Green Myth-Busting: Greenland was Once Green
Greenland MYTH: When Eric the Red and his Viking buddies settled Greenland, it was a lush pastoral paradise fit for farming and raising animals.
Facts: As climate change skepticism has developed into a full-blown industry, a number of myths have filtered out about historical patterns of warming and cooling: just mention the “Little Ice Age” or the “Medieval Warm Period” to your favorite skeptic, and let ‘em go…
As a history buff, I always found today’s myth fascinating. As Coby Beck at Grist notes, Viking leader Eric the Red gave Greenland its name not because it was lush and green, but because he wanted folks back home to think it was:
Greenland was called Greenland by Erik the Red (was he red?), who was in exile and wanted to attract people to a new colony. He thought you should give a land a good name so people would want to go there! It likely was a bit warmer when he landed for the first time than it was when the last settlers starved due to a number of factors — climate change, or at least some bad weather, a major one.
But it was never lush, and their existence was always harsh and meager, especially due to the Viking’s disdain for other peoples and ways of living. They attempted to live a European lifestyle in an arctic climate, side by side with Inuit who easily outlasted them. They starved surrounded by oceans and yet never ate fish! (Note: this was not a typical European behavior, and is a bit of a mystery to this day.)
The issue here, of course, really isn’t Greenland’s name; it’s the idea of a Medieval Warm Period that skeptics claim was comparable to the present day in terms of the average temperature (or even warmer!). By extension, ice melts on Greenland aren’t that big a deal: it’s happened before.
Coby has thoughts on the Medieval Warm Period, and points to information from NOAA. RealClimate, the blog for anyone interested in hardcore climate science, also presents a number of reasons why the perception skeptics have about the Medieval Warm Period are likely incorrect.
Greenland wasn’t green in the tenth century… and we don’t want it to become green this century…
August 8th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Max,
In Australia we say it a touch more robustly: “keeping the bastards honest”
BSkpt,
I must add/reiterate that your words were magnificent, and I would like to converse with you.
August 8th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Yes, water vapor is a very dominant factor in the total greenhouse effect. However, we are on the topic of climate change. Therefore, in order to examine water vapor’s role in this change, we must consider whether it is capable of initiating such a change. It is not, because it is a feedback. This argument is made all of the time by skeptics I’ve encountered, and it is usually sourced to the website created by Monte Hieb.
August 9th, 2007 at 3:58 am
Jason Leggett,
I have not heard of Monte Hieb before, and if he is saying that water initiates climate change, then I wont go there, because it sounds daft to me. I can understand your anger if you have come across sceptics who believe that.
However, I get angry when people deny the existence of the Medieval Warm Period, which was deleted by the IPCC in 2001. In a release by Harvard University, it seems to be coming back in a big way though! (links below) Also, in IPCC 2007, it is creeping back a little too! (watch this space in 2012!)
You will have to recognise that there has been climate change in the past when the human population was relatively small, so there must have been some trigger other than man-made CO2. Do you agree?
BobFJ
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/archive/pr0310.html
The paper: 76 pages
http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/132.pdf
August 10th, 2007 at 6:03 am
Jason Leggett: reur Aug 9
Journalistic opinion, quoting MANN
OK, you agree that past warmings must have had a natural cause. You also appear to be agreeing that current warming is probably via a combination of a natural cause together with increasing CO2. However, it is not possible to determine the magnitudes because of extreme complexity. Approaching it from the other direction, it is possible that the CO2 effect MAY be insignificant. This is precisely what the IPCC inferred in 2007, giving a 10% possibility that CO2 is not problematical. (a guess)
A big reason for the uncertainty is because of the rather astonishing roles of water in its three phase changes. In my post of Aug.6, concerning the greenhouse effects of CO2 and water vapour, the main greenhouse gas, some reasons are given why, intuitively, CO2 should have a relatively tiny effect.
Incidentally, I forgot to mention on Aug.6, that there are sources showing that the relatively few and small absorption bands in CO2 are mostly 100% absorbing anyway, although the altitude at which this occurs is not consistently given.
********************************************************
It is not even a tad surprising that there is a storm of protest over the S & B paper. What does surprise me though, in your long list of criticisms, is the authorship.
