Guest amateur climatologizing by David Middleton

In my daily search for stupid and/or ignorant news articles about climate change, I ran across a couple of recent “gems” from Business Insider.

Gem #1 Our “Fabulous” Climate

Trump suggests the climate may actually be ‘fabulous’ after an ominous UN report on looming disaster Sinéad Baker Oct. 10, 2018 President Donald Trump on Tuesday sought to cast doubt on a UN report on climate change that had dire warnings about how little time we have to stop a global catastrophe.

Trump suggested that the world’s climate might actually be “fabulous” and that he’d seen reports expressing that position.

The UN report outlines the effects of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Trump has previously called climate change a “hoax,” and last year he announced he would pull the US out of the Paris climate accord. President Donald Trump on Tuesday cast doubt on a United Nations report warning that we have just 12 years to curb climate change by suggesting it wasn’t more credible than reports that say the environment is “fabulous.” […] Business Insider

Sinéad Baker’s qualifications as a climate scientist:

City, University of London, Master’s, Investigative Journalism, 2017 – 2018

Trinity College, Dublin, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), English Literature and Philosophy 2012 – 2016

Note to Sinéad: The current climate *is* fabulous. All of the warming since the 1600’s has lifted Earth’s climate comfortably out of the Little Ice Age, which was the coldest climate of the Holocene, barely warmer than the Pleistocene Bølling-Allerød glacial interstadial in Central Greenland.

Compared to most of the rest of the Holocene, the current Fabulous-ocene could only be more fabulous if it was a bit warmer.

Regarding the “dire warnings about how little time we have to stop a global catastrophe”…

And who could have possibly guessed that there are only 0.6 °C of separation between a “Fabulous Climate” and “The Ice Age Cometh?”

Gem #2 The Earth Will Deny Climate Science and Cool Back Down

This one is a veritable treasure trove…

Trump says he thinks the Earth will cool back down, denying his own administration’s climate change report Alex Lockie Nov. 5, 2018 President Donald Trump said he hasn’t seen his own government’s National Climate Assessment, but he doubts its grim conclusions and thinks the climate can change back on its own.

The Trump administration’s own scientists say it’s overwhelmingly clear that humans are causing climate change and that its repercussions could ravage the US and the world.

But Trump said he thinks the climate, the hottest in modern human history, can change back on its own. President Donald Trump said he hasn’t seen his own government’s National Climate Assessment, but he doubts its grim conclusions and thinks the climate can change back on its own. […] The US military and other sections of the government have had to grapple with the reality of rising water levels that threaten naval bases and populations around the globe. […] While Trump admitted humans “certainly contribute” to the hottest climate in modern human history, he also said he could produce scientific reports that dispute human-caused climate change. In response to the UN report, Trump said in October that the climate may actually be “fabulous,” and not in danger. “Is there climate change? Yeah,” said Trump to Axios. “Will it go back like this?” Trump asked, making an up and down waving motion with his hand. “I mean will it change back? Probably, that’s what I think.” “I believe it goes this way,” he said, again waving his hand up and down. “We do have an impact, but I don’t believe the impact is nearly what some scientists say, and other scientists dispute those findings very strongly,” Trump said. […] Trump has championed policies, like the use of coal for power, that scientists blame for releasing carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. In defense of his preference for coal, Trump has said he doesn’t want to combat climate change at the expense of US jobs. These were some of the reasons why Trump pulled the US out of the global Paris agreement to combat climate change in 2017. While Trump correctly stated that the Earth’s climate changes regularly over time, it does so on a geologic time scale, rather than in a matter of generations. And scientists warn that our extensive burning of greenhouse gases has set off a period of warming that has thrown the Earth’s natural cycle out of whack. Business Insider

Alex Lockie’s qualifications as a climate scientist:

Georgia State University, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies, 2012 – 2015

His LinkedIn page also says he’s an expert in writing, social media and copy editing.

Where to start?

The US military and other sections of the government have had to grapple with the reality of rising water levels that threaten naval bases and populations around the globe.

Just imagine if the Navy had to deal with the Holocene Highstand!

But Trump said he thinks the climate, the hottest in modern human history, can change back on its own.

“The hottest in modern human history?” Modern humans possibly date back more than 800,000 years. We know that several previous Pleistocene interglacial stages were at least as hot, if not hotter, than the Holocene interglacial stage.

So… We can probably assume Mr. Lockie wasn’t referring to the hottest climate in modern-human history, he must have been referring to the hottest climate in modern history, which it may very well be.

It may currently be as warm as, or even slightly warmer than, it was during the Medieval Climatic Optimum…

Even if it does get a little warmer than the Medieval Climatic Optimum, as I explained to Sinéad, being hotter than the 1500’s to 1800’s is a “good thing.”

Glaciers were generally advancing from the Holocene Climate Optimum (ca 9-5 ka) until the mid-1800’s. This period is known as Neoglaciation.

