Climate myths

[Devonian]

Yes, given that the public consensus is, in my opininon, about to change (the scientific consensus means nothing unless the public go along with it and force political change) the 'feel-good' factor needs to be mitigated.

Slight quibble, isn't it the politicians, mostly the US president, who want to do this bio fuel thing to make the electorate feel better? I almost wonder if The Whitehouse doesn't understand the energy equation of it. No, they must, it's a stunt (and it helps US farmers - which is a clue, backdoor subsidies).

They cynic in me also wonders if, when the penny drops in The Whitehouse about the madness of bio fuels, we (those like me) might be confronted with a US cry of 'but you told us AGW was a problem, we did this bio fuel thing 'cos of you*, now you tell us not to do it, you don't know what you're talking about and can't make up your minds you [insert optional insult here: greenies, eco freaks, lefties etc]. Back to the oil, over consumption and oil wars everyone!'

* spot that? We didn't ask for it...

Edited May 20, 2007 by Devonian

[Gray-Wolf]

Slight quibble, isn't it the politicians, mostly the US president, who want to do this bio fuel thing to make the electorate feel better? I almost wonder if The Whitehouse doesn't understand the energy equation of it. No, they must, it's a stunt (and it helps US farmers - which is a clue, backdoor subsidies).

They cynic in me also wonders if, when the penny drops in The Whitehouse about the madness of bio fuels, we (those like me) might be confronted with a US cry of 'but you told us AGW was a problem, we did this bio fuel thing 'cos of you*, now you tell us not to do it, you don't know what you're talking about and can't make up your minds you [insert optional insult here: greenies, eco freaks, lefties etc]. Back to the oil, over consumption and oil wars everyone!'

* spot that? We didn't ask for it...

I just think it is an easy way of making oil appear 'Green' (comparatively). Maybe if an oil baron wasn't president I'd feel different.......

[7andY]

I read the 20 reasons - take issue with just one. I always thought the reason the Thames didn't freeze over in '63 was because of a power station upstream of London pumping out warm water.

The Thames froze in London as that is where tidal slack water occurred. Upstream the flow was too high, and downstream the water too salty. The last 'Ice Fair' was caused by ice floes jamming up against the old London Bridge, not a straightforward freezing of the river.

Not a big issue, but facts need to be right to be effective...

Cheers, 7&Y

[parmenides3]

I read the 20 reasons - take issue with just one. I always thought the reason the Thames didn't freeze over in '63 was because of a power station upstream of London pumping out warm water.

The Thames froze in London as that is where tidal slack water occurred. Upstream the flow was too high, and downstream the water too salty. The last 'Ice Fair' was caused by ice floes jamming up against the old London Bridge, not a straightforward freezing of the river.

Not a big issue, but facts need to be right to be effective...

Cheers, 7&Y

Possibly also worth mentioning that at the time of the Frost fairs there were numerous fish weirs upstream, and a large quantity of human waste filling the waterways, as well as the fact that almost none of the river had the current high banking; there were many water meadows, marshes, mud banks and shallows, so a direct comparison is not really possible.

:)P

[Gray-Wolf]

The last 'Ice Fair' was caused by ice floes jamming up against the old London Bridge, not a straightforward freezing of the river.

Not a big issue, but facts need to be right to be effective...

Cheers, 7&Y

And for those who don't know 'old London bridge' was nearly a dam with houses on top, the restriction upstream it posed certainly allowed the right conditions for ice to form upstream which then floated to the 'ice jam backing up from the bridge.

Some of the oil paintings, from the period of the fairs, show well the brecciated nature of the rucked up slab ice

[Roger J Smith]

My apologies for not responding in a very timely fashion to a few posts earlier in this discussion.

I wanted to clarify that I have stated elsewhere on NW that I believe part of the modern warming is anthropogenic and this part could be in the range of 25 to 50 per cent. I usually use one third as my estimate.