1) Journalistic opinion, quoting MANN
2) Realclimate = MANN et al
3) Journalistic opinion, accusing “Big Oil”
4) Journalistic opinion, quoting MANN
5) BRADLEY, HUGHES, and DIAZ (= MANN et al)
6) Journalistic opinion, pompous comments on peer review
7) Journalistic opinion, quoting MANN
9) Would not open
10) Otto Kinne… discusses peer review process, not S & B
11) Realclimate = MANN et al
12) Realclimate = MANN et al
Have you noticed a certain name above?
You know; he’s the guy who got the fraudulent MBH 1998 through the peer review process at Nature, and the fraudulent MBH 1999 paper through the peer review processes at GRL, and at the IPCC
This is a quickie; I’ve only had time to flick through your list of stuff.
BobFJ part 1
August 10th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Hey, Bob.
Yes. To argue otherwise would be absurd, and I don’t know of anyone who has made that argument.
Sort of. I agree that current warming is definitely (not probably) due to a combination of natural and anthropogenic causes.
This is a completely baseless claim. If you are going to contradict much of the research that has been conducted to this point, determining the radiative forcing values for the various natural and man-made forcing components, I would think you should provide some sources, or at the very least, some substantive argument as to how the studies upon which such numbers are based are invalid.
Well, the IPCC scientists settled on 95% certainty that human activity was primarily driving our current climate change. Then, due to the political process that is involved, and contrary to what many contrarians insinuate about the political nature of this process, certain governments pushed until the number was lowered to 90%, thus making the final product a more conservative one. That being said, yes, there is technically a 10% chance that human activity is not the primary factor in current climate change. What is the point of emphasizing the small uncertainty? It is still small, is it not? I assume you have fire insurance, even though there is much less than a 90% probability that you will need it. Why would we not prepare for and work to mitigate the problem that is "very likely" due to our activities since the Industrial Revolution?
I couldn’t disagree more. Much of the uncertainty is due to the effects of aerosols. No one disputes the fact that water vapor plays a very major role in the total greenhouse effect, but it is only a feedback, rather than a forcing (it cannot initiate a change in temperature). It only amplifies the effects of other forcings (greenhouse gases, solar energy, etc.). Therefore, pointing to water vapor as the cause for a change in our climate is somewhat like blaming the baseball my son hit with his baseball bat for the window that was broken when the ball went through it. I think we can agree that my son would be at fault, rather than the ball.
This is also incorrect. First, we’d still get an increase in greenhouse warming even if the atmosphere were saturated, because it’s the absorption in the thin upper atmosphere (which is unsaturated) that counts. Second, it’s not even true that the atmosphere is actually saturated with respect to absorption by CO2. [1]
You have basically submitted an ad hominem attack, which not only doesn’t address any of the arguments addressed based on their merit, but also misrepresents the sources that were provided. Some examples:
Yes, the article is from the WSJ, but it is not an op-ed. It is also true that Mann is quoted, but it is his response to the Soon and Baliunas paper in the form of a published scientific evaluation that was quoted from. Also, the quote from his paper consisted of only 7 words, and other sources were also quoted in the article. The point of providing it was to present the events that occurred in the aftermath of the paper’s publishing.
If you don’t have a valid rebuttal for the points raised by the climate scientists at RealClimate, that’s one thing, but it’s not a very convincing argument to just dismiss a source because of the people involved. This specific article provided more links to rebuttals and some additional context for the peer-review process that led to the paper’s publishing.
These were articles from the Harvard University paper, expressing concern over the questionable study’s ties to the university.
Again, this is ad hominem. If you don’t have a response to their criticism, just say so. You’ll notice that I didn’t simply dismiss the paper by Soon and Baliunas simply because of who did the research. I provided you with sources that show it’s flaws. It would be more convincing to see you do the same, if you have any. I’m skipping the rest of the ad hominems and addressing #10:
What? This is possibly the most important paper I provided (mainly because I haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy of the Mann rebuttal, published in Eos). Otto Kinne is the publisher of the journal, Climate Research, which originally published Soon’s paper. In it, he admits that there were serious errors in the paper, which is why he is discussing the peer-review process, because it failed.
[1] - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument-part-ii
August 12th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Jason Leggett
Since you seem to evade many of the points I raise including on your own Blog REASIC, I will draw you back to one point. Would you please define whom you mean as the “scientific community” in Your Aug.9, you have only quoted Mann et al:
August 12th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Jason Leggett,
Further to my post immediately above, I tried sending this to your own blog, but I seem to have been excommunicated. It is centered around what you seem to think is the scientific community.
