So what caused the glaciers to melt at the end of the last ice age if it is not natural variations in climate. What caused the ice age in the first place and then the melting of the ice. And then in many cycles of such. Man had better learn to adapt to climate change we sure are not going to stop it.

You are soooooooooo behind the curve.......

Last week there were at least 4 or 5 separate rebuttal articles, some citing independent, contradictory studies, over at Wattsupwiththat.com

Anyone just seeing this for the first time, go over there and scroll down to the articles, for a properly balanced perspective on this issue.

"According to the University of Buffalo, the idea that climate change since the mid-20th century might simply be a natural variation like others that have occurred throughout geologic time is dimming. "

I would say it was already pretty dim by the mid-90's, although recent multi-proxy studies have further constrained the variation over at least the past millenium.

Here's the study:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/10/16/0907094106.abstract

Abstract:

"The Arctic is currently undergoing dramatic environmental transformations, but it remains largely unknown how these changes compare with long-term natural variability. Here we present a lake sediment sequence from the Canadian Arctic that records warm periods of the past 200,000 years, including the 20th century. This record provides a perspective on recent changes in the Arctic and predates by approximately 80,000 years the oldest stratigraphically intact ice core recovered from the Greenland Ice Sheet. The early Holocene and the warmest part of the Last Interglacial (Marine Isotope Stage or MIS 5e) were the only periods of the past 200,000 years with summer temperatures comparable to or exceeding today's at this site. Paleoecological and geochemical data indicate that the past three interglacial periods were characterized by similar trajectories in temperature, lake biology, and lakewater pH, all of which tracked orbitally-driven solar insolation. In recent decades, however, the study site has deviated from this recurring natural pattern and has entered an environmental regime that is unique within the past 200 millennia. "

This is somewhat similar in conclusion to the recent Arctic study:

http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/arctic2k.jsp

The human fingerprint on global warming is everywhere. In the Arctic, they are impossible to ignore.

It's accepted by climate alarmists and climate realists alike that the atmosphere warmed by about 0.7 degrees Celsius during the 20th Century. The warming was not linear, however. There were periods of cooling and warming. Much of the net 0.7 degrees of warming occurred in the 1930s. Since 1998 the planet has not warmed; it is cooling. So, there's no need for alarm. I don't believe this University of Buffalo study. They use the typical alarmist words such as "dramatic" and "unprecedented." I knew we'd see more of these alarmist studies leading up to Copenhagen. We'll continue seeing many more scary "climate change" stories and articles to propagate fear and make it easier for the neo-communists in power around the world to sign their precious climate treaty. One day everyone will realize this isn't about saving the planet; it's about power and control; control over everyone and everything. These radicals are about to destroy all the progress and all the achievements of man over the past 200 years, and all based on the lie that CO2, the essential trace gas necessary for all life on Earth, is a dangerous pollutant. Life was far more difficult, dangerous and brief before the industrial revolution, and that's where the neo-commies want to take us - back to the dark ages. Where is our new "green" economy? Where is our new energy infrastructure based on "green" energy? Last time I checked we don't have a replacement infrastructure yet the neo-commies are set to destroy our existing infrastructure. They are creating one of the biggest most destructive scenarios in the history of man. Get ready for a return to death and destruction. Al Gore and George Soros should do fine though.

The mid-20th century saw the onset of the use of DDT. While the midges that died in the lake were not a menace nor a nuisance, the black flies have long been a scourge of the Arctic, and they resided there, too.

Did anyone at the U. of Colorado account for the very strong likelihood that insecticides, not climate change caused the death of these insects?

Just another example of collinearity messing up models.

After reading the study, I can not see how they concluded any evidence to discern the difference between the last warming periods and this current one.

The following statement has no supporting evidence within their study:

"There are periods of time reflected in this sediment core that demonstrate that the climate was as warm as today," said Briner, "but that was due to natural causes, having to do with well-understood patterns of the Earth's orbit around the sun. The whole ecosystem has now shifted and the ecosystem we see during just the last few decades is different from those seen during any of the past warm intervals."

As I see it, they are only assuming there is a different mechanism in place.

Am I missing something?

Or is this just another study that the researchers simply play on the ignorance of the general public with their play on words.

Is there absolute proof that there is AGW? Don't know. But there is overwhelming evidence. All the different avenues of science point to AGW. Each avenue by itself is not proof by itself.

