And these are some old, old logs: Lord Nelson and Captain Cook’s shiplogs question climate change theories
Scientists have uncovered a treasure trove of meteorological information contained in the detailed logs kept by those on board the vessels that established Britain’s great seafaring traditition including those on Nelsons’ Victory and Cook’s Endeavour.
Every Royal Naval ship kept a detailed record of climate including air pressure, wind strength, air and sea temperature and major meteorological disturbances.
A group of academics and Met Office scientists has unearthed the records dating from the 1600s and examined more than 6,000 logs, which have provided one of the world’s best sources for long-term weather data.
Their studies have raised questions about modern climate change theories. A paper by Dennis Wheeler, a geographer based at Sunderland University, recounts an increasing number of summer storms over Britain in the late 17th century.
Many scientists believe that storms are caused by global warming, but these were came during the so-called Little Ice Age that affected Europe from about 1600 to 1850.
The records also suggest that Europe saw a spell of rapid warming, similar to that experienced today, during the 1730s that must have been caused naturally.
But, of course, what is happening today, such as the 10 years of stable temps, couldn’t have anything to do with natural forces, right?
The argument that global warming stopped in 1998 is mistakenly conflating the large degree of annual variability with the long-term trend. Climate scientists readily admit that dips and spikes in temperature from year to year are driven more by natural factors (El Nino, volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo, etc.) than by anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and that the long-term warming trend is primarily driven by human emissions. For instance 1998 temperatures were anomalously high as a result of the “El Niño of the century”, so choosing an El Niño year as that start of the dataset gives a false impression.
http://www.wmo.ch/pages/prog/wcp/wcdmp/relatedpubs/pdf/El_Nino_in_Brief.pdf
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/01/uncertainty-noise-and-the-art-of-model-data-comparison/
If natural processes are causing the long-term warming trend, which ones are they and what is your evidence?