JohnB

Well the guy talking about megaliths has no clue. All he provides is the incoherent belief that our ancestors were too stupid to make these things. Argument from disbelief is no argument.

A new reconstruction is out that people might find interesting. The abstract is here. Note that it is a Central Europe and not a N Hemisphere or Global reconstruction. Probably to the consternation of both sides of the climate debate; So while it appears to warmer than any time in the last 2,500 years the actual warming rate and duration is less than seen previously. There is a reasonably comprehensive write up in Der Spiegel covering the main points of the paper. Put bluntly warm = good and cold = bad. Some in the blogosphere are noting the extreme lengths that the MSM are going to in avoiding using the word "cold" in connection with previous periods of disaster and death. On a similar line I notice that weather is now climate for the CC crowd. Kevin Trenberth has no reluctance in placing at least some of the blame for the recent Queensland floods on Global Warming. The inference is, as always, that warmer means more extreme events. Well, if you want to use a Qld event as "proof" then you should really check the actual facts before opening your mouth and inserting your foot. As can be readily seen, flood events became less common as temperature rose during the last 150 years. There were 5 events around or larger than the 1974 peak in the 60 year period from 1840 - 1900 and 2 since 1900. (1974 and 2010) What do you call your theory when it doesn't match the observed facts? For a bit of colour I quote from the diary of the explorer John Oxley who investigated the Brisbane River in 1824. On the 19th September he wrote; The above info and quote are from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

The same principle holds true in smaller things as well. Some years ago the Aust gov wanted to change the frequency used by CB radios here. This would have led to a marked reduction in range and performance. The laws were ready to pass and the fines for not getting a new radio were gazetted. And very quietly, without a ripple in the MSM, many thousands of people said "No. We will not change and we will not pay your fines. You can send us to jail." Simple, passive resistance made the laws unenforcable and they were quietly dropped.

If an outsider can make a couple of points? 1. Rather than being a political act, this strikes me as a nutter going nuts. If the act was primarily political he would have fired more often at Sen. Gifford rather than just once and then turning on the crowd. 2. In looking at the "causes" people are trying to apply rational, sane thougth to an irrational, insane act. That doesn't work. It could be that he simply "Didn't like Mondays" or whatever. 3. Supposedly violent rhetoric is not the problem. Far more damaging is the very dismissive rhetoric that in your partisanship declares the other side to be not worth talking to. The attitude towards tea partiers is that they are beyond reasoning with. If you keep telling people that there is no point talking, why be surprised if people stop talking? I don't know if the right has similar but "The Young turks" are a great example of mindless left wing moderate morons who use dismissive tactics to belittle their detractors. 4. If you really want to talk about incitement, don't limit it to pundits, as they are only part of the picture. Look at the general attitude of groups on each side, those who make public statements. If you want to include the tea partiers in the debate, then you had better add in Greenpeace and the WWF as well. The picture from the left in the US is not pretty and I doubt that the picture from the right is much better.

Not godlike imatfaal. He doesn't command the sun to rise and set, he just edits the sunsets, a much less powerful position.

Possibly. I'm still trying to understand how they survived the discovery of fire.

Thanks guys. An unexpected result is a new fashion trend in womens footwear. We'll fix and rebuild. The biggest danger at the moment is people going back into previously flooded homes without turning the power off. The substations are currently off and if a person is in the house when it comes back online and there is a short....... I must commend and reccommend to anybody who is in disaster management that the methods and use by the Queensland Police of social networking sites such as Facebook be studied. Their ability to provide up to the second information on roads being cut etc was invaluable. I'm also certain that their use to quash immediately rumours and myths helped greatly to reduce worry and panic. People always knew what was happening. This method is far superior to using radio or TV especially with net access available on so many phones these days. The page is here. Have a read and you'll see what I mean. FX. The watershed from this is going to be dire for some. Some in our scientific community are going to expand their vocabulary with new words "Responsibility", "Consequences" and quite possibly "Unemployment". It's a complex story of both political and scientific opportunism.

Except that the "right" numbers aren't being used, are they? There is just a deletion.