Against all the scientific papers quoted and the techniques being discussed, it sounds very crude, but frankly this is the way the intelligent layman or non-professional in this field would look at things: if you look at the long-term temperature graph from 500 AD through to the present in that paper quoted immediately after my first post here, the rather obvious conclusion is that this looks like another peak in the ongoing irregular cycle of peaks and troughs in temperatures. It doesn't look wildly disproportionate to the values indicated around 1000 and 1400 AD. It may be a bit higher, but this graph doesn't go back to the period around 3000 BC to 2000 BC when apparently it was even warmer in the British Isles than it is today. I remember reading in somebody's dissertation about Irish archaeological sites that the madrona or arbutus (which grows around where I live here) used to grow in Donegal and this requires summers 2 to 3 C degrees warmer than today's.

This is really all I mean when I say "natural cycles," I am not really making specific claims of equation-driven cycles, and to some extent I am not even thinking of my own research which is still very much in the developmental stage for the British Isles but as I'm trying to show in a scientific way in the advanced section, may be on to some significant part of the variability of temperatures also. What fraction there is another good question, could be anywhere from 25 to 75 per cent, and I am still very much in the midst of working through mounds of new data on my computer. In the Toronto study that BFTP has and was referring to earlier, there are indications of fairly substantial cycles from our passage through field sectors. I have known this for 12-15 years now and don't even think of it as remotely far-fetched, but given the state of enthralment with climate change issues in the profession, I have hit an even worse time for receptivity to these theories than would normally have been the case, given the professional taboo against ideas that even sound astrological (and in this case are not intended to be taken as quasi-mysterious at all, I attempt to give a physical rationale for them).

My comments about global warming or as it is now known, climate change, being the new state religion, obviously hit a sore spot, and I'm surprised that anyone would be begging me to explain myself in the same thread where others are promising my eternal humiliation for being wrong (thus proving my point, I didn't say it was a false religion, if you've got the right God here, you're totally in luck, isn't that what all religions preach?)

I can't change those dynamics, but I won't be "humiliated" because by the time this all comes down, I will be dead, so wherever I am headed in the afterlife, my critics probably won't be there and in any case, I shall be forgiven by those who really matter if I have got this wrong. It is not my intention to look at a mass of facts and deny the obvious cause and effect implied by them, but anyone that I have ever encountered in my profession has done a masterful job of doing exactly that each time I have tried to present my theory (BFTP can tell you it is hardly without foundation, the signals from Jupiter and Mercury in the Toronto temperature data are even more obvious than the hockey stick seems to be to global warmers).

I feel admiration rather than contempt for Mondy too, and the fact that he's a postal worker resonates with me because being one of the "2 out of 1800 who didn't agree" sort of a climatologist, that is more or less how I am keeping myself out of debt, with somewhat similar work. I can assure you that neither one of us meet anyone on these rounds with vast insights into the scientific method, those kinds of people are either full-time on-line here at Net-weather, or else locked up in some research institute where they are not allowed out by themselves.

Just wanted to give Mondy a little plug because I know from experience how nasty it is to become the "bad guy" in these sorts of debates, especially when you've got some understanding of the subject and you've given it your own best effort to understand what's really happening -- at the end of the day, this is really the only contribution I am trying to make to this, I am not sure how anyone will ever know "for certain" what is right or wrong here, because if warming can be largely from natural causes and not AGW, and the climate shifts through polar melting (as it has many times in the past two million years), then that alone will not "prove" anything either way. There is no way that I think I could prove my theories either, such ideas can only be accepted on the basis of probable veracity in the face of examination of all known alternatives.

But also we should realize that reality can be more complex than such a debate as this may suggest -- warming could be something like 50-50 natural cycle and AGW, one input could be interacting with the other in unknown ways, and whatever actually happens may or may not be within our control to change at any percentage level of AGW, from 1 to 99 -- I have a completely open mind on that whole subject area, and have no real objection to any efforts to reduce greenhouse gases or seek out alternative fuel technologies. I just feel that as a scientific question anthropogenic global warming and/or climate change has not been proven to the point where it should be presented as fact to students or the general public, but if it is presented like evolution along the lines that this is the prevailing view of science, then I suppose that is a true statement of fact in and of itself.

