The 10 most critical problems in the world, according to millennials

For the third year in a row, millennials who participated in the World Economic Forum's Global Shapers Survey 2017 believe climate change is the most serious issue affecting the world today.

Nearly half (48.8%) of the survey participants chose climate change as their top concern, and 78.1% said they would be willing to change their lifestyle to protect the environment.

Below are the top-10 most concerning world issues, according to millennials:

10. Lack of economic opportunity and unemployment (12.1%)

9. Safety / security / well being (14.1%)

8. Lack of education (15.9%)

7. Food and water security (18.2%)

6. Government accountability and transparency / corruption (22.7%)

5. Religious conflicts (23.9%)

4. Poverty (29.2%)

3. Inequality (income, discrimination) (30.8%)

2. Large scale conflict / wars (38.9%)

1. Climate change / destruction of nature (48.8%)


http://uk.businessinsider.com/world-economic-forum-world-biggest-problems-concerning-millennials-2016-8

Wow, I agree with so much of this. Interesting to see how the younger generations care about what's being done to the planet, while it's mostly older people who don't have as much time left here, on average, who deny climate change.

Lack of education would be top for me, because that’s where it all starts.

The number 1 was 2 different things lumped together as 1...


1. Climate change / destruction of nature (48.8%)


I think numbers 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 & 10 should be one category... what percentage/rank would that very closely linked set make...?

It should be a "no-brainer" to have environmental damage, mainly through deforrestation and pollution --  and resultant accelerated climate change (let's not "confuse cause and effect" here, either, and recognise man-made/accelerated  'climate change' as the result rather than the cause..),  as the numero uno problem facing the world today, both immediate and in the long term...

What use would it be to solve other major problems first --  hunger, unemployment, poverty, equality in access to education, homelessness, disease --  if the children don't have a healthy, habitable and sustainable world to grow up in, and 'inherit' in the future  ?!?

Why not people answer what their top 5 priorities are to resolve in the world?

Thor wrote:

Why not people answer what their top 5 priorities are to resolve in the world?

Why not run a poll, allowing let's say, to choose 3 out of the 10 choices given in the O/P...

And see if a "consensus" can be found for the priorities -- as viewed by NF contributors ?

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

Thor wrote:

Why not people answer what their top 5 priorities are to resolve in the world?

Why not run a poll, allowing let's say, to choose 3 out of the 10 choices given in the O/P...

And see if a "consensus" can be found for the priorities --  as viewed by NF contributors ?

Some people may not agree on those choices

Better to see what does come as priorities to people

I have not made my mind as to what order yet

Still thinking about it

If only these kids knew that most of the last 2000, 5000 and 10000 years were much warmer than the last few hundred years...!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:

If only these kids knew that most of the last 2000, 5000 and 10000 years were much warmer than the last few hundred years...!!!

'Those kids' are aware of the rapid speed with which the world has warmed in the last 50-100 years, largely aided as wolf says by man made things like pollution.

And even taking climate change out, that still leaves pollution of oceans, rivers, air and deforestation as a collosal problem, and arguably the biggest problem faced by our planet today.

Tommy Monk wrote:

If only these kids knew that most of the last 2000, 5000 and 10000 years were much warmer than the last few hundred years...!!!

If only you realized that life stabilizes around a stable temperature, like what the Earth had 2000, 5000 and 10000 years ago, and destabilizes around unstable temperatures, like what the Earth has had for the past 100 years or so.

Scientists figure that about nine species go extinct naturally every 100 years.

Since 1900, nearly 500 species have gone extinct.

We're in the middle of a mass extinction event, and people like you are making it worse by denying that it's happening.

Tommy Monk wrote:

If only these kids knew that most of the last 2000, 5000 and 10000 years were much warmer than the last few hundred years...!!!

Stop with the outright lies,  Tommy...

You have never provided any actual evidence to support your blatant corporatist opinions..

You may not care what kind of a world you leave to the future, comfortably esconced as you are in your selfish and inward-focussed arrogance, but a lot of other people do.

Tommy Monk wrote:

The number 1 was 2 different things lumped together as 1...


1. Climate change / destruction of nature (48.8%)


I think numbers 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 & 10 should be one category... what percentage/rank would that very closely linked set make...?

Who bloody cares? It’s just a list. Why do you need to deconstruct it?

That list is fairly predictable. I'm sure that people of my generation would have come up with something similar. It's all just talk reallly.

