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New Attempts To Erase The MWP & LIA

July 29, 2019
tags: ,

By Paul Homewood

 

 

There have been many attempts to get rid of the Medieval Warming Period and Little Ice Age, and here’s another one:

 

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The speed and extent of current global warming exceeds any similar event in the past 2,000 years, researchers say.

They show that famous historic events like the "Little Ice Age" don’t compare with the scale of warming seen over the last century.

The research suggests that the current warming rate is higher than any observed previously.

The scientists say it shows many of the arguments used by climate sceptics are no longer valid.

When scientists have surveyed the climatic history of our world over the past centuries a number of key eras have stood out.

These ranged from the "Roman Warm Period", which ran from AD 250 to AD 400, and saw unusually warm weather across Europe, to the famed Little Ice Age, which saw temperatures drop for centuries from the 1300s.

The events were seen by some as evidence that the world has warmed and cooled many times over the centuries and that the warming seen in the world since the industrial revolution was part of that pattern and therefore nothing to be alarmed about.

Three new research papers show that argument is on shaky ground.

The science teams reconstructed the climate conditions that existed over the past 2,000 years using 700 proxy records of temperature changes, including tree rings, corals and lake sediments. They determined that none of these climate events occurred on a global scale.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49086783 

As with the other failed attempts, this latest one claims that the MWP and LIA were only localised phenomena. But nothing could be further from the truth.

These three new studies rely on proxies, but time and again hockey stick studies based on proxies are proven to be fake, based on cherry picked proxies and dodgy statistics.

In fact, we have no need to rely on proxies, because the actual evidence of warm and cold periods is very real and substantial across the world.

We are all familiar with the evidence from Greenland ice cores, which clearly show both the MWP and LIA:

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http://www.kaltesonne.de/temperatures-over-the-past-10000-years/

There is also strong evidence from upper tree lines in both California and the Alps that the MWP and LIA were very real and significant events:

Scan

HH Lamb – Climate, History and the Modern World

 

The massive expansion of glaciers in Europe during the 17th & 18thC is very well documented, as is the fact that they began receding in the mid 19thC, long before man made CO2 had any effect.

But glaciers throughout the world underwent similar changes. Glaciologists believe that Icelandic glaciers reached their Holocene maxima during the LIA.

In Alaska as well, glaciers advanced in stages between the 12th and 19thC, when they reached their maximum extent. The scale of this advance is indicated by the recent discovery of the remains of medieval forests, as the glaciers melt.

Four hundred year old forests have also been uncovered by retreating glaciers in Patagonia. Glaciers in Peru and Chile also provide unmistakeable evidence of the LIA, as Lonnie Thompson notes, writing about the Quelccaya glacier in Peru, describes:

The fact that the Little Ice Age (about A.D. 1500 to 1900) stands out as a significant climatic event in the oxygen isotope and electrical conductivity records confirms the worldwide character of this event.

Other glaciologists estimate that the Cipreses and San Rafael glaciers in Chile reached maxima in 1842 and 1875.

Across the Pacific, in New Zealand the Franz Joseph glacier also grew alarmingly, as historian Brian Fagan revealed:

In New Zealand the Franz Joseph glacier wasa mere pocket of ice on a frozen snowfield nine centuries ago”…. Then Little Ice Age cooling began and the glacier thrust downslope into the valley below smashing into the great rain forests that flourished there, felling giant trees like matchsticks. By the early 18th Century, Franz Joseph’s face was within 3 km of the Pacific Ocean .

The high tide of glacial advance at Franz Joseph came between the late 17th Century and early 19th Century, just as it did in the European Alps.

Much more detail on these and other glaciers can be found here.

The evidence from New Zealand is supported by tree rings and speleotherms, which show the MWP and LIA very clearly.

 image_thumb115

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/08/19/the-little-ice-age-and-medieval-warming-in-south-africa/

 

None of these are localised occurrences, they are major climatic events which took place over hundreds of years.

And there are many other lines of evidence. For instance, both the MWP and LIA have been found to be distinctive features of the regional climate in S Africa.

There is another piece of evidence from lakes in Central Africa. Lakes such as Ghana’s Bosumtwi and Lake Malawi have much higher water levels now than during the LIA, while lakes closer to the equator are now much lower.

Boys practice traditional fishing methods on Lake Bosumtwi in Ghana. Submerged trees provide evidence on long-lasting drought just a few centuries ago

 Submerged trees provide evidence on long-lasting drought just a few centuries ago – Lake Bosumtwi

 

This is due to a phenomenon well understood by meteorologists. When the Earth cools, the weather belts are compressed to the equator. As a result, the narrow equatorial zone receives more rain, while the areas to the north and south become drought stricken. The Great Sahel drought of the 1970s was a classic example of this.

