Latest news: "greenhouse" gases help PREVENT globa

[SirNitram]

A point I've been ruminating on but don't know where to begin looking into, so I toss it out here.

Cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside. No big surprise there(Just imagine the waste heat from all the gas heaters in a city in winter seeping out). What I'm wondering is if this might 1) Effect our measurements and 2) Effect the planet as urbanization continues.

[Wicked Pilot]

Once you cut through all the bullshit and all the politics the fact of the matter remains that pumping waste into the air is not a good thing, and should be avoided as much as practical. Even if global warming was conclusively refuted tommorrow, having cities like Los Angeles, Houston, Mexico City, etc, permanently covered in smog decks, and having acid rain poisoning lakes and killing off wildlife would still not be acceptable.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Leaving that aside the question about global warming becomes what to do about it? The global climate system is frikken huge and if its woes were caused by humans, you have well over 100 years of effort in dicking it over. At some point it simply becomes more cost effective to adapt society to the new climatic reality than to adapt climatic reality to society.

Only one third of the world's land capable of being cultivated is actually under cultivation. What that means is that we can produce the same amount of food we do now even if twice as much land as-is currently cultivated becomes uncultivable due to global warming. Furthermore, if American levels of farming technology are provided to the whole world the number of people which could be fed on that land would increase by a factor of ten.

[El Moose Monstero]

A point I've been ruminating on but don't know where to begin looking into, so I toss it out here.

Cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside. No big surprise there(Just imagine the waste heat from all the gas heaters in a city in winter seeping out). What I'm wondering is if this might 1) Effect our measurements and 2) Effect the planet as urbanization continues.

Nah, we've got that one covered - climate monitoring stations are well out of the way, the CO2 emission data used by the IPCC come from the top of one of Mauna Loa (I think) and before someone points out that CO2 comes out of volcanoes too, I think it's so they can get background readings as well.

[El Moose Monstero]

The earth's climate has changed before, sometimes getting warmer, and sometimes getting colder. Temperatures in ancient times and the early middle ages were a few degrees warmer than they are today.

Actually, all of England's weather records going back centuries for highest temperature (in 2003, the previous record was only in 1990!) and wettest years/months have been topped recently.

Sorry to dispute you here, but the early Middle Ages were warmer.

Middle Ages were warmer than today, say scientists

The review, carried out by a team from Harvard University, examined the findings of studies of so-called "temperature proxies" such as tree rings, ice cores and historical accounts which allow scientists to estimate temperatures prevailing at sites around the world.

The findings prove that the world experienced a Medieval Warm Period between the ninth and 14th centuries with global temperatures significantly higher even than today.

They also confirm claims that a Little Ice Age set in around 1300, during which the world cooled dramatically. Since 1900, the world has begun to warm up again - but has still to reach the balmy temperatures of the Middle Ages.

It's interesting that Harvard scientists are apparently just figuring this out (or more likely confirming it) because historians have known about it for years. Beginning in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and continuing to the 14th, the climate began cooling, and this was recorded in a suprisingly wide array of sources. Among other effects the falling temperatures had was the loss of much arable land in northern Europe, a change in the fishing grounds that seriously effected the economies of the kingdoms and towns of northern Europe, the invention of the chimney to more efficiently heat homes in the now colder winters, and the destruction of the Norse Greenland colony, as immigration there ceased when previously usable grazing land became buried under ice and permafrost. The balminess of the middle ages is a well known, and well corroborated fact.

Sorry to counter dispute, but the University of East Anglia (arguably the foremost university for environmental science and meteorological monitoring in the country) also looked at the medieval warm periods and found that whilst medieval warm period didnt come close to the recorded climate observations for this past century.

They blamed the variation upon changes in solar output, volcanic activity and for figures post 1850 - anthropogenic forcing. Although they do admit that more study is needed.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/milltemp/

Even if we assume that this weren't the case, that the middle ages did indeed have higher temperatures than today, then it doesn't discount global warming. If as UEA suggests, the warming of the middle ages was a result of solar activity and volcanic outgassing, but that increases at the moment are from anthropogenic forcing - what happens when we get one on top of the other? What happens when we get a period of increased solar activity combined with a greenhouse effect? The general consensus of the environmental groups is that anthropogenic effects is the best explanation for climate change over the past 150 years - if this is the case, then it's an extra burden on the climate system, not one that should be discounted.

Although just as a query, did that MIT bloke say that CFC's were greenhouse gases? I thought the major issue with CFC's was ozone depletion.