It's not just climate change to blame for the loss of species though, its us in the main.
People need to have a purpose in life which probably means for most people a job that you either enjoy and get paid reasonably or get paid enough to stick to something boring so that you and your family can enjoy your life as far as possible, most of the rest will follow. There are too many people for jobs for all, for reasonable access to resources for all and habitat for other species to flourish.

Vintage wrote:It's not just climate change to blame for the loss of species though, its us in the main.
People need to have a purpose in life which probably means for most people a job that you either enjoy and get paid reasonably or get paid enough to stick to something boring so that you and your family can enjoy your life as far as possible, most of the rest will follow. There are too many people for jobs for all, for reasonable access to resources for all and habitat for other species to flourish.

yep, global over population is the major driver of a lot of these issues

I see the climate change wafflers have popped up here after my earlier post...


Ben... but the temps haven't been that 'stable' over the last 2000, 5000 & 10000 years... there have been plenty of ups and downs throughout these times... And there always will be!!!



Fleakeeper... I have posted up temp graphs on a previous recent thread about this topic... all showing what I said to be 100% true!!! And these graphs were created by recognised scientists using recognised science!!!



Eddie... a shopping list or a personal 'to do' list is best described as 'just a list'...

If the op 'list' is 'just a list' then it has no more place as a news story or as a relevant news related op posting here, as that of a simple shopping list...

However... as this 'list' is being treated with much more importance and news worth relevance... it will also be subjected to an equal level of scrutiny, as well as criticism (if necessary)...!

Tommy Monk wrote:
I see the climate change wafflers have popped up here after my earlier post...

Ben... but the temps haven't been that 'stable' over the last 2000, 5000 & 10000 years... there have been plenty of ups and downs throughout these times... And there always will be!!!

Fleakeeper... I have posted up temp graphs on a previous recent thread about this topic... all showing what I said to be 100% true!!! And these graphs were created by recognised scientists using recognised science!!!

Eddie... a shopping list or a personal 'to do' list is best described as 'just a list'...

If the op 'list' is 'just a list' then it has no more place as a news story or as a relevant news related op posting here, as that of a simple shopping list...

However... as this 'list' is being treated with much more importance and news worth relevance... it will also be subjected to an equal level of scrutiny, as well as criticism (if necessary)...!

Total bullshit,  Tommykins...

You can post up all the c&p'd graphs you like --  yet none of them support your nonsense..

Some you blatantly misuse and misrepresent, some are cherry-picked for irrelevant bits, and some are nothing more than total outright lies provided by oil and coal company propagandists..

In the main, you're simply using them to confuse amd obfuscate --  the fact that you misuse some of them, and claim that some others say the very opposite of what is actually there, only tells me how little you actually know and understand about the underlying science.

It is also quite revealing to note that Ben, veya and I are all actually experiencing the real world effects of man-made pollution and deforrestation -- and the resultant accelerated climate change effects  -- in our various parts of the world,  while you are happy to continue along with your head stuck up your arse, willingly lapping up all of the corporate propaganda as you go..

Get yourself a proper education, Tommy, rather than relying on your propagandist, nationalist and denialist blogsites --  and then you just might be able to more critically recognise the crap that you are parroting on here for what it is...

I posted up temperature graphs from independent scientists from independent sources...


They all show that temperatures during each period of time have been mostly warmer than it is now...!


If you are only going to consider temps over the last 300-400 years as a comparison for what is normal... then what you are doing is comparing a period of unusually colder than normal temperatures, with now and more recent decades being a bit warmer but what is in fact a return to what is more a long term normal...


Why do you so strongly dismiss the scientists ice core study data on long term historical temperatures?

When you have absolutely nothing in the way of evidence to show anything other than what they have shown...!?


Where is your evidence for temperatures over the last 2000, 5000 and 10000 years...!?


You can't just outright dismiss some scientific findings because you don't like what they show... without showing any evidence to show anything different...!!!


If you've got anything more conclusive to show... then let's see it...!?


Over to you...

Why are we going around again in one of Tommy's dances on this, when I already debunked his claims last time with so many facts and corrected his falsehoods?

Tommy refuses to actually look at the evidence objectively or even understand it

As he has dogmatically beliefs on this

Only he can help himself and start to look skeptically at his beliefs here

Otherwise he is simple looking for attention again, on a subject we only just discussed recently

I've shown temp graphs over the last 10000 years that show most of that time it has been warmer...


Can you show anything that disproves this...?


If not... then you will have to accept what I've shown, to be true!

*THE Ben Reilly* wrote:Wow, I agree with so much of this. Interesting to see how the younger generations care about what's being done to the planet, while it's mostly older people who don't have as much time left here, on average, who deny climate change.

