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of direct measurements, proxy indicators of temperature such as tree rings and ice cores, and data gleaned from historical documents."
Bring back the Frost fairs. (Score:5, Interesting)
A somewhat Conspiracy-Theory-ish observation (Score:2, Interesting)
Is it impossible that this particular result is being publicised to remind the general public that we have been like this before in history, and that global warming may not be to blame as regards are current weather? At the very least, I am afraid this piece of news may have this as a result.
Re:A somewhat Conspiracy-Theory-ish observation (Score:4, Interesting)
The article may be a contributing factor to global-warming denialists, but they'd have continued denying anyway. The fact that they might seize on this, and twist it to their aims, is neither here nor there.
The great frost was a relatively little known event historically, to the point that wikipedia only recently got a page about it, and as of this moment, it still hasn't appeared in the page detailing the events of 1709.
Even for those who want to claim it somehow invalidates global warming, it should be noted that the great frost was followed over the next few years by a period of rapid temperature increases. If they want to somehow draw a comparable link between 1709 and 2009, you can throw that back at them as another meaningless statistic.
Re:So what about global warming ? (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, if the climate models could re-create the last 1000 years, that would be a pretty good validation. I doubt they can though.
I'm not a skeptic, current climate models are not bad. The iterations of IPCC predictions have seemed to close in on their old "most likely" scenarios - which tends to validate that they are not just making stuff up.
I would just have a lot more faith in the models if they were open source. Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not sure - some of them may be available), but apparently it's more important that researchers keep their competitive advantages away from other researchers than to allow people to replicate their results.
I wonder how we'd cope now? (Score:5, Interesting)
And with roads and rivers blocked by snow and ice, it was impossible to transport food to the cities. Paris waited three months for fresh supplies.
OK, modern power transmission and transport infrastructure is much more sophisticated. But still very vulnerable to extreme weather conditions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_storm#Notable_ice_storms [wikipedia.org]
Modern 'just in time' supply chains have less stock everywhere in the pipeline, so are intolerent of the slightest disruption. How would we do if this kind of thing hit again?
Re:Not that cold (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Proxy indicators"? (Score:2, Interesting)
I wouldn't have thought climate scientists would have much of a problem with climate proxy indicators being referred to as indirect evidence so there's no need for your use of the pejorative term "euphemism" there.
And if you think "circumstantial evidence" includes race, sex, and religion in a court of law, you clearly don't have an understanding of this term either.
Read up a bit on the science involved and you might be surprised to find some of these proxy indicators are little different than using the existence of fossils to infer the presence of dinosaurs in prehistory.
Or perhaps you don't believe in dinosaurs?
This project appears to be good science, whatever your views on climate change - it's recognizing there is a limit to the accuracy of what we currently use as proxy indicators, but by comparing proxy indicator predictions against actual measurements, it hopes to refine our use of these indirect measurements so we can use them to get a clearer idea of the causes of current climate trends.
Related to the Maunder Minimum ? (Score:5, Interesting)
The cold winter in 1709 was towards the tail-end of the "Maunder Minimum [nasa.gov]" in sunspots and solar activity. Given that sunspot numbers are again unusually low [nasa.gov], maybe it will happen again [popsci.com].
Little Ice Age (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A somewhat Conspiracy-Theory-ish observation (Score:1, Interesting)
I'll quote from the comments of that article:
Then, of course, the comments pointing out how the articles are not really about that etc. And so the circle continues. My point isn't that that comment is accurate, but that there always is one. And then one against it. Ad nauseum.
In a great many theories, common sense can lead you to a conclusion. Anybody can take ice out of the freezer and put it in a kettle on the stove to watch water go from ice to water to vapor.
In the case of man-made global warming, you simply have to pick a side. Who do you trust? There's virtually nothing you yourself can easily verify personally. There's no single "look how this was theorized 50 years ago and not a single of its dozens of predictions have failed" item to point to. On the other hand we can point to failed weather forecasts every single week.
It's simply not possible to come to an objective conclusion without dedicating huge amounts of time to the pursuit. And even then there's no guarantee where you'll end up (there are still serious scientists around that argue against the man-made global warming theory, after all). Most don't bother. Most just pick a side. You believe the one, or the other. Then you start throwing rocks at "the other".
The irony is that most of the changes needed to cut down on emissions has immediate and quite noticeable local effects. It has no negative effects. Instead of focusing on something people can relate to, politicians opt for "the sky is falling" fearmongering.
The reason is obvious, of course. Fear is a lot more potent as a political tool. Take a small country like mine. Politicians are making a huge deal about environmentally friendly cars. When doing so they focus exclusively on local emissions. If nobody here ever drove again, we'd cut the global emissions by some 0.00000015%. Give or take a zero. That has nothing to do with global climate, that's a political agenda.
In any case where you have a controversial issue, where one side does not welcome discussion, that's grounds for scepticism in itself. Whenever a global warming evangelist answers "I read this article about that 'hockey stick' temperature curve being in error" with something along the lines of "you idiot hippie!" as opposed to explaining the Wahl and Ammann examination, it's not helping their credibility. And there's a lot of that going on. _A lot_. You can't behave like an evangelist and expect not to be treated as one.