Well, we made it. (Sort of) The floods peaked at 4.45m instead of the modelled 5.4m so there is a lot less damage than expected. 11,900 homes flooded instead of 20,000. It's pretty bad when you consider that to be good news. 3 looters have been caught and the general consensus is that they should be used as flood markers. However our sense of humour is already starting to show. Our largest football stadium is rather waterlogged so the statue outside is now suitably attired. And I thought this one was rather good. A true "Sign of the Times". Now the clean up begins for us. 75% of the State is flood damaged (an area about twice the size of Texas) so we need to get things operational ASAP so we can help the rest of the State. Rigney, thanks very much for the offer. I have no idea about donations but I'll bet that your local Red Cross or Salvation Army has something going. As to the poem, it expresses how I feel about my land and I cannot read it without tearing up a bit. We also must spare a thougth for those to the south. Our inland floods are making their way down the rivers and flood warnings are current in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Just to be different, Western australia has bushfires instead.

They are waiting for their Speech Therapists to complete their work. The aliens have an acute sense of smell and communicate by carefuly modulated emissions of bodily gasses. This explains all their "probing" as they are trying to work out why we can't speak properly.

Thanks guys. I'm in Brisbane. (Just got home from a shift filling sandbags for emergency services. It's 2.45 AM local now.) Queensland Police asked for help on their Facebook page and thousands turned out. There were so many that lots were turned away and asked to come back at 2AM to releive us. They did. The Bremer river in Ipswich peaked at 19+ metres tonight. There can be no assesment of damage until tomorrow. Todays peak is estimated at 22 metres+. The danger time for us is 1500 today and Thursday. We get to see the result of the old question. At 1500 local we will have a "King" tide, an extremely high, high tide. This will force the water in the Brisbane river back up the river, just in time to meet the flood water from Toowoomba coming downstream. We'll find out what happens when an irrisistable flood meets an immovable object. The level is expected to peak at nearly 500mm higher than the 1974 floods. We are safe, but my beautiful city is not. The plus is that 1974 was the result of weeks of rain and the flood lasted some time. We expect this one to be short and sharp. Hopefully this will cut down the damage as there shouldn't be long term soaking. Our dams are well past full and can no longer help in flood mitigation. To give an idea, if you use "Enoggera Reservoir" in Google Earth, that is the closest dam to my place. There is a Panoramio photo placed on the dam wall. If you look at the photo, you can see a small hut (about 3m high) near the wall. The hut is now under water. The worst part is the waiting. We know it's coming and there is nothing short of literal "Divine Intevention" that can stop it. Rigney, there is one fact that makes Toowoomba so much scarier. It's elevation is 700m above sea level and is pretty much on top of the mountain range. As of 1800 local, 70 towns were either flooded or cut off by floods. CaptainPanic, we are known for droughts, but floods and fires are nothing new for us. One of our greatest poets, Dorothea McKellar, wrote this quite some time ago, it's called simply "My Country". The love of field and coppice, Of green and shaded lanes, Of ordered woods and gardens Is running in your veins. Strong love of grey-blue distance, Brown streams and soft, dim skies - I know but cannot share it, My love is otherwise. I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea, Her beauty and her terror – The wide brown land for me! The stark white ring-barked forests, All tragic to the moon, The sapphire-misted mountains, The hot gold hush of noon, Green tangle of the brushes Where lithe lianas coil, And orchids deck the tree-tops, And ferns the warm dark soil. Core of my heart, my country! Her pitiless blue sky, When, sick at heart, around us We see the cattle die – But then the grey clouds gather, And we can bless again The drumming of an army, The steady soaking rain. Core of my heart, my country! Land of the rainbow gold, For flood and fire and famine She pays us back threefold. Over the thirsty paddocks, Watch, after many days, The filmy veil of greenness That thickens as we gaze. An opal-hearted country, A wilful, lavish land – All you who have not loved her, You will not understand – Though earth holds many splendours, Wherever I may die, I know to what brown country My homing thoughts will fly. Those that understand this, will understand us. In the words of our Premier; "This weather......It may break our hearts, but it will not break our spirits."

Since offers of aid have already arrived from the USA and the EU, I presume it's hit the world media. Toowoomba was hit yesterday by flash flooding; As of 12.30 PM local time (GMT +10) we have 8 dead and 72 missing. Our dams are at 173% capacity and the flood waters haven't got to them yet. The water is coming from the west and is estimated to peak at 18 metres at Ipswich. The CBD of Brisbane is being evacuated and 30 suburbs are on flood warning "High" alert. Highways to the north are cut and evacuation orders for some areas were issued some 20 minutes ago. The orders were quite literally "Get out. Take nothing. Just run". Civillian, Military and even news choppers are evacuating as many as they can from endangered areas. For now, all we can do is wait and hope it isn't as bad as this one was. At least I know all my family are safe. As of 1300 local time, the Brisbane river has broken its banks and flood waters are in the inner city.