That's not true at all. Older people care very much. I know I do. In fact, I think older people are very concerned, as we can remember different times.

On the subject of climate change, which seems to be causing such concern:
Our climate change is more about massive corporations, wars caused by the elite echelons, the selfish culture we have of me me me, the destruction of our planet because we're all slaves to commercial want, to what we covet, to the luxuries we think we can't live without. You only have to look at the youngsters screaming "Brexit has ruined my future" to see that all they're concerned about is the standard of their personal life to come, as they see it. Oh...dear...the price of holidays will become ruinous...the cost of my Jimmy Choo's will become unaffordable for me...how will I cope if I can't watch Kim Kardashian on my 50 inch Smart TV, and can't access Facebook because I can't afford the latest iPhone. They'll have no future if we've no air to breathe!

We want cheap clothes, cheap food, cheap electrical goods. And the price appears to be the planet, I'm afraid.

If there's going to be no future it'll be because, increasingly, young people are living more unhealthy lives, and those who try to be healthy will have to breathe more polluted air, and eat food that's genetically modified or pumped with chemicals. Why? It all boils down to profit. That's what makes this world what it is. Money, the making of money, and keeping the rich at the top and the poor in their place.

Brazil is the worst offender for polluting our planet. Followed by the United States. The USA also ranks in 1st place for CO2 emissions, 2nd place for water pollution, 3rd place for marine captures, and 9th place for threatened species.

China holds the title of the worst country with the highest carbon footprint, followed by...the United States.

We're all at the mercy of the few who hold the future of this planet in their hands. Each country needs to take responsibility for the part they play. But they don't always. Areas of rainforest the size of New Jersey are being destroyed every year. China continues to pump pollution into the air. Despite pledges by these countries to cut this down. Will it be enough? This should be the main concern for us all. Because if we can't do this...then all those things in that list will mean diddly.

Tommy Monk wrote:I've shown temp graphs over the last 10000 years that show most of that time it has been warmer...


Can you show anything that disproves this...?


If not... then you will have to accept what I've shown, to be true!

So... nobody can show any evidence against the fact that most of the last 2000, 5000 and 10000 years have been warmer than it is now...!!!???

Well...???


I'm still waiting for some evidence...???


If you haven't got any... then surely you have no basis for any of your climate change claims...!!!

Tommy Your wrong there is plenty of evidence you are just to Dumb to understand/accept it 

Stop pretending Your denial is based on anything other than Selfish idiocy.

Tommy Monk wrote:
Well...???

I'm still waiting for some evidence...???

If you haven't got any... then surely you have no basis for any of your climate change claims...!!!

I live on the most bushfire-prone continent on the planet...

I have seen first-hand how the patterns,  reoccurrence/frequency, and ferocity of both fires and droughts have changed over the last half century;  along with ever increasing pollution, deforrestation and the spread of coal mining companies fucking over my backyard..

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/5773711/no-smoke-to-just-flames-hunter-bushfires-roar-in-torrid-conditions/

You on the other hand, Tommy, are nothing more than an uneducated and inexperienced dullard, sucking on your beloved big business masters, lapping up all of that selfish propaganda they keep feeding you, without question.

https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/coal-and-other-fossil-fuels/hidden-cost-of-fossils


And, it's even worse over in the USA, these days --  where the mining companies are getting a free run,  and don't even have to pay royalties to compensate for the damage they do  !!!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/01/25/things-not-to-worry-about-miners-dont-pay-royalties-on-public-land-to-the-government/

Why don't you get out and away from your corporatist and nationalist blogsites, and actually experience just what your beloved cock-sucking big bosses are doing to this planet  ???

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-29/szoke-no,-coal-is-not-good-for-humanity/6656184

Most older people were brought up conserving and recycling, many haven't got out of the habit but you can't get much repaired these days, you've have to replace.

I'm not listening to any corporate anybody's... I'm simply stating that there are scientific studies on past temps over the last 2000, 5000 and 10000 years, and all show that most of the time it is warmer than now...!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:I'm not listening to any corporate anybody's... I'm simply stating that there are scientific studies on past temps over the last 2000, 5000 and 10000 years, and all show that most of the time it is warmer than now...!!!

That is fine

Show me these graphs?

Then show me how many animals became exitinct at these times?

We know warmer times create this

However we are now creating this today through human intervention

How is that a good thing, when we know from the past its a bad thing?

Already posted the graphs on a recent "climate change" thread... And you have already seen them...


So... look up the thread yourself, as you obviously weren't paying enough attention then...


The rest of your post is spurious waffle...!

