Scientists: Earth is warmer today than any time in the past 11,300 Years

[Poll_Blind]

From Science Recorder:

Comprehensive new research into global climate change finds that our planet is warmer today than at any time during the last 11,300 years. The study, published in the journal Science, examined variations in temperature over the past 15,000 years, during the relatively warm Holocene period, which began at the close of the last great ice age and continues to the present day.

Researchers from Oregon State University and Harvard used core samples from 73 ice and sediment core monitoring sites around the globe to reconstruct global temperature change by studying fossils of marine microorganisms.

Previous climate histories have mainly focused on changes over the past 2,000 years, but the new data puts today’s climate change into a much broader and long-term context, according to lead author on the study, OSU paleoclimatologist Shaun Marcott.

Earlier studies have relied primarily on analysis of tree rings, lake sediment cores and isotope ratios in cave formations. Although such studies can provide detailed reconstructions of climatic change, they typically apply only to limited geographical regions and do not extend back more than a couple of thousand years, says Marcott. Marcott’s study, on the other hand, fills in the crucial post-ice age time during early human civilization.

In addition, the study represents one of the first attempts to build a set of data from sites around the world. Peter Clark, an OSU paleoclimatologist and co-author on the Science article, said many previous temperature reconstructions were regional in nature and were not placed in a global context, which led the team to create a model that was global in context.

--snip--

I hope you all get that nobody's going to do anything about global warming. It's too late. What's going to happen is people (but especially nations) are basically going to continue doing what they had been doing. There is almost certainly going to be some action on a national level, but it's not going to be enough and what's going to happen is going to happen.

I think it's worth making a little space for the idea that we're going to have to deal with the repercussions of this during our lifetimes and that the results of our, and our ancestors', actions are going to impact how we interact with the world.

PB

[NYC_SKP]

1. Water wars, food wars, pestilence and disease are coming.

Resulting in a well-deserved "thinning of the herd", IMHO, as I feel we've grossly over-populated the planet and disrespected her beauty and resources.

eom.

[Poll_Blind]

3. Objectively, I agree. Subjectively, I recently attended a school play and...

...the faces of some of the most vulnerable of "the herd" are fresh in my mind. I'm not saying anything by that and that's in no way directed at you. This is going to put a big hurt on us all, IMO, and even living in a so called "first world" country is not going to protect us from the consequences.

PB

[NYC_SKP]

4. I wish it weren't so, and I've dedicated my career to preventing it's happening.

I work with schools and teachers and students on environmental education programs. I don't let on my fears explicitly, but I do try to encourage them all to study the subject and make their own informed decisions.

[RevStPatrick]

9. I don't think the planet is "over-populated."

I think the planet is over-populated for the systems that we have in place.

If we were a rational species, we would build new systems.
But we're not a rational species.
We're a species of mostly nice, dumb people who are just trying to live their lives, and a bunch of greed-heads.
The greed-heads are the ones who determine what systems are in place, and they don't want to change anything because the current systems give them all the money and power.

So yes, the culling is coming, but it doesn't have to be that way...

[NYC_SKP]

10. There aren't sustainable systems that can support the densities that are found in many places.

Maybe we could redistribute people and have a chance, but measured against true long-term sustainability needs, there isn't a chance in hell of carrying this many people distributed where they are.

At least not in a pleasant humane way.

Nonetheless, I get what you're saying, I just disagree.

[GliderGuider]

17. Don't "better" systems usually permit more growth?

Isn't that usually the purpose of devising better systems?

What kind of "better" system would stop the growth in population, consumption, energy use and the concentration of wealth, power and population?

Would most people in the world see a system that did that as "better"?

[John2]

11. There are vast areas

on this Planet not populated. Most of the U.S. population rests on both coasts. There are vast areas in the Former Soviet Union with sparse population. Africa is not really that heavily populated and neither is South America or Canada.

The Earth is over three quarters water. If you can learn to purify sea water, you will never be out of water. And there is plenty of food in the sea, and food can be grown. It depends on how you take care of the soil. We waste a lot of food and some people act like swine. No one should go hungry on this planet.