The rainfall patterns clearly identified in African lakes such as these is strong evidence of a cooler climate during the LIA.

I could go on. Other studies have found evidence of the LIA in China and Tibet. 

Even Antarctica was affected, as a study by Bertler et al showed. According to their Abstract:

The Little Ice Age (LIA) is one of the most prominent climate shifts in the past 5000 yrs

Now charlatans pretend that the Little Ice Age never really existed.

42 Comments
  1. July 29, 2019 8:52 pm

    Another BBC website climate post where the comments thread is closed rather quickly for some reason.

  2. July 29, 2019 9:07 pm

    The treeline was once further north, as findings in both Fennoscandia (Norway+Sweden+Finland+Russian Kola Peninsula) and Canada proves.

  3. Ajax Ornis permalink
    July 29, 2019 9:44 pm

    Just wondering, who are these muppets, charlatans etc who do so much “study” & “research” and make these absurd and unscientific claims ? Wouldn’t it be revealing to know who they are; what exact qualifications do they have ? Their ages & experience? Their political leanings and who, exactly, pays them for all this valiant work, and why ?
    This info, and maybe even more like it, would surely make very interesting reading.
    And I have a feeling that we have a right to know.

    • Bertie permalink
      July 29, 2019 10:02 pm

      And what the hell do the BBC – which used to be a responsible and respected institution – think it is doing propagating this drivel? Lord Reith (to whom my ex-wife was great niece) must be doing handstands in his grave!.

  4. Ariane permalink
    July 29, 2019 9:59 pm

    One can only wonder what Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit would do with that research upon which Matt McGrath at the BBC bases his piece!

    • August 1, 2019 9:24 am

      You don’t have to wonder – read his twitter thread

      Proxies weighted and screened – all the old tricks to guarantee a hockey stick.

  5. swan101 permalink
    July 29, 2019 9:59 pm

    Reblogged this on ECO-ENERGY DATABASE.

  6. July 29, 2019 10:00 pm

    Reblogged this on WeatherAction News and commented:
    No matter their reconstructions and revisions whilst some of us still have voices we will speak out against the malignant ignorance of these people. We cannot let our past be taken from us.

    The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” – George Orwell

    • Bertie permalink
      July 29, 2019 10:07 pm

      Very pertinent quote seeing as this whole AGW nonsense is politically motivated. I see that the latest edition of Vogue – under the guest editorship of the American interloper into the royal family – lauds Greta Thurnberg (the sainted one) as one of the modern world’s 15 most inspirational women!

      • Gerry, England permalink
        July 30, 2019 1:43 pm

        Saint Greta is going to eschew flying to an alarmist conference in the US. No, surprisingly she is not going to walk on water but sailing in a state of the art probably £1m+ high tech carbon fibre racing yacht. Yes, there is a certain irony there. Hopefully it will be nice and rough.

  7. July 29, 2019 10:17 pm

    I’ve sent Matt McGrath an extra woolly jumper – he’s going to need it, since he will have thrown all his winter clothes away…

  8. July 29, 2019 10:20 pm

    These jokers seem to forget that the Earth rotates on its axis. How could decades or centuries of warming or cooling only occur ‘locally’? Makes no sense.

    • Smoke&Mirrors permalink
      July 30, 2019 8:13 am

      On the one hand, the BBC article acknowledges that the LIA and MWP did exist and yet on the other hand it says that neither of these events were on a global scale. Thus they seem to be dismissed as not being significant and of little consequence in any discussion about climate.

      This fails a plausibility test.

      How can events that lasted for GENERATIONS – in the case of the MWP – and for CENTURIES – in the case of the LIA – be confined to only part of the globe and yet not, in themselves, be considered as spectacular climate anomalies?

      Why was only part of the globe affected and how the blazes could the events last for so long in this partial state – and then just go away for business as usual?

      Beats me! And, I suspect, beats the BBC et al……

      • July 30, 2019 11:45 am

        And while we are at it, let’s ignore ice core data, sediment core data, and pollen data from bogs. Please, please don’t even think about digging soil profiles which show changes over time and contain organic matter which can be carbon dated. Truth and reality are just too horrible from some to contemplate.

  9. Athelstan. permalink
    July 29, 2019 10:21 pm

    As soon as I saw it was a report in ‘Nature’ – I didn’t bother.

  10. Gamecock permalink
    July 29, 2019 10:29 pm

    ‘The science teams reconstructed the climate conditions’

    Bizarre. There is no such thing as ‘climate conditions.’

  11. Gamecock permalink
    July 29, 2019 10:33 pm

    “The science teams reconstructed the climate conditions that existed over the past 2,000 years using 700 proxy records of temperature changes, including tree rings, chicken entrails, corals, lake sediments and a ouija board.”