Tommy Monk wrote:
Already posted the graphs on a recent "climate change" thread... And you have already seen them...


So... look up the thread yourself, as you obviously weren't paying enough attention then...


The rest of your post is spurious waffle...!

Hey Tom-Tom, what do you think of that climate change report from the Trump administration?

Here's the report, in case you just missed it: http://www.newsfixboard.com/t25605-trump-administration-issues-dire-warning-as-global-warming-has-cost-the-u-s-400-billion-in-the-past-3-years#486982

Waffle...

Did you even read it, Tom-Tom?

I read your thread...


It says... "damaging weather in the United States, cost nearly $400 billion since 2015"...


There always has been, and always will be "damaging weather" throughout the world...!

Wouldn't matter if Tommykins actually read anything relevant to the topic or not...

He simply doesn't have the requisite intelligence, education or experience, let alone the level of rational analytical and 'critical' thinking, to be able to comprehend even one iota of the information before him..

As often shown through the complete drivel that he keeps on posting on here.

***************************************************************

There is one simple fact that will dismiss all of Tommy's drivel re:  both warmer periods over the millenia, and occasional abnormal cooling periods (like his farcical and wronglylabelled "mini ice ages"..)  :

• The last general widespread genuine "ice age" that covered most of the planet peaked around 13,000 to 11,700 years ago

https://www.livescience.com/40311-pleistocene-epoch.html

•  So, in effect we are still at the "tail end" of that last ice age;  with the remnants still evident in Antarctica, the glaciers in NZ, Chile, Greenland and the likes, and parts of the Arctic;

•   In fact, we are still in a long term "warming period" with the planet supposed to slowly meant to warm for a few years yet  --

http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/fall12/atmo336/lectures/sec5/holocene.html

•   Where, in the more normal run of things, this current warming period would not have peaked for another 1500 to 2000 years, allowing some time for both populations of plants and animals to adapt or perish --  and human communities to adapt or move --  in the normal run of things..

•   Unfortunately, due to mankind's increased activities since the "Industrial Revolution" of the 17th and 18th century --  deforrestation, pollution (esp. but not only "greenhouse gases), urbanisation, exponential population growth, unbridled "economic growth"  --  this stroll to the peak has been grossly accelerated into a race towards extinction, as that peak will likely now be reached before the end of this century.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/30/nasa-climate-change-warning-earth-temperature-warming

•  Allied with the company-funded denialist crap spread by propagandist shills like Christopher Monckton, Donald Trump, Tony Abbott, and supported by ignoramuses on here like Tommy,  Fred, Smelly' and any other anti-science twonks willing to bury their heads in the sand..

•   Making it that much more likely that we have already "'passed the point of no return",  so that now mankind will have to either adapt very quickly to a damaged ecosystem --  or go the way of the dinosaurs...

*****************************************************************

The Dinosaurs roamed the Earth for some 65 million years..

Mankind has yet to reach its' first half million  !

Absolute shit!!!


Most of the last 2000 Yeats, 5000 years and 10000 years have been warmer than now!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:Absolute shit!!!


Most of the last 2000 Yeats, 5000 years and 10000 years have been warmer than now!!!

Do fuck off Tommy...

You lying dumbfuck empty-headed piece of shit...

You are nothing more than a traitor to the entire planet, not just humankind.

You pathetic gormless and spineless trolling shill..

Tommy, and anyone foolish enough to defend his trolling lies, can suck on this ==


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11647-climate-myths-its-been-far-warmer-in-the-past-whats-the-big-deal/

https://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth

Tommy Monk wrote:

I read your thread...


It says... "damaging weather in the United States, cost nearly $400 billion since 2015"...


There always has been, and always will be "damaging weather" throughout the world...!

There is more these days than there used to be. Hurricanes and wildfires are getting worse because of global warming.

*THE Ben Reilly* wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:

I read your thread...


It says... "damaging weather in the United States, cost nearly $400 billion since 2015"...


There always has been, and always will be "damaging weather" throughout the world...!

There is more these days than there used to be. Hurricanes and wildfires are getting worse because of global warming.

You say getting worse in recent years... but what you should be saying is, returning to normal levels after a few hundred years of unusually cooler temperatures...





Maybe you could tell us what it was like in the USA 500 years ago...?

Or 1000 years ago...?

2000 years ago...?


You see... you are completely failing to look at the big picture... And mistakenly thinking that normal is only what you have seen over a few decades...


It is completely normal for there to be wildfires over there... as some plant species have evolved to require exactly that over millions of years... if it wasn't normal for there to be wildfires, then these plants wouldn't exist there at all!!!


