Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 03/08/2010 10:02:04 PM PST by neverdem
Common sense suggests this should begin as a handful of pilot projects, not a gaggle of boondoggles. But who knows. The slyentists’ Kool-Aid has stuff in it we haven’t even dreamed about.
I’d envision a process that looks like the way that DNA is sequenced, except we at least might have some rough clue of the order already (this shell was lying above that shell, etc.).
nah! Lets start big and give these clowns $50 million to start with for their clam digging project.
Gypsy fortune tellers read tea leaves and alleged scientists read funky old clam shells. Both have the same level of accuracy for divining the historical climate record
Follow the money (research grants) not the scientific logic
The hope (dim though it may be) is that now the dirt about the AGW cabal has been flung out on the table for all to see, the next generation of science on global climate will actually be open and transparent. If clams can tell a story, let them tell it directly to the whole world. No more hidey holes and proprietary processing.
I doubt the clams tell any worthwhile story. They will give you very fuzzy data. You will derive temperature data from oxygen isotope levels in ancient clam shells???? Are you actually dazzled by this crap? This is an amusing methodology that will be inaccurate and worthless. At best the O2 isotope levels will give you a sense of the past climate but nothing accurate
read the entire article
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100308/full/news.2010.110.html
Not dazzled, just curious. It’s another potential window into the past. At least Obama hasn’t gone and destroyed all the clam shells in the world.
Yeah they got the isotopes backwards.
I doubt this clam digging shiite does any better than an accuracy of within 5 degrees Fahrenheit
Might be able to tell you roughly if the temperatures of the rest of the world kept up during the MWP.
When I first read that the tree ring data was based in ring WIDTH, my reaction was "gee, how can anybody be so stupid".
Molecules with heavy isotopes have slower reaction kinetics than the ones with the corresponding light isotopes. It's strictly based on mass and temperature.
Isotope ratios are one of most accurate techniques that we have. It is the "gold standard" in temperature proxies.
Wasn’t talking about that, Hog.
I mean that a certain ratio of the isotopes is being assumed to exist on the surface of the earth. How did this ratio come to be and could something throw a monkey wrench into it, such as volcanic emissions.
Agree that everything happens slower with the heavier molecules. That would include evaporation...
Well, that get's into stellar evolution and supernovas, which is WAY outside my area of deep expertise. Suffice it to say that no non-nuclear process is going to change stable isotope masses.
This is NOT the case for C14, which is synthesized in the atmosphere by collision of high energy particles with the atmosphere, and which in turn is affected by the solar wind. But even that is still a nuclear process, though ongoing and slightly variable. (Personal note: at one time I worked in a carbon-dating lab, and had the opportunity to meet Willard Libby, the fella that discovered the carbon dating process)
All analytical measurements (actually ALL measurements) yield fuzzy data. That's what error bars are for.
"This is an amusing methodology that will be inaccurate and worthless."
Wrong. Very well-understood and experimentally validated. Determination of molecular and atomic mass by mass spectrometry is one of the more precise and accurate analytical techniques we have. And the effects of isotope mass on reaction kinetics has broad validation.
bullshit.....you are smarter than me. I would appreciate a simple explanation of how accurate the temperature readings are from 10,000 year old clam shells. Derived via O2 isotopes...
Please don’t use the word fuzzy. Just tell me the accuracy within a range of degrees Fahrenheit. In other words—— they say it was 67 degrees Fahrenheit average when the clam shells were formed over a 7 year period. Exactly how accurate is that 67 degrees? Does it really mean 63-71 degrees? Because that is my suspicion
Much appreciated!
Well, that is what error bars are supposed to do, tell you the statistical scatter (accuracy) of the data point. To get that for the data set in the article, we'd have to actually read the journal article, rather than the editorial synopsis that was posted here.
And the fact that most of the AGW graphs do NOT include error bars points them up to be propaganda rather than science.
Actually, the posted article tends to support the "climate skeptic" position, because it says that the isotope ratio data indicates that the Medieval Warm period (and the earlier "Roman" warm period) were real.
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