Also I wish to assure that I have no personal animosity to anyone who supports the prevailing view, I am sure most people in the atmospheric sciences have thought about it exhaustively and I assume they have applied the same principle of open-minded evaluation of all competing points of view. Where I do have reservations is about some politicians and environmentalists who are taking up this cause and trying to blend it in with a generally identifiable political agenda, to my mind this introduces the real danger that science will be used for political purposes.

Final point, I would like to stress that my chief concern here, and the only real reason why I get involved in these debates at all, is that I believe that if the warming is largely natural in origin and cannot be reversed by any action we take, even if that action is entirely desireable, then we open ourselves up to being unprepared for the consequences of sea level rises and other impacts of the changes underway, or the sudden arrival of much colder conditions from some natural origin (I am not predicting this before 2060 at the earliest, by the way), so that the theory then becomes dangerous because our governments will be persuaded on courses of action that will not have the expected results, whereas they should be concentrating more on their response to the inevitable sea level rises that are sure to come 10-30 years from now, as all are saying not that far into the future. If those come, I will not feel humiliation at all, because I am expecting them, my theoretical modelling has been showing since the 1980s that warming will continue for 20-30 years longer at least, to the level of about +1.0 C over the present and more in the arctic -- I am expecting substantial melting of the north polar ice, some further melting of Greenland land ice and the disappearance of much mountain and other arctic glacial ice. I would be expecting that if squirrels were the most intelligent life form on earth, and I would hope they would have the sense to relocate at least a metre higher above sea level if they are coast-dwelling squirrels. As should humans, either build substantial defences or expect to get your feet wet eventually in the first two metres above sea level. That may not sound like much, but when you look at maps you see what significant impacts there could be around the world. At least with a natural 70-30 basis for the warming, the chances of the Antarctic undergoing substantial and catastrophic melting are reduced from the AGW long-term scenarios, but I truly believe that by the time that gets into play, we will have moved on from fossil fuel dependence for any number of reasons.

The one thing is, too, that we skeptics could be proven right more easily than wrong -- if it turns a lot colder, I don't think there will be much chance of blaming that on AGW. Then there's the wild card of a large volcanic eruption, and then all bets are off.

[johnholmes]

so all, once more we have all gone round in circles, no one has converted anyone to their point of view. Some have been rather OTT in their personal comments which is sad to see and read, some have made valiant efforts to make reasonable comments thatever their viewpoint. We are after all, whatever our professional expertise just amateurs, very interested and knowledgeable ones in many cases, but without the access that the professional has. Sadly today, whether its an attempt to discover what is AGW and what i is normal' GW, or global temperature cycles needs lots of cash to fund it. That is the problem, governments and huge corporations have a vested interest and it makes for great difficulty for anyone to try and decide what is honest scientific endeavour and what has been, tainted, shall I say, by this intervention.

John

[Iceberg]

Yet again we have the known unknowns of the natural cycles that are responsible for a goodly portion of the Warming observed.

I once started a thread on this and asked anybody who knew anything about these natural cycles to show even a thread of evidence (unsurprisingly there were no takers).

Research into natural cycles is huge in climate science and it's an area we need to know more about.

[Gray-Wolf]

The old 'it's all happened before and it'll all happen again' chestnut.

Our sun is getting on for middle aged and since it's birth it has been getting warmer and warmer (more energy escaping into our solar system) and ,as such, it has never benn as warm (mean output) as now and the increase in output ,over the next 5 billion years, will continue. Yes we once had 'snowball earth' with ALL surfaces frozen but the sun was much weaker then.

The run of precesional,geological,atmospheric conditions that led up to the present 'ice age' (for we are 'supposed' to still be in it) will be hard to match and for ,of course, the sun was 'weaker' at the onset of that period too.