Just to add. Earthquakes and faults can be caused by vertical pressure as well as horizontal. During the last Ice Age the areas beneath the ice shields were depressed, Scandinavia was depressed some 800 metres. Once the ice receeded and the weight was gone, faults and their accompanying earthquakes occurred. The full name is "Post Glacial Isostatic Rebound". This is also the reason for faults in England. Southern England was raised by the pressure of the ice to the North while Scotland was depressed. Scotland is still rising from the rebound while Southern England is slowly sinking.

I know there was join Aussie/New Zealand expedition a year or so ago. They spent 3 months in the Tasman Sea and came back with some rediculous number of new species. The oceans are amazing places.

Thanks Cypress. I was trying to get the concept across because with the differences between national laws, I couldn't use specifics. I think there are quite a few areas where the worldviews diverge and the divergence is greatly under rated. I notice much the same thing but in the other direction in the accusations against Dr. Wegman. From the business POV he did some summaries and paraphrasing, and used some boilerplate as background info, big deal. However using words without giving direct credit is the high crime of plagiarism in Academia. Swansont I suppose the easiest way to put it is this. If it was about finances, could your reasons convince the taxman?

From a quick check it seems that Gold has to a degree appropriated the Russian-Ukrainian theory. I did a post some years ago with links to the russian papers, but can't find it now. however here is a 2002 replication of earlier russian work. Take iron, marble and water, add heat and pressure and you get hydrocarbons. A comparison between the biotic and abiotic theories is here. (I haven't read it yet.) I think the russian theory has some legs for the simple reason that they can show experimental evidence. AFAIK, no-one has put some grass or other organic matter into a chamber and managed to turn it into oil. However, both theories have problems. The biotic theory can't really explain how massive oil deposits occur in largely magmatic areas and the abiotic theory uses a lot of handwaving to explain how large deposits get into sedimentary deposits. I suppose the possibility exists that both are right. Perhaps one is the source of heavy crude and the other results in light crude. I don't know and TBH I haven't read much on this in the last few years.

