Northern sea ice is running neck and neck with the second lowest extent ever observed by man. We may even get the record, if we are unlucky.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png

Who are we kidding?

Translation from the Norwegian Meteorlogican Institute.

http://met.no/?module=Articles;action=Article.publicShow;ID=1032

More ice than normally around the Svalbard , but ice thickness varies.

Stats go back to 1980 and the trend has been open water along the northern coast of Svalbard with normal ice cover.

BUT MUCH ICE COVER AROUND THE SVALBARD IS NOT UNUSUAL. This was the case in 1980, 1990 , 1997 ,2000 and 2003, states the leader for the " Ice Service" in Tromsö.

1984 and 2002 there were little ice , and year 2006 exceptionally little.

Years with much ice in the southern archipelago were in 1982 , 1993 and 2004 , that means once about every 10th year.

The ignorance here is amazing, because as all scientits know , there are big regional differences in the region.

David - do you mean observed by satellites? Arctic sea ice is unlikely to beat the short record low set at a time when Antarctic sea ice was at a short record high. Global sea ice is therefore very healthy.

Ann is right, “the ignorance here is amazing.”

According to the New York Times, “Expert says that the Artic Ocean will soon be an open sea.” This could result in “catastrophic shifts in climate…”

Read the whole article, it’s absolutely terrifying.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/nyt_arctic_77442757.pdf

I keep forgetting Wes is only the upside down reflection of Luke i.e. toe to toe at the waterline.

"This dovetails with a press release and news story about more ice than normal in the Barents Sea" - Paul

According to Havsforskningsinstituttet ( The Marine Research Institute) , Bergen , Norge , the sea temperature is rising in the Barents Sea.

Here's the report from IMR , Institute Marine Research.( Ask a Norwegian Embassy to make a translation)

http://fiskeribladetfiskaren.no/default.asp?side=101&lesmer=7882

I see it quite futile to discuss here , with quotes taken from the blogosphere and tabloids with tits in the centerfold.

One by one, the AGW shibboleths are falling; temp, hurricanes, ice, rising sea levels; I would say the chimera of ocean acidity is the only one left standing.

I watched a bit of 'our' Penny on 'our' ABC last night with Mr fair and balanced, Tony Jones; and the exchanges between Wong and Turnbull were instructive; they were competing to see who could be the most aggressive in terms of implementing non-fossil energy, excluding nuclear of course; it now really is a case of no political opposition to AGW in Australia.

So we still have these clowns flogging atlantic conveyor collapse and new ice age more than 3 years after it was first refuted and more than 2 years after Wunch completely debunked it.

And yet more Greenland "tipping point" crap despite needing more than 19,000 years to melt at current melt rates. This $hit just goes on and on and on.

The spivs predicted no ice sheet this year but forgot to tell the ice sheet. The trouble with this ice is its got no damned gratitude.

All we care about, Ann, is were the tits real?
Fact or fiction?

"DAILY, new evidence emerges to demonstrate that Climate Minister Penny Wong is wrong."

Garnaut, green paper, Liberals roll leader on climate change, you lot and Piers are having such a devasting effect on the evil supporters of AGW that one wonders when you will receive your due recognition. One is reminded of that Iraqi guy who was saying that there was nothing to worry about as the US took Baghdad.

"Scientists say the break, the largest on record since 2005 but still small when compared with others "

That's because that's all that was left to break off, all the rest is gone already.

Yes, indeed.

This Arctic ice scare BS is another beat up in a now very long line of such AGW alarmist beat ups.

Remember the transient press reports by (ferally green) 'Antarctic trekkers' (yes, of course they exist) of 'freak rain storms' in Antarctica? Not a word at the time on exactly where they were taking place or whether they happen yearly, every decade or every century?

In actual fact the rain was taking place at about 63 degrees south on the Antarctic Peninsula which is north of the Antarctic Circle. Now I havn't been to Antarctica (yet) but this does mean it's no further south then Reykjavík, Iceland is north. I have spent a few bits of time in Reykavik and even in winter it can be miserably cold and rainy.

The Antarctic Peninsula is also part of West Antarctica which is only one-third of the continent. The record does shows West Antarctica is undoubtedly warming slightly, possibly due to cyclic volcanic action as the stations reporting the warming are those located closest to, or downwind of known zones of natural volcanic heat flux.

The record also shows East Antarctica (two-thirds of the continent) is cooling. When you read about Antarctica melting notice how it's always West Antarctica they mention. Little or no mention will be made of the much larger East Antarctica cooling.

Next we come to the massive Wilkins Ice Shelf is melting furphy. Remember that? The Wilkins Ice Shelf is 150 km x 110 km or 16,500 km^2.

Now 16,500 km^2 sounds like a lot but as of June 2008 there was 14.5 million km^2 of ice around Antarctica.

That compares with 13.8 million in 2007 and 12.6 in 1979 (the first year of satellite data).

The June 2008 number is the record most ice for June in the short, 30 year history of satellite monitoring of Antarctica ice areas.

Patrick B,

Fact is, about a thousand years ago European’s hailing from Ann's homeland settled in GREENLand, and ran milk cows. They sailed into the Northwest Passage in wooden long ships and left archeological remains. They were driven out of their colonies by global cooling because they would not adopt the lifestyle of the Inuit people. To this day, there is not a single dairy farm in Greenland.

About 500 years ago elephant seals had colonies in Antarctica, where today they have been driven to out by expanding ice sheets.

http://www.climatechange.umaine.edu/Research/Expeditions/2006/seals/index.html

Polar bears survived both these warm periods, which were warmer than today. Homo sapiens thrived as well.

To have a rational discussion it is important to frame the debate in the historical context, rather than popular mass delusion…

Climate is not weather. Yet, our historical data for NH sea ice only goes back to 1979.

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png

That’s barely the length of a single PDO phase or 2.5 solar cycles. It’s weather, not climate.

CLIMATE CHANGE – THE TROJAN HORSE - TIME FOR A COOL CHANGE -

Who will speak for science when the barbarian is already inside the gate?
Science today, that triumph of humanity over primitive superstition, that monument to the
evolutionary miracle of the human brain, is now being debased by barbarians.

The Church of green warming religions is very big in Christian Europe. Everyday anythings are now blamed on warming and reported uncritically by media. The dumbed-down, trumped-up science is the modern religious medicine used to mesmerise the masses. Institutionalised across the globe, politicians and activists of all persuasions, present their arguments in terms of what ‘the trumped-up science’ is telling them to do. The so called “world’s best thinkers” have grabbed and promoted this moral agenda emphasising sinful behaviour change over technological innovation - purchasing the absolution of carbon offsets for their sins.

Climate environmentalism is a political mission with a religious agenda, offering disciples the delicious prospect of being in the right and running things under the motherhood banner of saving the planet - very attractive to the young and fearful old. Activists demand the high moral ground, with an epitaph chanting “O Mother Earth… pardon me for trampling on you.” Any movement enforcing this degree of moral certitude is a sign of uncertain things to come.

The science of future climate is in its infancy and is multi-disciplinary, no one branch knows the whole story. The truth is - climate prediction is hard, half of the variability in the climate system is not predictable and modellers don’t expect to do well. We are being asked to take irreversible actions today, to produce un-testable postulates for tomorrow, based on computer simulated predictions in excess of 100 years. Very iffy stuff! When the Western world became increasingly pessimistic about Man’s carbon footprint, science was hijacked to decode nature’s message. The more scientists research global climate, the more we learn how much they don’t know. The more alarmists talk, the more we realize they know even less.

We live on a majestically dynamic planet with intertwining complexes. Scenarios for future climate involve natural equations of infinite variables. Fluctuation in the Sun’s intensity is arguably the controlling factor in Earth’s climate. Recent solar flare activity suggests cooling will occur next. To assume human induced carbon emissions alone will significantly alter predictions is pretentious pseudo-science. Advocating carbon change will change the way you live, but will not change future climate. It’s a blatant tax on breathing. To accept the mantra of evil carbon is to invite the death of nationalism to dinner.

That’s the thing about history…when you live it, you’re rarely there. Real science is alive and lives in time. It is what it is. Not what it should have been or would have been. It is what it is. So enjoy the journey, because the destination may not be that great. Look at the best educated generation in history… all dressed up with nowhere to go. Superstition is the mantra of the day. Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Science, that once esteemed bastion of knowledge and fertile pillar to truth, has been neutered into the floppy-dick instrument of global politics and vested activists. Not only does the censorship of science render it impotent, it also looses its ability to objectively inform the public, producing an atmosphere of deafness towards insight and freedoms. What is at risk is not the climate but freedom. Today we live in the most censored of times.

Is it not high time we entered a dialogue to awaken an audience to the enveloping clouds of non-news that invade our everyday? “Global warming” is only a vehicle that exemplifies part of the way the system works. It is the insidious procession of the erosion of human rights through the co-verted use of selective censorship, that we should be most interested in. Climate science is in the van-guard of such a procession.

The scientific method is not perfect but it does “sophisticate the superstition” and provides a method upon which to gauge progress and proximity of truth. The funnelling of science to deliver a prescribed outcome happens everywhere everyday. In the past, science has arguably aided well for prescribed beneficial outcomes. But the stakes are sky high and connived in the case of global warming.

The western world is not going to cripple itself to iron-out injustice. The moral or philosophical question here is, does the end justify the means or the start of a slippery slope? The real question is, what will they pick on next using “science” to substantiate their stance?