I firmly believe that my witnessing ,over the past 40yrs, has been of weather patterns being modified by human intervention . I remember wearing hankies over my mouth under scarves during the last of the smogs in the late 60's (or were they not 'human generated either') and I have seen state sized slabs of Antarctica float free (and some notable Arctic 'slabs top!) I've seen the CET (71-2000) being consistently trounced by temps over 1c above the mean even in our appalling months (of which I'll include this May) and many approaching 3c above the mean.

But even without man our planet would be slowly modifying in line with the inexorable increase in output from our star. Because of our muxing about we may well have ended our current glaciation prematurely leaving only 5 billion years of steady warming to look forward to (ending in the oceans boiling off into space and the crust becoming molten, just as it was at our planets birth) before the red giant that will be our sun consumes the planet completely.

So, when set against our evolving solar system, why will what has geologically happened happen all over again?

[Roger J Smith]

On the subject of natural cycles and lack of evidence, I have the CET in anomaly form in a data base, in order to support research into what I would call signals rather than cycles, embedded in the temperature records and presumably associated with variables such as field sectors in the solar system magnetic field.

You can see that there are regular signals of certain lengths such as 13 months and 26 months in my report in the advanced section here. These have amplitudes of about 0.2 C degrees so they are perhaps individually not very large on the scale that people discuss in these climate change scenarios (2-3 C minimum entry fee so to speak) but if you had 5-10 such cycles (signals) peaking together then you would have a fairly large amplitude variation over a year or two years. That may be what has been going on to some extent over 2006 and early 2007.

As far as longer term cycles, I have done some smooth curve analysis of the CET and you can see a fairly regular 65-70 year temperature wave with peaks around 1725, 1790, 1855, 1930 and the present time in that, but no particular cause and effect suggests itself to me. I will post more about this later, I have to run now and some of these peaks are from memory so let me dig that 41-year running mean curve up, or somebody else produce one if you like, if you have annual CET values in a data base it only takes a couple of minutes to set up the filter (AVG 1-41 then copy that to the end of the series minus 20 years).

One of the big objections I have to a lot of presentations of global warming theory is this -- people sneak in the last few years on long-term running mean graphs by scaling down the number of years so the curves don't end in say 1967-2007 for a 41-yr rm graph, so they then go 1968-2007, 1969-2007 etc, or else they estimate values for 2008 and beyond and feed those in to create a nice upwards spike into the FI realm at the end of their graphs.

This is not only unscientific, it is deceptive, and any paper that uses this technique should be automatically tossed aside, a forecast based on tapered running means as I call this, represents more or less of an opinion disguised as fact. Hope you see what I mean, and look out for this in any published studies, especially the kind that find their way into Sunday papers.

[Roger J Smith]

I have now had some time to read through the paper cited early in this thread, which sets out to show that the recent warming is largely based on greenhouse gases and not other natural variations.

There appear to be a number of dubious assumptions made in this paper. First of all, the authors speak about a footprint in the data for several variables, including greenhouse gases. They more or less state that the footprint is the nature of the data in the 20th century, then proceed to say that the footprint shows up in the 20th century. This is clearly circular reasoning and proves very little.

They state that they can detect that greenhouse gases were responsible for "22 to 52 per cent" (the 95% confidence range) of the warming even in the early 20th century. That seems closer to the more recent possible range to me, but I assume that the authors view the recent warming as 75% to 90% greenhouse gas related.

The fact that makes me very sceptical about this claim is not so evident in Europe as in North America, where this early 20th century warming actually took place in a very rapid shift around 1889-1891. A colder climatic type in evidence in the 19th century rather suddenly shifted to the sort of range that then seemed to prevail in general terms from 1890 to about 1980, after which this even warmer period set in but mainly in overnight lows rising faster than daytime highs, and other indications that a lifting of the jet stream was driving the climate shift. That could be caused by any number of external forcings including any linkage between climate and the magnetic field, a variable which the authors conveniently ignore.

