society, because they were made of stone. He therefore suggests that they had only a ceremonial aspect that has been lost. But it could be that they were an attempt to copy the spear heads that were beginning to be developed in Britain at the time, but which were made utilitarian only by being made of metal. And that would suggest some form of communication between the two societies.

There remain a couple of additional thoughts, both about the ability of early societies such as these to travel long distances, and the mysterious disappearance of whole societal segments. But they arise in events in Greenland that happened during the Medieval Warming Period; the migration of the Thule from Alaska to Northern Greenland in 1000 AD, and the abandonment of the Western Settlement of the Viking in Greenland. Since this is a different time period I will therefore leave those topics to a subsequent post.

Political will amidst climate uncertainty

I don’t expect that there will be many tsunamis in Germany over the next century, nor, apart from the occasional man-made earthquakes that can come from potash mining, do I expect the country to suffer any major damage from an earthquake. Seriously, I rather suspect that the German government has the same view of the future. But that has not stopped them from deciding to close all nuclear power stations within the next eleven years, using the recent events in Japan as one of the justifying reasons.

Germany gets about 25% of its current energy supply from nuclear power, and about 17% comes from the sustainable sources such as solar and wind. But the problem, in part, is that these become unreliable sources in winter, with lower wind speeds and shorter, darker days. Yet, without a balance sheet having been presented that will show where the lost power will come from, the decision has been made, on apparently political grounds, that nuclear must go.

There comes a time in the affairs of Government when a commitment is made to a policy that makes it virtually impossible for those in charge to later reverse the decision. This decision by the German government is one such probably irrevocable decision, and it seems that the step that the British Government recently made in their commitment to a “green” anti-carbon future for the UK, is another.

A limit on the total amount of greenhouse gases to be emitted by the UK between 2023 to 2027 has been proposed to cut Britain’s emissions by 50% from 1990 levels.

The ultimate goal is to get the emissions down 80% by 2050. The evidence that these “green” technologies will support existing levels of power and production is becoming more debatable. Thus the powers-that-be anticipate that there should also be a cut in energy demand from the general populace. In the case of Germany this target is about 10% of their current consumption.

The commitments to turn away from existing technologies with the capacity to supply energy at an acceptable financial price, and instead to rely on wind and solar, technologies that are not as consistent in providing power when needed, comes at a time when there has been enough experience with sustainable power that the advantages and disadvantages are becoming more evident. Though, before discussing that I should explain that, writing as I do about coming shortages of oil, the reality is that the world is going to need whatever energy supplies it can find in the coming years and that includes energy from wind, solar, geothermal and hydro.

But there is a growing question as to the real practicality of some of the “green” solutions being proposed, and also questions on their cost. One such, for example is the book “The False Promise of Green Energy”. This epitomizes a growing body of criticism that takes a hard look at the costs and energy actually produced by the “green revolution” and concludes that they not nearly as beneficial in reality as they have been made out to be. I don’t agree with a lot of the philosophy that drives the Foundation that published the study, leaving the energy future to the marketplace to find answers to me indicates a failure to understand the size of the problem that is developing. Nevertheless the book does raise some legitimate concerns over the drive to commit to the “energy solution of the day.” For a while at the end of the last Administration in the United States, cellulosic ethanol was going to be that White Knight. Mandates were to provide a market to justify the investment in large plants required to have any increment on national supply. Well it turns out that those getting the money were more optimistic than realistic, and those targets have been scaled back.

Today the solution of choice still remains wind power. The cost has come down, and particularly on-shore, the reliability of the plant has gone up. Unfortunately the other partner in the success of the technology is a natural one, and the consistency and strength of the wind to drive the wind turbines has not been as good. The John Muir Trust examined the record,, and reported last January,

The research found over 395 days, the wind farms could have produced 17,586,000 MW hours of energy running at full capacity. In reality, 3,881,900MW hours was generated, equivalent to 22.07 per cent.

And over the past two years, wind generation across the sites fell below 20MW on 123 separate days for a combined duration of 25 days. For a total of nine days, output dipped below 10MW, barely enough power to boil 3,300 household kettles.

More recently the Telegraph has noted

The Coalition has drawn up plans to open more wind farms in an effort to meet Britain’s European Union target of providing 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.More than 3,600 turbines are expected to be installed in offshore wind farms over the next nine years.

But statistics suggest that the winds that sweep across the British Isles may be weakening. Last year, wind speeds over the UK averaged 7.8 knots (8.9mph), a fall of 20 per cent on 2008, and well below the mean for this century, which stands at 9.1 knots (10.5mph).