Try to see the bigger picture man!

Instead of just believing the wafffle that you have been bombarded with...!

I have ten factual, informative and educational links on this thread...

Many of which have clearly dispelled all of the Tommy lies that the slimebag shill Tommy consistently spams these threads with..

Tommy the troll, in reply, has done nothing but insult and abuse everyone on here with his abject stupidity.

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

I have ten factual, informative and educational links on this thread...

Many of which have clearly dispelled all of the Tommy lies that the slimebag shill Tommy consistently spams these threads with..

Tommy the troll, in reply, has done nothing but insult and abuse everyone on here with his abject stupidity.

Ah, but Tommy has a chart, and he sees that chart better than scientists, apparently.

Forget your many links to varying sources, the majority of scientific reports, a general consensus across the scientific community, agreement among politicians in most developed nations, the radically changing and often extreme climate conditions and freakish weather events in many places in the world today, or the quickening of the rising climate temperatures in recent decades, and the notably rising sea levels, mask wearing in polluted cities etc, etc, etc... because Tommy has a chart, and Tommy knows best

Tommy Monk wrote:

*THE Ben Reilly* wrote:

There is more these days than there used to be. Hurricanes and wildfires are getting worse because of global warming.

You say getting worse in recent years... but what you should be saying is, returning to normal levels after a few hundred years of unusually cooler temperatures...





Maybe you could tell us what it was like in the USA 500 years ago...?

Or 1000 years ago...?

2000 years ago...?


You see... you are completely failing to look at the big picture... And mistakenly thinking that normal is only what you have seen over a few decades...


It is completely normal for there to be wildfires over there... as some plant species have evolved to require exactly that over millions of years... if it wasn't normal for there to be wildfires, then these plants wouldn't exist there at all!!!


Try to see the bigger picture man!

Instead of just believing the wafffle that you have been bombarded with...!

Confusing Greenland warming vs global warming

What The Science Says:
This argument uses temperatures from the top of the Greenland ice sheet. This data ends in 1855, long before modern global warming began. It also reflects regional Greenland warming, not global warming.


Climate Myth: Most of the last 10,000 years were warmer
Even if the warming were as big as the IPCC imagines, it would not be as dangerous as Mr. Brown suggests. After all, recent research suggests that some 9,100 of the past 10,500 years were warmer than the present by up to 3 Celsius degrees: yet here we all are. (Christopher Monckton)


This argument is based on the work of Don Easterbrook who relies on temperatures at the top of the Greenland ice sheet as a proxy for global temperatures. That’s a fatal flaw, before we even begin to examine the use of the ice core data. A single regional record cannot stand in for the global record — local variability will be higher than the global, plus we have evidence that Antarctic temperatures swing in the opposite direction to Arctic changes. Richard Alley discussed that in some detail at Dot Earth last year, and it’s well worth reading his comments. Easterbrook, however, is content to ignore someone who has worked in this field, and relies entirely on Greenland data to make his case.

Most of the past 10,000 [years] have been warmer than the present. Figure 4 shows temperatures from the GISP2 Greenland ice core. With the exception of a brief warm period about 8,200 years ago, the entire period from 1,500 to 10,500 years ago was significantly warmer than present.

This is Easterbrook’s Fig 4:

It’s a graph he’s used before, in various forms, almost certainly copied and altered from the original (click image below to see source: the NOAA web page for Richard Alley’s 2000 paper The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland, though DE credits it as “Modified from Cuffy and Clow, 1997″, misspelling Kurt Cuffey’s name in the process:

Easterbrook continues:

Another graph of temperatures from the Greenland ice core for the past 10,000 years is shown in Figure 5. It shows essentially the same temperatures as Cuffy and Clow (1997) but with somewhat greater detail. What both of these temperature curves show is that virtually all of the past 10,000 years has been warmer than the present.

This is his Fig 5:



Easterbrook plots the temperature data from the GISP2 core, as archived here. Easterbrook defines “present” as the year 2000. However, the GISP2 “present” follows a common paleoclimate convention and is actually 1950. The first data point in the file is at 95 years BP. This would make 95 years BP 1855 — a full 155 years ago, long before any other global temperature record shows any modern warming. In order to make absolutely sure of my dates, I emailed Richard Alley, and he confirmed that the GISP2 “present” is 1950, and that the most recent temperature in the GISP2 series is therefore 1855.