Isn't it a scientific fact or knowledge, regardless what humans do, at some point in the future, all life will end on Earth and maybe including the Earth itself due to the life of the Sun? And that is projected to be billions, maybe even trillions of years from now, by observing other Stars? The climate will gradually change and man is defenseless against it. The only thing man can do is not increase the inevitable by polluting the atmosphere or having some kind of nuclear radiation.

[pscot]

16. You seem to be missing the point

Those who are now alive are going to pay the bill for years of unsustainable practices. It's going to hurt. There is a lot of pain ahead.

[MH1]

2. The combinaton of resource impacts and over-population will cause violent conflict

on a scale that will reduce potential government drone attacks on US civilians to among the very least of our worries.

[FarCenter]

5. They did not say "Earth is warmer today than any time in the past 11,300 Years"

A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years

Shaun A. Marcott, Jeremy D. Shakun, Peter U. Clark, Alan C. Mix

Abstract

Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records. Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<5000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago. This cooling is largely associated with ~2°C change in the North Atlantic. Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change model projections for 2100 exceed the full distribution of Holocene temperature under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198.abstract

Temperatures are currently lower than around 5000 years ago, although the projected warming will take them higher by 2100.

[DhhD]

6. Enough heat to melt the fresh water ice is all it will take. When is that projected to be? Soon!

Edited for spelling.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

8. This would take care of that pesky heat problem:

A CHILLING POSSIBILITY

BY DISTURBING A MASSIVE OCEAN CURRENT, MELTING ARCTIC SEA ICE MIGHT TRIGGER COLDER WEATHER IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA.

March 5, 2004: Global warming could plunge North America and Western Europe into a deep freeze, possibly within only a few decades.

That's the paradoxical scenario gaining credibility among many climate scientists. The thawing of sea ice covering the Arctic could disturb or even halt large currents in the Atlantic Ocean. Without the vast heat that these ocean currents deliver--comparable to the power generation of a million nuclear power plants--Europe's average temperature would likely drop 5 to 10°C (9 to 18°F), and parts of eastern North America would be chilled somewhat less. Such a dip in temperature would be similar to global average temperatures toward the end of the last ice age roughly 20,000 years ago.

Some scientists believe this shift in ocean currents could come surprisingly soon--within as little as 20 years, according to Robert Gagosian, president and director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Others doubt it will happen at all. Even so, the Pentagon is taking notice. Andrew Marshall, a veteran Defense Department planner, recently released an unclassified report detailing how a shift in ocean currents in the near future could compromise national security.

"It's difficult to predict what will happen," cautions Donald Cavalieri, a senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, "because the Arctic and North Atlantic are very complex systems with many interactions between the land, the sea, and the atmosphere. But the facts do suggest that the changes we're seeing in the Arctic could potentially affect currents that warm Western Europe, and that's gotten a lot of people concerned."


Arctic ice, 1979-2003, based on data collected by the Defense

More: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/05mar_arctic/

[AverageJoe90]

20. This actually does make sense, when you think about it.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

21. It does and it would be a catastrophe.

[Fuddnik]

7. Stupid scientists! Everyone knows the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Al Gore probably put them up to this.

[Politicub]

12. We need to tackle as a planet and not country by country

But I don't see that happening either. The US is going to end up managing living on a hot planet.

The freak weather shift and historically strong storm systems are a preview of what's to come on a grander scale.

[xtraxritical]

13. A man by the name of Malthus wrote of these things about the time of Darwin.

He was considered the founder of the science of demography.

[FarCenter]

15. Malthus influenced Darwin, but predated him.

"In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long- continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work".

Charles Darwin, from his autobiography. (1876)

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html

[xtraxritical]

19. Thanks, I've been out of school for a long time!

[WillyT]

14. K & R !!!

[talkingmime]

18. I don't know. It's like 38 degrees out right now.

Yes, I understand the context. I just had to post that. FOX uses the current temperature of the moment to try to "disprove" global warming. I think they all know it is real but they're just following marching orders from Murdoch and Ailes.