CARBON EMISSIONS TRADING just doesn’t feel right. Blind Freddy can see the sums just don’t add up.
Last month “the world’s best thinkers” at the Copenhagen Consensus reported on a PRIORITISED list of solutions to combat the biggest challenges facing the planet. Their findings included, research showing that even the most extreme carbon emission reductions would have an undetectable effect on warming.

The truth is… THE REAL DAMAGE COST OF CARBON IN ABOUT $2 PER TONNE - not $20 to $50 as reported by media. This degree of uncertainty will impact on business confidence for years to come.
The “tax on breathing” is money for jam for some others.

SAVE YOUR BILLIONS – direct it to where it will do the most good today rather than tilting at windmills for tomorrow. For example – address malnutrition and malaria cheaply today and save millions from death. The brain dead dilemma is; – wasting trillions for naught effect with carbon trading or spend two bob today to iron-in doable good. The net effect of emissions trading will have the worst impacts on the poorest people.

WHAT IS REALLY NEEDED IS SMARTER TECHNOLOGY AND THINKERS…
“staring down on the serene aesthetic
looking into the cherry deep future.”

meh…TOP RYDE

I watched the ABC's QandA last night and was intrigued by Penny Wong saying that inflows to the MDB have been 40% below previously lowest levels in the last couple of years and that this was worse than the projections for 2050. She then said that the inflows were tracking the projections quite well. Can't have it both ways Penny, the projections are either working or they're not. Couldn't be other reasons for low inflows could there?

There was amusement from the audience when, in a response to a question about how to educate the greater public about climate change, Tim Flannery suggested they watch AIT.

>About 500 years ago elephant seals had colonies in Antarctica, where today they have been driven to out by expanding ice sheets.

Southern elephant seals still come ashore on the Antarctic continent. True they do not come ashore there to breed or moult as they need 'sand and dirt and rocks and so forth' (hey Schiller, THESE seals need this substrate, not the Arctic ones!!!), but they are seen each summer around the various bases where sand and dirt and rocks and so forth exist. 500 years ago their numbers had not been drastically reduced due to hunting.

>Polar bears survived both these warm periods, which were warmer than today. Homo sapiens thrived as well.

And how quickly did these polar bears have to adapt to their new climate, not to mention their prey?

>is another beat up in a now very long line of such AGW alarmist beat ups.

This coming from someone who doesn't even have the decency to publicly admit when he was wrong in misrepresenting someone here.

"Polar bears survived both these warm periods, which were warmer than today- Wes George

This is of course only anctotal , but the Viking Sagas from Greenland and Canada states that THE NORTHERN parts of Greenland and Canada were cold. That's why the Viking settlements were based in the southern Greenland coast and the Inuits lived futher to the north.

Re the Viking travel to Canada ( Vinland) from Greenland , the closest sea way brought the Vikings to northern parts of Canada( Baffin Bay) , where it was TOO COLD to zettle down . That's why they sailed down the coast southwards to L'Anse aux Meadows ( New Founland).

So it must have been the case that the polar bears must have survived in northern Canada, where it was STILL VERY COLD and in northern parts of Greenland as well.

This re the Saga of Erik the Red

Ooops, sorry for all spelling errors , but it is very early in the morning. Need some coffe ;)!

It is true that Southern Elephant seals were heavily exploited for their oil in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

However it is now almost exactly 100 years since hunting ceased. There is an estimated 700,000 such seals breeding on a number of sub-antarctic islands (approx. 60,000 on Macquarie alone). Although this is open to debate some seal researchers have suggested that Southern Elephant seal numbers now approach levels comparable to what they were before human exploitation.

Carbon dates of former Southern Elephant seal breeding colonies around the coast of Antarctic suggest significant sizes to such colonies most recently in the 1400 - 1000 y BP period. Some dates are as recent as 500 y BP but dates spread between 1000 and 500 y BP are significantly scarcer than dates older than 1000 y BP (or indeed older than 4000 y BP).

One would have thought that sometime in the last 100 years, with the steady recovery of the Southern Elephant seal population, if spring/summer recession of ice off beaches around Antarctica was sufficient to allow re-establishment of breeding colonies that initiation of such breeding e.g. on the Antarctica Peninsula, would have been observed.

It would appear that the major constraint to that occurring, whatever it may be e.g. mature seals sensing what the water temperature tolerance of young cub seals is (noting these seals travel extraordinary distances to their feeding zones), has not been lifted since about 1000 - 500 y BP. There is no good evidence of any other such constraints e.g. dwindling food supply, major changes in predator population etc.

"This dovetails with a press release and news story about more ice than normal in the Barents Sea" - Paul

The headline and the following report from the IMR has the headline :" Summer feeling in the Barents Sea worrying".

IMR is the Institute for Marine Research, Norway.
From June 2008

Steve,

I get the feeling that Ann isn’t listening. Viking dairy farms, small open wooden knorrs manned by people dressed in medieval weather gear in Baffin Bay. Grapes, prized by Vikings growing on the coast of Canada where no grapes grow today. Regular agricultural trade between Greenland and Iceland conducted in small open wooden boats. No mention of drift ice in the old records until the 1300's.

Hello? Anyone home?

At the other end of the planet at the same time, Elephant Seal fossils where no elephant seal can survive today. Ancient coral reefs off the coast of NSW in water too cold for reef formation today.

So why is Occam’s Razor such a difficult concept?

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/occamraz.html

The elaborate AGW theory is unnecessary to explain the observed warming and cannot explain cooling. Worrying about that summer time feeling (in July?) isn’t warranted by the historical evidence.

" Regular agricultural trade between Greenland and Iceland conducted in small open wooden boats. "- Wes George

Hey George, do you know WHY there existed a trade between Greenland and Norway and Iceland. It was because it was TOO COLD in Greenland to grow some seeds.They were imported from Iceland and Norway.

So it must have been the case that the polar bears must have survived in northern Canada, where it was STILL VERY COLD and in northern parts of Greenland as well.

Guess what Ann, it is still very cold in those places.

I have already mentioned that in a recent PB thread that according to a Russian polar bear expert from the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, the subpopulations in northern Canada and in Greenland are currently out of danger, other subpopulations are more in danger , and one must look at the long time perspective.

Yes, Ann, but dairy products are no longer an export commodity from Greenland. It's a mote point that veggies don't grow well at the arctic circle.

The trade didn't exist because the Vikings loved exotic salads, it existed because white bear skins could be sold for a Prince's ransom in Europe, same with walrus tusk, hides and Greenland Falcons were quite popular among the royalty of Europe. Of course, the Greenlanders brought back trade goods that they could not produce because it was TOO COLD, like wine, various fabrics and root and seed stocks.

Apparently, Greenland cheese was also quite popular.

Btw, Greenland falcons no longer breed in Greenland, it's TOO COLD.

Ever wonder why they called it GREEN land. Hint: It wasn't because Vikings were environmental activists.

wes; yes, Occam's Razor; a paraphrasing of Sherlock is also in order; the original is;

"Eliminate the impossible, and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

The AGW logic is;

Eliminate the possible, and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

So you can be bothered to respond to what I have written concerning southern elephant seals but are still too proud to admit your were wrong Steve?? Issues, issues, issues.

>However it is now almost exactly 100 years since hunting ceased. There is an estimated 700,000 such seals breeding on a number of sub-antarctic islands (approx. 60,000 on Macquarie alone).

Macquarie Island has seen a 'continued decrease in recent years' (McMahon et al, 2005).

>One would have thought that sometime in the last 100 years, with the steady recovery of the Southern Elephant seal population, if spring/summer recession of ice off beaches around Antarctica was sufficient to allow re-establishment of breeding colonies that initiation of such breeding e.g. on the Antarctica Peninsula, would have been observed.

'Our results demonstrate that juvenile southern elephant seals from Macquarie Island spent more time south of the Antarctic Polar Front and within fisheries management areas than previously suspected' (Field et al, 2004).

'The decline of this species has occured mainly in the Southern Indian and Pacific populations over the last three decades, while the Southern Atlantic populations are apparently stable or increasing (SCAR, 1991). The decline of such a major vertebrate predator is regarded as a cause for concern because of the ecosystem possible knock-on effects within (Hindell et al, 1994).' (Caiafa et al, 2005).

'Although the patterns and magnitude of the decrease have varied among populations, some populations have declined by as much as 80% since the 1950s.' (McMahon et al, 2005).

>young cub seals

They are called pups, which by definition are young.

>There is no good evidence of any other such constraints e.g. dwindling food supply, major changes in predator population etc.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=219693

'Such pronounced decreases in the numbers of a large vertebrate pedator cause concern because these changes potentially signal larger, unrecognised ecosystem changes (Caughley & Gunn, 1996)' (McMahon et al, 2005).

>At the other end of the planet at the same time, Elephant Seal fossils where no elephant seal can survive today.

Another typically dopey statement from Wes the biologist.

Drift ice is carried from the arctic ice pack and the waters north of Iceland by ocean currents. In colder times, arctic waters carry the ice southward while in warmer times the Gulf Stream dominates the Iceland area, keeping drift ice away. Iceland and Greenland are far enough north to observe this ice but far enough south so that they are not always surrounded by drift ice. Drift ice was carefully observed by Icelanders both from shore and from ships because it threatened ships and therefore affected commerce. Drift ice can be considered a thermometer of the north Atlantic.