But ice cores, sea cores, lake cores, tree cores, paleoclimatology, computer models, coral cores, on and on and on. They all point to AGW.

Deniers are busy with their shovels, filling in this lake that refutes their claims. Since their rhetoric falls on deaf ears, they are taking a 'hands on' approach.

BTW- there are no 'shoulds', 'coulds', or 'woulds', except for "...which, under natural conditions, would lead to climatic cooling,". Sounds pretty confident to me.

Sounds like another desperate attempt to prove man made Global warming. How can any data from one area of one region on one continent tell anything about such a complex system as our climate.

Micro climates are everywhere on the planet and choosing and using data from such an area is borderline fraudulent.

Mid 20th, you say?

Isn't that when we started sending things into space?
Maybe space travel is the cause of global warming?
It all started with Sputnik, maybe I can get some grant money to study that?

What a joke.

"The 20th century is the only period during the past 200 millennia in which aquatic indicators reflect increased warming, despite the declining effect of slow changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis which, under natural conditions, would lead to climatic cooling,"

Apparently the aquatic indicators didn't pick up the Mediaeval Warm Period and are therefore pretty well useless.

Another desperate attempt to prove a falsehood to be true.

Here is an interesting article on the importance of becoming vegetarians in order to stop global warming: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6891362.ece

I guess its not just CO2 after all. It would be intersting to see what a poll of AGW-supporters demanding cap-and-trade etc. would show regarding whether or not they are actually putting their mouth where their mouth is with regard to diet.

What was the control? Mud from the past 100 years is different from supposed warm times in the past? This sounds fishy. Did they test any equatorial lakes? Did they test the Great Lakes? Oh, I guess all the zebra mussel shells and gobie skeletons in the new layers would screw up the results.

Anonymous said:

"Much of the net 0.7 degrees of warming occurred in the 1930s. Since 1998 the planet has not warmed; it is cooling"

Wrong on both accounts. The degree increase has mostly been in the last 30-40 years. The rate of increase in the last half of the century was 0.13°C ±0.03°C per decade, versus 0.07°C ± 0.02°C per decade for the century as a whole. And no, the temperature has not been going down since your cherry picked year of 1998 (very convenient to choose a strongly anomalously warm year as the baseline- if you choose 1997 or 1999 your argument crumbles). Every year since 2001 has been warmer than any year before it in the instrumental record except for the very strong El Nino year of 1998. One year does not make a trend, and neither 1998 nor 2008 are indicative of an excellerated warming (1998) or an abrupt cooling trend (2008), respectively. Trends need to be at least 5 year, and preferably multi-decadal.

The Sample size is too small and myopic. There were several bloggers who alluded to this. For a far better perspective of climate change I suggest you tap into far more credible sources of science like NASA, JPL, CAL TECH etc... as oppossed to "Buffalo?" here is a very good link that frames our globes history:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/

Basically we are in a very long term cooling trend with short term oscillations to which we now appear to be cooling again (short term). If my understanding of life during the cool and hot periods is correct since the beggining of the earth... FEAR the cool! This doesn't mean we should not be good stewards of our planet, but can we please calm down. Most of this all apears to be agenda driven. As Rahm Emmanuel Said " Don't let a good crisis go to waste".

"Already, agriculture accounts for 1/3 of total greenhouse gas emissions, largely from deforestation, livestock, carbon-intensive transportation, and rice paddies." from
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/climate/2009/10/21/assessing-global-metrics-for-agriculture/

From the post, "...despite the declining effect of slow changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis which, under natural conditions, would lead to climatic cooling," according to Yarrow Axford, from the University of Colorado and lead author of this paper."

The following is a graph of Milankovitch cycle data versus global temperature anomalies from the Vostok ice core data.
www.climatedata.info/Forcing/Forcing/milankovitchcycles_files/BIGw02-milankovitch-and-temperature.gif.gif
Mr. Axford fails to note that global temperatures do not always follow the variations of the Milankovitch cycle.

Jeff Green;
They all point to AGW ONLY because of cherry picked data and constant bias on interpretation.

Every single item you mentioned has an equally valid non AGW intrepretation.
Only a pre decided doctrine could conclude AGW from that data.

Try again.

Idecline:

Of course they are confident. They are Warmists.

Al Gore talks confident too. Doesn't make anything he says true though.

It's been along time since I took statistics, but I have a hard time believing that samples from a very small area can be applied to world-wide climate (a very big statistical universe indeed) with a reasonable degree of accuracy. This may a good one for Climateaudit.org to critic.