This is Easterbrook’s main sleight of hand. He wants to present a regional proxy for temperature from 155 years ago as somehow indicative of present global temperatures. The depths of his misunderstanding are made clear in a response he gave to a request from the German EIKE forum to clarify why he was representing 1905 (wrongly, in two senses) as the present. Here’s what he had to say:

The contention that the ice core only reaches 1905 is a complete lie (not unusual for AGW people). The top of the core is accurately dated by annual dust layers at 1987. There has been no significant warming from 1987 to the present, so the top of the core is representative of the present day climate in Greenland.

Unfortunately for Don, the first data point in the temperature series he’s relying on is not from the “top of the core”, it’s from layers dated to 1855. The reason is straightforward enough — it takes decades for snow to consolidate into ice.


And so to an interesting question. What has happened to temperatures at the top of Greenland ice sheet since 1855? Jason Box is one of the most prominent scientists working on Greenland and he has a recent paper reconstructing Greenland temperatures for the period 1840-2007 (Box, Jason E., Lei Yang, David H. Bromwich, Le-Sheng Bai, 2009: Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Air Temperature Variability: 1840–2007. J. Climate, 22, 4029–4049. doi: 10.1175/2009JCLI2816.1). He was kind enough to supply me with a temperature reconstruction for the GRIP drilling site — 28 km from GISP2. This is what the annual average temperature record looks like (click for bigger version):



I’ve added lines showing the average temperatures for the 1850s (blue) and the last 10 years (red), and the difference between those is a warming of 1.44ºC. I’ve also added the two most recent GISP2 temperature data points (for 1847 and 1855, red crosses). It’s obvious that the GRIP site is warmer than GISP2 (at Summit Camp). The difference is estimated to be 0.9ºC on the annual average (Box, pers comm).
Let’s have ago at reconstructing Easterbrook’s Fig 5, covering the last 10,000 years of GISP2 data. It looks like this (click for bigger version):

The GISP2 series — the red line — appears to be identical to Easterbrook’s version. The bottom black line shows his 1855 “present”, and it intersects the red line in the same places as his chart. I’ve added a grey line based on the +1.44ºC quantum calculated from the GRIP temperature data, and two blue crosses, which show the GISP2 site temperatures inferred from adjusted GRIP data for 1855 and 2009.
Two things are immediately apparent. If we make allowance for local warming over the last 155 years, Easterbrook’s claim that “most of the past 10,000 [years] have been warmer than the present” is not true for central Greenland, let alone the global record. It’s also clear that there is a mismatch between the temperature reconstructions and the ice core record. The two blue crosses on the chart show the GISP site temperatures (adjusted from GRIP data) for 1855 and 2009. It’s clear there is a calibration issue between the long term proxy (based on ∂¹⁸O measurement) and recent direct measurement of temperatures on the Greenland ice sheet. How that might be resolved is an interesting question, but not directly relevant to the point at issue — which is what Don Easterbrook is trying to show. Here’s his conclusion:

So where do the 1934/1998/2010 warm years rank in the long-term list of warm years? Of the past 10,500 years, 9,100 were warmer than 1934/1998/2010. Thus, regardless of which year ( 1934, 1998, or 2010) turns out to be the warmest of the past century, that year will rank number 9,099 in the long-term list. The climate has been warming slowly since the Little Ice Age (Fig. 5), but it has quite a ways to go yet before reaching the temperature levels that persisted for nearly all of the past 10,500 years. It’s really much to do about nothing.

1855 — Easterbrook’s “present” — was not warmer than 1934, 1998 or 2010 in Greenland, let alone around the world. His claim that 9,100 out of the last 10,500 years were warmer than recent peak years is false, based on a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of data.
The last word goes to Richard Alley, who points out that however interesting the study of past climate may be, it doesn’t help us where we’re heading:

"Whether temperatures have been warmer or colder in the past is largely irrelevant to the impacts of the ongoing warming. If you don’t care about humans and the other species here, global warming may not be all that important; nature has caused warmer and colder times in the past, and life survived. But, those warmer and colder times did not come when there were almost seven billion people living as we do. The best science says that if our warming becomes large, its influences on us will be primarily negative, and the temperature of the Holocene or the Cretaceous has no bearing on that. Furthermore, the existence of warmer and colder times in the past does not remove our fingerprints from the current warming, any more than the existence of natural fires would remove an arsonist’s fingerprints from a can of flammable liquid. If anything, nature has been pushing to cool the climate over the last few decades, but warming has occurred.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=337

This is why Tommy is an embarressment

Tommy Monk wrote:

*THE Ben Reilly* wrote:

There is more these days than there used to be. Hurricanes and wildfires are getting worse because of global warming.