From 1846 to present, detailed records were kept in Iceland that show the number of months drift ice appeared along with the temperature. Bergthórsson (1969) estimated past north Atlantic temperatures using a drift ice vs. temperature correlation derived from recorded data. For example, he observed that if ice is sighted in 20 months of one decade and 22 months of the next decade, that second decade was about 0.1 C cooler than the first. By analyzing various clues to reports of drift ice, he applied this correlation to estimate temperatures back to 1591. Using other historical references to past climate, he extended his temperature estimates back to the year 900. Both exercises illustrated the MWP and the LIA quite well.

Lamb (1966, 1969, 1995), Ladurie (1970), Bryson (1977), and others used anecdotal records to infer the climate record from the MWP to present. These records include agricultural markers such as grain prices, wine yields and crop types, changes in fishing conditions, allusions to climate in art and literature, tax logs, church logs, and other reported history. These records are extensive during the LIA years but there are fewer clues to infer climate during the MWP.

Lamb (1995) describes a passage from Landnámabók, a book written in Iceland in the year 1125, that catalogs the settlement of Greenland. It was recorded that Thorkel Farserk, a cousin of Erik the Red who founded the colony, having no boat at hand, swam out across a fjord to fetch a sheep from the island of Hvalsey. The distance is over 3.2 km. Lamb (1995) cites a medical endurance expert who established 10 C as the minimum possible water temperature for a very strong man to survive swimming that distance. Given that the normal water temperature at present for that fjord in August (midsummer) is 6 C, the story suggests a much warmer climate than present.

Lamb (1995) and Tkachuck (1983) both refer to old Norse burial depths on Greenland being much greater in the past than possible today which suggests the permafrost was deeper (warmer climate) than at present.

Bryson (1977) refers to ship reports that mention Blaserk and Hvitserk. These are Norwegian words meaning "black shirt" and "white shirt," respectively, that were used as a navigational reference for Greenland. Blaserk and Hvitserk referred to the same mountain but Blaserk was not mentioned after the early 1300's. Bryson (1977) concluded that during the MWP the mountain was not snow-covered so would be "darker," while during the post-MWP cooling, the mountain was "white" due to snow cover.

Steve; a fine bit of detective work; Sherlock would have approved.

I referred to long term constraints such as food supply and predators possibly stopping Southern Elephant breeding on Antarctica over approximately 100 years between the very early 20th century and now.

Travis's web reference given above in response reads:

Guinet, Jouventin and Weimerskirch
Antarctic Science (1999), 11: 193-197

Recent population change of the southern elephant seal at Îles Crozet and Îles Kerguelen: the end of the decrease?

The elephant seal populations breeding on the Îles Crozet and Kerguelen were regularly surveyed over the last three decades. At Îles Kerguelen the number of breeding females decreased at an annual rate of 3.6% between 1970 and 1987, then increased at an annual rate of 1.1% to 1997. At Îles Crozet, the population was reported to decrease at a rate of 5.35% between 1970 and 1990 but no change in numbers was found between 1990 and 1997. These results indicate that the rapid decline observed both at Îles Crozet and Îles Kerguelen has ended, and these populations are now either stable or slightly increasing. We suggest that broad scale change in environmental factors affecting the food availability for elephant seals may be responsible for the change in numbers of these marine predators. The higher rate of decrease, the longer period of decline, and the absence of any significant change between 1990 and 1997 observed on the Îles Crozet may be explained by additional factors such as killer whale predation.

More congenital fibbing and fudging of facts I see, Mr. T.

There is ample evidence for the MWP in Greenland. Archaeological evidence shows that the Viking occupation ended in the LIA when they were reduced to eating their own dogs as a last resort. The legend of the Northwest Passage hails from the MWP, when Arctic sea ice was probably non-existent.

Hang on Paul.

The LIA commenced about 1650. The Vikings were forced off Greenland or died of old age or plague about 1350. There is an interregnum of about 300 years.

At least one side of this debate has to keep its standards up.

Wes George posted a map of the Artic sea ice extent, earlier.How the seas ice is reducing at an alarming rate.
Did anyone notice the date on the paper?
No? It was Feb 20 1969
It's at the bottom of page

Actually, to be precise:

1408: A wedding is held at Hvalsey Church (as in the island of Hvalsey swum over to by Thorkel Farserk). This is the last written record of Greenland's Norse population.

1480-1500: The Norse population of Greenland disappears.

So make that interregnum 150 years if you wish.

Steve, the LIA was at its peak of coldness in the late 17th to early 18th century. The MWP is generally regarded as being from 800 to 1200, the LIA from around 1300.

"Greenland's climate began to change as well; the summers grew shorter and progressively cooler, limiting the time cattle could be kept outdoors and increasing the need for winter fodder. During the worst years, when rains would have been heaviest, the hay crop would barely have been adequate to see the penned animals through the coldest days. Over the decades the drop in temperature seems to have had an effect on the design of the Greenlanders' houses. Originally conceived as single-roomed structures, like the great hall at Brattahlid, they were divided into smaller spaces for warmth, and then into warrens of interconnected chambers, with the cows kept close by so the owners might benefit from the animals' body heat."

"One valley farm, excavated in 1976 and 1977, revealed just how desperate some of the Greenlanders had become. During a freezing winter, the farmers killed and ate their livestock, including a newborn calf and lamb, leaving the bones and hoofs on the ground. Even the deerhound, probably the companion of many a hunt, may have been slaughtered for food; one of its leg bones bore the knicks of a knifeblade. Similar remains were found on another farm, but if, like their masters, the animals were starving, their fatless meat would have offered little nourishment."

"Whoever killed the animals was used to living in squalid conditions. The bone-littered earthen floors had been spread with an insulating layer of twigs that attracted mice and a variety of insect pests. Study of the farms' ancient insect fauna revealed the remains of flies. Brought inadvertently from Europe, the flies were dependent for their survival on the warm environment of the Norse houses and on the less than sanitary state of the interiors. Radiocarbon dating of their remains revealed that they died out suddenly when these conditions ceased to prevail around 1350, presumably when the structures were no longer inhabited. Some of the rooms had been used as latrines, possibly out of habit or because the occupants were reluctant to venture out into the searing cold. An ice core drilled from the island's massive icecap between 1992 and 1993 shows a decided cooling off in the Western Settlement during the mid-fourteenth century."

I have never heard of the LIA starting as early as 1300? Wikipedia gives 1650. Please explain.

"So you can be bothered to respond to what I have written..."

If you mean "can't", That is correct.

Thanks, Steve, for the explanation of drift ice. Apparently, it wasn't enough of an issue for Greenland colonists to document it in their Sagas.

And this is interesting too:

"Lamb (1995) and Tkachuck (1983) both refer to old Norse burial depths on Greenland being much greater in the past than possible today which suggests the permafrost was deeper (warmer climate) than at present."

Ann, you online? Permafrost was deeper in the MWP. What say ye?

Steve, someone must of "borrowed" my copy of Jared Diamond's latest book, "Collapse, blah, blah." He goes to great lengths to show how the Vikings were forced off Greenland due to cooling and their lack of willingness to adapt to the Inuit-style hunter/gatherer pagan lifestyle. Cooling in Greenland must have preceeded the LIA?

Jeff, What? You mean that New York Times story I linked to claiming the Arctic would be ice free in 15 years was from 1969? Bloody hell, history repeats itself, don't it?

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/nyt_arctic_77442757.pdf

Ann, comments please?

I see William Connelley's name appears as an editor of the Wiki LIA page!

From Wiki:

Dating of the Little Ice Age

There is no agreed beginning year to the Little Ice Age, although there is a frequently referenced series of events preceding the known climatic minima. Starting in the 13th century, pack ice began advancing southwards in the North Atlantic, as did glaciers in Greenland. The three years of torrential rains beginning in 1315 ushered in an era of unpredictable weather in Northern Europe which did not lift until the 19th century. There is anecdotal evidence of expanding glaciers almost worldwide. In contrast, a climate reconstruction based on glacial length[3] shows no great variation from 1600 to 1850, though it shows strong retreat thereafter.

For this reason, any of several dates ranging over 400 years may indicate the beginning of the Little Ice Age:

1250 for when Atlantic pack ice began to grow
1300 for when warm summers stopped being dependable in Northern Europe
1315 for the rains and Great Famine of 1315-1317
1550 for theorized beginning of worldwide glacial expansion
1650 for the first climatic minimum
In contrast to its uncertain beginning, there is a consensus that the Little Ice Age ended in the mid-19th century.

Interesting. Food for more thought. Thanks.

Hi all again, interesting discussion! I will try to come back with more comments later, posting some Viking stuff on my site right now , check out the Viking dragon ship and the Viking Rune stone in my neighbourhood:

http://annimal.bloggsida.se/

Steve/Paul

there were also calendar issues around this time as well ~ 1300, and if I recall correctly the Korean Choson annals recorded quite frequent meteor activity around this time as well - suggesting that the LIA could have been global, depending on where one was.

Mike Baillie's work is relevant, as well as, in a peripheral sense, Gavin Menzie's accounts of the Chinese activity as discussed in 1421 and 1434.

There is also some tenuous evidence of the collapse of South American civilisations at this time and Ted Bryant of Wollongong Uni adds more data re a meteor impact between Australia and NZ at this time as well.