Sorry for the delay, but I was enjoying Christmas. Swansont, I fear that you are missing my point. The graph we are talking about is not data, but published papers. Hence it is akin to preparing a spaghetti graph of the final financial reports for several departments. From this POV it doesn't matter if they dropped their calculator or not, the line was their final report and to truncate is illegal. The reasoning is irrelevent, it is the act that is wrong. I can see that from your POV it isn't a big thing, but can you see that in my world the act itself is a crime? To present or imply the spaghetti graph is a complete and accurate record of the performance of the depts is a lie because some of them have been truncated. This is a crime in the business world. The reasoning is simple, most people just look at the pictures to get an idea of the general situation and only read the full reports for certain details. Therefore the pictures must be full and complete. Anything else is illegal. Those are the rules I live and work by. The act of truncating is illegal. Any reasoning as to why it is justified can be saved for when I brief my Defense Counsel. I can no more question the illegality of the act than I could question the Law of Gravity. In my world, it just is. I put it to you that since these reports are being used to advise and justify policies and investments of billions of dollars, then they must surely be made to meet the same requirements and standards as a business report. Samm. But that isn't the argument, is it? The argument is that the third warming is the result of a totally different set of forcings from the other two yet achieved an almost identical result. The Lean and Rind paper was one I hadn't seen. The links to the full have stopped working for some reason, but I'm glad i read it before they dropped out. Have you seen L&R 2009? I'm most pleased to see their short term checkable predictions from their developed model. I do have concerns in that as they note in their Summary section, L&R 2008 only accounted for 76% of the varience between 1889 and the present. A 24% wild card adds a big "If" to the equation. However we will be able to see the robustness of the model within a few years, something that has been sadly lacking previously. I don't like to parse paragraphs but I thought this sentence should be addressed separately. Firstly, on a purely logical basis, if there is a "lack of warming" with a decreased ENSO and SI, then where is your CO2 forcing? If there is warming with high SI and positive ENSO and a "lack of warming" without them, then by what logical process can CO2 be claimed to be a major climate driver? Is there a lack of warming in the first place? I would say so. When we look at UAH temp series; After the recovery from the post 1998 El Nino event, most of this decade has been remarkably stable. 2008 - 2010 could be described as a dip and a rise. Note however that the temps are dropping again rapidly and we are now back to .18 degrees which is about where it's been for most of the decade. so fankly I'm not seeing much in the way of underlying CO2 forcings, the temps are back to where they were 9 odd years ago despite the increase in CO2. On volcanics. One of the major papers in this area was Glecker et al 2006 which showed that volcanics were a long term forcing using 12 models. One of the authors has recently published (it's "in print" in GRL) pointing out the rather obvious flaw in the original paper. A dsicussion of the Gregory paper and it's implications for volcanic forcings in climate models can be found here. Put simply, the models showed that from a zero volcanic forcing start, they could accurately mimic the 20th C temps and that volcanic forcings from events like Krakatoa lasted well into the 20th C. Gregory points out that if the conclusions are true, then the models should not be run with a zero volcanic forcings start as the real situation is that the 1880 start will have forcings from volcanoes in the previous 80-100 years. In essence the difference is this; Volcanoes don't have a long term effect on the climate, only short term ones after their eruptions, or perhaps more exactly, the long term forcing is a constant or nearly so. This leads to some problems with IPCC AR4 8.7.2.3 and the long term forcings assumed in models. As an aside I found it most interesting reading an exchange between Gavin Schmidt and Judith Curry where Gavin commented that the forcings used in models for the IPCC are supplied by the IPCC which implied that they might not be the same as the modellers themselves would choose. Rather more interesting is that a number of the inputs for IPCC climate models are the outputs of population and economic models. I can only conclude that the IPCC economic models are somehow far more accurate than anybody elses. Not quite. CO2 may win out over the long term or it may not. Although I am saying that any explanation that only includes natural or anthopogenic causes must be wrong. I must add that I think that we are underestimating the natural forcings in the long term view. Going back to the UAH graph we can see a drop of .5 degrees just after the 1998 El Nino event. Given that natural forcings can change global temps by .5 degrees in 18 months it strikes me as a bit far fetched to think that they cannot do the same on centennial scales. As the paper quoted above showed we may have made some severe mistakes in the values attributed to natural forcings. The Glecker paper implies that the effect of volcanic aerosols are compounding, producing an increasing negative forcing that counteracts the increasing positive forcing for CO2. If this is not correct and volcanics do not compound, then the models are vastly over estimating the positive forcing of CO2. I must add though that L&R do not reference Glecker in their 2009 paper, I don't know if they did in the 2008 one. The first isn't too hard. Using the data we find the temps went from -49.6025 at 27,346 BP to -38.7156 at 27,774 BP, a change of 11 degrees in 400 years. If we assume that latitudinal amplification trebles the global reaction, we could imply a global change of 2.75 degrees or .685 degrees per century. As a back of the envelope, I don't see this as really different from the .7 degrees over the last hundred years or so. Again it would appear that the warming of the 20th C is not exceptional in any way. Yes, it is only one proxy, but we have to work with what we have. The number of long term proxies is increasing but there are calibration problems. For example this paperdiscusses the problems with South America. Basically we have the cores etc, but good instrumental series to calibrate against are lacking. While some are long, most are only 30-50 years which isn't really enough to provide both a calibration and verification period. Similarly this White Paper from NOAA discusses some of the problems with speliotherms etc. I can't prove it, but it strikes me that my own nation Australia is also falling very short on financing the research that needs to be done WRT long term proxies for our continent. As (I think) Kevin Trenberth said; "It's hard to find data when there is none". The difficulty is that we have short term high resolution proxies and long term low resolution proxies, what we need are long term high resolution ones and ice cores seem to be about the best bet. Speliotherms and varves can give good high resolution however the dating is sometimes a problem. I reccommend this sitefor a good overview on proxies. Following the links makes for very interesting reading on the subject. As to whether it invalidates other studies, that depends on the proxies chosen both in the original studies and those that followed. For example, the iconic MBH paper shows the 20th C to be quite unusual, yes? However to quote from Eiríksson et all 2006; If you look at this pageyou will see individual proxy temperature reconstructions tha tcover the globe, all showing a MWP and LIA. One has to wonder exactly how, given that so many proxies abound showing both these features existed on a planetary scale, MBH and subsequent papers fail to show it. Maybe it depends on the proxies you choose and the weighting that you give them? I'm not, one data point proves nothing. However may I point out (with tongue very firmly in cheek) that the general trend for climate sensitivity is very much a downward trend? Cheers.

Moontanman, I take it you've been reading the Russian Academy of Science papers too? Perhaps one of the most interesting debates in scientific history, that one.

Watch the original "The Day the Earth Stood Still" for the probable government reaction.

