Rusted Sky

SOMEONE will ignore the memo.

In this case, it was a paleo-biologist who noticed something...

The Medieval Warm Period linked to the success of Machu Picchu, Inca Empire ｫ Watts Up With That?

Here is the abstract.

The rapid expansion of the Inca from the Cuzco area of highland Peru produced the largest empire in the New World between ca. AD 1400–1532. Although this meteoric rise may in part be due to the adoption of innovative societal strategies, supported by a large labour force and standing army, we argue that this would not have been possible without increased crop productivity, which was linked to more favourable climatic conditions. A multi-proxy, high-resolution 1200-year lake sediment record was analysed at Marcacocha, 12 km north of Ollantaytambo, in the heartland of the Inca Empire. This record reveals a period of sustained aridity that began from AD 880, followed by increased warming from AD 1100 that lasted beyond the arrival of the Spanish in AD 1532. These increasingly warmer conditions allowed the Inca and their predecessors the opportunity to exploit higher altitudes from AD 1150, by constructing agricultural terraces that employed glacial-fed irrigation, in combination with deliberate agroforestry techniques. There may be some important lessons to be learnt today from these strategies for sustainable rural development in the Andes in the light of future climate uncertainty.

One of the tenents of AGW is that the MWP doesn't exist, didn't happen, and it wouldn't have made any difference anyway if it did, which it didn't.

Except it apparently did.

Now, in the Halls of Hot Air - the following exchange occurred.

EPA's Jackson and Energy Sec. Chu on the Senate hot seat ｫ Watts Up With That?

“I believe the central parts of the [EPA] chart are that U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels,” Administrator Jackson said.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) presented the chart to both Jackson and Secretary Chu, which shows that meaningful emissions reductions cannot occur without aggressive action by China, India, and other developing countries.

“I am encouraged that Administrator Jackson agrees that unilateral action by the U.S. will be all cost for no climate gain,” Sen. Inhofe said. “With China and India recently issuing statements of defiant opposition to mandatory emissions controls, acting alone through the job-killing Waxman-Markey bill would impose severe economic burdens on American consumers, businesses, and families, all without any impact on climate.”

Needless to say, Sec. Chu said he didn't agree.

Well, when your whole future is based on a fraud, you're going to try to maintain the fraude as long as possible... but it's kind of hard when you're being undercut by the EPA.

And this brings the third bit... and arguably the most important.

UAH global temperature anomaly - hitting the slopes « Watts Up With That?

UAH MSU has officially released their June 2009 data. This time, they're faster than RSS MSU. The anomaly was 0.001 °C, meaning that the global temperature was essentially equal to the average June temperature since 1979. June 2009 actually belonged to the cooler half of the Junes since 1979.

Global warming is supposed to exist and to be bad. Sometimes, we hear that global warming causes cooling. In this case, global warming causes global averageness. In all three cases, it is bad news. The three main enemies of environmentalism are warm weather, cool weather, and average weather.

But that ain't the kicker.

You may see that the cooling trends are dominating for most intervals shorter than 110 months; the trend in the last 50 months is around -6 °C per century. Only when the period gets longer than 150 months i.e. 12.5 years (but less than 31 years), the trend becomes uniformly positive, around 1.2 °C per century for the intervals whose length is close to 30 years.

Note that those 12.5 years – where you still get a vanishing trend – is from January 1997 to June 2009. If you consider the UAH mid troposphere data instead (relevant for the part of the atmosphere where the greenhouse warming should be most pronounced, according to both proper atmospheric science and the IPCC report, page 675), all the trends are shifted downwards:

You need to consider time periods longer than 180 months i.e. 15 years (at least from Summer 1994) – but shorter than 31 years – to see a uniformly positive warming trend. And the trend that you can calculate from those 30+ years is just 0.4 °C per century and chances are that this 30+-year trend will actually drop below zero again, in a few years. At any rate, the blue graph makes it clear that in the right context, the longer-term warming trend converges to zero at a very good accuracy.

Isn't that interesting?

We're at a point where a lot of people have been 'programmed' to basically gut the economy to stave off global warming. If Cap&Trade DOES pass - global warming won't be an issue.

Your thoughts?

J.