Globe Warmer In Time of Vikings

SEWilco writes "A record of recent global temperatures has been assembled by piecing together the hundreds of studies with past temperature estimates [Discovery, Harvard]. The record shows there was a "Medieval Warm Period" warmer than the 20th Century. This was followed by the "Little Ice Age", which ended around 1900. We're having average climate now. Numerous sources indicated this, but apparently were not gathered into one document" This adds some more background reading to the previously linked Telegraph story.

Comments

In too deep now...

[heldlikesound]

This isssue has be politicized to the point that even with the three or four recent findings that seem to support the case that our quickness to attribute shifts in climate to the actions of man may be completely off base, the side screaming bloody murder for the last 10 years will never admit that they may have been wrong.

Having said that, I am sympathetic to the evironmental movement, there's just nothing I hate more than bad science that persists due to politics.

Re:In too deep now...

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense, but I'd say *you* are engaging in poor science. You yourself use words like "seem" and "may be" (and I do like how you chose to bold the next word, de-emphasizing the speculative nature of the results), but you insist that people who don't immediately admit that they may have been wrong are bad scientists. This is very poor reasoning on your part.

Look at what's been shown: it *might* be the case that Earth's climate has shifted rather rapidly in the past. Without seeing the details of the study and not being myself an expert in the field, I think most of us will accept that. So what? So Earth's climate may have changed rapidly in the past. There have been mass extinctions in the past too (the Cretacious-Tertiary event, for one), but that doesn't mean mankind isn't responsible for the current massive number of extinctions planet-wide.

In fact, it's worse that that. There are many studies showing that the warming probably *is* anthropogenic. The warning trend tracks smack-on with the rise in atmospheric CO2, for one thing. There are studies on glaciers that must have been quite cold for millenia, but are now suddenly warming up. Computer models - starting with the basic physics, mind you - show the same warming trend. We have a mechanism that points to human involvement, we have evidence that it is humans and we have evidence that this hasn't happened in the past.

You bring in three or four new studies which don't even actually contradict the anthropogenic theory and expect people to just suddenly change their views, especially when those new studies don't do anything to explain away the previous results as *non*-anthropogenic? I'd be disappointed with any of my fellow scientists who *did* suddenly switch views based on such poor arguments.

The fact is, politics or not, scientists very rarely suddenly drop old theories and embrace new ones. Evidence seldom comes in so strongly that it makes sense to do so. Usually, it's a slow trickle of data, often over decades, that shift views.

Re: In too deep now...

[Black Parrot]

> This isssue has be politicized to the point that even with the three or four recent findings that seem to support the case that our quickness to attribute shifts in climate to the actions of man may be completely off base, the side screaming bloody murder for the last 10 years will never admit that they may have been wrong.

> Having said that, I am sympathetic to the evironmental movement, there's just nothing I hate more than bad science that persists due to politics.

Thing is, we have good sound physics to explain how various gas mixtures deal with radiated heat, and we have good sound evidence that the amounts of some of the relevant gasses in the atmosphere have grown exponentially as civilization has progressed.

Where's the bad science you're talking about? Do you dispute scientists' claims about the role of atmospheric gasses in the temperatures of other planets?

Just because the earth's temperature fluctuates as a background noise, doesn't mean we should ignore what we're doing to the atmosphere. Yes, distinguishing signal from noise is going to be difficult until the signal is so strong we're fuxored. But there's lots of good science in this beyond the daily weather report.

Hmmm

[Henry V .009]

Too late. In Western societies, more people believe in Global Warming than believe in God. It is to good a story to stay anything but the global boogeyman it is.

Research sponsored by who?

[Glass of Water]

The trolling was quite predictable on this one. If you RTFA, you'll note that:

The study - funded by NASA, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the American Petroleum Institute - will be published in the Energy and Environment journal.
(from the Harvard article)

I think the conclusion hastily drawn by many of my fellow slashdotters is an example of post hoc ergo propter hoc. In other words, the argument that is being made goes like this: Global warming is caused by a factor other than pollution. Therefore, pollution does not cause global warming.

That said, I agree that bandwagon environmentalism is a bad trend. It does not seem, however, that the current US administration is in danger of subverting our economy with overzealous environmental regulation.

Re:Research sponsored by who?

[jellisky]

In other words, the argument that is being made goes like this: Global warming is caused by a factor other than pollution. Therefore, pollution does not cause global warming.
--------------

Hate to break it to you, but that argument is perfectly valid since it's just a restatement of the first statement. It's a perfectly valid and logical argument.

If the argument went:
Global warming in this study is caused by a factor other than pollution; therefore, pollution does no cause global warming.
then there'd be a logical fallacy.

I'm also not seeing where your post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is occuring. Perhaps you are insinuating that the scientists in the study are claiming that, since pollution is a modern effect and there was global warming before modern times, pollution was not a factor in the climate change, and thus, is not a factor in global warming at all. From what I read of the articles, I don't see any place where they say that pollution is NOT a factor in current climate. The insinuation of the articles seems to be that perhaps we are overestimating pollution's effect on the climate system, which is not a bad insinuation given recent studies on the carbon dioxide budget (see almost anything published by Dr. Scott Denning over the last two years). As for the /.ers making logical fallacies, let's just say that I wouldn't be surprised... but your example leaves much to be desired.

As an atmospheric scientist, I've seen enough global warming results from people on both sides of the fence that I feel comfortable saying something that may surprise many people: we don't have enough of a clue of what's going on to make any sort of accurate prediction of climate. These big old climate models that run for months on our supercomputers aren't very useful since they rely on so many parametrizations. And how these parametrizations are implemented can seriously affect the results of the models. We're finding out that the climate is so chaotic over even long times with averaging that prediction is difficult, at best. But, we're making strides in understanding the feedback mechanisms that are present... slowly but surely. In other words, expect even the most basic ideas of the climate scientists to be in constant flux for another decade or two. Climate science is much like nuclear science was during the beginning of the 1900's.

-Jellisky

Re: What I don't get. . .

[Bastian]

Is why so many people seem to want to oversimplify the situation.

As with any set of data, it's not all signal and it's not all noise. Much of the research in global warming may be due to political motive. (Though personally, I'm not inclined to agree that environmentalism is a purely political issue. I have a lot of reasons to be concerned by the idea that Florida might start shrinking in the next century, and none of them have to do with politics.) However, the focus of all the stuff I've heard about lately is on trying to figure out just how much of the change in global climate over the past century is due to natural fluctuation and how much is due to pollution.

Besides, even if it turns out to be entirely due to nautural fluctuation, it seems that it would be in our best interests to still modify the actions of humanity as a whole to promote a global climate that is best suited to humans. People don't think irrigation is a stupid idea because Mother Nature didn't put a body of water in the middle of every cornfield. The issue at hand should be what action is ultimately the most beneficial to the world.

Re:One Word: Bull

[jackjumper]

Don't be so quick. The vikings abandoned their greenland settlements when the temperature dropped.