Why would a warming half as great as the current warming, therefore quite substantial, be significantly driven by greenhouse gases mainly from a very early stage when the production of carbon dioxide by modern standards must have been in the 5 to 10 per cent range (in the 1889-1891 period, that is to say) ??

That footprint analysis seems faulty to me, then this more recent footprint analysis citing greenhouse gases dominating the forcing, can only be circular reasoning because the authors would have no reason to suspect greenhouse gases in the cause and effect of earlier warmings, so their footprint would have to be derived from modern data.

I was also unconvinced by some of the data juggling that eventually put all previous warmings down a few notches compared with the late 20th century, when we have much evidence that the 11th century warming may have been on a par with it or slightly greater. This seems contrived to me. In fact much of the language of the paper seems to be an academic version of saying, we want the data to conform to our theory, so we will keep prodding the numbers until we get the conclusions we want.

If we have very little understanding of why it really turned much colder in the Little Ice Age, and why it was so much warmer in such periods as the 11th century, the 15th century, parts of the 18th century, and the 20th century, then how can we be "certain" as many now say they are, that more than 50% of the current warming is due to AGW? Why is the proportion "obviously" 70% or so, and not 20% or 30%, or even zero for that matter?

The paper didn't answer my doubts about this concept, but it did demonstrate that there is a tendency to fit data analysis to a desired conclusion. Perhaps the most obvious flaw in the theory is this -- why has the recent five to ten years turned so warm in Europe and shown a tendency to turn colder in North America? Is that not more consistent with externally forced natural variations which do not necessarily need to operate in tandem in different regions since there could be feedback at work, shifts of circulation patterns altering the balance in different ways. Greenhouse gases have not been expected to do that kind of climate change and nobody has presented any theories about how they would, or even if they could.

And that's the basic reason why I tend to think this AGW lobby has gone further than the overall facts warrant in their claims of certainty and the related calls for many different kinds of political action that are straining the credulity of the voters in many developed nations, and not even brought to the attention of the citizens of China where perhaps action is most urgently required.

[Gray-Wolf]

Hi RJS!

what we must not forget is the 'model' underneath the AGW. The planet/solar system has a whole host of natural cycles, sometimes they pull against one another and globally show a null effect, sometimes the combine and show a large anomaly.

You have to try and picture a slow, AGW, signal building ever stronger over time until it itself swamps all the other drivers in our climate.

We are probably well into the 2nd third of this 'swamping' and ,as such, some of our 'cyclical drivers' are now able to be overcome by the stronger AGW signal (if in opposition) or show a strong positive correlation (if in agreement). It's a heck of a mess!

The thing I cannot escape from is the positive correlation between our CO2 outputs and the inexorable rise in global temps and the changes associated with the rise.

I now foresee the ease with which a rapid climate shift could overcome our planet if one of the 'natural' +2c swings occurs and ,if not, that the shift becomes ever more likely as global temps edge ever closer to the 'point of no return' reducing the scale that any 'positive natural cycle' needs to be to push the climate over the edge into rapid climate shift (which is itself self reinforcing so once the 'switch' is thrown it stays thrown).

Tales of anomalies over 100yrs old are back in the period where AGW influence was probably still less than a third of the way to being in control and so the natural conflagration of signals would still have held sway.

Edited May 29, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[shuggee]

Whilst at the Falkirk Wheel yesterday, the Archimides Prinicple was being discussed with my fellow boaters and it suddenly occurred to me that the rise in sea levels worldwide could be due to the millions of tonnes of shipping that has been built to operate across the globe in recent years. Feasible?!

[Gray-Wolf]

Whilst at the Falkirk Wheel yesterday, the Archimides Prinicple was being discussed with my fellow boaters and it suddenly occurred to me that the rise in sea levels worldwide could be due to the millions of tonnes of shipping that has been built to operate across the globe in recent years. Feasible?!

You been at the buckfast again?