They certainly appear to be worked bone impliments. (They could also be naturally worn.) Can we have some more information? Where did you find them? When? How far down were they? What else did you find with them? I notice the coin you use in the pics has the Queen on it. The ruler is a much better guage of size as coinage varies between nations and since I don't know the coin, I can't guage how big the item is from it. But more information is required please, otherwise the answer can only be "They're bits of bone".

On the graph and strawmen. Frankly I didn't even look at the green line as it wasn't germane to the point. The point was that there have been three warming periods, which the graph showed, that was why I used it. Nowhere in my post did I mention the CO2 part of the graph. Since I only used it to demonstrate the existence of the three periods, I think that you both demolished strawmen. Swansont, I'm thinking of it this way. Suppose those lines were the profitability of various depts in a company. Generally the trend is up but some depts are down. Can I cut them because it "doesn't matter" for the general picture of company profitability? Can I cut them because I know the data is "wrong" and given time I can come up with a really good reason why they are diverging? The answer to both is "No". I have to show the lot, warts and all. These rules are put in place because it is simple human nature to rationalise and "Gild the Lilly" in reports. I simply assume that those involved in science are humans and have the same frailties as the rest of the population and that therefore the same rules should apply. I'm most interested to hear a reason why science is in some way special and should be exempt. The other problem with this truncating is that it is circular reasoning. The hypothesis behind the reconstructions is that ring width, density, varves, etc respond in a linear fashion to changes in temperature. What you are essentially defending is the idea that all data that contradicts the hypothesis is "wrong" and can be thrown out. Therefore all data remaining confirms the hypothesis and the hypothesis is therefore right. You've explained before that you throw out data and I have no doubt you do. But, you throw it because you know it is wrong or defective, not because it contradicts your initial hypothesis. Hypothesis: All swans are white. Any data concerning black swans is therfore wrong and can be discarded. Therefore all data confirms that all swans are white. Hypothesis proven? Sorry to use an "Argument from Incredulity", but really what would be the odds that the third period of warming in a non-linear chaotic system would be exactly the same as the previous ones from natural causes? Note that the "We can't think of anything else to account for the warming" is an "argument from ignorance". Can you prove the ENSO forcing isn't high enough? Nobody else has. TSI is the same, but has its content changed? What would be the effect on the climate of an increase in incoming short wave radiation? How does you theory account for the current lack of warming? Natural variations cancelling out the CO2 forcing? And these natural variations are amazingly growing in strength at exactly the right rate to counteract the influence of the CO2? The difference here is in approach. If we assume that internal forcings and variabliity are large then CO2 becomes a minor player and the temp changes seen fit rather easily. The sun was at its most energetic for quite some time during most of the 20th C. Allow for a bit of lag. Apply a 60 year oscillation for the PDO etc. Simple answer. But if you want CO2 to be a major player you need a large number of highly unlikely events to transpire to fit the record. You need the natural forcings for the first two warmings to phase out at such a time and at such a rate as to allow CO2 to "take over". You need aerosols to increase and at such a time and at such a rate as to emulate the (possibly) volcanic cooling of 1880-1910. You then need those aerosols to decrease at such a time and at such a rate as to allow the warming from CO2 to equal the forcings from the earlier periods. And from 2000 to present you now need to find this magical place that the missing heat has gone to and is apparently "hiding". Either that or you need to find the negative forcing that is growing at such a rate as to almost exactly cancel the CO2 forcing. All these things are required if CO2 is a major player. All this makes my position very difficult. Reason tells me that CO2 should be a minor player in the climate system, but I trust the physicists who say that we should have had some .6 degrees warming from CO2 increase. Which is why I sometimes seem to bat for both sides. I'm sceptical of the idea that CO2 is a major player but I'm also sceptical of any explanation that accounts for the warming without CO2. There is way too much either/or, it must be this or that, no middle road. For example it seems reasonable to me that for the period 1970-2000 with the PDO etc in positive mode they account for half the warming with CO2 the other half. Now they have essentially switched to negative mode, their negative forcing counteracts the CO2s positive forcing. I know it's not strictly accurate, but I hope you see my point. Both sides are simply too certain of their correctness. I don't know if it's true, but I've read on the net that the Scottish legal system has a third category besides "Guilty" and "Innocent", that category is "Not Proven". That best sums up my position. I don't find CO2 guilty or innocent, I find the case "Not Proven". But it hasn't 1 degree in a century, has it? It's been about .7 degrees in a century and a half. One of the things that bugs the daylights out of me is that every time you see one of the ice core records, the last 10,000 years is a great big splodge on the end. We know the temps go up and down, because it's a tall splodge, but a detailed look would be nice. Is the current rate unusual? If we plot the Greenland data from Alley R.B. 2004 from the NCDC, we get this for the last 10,000 years. Do you see anything particularly unusual about the current period? I don't. So let's look a bit further back, 50,000 years. Yes, sharp rises in temperature sure seem unusual, don't they? Granted, there will be high latitude amplification, but the temps sure changed a lot. I'd say that a degree per century isn't that unusual at all. It wasn't that long ago that 2.4 was the minority and 4 degrees was the majority. It's about science, not a popularity contest. I'm much happier letting the science develop without suggesting what they should find. Definitely. I was referring to the natural forcings and feedbacks in the climate system. Sorry for not being clear on that. I would think that human influence and the Sun would be the only external forcings that aren't effected by something else.