If the current power systems (often nuclear and coal) are to be done away with, as the current European Governments seem set on achieving, then they should, were they morally responsible, also indicate the sources, costs, power and true likelihood of being able to replace existing power plants with a viable alternative. Those answers are often given in general terms and rely on projections (such as, for example, that wind will produce 30% of nameplate capacity) that are now being shown to be wrong. This seems a more certain way of destroying the future of our children than the threat of carbon dioxide level rise, though one would have to look hard to find many that recognize this reality. Politicians have grasped an approach and now use the threat of climate change to justify policies that cannot be easily undone.

The same is equally true about the opinions of the validity of the models that are used to justify these decisions. Changes in the reliability of the models, as data is acquired and time passes are often largely not to be admitted. For example, one of the more prevalent aspects of the global warming argument is that the accelerating rise in sea level is going to lead to the swamping of land around the globe well within this century. That later prediction has largely been based on models, but a series of buoys was placed around the world to give a more accurate assessment of the rise in sea-level. As this data has become more widely available and over a longer time, so it has been possible to discern the trend.

Sea level change over the past eighteen years (U of Colorado )

If one looks at the second half of the plot (green and orange) it is possible to conclude that, if anything , the rate of sea level rise is slowing down. This despite the increased quantities of carbon dioxide that have been added to the atmosphere.

That view of this data by Dr James Hansen, the “guru” of the AGW world, has now been announced through the Goddard Institute for Space Science (GISS) in the form of a paper “Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications” . And while it lays the blame on the slow-down on volcanic activity and a solar minimum, nevertheless it recognizes the phenomenon

Although the accuracy of ocean heat uptake in the pre-Argo era is inherently limited, it is clear that heat uptake in the Argo era is smaller than it was during the 5-10 years preceding full Argo deployment, as discussed by Trenberth (2009, 2010) and Trenberth and Fasullo (2010).

Yet with this evidence of a stability in the ocean temperature, the IEA has just announced a major increase in CO2 emissions, which leads them to predict that the temperatures will rise, around the globe, by 4 deg C by 2010, and that many of us will drown.

It would seem that even as the science becomes less certain, so the politicians who cling to it, become more determined to implement an answer that may no longer be correct.

Incidentally I was down in Florida last week, and one of those I met with was bemoaning that the oranges that used to be grown in Northern Florida (Jacksonville) can now only be grown economically further south in the state due to the colder climates of recent years, ah!

A Conference on "Climate Change Myths"

Way back in February 2007 I went to an Emerging Energies Technology meeting in Santa Barbara, and along to way picked up a book “Unstoppable Global Warming – every 1,500 years,” to read on the plane. I wrote a post for The Oil Drum combining the opinions expressed in the book with my conclusions from the Conference. I got some 262 comments to that post – there were some 150-odd about the book, some 55 of which were straight ad hominem attacks and a total of 5 addressed the scientific points that were brought up. It got me curious since, not having ventured in those waters before, I had presumed that the debate on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and the argument that carbon dioxide was causing global warming was being carried out as a scientific debate, and not a political or religious one.

So from then on, usually when writing about other conference trips, I would spend some time digging deeper into the subject and seeing what the data said. I soon came to the conclusion that there was indeed a Medieval Warming Period, a Little Ice Age, and a Roman Warming Period. But as I slipped in these tidbits to what are otherwise posts on the coming energy crisis, almost all the response was “ad hominem.” (You can see a small example recent example in my review of Richard Heinberg’s book which was put up on TOD last week) there are some 32 comments in the thread.

At the end of the last Administration, and with the incoming one heavily committed to the AGW belief, I wrote a post in which I tried to point out that with the evidence starting to be a lot less convincing, it would be dangerous for the Administration to go too far out on a limb supporting something that might not be true. This time there were 466 comments, though less of the ad hominem (though still some 25 folk that used it, some several times) and more of the science. But even though it brought a level of censorship to TOD that I found disturbing I felt the post worthwhile, and it did lead to the creation of this site.

I now see that my original projections are beginning to be born out, as more questioning editorials, and scientific information begin to appear in the daily press. Thus when a Conference brought 8 of those that would speak on “Debunking Climate Change Myths” to Springfield - which is close – I decided to go. And in my usual mode, here is what I saw and heard.

The meeting, which was organized by Ron Boyer of Surefire Strategies, had somewhere around 150 present, including students from a local school. (They had watched “An Inconvenient Truth” the previous day).