There are really too many things on this expanding thread (Reasic and you) for me to handle, so I’ll just address the subject that seems to have really caught your attention, that is; IPCC DECEPTION, principally with the hockey-stick as typically seen at:
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/vol4/english/pdf/wg1ts.pdf fig 5, page 9
**************************************************************************
EXAMPLE 1
Here is an extract from one of my earlier posts, which you seem to have um, what’s the word, overlooked, but with [minor edits]:
A good example is the MBH99 Hockey-stick, which in the 2001 IPCC illustrations contains several fairly evident and serious discrepancies. Firstly, you may notice that the T data screams up to the high in 1998, but remember that was 3 years ago. [relative to 2001]
In the same report, [ see http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/052.htm#fig21 showing] the published global temperatures graph, and it stands out like dog’s balls, that 1998 was a freak spike, and that at that time, it was a massive ~0.3 degrees above trend. (versus the post-industrial ~0.7? total…). Years 1999 & 2000 were below the [2001] current trend.
It was well within the capabilities of Mann et al or the IPCC to correct the graph to year 2000, but of course the DECEPTIVE very frightening implied trend ending at 1998 was far more likely to panic policymakers… [it being over 40%, (forty percent) above trend]
[Mann et al were keen to use a deceptive 40-year smoothing on the proxy data, (see below), yet they did not use smoothing on the red data, thus making it look much more frightening than the actual published trend data]
****************************************************************************
EXAMPLE 2
If you study the hockey-stick, you will see that the blue proxy data is stopped at ~1980 at an unresolved down-trend. Consequently, any adequate peer review process should investigate its determination. It ought to be clarified within the body of the source papers, MBH98 & 99, but it is not! Moreover, when such available missing blue data is inserted, it becomes clear why Mann et al excluded it, because the down-trend continues all the way. Its inclusion, would have shown major divergence between proxy and T, during a time of increasing T, AND increasing feedstock CO2, which would have been totally irreconcilable. It would immediately strongly compromise the validity of dendro-climatology.
### A GOLDEN RULE in science is: data must not be cherry-picked simply because it is “inconvenient”. In engineering for instance, people could get killed! ###
This still unresolved problem is known as “The Divergence Problem”, and perhaps the most useful summary paper on its status is:
D’Arrigo et al 2007: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~liepert/pdf/DArrigo_GPC2007.pdf .
Incidentally, Hughes from Mann et al presented an hypothesis for the divergence problem in Nature July 1999, (yep, 1999), declaring it as fact. However, proper consideration of his hypothesis actually places the future of dendro-climatology under further threat, if he is correct. He assumed that the springtime snow-melt timing has remained constant over the millennia, for which there is no evidence. #. He also assumed that unspecified human activity consequences have recently caused the snow-melt to be delayed, for which there is no evidence.
#. This is almost laughable, for instance, here in Australia, the rather variable ski seasons on natural snow, can be savagely cut-short by just a day or two of warmish weather when it is accompanied by strong winds. How can tree-rings tell you if it has been windy during their non-growing season, let alone anything else?
*****************************************************************************
EXAMPLE 3
If you look again at the same area on the hockey-stick, you will see that the 40-year smoothing (black) is taken right to the end of the blue proxy data, and that it has a little up-turn at ~1960, which gives an excellent match with the implied trend of the red data. There are three things wrong with this:
(a) A 40-year smoothing, by definition, cannot be taken any closer than 20 years from the end of the data, because the final 40-year span has ended. Therefore, the up-turn must be a fudge, or, some additional 20 years of desired data must have been “created”, and it looks suspiciously like the red data was used. This mixing of different parameters or any other data invention is scientifically ILLEGAL.
(b) The trend of the unsmoothed blue data is downwards all the way, so the upturn is deceptive. Actually, the confidence levels (grey) in near modern times are high, and it would have made sense to make estimated annual average or short interval smoothing towards the end.
(An inexpert reader could not be expected to realize that the trends shown or implied for either the blue OR the red data, are actually, both a deception.)
(c) The blue and the red data are totally different parameters, and should not be implied to be the same, because there are cross-correlation relative calibration issues.
******************************************************************************
EXAMPLE 4
In assessing the real value of the hockey-stick, the truly important part is the extension over MBH98 that corresponds to the disputed MWP. Table 1 from MBH99 gives the following sampling information for that period:
From the Northern Hemisphere; 3 series (comprising 28 trees) and 4 single trees at various locations, plus a Greenland ice core for isotopic T inference.