[Hiya]

Whilst at the Falkirk Wheel yesterday, the Archimides Prinicple was being discussed with my fellow boaters and it suddenly occurred to me that the rise in sea levels worldwide could be due to the millions of tonnes of shipping that has been built to operate across the globe in recent years. Feasible?!

I've often thought about that. How much have sea levels risen anyway? a matter of millimetres? and considering how much junk we put into the sea you never know. Not a chance of any figures to prove this tho.

[Bobby]

Whilst at the Falkirk Wheel yesterday, the Archimides Prinicple was being discussed with my fellow boaters and it suddenly occurred to me that the rise in sea levels worldwide could be due to the millions of tonnes of shipping that has been built to operate across the globe in recent years. Feasible?!

I don't think so, the amount of water ships displace compared to the vast amount of water in the oceans is completely negligible.

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

My apologies for not responding in a very timely fashion to a few posts earlier in this discussion.

I can't change those dynamics, but I won't be "humiliated" because by the time this all comes down, I will be dead, so wherever I am headed in the afterlife, my critics probably won't be there and in any case, I shall be forgiven by those who really matter if I have got this wrong. It is not my intention to look at a mass of facts and deny the obvious cause and effect implied by them, but anyone that I have ever encountered in my profession has done a masterful job of doing exactly that each time I have tried to present my theory (BFTP can tell you it is hardly without foundation, the signals from Jupiter and Mercury in the Toronto temperature data are even more obvious than the hockey stick seems to be to global warmers).

Yes I can confirm this. There is a clear correlation and quite eye opening and to me is 'evidence' of the link.

BFTP

Final point, I would like to stress that my chief concern here, and the only real reason why I get involved in these debates at all, is that I believe that if the warming is largely natural in origin and cannot be reversed by any action we take, even if that action is entirely desireable, then we open ourselves up to being unprepared for the consequences of sea level rises and other impacts of the changes underway, or the sudden arrival of much colder conditions from some natural origin (I am not predicting this before 2060 at the earliest, by the way), If those come, I will not feel humiliation at all, because I am expecting them, my theoretical modelling has been showing since the 1980s that warming will continue for 20-30 years longer at least, to the level of about +1.0 C over the present and more in the arctic -- I am expecting substantial melting of the north polar ice, some further melting of Greenland land ice and the disappearance of much mountain and other arctic glacial ice. At least with a natural 70-30 basis for the warming, the chances of the Antarctic undergoing substantial and catastrophic melting are reduced from the AGW long-term scenarios, but I truly believe that by the time that gets into play, we will have moved on from fossil fuel dependence for any number of reasons.

That surprises me Roger. I will pm you with some questions I have.

BFTP

Edited June 1, 2007 by BLAST FROM THE PAST

[jethro]

That surprises me Roger. I will pm you with some questions I have.

BFTP

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

That surprises me Roger. I will pm you with some questions I have.

BFTP

BFTP, may I ask, do you expect it cool sooner than Roger's estimate?

Jethro

Yes, We have approaching Gleissberg minima in 2032 anticipated to be of Maunder magnitude [little ice age] and combined we have entered new cycle/phase [35 yrs or so] as regards to El Nino/La Nina ie we now entered phase where La Nina will be dominant. Last period was around the 40 to 70 period in the 20th century which saw cooling and the then belief in the 70s that we were heading into an ice age. We didn't as we chnaged back to El Nino dominated period [and possibly AGW mixed in somewhere too]. Also from around 2012 we shall enter cosmic flux which is believed by some to produce more cloud cover on Earth and hence more radiated heat deflected. I am not forecasting an ice age but an end to current warming and slight cooling to take over globally from say 2015 when it will be apparent and then back to warming from 2040 approx. I believe in the solar cycles and the effect they have on the planet. It is anticipated by some that cycle 24 around 2010/11 will be quieter than 23 that has just passed and this will be an indicator of the approaching minima.

BFTP

Edited June 2, 2007 by BLAST FROM THE PAST

[johnholmes]

an interesting article here from the Himalayan region.

http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/feature/2007/06/04_b1.htm

[Roger J Smith]

Imagine how left trouser leged Mallory and Irvine would be to read about that.

