fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

It’s Just A Flesh Wound

People who believe that the spike in global temperatures over the last 100 years are part of a natural cycle are going to have a much tougher time sticking to that line after the study released the other day. Excerpt: Previous historic climate reconstructions typically extended no further back than 2,000 years, roughly as far […]

marcott-B-CD

People who believe that the spike in global temperatures over the last 100 years are part of a natural cycle are going to have a much tougher time sticking to that line after the study released the other day. Excerpt:

Previous historic climate reconstructions typically extended no further back than 2,000 years, roughly as far back as you can go by examining climate indicators from tree rings, as Mann did. To dig even deeper, Marcott’s team looked at objects collected from more than 70 sites worldwide, primarily fossilized ocean shells that have been unearthed by oceanographers. Existing research has shown that certain chemical tracers in the shells link directly to temperature at the time they were created; by studying oxygen isotopes in the fossilized plankton shown below, for example, scientists can deduce that it formed its shell at a time when Greenland was fully without ice. Marcott’s task was to compile enough such samples to represent the whole planet over his chosen timeframe.

“There’s been a lot of work that’s gone into the calibrations, so we can be dead certain [the shells] are recording the temperature we think they’re recording,” he said.

Today’s study should help debunk the common climate change denial argument that recent warming is simply part of a long-term natural trend. Indeed, Marcott says, the earth should be nearing the bottom of a several-thousand year cool-off (the end-point of the rainbow arc in (B) above), if natural factors like solar variability were the sole driving factors. Instead, temperatures are rising rapidly.

You yellow global-warming bastards! Come back here and take what’s coming to ya! I’ll bite your legs off!

Advertisement

Comments

Want to join the conversation?

Subscribe for as little as $5/mo to start commenting on Rod’s blog.

Join Now