I'd like to see a cite for this. And those of us who live in nations with UHC have no fear of being uninsured. We have the freedom to choose our jobs without worrying about the Health Plan.

I'll have to search deeper, but here is one post covering the period 1880 up to today WRT the ENSO and PDO. While the period since 1860 has seen a general warming trend it is important to realise that there are in fact three warming periods within. 1860 - 1880 warmed, 1880 - 1910 cooled, 1910 - 1940 warmed again, 1940 - 1970 cooled slightly, 1970 - 2000 warmed again and 2000- 2010 has done bugger all. Sorry about the size, but it was the only version of the graph I could find. There has never been any suggestion that the first two warming periods had anything to do with human emissions of CO2, they are accepted as being totally natural in causation. This may or may not be true BTW, however if we assumed a CO2 component in them we would have to show vastly increased warming in the third period and this is not apparent. (Because CO2 forcing would have to be much larger than we think.) The rates of warming are as follows; Period Length Trend (Degrees C per decade) Significance 1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes 1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes 1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes 1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes As is readily seen there is no statistical difference between the two "natural" warming periods and the supposedly "unnatural" most recent one. In a BBC inteviewPhil Jones had this to say; I give you two hypotheses; 1. That the first two warmings were natural and the third was caused by CO2. This happened in such a way as to amazingly fit the observed warming/cooling cycle (for period) and also in a freak of improbability produced a trend not in any way different from the previous two "natural" warmings. That the natural forcings stopped in the period 1940 - 1970 and CO2 took over producing exactly the same forcing over the same period as the natural forcings. OR 2. That a natural warming/cooling cycle is occurring and the CO2 signature (forcing) is so small that it makes no statistical difference to the trends. IOW, there is no sign of CO2 forcing. However. Neither hypothesis explain the cause of the natural warming. Number 2 also leaves us with a problem. We know from radiative physics that an increase in CO2 must cause warming. (About 1.1 degrees for a doubling) This is why climate is a "wicked" problem. I must admit that one thing the graph does suggest to me is that while CO2 may not contribute much to the warming part of the cycle, it does have an effect on the cooling part. The cooling from 1880 -1910 was much greater than the cooling from 1940 - 1970 and since 2000 it's been about level. This is sort of consistent with the idea that while CO2 doesn't lead to warmer days, it does lead to warmer nights. They were extreme circumstances and the climate response was equally extreme. But the current temperature cycle isn't extreme in any way so it doesn't require extreme natural forcings. Right from the beginning we have assumed (Note that in the Gradualist/Catastrophists debate the grads believe that natural climate forcings are small and that temp changes of more than about .20/century are caused by freak events whilke the catasts think that natural forcings are large and that temp changes of 1.00/century are not unusual.) that the climate response to natural forcings is small and that CO2 is a primary driver. One of the arguments against larger variations in history is that if they exist then sensitivity to CO2 is larger than assumed and the CO2 problem is therefore much worse. An alternate view is that while climate variability in the past was larger than the hockey stick shows, it was driven by natural forcings and not CO2, meaning that CO2 sensitivity may be lower than we think. 10 years ago, climate models centred around a 40 warming for a doubling of CO2 (counting feedbacks etc) they are now converging on about 2.40. A very recent paper from a NASA team (described here) puts the warming from a doubling from todays 390 ppm to 780 ppm at 1.650. Treating the climate as a purely physical object responding only to the laws of physics seems to be a bad approach. The climate is a biosphere which while it follows physical laws (in detail) is much harder to quantify in a model. Note that if this new figure is correct, it allows for much greater variation in paleo climate without an increase in CO2 sensitivity, meaning that natural effects must be greater than previously assumed. The thing that must be realised is that in reality there is no such thing as "Climate" as a distinct entity. There are only forcings and feedbacks. In the natural world I've yet to see anything that isn't a feedback of (or is uneffected by) something else. Clouds might be a temperature forcing, but they are also a feedback to temperature, GCRs and changing currents. GCRs are effected by the Suns magnetic field (and Thor only knows what all the things are that effect currents). Even natural increases/decreases in CO2 are feedbacks for temperatures and other factors. Climate could be described as an equation where every variable is a function of two or more other variables. Everything is a "forcing" of climate and everything is a "feedback" of climate. I doubt that it was truncated because it cast doubt on the methodology too. This is an area where background becomes important, and the word "fraud" gets used. Some scientists get all huffy and defensive, but the word is used in one language (business) and is heard in the other language (science). In business we have a thing called "Full Disclosure". If I were preparing a spaghetti graph for the CEO and I left out data because I "knew" it was wrong and he/she found out, I would probably get fired. If that graph was to be used in a Propectus for investors and the deletion was discovered, I would be charged with and jailed for, fraud. In the business world any deletion or modification of data in a public report is considered fraud. That is my world and the rules I have to live and work by. Full Disclosure, always, no excuses allowed. It doesn't matter why it was done, the fact is that it was done and in the business world would be automatically considered fraud. Do I think that fraud was committed? No, not at all. But keep in mind that if I had done a graph for a Prospectus using the same methods, I would be in jail. There are two very distinct sets of rules here and I have to ask why climate scientists (or anybody else) should get a free pass in areas where I would be charged with a crime. Climate is a big issue and we are talking about trillions of dollars. I simply think that science should be held to the same standard as business is. (And we've seen that even with the checks and balances, business can still go very wrong) It comes down to trust. You don't trust a businessman that hides or deletes data, why should you trust a scientist that does the same thing?