Deniers are the ones getting 'desperate'. They have weak arguments, flawed analysis, and agenda based reasons for their 'lack of conscience' about Global Warming. One little article about one little lake gets them all riled up!

p.s.- Anonymous- If you are always 'anonymous' it must be because you don't even want anyone to know the irrational excuses you keep presenting...embarassed perhaps?

I am sorry about stating the obvious but we have thermometers that show us the temperature changes near that lake. Why didn't the researchers check them to see if their research was valid? I have looked at the instrumental record and for the life of me I just can't see any support for most of the fiction that is being passed off as academic research. Since when is such research not supposed to deal in facts?

The human fingerprint on global warming is everywhere. In the Arctic, they are impossible to ignore.

Actually, all you have to do is to look at the temperature record for the past century and you find them easy to ignore because they do not exist. Here is a point made by Richard Lindzen in his last presentation.

“THE ARCTIC OCEAN IS WARMING UP, ICEBERGS ARE GROWING SCARCER AND IN SOME PLACES THE SEALS ARE FINDING THE WATER TOO HOT. REPORTS ALL POINT TO A RADICAL CHANGE IN CLIMATE CONDITIONS AND HITHERTO UNHEARD-OF TEMPERATURES IN THE ARCTIC ZONE. EXPEDITIONS REPORT THAT SCARCELY ANY ICE HAS BEEN MET WITH AS FAR NORTH AS 81 DEGREES 29 MINUTES. GREAT MASSES OF ICE HAVE BEEN REPLACED BY MORAINES OF EARTH AND STONES, WHILE AT MANY POINTS WELL KNOWN GLACIERS HAVE ENTIRELY DISAPPEARED.”
—US WEATHER BUREAU, 1922

How about that? Open water at very high latitudes during the 1920s just as we have today. Of course, we had a cold trend that brought the ice and glaciers back only to have some retreat as the cycle continued. Why is it that you people deny that weather changes for natural reasons? Are you so arrogant to elevate the effect of the role of man over those of the sun and ocean currents?

And it might help your credibility if you actually checked the temperature record near the area in question.

You also might wish to look at the Hansen and Lebedeff 1987 paper. What we see are very warm Arctic temperatures into the 1930s and subsequent cooling until recently. Once again, natural variation seems much more important than hype about the effects of CO2 emissions. And before you start going around blaming soot and dust emissions causing the cooling after the 1930s please note that NASA has concluded that those help to increase Arctic temperatures.

Canadian data from Env. Canada is showing an increase of 0.9c over the last 65 years (that is after 1930). That is from all Canadian regions and that goes very far north where there's no population, urban, or suburban growth.

So you will come back with summer 2009 being soooooo cold. Well, bad news for you, summer 2009 was 0.4c above average country wise. Sure, you have regions for this single year where it was cooler, but the same for warmer regions. All and all, if you look at a long term period (even only the last ten years), it is still warming. I'm not saying it is a statement for the global situation, but it is like that for Canada. As the data from Nasa is showing the situation for the US - also warming there. And you got data from the Europeen agencies, also showing warming . Then you got the Australian data showing much more warming for the south Pacific part of the world.

The study does not claim to be a reflection of the global situation - however some deniers are doing that link to discredit the study, but it's not the case. The study is saying that on that very unique place (and there only), current warming period is different from the previous ones, that's all.

Last words... For you deniers, it's cooling. Ok then, you better switch soon to an alternate heating source (other than gaz or fuel), ressources are almost exhausted - i think you should really consider electric power sources from the wind, the sun, or the water very soon. Even if you think it is not warming, do it for the cooling - switch to a cleaner solution.

Vangel,

The 1920's was in the middle of the Arctic warming trend (and the global trend too), after some rise in greenhouse gas concentrations, consistent with proxy evidence, so it's no surprise Arctic melting was observed. Lindzen isn't pointing out anything we don't already know. This is not to say natural cyclic variation doesn't play a role in some of the variation observed. It just can't explain much of the extreme warming trend observed over the last century, after thousands of years of long-term cooling. Such warming takes us well beyond the range of natural variability.

http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/arctic2k.jsp

"And it might help your credibility if you actually checked the temperature record near the area in question."

It would vastly help your credibility if you looked at more than one station.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425700260000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

"You also might wish to look at the Hansen and Lebedeff 1987 paper. What we see are very warm Arctic temperatures into the 1930s and subsequent cooling until recently. "

"Recently" in the paper is 1985. Nice try.