The first speaker was Joseph D’Aleo who is a retired meteorologist and runs the website Icecap . He showed a plot from Carter which plotted the temperatures since 3000 BC, showing the presence of four Warming Periods (including our own), noting that the peak temperatures for these were trending downwards. He then brought the discussion to more recent times with graphs that showed that the 1930’s were the warmest years of the 20th Century. I am going to insert a graph here from Dr. Hansen at GISS because it makes some of the later points that folk raised a little clearer.

Comparison of US temperatures and global temperatures (Source Hansen)

At this stage we were talking about the figure on the left. He then put up the first figure from Ian Plimer’s “Heaven and Earth” which showed the projections from different climate models plotted with the current trends over the past 20 years, and projected forward (and with a growing gap between the higher predictions and reality).

The information from the graph on the left comes from stations located around the US, but in 1990 a number of these stations were dropped, at the same time as there was an increase in the reported average temperature. So there is some question as to the accuracy of more recent averages, given that the recent survey by Anthony Watts has shown that many of the stations do not meet the required location standards, and that the readings do not recognize the increasing temperature effects of urbanization of the areas around the stations.

Station dropouts and temperature average changes (D'Aleo)

In switching to the global temps (no he didn’t use the graph on the right) he pointed out that there is a lot of the globe that is ocean. As a result the impact of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation , both of which appear to be on a 60-year cycle (graphs at the links) can be significant on the overall averages that are calculated. And when these are plotted with the changing global temperature, then the correlation was clear.

In a similar way he showed that put together, sunspot activity, ocean oscillation and global temperature showed that there was a clear correlation, which is absent when the temperature is plotted against carbon dioxide. He noted that the current monitoring of ocean temperatures by buoys showed no recent warming of the oceans, and that there may be a reduction in temperature.

In the transition to the next speaker it was noted that the local State Representatives (about four or five) were either already in the audience or would soon be there,

The second speaker was Duane Highley of the Associated Electric Cooperative. His mission was to explain the opposition of the Electric Cooperatives to the Waxman Markey bill, and highlight its impacts. Missouri has one of the highest dependencies on coal for power generation in the country (around 85%). For the nation the numbers are that about 50% of electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, but in the Midwest this rises to 80%. Thus any legislation that would impose costs for coal use would be felt more severely in the region.

In commenting on the IPCC report on AGW he noted that the terms used included “very likely” but that this is quoted as meaning a 66% certainty of warming– which is not mentioned in the media. Nor is the fact that the odds given that the world would see more storms was actually 50:50, and that there is no trend for more tornadoes (a topic of interest in Tornado corridor).

And then to bring the costs of Waxman Markey home he estimated that the cost per household could range from $175 to $1,800 a year, but because the average Missouri household generates the equivalent of a ton of carbon dioxide a month for household and about 1 t/month equivalent for transportation then – if the cost per ton of carbon is $28 the impact is not hard to calculate. (But it may be $50 a ton). To cope folk may have to go to rationing themselves to one car per family, as the caps on carbon get more severe over the next forty years.

How will the utility companies cope? Using offsets; natural gas; wind and biomass and gains in energy efficiency of consumption. The problem is that coal is 1/3rd of the cost of the next cheapest fuel and that is natural gas, which can be anticipated to run out in a couple of decades. Missouri just put in a 150 MW wind farm, but on the hottest day of the year only got 3 MW from it. He did not like the biomass alternative – to supply a 150 MW station with wood would require 14,000 truckloads of wood per day – half the traffic on the local interstate.

He further noted that the new light bulbs only impact 5% of a household consumption, and changing them saves only a third of that. Then he put up the pie chart showing how a household uses electric power and asked which of the uses should be cut first.

To those looking to a nuclear solution he noted that the nation needs four new reactors a year, but that there won’t be any new ones before 2018, and in the Midwest the first may arrive in 2022. Thus we will have to rely on coal and use CCS as well as using no-till farming and other offset technologies to meet the required goals.

At the end he polled the audience and about 60% got their power from an electric co-op with about 10% of the audience on the board of a co-op).

After the break Dennis Avery (who wrote the Climate Warming book I mentioned at the top) noted that it is very difficult to be heard with his message, but that they are making progress. He noted that temperature variations correlate at 22% with carbon dioxide levels, but correlate at the 79% level with sunspot activity. He noted that the Argo buoys have noted that the ocean stopped warming in 2003, and that the data from the Jason satellite shows that the Pacific is cooling. He described the history of discovery of the Dansgaard:Oeschger events and their significance. He noted that Bond had first noted the regularity of the 1,500 year cycle of the Warming Periods based on the presence of red ice-rafted rock in the North Atlantic. The periodicity is also confirmed by changes in fossil pollen, and the migration of different species as temperatures changed. (Ecotone migration).