You say getting worse in recent years... but what you should be saying is, returning to normal levels after a few hundred years of unusually cooler temperatures...





Maybe you could tell us what it was like in the USA 500 years ago...?

Or 1000 years ago...?

2000 years ago...?


You see... you are completely failing to look at the big picture... And mistakenly thinking that normal is only what you have seen over a few decades...


It is completely normal for there to be wildfires over there... as some plant species have evolved to require exactly that over millions of years... if it wasn't normal for there to be wildfires, then these plants wouldn't exist there at all!!!


Try to see the bigger picture man!

Instead of just believing the wafffle that you have been bombarded with...!

Wolfboy... 10 people telling the same lie, doesn't make it true...!!!


Look at the graph above...


What does it tell you...?

Nobody from opposing sides of an argument looks at their opponents stuff, and if they do, they dispute it anyway with other links and graphs.
And so on and on and on.

So what’s the point? You’re all going round in circles and actually, time will tell who’s right.

Right?

Ps. In this matter, I think Tommy is wrong.
Just for the 45.


Pps “45” is the hip way to say “for the record”.

The 10000 year temp graph is compiled from the scientific investigation and study of ice core data, using a well known and well established technique that is highly regarded as being extremely accurate!!!


While the climate change lot have been caught out lying and falsifying data on numerous occasions on what they have tried telling us about the temps of the last few decades...!


I know who I would rather trust...!!!

Thor wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:


You say getting worse in recent years... but what you should be saying is, returning to normal levels after a few hundred years of unusually cooler temperatures...





Maybe you could tell us what it was like in the USA 500 years ago...?

Or 1000 years ago...?

2000 years ago...?


You see... you are completely failing to look at the big picture... And mistakenly thinking that normal is only what you have seen over a few decades...


It is completely normal for there to be wildfires over there... as some plant species have evolved to require exactly that over millions of years... if it wasn't normal for there to be wildfires, then these plants wouldn't exist there at all!!!


Try to see the bigger picture man!

Instead of just believing the wafffle that you have been bombarded with...!

Confusing Greenland warming vs global warming

What The Science Says:
This argument uses temperatures from the top of the Greenland ice sheet. This data ends in 1855, long before modern global warming began. It also reflects regional Greenland warming, not global warming.


Climate Myth: Most of the last 10,000 years were warmer
Even if the warming were as big as the IPCC imagines, it would not be as dangerous as Mr. Brown suggests. After all, recent research suggests that some 9,100 of the past 10,500 years were warmer than the present by up to 3 Celsius degrees: yet here we all are. (Christopher Monckton)


This argument is based on the work of Don Easterbrook who relies on temperatures at the top of the Greenland ice sheet as a proxy for global temperatures. That’s a fatal flaw, before we even begin to examine the use of the ice core data. A single regional record cannot stand in for the global record — local variability will be higher than the global, plus we have evidence that Antarctic temperatures swing in the opposite direction to Arctic changes. Richard Alley discussed that in some detail at Dot Earth last year, and it’s well worth reading his comments. Easterbrook, however, is content to ignore someone who has worked in this field, and relies entirely on Greenland data to make his case.

Most of the past 10,000 [years] have been warmer than the present. Figure 4 shows temperatures from the GISP2 Greenland ice core. With the exception of a brief warm period about 8,200 years ago, the entire period from 1,500 to 10,500 years ago was significantly warmer than present.

This is Easterbrook’s Fig 4:

It’s a graph he’s used before, in various forms, almost certainly copied and altered from the original (click image below to see source: the NOAA web page for Richard Alley’s 2000 paper The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland, though DE credits it as “Modified from Cuffy and Clow, 1997″, misspelling Kurt Cuffey’s name in the process:

Easterbrook continues:

Another graph of temperatures from the Greenland ice core for the past 10,000 years is shown in Figure 5. It shows essentially the same temperatures as Cuffy and Clow (1997) but with somewhat greater detail. What both of these temperature curves show is that virtually all of the past 10,000 years has been warmer than the present.

This is his Fig 5:



Easterbrook plots the temperature data from the GISP2 core, as archived here. Easterbrook defines “present” as the year 2000. However, the GISP2 “present” follows a common paleoclimate convention and is actually 1950. The first data point in the file is at 95 years BP. This would make 95 years BP 1855 — a full 155 years ago, long before any other global temperature record shows any modern warming. In order to make absolutely sure of my dates, I emailed Richard Alley, and he confirmed that the GISP2 “present” is 1950, and that the most recent temperature in the GISP2 series is therefore 1855.