[El Moose Monstero]

*doesnt discount anthropogenic global warming

[Perinquus]

Sorry to counter dispute, but the University of East Anglia (arguably the foremost university for environmental science and meteorological monitoring in the country) also looked at the medieval warm periods and found that whilst medieval warm period didnt come close to the recorded climate observations for this past century.

They blamed the variation upon changes in solar output, volcanic activity and for figures post 1850 - anthropogenic forcing. Although they do admit that more study is needed.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/milltemp/

There's is the first study I have heard of to make this claim. And I am far more inclined to agree with the Harvard study, because it corroborates what is known from both archaeological evidence and written evidence. It is, for example, an undisputed fact that there were Norse settlements in parts of Greenland that are now permanently covered by ice, and archaeological evidence shows they grazed animals there. Moreover, an increase in the amount of drift ice along Greenland's east coast, forced sailors to change the sailing route they used to get there. Ships had to head farther south and then turn back to reach the settlements along the southwest coast. The longer distance and increased threat of ice caused fewer ships to visit Greenland, and the disappearance of formerly usable land brought immigration to Greenland to a halt. This is impossible to explain if the temperatures were not warmer than today's. Likewise, during the warm period, wine grapes were grown in Europe up to 300 miles north of their present northerly growing limit.

[tharkûn]

Once you cut through all the bullshit and all the politics the fact of the matter remains that pumping waste into the air is not a good thing, and should be avoided as much as practical. Even if global warming was conclusively refuted tommorrow, having cities like Los Angeles, Houston, Mexico City, etc, permanently covered in smog decks, and having acid rain poisoning lakes and killing off wildlife would still not be acceptable.

The day I see the environmental movement campaign for more nuclear power is the day I will start taking the movement seriously. As long as that sacred cow of idioacy remains; it is hard to accept claims of doom and gloom when an obvious step is denigrated out of stupidity.

As far as European climates, umm guys can you think of a worse place to monitor climatic changes? Europe is warmed by a massive convection current that appears to be sensistive. It is quite possible that Europe might warm when the rest of the world cools or vice versa.

[HyperionX]

Sorry to counter dispute, but the University of East Anglia (arguably the foremost university for environmental science and meteorological monitoring in the country) also looked at the medieval warm periods and found that whilst medieval warm period didnt come close to the recorded climate observations for this past century.

They blamed the variation upon changes in solar output, volcanic activity and for figures post 1850 - anthropogenic forcing. Although they do admit that more study is needed.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/milltemp/

There's is the first study I have heard of to make this claim. And I am far more inclined to agree with the Harvard study, because it corroborates what is known from both archaeological evidence and written evidence. It is, for example, an undisputed fact that there were Norse settlements in parts of Greenland that are now permanently covered by ice, and archaeological evidence shows they grazed animals there. Moreover, an increase in the amount of drift ice along Greenland's east coast, forced sailors to change the sailing route they used to get there. Ships had to head farther south and then turn back to reach the settlements along the southwest coast. The longer distance and increased threat of ice caused fewer ships to visit Greenland, and the disappearance of formerly usable land brought immigration to Greenland to a halt. This is impossible to explain if the temperatures were not warmer than today's. Likewise, during the warm period, wine grapes were grown in Europe up to 300 miles north of their present northerly growing limit.

Then you are woefully uninformed. The medieval warm period was clearly a European-North-American-only event and had a minimal effect worldwide. Globally the world was much cooler then than it is now.

[Perinquus]

Sorry to counter dispute, but the University of East Anglia (arguably the foremost university for environmental science and meteorological monitoring in the country) also looked at the medieval warm periods and found that whilst medieval warm period didnt come close to the recorded climate observations for this past century.

They blamed the variation upon changes in solar output, volcanic activity and for figures post 1850 - anthropogenic forcing. Although they do admit that more study is needed.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/milltemp/

There's is the first study I have heard of to make this claim. And I am far more inclined to agree with the Harvard study, because it corroborates what is known from both archaeological evidence and written evidence. It is, for example, an undisputed fact that there were Norse settlements in parts of Greenland that are now permanently covered by ice, and archaeological evidence shows they grazed animals there. Moreover, an increase in the amount of drift ice along Greenland's east coast, forced sailors to change the sailing route they used to get there. Ships had to head farther south and then turn back to reach the settlements along the southwest coast. The longer distance and increased threat of ice caused fewer ships to visit Greenland, and the disappearance of formerly usable land brought immigration to Greenland to a halt. This is impossible to explain if the temperatures were not warmer than today's. Likewise, during the warm period, wine grapes were grown in Europe up to 300 miles north of their present northerly growing limit.