Of course none of the GCM's factor in these extra-terrestrial impacts to climate, rendering the whole exercise as nothing more than the latest version of the Peter Principle - Theories are created to require proof within the newly funded research grants.

However, as Wes and Steve would appreciate, the plague of post-modernism that has afflicted our institutions of higher learning eschews any historical evidence as politically motivated.

Much as Lyell dismissed the Old Testament as literature, (though I suspect the Jewish people might beg to differ).

wes; maybe they read Ian Wilson's paper on, amongst other things, the operation of the NAO; from 1970-2000 there was a -ve NAO with mild conditions in Greenland; how prescient of them!

"Actually, I'm going to delete the whole post as it was posted when I was in a bad temper."

Please - don't go revising history on our account.
Personally, I'm more of an Oliver Cromwell kind of person ("warts and all").

Hi, all again!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tifmqKz34V4

Don't worry, we all get a little heated up some times.

It is always best to try to moderate anger with humour.

Even sarcasm is not so bad if it has some wit to it.

Two old sailors were sitting on the wharf watching the sea slide back and forth and the birds wheeling though the crystal clear sky.

One old sailor said to the other: "Them's really nice albatrosses".

The other old sailor said: "You stupid, senile old idiot. Them's not albatrosses, them's gulls".

The first old sailor said: "Boy's or gulls, them's nice albatrosses."

This is life.

Wes

The 1969 Newspaper report you note is fact, but the Chinese, ~ 1400 AD mapped the arctic regions, free of ice one assumes.

Comment?

Just in case most of you have forgotten the issue,

AGW is about human emission of CO2, that increases the temperature, or thermal state, of the air we breathe, ignoring the thermal input of the earth itself, and the sun, and also ignoring the CO2 emissions of Senators Pelosi and others, (dismissing those as irrelevant).

Keep comments relevant to the thread!

Steve: "At least one side of this debate has to keep its standards up."

I've demonstrated that my claims for the timing of the LIA are bona fide, although not necessarily definitive!

I agree.

Paul

so what is the problem?

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/snowice/sea-lake-ice/barrow_webcam.html
This is current events that Minister Wong is talking about so,
Barrow Alaska webcam.

Looks chilly to me. Through the fog you can barely make out white stuff in the water.
I don't care how tough a viking you are, no swimming today. The sheep is on it's own.

Two interesting articles:

One re a new Viking settlement found in Greenland.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ruins recently discovered on Greenland may mark the Vikings’ most northerly year-round hunting outpost on the island.

Knut Espen Solberg, leader of ‘The Melting Arctic’ project mapping changes in the north, told Reuters the remains uncovered in west Greenland may also be new evidence that the climate was less chilly about 1,000 years ago than it is today

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

See http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20080728-0828-greenland-vikings.html and http://www.sikunews.com/art.html?catid=6&artid=5192

And one a travelogue from Greenland with with an interesting quote

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’d like to say that global warming was evident during my visit, but that is not really the case. Indeed, Salik tells me that he and most Greenlanders are pretty skeptical about it.

The local fishing industry used to be based on arctic prawns, but the sea temperature has changed just enough that the prawns are much further north, so now they fish for cod.

But, as Salik points out, this cycle has happened several times in living memory. The same with the glaciers: yes they are retreating, but at least in his area, they have yet to reach the limits that the locals remember them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

See http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/eating-polar-bears-is-okay-in-greenland/

Ann

How about posting the topic here and not advertising your version of ecological Ikea here?

Hi Louis,
For some years ago , I read the book " Västervägen till Vinland" , roughly translated as " Westernway to Vinland" , by the Norwegian Arctic explorer , Helge Ingstad. He is probably the most authorative person on the subject of Vikings , Greenland , Vinland etc.

During the 60's the National Geographic Society , funded his research re Viking settlements in New Foundland , and he was the scientist who finally found the Vinland settlements.

I'm going to do a summary from this book on my blog soon.

In the meantime you can read from the book , published in 1965, that Erik the Red , was an outlaw in Iceland , and he organised an expedition to Greenland in 987.

It was said that this was a dangerous travel. The expedition had 25 ships , only 14 ships finally reached southwest Greenland due to pack ice and icy sea conditions.

Re Arnost comment, it is stated in the book , that the cod in the fjords in Greenland migrated northwards due to cold summers in the end of the colonization....

Ann

Thank you for things I know.

As an Ikea Scientologist, do you think that the Leggo-like basis of technology you advertise, is applicable to the rest of humanity?

Louis,
The only reason why I ever have made comments on the blog , is because Jennifer has e-mailed me dozens of times asking me to make guest post , comments etc. Now , methinks I have been bulls@**ing around enough!

Ann

I remember your past departure from here, and your present explanation does you proud as an EU climate/carbon trading functionary.

Hannes Alfven might have changed his passport on the basis of your comments.

In regards to the overall suggestion that the Arctic ice mass is not melting:

"Aye, Caesar, but not gone."

I'd like to offer a larger thought regarding this matter of the latest news on the Arctic front. It seems to me that people still can't quite get over the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what's happening today and tomorrow; climate is what's going to happen in 50 years. It's therefore pointless to worry about the details of what's happening at this instant in time -- it's the big picture that count. Please indulge me a bit of artistic license in presenting the arguments of a fictitious "anti-deforestation" blog that attacks the hysterical blubberings of environmentalists that the earth's forests are disappearing:

Meanwhile, in Bend, Oregon, we have photographic proof that the environmentalists are all a bunch of liberal liars: actual photographs of a Ponderosa Pine seedling on June 1st, 2008 and July 1st, 2008, showing beyond any doubt that the seedling has grown by a whopping 4 millimeters. Applying this data to the rest of the world, we can see that world forest biomass is now increasing at a whopping 0.2% per annum!

But there's more! On Easter Island, site of catastrophic deforestation hundreds of years ago, heartening news that reforestation efforts are moving ahead faster than originally predicted. Infuriatingly, the International Cabal of Liberal Environmentalist Commies has suppressed this data, refusing to permit it to appear on the front page of the New York Times.

Lastly, some news from the Amazon Basin, poster child of the environmentalists' most rabid deforestation claims. What the environmentalists WON'T tell is stories about people like Jorge Medina, a small farmer in Brazil who has been planting beech trees along the creek that flows through his land. "The cattle from my neighbor were always trampling the creek, making it muddy. But I got him to fence them off, and now I'm planting the beech trees to provide some shade for the water. I hope that we'll see fish in the creek someday." One more story you won't read in the MSM.

OK, I know: it's satire, it's silly, it's a caricature, and it proves nothing. But I suggest that it might be worth your while to consider the whole matter of seeing forests and trees. Climate is not weather.

Thanks for that Chris Crawford. I'm sure none of us here understood that before./sarcasm off

>More congenital fibbing and fudging of facts I see, Mr. T.

I presume you are referring to me Strawberry Shortcake. More? Please tell me where it was previously? Or are you referring to me supposedly citing Harries? LOL! Whatever you are referring to you can provide some evidence - you being the well-referenced, 'famous' Dr that you are, I’m sure finding evidence to support your claims is within your capacity?? Otherwise,get back in your little hole and stop making pathetic blatantly untrue lies about people here you have issues with. You've been caught out Short, but you have an obvious issue with being shown you are wrong, and an emerging history of disturbing behaviour.

Yes Steve, I would put this link up deliberately to fudge facts and fib. Actually, I would leave that to you...there is evidence here for that.

For a start you tried to suggest that southern elephant seals had undergone a steady recovery. Really? As I provided, some populations have declined, some are steady and some show 'slight' increase. The link was included to (a) show that some had shown a 'slight' increase, and (b) that changes in food availability and possibly predation may explain some of the decline. You may not have noticed that the title questioned whether the decline had stopped (There we also words like ‘suggest’ in there. Tsk, words that Ivan can’t deal with).

With regards to the declines, a more recent reference by people with almost as many publications as you Steve (who would never dream of wasting their precious time on a blog such as this or desperately try and convince people of how superior they are):-'Intrinsic hypotheses for patterns of regional decline include factors that are affected by density-dependent mechanisms: (i) paucity of males, (ii) population 'overshoot' and (iii) pandemic disease. Extrinsic hypotheses include (iv) predation, (v) competition with fisheries concerns, (vi) interspecific competition, (vii) environmental change and (viii) human disturbance. Of the eight hypotheses proposed and examined here, we conclude that three can be discounted (i, v, viii), three are unlikely, but may require more testing (ii, iii, iv) and two are plausible (vi, vii).' (McMahon et al, 2005).

If you are going to be such a pompous twit, try being a smart one. At least that way people can learn something from you.

>If you mean "can't", That is correct.

Thank you Wes for being consistently dopey.

>someone must of "borrowed"

You mean 'must have', don't you? LOL!

Chris

Hansen, using his Co2 weighted computer models, couldn't predict today's climate twenty years ago.
Now you are saying he's going to do better in 50?
His predictions are getting further off by the day.
Bangladesh isn't sinking, it's adding land. He was off by a whole sign on that one.

James, did Hansen predict that Bangladesh would lose land mass?

" Hannes Alfven might have changed his passport on the basis of your comments" - Louis

FYI , Hannes Alfven was an anti nuclear activist.

To Loius,

" Alfvén's interests encompassed important matters outside science. These included nuclear disarmament, population growth, and the environment"

To Louis,

Hannes Alfven was also a member of the Pugwash movement , that works for social and environmental issues.