He noted the 30-year segmentation of the global temperature cycle (which can be partly be seen in the fig on the right above). He noted that clouds reinforced the effects of carbon dioxide though it is not clear if they help or hinder the effect. He pointed out that 30 years of cooling negates the IPCC prediction of relentless warming.

Yet what have we to fear? In the earlier warming periods conditions were so good populations doubled, the temples in India and Angkor Watt were built. The effect of events such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation are reflected in the migration of salmon into the Columbia River, and cycles can be identified with 10 such over 400 years. The warming periods tend to be front loaded with a load of temperature rise at the front end, and then much less warming later, and so we may get another 0.5 degrees C increase over the next century. But there may well be a drought in the American South and West and the Mexican desert may well invade the USA. And then, in a thousand years we will have an Ice Age, whether Little or Large he didn’t know. Animals, insects and plants adapt, there is fossil jawbone of a polar bear that is 120,000 year old.

He did not think that the current thinking about the Climate would change, however, until decisions begin to hit people in their wallet.

The final speaker of the morning was Dr Anthony Lupo, the head of the Atmospheric Science Dept at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He talked on the changes in climate using information from the Missouri Climate Center. Climate is the long-term average of weather, but what is long-term? By definition 30-years. Climatology is the “crazy uncle” of meteorology. It is a complex subject and the atmosphere is only one of many parts that interact. These include the Cryosphere; the Oceans, the Lithosphere and the Biosphere. The problem is that each induces feedbacks in the others, and of these the atmosphere is the most sensitive and fastest to react.

He described how climate models work, based on energy balance between input and output. The problem with public reaction, however, is that they react to the most sensational results, even when these are least likely to occur. It must be remembered that the models are based on hypotheses of how the atmosphere reacts and that there are certain parts that are missing, such as the physics that deals with clouds and rain or precipitation. The numeric models are inadequate to cover the variables that should be included. And there are observational errors that arise because there was not enough data provided to the models to allow accuracy.

He put up a slide showing Sylvester the cartoon cat against a photo of a kitten to compare the state of the technology to reality. In Missouri the climate has not climbed as high as it was in the 1930’s. Some of the data they look at comes from the Missouri Tree Ring Laboratory.

After a pleasant lunch, the afternoon began with a talk by Marlo Lewis of the CEI who pointed out that a skeptic is one who enquires and then lets the evidence decide. He then began a skeptical look at the movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” He noted that, contrary to the movie, less people die as it gets warmer as has been shown in scientific studies. He pointed out that while ex-Vice President Gore pointed to deaths from heat in France in 2003, in most of the rest of the world it was cooler than usual. He noted that the science of hurricanes does not support the conclusion that they will increase in size and frequency. The worst period of activity recently was in 1812. And he noted that Greenland is losing ice at the rate of 0.4% of its ice per century. On top of which when the data is analyzed Greenland has been cooling for the latter two-thirds of the 20th Century. (This may have been a comment from the audience).

He was followed to the podium by Marc Morano who writes the Climate Depot website. He spoke more emotionally about the topic than most, pointing out many of the disturbing statements from those who advocate global warming, and whose remarks then get featured at his website. Particularly he focused on those that followed the maxim “you have to find ways to exaggerate the threat.” And there have been several of those just recently. He noted that science without debate is propaganda.

He used statements such as “a lot of people will get filthy rich doing nothing for the environment” to carry his message. And he went on to note that as the populace grow weary of the carbon dioxide debate then something else must take its place. The declining oxygen levels has been tried, so far with little success, so the next topic may be plastics.

He noted that Ex-VP Gore uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans (this is the proportion of that country that has no electricity).

After the break Craig Loehle, of the National Council for Air an Stream Improvement – who is a forester and an expert in tree rings, talked about the problems with Dr. Mann’s “hockey stick” plot of previous global temperatures, which is partially based on tree rings from the bristle cone pines of Colorado. He showed that the use of these rings may be inappropriate, and when they are removed, then the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age, which had disappeared in the plot reappeared. He noted that given the ubiquitous nature of data on the MWP and the LIA that graphs such as the “hockey stick” which don’t show it thus become “meaningless”.

