National Geographic: Melting Mars Means Man-Made Global Warming a Myth

NewsBusters, National Geographic ^ | 3/1/2007 | Noel Sheppard

[AT7Saluki]

...Regardless, the earth-shattering piece began ...

Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.

The article marvelously continued:

Earth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (Get an overview: "Global Warming Fast Facts".)

Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.

In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.

[UCANSEE2]

Now I know why I haven't heard lately of anyone committing suicide by locking themselves in a garage with the engine running.

I Thank God and Jim Robinson every day, because I learn something new everyday that I log into FR.

Thanks to you too, P-Marlowe.

[bcsco]

I enjoyed your counter arguments; especially your second one. The problem I see with the first one is that the greens claim the C02 emissions come not only from SUV's (or vehicles in general) but also from industrial pollution, etc. Thus it leaves them open for some degree of rebuttal.

Your second argument is great, however. Less C02 means less available for not only plant life but human needs. And I like the way it's put.

[bjc]

I guess after looking at various charts and reading some of the more readily accessible papers, I too am no sure yet about the GW phenomena. The amount of manipulation needed to create these time series types of data and the inherent errors in actual raw measurements and statistically combining data from sources of widely varying degrees of precision makes me skeptical.

I just ran a simple test of the sensitivity of the trend line on Arctic Sea Ice from 1979 to 2005 by testing the impact on the trend line by hypothesizing different numbers for 2006 and 2007. (Note: Again I am not sure of the constancy in method of measuring the extent of Arctic Sea Ice. Certainly I hope the data's reliability has been checked by an independent assessment with no reference to the year the data was collected.) If you project the 25 year average, excluding 2005, for 2006 (i.e., treat 2005 as an anomaly or outlier) then the apparent trend weakens significantly. Now I hasten to add that there is no basis for so treating 2005 but it does serve to demonstrate that the pre-existing variability in Arctic Sea Ice is sufficiently great to call into question the stabiity of the model. With this relatively short time series it is kind of tricky to feel very confident in the trend. I would be interested in seeing the data on Antartic Sea Ice added to the same chart. Has anyone seen such a graph?

[Bitsy]

Exactly. What a pile of rubbish! leftists want us to turn off our AC's, ride bikes, stop farting and run our cars on paper products or whatever but Al Gore will pay someone so he can have carbon credits to do what they don't want us to do. He is both an idiot and a hypocrite!

[bcsco]

leftists want us to turn off our AC's, ride bikes, stop farting...

Well, as I understand it, they're mostly concerned with cows belching and farting :)

[SquirrelKing]

LOL - Just in time for Gorbal Warming benefit concerts this July.

IT'S HAPPENING, PEOPLE! CAN'T YOU SEE HOW SWEATY I AM?

[Islander7]

It's called S P R I N G !

[ancient_geezer]

The counter by such noted scientists as Mr. Limbaugh is to say, "Not Our Fault, therefore No Global Warming."
Interestingly, these are logically equivalent statements -- and both wrong.

All depends on whether or not you use the UN dictionary or not.

At the core of this debate is raw political power, derivable from treaty requirements which require a crisis rooted in an anthropogenic cause to move forward.

In this Ross McKitrick, Canadian economist, hits the nail on the proverbial head.

An Economist's Perspective on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol,
by Ross McKitrick. November 2003

The 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) defined "climate change" as follows:

"Climate change" means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.
( http://unfccc.int/index.html )

The recent Third Assessment Report (TAR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defined it differently ( http://www.ipcc.ch/ ):

Climate change in IPCC usage refers to any change over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity.

This is a very important difference: The IPCC is looking for signs of any change, whereas the policy instruments prescribed by the UNFCCC are not triggered unless it is a particular kind of change: that attributable to human activity. When IPCC officials declare that "climate change" is for real, this is about as informative as announcing that the passage of time is for real. Of course the climate changes: if it didn't Winnipeg would still be under a glacier. But the fact that the last ice age ended doesn't imply that the policy mechanisms of the UNFCCC should kick in. That's the problem with the ambiguity over the term "climate change"-and it seems to trip up a lot of people-accepting the reality of "climate change" does not mean accepting the need for policy interventions. And denying that global warming is a problem requiring costly policy measures is not the same as denying "climate change."

 

Thus it is prudent to be very skeptical and very discerning of all that is offered under the banner of Climate Change.

