More Hockey Stick Temperature Data

I found the short version of J. Storrs Hall's history of temperature in the the Greenland ice from Watts Up with That?  I am going to present a shorter version here with my comments, but it is worth looking at the original version, which also goes further back in the history of the Earth.  Meanwhile, let us all be very sure that we have a solid understanding of the relatively recent steady and stable climate provided to us by beneficent natural forces prior to man's industrial age, in which man acquired the capability to kill the Earth and promptly set out to do so.  Yes, we all on board with Obama and so many leaders of governments all over the world gathered in Copenhagen who are only too happy to lay down the law and restrict our energy use for the good of the Earth.  ......Good, you know me well enough to know that the last couple of sentences were tongue in cheek, mimicking the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming nuts!

At the Foresight Institute, J. Storrs Hall had some interesting graphs made from NOAA ice core data (Alley, R.B. 2000. The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland. Quaternary Science Reviews 19:213-226.)

Let us look at the recent history of this Greenland ice core data and note how stable the temperature was prior to 1840 during the Little Ice Age.

Note the unique rise from 1840 to about 1880.  This is a terribly sudden rise.  Now just as Mann and Briffa look at their bristlecone and tree ring data sets with flat temperature histories in much of this same period and then append the land surface instrumental measurement data to the late 20th Century as enhanced by the urban heat island effect to create a similar hockey stick set of temperature data, we examine this data in the same mindset.  Well, clearly the early industrial age, though limited to Britain mostly at that time, with the U.S. and Germany as minor players, was very effective in altering the world's climate!  Shame on those Brits!  It's really their fault.  They should pay us punitive taxes!  Indeed, the Brits owe everyone in the whole world.

We should note that there has been a further temperature rise in fits and starts after 1900 of about another 0.5 C.  Dare we look further back in history as seen by Greenland ice?  Awwww......sure, why not.  We are intrepid explorers here!

Hmm.....You mean before the Little Ice Age there was a warm period which was much warmer than it was in 1900?  It was even warmer than now!  Who woulda thunk?  And look at that awful temperature rise from 900 AD to 1025 AD of 1.7 C.  What do you suppose those people coming out of the Dark Ages in Europe did to cause that?  Were they really roasting that many Christian heretics in bonfires?  Was it due to all the blacksmiths hammering out armor and making swords?  I guess whatever they were doing must have stopped in about 1025 AD.  Maybe they noted the fact that their activities had caused man-made global warming.  I bet they all got together in Copenhagen and signed a treaty to burn less wood and charcoal!  Apparently, after that, it got colder and everyone was really happy again!  Man warming the Earth being such an awful bad thing and all.

 

Dare we look still further back?  Of course, we are all fearless here!

Oh my!  It was as warm (at least in Greenland) from about 2500 BC to 500 AD as it is now!  What on earth were those Romans and Greeks and Persians and Indians and Chinese doing then to cause those high temperatures?  Oh, and how come there was ice on Greenland at all?  How dare the ice in Greenland not have melted in 1200 BC when it was about 2.2 C warmer than now.  Al Gore, the inventor of the internet, says it should melt when that warm and flood the Earth with sea levels 20 feet higher than now.

J. Storrs Hall keeps going back and shows us what we really should worry about.  Namely, the Earth has had a real fascination with ice ages in earlier times.  He reminds us, as I have in the past, that if you want to worry about climate change, worry about the way natural forces tend to give the Earth many an ice age.  We should be very thankful it is warm.  Of course, if it were as warm as it was from 2500 BC to 500 AD, we might actually have good reason to be happy.  After all , man made some pretty good advances in that time, when according to Obama and Gore, man should have been too miserable to function.  He should have been hiding deep in his cool caves.

So, Obama and Gore, the UN, and all those European leaders, and the reluctant Indians and Chinese are all sitting down and trying to put the blacksmiths out of work.  If they put enough blacksmiths out of work, do you suppose they can bring on the return of the Little Ice Age?  Wouldn't that be just grand?