Scientists Reconstruct Millennium's Coldest Winter 290
Ponca City, We love you writes "In England they called it the Great Frost, while in France it entered legend as Le Grand Hiver, three months of deadly cold that fell over Europe in 1709 ushering in a year of famine and food riots. Livestock died from cold in their barns, chicken's combs froze and fell off, trees exploded and travelers froze to death on the roads. It was the coldest winter in 500 years with temperatures as much as 7 degrees C below the average for 20th-century Europe. Now as part of the European Union's Millennium Project, Scientists are aiming to reconstruct the past 1000 years of Europe's climate using a combination of direct measurements, proxy indicators of temperature such as tree rings and ice cores, and data gleaned from historical documents."
Re:Not that cold (Score:4, Informative)
We're at a significantly lower latitude than France, and we've had at least 5 days of single digit F temps just this winter alone, and that is typical.
France and other western european countries enjoy (imho) the gulf stream effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream [wikipedia.org]
Buildings, farms and livestock (especially in southern france) aren't designed for such temperature and certainly not for long period under such a temperature.
Re:A somewhat Conspiracy-Theory-ish observation (Score:4, Informative)
Worst. Understatement. Ever.
It got to 46 degrees C (114F) here two days ago, and temperatures all over southern Australia broke records. Over 100 people have died in fires and over 600 houses have been lost (in Victoria - i don't know about other states)
On the northern side of the country they are having some pretty bad floods.
Re:A somewhat Conspiracy-Theory-ish observation (Score:5, Informative)
There has never been a "this is probably the last year you can ski here" statement from climate scientists. It's straw man attacks like these that make denialists into denialists: instead of criticising the models, the predictions and the findings, you come up with your own stuff. Or you choose to criticise moonbat environmentalist hippies instead of the science.
Exactly right.
For example, the oft-troped canard that scientists claimed we were heading for a new ice age back in the 70's.
Most predictions of an impending ice age came from the popular press (eg - Newsweek, NY Times, National Geographic, Time Magazine). As far as peer reviewed scientific papers in the 1970s, very few papers (7 in total) predicted global cooling. Significantly more papers (42 in total) predicted global warming due to CO2.
But of course, the denialists (yes, I'll use that term, because that's what they are) still repeat this debunked claim. In that way, they are damn similar to creationists: Repeating old discredited arguments based on misinformation to back their points.
This means YOU, Anonymous Coward above ("It doesn't help that scientists/politicians/news have claimed the onset of catastrophic climate change in both directions several times before in recent history.")
(Source : http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm [skepticalscience.com] )
Re:Not that cold (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A story for Depression II? (Score:5, Informative)
I expect you're prepared for that. Happens every year?
Living in London, I'm not prepared for -15C, but that's OK, it never happens. I'm not really prepared for -5C. When there was 15cm of snow last Monday most people didn't go to work: very little of the public transport was running, mostly because it's not worth spending millions on snow/ice clearing equipment that'll be used once every 20 years. They also ran out of salt/grit, the emergency stockpiles weren't big enough.
The last time I took the "wow! it snowed!" photos was 2007. It seemed a huge fall of snow at the time. Looking back, you can still see the grass, and it only lasted a day.
Re:So what about global warming ? (Score:2, Informative)
To amplify on this, your scientific credentials depend to an extent on how often your work is referred to in other publications. They won't be if you keep the details secret. These credentials, the scientific relevance of your work, if you will, can have a pronounced effect on your funding by various grant-giving agencies. No-one's going to give you much money if your work is ignored. On the other hand, if your work is widely quoted/referenced, your chances of winning the grant sweepstakes go way up. You need to prove to other workers in the field that you know what you're doing. True, you don't want to be scooped, but you lose out by keeping your results secret.
Re:Reputable science (Score:1, Informative)
The cover story about "Darwin Was Wrong" was, of course, strictly accurate, as it concerned the growing evidence that horizontal gene transfer is actually a significant feature even in multicellular life, and hence that the "tree of life" that Darwin's original version of evolutionary theory was based around is, in fact, more wrong than we thought it was.
Of course, it was a sensationalist headline, but that's not quite the same as being disreputable.
Re:Not that cold (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Related to the Maunder Minimum ? (Score:1, Informative)
careful... you'll get yourself labeled a 'denialist' with talk like that.
Re:Not that cold (Score:3, Informative)
A tree will explode if it freezes rapidly. If the tree doesn't have time for the sap to go to the roots, this is a risk. Of course, trees that have a higher sap content or lower sugar content will explode easier (greater expansion and less cold tolerance). Calgary, Alberta, Canada has this problem due to chinooks [wikipedia.org]. You can find a number of trees there with massive splits on the sides from sap rising from the roots during a chinook and then freezing just days later.
