Most of that ClimateAudit piece is popular press accounts based upon a scientific paper that appeared in 2007. If you read down through the comments, you will find that someone actually dug out the abstract of that paper and lo and behold, here is what it reads (bolding added):
So, in other words (as near as I can understand it), while the artefacts show that during the warmer periods between ~4900 years ago and now, that pass was used for transit across the alps, the same evidence also shows that at those times (as opposed to now), it was still ice-covered. That’s a bit different than the spin put on it by ClimateAudit, no?
It sounds to me as though they are talking about the particular site – Schnidejoch. It is hard to see why people would have been using the mountain pass in question during the roman or medieval warm periods if the area was glaciated.
Anyway, you can spin it any way you like, but the bottom line is this:
A European glacier retreated recently, revealing evidence of civilization. The reasonable inference is that the recent glacier retreat (of that glacier anyway) is NOT unprecedented.
And I would make a larger point:
In these global warming debates, I constantly see people claiming that some tangible aspect of the weather or climate is unprecedented. So far, a few google searches have always found precendent.
Wow…I tried to be polite and not gloat because I thought you would just admit that…whoops, you were wrong…but now I realize that this tactic doesn’t work with you. The point is that you referenced a blog that interpreted some data to say exactly the opposite of what the most recent study based on this data has actually concluded. (To be fair, it may not be McIntyre’s fault since he wrote that post a couple years before the scientific study was published…so I am not sure what the authors were saying about their find back then.)
It is strange that when you believed that the data agreed with your preconceptions, you weren’t so worried about the fact that they were talking about just one particular site, but now that has become a big concern. (And, while I agree that it is just evidence from one particular site, it is at least in a general region of the world in which it had previously been argued that the Medieval Warm Period had been quite notable.)
As for your implied question, the point is that during the warmer periods, there was not as much glacial ice in the pass (and presumably none once you get to elevations somewhat below it on either side) and thus it was not so hard to get through but during the colder periods it was.
No, the bottom line is that, by studying the evidence carefully, the scientists have concluded that, while the glacier has advanced and retreated several times during the last 5000 years, the extent of the current retreat is unprececented. Hence the sentence in the abstract that “Current glacier retreat is unprecedented since at least that time.” Is there something that is unclear to you in that sentence?
Well, I would make the larger point that you only seem to arrive at this conclusion but utterly ignoring what the scientists actually say. And, just to be clear, one of the authors on that paper, Suter, is the same one quoted most extensively in the two discussions that McIntyre translated, so this isn’t a matter of different scientists disagreeing with the interpretation of the scientists who made the discovery. It seems to be the actual team that made the original discovery.
Here, by the way, is the full paper. They do note that their conclusion of the glacial retreat being unprecedented in at least 5000 years is different from the conclusion reached from some studies of other glaciers in the alps. However, they feel that is because some of these studies use quite dated data (e.g., are comparing the 1985 glacial extent to earlier times) and because those others are glacier tongues which have longer lagtimes with climatology…so they have not fully responded to the warming up to this point. This current study, by contrast, is apparently unique in looking at an aspect of the glacier (the so-called “equilibrium line altitude” (ELA) that should stay in pretty good sync with the current climatological state in a rapidly changing climate such as our current one. (Or, at least that is what I understand from my first read of their discussion and conclusion section.)
So apparently there are plenty of references undermining this claim of “unprecedented.”
Looks to me like you are the one who has chosen to “utterly ignore” what scientists have to say, instead cherry-picking a paper that says something that fits your preconceived notions; and then falsely claiming that the articles I cited were based on your paper.
That is in the introduction of their paper and, as I noted above, in the conclusions they explain why they think that their study might be better able to capture the current warmth without a significant time lag. At any rate, this is in the general part of the world that is supposed to have the strongest evidence for a Medieval Warm Period and warmth during the Roman era. So, the warmth not being unprecedented there would not necessarily imply that the warmth is not unprecedented on a hemispherical or global scale. However, the warmth being unprecedented there would undermine the MWP (or Roman times) being warmer than the present in the very region for which evidence of warmth during these periods is apparently the strongest!