Statement from the Pugwash movement : " Scientists know for certain that human activities have increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.....

Continue to read what the Pugwash movement states on climate change :

http://www.spusa.org/pubs/energy_environment/climate/gcc_brief.html#background

Travis

The last C14 dated skeletons of Southern Elephant seals around the coast of Antararctica are about 500 y BP. That is a full 300 years BEFORE human exploitation.

Since early 21st century there has been overall a recovery in the total population of such seal, That fact is well referenced. Papers showing regional declines and rises in population over a 27 year period between 1970 and 1997 are certainly interesting but hardly germane.

Leaving out the whole 19th century that leaves a total period of 400 years since 1600 AD when Southern Elephant seals had the opportunity to breed on the coast of Antartica, free of the influence of man, the last 100 years covering a period of claimed SST rise (actually only around the Antarctic Pensinsula if one examines the record carefully).

Prior to 1600 AD there is also evidence (from C14 dating) of a decline in the size and number of locations of breeding populations going back to at least 1100 AD.

These are the basic facts, whatever diversionary postering and smoke screening you may choose to plaster over them in the vain hope the gullible may get sucked in.

The key question is what do these facts tell us about SSTs and Southern Ocean climate over the last 500 - 1000 years? The answer seems obvious to me and it is to the people who study these fossil bones.

Ann

Scientists do not know anything for certain - only the religious have this certainty - so I suppose I would not be too far wrong in concluding that you are here to peddle your faith.

Steve,

>These are the basic facts, whatever diversionary postering and smoke screening you may choose to plaster over them in the vain hope the gullible may get sucked in.

I could say the same of you regarding population fluctuations and the possible factors for this. It is clear you are not a biologist.

You can answer my question of where I have mislead and where I cited Harries.If you make such claims publicly Steve, you should be prepared to back them up when the poster being slagged off asks. It is the least you could do, and having the humility to say you were wrong would not be taken lightly.

Louis Hissink writes:

"Scientists do not know anything for certain - only the religious have this certainty"

While you are technically correct, I think you are being unfair here. Nobody questions that the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations of the last 50 years is due to human activities. Do you question that statement? If you don't, why raise a stink about it?

Steve's right.

For the record:

"Southern elephant seals currently do not have breeding or moulting sites within the Ross Sea, which is considerably south of their primary habitat in the Subantarctic. In previous work, we discovered that the seals once occupied large areas of the Victoria Land coast at times between about 500 and 7000 years ago. We believe that the presence or absence of elephant seals in this region is largely due to the extent and duration of sea-ice cover. The coast today is locked in land-fast ice..."

http://www.climatechange.umaine.edu/Research/Expeditions/2006/seals/index.html

It’s been an interesting debate. Ann seems to have conceded that the Arctic/Antarctic were much warmer than today during the Medieval Warming Period (MWP) in spite of atmospheric CO2 ppm being almost doubled today… (See Pugwash movement.)

The MWP was so much warmer that dairy farms existed in Greenland (Cheese was an export commodity of Greenland!) and the Vikings buried their dead much deeper than permafrost on the same sites would allow today.

As someone quite familiar with Viking history, Ann is unable to refute these, and other observations, instead can only offer that the colonists had to import veggies, they lost Knorrs at sea and other non sequiturs. Nevertheless, there is only one reason why there are no dairy farms on Greenland today.

We’ve shown that the warming was global by introducing evidence that species, now extinct on mainland Antarctic because it is TOO COLD there for them to find a breeding habitat, once were common there about a 1,000 years ago.

http://www.climatechange.umaine.edu/Research/Expeditions/2006/seals/index.html

We’ve shown that weather is not climate. The ice extent data for the poles only goes back to 1979, not 1879 or 1279 and as such the record is barely as long as a single PDO cycle. It’s the start of a climate database, of course, but not long enough to reveal a climate trend.

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png

For those who insist on parsing a few years of data, we have shown that although the Arctic did experience “A Historic World Record Low” sea ice extent level in 2007, the same year the Antarctic experienced a new sea ice maximum extent. Naturally, the Antarctic maximum did not make the nightly news. Perhaps, this explains why “Climate Change Delusion” is so common among the public.

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Antarctic.jpg

We’ve shown that if the Arctic has shown warming trends in recent decades and the Antarctic is experiencing record high levels of sea ice, then the warming is not global, by definition. CO2 warming, which conform well within the GCMs scenarios, doesn’t fit the observed data. The AGW hypothesis doesn’t predict Antarctic cooling.

http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news256486

We’ve shown that respectable news and science journals have made Arctic ice cap meltdown claims repeatedly throughout the 20 th century, that is, when they weren’t predicted a new ice age.

We’ve shown that the media reports anecdotal events, an iceberg breaking off here, a “worrying summer time feeling” there, as hard evidence for catastrophic climate change, while ignoring the vast context of historical data that is out there from a variety of sources: ethnographic history, archaeology, sailing log books, Arctic explorers, palaeontology, oceanography and, of course, climatology.

As the Pugwash Movement’s motto states, we must “learn to think in a new way,” rather than following whatever fashionable paradigm is momentarily in vogue.

Lastly, we’ve suggested that the supporters of the AGW hypothesis review the observed data again, this time with Occam’s Razor foremost in mind, in order to sort out the dialectic errors of reason, which are commonly held by the public today. Learn to think for one’s self, outside the constraint of popular fashion.

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/occamraz.html

Ladies and Gentleman, I believe the debate is over and the science is settled. The Earth has been warmer than today within the last millennium and that warmer-than-today period lasted hundreds of years. The polar bears, the ice cap and human beings all survived quite nicely.

In spite of the so-called Greenhouse Gas emissions of late, today’s temperatures are well within natural pre-industrial variation.

So, if some one here could make a rational, on-topic argument in the context of historical evidence that the above is in error, we can begin again...

Wes, I have a couple of comments regarding your summation.

First, I'd like to address your assertion that "the Antarctic is experiencing record high levels of sea ice"

This does not address the issue of AGW. What matters is the temperature, not the sea ice. And a good indicator of long-term temperature change in the Antarctic is the total mass of ice, not just the amount of ice in the sea. The IPCC AR4 report indicates that there's a lot of uncertainty here, with the range of change between +50 gT/year and -200 gT/year. Thus, the degree of certainty you imply seems much too high to me. The most reliable statement would seem to be that the Antarctic appears to be warming, but might not be.

More important is the logical implication of your observation that temperatures at some time in the past have been higher. This is absolutely true. The problem is that your observation has no predictive value -- it tells us nothing about our current situation. Perhaps you mean to imply that these things just spontaneously happen and hence there's nothing we can do about it. If so, I'd request that you make that explicit so we can consider your line of reasoning.

wes; you are right, but I don't share your confidence that the debate is over; it is certain that CO2 as the nominated agent of AGW is as dead as a Dodo; the other greenhouse fingerprints, declining ice, historically high temps, hurricanes, rising sea level, droughts, biosphere decline, either are plain wrong, or have other less apocalyptic causes involved; the reason I don't share your confidence is that, firstly, the issue here has never been the science; this is a philosophical movement with the materialism and excesses of Western capialism firmly in its sights; secondly, there is so much ego investment in support of this issue by the commissars that they are not going to let go lightly; 3rdly, the tactics being used are formidable and unscruptulous; we've seen the censorship, the threats, the obfuscation and lies and distortions; a good example of some of the more subtle methods was manifest during Steve Short's run-in with Steven Watkinson over the ocean acidity issue, probably the only remaining unresolved issue in this debate; I asked Watkinson whether he was a lawyer because he used classic legal technique in the 'debate'; lawyers are trained to condense and shape facts into a dichotomy, black and white in form; it was clear that Watkinson had a 'brief' (as opposed to a scientific) understanding of the facts sufficient to herd Steve into a legal cul de sac of being right or wrong; that that wrong or right was a relatively minor point about a contradiction in an article with a different take on ocean Ph is beside the point; the tactic is to force an admission or an apparent error from the other side which can then be used as a springboard to wholesale denigration of the entirity of the opposite side, and as a bonus, use the 'error' (and it should be realised that such a legal 'error' is simply a matter of reductionist logic and is mostly not a true reflection of the complexity of the entire issue which may be able to accomodate different views, or even more basic, that the circumstances may contain inherent contradictions or stochastic elements) to apply the ad hom personal attack; the tactics against Steve were, as I say, classic legal ones; and we see these, along with all the subtle and not so subtle methods of propaganda and agitprop, being employed by the AGW proponents; as a result the public is being manipulated into its current state of ignorance and compliance; as creatures of measures of public opinion the base pollies cannot be relied upon; which is why blogs like this are crucial; the msm, on the main is pro-AGW; Bolt, Ackerman and a few other print and radio people are really all that is standing between AGW chaos (I firmly believe that a great number of the AGW supporters have no idea of how disruptive the effects of proposed AGW measures will be) and public sanity.

Chris Crawford,

Which part of the increase in CO2 is due to human activities? The best figures put this at about 3% of the total. Since CO2 has risen from 280 ppmv to 380 ppmv, some 100 ppmv increase, then 3 ppm is attributable to humanity. 97 ppmv is natural.

I raise a stink about it because the climate clowns want to blame us for the 97ppmv rise in addtion to the 3% which we are responsible for.