Then you are woefully uninformed. The medieval warm period was clearly a European-North-American-only event and had a minimal effect worldwide. Globally the world was much cooler then than it is now.

Actually, no it wasn't. And it wasn't a European/North American phenomenon at all. It does appar to have been global. Evidence of warmer weather back then also comes from places like China and Tasmania. In a study published in Science magazine in March 2002, researchers examined ancient tree rings at 14 sties on three continents, and found evidence of warmer temperatures during the medieval warm period.

The Harvard study, which you can read here:

Proxy climactic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years

also refers to the evidence of this warm period being drawn from "the Arctic to New Zealand". And in the conclusion of the report, it states that "Overall, the 20th century does not contain the warmest anomaly in the past millennium in most of the proxy records, which have been sampled world wide" (emphasis added).

Another Harvard report, from 2003, may be read here:

Reconstructing Climactic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal

And this report also used evidence drawn from all over the world, and again, found evidence of warmer temperatures during the medieval warm period from all over the world.

It was not an exclusively European/North American phenomenon.

[HyperionX]

There's is the first study I have heard of to make this claim. And I am far more inclined to agree with the Harvard study, because it corroborates what is known from both archaeological evidence and written evidence. It is, for example, an undisputed fact that there were Norse settlements in parts of Greenland that are now permanently covered by ice, and archaeological evidence shows they grazed animals there. Moreover, an increase in the amount of drift ice along Greenland's east coast, forced sailors to change the sailing route they used to get there. Ships had to head farther south and then turn back to reach the settlements along the southwest coast. The longer distance and increased threat of ice caused fewer ships to visit Greenland, and the disappearance of formerly usable land brought immigration to Greenland to a halt. This is impossible to explain if the temperatures were not warmer than today's. Likewise, during the warm period, wine grapes were grown in Europe up to 300 miles north of their present northerly growing limit.

Then you are woefully uninformed. The medieval warm period was clearly a European-North-American-only event and had a minimal effect worldwide. Globally the world was much cooler then than it is now.

Actually, no it wasn't. And it wasn't a European/North American phenomenon at all. It does appar to have been global. Evidence of warmer weather back then also comes from places like China and Tasmania. In a study published in Science magazine in March 2002, researchers examined ancient tree rings at 14 sties on three continents, and found evidence of warmer temperatures during the medieval warm period.

The Harvard study, which you can read here:

Proxy climactic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years

also refers to the evidence of this warm period being drawn from "the Arctic to New Zealand". And in the conclusion of the report, it states that "Overall, the 20th century does not contain the warmest anomaly in the past millennium in most of the proxy records, which have been sampled world wide" (emphasis added).

Another Harvard report, from 2003, may be read here:

Reconstructing Climactic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal

And this report also used evidence drawn from all over the world, and again, found evidence of warmer temperatures during the medieval warm period from all over the world.

It was not an exclusively European/North American phenomenon.

Nonsense. What you are doing is the epitamy of selective data reading to support one cause over another. The fact that you would choose a single study over the IPCC 2001 report (http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/070.htm) which uses several papers is telling of either you misunderstanding or intentions.

Anyways, whenever you have a contradiction its time to see if anyone made a mistake. As I read through the Harvard paper I see a glaring mistake: He's not comparing averages, he's comparing extremes!!! In other words, he looked for the most hottest or wettest 50 year period in any given one region in the entiring 800-2000 period and asks if that fell into 1900-2000. Obviously, by sheer weight of statistics, for any given single region it is very likely to fall in 800-1900 rather than 1900-2000, even if it's more likely to fall within 1900-2000, and that's exactly what the data tells us. For instance the Dust Bowl of the USA during the 1920's, an usually dry and hot period. Interesting enough, in fig. 3 there's a maximally extreme anomaly right there at that time, therefore demonstrating the potential problem of this method: it's ease by which it's influenced by outlier weather patterns.

His graphs for the medieval warming and little ice age (fig. 2 and fig. 1 respectively) don't look for extremes but look for any anomalies at all, making them total worthless. Of course you're going to find an anomaly, climate isn't static and of course over 500 years nearly everywhere will give an anomaly, and that's exactly what you got. In the end there seems to be some serious issues by which the Harvard paper read data.

Irregardless, nothing in this paper have made even a token argument that the medieval warm period was as warm as you say, Perinquus, because they're not comparing the same thing. This paper proves nothing.

