Apparently the Romans are responsible for global warming.

 

The alarmist side of the climate change debate has long tried to deny or downplay the Medieval Warm Period…it wasn’t always like that…..

This is from the ‘esteemed’ science publication ‘Nature’ in 1999:

Holocene periodicity in North Atlantic climate and deep-ocean flow south of Iceland

The documented history of climate change in northern Europe over the past few millennia is marked by the alternation of cooler and warmer periods. At present we are still recovering from a time of colder climate known as the Little Ice Age, centred at 400 yr BP, which, in our record, coincides with reduced ISOW flow intensity .

Modern values are comparable to the last warm interval in European history, known as the Mediaeval Warm Period, which peaked at different times in various regions surrounding the North Atlantic basin between 750 and 1,050 yr BP (AD900 to1250).

 The climatic history in the few millennia before the Mediaeval Warm Period is less clear, but Europe appears to have enjoyed a warmer spell at 2,000 yr BP, also referred to as the Roman Warm Period, followed by cooling and glacier advance in the Dark Ages (AD500 to 1000). In our record, a peak in deep-current speed centred at 1,850 yr BP(AD100) coincides with the Roman Warm Period.

The main concern for future climate must be that a possible increase in melting of the Greenland ice sheet resulting from anthropogenically induced atmospheric warming may reach a critical level where the ‘conveyor belt’ will flip to its early Holocene operational mode. The resulting perturbations could conceivably result in climate extremes exceeding those of the Little Ice Age for northern Europe.

Without such perturbations, the climate looks likely to be warm for several hundred years

 

So the climate is the same as the Medieval Warm Period…..and the Roman Warm Period was as warm.

 

And there definitely was a Medieval Warm Period, long denied by the climate lobby, which the IPCC has now admitted itself in AR5.

Continental-scale surface temperature reconstructions show, with high confidence, multidecadal periods during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (year 950 to 1250) that were in some regions as warm as in the late 20th century.

 

 

Shame it took them so long to admit this when ‘science’ clearly knew long ago….politics and the desire to force ‘Global Warming’ upon us meant they had to hide the rise in temperature…..but note that tricky get out clause ‘in some regions’.

 

 

When forced to admit the presence of the Medieval Warm Period the lobbyists came up with cunning ploy….first, it didn’t exist, then it may have existed but was not as warm as today….now it may have been as warm as today but only have been in insignificant regions…..

 

Here Harrabin and Professor Phil Jones equivocate about the existence of the MWP….

Professor Jones himself is candid about the uncertainties. He stands by the view that humans are most likely to be warming the planet but admits there have been two similar periods of recent warming and confirms that we don’t yet know enough to be sure if the Medieval Warm Period was global and if it was warmer than today.

 

And again in their question and answer session:

Harrabin: There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?

Jones: There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.

 

The question of whether global warming was ‘global’ or not is merely a ploy to get around the inconvenient fact that Jones and the climate lobby will have to admit to a Medieval Warm Period at all….it says ‘OK there might have been just as much warming but it was regional…and therefore not global and therefore not comparable to today’

 

The trouble with that is that as you can see from the 1999 article, which states that global warming could produce an ice age in Europe, climate change does not bring an even temperature rise….The IPCC itself tells us that global warming will not produce a world which has an equal rise in temperature evenly distributed across the globe….the recent IPCC AR5 told us that warming may divert the Gulf Stream and we will freeze in the UK.

 

Aahhh…hold everything….

New scientific evidence claims a slowdown in the Gulf Stream will mean Britain will get HOTTER, not colder as previously thought

 

I swear they said the science was settled!

 

But believe or not in global warming…& that’s not the point…the point is the hiding or downplaying of the MWP by climate change advocates, and the Roman period which hardly rates a mention….more politics than science.

 

But wait…the climate lobby have an explanation/excuse for both warm periods…they too were man made…forest clearance and burning of the wood created methane emissions that warmed the planet:

From WUWT:

Greenland ice cores over the last 2 millennia and find that the carbon isotopic composition underwent pronounced centennial-scale variations between 200 BC and 1600 AD without clear corresponding changes in CH₄ mixing ratios. The long-term CH₄ increase observed over this period is accompanied by a small overall δ¹³C decrease. Two-box model calculations suggest that the long-term CH₄ increase can only be explained by an increase in emissions from biogenic sources. The centennial-scale variations in isotope ratios must be primarily due to changes in biomass burning, which are correlated with both natural climate variability including the Medieval Climate Anomaly, and with changes in human population, land-use and important events in history.

 

So forget the MWP and the RWP as evidence that these warm periods are just ‘natural variation’ and that the modern warming could be the result of similar natural processes…they were man made and so you have nothing to undermine today’s claims …so that pulls the rug from under your argument…doesn’t it!

 

Still…if that were true…that it was forest clearance and biomass burning that warmed the planet….

Who are the worst offenders for forest clearance in modern times?  Africa and South America…the Tropical regions in particular.

Modern climate change coincides perfectly with the growth of developing nation’s populations, and subsequent land clearance…not to mention everyone needs a cooking fire and heating.

So who is to blame…the ‘West’ or the developing world?

 

 

 

 

Perhaps the BBC should be asking more wide ranging questions as to who is to blame instead of pumping out a ‘Marxist’ narrative of history which goes something like this:…’The West’s Industrialisation caused Global warming which is caused by increasing levels of CO2, the developing world is suffering the most from global warming…therefore the West must pay them lots of money.’

 

Africa seeks climate change cash

Ministers from 10 African countries have met in Ethiopia to try to agree a common position on climate change, months before a crucial UN meeting. They were expected to renew demands for billions of dollars in compensation for Africa because of damage caused by global warming. And they are likely to ask rich nations to cut emissions by 40% by 2012. African nations are among the lightest polluters but analysts say they will suffer the most from climate change.