Retreating Glaciers = Good

Advancing Glaciers = Bad

But Trump said he thinks the climate… can change back on its own.

Note to Alex: It can… and has… repeatedly…

.

It can warm all by itself, ignoring low CO 2 levels…

It can cool all by itself, ignoring high CO 2 levels…

While Trump correctly stated that the Earth’s climate changes regularly over time, it does so on a geologic time scale, rather than in a matter of generations.

Alex, did you not read a word I just wrote? The Little Ice Age occurred over a matter of decades, as did the Younger Dryas glacial stadial and all of the Dansgaard–Oeschger, Heinrich and Bond events.

And scientists warn that our extensive burning of greenhouse gases has set off a period of warming that has thrown the Earth’s natural cycle out of whack.

We don’t even break out of the noise level of “the Earth’s natural cycle”…

All of this…

May have played a small role in this…

Trump has championed policies, like the use of coal for power, that scientists blame for releasing carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. In defense of his preference for coal, Trump has said he doesn’t want to combat climate change at the expense of US jobs.

Note to Sinéad & Alex… You have jobs.

President Trump is correct on both counts. The climate is fabulous and it will eventually cool back down and become decidedly un-fabulous.

FORECASTING THE FUTURE. We can now try to decide if we are now in an interglacial stage, with other glacials to follow, or if the world has finally emerged from the Cenozoic Ice Age. According to the Milankovitch theory, fluctuations of radiation of the type shown in Fig. 16-18 must continue and therefore future glacial stages will continue. According to the theory just described, as long as the North and South Poles retain their present thermally isolated locations, the polar latitudes will be frigid; and as the Arctic Ocean keeps oscillating between ice-free and ice-covered states, glacial-interglacial climates will continue. Finally, regardless of which theory one subscribes to, as long as we see no fundamental change in the late Cenozoic climate trend, and the presence of ice on Greenland and Antarctica indicates that no change has occurred, we can expect that the fluctuations of the past million years will continue. Donn, William L. Meteorology. 4th Edition. McGraw-Hill 1975. pp 463-464

What are my qualifications for criticizing Business Insider’s climate science experts? A BS in Earth Science (Geology) earned during That 70’s Climate Science Show and 37 years experience in the Climate Wrecking Industry.

Now, I have to get back to my job and find some more oil… MAGA!

Selected References

Berner, R.A. and Z. Kothavala, 2001. GEOCARB III: A Revised Model of Atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic Time, American Journal of Science, v.301, pp.182-204, February 2001.

Jameson, J., C. Strohmenger. Late Pleistocene to Holocene Sea-Level History of Qatar: Implications for Eustasy and Tectonics. AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90142 © 2012 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, April 22-25, 2012, Long Beach, California.

Ljungqvist, F.C.2009. Temperature proxy records covering the last two millennia: a tabular and visual overview. Geografiska Annaler: Physical Geography, Vol. 91A, pp. 11-29.

Ljungqvist, F.C. 2010. A new reconstruction of temperature variability in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere during the last two millennia. Geografiska Annaler: Physical Geography, Vol. 92 A(3), pp. 339-351, September 2010. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0459.2010.00399.x

MacFarling Meure, C., D. Etheridge, C. Trudinger, P. Steele, R. Langenfelds, T. van Ommen, A. Smith, and J. Elkins (2006), Law Dome CO 2 , CH 4 and N 2 O ice core records extended to 2000 years BP, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L14810, doi:10.1029/2006GL026152.

Moberg, A., D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karlén. 2005. Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data. Nature, Vol. 433, No. 7026, pp. 613-617, 10 February 2005.

Oerlemans, J. Extracting a climate signal from 169 glacier records. Science (80-. ). 2005, 308, 675–677, doi:10.1126/science.1107046.

Pearson, P. N. and Palmer, M. R.: Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 60 million years, Nature, 406, 695–699,https://doi.org/10.1038/35021000, 2000.

Royer, et al., 2001. Paleobotanical Evidence for Near Present-Day Levels of Atmospheric CO 2 During Part of the Tertiary. Science 22 June 2001: 2310-2313. DOI:10.112

Rundgren et al., 2005. Last interglacial atmospheric CO2 changes from stomatal index data and their relation to climate variations. Global and Planetary Change 49 (2005) 47–62.

Tripati, A.K., C.D. Roberts, and R.A. Eagle. 2009. Coupling of CO 2 and Ice Sheet Stability Over Major Climate Transitions of the Last 20 Million Years. Science, Vol. 326, pp. 1394 1397, 4 December 2009. DOI: 10.1126/science.1178296

Zachos, J. C., Pagani, M., Sloan, L. C., Thomas, E. & Billups, K. Trends, rhythms, and aberrations in global climate 65 Ma to present. Science 292, 686–-693 (2001).

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