[Perinquus]

Nonsense. What you are doing is the epitamy of selective data reading to support one cause over another. The fact that you would choose a single study over the IPCC 2001 report (http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/070.htm) which uses several papers is telling of either you misunderstanding or intentions.

Anyways, whenever you have a contradiction its time to see if anyone made a mistake. As I read through the Harvard paper I see a glaring mistake: He's not comparing averages, he's comparing extremes!!! In other words, he looked for the most hottest or wettest 50 year period in any given one region in the entiring 800-2000 period and asks if that fell into 1900-2000. Obviously, by sheer weight of statistics, for any given single region it is very likely to fall in 800-1900 rather than 1900-2000, even if it's more likely to fall within 1900-2000, and that's exactly what the data tells us.

That might be so, all things being equal. However all things are not equal - or so proponents of human-induced global warming tell us. They tell us we are in a period of unprecedented global warming. And if this is unprecedented, as they claim, then we should expect to find these uncommonly hot periods within this period of human induced global warming, but we don't.

For instance the Dust Bowl of the USA during the 1920's, an usually dry and hot period. Interesting enough, in fig. 3 there's a maximally extreme anomaly right there at that time, therefore demonstrating the potential problem of this method: it's ease by which it's influenced by outlier weather patterns.

His graphs for the medieval warming and little ice age (fig. 2 and fig. 1 respectively) don't look for extremes but look for any anomalies at all, making them total worthless. Of course you're going to find an anomaly, climate isn't static and of course over 500 years nearly everywhere will give an anomaly, and that's exactly what you got. In the end there seems to be some serious issues by which the Harvard paper read data.

Irregardless, nothing in this paper have made even a token argument that the medieval warm period was as warm as you say, Perinquus, because they're not comparing the same thing. This paper proves nothing.

As a matter of fact, I am not relying exclusively on a single study for this view. There is another from Cambridge that supports the global warm period:

CCNet CLIMATE SCARES & CLIMATE CHANGE - 3 October 2001

"I'm an old Greenpeace, left-wing kind of guy and thought basically,
yes, things are getting worse and worse. Then I read an interview
with Julian Simon, [the late] American economist, that tells us things are
actually getting better and better, contrary to common knowledge. I
thought, No, it can't be true. But he said 'Go check it yourself,' ... so
I'll have to get his book, to see that it was probably wrong. And it was
sufficiently good, his book, and it looked sufficiently substantiated that
it would probably be fun to debunk. So I got some of my best students
together and we did a study course in the fall of '97.... We wanted to
show, you know, this is entirely wrong, this is right-wing American
propaganda. As it turned out over the next couple months, we were
getting debunked for the most part."
--Bjorn Lomborg, VOANews, 1 October 2001

And the Cambridge study examined evidence from a wide distribution:

(1) LITTLE ICE AGE - ARTIC
C02 Science Magazine, 3 October 2001

(2) THE LITTLE ICE AGE IN THE ARABIAN SEA
CO2 Science Magazine, 3 October 2001

(3) LITTLE ICE AGE - SOUTH AMERICA
CO2 Science Magazine, 26 September 2001

(4) THE MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD AND LITTLE ICE AGE IN RUSSIA
CO2 Science Magazine, 26 September 2001

(5) LITTLE ICE AGE - EUROPE
CO2 Science Magazine, 19 September 2001

(6) LITTLE ICE AGE - AFRICA
CO2 Science Magazine, 12 September 2001

(7) A SOLAR-INFLUENCED LITTLE ICE AGE AND MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD IN TROPICAL
VENEZUELA
CO2 Science Magazine, 12 September 2001

(8 ) GLOBAL WARMING FACTS, CONSENSUS MELT AWAY
TechCentralStation, 1 October 2001

(9) DANISH SCIENTIST CLAIMS KYOTO TREATY USELESS
VOANews, 1 October 2001

20th Century Warming Not Unprecedented, Experts Testify

I've been able to find mention of the fact that the European Space Agency also holds the position that the medieval warm period was global, but I haven't been able to find their report.

But the final pararaphs in the article linked to above is right on, I think.

There is a prominent group of climate modelers and statisticians who fervently believe that the recent observed warming is human induced. They simply assert that periods such as the Medieval Warm Period didn't happen. As the EOS group puts it, "modeling and statistical studies indicate that such anomalous warmth cannot be explained by natural factors but, instead, requires significant anthropogenic (that is, 'human') influences during the 20th century." The only conclusion to draw from statements such as that is that it matters not what the proxy record says - there can be no Medieval Warm Period.