[Bitsy]

I know. I was trying a little humor and I guess I wasn't up to it. Sorry.

[ancient_geezer]

General cooling since when? The 1930s?

Nah, since the latter quarter of the current interglacial period.

 

Figure 1-2 Climate of the last 2400 years (GISP2)

Figure 1-3 Climate of the last 12,000 years (GISP2)

[driftdiver]

"It's called S P R I N G !"

OH!!! I see. You mean the earths temperature changes naturally?

But environmental whacko's have been declaring a global emergency for the last hundred years that the earth is either too hot or too cold.

[Islander7]

The older I get the wiser I realize my grandparents were.

[AaronInCarolina]

AG, your point is well-taken. In fact, the Holocene Maximum occurred about 5 to 6 thousand years ago, and generally we have been cooling since then. In fact, just by looking at charts, it would seem that we have already begun a downward trend toward the next ice age. I know that timing of ice ages are generally understood to be driven by peak points of Milankovich Cycles. Does anyone know just what the current status is of the 3 Milankovitch cycles are: (Eccentricity, Obliquity, and Precession)? Just from graphs, it would seem we must be very near to the next 100kyr Eccentricity cycle peak.

[driftdiver]

How dare you introduce facts into this discussion.

[bcsco]

I was trying a little humor and I guess I wasn't up to it. Sorry.

No need to apologize. You WERE humorous. I was just adding a little humor of my own.

[ancient_geezer]

I know that timing of ice ages are generally understood to be driven by peak points of Milankovich Cycles.

 

That is the general hypthesis, unfortunately there are severe problems with Milankovich, especially as regards the 100kyr & 41kyr cycles based on eccentricty and lack of 27kyr signal in the data that should be there for precession.

Here's some of articles on the issues, the theory and proposed alternatives to M's hypothesis:

Ice Ages & Astronomical Causes
Brief Introduction to the History of Climate
by Richard A. Muller

An Orbital Theory for Glacial Cycles
Peter Bogenschutz
March 2006
http://www.met.utah.edu/reichler/6030/presentations/Pete_Milankovitch.pdf

A Causality Problem for Milankovitch
Daniel B. Karner and Richard A. Muller
http://muller.lbl.gov/papers/Causality.pdf

Colloquium Paper Spectrum of 100-kyr glacial cycle: Orbital inclination, not eccentricity
Richard A. Muller^* and Gordon J. MacDonald
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=33747

Indexed links to Muller's work on the ice ages

And if you are a real glutton for punishment, a totally different route centered on what is going on inside the sun:

Solar Resonant Diffusion Waves as a Driver of Terrestrial Climate Change
Robert Ehrlich (2007)
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0701117v1

A theory is described based on resonant thermal diffusion waves in the sun that appears to explain many details of the paleotemperature record for the last 5.3 million years. These include the observed periodicities, the relative strengths of each observed cycle, and the sudden emergence in time for the 100 thousand year cycle. Other prior work suggesting a link between terrestrial paleoclimate and solar luminosity variations has not provided any specific mechanism. The particular mechanism described here has been demonstrated empirically, although not previously invoked in the solar context. The theory also lacks most of the problems associated with Milankovitch cycles.

[CarlRS]

I think the Martians need to give up their SUVs, just like King Arthur should have given up his Humvee during the Medieval Warm Spell.
Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says
Global Warming Farce

[cogitator]

Have you read:?

Holocene periodicity in North Atlantic climate and deep-ocean flow south of Iceland, Bianchi and McCave, Nature 397, 515-517.

Centennial-Scale Holocene Climate Variability Revealed by a High-Resolution Speleothem del 18 O Record from SW Ireland, McDermott, Mattey, and Hawkesworth, Science, 294(5545), 1328-1331.

I tried but I can't find a sufficiently high-resolution del 18 0 record from the Southern Hemisphere allowing discernment of the late BC -- early AD era.

[ancient_geezer]

No, just run into abit in what I run across here and there in my tracking down info on the Little Ice Ige & Maunder Minimum.

 

http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/ice/lec19/lec19.htm#little

Little Ice Age

Cold climate and glacier expansion during the Little Ice Age are documented from all continents (except Antarctica) and on major islands from New Zealand to Svalbard (Grove 1988). The best historical evidence comes from the Alps, Scandinavia, and Iceland. The Little Ice Age was not a single, uniformly cold climatic episode. Distinct variations in climate and in glacier activity took place on a regional basis. In Europe and North America, at least six phases of glacier expansion occurred and were separated by milder intervals.