He reiterated the comments on the data coming from the Argo buoys that showed ocean cooling and that as a result the sea levels are stabilizing and that there is not enough heat being stored in the ocean to jump-start global warming again.

He noted that, just recently, speakers from the Hadley Climate Research Unit had conjectured that we may be entering a 30-year period of global cooling. And he reiterated that tree ring data can be minsinterpreted and explained why.

The last speaker of the day was Doug Hoffman, who recently wrote the book “The Resilient Earth” and has a web site of that title. He gave a concise history of the Universe (appreciated since this was the last paper of the day) noting that in terms of both carbon dioxide levels and global temperature, when commentators say that current levels are “unprecedented” and “irreversible” they are wrong, as history has shown.

We are still technically in an Ice Age (defined as there being glacial ice – which is at the poles) and there have been times in the past when we were not (no glaciers). He gave a concise history of global warming theories (following the text in his book) bringing us up to the Inconvenient Truth movie and AGW which he pointed out is a theory. He noted that the movie made 5 predictions:

1 – The Greenland Glaciers were melting at an increasing rate – however he noted a recent report that showed that the glaciers are slowing, and that this prediction is not happening.

2 – Rising Ocean levels – He noted that the changes are so slight that it takes 50-years of data to be sure of the mm of change that are occurring, however, using data from the University of Colorado – Boulder he noted that this prediction is also not happening.

3- Extinction of the polar bears. In the 1950’s there were about 5,000 polar bears, the recent counts suggest that there are now around 25,000 so that this reduction in population that was predicted is not happening. (There aren’t just a few more, there are a h*** of a lot more).

4 – There will be more frequent hurricanes – A study over the past 350 years shows that the 1690’s were probably the worst period (in the heart of the Little Ice Age) and that recent scientific thinking (born out by the lack of hurricanes) is that this prediction is also not happening.

5 – The world will see more extreme temperatures. Dr. Hansen predicted steadily rising temperatures to Congress, they have not been – there have been hotter years and there is now a 0.8 deg C shortfall between the temperatures he predicted and reality.

When 5 predictions for a theory fail, it is generally time to agree that the theory is wrong. Consensus – that is public opinion – and is not justified by the science.

The meeting, in short, was a roll out of a series of scientific information to buttress the claim that many of the facts about Climate Change are Myths, although no one disagreed that the world has been warming. It was thus a change from the ad hominem attacks that are the usual part of the global climate debate.

If I had a concern, and it is a serious one, it is that this is becoming very much a politicized debate. This audience was drawn from the heart of the conservative Republican base. The folk that push AGW appear to be increasingly those out of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

Unfortunately nature, and the study of science to describe it, is party neutral. Making too many predictions as to what will happen can be dangerous to political health when they are proved wrong. We may not have to wait too much longer to find out who is correct.

Real Climate vs Climate Science

There is a form of ongoing debate ocurring between Real Climate and Roger Pielke Sr about recent predictions in regard to what is going on with the current climate.

Basically the debate resolves around the comment

Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago - such as rising sea levels, the increase of heat stored in the ocean and the shrinking Arctic sea ice. “The updated estimates of the future global mean sea level rise are about double the IPCC projections from 2007″, says the new report. And it points out that any warming caused will be virtually irreversible for at least a thousand years - because of the long residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere.”

Now it is an illustration of the way in which the debate is twisted that Roger Pielke begins the debate by pointing out that the conclusions drawn in that paragraph are not tenable, and provides graphic evidence to the point. (As an illustration if you look at the gradient of sea level records the most recent measurements (from the Jason satellite) have, over the time period from 2002, a shallower gradient than those from the TOPEX satellite that preceded it. (Note this is a corrected paragraph - I had written temperature instead of level, my apologies).

However, Gavin, over at Real Climate, changes the focus of the argument, from the error in the original conclusion, to interpreting the change in only the last couple of years as being a positive conclusion by Roger, and claiming that it is inaccurate because it is made over too short a period.

But the original conclusion, derived over this short time interval, is one made by the alarmists, so that, in reality the criticisms that Gavin is advancing argue against the conclusions that he is touting, rather than the criticisms of them. (Although it must be noted that the criticism that the report distorts data in its interpretation also holds true if one looks at the longer picture). It cannot be acceptable to sieze on short term changes - such as the transient drop in ice area - and accept the two-year interval over which this occured - but then deny the evidence, over the longer period, that this is purely transitory, on the criticism that the longer period is too short to allow a realistic conclusion (after drawing one from the shorter interval).

