DATA from Ice Cores and Mud Cores
Responding to a comment (A Dear John letter!)
Dear John —
Commenting on my last Post, you wrote:
Thanks for posting this. I am a bit sceptical tho:
1) I doubt can you measure surface temperatures from 8000 years ago
2) Surface temperature of 30 -32 C in Greenland I find hard to believe.
Thanks for your comment — I’ll bet your comment struck a chord with many readers, so I’m responding with a Post.
Yes, it certainly does seem incredible that accurate temperature measurements of the Earth’s surface can be made for 8,000 years in the past, to the early part of the this present brief Inter-Glacial period called the Holocene. Well, 8,000 years is nothing!
The Vostok Ice Cores provide such DATA going back 100 times further into the past, to over 800,000 years ago, showing the past 10 or so Ice Ages1. The Greenland Ice Core DATA, shown by Jørgen Peder Steffensen in the video in my previous Post, confirm the Vostock Ice Core DATA showing that temperatures were indeed a couple of degrees C higher in the past during this present Holocene Inter-Glacial Period compared to the present temperature. While the this Greenland Ice Core DATA only goes back in time a small fraction of that of the Antarctic Vostok DATA, it provides a more detailed record of the recent past (there is only 1 Data Point per century in the Vostok DATA).
And Mud Core DATA goes back in time to about 5,000,000 (5 Million) years ago, showing the onset of the Earth’s Glaciation Period (an almost constant Ice Age with brief Inter-Glacial Periods) about 3 Million years ago. The Vostok Ice Core DATA confirmed (the last 1 Million years of) the Mud Core DATA, and also confirm the 1976 seminal findings of Hays et al.2 that the Earth’s periodic Ice Ages are caused by the Milankovitch Cycles (variations in the Earth’s orbit)3, and also confirm the findings of Hays et al., and many others, that changes in atmospheric CO2 LAG Temperature, making a mockery of Mr. Gore’s claims4.
Over a half a century ago, the techniques of using “heavy” water isotopes (water with one of the Hydrogen atoms replaced by a Deuterium atom, or with the stable O-18 atom in place of the more common O-16 atom) as a proxy for temperature measurements were used by Hays et al. These and other experimental techniques of measuring temperatures in the past have been verified by many hundreds5 of independent Ice Core and other measurements.
Now, as you know, one cannot publish any article questioning the Global Warming (Specious) Narrative without a disclaimer from some “reputable” source (e.g., Wikipedia [or NPR, CNN, NYT, WaPo or Al, Greta or Rachel Maddow]). Below is my disclaimer of all of these disclaimers (i.e., propaganda):
More on Propaganda and Censorship in Science
The Narrative ALWAYS trumps even DATA in the Climate Crisis “Follow-the-Science” Religion.
See “Anthropogenic Global Warming II- A First look at the Vostok Ice Core Data”
Anthropogenic Global Warming II-
The Earth has been cooling since it was first formed about 4 - 5 billion years ago. It has cooled from a high temperature vapor, then condensing into to a liquid (molten rock and iron), and finally cooling enough to have a solid crust on the surface now about 10 miles thick (compared to the Earth’s radius of about 4000 miles). About 3 or 4 million yea…
Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages (https://www.whoi.edu/cms/files/hays76sci_268464.pdf)
The Mud Core Data goes back in time about 5 Million years, and shows the onset of this Glacial Age about 3 Million years ago.
Anthropogenic Global Warming VI -- Milankovitch was Right !
Today is Christmas Eve — 3 days past the Winter Solstice. Consequently, I’m sure that EVERYONE, just like me, is only thinking about one thing: the Earth’s Orbit. How apropos that I post this today.
Spoiler Alert: Never trust politicians. Certainly never trust trust a politician when it comes to science.
Hoisting Mr. Gore on his own Petard
Now don’t get me wrong, I love Al Gore; he is the perfect Al Gore! But he’s not a scientist, not even close. He is a Politician. Perhaps also, or redundantly, a show-man and con-man.
See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ice_cores
I work with a lot of PhD meteorologists and about half are skeptical. I would engage the other half and all but two, when presented with geologic time/temp facts, would say, "I'm not an expert in the field of climatology."
One that continued engage after I pointed out that carbon was many times higher in the past, as in the Jurassic, then asked, "do you want to live in a climate like that?"
I engaged the other, a cosigner of the IPCC, and that person claimed that methane is the real issue and that if Greenland's ice sheet melts, the release of methane could cause a temperature runaway effect leaving the Earth like Venus. I then asked, then why didn't we have a runaway in all the previous times the ice sheet melted? I never heard back.
I contend their knowledge is neither broad nor deep...just narrow and myopic.
Here is a column from 2008 by Friedman of the NYT, who is a far left climate nut. He visited Steffensen's camp. Note that the Danish climate minister and Pauchari from IPCC were visting the camp. So already by 2008 the research theme was that "instability" is a threat that could make CO2 emission very risky. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/opinion/03Friedman.html
I should also point out that Hedegaard is/ was a member of the "Conservative Party" in Denmark. What a joke. She was a huge climate zealot and then got an EU role as a climate czar later in the 2010s.