Climate change will have “major impact” on fishing industry

Climate change is already impacting the world’s oceans and will have serious consequences for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on fishing for their livelihoods, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).


Zoom

Changes in sea temperatures alter the body temperature of aquatic species used for human consumption and therefore impact their metabolism, growth rate, reproduction and susceptibility to diseases and toxins, FAO said today, at the start of a four-day scientific seminar in Rome on climate change and marine fisheries.

Impacts on fisheries that have already been observed include an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as the El Niño phenomenon in the South Pacific; the warming of the world’s oceans, with the Atlantic in particular showing signs of warming deep below the surface; and warmer-water species increasing toward the South and North Poles.

There has also been an increase in salinity in near-surface waters in hotter regions, while the opposite is occurring in colder areas because of greater precipitation, melting ice and other processes. In addition, the oceans are becoming more acidic with probable negative consequences for coral-reef and calcium-bearing organisms.

Fishing communities in the world’s high-latitudes, as well as those that rely on coral reef systems will be most exposed to the impact of climate change. Fisheries located in deltas, coral atolls and ice-dominated coasts will be vulnerable to flooding and coastal erosion because of rises in sea level.

FAO says that some 42 million people work directly in the fishing sector, the great majority in developing countries. Counting in those who work in processing, supply, marketing and distribution, the fishing industry supports several hundred million jobs.

Aquatic foods have high nutritional quality, contributing 20% r more of average per capita animal protein intake for more than 2.8 billion people, again mostly in developing countries.

Fish is also the world’s most widely traded foodstuff and a key source of export earnings for many poorer countries. The sector has particular significance for small island States.

FAO report from July 2008

Cohenite

The legalistic hatchet job done on Steve has echoes from 2 centuries ago when Charles Lyell, also a lawyer, did a hatchet job on geology as described by George Grinnell in 1975.

http://www.mikamar.biz/geology.htm

I am not sure we can turn the AGW madness around as quickly as we might wish since geology is still captivated with the Lyellian plague.

(This does not under any circumstance mean I support Creationism, only that I do not support geological uniformitarianism).

>Steve's right.

You're such a bloody stupid groupie Wes.

Travis wrote at August 1, 2008 12:45 PM
>Southern elephant seals still come ashore on the Antarctic continent. True they do not come ashore there to breed or moult as they need 'sand and dirt and rocks and so forth'

There seems to be a glut of surprising undocumented statements in the last few comments. I'm not averse to giving people the benefit of the doubt, but I think some of those statements need to be backed up with some sort of support, such as:

"it is certain that CO2 as the nominated agent of AGW is as dead as a Dodo"

(It may be certain to the author, but the evidence of which I am aware directly contradicts this claim. I request that the author of this statement provide some support for the claim.)

"declining ice, historically high temps, hurricanes, rising sea level, droughts, biosphere decline, either are plain wrong, or have other less apocalyptic causes involved;"

(That's a pretty broad statement. As far as I know, there's strong evidence for declining ice, rising temperatures, and rising sea levels. Again, I request that the author provide some sort of substantiation for these assertions.)

" the issue here has never been the science; this is a philosophical movement with the materialism and excesses of Western capialism firmly in its sights"

(This may be true of some proponents of AGW, but it is most certainly not the concern of all proponents; moreover, it's irrelevant; if they're right for the wrong reasons, they're still right. You need to prove that they're wrong, not that they have the wrong motivations.)

" there is so much ego investment in support of this issue by the commissars that they are not going to let go lightly"

(I request that you provide evidence regarding the ego investments of the thousands of scientists working on the problem. Without that evidence, the assertion is idle speculation.)

"the tactics being used are formidable and unscruptulous"

(Again, this is a broad statement. I'm sure that you can come up with a few examples to support this claim, but I very much doubt that you can show that such behavior is common among the proponents of AGW.)

" we've seen the censorship, the threats, the obfuscation and lies and distortions"

(Again, you can probably come up with a few examples. However, we're talking about a process involving literally thousands of people. That process includes a great many checks and balances to insure that human foibles do not significantly affect the overall result. Moreover, there is much more evidence of violations of intellectual integrity among the opponents of AGW. The problem here is that there are plenty of fringe activists on both sides who go way over the edge. The proper response is to simply ignore the nut cases and concentrate on the facts.)

"we see these, along with all the subtle and not so subtle methods of propaganda and agitprop, being employed by the AGW proponents"

(Again, the same methods are used by some of the AGW opponents. The proper response, again, is to simply ignore falsehoods and concentrate on the science.)

" the public is being manipulated into its current state of ignorance and compliance"

(That's your opinion. My own opinion is that the public is being made aware of a serious problem. Neither of our opinions really matters much. What matters is the truth. So why don't we talk about that?)

"I firmly believe that a great number of the AGW supporters have no idea of how disruptive the effects of proposed AGW measures will be"

(There are TWO issues here, and they are completely independent. The first issue is whether AGW presents a significant threat to our overall well-being. The second issue, which is completely independent of the first issue, is what we might do about it. The first issue is a matter of science and the second issue is a matter of policy. My impression, based on reading the statements of many AGW opponents, is that they are primarily concerned with the second issue -- and those concerns are valid -- and therefore allow their opinions on that second issue to affect their judgements on the first issue -- which is completely invalid. Render unto Caesar: let us make scientific judgements based solely on the science, and political judgements on political considerations. My impression is that the opponents of AGW are fighting the wrong fight, and are discrediting their efforts by engaging in shoddy logic with regard to the science. One of the most important adages of military science is "Fight on the ground of your own choosing", which means, fight where you have the advantage. The opponents of AGW are fighting a losing battle on the ground where they are weakest. They are on much stronger ground addressing the economic costs and benefits of AGW abatement. I suspect, however, that by the time they realize that they are fighting a losing battle, they will have lost all public credibility and will lose the more important battle over costs and benefits of AGW abatement.)

"Which part of the increase in CO2 is due to human activities? The best figures put this at about 3% of the total."

I'd sure like to see those 'best figures'. I suspect that you may be confusing some different numbers here. Have you a source for your assertion?

"Fishing communities in the world’s high-latitudes, as well as those that rely on coral reef systems will be most exposed to the impact of climate change. Fisheries located in deltas, coral atolls and ice-dominated coasts will be vulnerable to flooding and coastal erosion because of rises in sea level.

FAO says that some 42 million people work directly in the fishing sector, the great majority in developing countries. Counting in those who work in processing, supply, marketing and distribution, the fishing industry supports several hundred million jobs.

Aquatic foods have high nutritional quality, contributing 20% r more of average per capita animal protein intake for more than 2.8 billion people, again mostly in developing countries.

Fish is also the world’s most widely traded foodstuff and a key source of export earnings for many poorer countries. The sector has particular significance for small island States."

ALL true BUT:

The net effect of rising atmospheric CO2 is to increase the cyanobacterial (phytoplankton) biomass of the oceans due to the CO2-fertilization effect.

Photosynthetic phytoplankton absorb CO2 and bicarbonate (HCO3-) and respire O2 under the influence of sunlight. They gave us this O2-rich atmosphere. They are the 'lungs of the planet'.

This all-important process removes (acidic) dissolved CO2 and HCO3 from the near surface layers of the ocean and converts it into organic carbon and biogenic calcium carbonate. Therefore, by definition, it counteracts oceanic acidity.

While anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are increasing at a rate now of about 3.3%/year the rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is still only 0.45% and has been constant for at least the last 3 decades. This means that the oceans are presently taking up 3.3-0.45/3.3 = 86% or 6/7ths of all emitted CO2, both anthropogenically and naturally produced.

It also means that oceanic phytoplanktonic 'primary productivity' must therefore be increasing in response to rising atmospheric CO2.

This is also shown by the demonstrable, increasingly negative average annual offset between average atmospheric CO2 over all 8 monitoring stations below 40 S and the global average (falling from about -0.34±0.08% in 1983 to about -0.59±0.03% in 2006 and -0.53±0.03% in 2007). If the Great Southern Ocean was losing its ability to increasingly absorb the increasing atmospheric CO2 this offset would be trending towards 0.00% not drifting in the opposite direction.

This effect arises because the great Southern Ocean (SO), containing the (west to east) circum-Antarctic current and its associated gyres, are the major zones of cyanobacterial primary productivity on this planet. Obviously the SO is either reducing its temperature (thereby increasing CO2 solubility) AND/OR is increasing its primary productivity due to the 'CO2-fertilization effect'.

There is no evidence for significantly falling SSTs over the SO and it runs counter to the idea of AGW.

If such oceanic primary productivity were not also constrained by other factors (other than temperature and available CO2), principally dissolved Fe, Si and N nutrient limitations, it's productivity would probably be increasing even more rapidly (and an even greater fraction of atmospheric CO2 would therefore be being removed).

Oceanic phytoplanktonic primary productivity is the fundamental basis of the oceanic food chain. This is the base platform upon which the total of ALL marine-based human food production is exclusively based.

If oceanic cyanobacterial primary productivity is rising in response to rising atmospheric CO2 (which all indication are that it is), it follows, by definition, that the (human) food productivity of the oceans is also rising in line with AGW.

According to Helge Ingstad, the world's probably most authorative scientist on Vikings and Greenland, it is not certain the Vikings found grapes in New Foundland.