This is Easterbrook’s main sleight of hand. He wants to present a regional proxy for temperature from 155 years ago as somehow indicative of present global temperatures. The depths of his misunderstanding are made clear in a response he gave to a request from the German EIKE forum to clarify why he was representing 1905 (wrongly, in two senses) as the present. Here’s what he had to say:

The contention that the ice core only reaches 1905 is a complete lie (not unusual for AGW people). The top of the core is accurately dated by annual dust layers at 1987. There has been no significant warming from 1987 to the present, so the top of the core is representative of the present day climate in Greenland.

Unfortunately for Don, the first data point in the temperature series he’s relying on is not from the “top of the core”, it’s from layers dated to 1855. The reason is straightforward enough — it takes decades for snow to consolidate into ice.


And so to an interesting question. What has happened to temperatures at the top of Greenland ice sheet since 1855? Jason Box is one of the most prominent scientists working on Greenland and he has a recent paper reconstructing Greenland temperatures for the period 1840-2007 (Box, Jason E., Lei Yang, David H. Bromwich, Le-Sheng Bai, 2009: Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Air Temperature Variability: 1840–2007. J. Climate, 22, 4029–4049. doi: 10.1175/2009JCLI2816.1). He was kind enough to supply me with a temperature reconstruction for the GRIP drilling site — 28 km from GISP2. This is what the annual average temperature record looks like (click for bigger version):



I’ve added lines showing the average temperatures for the 1850s (blue) and the last 10 years (red), and the difference between those is a warming of 1.44ºC. I’ve also added the two most recent GISP2 temperature data points (for 1847 and 1855, red crosses). It’s obvious that the GRIP site is warmer than GISP2 (at Summit Camp). The difference is estimated to be 0.9ºC on the annual average (Box, pers comm).
Let’s have ago at reconstructing Easterbrook’s Fig 5, covering the last 10,000 years of GISP2 data. It looks like this (click for bigger version):

The GISP2 series — the red line — appears to be identical to Easterbrook’s version. The bottom black line shows his 1855 “present”, and it intersects the red line in the same places as his chart. I’ve added a grey line based on the +1.44ºC quantum calculated from the GRIP temperature data, and two blue crosses, which show the GISP2 site temperatures inferred from adjusted GRIP data for 1855 and 2009.
Two things are immediately apparent. If we make allowance for local warming over the last 155 years, Easterbrook’s claim that “most of the past 10,000 [years] have been warmer than the present” is not true for central Greenland, let alone the global record. It’s also clear that there is a mismatch between the temperature reconstructions and the ice core record. The two blue crosses on the chart show the GISP site temperatures (adjusted from GRIP data) for 1855 and 2009. It’s clear there is a calibration issue between the long term proxy (based on ∂¹⁸O measurement) and recent direct measurement of temperatures on the Greenland ice sheet. How that might be resolved is an interesting question, but not directly relevant to the point at issue — which is what Don Easterbrook is trying to show. Here’s his conclusion:

So where do the 1934/1998/2010 warm years rank in the long-term list of warm years? Of the past 10,500 years, 9,100 were warmer than 1934/1998/2010. Thus, regardless of which year ( 1934, 1998, or 2010) turns out to be the warmest of the past century, that year will rank number 9,099 in the long-term list. The climate has been warming slowly since the Little Ice Age (Fig. 5), but it has quite a ways to go yet before reaching the temperature levels that persisted for nearly all of the past 10,500 years. It’s really much to do about nothing.

1855 — Easterbrook’s “present” — was not warmer than 1934, 1998 or 2010 in Greenland, let alone around the world. His claim that 9,100 out of the last 10,500 years were warmer than recent peak years is false, based on a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of data.
The last word goes to Richard Alley, who points out that however interesting the study of past climate may be, it doesn’t help us where we’re heading:

"Whether temperatures have been warmer or colder in the past is largely irrelevant to the impacts of the ongoing warming. If you don’t care about humans and the other species here, global warming may not be all that important; nature has caused warmer and colder times in the past, and life survived. But, those warmer and colder times did not come when there were almost seven billion people living as we do. The best science says that if our warming becomes large, its influences on us will be primarily negative, and the temperature of the Holocene or the Cretaceous has no bearing on that. Furthermore, the existence of warmer and colder times in the past does not remove our fingerprints from the current warming, any more than the existence of natural fires would remove an arsonist’s fingerprints from a can of flammable liquid. If anything, nature has been pushing to cool the climate over the last few decades, but warming has occurred.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=337

This is why Tommy is an embarressment

@Eddie, this is looking very much at the argument Tommy claims by someone else