Re:A somewhat Conspiracy-Theory-ish observation (Score:1, Interesting)
Tell me this then. Can the weather man predict exactly what the temp is next week on friday at 2 pm in the middle of times square? It really is THAT simple. They make a slightly less than accurate prediction that it will probably be in the 20's. If it is in the 30s they shrug and go 'oh well guess our model was wrong'.
If you can not say with any sort of certainty that it will be 20-22 next week on friday. How am I supposed to take your word for it that it is going to be X degrees warmer/cooler next CENTURY? You really have to go no further than your local news station to get the 'proof' that most of this 'global warming' is bunk...
I am not saying it does not exist. I am saying the models are usually 'fudged' around to work to the current pet theory. There are thousands of factors. Not just the 'OMGZ WEZE ARE POLUTINGS'. We are only now just starting to get an idea of what other junk the sun is pumping out that effects our climate. It seems like many models treat the sun as a constant variable when it is NOT.
But I do know one thing making a half baked policy on a half baked theory is a BAD idea. Many government programs are just plane wasteful in and of themselves and we want the government to make it all better.
Here is a theory maybe its just warmer because there have been less volcano? Or maybe something in the earths core has started emitting more heat? Or maybe the sun is giving off more solar radiation (on its cycle)? There are tons of these things which can change the weather. There is no one single silver bullet I can tell you that right now.
Call it what it is, bad science. Theorys have testable points. If you have to 'fudge the numbers around' to make it work it probably is a broken theory in some way. The main article talks about deriving temperatures from samples. Sounds exactly like 'fudging numbers around'. Even if those numbers 'prove global cooling'. I would still say it is bad science.
To put this to rest we would need thousands more temp sensors all over the globe equally scattered. Including many layers in the oceans and the sky. Then many years (probably 2-4 hundred) then we MIGHT start to get a workable theory.
But maybe, JUST maybe if we repeat it enough it will be true.
Also to defend the other AC. 'this is probably the last year you can ski here' is EXACTLY the sort of junk science you will get out of news organizations. This sort of junk reinforces the idea that it might be true to people who do not know any better. I have seen almost those exact words many times. Also the ski resorts will 'play it up' a bit to draw in people. So you now not only have the paper saying it you have a business saying it to bring in more money.
Do not confuse theory with fact. Again I am not saying that it does not exist. I just am saying that the models are mostly based on data that is being fudged around to fit a particular agenda. Then the theories are fudged around to do the same thing.
Even Einstein did this he had his great 'cosmological constant'. As he was trying to fudge his theory to fit his world view. He called it one of his greatest mistakes.
Re:Warm? Cold? (Score:5, Interesting)
We started out with the view, based on historical anecdote, that there had been a Roman Warming and Medieval Warming, that were roughly as large as today's warming. There had also been coolings, notably in between the warmings, and in the late 17th century when the Thames froze, and during the early 19C during Napoleon's famous retreat.
The Hockey Stick proxy work appeared to refute this. It seemed to show that temperatures had not varied a whole lot until the 1980's, at which they took off in an unprecedented way. However, the HS work was exploded, primarily not because of misuse of PCA (though that happened) but because the key proxies it depended on were the Bristlecone Pines, which no-one seriously thinks are temperature proxies. This has been gone through ad nauseam, and you will often find people arguing that the results have been replicated independently, but if you look at the proxies used, and the people doing the studies, you'll find they are not independent.
So this leaves us with a reinstated RWP and MWP and the cooling periods, in short, greater natural variability than the HS alleged. To the extent that the IPCC does not accept this, it is just wrong.
We now get the interesting counter argument, which has become more popular as the HS has been discredited, which goes: Ah yes, but if the MWP existed, it proves that the climate is more sensitive than we have thought, and so we should be more worried rather than less about CO2. The attempt is now to make the existence of the MWP into an argument for higher climate sensitivity. This replaces the previous argument that its supposed absence was an argument for alarm, because it proved today's uniqueness. It is logically fallacious of course, since by hypothesis, we do not know what caused it, and so we cannot say anything about its magnitude, and so cannot reach any conclusions about sensitivity based on it.
Where do we end up? We end up having to argue that todays warming is unique in having been caused by CO2. But this is now much harder to prove, since the problem is we have had two other comparably sized warming periods not caused by rising CO2. How do we exclude the cause of them from operating now, especially if we have no idea what it was?
We also have another difficulty rarely alluded to. It is not just the warming due to CO2 that is problematic, it is the independent assertion that lowering CO2 would produce cooling. This has never happened before. Cooling has always preceded falls in CO2 in paleo times. In modern times it has always happened independently of CO2 levels. If we were to do it, at vast expense, how do we know it would work?
And finally, there is the issue of feedbacks. That would take us too far afield, but its agreed that what warms the planet is not primarily the CO2. It is the feedbacks that supposedly amplify the initial warming, from CO2 in the modern case, but could be from anything. The existence of these feedbacks, and whether they are positive or negative, is heavily disputed.
Its a mess. The best advice one can give is, the science is not settled. But another five years of cooling measured by satellite, that will settle it, if it happens.
