On 6 Sep, 16:38, Graham P Davis wrote:
Alastair wrote:
On 6 Sep, 15:06, Graham P Davis wrote:
Alastair wrote:
On 6 Sep, 09:38, Graham P Davis wrote:
Alastair wrote:
On 3 Sep, 11:26, Graham P Davis wrote:
Alastair wrote:
snip

When that great unsung English hero of earth science Professor Coope
first discovered that the climate does change abruptly, he doubted
uniformitarianism, but now only claims that optimism is a bad guide
for earth scientists.

So unsung that I've never heard of him, but that's probably my fault.
However, could you please supply more information on him, full name,
when he discovered that climate changes abruptly, references, etc.

Your optimism that the climate cannot behave in the same way as the
weather behaved in Boscastle or in New Orleans will win you many
friends, but I do not believe it is realistic :-(

That's the exact opposite of what I believe. I've known for forty
years that climate can change suddenly.

Professor Russell Coope was awarded the Geological Society's Prestwich
Prize in 2005
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Prestwich_Medal

I have read his speech but cannot find it now.

Here is a paper he wrote in which he was saying that rapid climate
change happened, before it was confirmed by the Greenland ice cores.

http://www.shropshiregeology.org.uk/...ceedings/1984%...

Thanks, Alastair.

I see that, at the end of the piece, Professor Coope refers to sudden
changes in climate being correlated to changes in the NAD. This predates
the recent hype of the so-called discovery of these changes by a decade
or two.

My memories of the book I read in the sixties on ice, which included a
section on the sudden shut-down of the NAD, are a bit rusty. However, I
think Greenland ice-cores had provided some of the evidence for such
events in the past and their effects on the climate. Seems a pity that
such evidence seems to have got lost and had to be re-discovered. A bit
of googling suggests the ice-cores used in the [re-?]discovery date from
1966, but I'm fairly sure that that date is still later than the
publication date of the book I'd read. The more I learn, the less I know.

I think that in the early part of the 20th century abrupt climate
changes were found in varves, but that work was later discredited.

Russell Coope is a hero of mine, ever since I saw him on an Open
University video called Rapid Climate Change. I am not sure that he is
a hero for anyone else, but I was not the only OU student who found
that video fascinating.

There is a history of "The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change" at
http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-56/iss-8/p30.htmlWeart starts with CEP
Brooks who wrote "Climate through the Ages" which may be where you
first came across rapid climate change.

Thanks for that link, Alastair. The first time I came across rapid climate
change was the book I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, I can't remember
the author though I'm fairly sure he was based at Wood's Hole.

A little over thirty years ago I happened upon an earlier reference to
sudden climate change, though it's a bit less reliable. It's an SF short
story, New Worlds, by Erle Stanley Gardner, first published in 1932. It
ties in the 19th-century mammoth discoveries which were taken as evidence
of sudden onset of ice ages, the ancient stories of the flood, and evidence
of changes in locations of the poles, to create a disaster-movie of a
story.

Getting back to changes in NAD and Wood's Hole, I received notification of
the following a little over an hour ago -http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=20727

--
Graham P Davis
Bracknell, Berks., UK
Send e-mails to "newsman" as mails to "newsboy" are ignored.

Thanks for that link, Graham. The first time I came across Bob
Dickson (the lead author) was 5 years ago at a Royal Met Soc Wednesday
meeting on Rapid Climate Change. I had just realised that rapid
climate change is caused by the runaway behaviour of water vapour
triggered by sea ice sheets suddenly appearing and disappearing, and
assumed that since it was so obvious everyone would instantly see that
it was true too.

Bob was giving a talk about North Atlantic getting fresher and arguing
that this was because the THC was slowing down. He could not see
that the fresh water was caused by melting Arctic sea-ice (reported by
McPhee and the Sheba team), and that it is not the THC which keeps
Britain warm. It is the Rockies which divert the westerlies over the
warm Gulf of Mexico. That fact had just been published in a QJRMS
paper by Seager et al. I ended up shouting at Bob that Philip Eden
had said it was been a well known fact amongst British
meteorologists. It was a while before I dared show my face there
again!

But Bob is still locked into the same ideas even now, when nearly all
the Arctic ice has gone and there is no sign of the climate cooling.
Quite the reverse!

Graham P Davis wrote:

Graham,

I have just read through this thread and can sense by your frustration
the fact that so many are burying there heads in the sand. I keep
sitting on the fence, but then I haven't realy studied the evidence, I'm
leaning more your way nowadays and it is very worrying as we are
entering uncharted waters.

Thanks
--
Keith (Southend)
http://www.southendweather.net
e-mail: kreh at southendweather dot net

Keith (Southend) wrote:

Graham P Davis wrote:

Graham,

I have just read through this thread and can sense by your frustration
the fact that so many are burying there heads in the sand. I keep
sitting on the fence, but then I haven't realy studied the evidence, I'm
leaning more your way nowadays and it is very worrying as we are
entering uncharted waters.

Thanks

I admit I'm frustrated and baffled by what I see, rightly or wrongly, as a
deliberate and obstinate refusal of some people to see what I regard as
blindingly obvious. I suppose it's because I've been interested in weather
for sixty years and spent forty-two years in the Met Office where I was
involved in climatology for a while and, for the past thirty years, have
known that increasing CO2 causes global warming. Initially, I wasn't too
bothered, just glad that I'd got a logical explanation as to why forecasts
based on climatological cycles had started going wrong after promising
starts. Gradually, though, I've become more and more concerned with the
changes I'm seeing and the lack of any real action to combat it or prepare
for the consequences. Sorry, drifting into politics a bit there.

If you want to have a look at the evidence sometime, here's a few sites that
might be useful, beginning with where it all started -
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Lib...nts/Arrhenius/
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
http://epa.gov/climatechange/index.html
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporat...ths/index.html
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research...greenhouse.pdf
http://www.euronet.nl/users/e_wesker/climate.html
http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/Resources/gcc/

Hope that fence is not too uncomfortable. I'd offer a cushion but I need
them today to support my back. I heard on the radio this morning that
exercise is the best treatment for backache so I'll take some soon - a long
walk to the pub. And than get some anaesthetic while I'm there.

Cheers

--
Graham P Davis
Bracknell, Berks., UK
Send e-mails to "newsman" as mails to "newsboy" are ignored.