There is also the point that as the price goes up, marginal fields become economical, increasing supply. (a bit)

First off. Swansont, if I've offended you, I apologise. I didn't notice the "submitted" (it might be an old link). The paper has been "accepted" for some time. Publication was held off until the Journal could get the replies, critiques and response from the authors. From my POV Deepclimate etc were blogs responding to an accepted paper and therefore don't carry the same weight as the responses provided to the Journal. McShane and Wyner do conclude that; They also conclude (and I think this is quite important); Which speaks towards the rate of change. And from their Conclusions section; Samm, I think that many of the blogs are a waste of time, and the tone of many put me off. I like the articles at WUWT but generally skim the comments to see if anybody has posted a useful link rather than wasting my time reading the comments. WUWT would be much better if Willis Eschenbach or Bob Tisdale would actually submit for publication. They appear to know their stuff but I'd rather see the fight in the literature than in a blog. For example Bob Tisdale has shown rather convincingly that a very good fit to the instrumental temp curve is given by a constant .5 degree/century increase with a superimposed 60 year harmonic cycle (PDO and ENSO). The correlation is something like .87 IIRC, but I'd like to see it published rather than blogged. Lucias Blackboard is one that looks at things in detail. I tend to spend my time at Keith Kloors or lurking at Judith Currys. I don't look much at the "Warmista" blogs, either because of their tone or moderation policy. (Some of them come across as borderline "tin hat" brigade. ) The important thing is to not judge the person by the blog. I've found all Climatologists respond to specific questions if asked politely. (In fact only one ever didn't respond to an email and I found out later that he was off sick for about 4 months with a severe illness so I'm not about to complain.) It doesn't make much difference in the current climate debate but it is interesting. If you read non modern climate change paleo you'll see that there were two sides. The Gradualists who have held sway pretty much since the beginning and the Catastrophists. Gradualists believe that the climate is huge and has great inertia, it can only change naturally at very slow speeds. Temperature rose, the ice gradually receeded, the sea levels gradually rose. (That's how it was phrased when I was in school.) They have the mental picture of the ice shield melting and feeding creeks and rivers with maybe the occasional flood event. Catastrophists have a different view. For them things can change very rapidly indeed. If the ice shield melts from the top then you would finish up with lakes of water on top of the ice held back by ice "dams". Think of light rain on a car bonnet. You get all those little pools of water and then one finally moves, it flows into another, and another and another picking up volume and speed as it goes. Now imagine the same thing happening on the top of 2 million square miles of ice shield with not only the area involved but also the drop of two miles of altitude to feed the speed. I remember reading one paper from the 80s (?) where the maths was done. Imagine a wall of ice cold water 500 feet high and nearly 100 miles wide and travelling at nearly 300 miles per hour with the force of over 1,000 cubic miles of water behind it smashing into the Atlantic. More than enough to disrupt the AMOC I would think. From start to finish less than 12 hours and within 4 days the NH goes from deglaciation to full blown ice age conditions. Like I said earlier, scary as hell. As you might realise, I tend to side with the catastrophists. I believe that the climate can change rapidly and globally from purely natural causes. The changes we have seen in the last 140 odd years is orders of magnitude less than has occurred in the past from purely natural forcings. Given this I'm naturally sceptical of people who claim that the current rate of change is "unprecedented". "Galactic Cosmic Rays", the things CERN are looking into in the CLOUD experiments. Currents are constantly changing on a global scale. A major event took place 55 million years ago when North and South America joined to block the Equatorial current into the Pacific. A mere 12,000 years ago Britain was part of Europe and most of the North Sea was grassland. Indonesia was one large land mass and America and Russia were