But much of the broader scientific community, especially many geologists and paleoclimatologists, do not accept this argument. They argue that just because the modelers cannot explain natural climate variability, that does not mean it does not exist. They say they can see it clearly in the data. And they have a point.

The fact is that there is evidence that the warm period was global, but the people who advocate the view that the current warming trend in completely the result of human action simply conclude that since this could not have been responsible for earlier warming periods, there were no earlier warming periods. Nonesense. There were earlier warming periods, and earlier cooling periods. The last great ice age was started by one, and ended by the other. The medieval warm period was only one of these, it's just the most recent one we have evidence for.

I don't dispute that greenhouse emissions need to be curbed, and as I said earlier, I'm all for alternate energy sources that will allow us to do this. I don't even deny that greenhouse emissions may be playing some role in the current warming trend. But I'm not conviced that we are mostly or solely responsible, or that the proposed solutions, such as Kyoto, will not end up doing more harm than good.

[HyperionX]

Nonsense. What you are doing is the epitamy of selective data reading to support one cause over another. The fact that you would choose a single study over the IPCC 2001 report (http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/070.htm) which uses several papers is telling of either you misunderstanding or intentions.

Anyways, whenever you have a contradiction its time to see if anyone made a mistake. As I read through the Harvard paper I see a glaring mistake: He's not comparing averages, he's comparing extremes!!! In other words, he looked for the most hottest or wettest 50 year period in any given one region in the entiring 800-2000 period and asks if that fell into 1900-2000. Obviously, by sheer weight of statistics, for any given single region it is very likely to fall in 800-1900 rather than 1900-2000, even if it's more likely to fall within 1900-2000, and that's exactly what the data tells us.

That might be so, all things being equal. However all things are not equal - or so proponents of human-induced global warming tell us. They tell us we are in a period of unprecedented global warming. And if this is unprecedented, as they claim, then we should expect to find these uncommonly hot periods within this period of human induced global warming, but we don't.

Then you're just being brain dead. Reread your own data first. These uncommonly hot periods do exists if had bothered to check for them, but not the most severe of 1300 years all over the world all at once.

For instance the Dust Bowl of the USA during the 1920's, an usually dry and hot period. Interesting enough, in fig. 3 there's a maximally extreme anomaly right there at that time, therefore demonstrating the potential problem of this method: it's ease by which it's influenced by outlier weather patterns.

His graphs for the medieval warming and little ice age (fig. 2 and fig. 1 respectively) don't look for extremes but look for any anomalies at all, making them total worthless. Of course you're going to find an anomaly, climate isn't static and of course over 500 years nearly everywhere will give an anomaly, and that's exactly what you got. In the end there seems to be some serious issues by which the Harvard paper read data.

Irregardless, nothing in this paper have made even a token argument that the medieval warm period was as warm as you say, Perinquus, because they're not comparing the same thing. This paper proves nothing.

As a matter of fact, I am not relying exclusively on a single study for this view. There is another from Cambridge that supports the global warm period:

CCNet CLIMATE SCARES & CLIMATE CHANGE - 3 October 2001

Nonsense. Nearly all of this comes from CO2 Science Magazine which is a totally discredited source with links to the fossil fuel industry, and one from Sallie Baliunas, someone who's claim of global warming by solar variation has been more or less discredited recently by the existence of global dimming. The one is a political piece and has little to do with global warming.

*snip some irrelevant stuff here*

http://www.techcentralstation.com/080503F.html

I've been able to find mention of the fact that the European Space Agency also holds the position that the medieval warm period was global, but I haven't been able to find their report.

But the final pararaphs in the article linked to above is right on, I think.

There is a prominent group of climate modelers and statisticians who fervently believe that the recent observed warming is human induced. They simply assert that periods such as the Medieval Warm Period didn't happen. As the EOS group puts it, "modeling and statistical studies indicate that such anomalous warmth cannot be explained by natural factors but, instead, requires significant anthropogenic (that is, 'human') influences during the 20th century." The only conclusion to draw from statements such as that is that it matters not what the proxy record says - there can be no Medieval Warm Period.

But much of the broader scientific community, especially many geologists and paleoclimatologists, do not accept this argument. They argue that just because the modelers cannot explain natural climate variability, that does not mean it does not exist. They say they can see it clearly in the data. And they have a point.

The fact is that there is evidence that the warm period was global, but the people who advocate the view that the current warming trend in completely the result of human action simply conclude that since this could not have been responsible for earlier warming periods, there were no earlier warming periods. Nonesense. There were earlier warming periods, and earlier cooling periods. The last great ice age was started by one, and ended by the other. The medieval warm period was only one of these, it's just the most recent one we have evidence for.