1. 1560-1610 Major advances by all glaciers.
2. 1640-1650 Glacier maximum in Switzerland.
3. 1670-1705 Glacier maximum in Austria.
4. 1720-1750 Glacier maximum in Norway.
5. 1816-1825 Minor advances by all glaciers.
6. 1850-1890 Glacier maximum in Canada/Iceland.

These advances during the Little Ice Age resulted in adverse conditions for farms and villages located in mountain valleys below the glaciers. Many farms and some villages were destroyed by a combination of glacier advance, melt-water floods, landslides, and related disasters. Population in the affected mountain regions declined significantly, due to emigration and death, whereas population elsewhere in "lowland" Europe continued to grow in general during the Little Ice Age.

Glacier advances in the vicinity of Mont Blanc, France, destroyed three villages and heavily damaged a fourth between 1600 and 1610. The oldest of these villages had existed since the 1200s. Likewise in Norway, outlet glaciers of Jostedalsbreen ice cap advanced markedly in the 1700s and destroyed many farms--see Figs. 19-9, 19-10 and 19-11. The local population was reduced to eating bread made with a mixture of ground wheat chaff, straw, and pine bark. Taxes were reduced on farms that suffered physical damage--see Fig. 19-12, and many people were forced to migrate out of the region or become beggars.

Large lateral moraine of the Little Ice Age in vicinity of Hornsund, southern Spitsbergen, Svalbard. Photo © by J.J. Zeeberg; used here by permission.

Jostedalsbreen is the ice cap on the distant horizon. The deep valley is Jostedal, and a "summer farm" is seen to the right. Summer farms are used for tending dairy cattle that graze on the high pasture. During the Little Ice Age such summer farms were unproductive. Outlet glaciers of Jostedalsbreen descended into lower valleys in the distance and destroyed many farms. Photo date 6/87; © by J.S. Aber.

The Little Ice Age was a time of exceptional poverty, misery and suffering in Iceland, as a result of severe winters, major volcanic eruptions, and oppressive Danish colonial rule. Famine and pestilence ravaged the country. The human population of Iceland, which had reached about 70,000 around A.D. 1100, had dwindled to only 34,000 by 1708--less than half the Viking peak (Magnusson 1987). Following a huge volcanic eruption in 1783, there was serious discussion of evacuating the remaining inhabitants to live in Denmark, but this did not actually happen.

Climatic and human consequences of the Little Ice Age are best documented in western Europe. Therefore, some climatologists have concluded naively that this climatic episode was a regional anomaly, not of worldwide significance. This point of view is contradicted strongly by evidence from glaciers in tropical mountain locations. The Quelccaya ice cap in the Andes Mountains of southern Peru is one such site. Ice cores provide direct physical evidence for colder climate between AD 1500 and 1900 (Thompson et al. 1986). This record compares favorably with cooler northern hemisphere temperature and expanded glaciers during the same period. The climatic changes recorded in the Quelccaya ice cap correspond closely with prehistoric cultures of Peru. Farther south, Lake Titicaca rose significantly during the 16th-19th centuries as a result of more humid, cooler conditions (pers. comm. J. Argollo, 1996).

Location map and ice-cap margin

Solar-powered drilling equipment and ice core

Oxygen-isotope and accumulation records

Climatic record and prehistoric civilization

The Little Ice Age was in fact a worldwide event with distinct regional variations (Nesje and Dahl 2000). It is documented from the southern hemisphere to Spitsbergen in the far north (Svendsen and Mangerud 1997). Based on many forms of historical, archeological and geological evidence, global average temperature was 1-2°C cooler than today (Grove 1988). This climatic episode was not recognized at the time; its true character has become clear only since the Little Ice Age ended.

 

A 16sec NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center mpeg of the modeled effect of the Maunder Minimum on Earth's climate:

Hmm wonder which is more regional in extent:

Data @ NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis Maps

Tough call there ;O/.

[ancient_geezer]

You are aware that d¹⁸O is more a proxy for preciptation rates and the hydrological cycle than it is a proxy for temperature aren't you? Makes inferring temperature unabiguously, using it as a proxy, a real problem.