    FIFY

  12. Mack permalink
    July 29, 2019 10:35 pm

    Our friends at No Tricks Zone have diligently detailed hundreds of peer (not pal) reviewed studies by eminent scientists that demonstrate that the Little Ice Age and Medieval, Roman, Minoan and Holocene Climate Optimum warming periods were global in nature not localised. Historical records of the impact of these events concur. The physical evidence of such periods lie all around us. Matt McGrath is just a patsy which, in Gaelic, rhymes with twat! How apt.

  13. I_am_not_a_robot permalink
    July 29, 2019 10:43 pm

    NoTricksZone has 3 pages of MWP papers:
    https://notrickszone.com/search/medieval+warm+period/

    The diagram of purported 50 yr warming rates indicates that the (mostly) pre-WW2 rate exceeds by far any previous, but that could not have been due to human CO2 emissions anyway and, as opposed to their diagram, actually exceeds the post-war 50 yr rate:
    http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/to:1950/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/to:2000/trend
    I suspect more dodgy statistical manipulation in this reconstruction.

  14. July 29, 2019 11:22 pm

    Reblogged this on Climate Collections.

  15. Richard Bell permalink
    July 29, 2019 11:30 pm

    LA Times jumping on the bandwagon and telling the same story to Californians …… See What Up With That for the post ……..

  16. I_am_not_a_robot permalink
    July 29, 2019 11:33 pm

    Just today NoTricksZone has more papers showing ‘robust evidence the Earth was warmer during Medieval times’:
    https://notrickszone.com/2019/07/29/12-new-papers-provide-robust-evidence-the-earth-was-warmer-during-medieval-times/#comments

    • tom0mason permalink
      July 30, 2019 9:47 am

      Yes I left a comment there —
      “As Mark Twain said “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” and so it is with the Medieval Warm Period, as this event occurred, it was significant and global.
      The fact that cAGW advocates wish to dismiss these scientific reports just shows how fragile their supposition about atmospheric CO2 causing global warming must be.”

  17. July 30, 2019 12:40 am

    Reblogged this on Climate- Science.

  18. markl permalink
    July 30, 2019 1:40 am

    History revisionists always have a purpose and it’s not to tell the truth.

    • Ariane permalink
      July 30, 2019 9:07 am

      Markl, very true. To discover the reason, may be one should follow the money. Isn’t the BBC a member of the Commonwealth Broadcasters Association? And, in 2009, wasn’t there an International Conference on Broadcasting Media and Climate Change when the assembled members were told – by the then director of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri – that the media should propagate the idea that human carbon dioxide emeissions are causing climate change?

      • Gerry, England permalink
        July 30, 2019 1:44 pm

        Notwithstanding that, the BBC are certainly spewing out the CO2 propaganda.

  19. Broadlands permalink
    July 30, 2019 3:06 am

    “Now charlatans pretend that the Little Ice Age never really existed.”

    And, all those other “experts” shy away from (ignore?) from telling us what THEY plan to do about the current climate…whether it is warming or cooling, and alarmingly so or not. What is THEIR expert version of the scientific truth… (1) How much carbon sequestration will be required to lower the Earth’s temperature by even one part-per-million… in tons per-year. (2) How long will it take once they begin in earnest? (3) What will it cost all of us socially and economically …in real currencies while doing it?

    Are they not the real charlatans…the modern Elmer Gantry’s and snake-oil salesmen? I submit that they are. And “we” are being taken for a very expensive ride to wind up where we started… back in 1987 when CO2 was at 350 ppm. Really? That’s it?? the climate of 1987? Half a trillion tons of oxidized carbon to be captured and stored to reach THAT goal?

    Where is Plan B? When it soon becomes clear that humans cannot do that? The Paris Agreement does not address that eventuality… the proverbial rock and the hard place.

  20. Ian Wilson permalink
    July 30, 2019 8:06 am

    Ref Mack’s post, at CFACT they quote 700 scientists from 40 countries writing papers to the effect the MWP was worldwide.

    Incidentally CFACT state they were interviewed by the BBC at the Heartland climate conference.- has anyone heard it on air?

    • David Kelly permalink
      August 1, 2019 8:30 pm

      I heard the item. It lasted all of 60 seconds, if that! Lord Monkton was interviewed. The BBC reported (can’t recall who) said that he had looked at the temperature records and he wanted to know how LM could justify denying man made climate change when the temperature records were quite clear. LM replied to the effect that the BBC man had a different set of temperature records to the ones LM had. At that point the interview finished, without LM having been given any opportunity to clarify what he was saying! Typical.