From the Southern Hemisphere, (yes, SH!), there is a single tree sample from Tasmania (Australia), and Patagonia, and also 2 ice cores from Quelccaya for oxygen isotope and ice accumulation.
Here is a quote from MBH99: “Before AD 1400, only 12 indicators of the more than 100 described by MBH98 are available”.
An immediate question to ask is; if it is OK to use only 12 indicators prior to 1600 AD, which incidentally become increasingly fragile with age, why did they go through an unnecessary process of very much larger (and individually more reliable) sampling after1600?
Putting aside that MBH claim to infer the temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere, but 33% of their indicators are from the SH, it must be pointed out that trees that are used to infer T, (as distinct from precipitation), are confined to fairly tight regions. (as are ice cores). Temperature sensitive tree sites are generally selected at relatively high altitudes and/or high latitudes where there is a good degree of confidence that precipitation remains seasonally unvarying, for all-time. That basically means sites with reliable winter snows that thaw uniformly in spring, but it remains a matter of judgement. Consequently, there are very large areas of the NH land-mass that are counter-judged to be relatively unreliable because they are very different in character, and which are thus not represented by this branch of dendro-climatology. Some other areas for instance, might be used to judgmentally infer precipitation, not T, using say bristle-cone-pines.
The blindingly obvious of course is that the 71% of the earth’s surface that is covered by oceans, is also unrepresented.
Another difficulty is that trees do not grow during the winter or at night, so any T inference only applies to the much lesser growth times.
Yet another difficulty is that growth rates in reality indicate the overall quality of the growing season, in which T may well play a major part, but other factors, such as precipitation, cloud cover, timing of snow-melt etc, may indeterminately compromise the T inference.
Consequently, the amount of MBH99 data and its SPATIAL and TEMPORAL suitability is trivial compared with a host of other better distributed non-temporal data, including marine and lake sediments, historic records of crops, tree stumps above current tree-lines, stalactites in South Africa, and much, much, more.
You may be surprised to learn below in “BACKGROUND” that in the MBH99 paper, it is strongly implied that their small sampling in dendro-climatology and ice cores, does not give adequate temporal or spatial coverage to adequately cover the NH in defining the MWP.
(Not that that matters to the IPCC in pushing their ideology around the world)
**********************************************************************************
BACKGROUND FOR EXAMPLE 5, and immediately above.
If you refer to the MBH99 paper, titled: “Northern hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium; Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations”, the title immediately suggests that it was a rather tentative opus, and here is some of the content which confirms that.
“ABSTRACT: {EMPHASIS added}
Building on recent studies, we {ATTEMPT} hemispheric temperature reconstructions with proxy data networks for the past millennium. We focus not just on the reconstructions, but the {UNCERTAINTIES} therein, and {IMPORTANT CAVEATS}. Though expanded {UNCERTAINTIES PREVENT DECISIVE CONCLUSIONS} for the period prior to AD 1400, our results {SUGGEST} that the latter 20th century is anomalous in the context of at least the past millennium. The 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, at {MODERATELY HIGH} levels of confidence. The 20th century warming counters a millennial-scale cooling trend which is consistent with long-term astronomical forcing.” [end]
“CONCLUSIONS:
Although NH reconstructions prior to about AD 1400 exhibit {EXPANDED UNCERTAINTIES}, several important conclusions are {POSSIBLE, NOTWITHSTANDING CERTAIN CAVEATS}. While warmth early in the millennium approaches mean 20th century levels, the late 20th century still {APPEARS} anomalous: the 1990s are {LIKELY} the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium. {MORE WIDESPREAD} high-resolution data which can resolve millennial-scale variability {ARE NEEDED BEFORE MORE CONFIDENT CONCLUSIONS CAN BE REACHED}, with regard to the {SPATIAL and TEMPORAL} details of climate change in the past millennium and beyond.” [end]
Here is a translation of the last sentence: MBH are saying that their sample sites, (regardless of the disputed statistical process etc.), do not have adequate distribution or size over the NH and neither do they infer winter and night-time T’s. (which are a part of the so-called global average T’s)
**********************************************************************************
EXAMPLE 5:
The Dendro’s like to smooth their raw data using a 20, 30, 40, or 50-year filter…how the choice is made, or whether it is always Gaussian whatever, I do not know, but in general, the bigger the span, the flatter or smoother will be the curve. In the hockey-stick graph, it is stated to be 40-years. The grey areas indicate relative confidence levels in the results, which prior to 1600 AD are low. Nevertheless, MBH show this heavy black smoothing through that period which gives an impression, especially to inexpert readers that it definitely means something solid. However, READ THE PAPER! To be realistic, with regard to the small sample size and inadequate spatial and temporal definition, there should be no smoothing applied before 1600 AD, and imagination should be allowed to roam between the blue and the grey.