Re:And what about proven scientific fraud? (Score:2, Informative)
Oh, and McIntyre isn't a mathematician [wikipedia.org]. He only holds a Bachelor's in mathematics. I fucking hold a bachelor's in mathematics, but I don't go around calling myself a mathematician.
Re:And what about proven scientific fraud? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, I have a bias...never suggested otherwise. I do want to point a couple of things out:
1. It wasn't just MM disputing the "hockey stick" - a independent panel of statistics experts reporting to Congress examined it, Mann's work, and found that MM were the ones in the right.
2. The "hockey stick" was found to be the result of faulty mathematics...by people who specialize in mathematics. That makes them experts in their fields.
3. If Mann is so right, why doesn't his model stand up to scrutiny? Why did it CENSOR the data from the Medieval Warm Period? Why does it produce a "hockey stick" shape out of red noise around 99% of the time? Why does it rely on only one source for modern temperature figures, and that source itself is notoriously unreliable as a climate indicator?
Let me put it this way - Mann and company are hiding and misrepresenting data and methodologies, and asking us to just take their word for it. MM are pointing out there is a problem, making all of their work publicly available, and have received independent verification that their math is correct from experts in statistics and statistical analysis.
Who do you find more trustworthy?
Re:A story for Depression II? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not really prepared for -5C.
Buy a sweater. There now you're prepared.
Ok, maybe two sweaters in case one gets a hole in it.
Re:So what about global warming ? (Score:1, Informative)
Generally the source code and documentation for models is freely available. Have a look here:
http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/models/ccsm3.0/#src
Re:So what about global warming ? (Score:5, Informative)
This goes right to the peer review process. This stuff is supposed to be validatable, but even years after publication which is supposed to be post-validation, you are fighting to get the data needed to validate. Often a requirement of a Journal (such as Science, or Nature) is also that the data is to be archived and available, but the standard when it comes to Climate researchers who are publishing is that its simply OK that the data is neither archived nor available... that nobody bothered to do any validation at all.
The peer review process is a complete failure in the climate sciences. It appears to truely be a clique of climate scientists blindly signing off on each others work while they rake in the government grants.
Ask and you shall receive... (Score:5, Informative)
Ask and you shall receive:
1. There were two congressional panels, not one. The one done by the statistics experts that upheld MM's findings was headed by Edward Wegman - its report can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf [uoguelph.ca]
A commentary by McKitrick explaining the report can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanOp-Ed.pdf [uoguelph.ca]
2. The National Research Council report can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NRCreport.pdf [uoguelph.ca]
From what I understand, you have to read this one carefully - apparently the report and the media spin are in opposition. An op-ed discussing this can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NAS.op-ed.pdf [uoguelph.ca]
Documentation of the dishonest approach used to get the "hockey stick" into the IPCC report can be found here: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html [squarespace.com]
Additionally, you will also find these links of interest:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?page_id=354 [climateaudit.org]
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf [uoguelph.ca]
Now, you talk about the "denialists" (which isn't a real word - trust me on this, I write and edit for a living - the word you want is "deniers"...a "denialist" would be somebody who studies or specializes in denial) as though they are either a conspiracy nut or part of a conspiracy themselves. It's not the case with scientists in the field - why would it be the case with commentators inside and outside of it?
For example, I'm a writer, editor, publisher, and grad student. I got into this as an interested party with a critical mind, and the more I looked at the field, the less it made sense. The more I looked at both sides, the more I saw the deniers using critical thinking and attacking the results and methodologies, and people like Mann and Al Gore launching character assassinations in response. One of these "refuted arguments" is the Medieval Warm Period being warmer than today, but the evidence is so overwhelming in favour of it that Mann put that data into a folder with the word "CENSORED" in it for his own analysis. You can't disprove the existence of the Roman Empire in Europe by stating that the Mayans of the time didn't encounter Romans, but Mann attempted to do something similar with his own work.
Are all climatologists fraudsters? I very much doubt it. But Mann did commit what amounts to an academic fraud that changed his field, and in the process undermined a lot of the research in it and relating to it. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and in order to understand its relation to the greenhouse effect, accurate temperature over time measurements are necessary. But Mann skewed his data and created inaccurate temperature over time results - so any analysis based on that "hockey stick" is using inaccurate information, and is in error. This goes outside of the field - a lot of work is being done to determine the role of solar activity in climatology, but if a researcher is using Mann's results, he's not going to be able to make an accurate analysis.
The analysis from the entire field of climatology since Mann's "hockey stick" is now on very shaky ground, and a lot of work has to be redone before the data is trustworthy again. Mann has become a scientific superstar, but the damage that has been done to our understanding of climate is incredibly high.