joined by the Bering Strait land bridge so there was no water movement between the Pacific and Arctic oceans. These events changed the ocean currents and added millions of square miles of water from which evaporation could occur. Major events like these do indeed change the currents and effect cloud cover. On a smaller scale it's still going on. Due to the weight of the extra water since the last ice age the sea bottom is slowly sinking and since it lost the weight the land is still rising. Parts of Canada are rising at a rate of 2 cm per year. It's called "Post Glacial Isostatic Rebound". Scotland is rising and England is sinking. Silt from rivers is being deposited on Continental shelves making them slightly shallower and forcing the deeper currents upwards. In August 2006 the crew of the yacht Maiken witnessed the birth of an island in the Pacific.(The pics were floating around the net via email.) Another in the Pacific in 2000. The island Surtsey came from 130 metres down to be born between 1963 and 1967. The mid Atlantic Ridge runs from north to south with resulting islands from 710 north to 540 south and is in constant motion. Individually the movements are small, but a new island must divert the currents around it and the effect is probably cumulative. Many people start from the basis that the planet is stable and pretty much unchanging. I start from the basis that the planet is dynamic and in constant motion and change. Temperatures wax and wane, storm intensities grow and diminish. The only constant in the climate system is that it will change, with or without the actions of man and we had better get used to the idea. Where this leads to a practical difference is that if you believe that climate to be relatively constant and slow changing, then you will believe it easy to find an anthropogenic signal in the data. However if you consider the climate to be relatively volatile then you will believe it far more difficult to find a signal in the data. They don't have to do your work for you, you know. The reconstruction is calibrated to the same baseline average as the GISS and HADCRUT. In general proxy reconstructions are considered complete reconstructions even without the instrumental periods being used. Because the instrumental period is derived directly from the data it isn't deemed part of a "reconstruction". The term reconstruction is reserved for work where the temperature has to be inferred from proxies. It's a terminology thing, nothing more. Not quite. Remember that the theoretical basis of the reconstruction is that since the tree rings (or whatever) change in a regular fashion during the current period dependant upon temperature they will therefore respond the same way to previous temperatures. The proof of the methodology lies in the correlation between tree ring width and temperature over the instrumental period. Hence a lack of correlation reduces confidence in the methodology. Showing the divergence and offering an explanation as to why it is occurring and why your methodology is therefore still sound is good science. Truncating the data because it casts doubt on your methodology is nothing more than very bad science. The value of a proxy in a paleo reconstruction is a direct function of how well it correlates to the temperature record, that is how and why you choose proxies. You can't cut out the bit you don't like and tell people that the correlation is great, you have to show the full data and if there is a divergence, explain it. The explanation so far, which boils down to "There is an unknown factor, probably of anthropogenic origin" is bloody weak from my POV. As an aside there was a link to a paper some time ago at ClimateAudit concerning this. Apparently many tree proxies are chosen because they are at the tree line, or vegetation border. The paper showed that some trees grow along the ground until the temps reached a certain point and then they started growing straight up. This led to a great change in tree ring width and density which might go a long way to explaining the divergence problem. You should also be aware that the truncating is not being done to a proxy, it is being done to complete and published reconstructions. Specifically Briffa 2001 is truncated at 1960, with a couple of others in 1980. By truncating them you can say "See, the reconstructions roughly agree" without someone looking at the last 50 years and asking "Hang on, what's going on here?" I call that marketing, not science. This was "Mikes Nature trick" to "hide the decline".