It might have been squash -berries that are also called vin bär in Scandinavian. He suggests that the whole grape story is exaggerated and it was the VINberries that were fermented.( The wild berries could me found there as well today)

He suggests its only in the folklore that the " wrong" version of the grape story continues.

The northern border for wild grapes today is around 42 latitude , that means Massachusetts.

Chris Crawford

US Department of Energy 2000 numbers here

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

(11880/368400)*100 = 3.22%

And if we include the added CO2 from the baseline it works out at about 17%.

And since man is a natural animal, any activity is by definition natural, so our emission of CO2 however one wishes to put it, is also natural. It's why we are humans I suppose.

I am not confused at all with the numbers.

Steve, thanks for a very informative post. I knew that cyanobacteria were gobbling up CO2, but I didn't know that the effectiveness (86%) was so large.

" If oceanic cyanobacterial primary productivity is rising in response to rising atmospheric CO2 (which all indication are that it is), it follows, by definition, that the (human) food productivity of the oceans is also rising in line with AGW." - Steve

A very , very simplistic conclusion. I have not the time right now to make more comments , but warming waters will affect fish populations according to different species . Climate change will affect certain fish in a negative way . Will post on this later. It means as well that spawning areas and fishing activity is moving to the poles.

And finally , warming means more blooming of toxic algae etc, etc....

Louis Hissink, I checked the source that you provide, and there's definitely a mismatch between what you state and what's actually documented. The source you give does indeed state that "natural additions" to CO2 amount to 68 ppm and "human additions" amount to 12 ppm. However, I was wondering what the author meant by "natural additions". He doesn't define that term anywhere. I assume that he's talking about sources such as vulcanism -- but these are not differentials, they're part of the background. Here, let me explain:

There are many sources of natural carbon release: vulcanism, decomposition of organic materials, and so on. These have been with us for millions of years, and the pre-industrial concentration of CO2 (280 ppm) reflected the equilibrium between those natural sources and the natural sinks. Then we humans came along and started adding our own CO2 emissions. These were on top of the existing natural sources of CO2 emissions, and they caused the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to increase from 280 ppm to 380 ppm. The natural sources continued, but they didn't add to the increase -- they are part of the baseline. Hence the argument offered in your source is wrong.

Moreover, it isn't even justified. The source that the author provides does NOT provide the number he presents. I don't know where he got that number for natural contribution, but it did not come from the source he cited. Interestingly enough, the source he cites ultimately cites the IPCC reports. So if you want to eliminate the middlemen, just do directly to IPCC AR4, which clearly explains what's happening -- and the increase in CO2 concentrations is due to anthropogenic sources, not natural sources. See AR4, Chapter 2, pages 137 - 140.

BTW, Steve Short, you mentioned that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are increasing by 0.45% per year, but IPCC AR4, Chapter 2, page 137 cites 1.4 ppm per year increase in atmospheric CO2, which is only 0.37%. And their figure for human emissions of carbon (Figure 2.3) looks like a growth rate of about 8% per year. Go figure. Perhaps I've misinterpreted something?

Chris Crawford

I just did a Live Search and dredged that reference up. Strangely, or not so strangely, it's seems rather difficult to find any up to date numbers on these estimates.

You are right- the numbers don't seem to gel but somewhere someone must have the up to date numbers.

Given that the US decreased its CO2 emissions while Europe and the UK have been increasing theirs.

Incidentally you could have posted those numbers on here to make your point, so I suspect as you have not corrected the numbers I posted, I assume they must be correct.

Here's the rebuttal to Steve re phytoplankton, climate change and fish productivity:

Greenhouse may cut fish productivity:

http://worldfishingtoday.com/news/news.asp?mode=soeg&soeg=plankton&nyId=183

"(There we also words like ‘suggest’ in there. Tsk, words that Ivan can’t deal with)".

Travis - if you are going to 'verbal' me, please at least stick to some semblance of fact.

If someone 'suggests' that we go have a few beers and then go to the football, I can deal with that.
If the waiter 'suggests' that the eye fillet is better than the porterhouse tonight, I can deal with that.

But is someone tells me they 'believe' that the world is getting warmer, and 'thinks' the cause is man-made CO2, and 'suggests' that we all ruin the economy and pay a carbon tax to fix the 'problem', then I'm not OK with that.

The thing that beats the $hit out of me is that there are as many people out there as the opinion polls would 'suggest' who do subscribe to this nonsense.

"James, did Hansen predict that Bangladesh would lose land mass?"

Well, yes - as a matter of fact, he did.

Here..
(http://lightblueline.org/nasas-james-hansen-ipcc-forecast-climate-change-news-business)
"According to Hansen, large areas of Florida, East Anglia and the Netherlands, as well as many oceanic islands and most of Bangladesh, could be inundated within the lifetime of children now being born."

And here:
(http://www.topix.com/forum/world/bangladesh/TBJSRG1BU23254VMC)
"Bangladesh could disappear entirely by end of century: NASA"

And here:
(http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=43563)
"Johann Hari wrote: "[A]nd found that many climatologists think the IPCC is way too optimistic about Bangladesh. I turned to Professor James Hansen, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whose climate calculations have proved to be more accurate than anybody else's. He believes the melting of the Greenland ice cap being picked up his satellite today, now, suggests we are facing a 25-metre rise in sea levels this century -- which would drown Bangladesh entirely.""

There are a few dozen more - if you need to be convinced, that is.

You are arguing for something that the IPCC has not stated. The argument by the IPCC, (Hansen is only one person), is that sea levels are rising. On that basis, land will be lost. It's a simple matter of physics. The silt coming down a river has nothing to do with whether sea levels rise or not. To claim that the IPCC and Hansen are liars is amazing.

Ann, Steve Short also doesn't seem to believe that there is danger to the pteropods either, yet here is part of what appeared in Nature in 2005:

"The changes in seawater chemistry that we project to occur during this century could have severe consequences for calcifying organisms, particularly shelled pteropods: the major planktonic producers of aragonite. Pteropod population densities are high in polar and subpolar waters. Yet only five species typically occur in such cold water regions and, of these, only one or two species are common at the highest latitudes31. High-latitude pteropods have one or two generations per year12,15,32, form integral components of food webs, and are typically found in the upper 300m where they may reach densities of hundreds to thousands of individuals per m3 (refs 11, 13–15). In the Ross Sea, for example, the prominent subpolar–polar pteropod Limacina helicina sometimes replaces krill as the dominant zooplankton, and is considered an overall
indicator of ecosystem health33. In the strongly seasonal high latitudes, sedimentation pulses of pteropods frequently occur just after summer15,34. In the Ross Sea, pteropods account for the majority of the annual export flux of both carbonate and organic carbon34,35. South of the Antarctic Polar Front, pteropods also dominate the export flux of CaCO3 (ref. 36).

Pteropods may be unable to maintain shells in waters that are undersaturated with respect to aragonite."

"You are arguing for something that the IPCC has not stated."
Let's not start reinventing history here. Hansen is the one making the ultra-alarmist statements - well beyond anything 'predicted' by the IPCC. There are mountains of reports on the public record to this effect, including, of course our very own government-funded propaganda organ:
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s1870955.htm
Hansen also specifically refers to Bangladesh as being in the front line of sea level rise casualties - as pointed out previously.

"On that basis, land will be lost."
Intuitively - yes. But let's pose the question again. Where is there any evidence of this? Just because AGW people repeat this assertion ad nauseaum doesn't make it a fact.

"It's a simple matter of physics."
Ahh. Some real science at last. See previous question.

"The silt coming down a river has nothing to do with whether sea levels rise or not."
Not directly - but it is the canary in the cage. IF sea levels are rising a la Hansen's predictions, then the minor contribution of river silt should be lost in the noise. How is it possible to have rising sea levels AND growing coastlines.

"To claim that the IPCC and Hansen are liars is amazing."
What alternative would you prefer: a) idiots? b) frauds? c) incompetents? d) all of the above?

Chris Crawford,

“….your assertion that "the Antarctic is experiencing record high levels of sea ice. This does not address the issue of AGW. What matters is the temperature, not the sea ice.”

Antarctica is more like an archipelago than a continent. Total ice mass isn’t easy to measure and sea ice extent is. It’s also the part of the mass that varies radically from year to year and should reveal trends. If total ice mass is declining it will show first in sea ice extent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:AntarcticaRockSurface.jpg

Therefore, sea ice does seem to be the best T proxy available. And on that evidence it seems probably that the Antarctic is NOT warming according to the predictions of AGW theory.

That’s my point. AGW theory doesn’t appear to match the observations. Where warming is predicted to be most extreme, at the poles, half the polar regions shows no or little warming. This is a challenge to the predictive value of AGW theory.

“More important is the logical implication of your observation that temperatures at some time in the past have been higher. This is absolutely true. The problem is that your observation has no predictive value.”

This would be a true if AGW theory didn’t forecast a global climate apocalypse. The fact that temperatures have often been warmer in the Holocene past reveals that our current situation is within interglacial normal variation. This is extremely relevant to the debate because AGW supporters have repeatedly claimed that we are well above natural temperature variations and that an apocalypse will occur within our lifetimes. Thus, the observation that today’s temperatures are within natural variation predicts that AGW theory is wrong, at least in this respect.

It also shows that today’s temperature can be accounted for without the apparatus of AGW theory, which is at its foundation based upon unproven assumptions about the climate’s sensitivity to CO2 increases.

Back to Occam’s Razor.