"Are you so arrogant to elevate the effect of the role of man over those of the sun and ocean currents? "

Are you so arrogant to believe elevating greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere to levels not seen in millions of years in a thin atmosphere surrounding the planet can't have a significant effect on the climate? Certainly, this belief tends to keep "skeptics" oblivious to evidence.

Mark B

I was glad to see you actually supplied links, but then disappointed because your second link didn't work, and your first link led to an article which uses that absurd hockey stick graph.

I have told you this before, and expect you to remain steadfastly deaf to it. However I'll point it out again just in case others are listening.

The original Mann hockey stick was debunked, re-debunked, and debunked before Congress, due to its dependence on Bristlecones as a proxy, and the fact Mann's Bristlecones are not an acceptable proxy, for around five different reasons.

Mann's "new and improved" hockey stick not only reused the debunked proxies, but used some lake sediment data despite the fact the scientist who actually collected the data expressly stated recent data had been corrupted by man-made projects in the streams which led into the lake. (This caused a down-spike in sediments; Mann flipped the graph upside down to make the down-spike into the up-spike necessary for a hockey-stick.)

Briffa's hockey stick boils down to data collected from twelve trees, with one tree in particular responsible for the up-spike. The sample was far too small to be reliable, and data from other trees was ignored, apparently because it shows no hockey stick, and (in the case of the Ural data,) seems to show it was warmer around the year 1000 than it is now.

Lastly, the data needed to be tweaked. (For example, trees ordinarily grow more slowly, once they reach maturity and put energy into making seeds. In order to compensate for this slowing growth the rings need to be "made more wide" than they actually are.) The problem with such tweaking is that the sum total of all these "adjustments" creates a model which will always give you a hockey stick, no matter what data you put in. You could put in random noise, and it will still give you a hockey stick.

If you would just take the time, you'd see the hockey stick is utterly debunked. However a select group of climate scientists continue to use the debunked data. And what do they get? Well surprise, surprise, surprise. They get another hockey stick!!! However their "new" hockey stick is debunked before it gets off the ground, for it is based on debunked data.

I did take the time to read your link, and found it just more of the same.

Now I wish you'd take the time to check out the "Watts Up With That" posting about the above core samples. Of especially great interest is the fact that nearby thermometers do not show what the study suggests. I'm sorry, but I tend to think a thermometer is a better "proxy" for actual temperature than the skeletons of midges in lake-bottom muck.

As Dan pointed out above, DDT may better explain the "unprecedented" change in midge populations. DTT is stored up in arctic snow and ice during a cold cycle, and only released years later, during the next warm cycle.

Just so happens they started spraying DDT around the nearby air base and surrounding towns in 1950!!!!
Did they check the sediments at and after those dates for DDT????
That one thing could blow their whole research project and model out of the lake!!!!

Caleb writes:

"I was glad to see you actually supplied links,"

I was not surprised that you didn't, but since it's likely to lead back to the rantings of a former mining executive or various political reports, Congressional presentations, etc., it would not likely be enlightening.

"Of especially great interest is the fact that nearby thermometers do not show what the study suggests."

My 2nd link is an indicator that most surface stations in the Arctic show rapid warming over the last century (and half century), including in the region of study. One can see the global trend since mid-century:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2009&month_last=09&sat=4&sst=1&type=trends&mean_gen=0112&year1=1950&year2=2008&base1=1900&base2=2000&radius=1200&pol=reg

It's interesting that deniers routinely bash surface stations until they find an anomalous one that shows little warming, uncritically accept its measurements, then claim independent studies revealing the effects of Arctic warming are "debunked" as a result. What happened to their "skeptism"?

"Briffa's hockey stick boils down to data collected from twelve trees"

No it doesn't, but this comical misconception explains your belief that the science has been "debunked".

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/

"Anonymous:
You are soooooooooo behind the curve.......

Last week there were at least 4 or 5 separate rebuttal articles, some citing independent, contradictory studies, over at Wattsupwiththat.com"

Yeah I would go ahead and do that except that "Wattsup" is not a reliable source of information. Give me a link thats not from spin city and I will give it a go. The last time I went there was during the Briffa thread. The funny part was that the rest of the data he posted made the hockey stick issue unimportant in the context of the larger study. I will at least give him kudos for posting that data anyway. By the way, can we stop talking about the hockey stick now? Its so yesterday.