CLIMATE CHANGE INDEX

PRESENTATION PACKET (.pdf) – This is a collection of ten papers handed out to the audience at the presentation on climate change given at the Redding Public Library on 2 May 2013.

EARTH – SUN RELATIONSHIPS (.pdf) – This is a 17-page discussion of all of the elements of the earth-Sun relationship that affect any and all climate change scenarios. It covers the basic principles of solar forcing, albedo forcing, orbital forcing, and atmospheric forcing (including carbon-forcing). There is a three-page bibliography.

EARTH – SUN NUMERICAL VALUES (.pdf) – This is a three-page compilation of the accepted values of the various astronomical measurements. It will be useful for those of you who prefer to do all of their own calculations.

OVERVIEW (.pdf) – This is an introduction to the four major climate-forcing hypotheses: solar-forcing, albedo-forcing, orbital-forcing, and atmospheric-forcing.

SOLAR FORCING (.pdf) – This is a brief introduction to the solar-forcing hypothesis.

ALBEDO FORCING (.pdf) – This is a brief introduction to the albedo-forcing hypothesis.

ORBITAL FORCING (.pdf) – This is a brief introduction to the orbital-forcing hypothesis (the Milankovitch Theory).

ATMOSPHERIC FORCING (.pdf) – This is a brief introduction to the atmospheric-forcing hypothesis—including carbon-forcing and water-vapor-forcing.

WATER AND THE EARTH’S HEAT BUDGETS (PDF) – This is a nineteen-page discussion of the dominance of water vapor in all six of the Earth’s heat budgets.

ARE RECONSTRUCTION OF SURFACE TEMPERATURE OVER THE LAST 1000 YEARS RELIABLE? (.pdf) – A forty-five page reprint of the McShane and Wyner article that appeared in the 2011 Journal of Applied Statistics. This article is well-written but does require a solid understanding of advanced statistical theory and paleoclimatology to properly understand. The conclusion is that such studies have such large margins of error as to be essentially useless except in the very broadest sense.

THE MEDIEVAL CLIMATE ANOMALY AND THE NORTH ATLANTIC OSCILLATION (.pdf) – This is a 2009 paper by Truet in Science that started the argument about the cause and the significance of the Medieval Climate Anomaly.

THE MEDIEVAL CLIMATE ANOMALY (.pdf) – This is a fourteen-page article published by Mann and his associates in June of 2011 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. It minimizes the significance of the Medieval Warm Period in the global climate history, but does admit that the warm spell was probably caused by solar-forcing combined with changes in oceanic circulation proposed by Truet.

THE MEDIEVAL CLIMATE ANOMALY (REVISITED) (.pdf) – This is a twenty-page paper published online by Michael Mann and his associates in January of 2012. It defends against some of the criticisms engendered by the 2011 paper. It adds a number of impressive graphics, but covers little new ground.

TEMPERATURE VARIABILITY DURING THE LAST TWO MILLENIA (.pdf) – This is a thirteen-page paper published by Ljungqvist in the Geografiska Annaler in 2010. It concludes that temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period were slightly warmer than today for most of the European northern mid-latitudes. This conflicts with the Mann and his colleagues, but agrees with writings by medieval scholars.

Last edited in January of 2014