Re:So what about global warming ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have "optimized" (by running profilers on it) a very VERY good program for molecular simulation. It can do molecular dynamics, monte carlo, gradual insertion and what not...
It is designed to run on super-computers, and the next best contestant (Towhee), which is open source, is no where near it. For a simulation that takes 10 days on Towhee, we take only 3 days.
And it all is proprietary. It was written and maintained by a group of PhD students over many years, and they used to distribute binaries to those who needed them. No source code!
I got the source code in the name of profiling, but actually because they offered a PhD position to me, and I was supposed to work on it.
In short, competitive computer models remain closed source. The theory might be well published, the implementation remains within those who want to publish some-thing before someone else does.
Re:And what about proven scientific fraud? (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean Realclimate, the website run by, um, Michael Mann...the man who created the "hockey stick" graph in the first place?
And, while McIntyre may not be a mathematician, Wegman was a professor of statistics, and his panel - which verified MM's findings - were also experts in statistics and statistical analysis. They were able to verify and reproduce MM's work, and not Mann's, and they were using Mann's data and methodologies.
Also, while McIntyre may not be a mathematician, Ross McKitrick, the other side of the MM team, is a professor of environmental economics - and economists spend a lot of time dealing with mathematical models.
Quite so... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, it was a sensationalist headline, but that's not quite the same as being disreputable.
Quite so...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.600-why-darwin-was-wrong-about-the-tree-of-life.html [newscientist.com]
Re:Not that cold (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a huge pine tree explode in my back yard at the start of this winter. Usually happens if there's a big ice storm early in the season. The last time I remember widespread tree explosions was in the winter of 1997, which was much worse than this winter. This winter, power was out for four days, and there was a good 2" coat of ice on all the trees. In '97, power was out for weeks, and the ice was 6" thick on large trees and buildings.
Yes, it's literally an explosion. There is a loud bang, and the tree breaks into very small pieces. There is still wood shrapnel across my back yard (since I haven't cleaned it up yet), and the next morning the whole area smelled like pine.
Re:So what about global warming ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect that the current "global warming" programs have been written with the assumption that global warming is real, and that they have built this "fact" into the programs. Since there is no way to review the source code to see if this is true, they protect themselves from discovery of this fact. In any other area of science, peer review is considered important, but in this area anything that supports it is lauded, but anything that negates is either ignored or loudly declaimed.
You MUST believe whatever they tell you, or the inquisition will come after you.
There are many bizarre ideas that you must believe to belong in the global warming cult. Such as, the sun has no effect on the earth, carbon produced by SUV's (which is less than 2% of that produced by natural means) is the major cause of global warming, volcanoes don't produce greenhouse gases, the Earth's temperature has never varied more than 1/10 of a degree over the last million years.
What can you say about a program that assumes that the sun and volcanic eruptions have absolutely no effect on the global temperature?
Until you seperate global warming from religion, you will not get any real science done. Until the real cause is understood, there cannot be a usable correction. Any "fix" without understanding the real problem would be like changing the tires on your car when you see an pool of oil under it. You've done something, spent a lot of money, but fixed nothing.
Re:Related to the Maunder Minimum ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, but according to the global warming experts, the sun has absolutely no effect on the global temperature.
Day being typically warmer than night is purely an illusion, and if the sun disappeared tomorrow global temperatures wouldn't change.
Re:So what about global warming ? (Score:2, Interesting)
I haven't dealt with this at all, but I would imagine a polite "Here's the code. I did not document it and I do not have time to provide support or answer questions on it." would suffice(May want to put that in the source). Delete all email requests that you get about the code, and go on with life and research.
Re:Not that cold (Score:3, Interesting)
Having lived in Montana during the Great Winters of the late 1960s/70s, when winter temps regularly hit -65F (and sometimes didn't get above -45F for several weeks in January) ... livestock deaths due to cold are rare even among stock that spend the whole winter out on the range, and the real cause of death is usually not so much cold as starvation due to being trapped away from feed (either grass being too far under the snow, or the rancher being unable to get hay to them) following a major blizzard.
I never saw birds dying from -65F temps in Montana -- in fact those little chickadees (which must weigh all of 2 ounces) are around all winter, in large numbers. Now, birds getting caught in an ice storm might be another matter, but I never saw dead birds after such storms either, and we had plenty of 'em.
Nightcaps freezing to the bed?? Maybe if your roof leaked. Once in a while my fire would go out in the night, and when I woke up it'd be -10F in my house. Water jug would be partly frozen, but my nightcap certainly wasn't, let alone any other body parts.
Exposed thin tissues like the tips of cats' ears and chicken combs can get frostbitten (in which case the tips sortof dry up and fall off) and the same for human ears if you don't wear a hat. But merely zero temps generally won't suffice to do it.
Methinks it was not the severity at fault (after all, Scandinavia has much worse winters every year, and survives it!) but the lack of preparedness, given that this was an unusual cold for the era and area -- much as happens when Alabama gets an ice storm today.
"When it don't rain, the roof don't leak; when it rains, I cain't fix it no-how."