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Long-term and Recent Temperatures

By April 6, 2022Commentary

Just want to give people a little foundation for understanding climate.  The big claim right now is that rising CO2 levels are creating runaway higher temperatures and will have us all living either in deserts or under the expanding seas.  Just to be very upfront about my bias, this is all bullshit driven by ideologues who as usual, have corrupted the science in favor of what they believe.

Temperatures more than 150 or 200 years ago largely are inferred from proxies, since there were not reliable thermometer records.  Even the recent thermometer records have been corrupted by supposed necessary adjustments which inevitably and mysteriously always seem to make the past cooler and the present warmer than the actual readings show.  A proxy is some measurement from which temperature can supposedly be inferred–tree rings are a notable one.  The best record for guessing at, and honestly, that is what it is, long-ago temperature are ice cores, and the longest of those come from Antarctica, where we can see several glacial cycles.

These two charts show a fairly long record of the earth’s average temperature and one just covering the last few thousand years.  What is immediately apparent is that there is actually nothing unusual about the last few decades’ temps.  In fact, the earth has been much warmer a number of times in the past.  You can see that the current interglacial period in which we live is similar to the one two cycles ago, and that warmth hasn’t yet come close to the peak of the immediately past cycle.

On the more recent chart you can see that even within this interglacial cycle current temperatures are nothing to get alarmed about and have not reached other intracycle peaks.  So keep these charts in mind when you see bullshit about “unprecedented” warmth.  It simply isn’t true.  And remember why the morons who espouse this nonsense do so–they are trying to control your lives.

Join the discussion 10 Comments

  • MLR says:

    It doesn’t matter, the canard of anthropogenic global warming has been bought by almost all of the people who control our governments, education, and industry. It won’t end until there is a catastrophe of the lights going out and there is mass death to people freezing to death.

  • Joe Lampe says:

    Three of the many good books on climate change are these:
    Global Warming Skepticism for Busy Busy People, by Roy Spencer
    The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change, by Marc Morano
    The Deniers, by Lawrence Solomon
    See also the world’s most viewed climate website: http://www.wattsupwiththat.com
    Another good one: https://realclimatescience.com/2022/04/sneak-preview-of-real-climate-tools/

  • JT says:

    The age old argument is that there was never this mount of fossil fuel burning in the historical temperature data. This point makes it much easier to extrapolate the unknowns right through the top right corner of the graphs and create environmental superstars out of ADHA teenagers. This really comes down to a physics problem bounded the 4 laws of thermodynamics. None of these systems can be isolated for ‘study’ and when you are talking about numbers with powers of 10^23rd, or more, approximations and margins of error are well beyond any measurable accuracy. No one factors in the heat from the earth’s core itself. Our ‘heat’ sources, or lack there of, are not only external.

    I’ve found attempts at BTU balances that basically say there’s not enough energy density in solar and wind to get anywhere near the amount needed to maintain our existing global infrastructure, let alone improve it. These two options are ‘fringe’ sources that are cute, environmentally stupid, but oh so easy to sell. Fusion is the answer, but it needs to be embraced and developed by energy companies, or they’ll perish hanging on to their fossil fuels. TOKAMAC to the rescue !!

    Gonna be a very difficult imaginary genie to put back in the bottle …

  • dirtyjobsguy says:

    We still are not certain what triggers Ice Ages, except that the next one is overdue. Here in Connecticut we had over a mile of ice on the ground not long before humans arrived here. Who decided that 2 degrees C was unacceptable anyway?

  • Tom Heller says:

    Not at all surprising that the same people advancing earth warming are the same people who wear masks while driving alone in their EV. Very sad.

  • Lake Detective says:

    A clever paper from the journal Nature (Grape ripening as a past climate indicator) uses parish records from 1370 to 2003 from Burgundy, France. Grapes ripen based on temperature. Grape harvesting has been recorded religiously since the 1300s. Findings indicate decadal warming trends in the 1300s, 1400s, !500s, and 1600s. There was a cooling trend since the 1750s to the 1970s. We are coming out of that cooling trend now. Apparently the Pinot Noir grape has a number of significant benefits.

  • John Oh says:

    Stop making sense! Between JT and Blackwing1 from yesterday I’m beginning to doubt everything I’ve been told by all the smart people and true believers. I think we’ve made little progress since the 16th and 17th centuries when cold weather and crop failures got blamed on witchcraft. A lot of people were burned at the stake until it finally got warmer and the crops did better. So I guess it worked. Science.

  • dell says:

    One of the best level headed analysis is by Kit Webster: “The Only Ten Things You Need To Know About Global Warming”

    The book can be downloaded for free.

    https://www.tenthingswarming.com/thoughts-on-ar6

  • Bob Harper says:

    A friend to whom I sent this objected that both graphs include the word ‘modified’ in their descriptions, and he wonders whether this does not mean the introduction of bias. I very much doubt that, and find the piece quite compelling, but how ought I to answer him with respect to the word ‘modified’?

  • joe Kosanda says:

    In response to Bob H question of “modified”
    The first graph is a composite of several studies depicted as an average of those studies. The overall presentation the first graph is pretty well accepted by the scientific community (and the general public) and is not controversial.

    The second graph has the typical modifications (“visual effects” ) that both the luke warmers use and which is also used by the climate activists. In this particular case, the time scale is shortened and the temperature scale is much longer in the graph to make the swings btween the MWP, LIA, RWP, etc appear to be much shorter and sharper . The activists on the other hand will lengthen the time scale and shorten the temp scale to substantially smooth out the mwp, lia , rwp, to make to the temp changes appear quite small, along with overstating the amount of warming in the modern period.

    The paleo reconstructions are fraught with problems. At this point, there are 50+ reconstructions that all reach similar conclusions/results as Mann’s mbh98. Everyone is well tuned to the hyjinx with MBH98, though I think far too much time and effort is made trying to discredit mbh98 which is rather trivial with respect to the broader issue in the paleo reconstruction. Any study in any field is only as good as the quality of the underlying data. In my opinion, the resolution of the underlying proxies is not nearly high enough to obtain any reasonable insight into the past temperature, along with too many proxies not reconciling to known historical events ( ie poorly calibrated to known events during the reconstruction period) – conclusions being reached which are not supported by the underlying data

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