Blast, if the Gleissberg business works out, all bets are off, I am not so convinced that solar activity will die off as much as this model suggests. But I don't claim much success in solar activity forecasting, despite the general accuracy of some comments I made in 1994 in my paper. I think there was an implication there that the 1999 to 2001 peak would be a longer, flatter peak with moderate activity levels. I don't have much new insight into how the next 2-3 cycles will play out, but it wouldn't surprise me if we are now into a long-term decline.

Then I am also not totally sold on the Maunder minimum being the cause of the late 17th century cooling, although obviously the fit is very good. From my research perspective, I don't think there is a direct cause and effect mechanism, but rather, solar activity may vary with temperature in some parts of the world due to similar cause and effect in both processes, related to orbital interactions of the four largest outer planets.

In other words, magnetic field interactions may be causing both effects but one is not causing the other.

I continue to think the large scale question here is confusion between AGW signals and the shifting magnetic field. I think what is happening in recent decades is this -- the atmosphere is being slowly loaded with greenhouse gases, that has at least some effect on global and especially subarctic temperatures, meanwhile, the magnetic field is both weakening and shifting its orientation to favour higher thicknesses and a more northerly jet for Europe in particular. That alone would warm the climate substantially for the Atlantic and Europe relative to North America and this is what we have been seeing especially since 1994 when colder winters returned after an absence of about 7 years, to eastern N America.

My feeling is that if the AGW theory was the better of the two explanations, it would be warming just as fast and as prolifically in N America, but in recent years the warming seems to have become centered over the UK, France and western Europe in general, as well as western Russia, Scandinavia and the far northern Atlantic. This sector is warming faster because heights and thicknesses are being distorted by the retreating NMP which has moved away by 20 degrees of both latitude and longitude in the past 25 years.

This may have happened in the 10th and 11th centuries as well -- the archaeological evidence shows that northern Newfoundland was much milder then even than a slight recent warming has left it today. It would seem likely to me that if the NMP were located in the western arctic or near north coast Alaska, the Icelandic vortex could substantially disappear in favour of a central arctic vortex, and the mean flow for Labrador and Newfoundland could become SW rather than WNW as at present. This is probably also why Greenland was so hospitable to the first wave of settlers, and later became so inhospitable when presumably the NMP shifted further east towards Victoria Island, where we can first reliably locate it by 1550 to 1600. Since then, it has wandered southeast towards the Canadian mainland where it was located by Ross in 1839-40, and after that, it has shifted rather steadily NW across the arctic islands and is now close to 84 N 116 W in the arctic ocean, its most northerly position in the known period of record. Much less reliable estimates indicate that it has wandered all around the arctic basin over the postglacial era, and if it ever decided to take up residence around Svalbard or North Cape, things could get decidedly colder in Europe.

The other point we should all keep in mind, the earth is long overdue for some major volcanic activity, there really hasn't been a hemispheric dust veil of any real severity since the 1880s, all 20th century contenders were relatively minor by historic standards. When and if this comes, there could be quite a sharp cooling from that input alone.

[Gray-Wolf]

The other point we should all keep in mind, the earth is long overdue for some major volcanic activity, there really hasn't been a hemispheric dust veil of any real severity since the 1880s, all 20th century contenders were relatively minor by historic standards. When and if this comes, there could be quite a sharp cooling from that input alone.

I posted somewhere that if you could imagine the worlds particulate/CO2 output concentrated into one spot then you'd probably have one mother of a 'volcanic like plume'. Of course this plume has been spewing out it's pollutants, impacting pan evaporation etc rates globally for over 100yrs!

Some fissure eruptions (like the Tertiary suite of volcanics) can take many years to complete their eruptions but most volcanic events are over in a a few short months (occasionally longer) but rarely on the scale of the man made 'eruption' we have instigated.

[The Penguin]

Or fart in the wind, depending . . .