The criticism made of the conclusion that the climate changes are accelerating is not born out by the evidence, and such evidence as there is argues against the conclusions. It is a pity, therefore, that the conclusions are getting the scale of publicity and acceptance that they are.

Sea-levels and Permafrost burials

The calamities that are predicted by those arguing for the need for carbon dioxide emission controls typically focus on the rapid rise in sea levels that are predicted as the temperature continues to rise. The rise in temperature is also anticipated to get more rapid, since, as the tundra that covers much of the countryside along the Arctic Circle warms, it is expected to emit more methane. There are a number of other commentators who are talking about this (and which I will refer to in Saturday Pick Points later today) but I thought I’d dwell just a little more on the Medieval Warming Period Experience to counter the latter. But first a comment on the “rising tides” that are cited as the greatest concern. (They were after all the basis for the court decision that the EPA had to regulate carbon dioxide.)

On April 2, 2007 the Supreme Court released its ruling in the case of the state of Massachusetts vs. the Environmental Protection Agency. Massachusetts and eleven other states, along with several local governments and non-governmental organizations (petitioners), sued the EPA for not regulating the emissions of four greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), from the transportation sector. The petitioners claimed that human-influenced global climate change was causing adverse effects, such as sea-level rise, to the state of Massachusetts. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled in favor of Massachusetts et al, finding that EPA has the authority to regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

If one goes to the National Institute of Oceanography, in India, one gets this curve for the last sea-level at Mumbai for the past 135 years, and it suggests that there is nothing particularly remarkable about the current changes in sea level, nor is there any discernable effect due to GHG Global Warming.


Sea-level variability at Mumbai, which has the only more-than-century-long sea-level record in the Indian Ocean. Annual sea level (cm) is plotted as a function of time to reveal the variability of the annual sea level over the length of the data record (1878 to 1988 in this figure) (red), showing the inter-annual variability in sea level at Mumbai. Filtering annual sea level with a 10-year boxcar filter (10-year running mean) (blue) reveals inter-decadal variations. At Mumbai, these inter-decadal variations are as large as are the variations from year to year.

The University of Colorado at Boulder has a site that lists, from Tide Gauge Records, the rise in the oceans over the decades, and the site includes this table:

Source University of Colorado Boulder.
With today’s technology it is now possible to see these changes in a more global sense. JPL, for example, has an animation site of seal-levels (the sea-level viewer) which is worth a visit. as well as the patterns shown by major currents.

However if one looks at the satellite measurement of sea levels, one gets:
Source Univ Colorado Boulder

What is interesting is to note that this data comes from two different satellites, and that if one separates the two (Jason and Topex) one gets a slope for the TOPEX of 3.22 mm/yr, but for the Jason data the slope is only 2.4 mm per year, which is more in line with the tide gauge data, but which also suggests that the sea-level rise is slowing down, rather than speeding up. (The average for the two together, I compute to 3.28 mm, but that is rounding).

Now the second point required that I adopt a new bit of technology. The book that I have started to quote more and more from in regard to glaciers, ice sheets etc is Jean Grove’s Little Ice Age of which I have written before. However, as I also noted, the original costs $320, and if you want the new edition it is $850 on Amazon. Much as I find this fascinating, this is a bit steep, and so I borrowed the books from the library. But they had to go back – and hence the step to new technology. I discovered that the book costs $11 on Kindle. Egad! I pay for the machine with one purchase.

I’m still learning how to use the machine, and so it will take a couple of days before I can pull quotes and pictures properly from it to insert here. But here is the relevant section, copied out, that I wanted to point to today. We know from the recent excavations at Sandet in Greenland, that the ground is now permafrost to the surface. However, to quote a little from Grove

It is known that Herjolfsnes remained inhabited until after 1480, though it is clear that the climate had deteriorated by 1350. This is shown by the fact that costumes from burials were penetrated by tree roots until those of the 1350’s and subsequent decades, which remained in remarkable state of preservation, indicating that not long after burials of this time the ground a meter or two deep had become frozen throughout the year (Norlund 1924, Howgard 1925, Gad 1970).

So all the current permafrost in that latitude was not frozen prior to 1350. Thus it was giving off the decomposition products prior to freezing. The farm at Sandet still smells like a midden when its soil is thawed. Ergo if there was no vast global melt-down at the time, and history would surely have recorded one, when these latitudes were not frozen, then there won't be this time. And the Medieval Warming period ran from about 930 to 1350, so I would suggest that we relax and stop all the hysteria.


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