Posted on 07/10/2012 12:53:24 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
Their findings demonstrate that this trend involves a cooling of -0.3°C per millennium due to gradual changes to the position of the sun and an increase in the distance between the Earth and the sun.
The Earth keeps gaining a relatively small amount of mass, online I see estimates from 10^7 to 10^9 kg per day, with the mass of the Earth about 6*10^24 kg. The Earth’s orbital speed over time should be slightly slowing due to drag from whatever particles are out there. I would think both of those would lead to the Earth getting closer to the Sun.
So why is the Earth moving away from the Sun? Is the Sun shedding so much mass (and energy that was mass) that its gravitational force is weakening?
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ferdberple says:
Billy Liar says:
July 9, 2012 at 3:29 pm
Why not just accept that they are unreliable indicators of past climate?
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It isn’t the trees that are unreliable, it is the “calibration” methodology used by some climate scientists. A Lucia showed on her web-site, the divergence problem is a result of calibration.
It is interesting to note that this study does not demonstrate the divergence problem, which suggests that it does not have the calibration flaw found in the papers such and Mann and more recently Gergis.
I agree completely with that statement. As a student (a long time ago) I studied tree rings in the southwest US. There is a direct relation between tree-ring thickness and moisture and a more indirect relation between tree rings and temperature. First, most tree ring growth occurs in the spring and is a function of winter moisture. An El Niño winter generally is moist and cool which contributes to thicker tree rings as soil moisture is more likely to be retained for vegetation use. A La Niña winter is more likely to be drier and warmer leading to thinner tree ring growth. So indirectly, we can conclude that winter temperatures are likely warmer with a La Niña event.
However, summer precipitation and temperature, at least in the southwest US, are not driven by either seasonal climate event. In the summer, precipitation comes from tropical moisture from either or both the Gulf of Mexico and the far eastern Pacific Ocean. The occurrence and duration is dependent on the position of the continental high pressure dome which circulates moisture from these two areas clockwise over the southwest. If the location is over NM or west Texas, moisture will not flow northward. Further east over the central US, moisture will stream into the area in the pattern commonly known as the summer monsoon. A connection between La Niña/El Niño events and the high pressure area location has not been defined to my knowledge. In any event, summer temperatures and precipitation are not a markedly important factor in tree ring growth so conclusions as to historic summer temperature and climate based on tree rings are tenuous at best.
Hide the decline!
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