Wow, now this is getting really ridiculous. Read the freakin’ reference that you provided for Og’s sake! The paper that I cited was the paper that came out of the archeological find by Peter Suter et al. at Schnidejoch Pass. The name of Suter and that pass are all over the freakin’ articles that McIntyre translated (I count 11 reference to Suter’s name and 8 references to the location name in the post, not including the comments section). And, many of the details of what they found and the periods that they dated them to match up too. You simply can’t get away with trying to claim that this is a different archeological find than the one discussed in that ClimateAudit post.
When I first read that ClimateAudit piece, I didn’t notice the date on it and the fact that there was this one and one half year jump in the comments section from the first comments on it to another set of comments that included the link to the abstract.
So, my original statement, “Most of that ClimateAudit piece is popular press accounts based upon a scientific paper that appeared in 2007” should really have said something like “Most of that ClimateAudit piece is popular press accounts of an archeological find that led to a scientific paper that appeared in 2007”.
I think that would be wise given the circumstances.
And so the search continues for this mysterious unprecedented weather that’s supposedly the smoking gun evidence for the CAGW hypothesis.
Lol. Nice straw man.
Look, you didn’t claim that the articles were based on the same find as the paper. You claimed that the articles were based on the paper itself. Which would appear impossible.
Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase:
It looks to me like there is plenty of scientific and lay evidence that there is ample precedent for the recession of glaciers. If you want to claim otherwise, please make your claim in a specific way, cite something to back it up, and I will consider it.
Who said that this is the “smoking gun evidence” for CAGW? I have always said that the theory is based on many independent lines of evidence of which the notion that the late 20th century warmth is unprecedented on a global scale is but one piece of evidence, and the most circumstantial one at that.
So, you want to claim victory because the original articles were not based on the paper itself but were actually just an earlier discussion of the find from which the paper eventually resulted? I don’t see that as very material to the fact that the evidence presented has been interpreted by those who found it as providing evidence for retreat of that glacier that is unprecedented in at least the last 5000 years.
Noone has ever claimed that the recession of glaciers hadn’t occurred at times in the past…or even that some glaciers haven’t receded further than they have at times during the last several thousand years. The claim is that, on a hemispherical or global scale, the current warmth appears to be unprecedented. I.e., the argument is that those previous warm times were in local regions…and even when many places did show a “Medieval warm period” during some period of time around 800-1300 A.D., the times at which different places tended to show warmth were asynchronous so that the global anomaly was not as large as it is today when places around the world are warming largely synchronously.
However, I also think one of the points made in that paper is important…which is that previous studies of glaciers looked at glacial tongues that have a fairly long lag time with climatology and thus are unlikely to have captured that much of the significant warming that has occurred over the last ~35 years.
I agree that " eventually there will be statistically-meaningful deviations from any particular model." “Eventually” in this case seems to be thirty years, which is not very long for models that are supposed to forecast out for a century.
Now, if what you say is true, that every model will eventually go off the rails and have statistically significant deviations from reality … then my question is, can we not assume from that that eventually the average of the models will also have statistically significant deviations from reality?
I mean, the models seem in general to cluster together (and are claimed to be correct) in their reconstructions of the historical record. So are you saying that they are no longer going to cluster after 2000? If they cluster after 2000, then if one goes off the rails, they all go off the rails, and their average goes off the rails.
Or are they no longer going to cluster together after the year 2000? This might possibly (but not necessarily) mean the average doesn’t go off the rails, but it greatly increases the uncertainty of their forecast …
I don’t expect you to be a mind-reader. However, I do expect you to be able to understand the concept that sentences should be taken in context. I think if you look at the context around that sentence, it ought to be clear that I am talking about the claim of the recession of the glacier being unprecedented over the last 5000 years.
I’m really confused here, intention. Are you telling me that you don’t understand that there is a range of results from different models…that there is a range in the climate sensitivities among models and so forth?
That is why you can’t just look at the average but also must look at the distribution of projections.
Increases it over what? Sure, it increases it over the “straw man” concept that the average is going to be exactly correct (within statistical error). This is why the IPCC shows the range of predictions and not just the average from the different models.