Paul

The UK Government’s former chief scientific adviser has accused green activists of putting the fight against climate change at risk by wanting to take society back to the 17th century.

He said: “There is a suspicion, and I have that suspicion myself, that a large number of people who label themselves ‘green’ are actually keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century.

Sir David’s comments were made in an interview in The Guardian.

The most pessimistic predictions of sea level rises as ice sheets are melted by global warming may have to be scaled back as a result of an extraordinary discovery that ice persisted when the Earth was much hotter than today.

Scientists have discovered that glaciers survived for hundreds of thousands of years during an extraordinary era when crocodiles roamed the Arctic and the tropical Atlantic Ocean was as warm as human blood.

They had thought that Earth was ice free during the so called Turonian period, a “super greenhouse world” between 93.5 million and 89.3 million years ago. But now evidence has been found of hothouse glaciers that persisted by studies of tiny plankton and other marine organisms.

Read the rest of the Telegraph article here.

I was hoping to link to a BBC website article, but they don’t seem to find it newsworthy.

Read the article in Science magazine, if you have a subscription, or the abstract if you don’t:

Isotopic Evidence for Glaciation During the Cretaceous Supergreenhouse

André Bornemann,1,2* Richard D. Norris,1 Oliver Friedrich,1,3 Britta Beckmann,4 Stefan Schouten,5 Jaap S. Sinninghe Damsté,5 Jennifer Vogel,1 Peter Hofmann,4 Thomas Wagner6

The Turonian (93.5 to 89.3 million years ago) was one of the warmest periods of the Phanerozoic eon, with tropical sea surface temperatures over 35°C. High-amplitude sea-level changes and positive 18O excursions in marine limestones suggest that glaciation events may have punctuated this episode of extreme warmth. New 18O data from the tropical Atlantic show synchronous shifts 91.2 million years ago for both the surface and deep ocean that are consistent with an approximately 200,000-year period of glaciation, with ice sheets of about half the size of the modern Antarctic ice cap. Even the prevailing supergreenhouse climate was not a barrier to the formation of large ice sheets, calling into question the common assumption that the poles were always ice-free during past periods of intense global warming.

1 Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, Geosciences Research Division, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093–0244, USA.
2 Institut für Geophysik und Geologie, Universität Leipzig, Talstraße 35, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.
3 School of Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre, European Way, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK.
4 Institut für Geologie und Mineralogie, Universität Köln, Zülpicher Straße 49a, D-50674 Köln, Germany.
5 Department of Marine Biogeochemistry and Toxicology, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Post Office Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg, Texel, Netherlands.
6 School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK.

Over at Prometheus, it has been noted that observed global average surface temperatures for 2000 to 2007 are failing to follow the projected IPCC A1F1 scenario despite the fact that CO2 emissions are rising in line with the high end prediction. Of course, we don’t know how long this will continue, or when and if the record temperature for 1998 wil be broken.

Meanwhile, Roger Pielke Sr has looked at 3 other global warming or cooling metrics, namely lower tropospheric warming, atmospheric water vapor content, and oceanic heat content. Pielke Sr concludes that:

“An examination of even the most fundamental of climate metrics show that recent trends are inconsistent with the 2007 IPCC claims regarding global warming. This includes a lack of warming in the global average lower tropospheric temperature and upper ocean, the muted at best moistening of the troposphere, and evidence of a negative radiative feedback. These lack of agreement with these climate metrics indicate that the IPCC report should be interpreted as a collection of papers on a hypothesis rather than a summary of established scientific understanding of how humans are altering the climate system.”

With the above in mind, global average temperature is losing it potency as an observational scare, and the scene is set for climate alarmists to shift the focus onto ‘ocean acidification.’ A email from Bob Carter dropped into my mailbox on 18th December suggesting that the IPCC have been preparing for such a debate shift for some time.

Lo and behold, on 6th January, a weblog called Never Ending Math Equation came up with this blog post:

“Ocean Acidification” or “Why You Should Be Scared About Rising CO2 Emissions Even If You Are A Climate Change Skeptic”

“Given that this debate is often as fruitful as debating a creationist on evolution, I propose a different tact in winning support for timely action on this issue: explain the looming problem of ocean acidification.” Read the entire post here.

Of course, the oceans are alkaline and dissolved CO2 makes them less alkaline although acidification is the accepted terminology. Bob Carter provided a link to an excellent New Zealand account of the background to the acidification of the ocean scare. The text, though scientific, is written without detailed technicalities to a degree that renders most of it appreciable by non-scientists. The 3 part Seafriends article, ‘Ocean acidification – Are oceans becoming more acidic and is this a threat to marine life?’ can be found here.

So, if you feel inclined, follow all the links above and prepare for a possible climate debate shift.

Roy Spencer has published a new book that will be released on 27th March entitled, ‘Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Leads to Bad Science, Pandering politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor.’

In the chapter on politics, Roy Spencer describes the political pressure he was under during the Clinton/Gore
administration to not voice any of his personal views on global warming during congressional testimony…which is more restriction than Jim Hansen ever had.

There are also revised editions of the best sellers TAKEN BY STORM: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming by Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick.

and

Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years,Updated and Expanded Edition by S Fred Singer and Dennis T Avery.

Keep an eye on the Science and Public Policy Institute website for the imminent release of Christopher Monckton’s 90-minute climate movie Apocalypse? NO! DVD.

Plus, there is always the expanded and improved version of the DVD The Great Global Warming Swindle by Wag TV.

Enjoy!

The UK has two long temperature series. The Central England Temperature series is the world’s longest series; the monthly mean begins in 1659, in the depths of the Little Ice Age. The series represents a roughly triangular area of the United Kingdom enclosed by Bristol, Lancashire and London. The Met Office predicted 2007 would be a record, beating the previous annual mean record of 10.82C set in 2006. In fact, the mean for 2007 was 10.48C, the same as 2004 and 1959, but lower than 1949, 1989, 1990, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2003. The Met Office are being more cautious with their 2008 prediction, saying it will most likely be in the top 10 of recorded temperatures.

Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland is home to a temperature series begining in 1795. In contrast to the CET, 2007 was a record year:

2007 Warmest Year on Record at Armagh

Meteorological measurements taken at the Armagh Observatory show that, despite a relatively poor summer, 2007 continued the warming trend seen in recent years. With an average temperature of 10.6 degrees Celsius, 2007 ranks as the hottest year on record, beating the previous record, 2006, by 0.15 degrees. Six of the warmest years at Armagh in the last 212 years have occurred in the last decade.

Last year’s average temperature was 10.6 degrees Celsius. This is to be compared with the 30-year average (1961-1990) of 9.24 degrees, itself nearly 0.2 degrees warmer than the average of 9.05 degrees since daily temperature measurements began at Armagh in 1795. Over approximately the last thirty years, the mean annual temperature at Armagh has increased at an average rate of 0.06 degrees per year, mirroring the warming trend seen from around 1920 to 1950.

A number of other temperature records emerge from the 2007 observations. The third coolest June day on record occurred on 15th June 2007. But it was the warmest April on record (mean monthly temperature 11.2 degrees) and a warmer spring than average. November 2007 was the fourth mildest on record, with a mean monthly temperature of 8.8 degrees.

There is also an interesting published paper from Armagh entitled ‘TRENDS AND CYCLES IN LONG IRISH METEOROLOGICAL SERIES’

Armagh Observatory scientific publications and reprints are here.

I may revisit both temperature series as 2008 progresses, and at the end of 2008.