"doesn't seem to believe that there is danger to the pteropods either"

Hmmmm...
"that we project to occur during this century.."
"could have severe consequences.."
"may be unable.."

The only danger I can see is that at some point some actual science might intrude into the discussion. But then again, I doubt it. Guesswork has proved more effective so far.

CO2 is as dead as a Dodo; CO2 does absorb reemitted LW but is limited by Stefan-Boltzman and Wien; H2O does the most of the greenhouse effect and as Spencer and Lindzen and Monckton have recently shown has a dominant stochastic negative feedback effect; the AIRS satellite instrument has recently shown that CO2 is not uniformly mixed in the atmosphere which means that there is not an opaque trapping layer; in any event this was obvious already by reference to any albedo map which shows large parts of the earth reflecting incoming SW; with SW not reaching the surface there is no reemitted LW to absorb; Stewart's Law shows that thermal and therefore radiative balance will be maintained with only variations in internal forcing; a recent paper from the Russian Academy of Sciences shows that the convective heat transfer mechanism dominates radiative heat transfer and due to ocean absorbtion and atmospheric pressure, increases in CO2 have a cooling effect;

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15567030701568727

As well, CO2 is not correlated with historical or even recent temp movements, and in fact historically CO2 follows temp movements.

Ice is not declining; you have to remember 99.9% of the land ice is on Greenland and Antarctica;
Western Antarctica, bearing in mind that this part of the continent is underpined by a ring of active volcanoes;

http:www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GL032529.shtml

East Antarctica;

http:www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/5730/1898

Greenland; a historical perspective;

http:www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007JD008742.shtml

In addition the Arctic is not at historical lows as Steve and other have shown; there are numerous pre-satellite records of less ice during the 20thC.

Sea levels have been rising since the end of the last glacial; it is moot whether there have been recent rises, but play the game yourself;

http://sahultime.monash.edu.au/explore.html

Right for the wrong reasons is a totally absurd comment in the context of this debate; the issue is whether the science is right; if it isn't nothing valid flows; so far the science hasn't made the case.

Ego investment; Hansen, Flannery, Pearman, Schmidt, Humbert; in addition there are not thousands of scientists; the consensus argument is bunk.

The fact is the msm and mainstream politics has been ensnared by this deceit and any deviation is punished; every prominent scientist who criticises the orthodoxy is smeared.

There is as much more evidence of violations of intellectual integrity among the opponents of AGW

Utter, unmitigated garbage; give one.

Cohenite

Could you clarify your second last sentence? You are not meaning us are you? Or are you quoting some drivel posted above.

Louis; it is what Chris Crawford has asserted in his long, disingenuous reply of 02:02 PM to an earlier comment by me; sorry for not making it plainer; it is a jaw-dropping assertion is it not?

Cohenite

Aah, I suspected you were quoting someone here but I obviously didn't read 'that' particular assertion by Chris Crawford.

That said, it is indeed jaw dropping but par for the course.

I base my view based on personal experience with this lot (Politically) but Bernard Goldbergs two brilliant books on the MSM and its philosophical (and this is crediting them more than they deserve) basis in leftism. (Biased and Arrogance are the titles (paraphrased) of his two books).

Bernard summed it quite neatly - lefties only fratenise with their own kind, so all they hear are confirmations of their own beliefs. Because they avoid socialising with us, they never get to experience different takes on a topic. They believe they are normal and we not. I hate to say it but I suspect they are sociopaths.

And far more importantly, their whole reasoning system is dialectic - truths are established by consensus - not from compulsion of experimental fact. There is a good reason why global warming is taught as a strand in the social sciences and not the physical sciences.

Greenland temperatures:

http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/greenland_temp.html

Illulsiat Glacier melt:

http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/greenland_glacier.html

Discussion of Vikings end on Greenland:

http://www.york.ac.uk/teaching/history/pjpg/Greenland.pdf

From Ferdinand Englebeen here:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=931

More interesting links from that thread:

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/end_of_vikings_greenland.html

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/vikings_during_mwp.html

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005JD006494.shtml

Paleo studies:

http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l2_igalikufjord.php

http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_gripsummit.php

Food for thought:

http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/print.cfm?id=776

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2007/CanWeAvert_20070625.pdf
Here is Hansen predicting that all of Bangladesh would be under the Indian Ocean - in his own paper(page 11). That's for Chris.

Thanks for the backup, Ivan,,, Cohenite.

There are probably records for Bangladesh dating from 1000 AD.
We have already established that the MWP existed, was global in nature, and that it's global warming exceeded today's temperatures.
All we have to do is ask the Indians "was Bangladesh underwater between the years, 1000 and 1450 ish?"
Seems easy enough.

"We have already established that the MWP existed, was global in nature"

Which blog???

"All we have to do is ask the Indians "was Bangladesh underwater between the years, 1000 and 1450 ish?""

Good point, James. Isn't amazing where a rational analysis of the evidence can lead?

Of course, Bangladesh wasn't underwater in the Middle Ages, even as Vikings exported dairy products to Europe from Greenland. Nor were the Indians suffering great drought. In fact, Indian civilization was experiencing a Golden Age as was the Islamic world in the Middle East. Fortunately, they were blithely unaware of the IPCC scenarios for civilization collapse due to global warming.

Cambodia, Bali, Java, China, Japan, North American Indian, Oceania and part of Africa all were in high renaissance mode culturally during the MWP, when according to the IPCC they should have been experiencing mass starvation, water shortages and mass migration and war due to global warming.

The MWP was extremely kind to human cultural evolution in all places but Central America. And to be fair, the collapse of the Mayan city states is not a well understood phenomena and probably is only partly related to climate shifts. The Anasazi culture to the north collapsed due to drought, but not until 1200 or 1300 AD when LIA had begun, at least in Europe.

Gavin

"Which blog?"

Never mind I know who you are but won't take advantage of it.

That said, you do raise an interesting point - the MWP was indeed regional, in terms of the European perspective and if, as you do, assume that the earth's physical orientation in space is fixed, by assumption, then the MWP can't be global.

Assuming that the earth can't change it's axis wrt the celestial references, Tim Lambert' point,
then there must be clear evidence for very high temperatures in the equatorial regions at the same time as the MWP.

No one seems to have reported this. So if the GMT of the earth was higher, uniformly, over the earth, and Greenland was amenable to farming in areas that yet to allow that, then we should have records from countries at the equator complaining of scorching summers.

I have not encountered any.

So if Greenland was hospitable to farming during the MWP, and no one else complained of excessive heat south of Greenland, then the only plausible mechanism for climate change in Greenland is that the earth reoriented itself, as a result, of an NEO interaction.

The Korean Choson Annals sugest this.

If this novel explanation is unsatisfactory, then you need to demonstrate that a regional climate warming, the MWP, was assocated with even more torrid cllimates at lower latitudes.

Gavin - "Which blog?"

Try a few research papers instead:
MWP in North America
(http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060823_1/20060823_1_09.html)
repeated in Science:
(http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/313/5785/345)
MWP in Russia:
(http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20051110/20051110_12.html)
MWP in China
(http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002AGUFMPP71C..09L)
MWP in Asia
(http://www.co2science.org/subject/a/summaries/asiamwp.php)
MWP in South America:
(http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/AVH4/00044/AVH4-A-00044.pdf?PHPSESSID=bd1cbdaa2c636868bb6b65df9e2456eb)
MWP everywhere:
(http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-04/evil.htm)

You AGW nongs need to inform yourselves, instead of just playing "Simple Hansen Says" all the time.

Just a few quick points. The alarmists can't have it both ways - Antarctic sea ice is just as relevant as Arctic sea ice, but increasing Antarctic sea ice just doesn't make news. Plus Antarctica's West/East climate differences are long established - see elsewhere on this blog about east and west antarctica's divergent climate histories over 14 million years.

Climate change has significant regional differences, whether we talk about the modern warm period, or the medieval warm period - there is evidence both for and against the global MWP, but the IPCC bias their proxies against (Steve McIntyre has summarised the proxy evidence against a warm MWP), plus we have mentioned elsewhere the witheld, unverified data by hockey stick proponents.

Certainly, the shift to colder conditions finished off Greenland's Viking settlers, although they already had other problems.

The Mayan civilisation was destroyed by prolonged drought - an interesting detective story in itself:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/cultures/maya_01.shtml

Actually, Louis, global warming (or cooling for that matter) has an increasing effect towards the poles. Thus, in the Jurassic it wasn't much warmer at the equator than today, but it was much, much warmer at the poles. No need to postulate planetary axis shifts. Occam's Razor.

Indeed, it was likely cooler at the equator during the MWP than today, certainly it was in cities, due to the effects of vast primary forests, no UHI, no Asian Brown Cloud and unfettered river systems. Not to mention remnant mountain glaciers left over from the Younger Dryas.

"UN rushes aid as unexpected cold spell threatens Peruvian livestock"

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=27537&Cr=&Cr1=
"This year, the cold arrived well ahead of the usual season – in March and April, instead of June – and many small-scale farmers have not been able to harvest their crops."
"The gravity of the situation has led the Peruvian Government to declare a state of emergency in 11 of the country’s 25 provinces."

Meanwhile, what is their sister organisation (WMO) obsessing about on their website:
"Strong climate warming in the Netherlands"
//www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/news/index_en.html
The rest of us probably have another name for it: summer.

And the remains of the Mayan civi