That article is a piece of junk because it goes right back to the first source I've responded to as evidence of a medieval warming period. In fact, I have now recently found the discrediting of that original source here. In fact, the editor that let that piece o' junk through had to resign because of it as shown here.

This argument of yours is getting very weak pretty quickly now. In fact, I'd say you were duped by 2+ year old data that was well known to be wrong by now.

I don't dispute that greenhouse emissions need to be curbed, and as I said earlier, I'm all for alternate energy sources that will allow us to do this. I don't even deny that greenhouse emissions may be playing some role in the current warming trend. But I'm not conviced that we are mostly or solely responsible, or that the proposed solutions, such as Kyoto, will not end up doing more harm than good.

As shown by the data above, your argument is nonsense. Nearly all (real) evidence points to greenhouse gas as the primary culprit. The only thing I agree with you is on the Kyoto treaty, which I feel is too timid to be meaningful.

[Illuminatus Primus]

[snip strawmen]

This article is for idiots.

Refuting me on the grounds of secondary evidence posted after the OP has precisely nothing to do with the original article. Anything else is simply ascribing to me positions I did not make.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Although just as a query, did that MIT bloke say that CFC's were greenhouse gases? I thought the major issue with CFC's was ozone depletion.

Chloroflorocarbons are thousands of times stronger than carbon dioxide at trapping heat energy in the atmosphere. However, their volumes are so much smaller than the carbon dioxide quantities that they only form a small portion of the Earth's greenhouse effect.

[El Moose Monstero]

Although just as a query, did that MIT bloke say that CFC's were greenhouse gases? I thought the major issue with CFC's was ozone depletion.

Chloroflorocarbons are thousands of times stronger than carbon dioxide at trapping heat energy in the atmosphere. However, their volumes are so much smaller than the carbon dioxide quantities that they only form a small portion of the Earth's greenhouse effect.

Gah, damnit. So they are. I remember the wee table thing with the percentages on it from last year. I'm a fool. Thanks, IP.

[Perinquus]

That article is a piece of junk because it goes right back to the first source I've responded to as evidence of a medieval warming period. In fact, I have now recently found the discrediting of that original source here. In fact, the editor that let that piece o' junk through had to resign because of it as shown here.

Yes, and isn't that interesting? Richard Muller, writing for Technology Review in December of 2003, had this to say of the matter:

Six editors recently resigned from the journal Climate Research because of this issue. Their crime: publishing the article "Proxy Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1,000 Years," by W. Soon and S. Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Without passing judgment on this particular paper, I can still point out that our journals are full of poor papers. If editors were dismissed every time they published one, they would all be out of work within a month or two. What made the Soon and Baliunas situation different is that their paper attracted enormous attention. And that's because it threw doubt on the hockey stick.

If you don't know what the hockey stick is, do a Google search, including the word "climate." You'll learn that it is the nickname for a remarkable graph that has become a poster child for the environmental movement. Published by M. Mann and colleagues in 1998 and 1999, the plot showed that the climate of the Northern Hemisphere had been remarkably constant for 900 years until it suddenly began to heat up about 100 years ago-right about the time that human use of fossil fuels began to push up levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The overall shape of the curve resembled a hockey stick laying on its back-a straight part with a sudden bend upwards near the end.
Soon the graph acquired a very effective sound bite: 1998 was the warmest year in the last thousand years. This carried a compelling conclusion: global warming is real; humans are to blame; we must do something-hurry and ratify the Kyoto treaty on limitations of fossil fuel emissions. Yet some scientists urged caution, a go slow approach. As a wise man once warned, "do not let the merely urgent interfere with the truly important."

There was a minor scientific glitch. The hockey stick contradicted previous work that had concluded that there had been a "medieval warm period." In fact, it disagreed with a plot published by the IPCC itself a decade earlier (in its 1990 report) that showed pronounced warm temperatures from the years 1000 to 1400.

Such inconsistencies are common in science, and scientists love them. They mean more work, maybe a little public attention (which can't hurt funding), and the excitement that comes with the effort to resolve uncertainty. The Soon and Baliunas paper was part of this process. Their paper presented all the data in favor of the medieval warm period.