Notice two things:
[a] If Mann et al had confidence in that impressive black line they would clearly say that 1998 was ~0.8 C warmer than the warmest decade in the past 1000 years. However, they merely claim in their conclusions that it was LIKELY to be higher. (by an unspecified amount)…..a rather vague, maybe statement.
[b] There is a 10 or 20 year period at 1250 AD that appears to be a tad higher than the highest recent peak of proxy data in 1940, (from whence forward it down-trends even till now). (although the 40-year smoothing tends to distract from it)
Nevertheless, that deceptive black line has convinced millions of people, that modern day warming is unprecedented!
**********************************************************************************
EXAMPLE 6:
So now we come to the 2007 report: One of the lead contributors was Professor David Karoly. In his expert review comments on the first order draft of WG1, Ch.1, November 2005, he wanted that the hockey-stick be “de-emphasized”, because skeptics could take advantage of it. The official author response was unusually enthusiastic to his approach compared to that towards other experts who were “less polite”, even mocking about the hockey-stick. So where is the MBH99 hockey-stick in 2007? It has disappeared, and its closest equivalent is a “spaghetti” graph, see fig 6.10c Page 467 at:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_Ch06.pdf
This collection of studies, (including a simplified version of MBH99 buried therein) reveals 6 obvious features:
(1) The bore-hole curve, shows a strong Little Ice Age. (which was cancelled on MBH99 despite a 100+ data set in that period)
(2) The emergence of a small MWP (despite the inadequate spatial and temporal relevance, and low sample size, discussed herewith)
(3) A wide variation between the studies
(4) Those curves that approach ~2000 all show divergence from the black published T line. (ignore the distracting slightly heavier bore-hole line)
(5) The foot-text to figure 6.10 blandly describes a 30-year smoothing, in which the missing 15 years of end data are “substituted” or “guessed”. (See EXAMPLE 3) The consequential little upturn appears to be an attempt to minimize the divergence with T. However, it opposes the actual trend in the raw data. (See EXAMPLE 2)
(6) There is no mention of the greatly reduced sample size and confidence levels prior to 1600AD.
This all shows that the flagship hockey-stick of IPCC 2001 has had to be withdrawn because it is blatantly deceptive, and can be shown to be so. It was done quietly, without admission or apology to the world policymakers and world media whom were deceived by it into believing that recent warming is unprecedented.
In contrast, at least in Australia, and from my lesser experience in the UK, in media and the like, when gross errors or misrepresentation are exposed, it is normal to see a retraction or an apology.
There is other stuff that I could discuss, but it is less simple.
PLEASE STUDY THIS CAREFULLY AND AT LENGTH. I WILL NOT OPEN THIS BLOG FOR A WHOLE WEEK…..Regards, Bob FJ
August 12th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Wow. I’m going with this guy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ
August 13th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
I wonder …
BobFJ really has it all covered. The world’s hydrologists don’t know how the water cycle works. BobFJ does. The world’s atmospheric physicists and chemists don’t know how CO2 absorption works. BobFJ does. The worlds dendroclimatologists don’t know how dendroclimatology works. BobFJ does. Historians don’t know history. BobFJ does. These kinds of across-the-board hidden insights would make me hesitate to put much faith in his statements.
He appear to be very knowledgeable and well read, yet in the few instances where I readily can check, like the 100 % CO2 absorption (”the relatively few and small absorption bands in CO2 are mostly 100% absorbing anyway”), he is totally off and apparently does not have a clue what he is speaking about. I also checked one of his references (D’Arrigo et al 2007), which wasn’t nearly as convincing an argument as he made it out to be. This tend to put a really big question mark on everything else he says.
That won’t stop him, I’m sure. And he’ll likely be outraged. Oh, well …
August 14th, 2007 at 2:21 am
I agree with you, themotie. That was a very long comment, so it’s taking me some time to digest, but I’m planning on addressing each point, and then following up with a broader comment on the implications of his "examples", or lack thereof. Hopefully I’ll have the time to finish my thoughts tomorrow.