  21. Eoin mc permalink
    July 30, 2019 8:56 am

    The climate alarmist bible in Ireland – The Irish Times – was first out of the traps some months ago with an article where the Little Ice Age was ‘disappeared’. Penned by a retired insider government economist, who now heads a government climate alarmist think tank, the thesis behind the attempted disappearance of the Little Ice Age was that there was some sort of confusion with the spelling of vineyards in France and England and the economic fallout caused by a few wine suppliers suffering financial loss was the only effect of a limited number of localised cold years that affected wine production. I had to read the article a few times to make sure I was understanding the nonsense properly. Seems to be a concerted global effort in the climate alarmist industry in the media to re-engineer the Hockey Stick.

    • July 30, 2019 9:08 am

      A week or two back they were trying to whitewash the Climategate e-mails fiasco. A pattern seems to be emerging, trying to breathe life into the dead horse they keep flogging.

      • Athelstan. permalink
        July 30, 2019 10:17 am

        AGM…………..It always was a political bandwagon and FA to to with pure science – of which, there isn’t any, no noise, no signal just pure BS and statistical jiggerpokery – computer modelled fantasy.

      • Graeme No.3 permalink
        July 30, 2019 2:23 pm

        old brew:
        I think it’s a dead mule they’re thrashing.

    • mikewaite permalink
      July 30, 2019 5:53 pm

      “re engineer the hockey stick”
      . Interestingly that is one of the comments made by a reviewer of the draft version of a recent paper from Climate of the Past (an open access journal of the AGU) . This paper updates the proxies used by the PAGES 2K consortium to the extent that the MWP and LIA are eliminated, leaving a hockey stick.
      https://www.clim-past.net/15/1251/2019/#bib1.bibx59

      One of the reviewers comments :
      -“In the current version, the global mean temperature evolution is the reappearance ofthe famous “hockey stick” in climate science. After all the discussion, the hockey stick was rising(sic) 20 years ago, I would not publish this as a state-of-the-art temperature reconstruction, especially not without a discussion and not if it is an artefact of un-screened input data.”-
      And there are other comments about the choice of proxies . To be fair to the authors they have made changes and explained their procedure , given in the peer review section of the journal.
      What seems to be a common link to the article in Nature Geoscience, that is the subject of this post on NotaLot is the revision of the proxy dataset of PAGES 2K consortium .
      Perhaps that is where we should focus our attention.

  22. europeanonion permalink
    July 30, 2019 4:04 pm

    One day’s worth is alarmist a week’s worth might be proof. “I’m pink therefore i’m spam”. Throw enough money at it and the world could be seen as flat. All we see is coercion. How little co2 could nature survive on?

    • Ariane permalink
      July 30, 2019 7:10 pm

      Europeanonion, excellent. Yes, the point is to follow the money. It’s a rich person’s project. (To keep the rest poor.) Excellent: I’m pink therefore I’m spam!! I mean, in the first place, if we’re going to talk ‘science’, how could anybody prove that any warming is human caused??

  23. Christopher Lynch Lynch permalink
    July 30, 2019 6:15 pm

    If CAGW was a matter of scientific fact then there would be no need to lie about climate history. Nothing demonstrates more clearly that the CAGW scare is a Trojan horse for a Marxist political agenda than the repeated attempts to purge the medieval warm period and the little ice age.

    • bobn permalink
      July 30, 2019 6:54 pm

      Yes, they are Ice age deniers. Since a holocaust is defined as an event of ‘large-scale destruction’, and ice-ages cause large scale destruction, I think i’ll refer to AGW fantasists and deniers of history in future as ‘climate fantasists and holocaust deniers’. They started the game of twisting language, history, meaning and fact.

  24. August 1, 2019 9:29 am

    My blog post on this

    Hockey Stick Groundhog Day

    They have used the same discredited tricks as the hockey-stick manufacturers have been using for the last 20 years. Mainly the screening fallacy, where you delete tree rings that don’t go up in the 20th century, which guarantees you will get a hockey stick shape.

  25. August 2, 2019 11:51 pm

    OK, we have a ton of science telling us that the MWP, the RWP, the LIA but also the Minoan Warm period and many others like them before are as real as a heart attack. But we have more, even better stuff. Old Roman tax records from Brittania show that wine was grown fa into the north of the island back then, try that today. It must have been warmer then. Ice probes from Greenland release grains, plants, and animals in hundreds and sometimes thousands of years old ice cores that could only have gotten there if those plants and animals lived there and they required a lot warmer climate, or the root trunks of birches and other trees in Greenland that cannot survive today, … Historians know how climates shifted, and they know the political ramifications of such climate change. Climate Change is a fact, it has been so for 4,5 billion years.

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