The debate grew. Critics of Soon and Baliunas charged that their paper wasn't balanced; because it consisted of a compilation of data showing warming at different locations at different times, the criticism went, the work was not a valid refutation of the hockey stick analysis, which had combined a much larger set of data. That was a valid concern, but it didn't necessarily mean that the Soon and Baliunas results should be ignored. It simply meant that the issue was still open.

Meanwhile, critics excoriated Climate Research for allegedly failing to vet the Soon and Baliunas paper properly. The publisher, a German company called Inter-Research, agreed, leading to the resignation of the journal's editor-in-chief and, eventually, five other editors.

Then last month the situation became even more complex. S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick published a paper in Energy and Environment with a detailed critique of the original hockey stick work. They stated bluntly that the original Mann papers contained "collation errors, unjustifiable truncations of extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculations of principal components, and other quality control defects." Moreover, when they corrected these errors, the medieval warm period came back-strongly. Mann, et al., disagreed. They immediately posted a reply on the Web, with their criticism of McIntyre and McKitrick's analysis.

Last month's article by McIntyre and McKitrick raised pertinent questions. They had been given access (by Mann) to details of the work that were not publicly available. Independent analysis and (when possible) independent data sets are ultimately the arbiter of truth. This is precisely the way that science should, and usually does, proceed. That's why Nobel Prizes are often awarded one to three decades after the work was completed-to avoid mistakes. Truth is not easy to find, but a slow process is the only one that works reliably.

Medieval Global Warming

That's the problem with the advaocates of human-caused global warming. There seems to be something of a rush to judgement here.

This argument of yours is getting very weak pretty quickly now. In fact, I'd say you were duped by 2+ year old data that was well known to be wrong by now.

Is it? Look at the end of the extract from the above article, and you will find reference to work only just over a year old that casts some doubt on the accuracy of the Mann paper that Soon and Baliunas originally refuted, pointing to "collation errors, unjustifiable truncations of extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculations of principal components, and other quality control defects."

Maybe the issue just isn't as thoroughly settled as you seem to think.

I don't dispute that greenhouse emissions need to be curbed, and as I said earlier, I'm all for alternate energy sources that will allow us to do this. I don't even deny that greenhouse emissions may be playing some role in the current warming trend. But I'm not conviced that we are mostly or solely responsible, or that the proposed solutions, such as Kyoto, will not end up doing more harm than good.

As shown by the data above, your argument is nonsense. Nearly all (real) evidence points to greenhouse gas as the primary culprit. The only thing I agree with you is on the Kyoto treaty, which I feel is too timid to be meaningful.

Given that Kyoto as it is would be a terrible blow to our economy, I shudder to imagine the results of measures you think would not be too timid. I shudder even more to think of implementing such measures and then finding out twenty years down the road that the latest research casts serious doubt on the accuracy of many of the currently accepted theories.

[HyperionX]

That article is a piece of junk because it goes right back to the first source I've responded to as evidence of a medieval warming period. In fact, I have now recently found the discrediting of that original source here. In fact, the editor that let that piece o' junk through had to resign because of it as shown here.

Yes, and isn't that interesting? Richard Muller, writing for Technology Review in December of 2003, had this to say of the matter:

Six editors recently resigned from the journal Climate Research because of this issue. Their crime: publishing the article "Proxy Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1,000 Years," by W. Soon and S. Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Without passing judgment on this particular paper, I can still point out that our journals are full of poor papers. If editors were dismissed every time they published one, they would all be out of work within a month or two. What made the Soon and Baliunas situation different is that their paper attracted enormous attention. And that's because it threw doubt on the hockey stick.

If you don't know what the hockey stick is, do a Google search, including the word "climate." You'll learn that it is the nickname for a remarkable graph that has become a poster child for the environmental movement. Published by M. Mann and colleagues in 1998 and 1999, the plot showed that the climate of the Northern Hemisphere had been remarkably constant for 900 years until it suddenly began to heat up about 100 years ago-right about the time that human use of fossil fuels began to push up levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The overall shape of the curve resembled a hockey stick laying on its back-a straight part with a sudden bend upwards near the end.
Soon the graph acquired a very effective sound bite: 1998 was the warmest year in the last thousand years. This carried a compelling conclusion: global warming is real; humans are to blame; we must do something-hurry and ratify the Kyoto treaty on limitations of fossil fuel emissions. Yet some scientists urged caution, a go slow approach. As a wise man once warned, "do not let the merely urgent interfere with the truly important."

There was a minor scientific glitch. The hockey stick contradicted previous work that had concluded that there had been a "medieval warm period." In fact, it disagreed with a plot published by the IPCC itself a decade earlier (in its 1990 report) that showed pronounced warm temperatures from the years 1000 to 1400.

