clouds (missed) and a long lost lake ...

7 Oct 2011

A new paper purportedly debunking the Svensmark hypotheiss, published in the Journal of Climate, follows a similar pattern to other critiques - by apparently ignoring changes to satellite data reception (see The idea appears to be to sidetrack Svensmark before the forthcoming IPCC report - in that way his theory will not be taken into consideration. Anything contrary to the consensus co2 theory is being attacked, the Sun, clouds, the missing heat (escaping into space) etc. This sounds positively paranoid, if not conspiratorial - but bear in mind the hockey stick graph was designed in the late 1990s for the sole purpose of airbrushing the Medieval Warm Period out of history. It was too embarrassing to have a warm episode a 1000 years ago even warmer than the modern supposedly co2 driven warming phase - without the necessary 4x4s chugging around.

Meanwhile, at the former Lake Agassiz is said to have caused climate change - or is this clutching at straws. Lake Agassiz was formed when the ice sheet melted across NE North America and covered a huge expanse of what is now Canada. It was as big as Hudson Bay and lay across most of what is now Manitoba and western Ontario. A paper at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America hopes to tell us more about the history of the lake - its origin and disappearance. However, it is its role in the cool weather of the Younger Dryas event that is the centre of attention, an abrup shift to a cold climate that persisted for a 1000+ years. One idea, often touted in books and articles, is that Lake Agassiz drained into the Atlantic via the St Lawrence and this injection of cold fresh water kick started the cold snap. However, dating of sediment from the lake does not support this theory - so what kind of role did the lake play on climate?