Such inconsistencies are common in science, and scientists love them. They mean more work, maybe a little public attention (which can't hurt funding), and the excitement that comes with the effort to resolve uncertainty. The Soon and Baliunas paper was part of this process. Their paper presented all the data in favor of the medieval warm period.

The debate grew. Critics of Soon and Baliunas charged that their paper wasn't balanced; because it consisted of a compilation of data showing warming at different locations at different times, the criticism went, the work was not a valid refutation of the hockey stick analysis, which had combined a much larger set of data. That was a valid concern, but it didn't necessarily mean that the Soon and Baliunas results should be ignored. It simply meant that the issue was still open.

Meanwhile, critics excoriated Climate Research for allegedly failing to vet the Soon and Baliunas paper properly. The publisher, a German company called Inter-Research, agreed, leading to the resignation of the journal's editor-in-chief and, eventually, five other editors.

Then last month the situation became even more complex. S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick published a paper in Energy and Environment with a detailed critique of the original hockey stick work. They stated bluntly that the original Mann papers contained "collation errors, unjustifiable truncations of extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculations of principal components, and other quality control defects." Moreover, when they corrected these errors, the medieval warm period came back-strongly. Mann, et al., disagreed. They immediately posted a reply on the Web, with their criticism of McIntyre and McKitrick's analysis.

Last month's article by McIntyre and McKitrick raised pertinent questions. They had been given access (by Mann) to details of the work that were not publicly available. Independent analysis and (when possible) independent data sets are ultimately the arbiter of truth. This is precisely the way that science should, and usually does, proceed. That's why Nobel Prizes are often awarded one to three decades after the work was completed-to avoid mistakes. Truth is not easy to find, but a slow process is the only one that works reliably.

Medieval Global Warming

That's the problem with the advaocates of human-caused global warming. There seems to be something of a rush to judgement here.

Nonsense again. Scientific journals are not newspapers, they must have a very high standard with peer-reviewed everything, and that paper was a total turd, with a number of methodology problems. Editors resigned because they are held to such high standards.

The other argument of this consists of the same old argument that because sometimes theory are overturned, we should wait and do nothing because maybe this will be overturned as well. That's nonsense as well; unless there is some reason to believe that something is wrong you have to take it seriously. Now, it's been 4 years since that Mann paper, and little real evidence has appeared to question global warming and much that supports. Judge for yourself.

As for the McIntyre and McKitrick paper, well, read for yourself. They comfused degrees with radians, made up his temperature scale (inadvertently it would seem), and a host of other mistakes. In short, it's bulls***.

This argument of yours is getting very weak pretty quickly now. In fact, I'd say you were duped by 2+ year old data that was well known to be wrong by now.

Is it? Look at the end of the extract from the above article, and you will find reference to work only just over a year old that casts some doubt on the accuracy of the Mann paper that Soon and Baliunas originally refuted, pointing to "collation errors, unjustifiable truncations of extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculations of principal components, and other quality control defects."

Maybe the issue just isn't as thoroughly settled as you seem to think.

That's funny. When the argument against global warming consists of a guy who's work makes you wonder if he could even add (see McIntyre and McKitrick's outing), I think you can get a good idea of how settled things are. I think I see the problem now, you're ridiculously out of loop. If you had known what had actually happened you've would've known that all your arguments was refuted a while ago. Don't feel bad, the conservative attacks was quite thorough, and a google search of Mann's paper leads only to unfounded attacks.

As shown by the data above, your argument is nonsense. Nearly all (real) evidence points to greenhouse gas as the primary culprit. The only thing I agree with you is on the Kyoto treaty, which I feel is too timid to be meaningful.

Given that Kyoto as it is would be a terrible blow to our economy, I shudder to imagine the results of measures you think would not be too timid. I shudder even more to think of implementing such measures and then finding out twenty years down the road that the latest research casts serious doubt on the accuracy of many of the currently accepted theories.

The concept that Kyoto would hurt the economy is absurd, especially now with oil prices so high. All it would entail would be replace inefficient factories, power plants, and vehicles with newer more efficient ones, and perhaps fossil fuels with biodiesel or thermo-depolymerization oil (so called alternative fuel sources). The cost would be a transition cost, but in the long run things will be more effient and at least reduce our dependency on foreign oil. Regardless, a switch to nuclear power and renewable sources and investment in alternative fuels and perhaps hydrogen in the long run I see no reason why we can't reduce CO2 emissions to close to zero.