Posted on 07/11/2012 10:30:54 AM PDT by Twotone
Rings in fossilised pine trees have proven that the world was much warmer than previously thought - and the earth has been slowly COOLING for 2,000 years.
Measurements stretching back to 138BC prove that the Earth is slowly cooling due to changes in the distance between the Earth and the sun.
The finding may force scientists to rethink current theories of the impact of global warming.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Tree-rings prove climate was WARMER in Roman and Medieval times than it is now - and world has been cooling for 2,000 years
“...The finding may force scientists to rethink current theories of the impact of global warming...”
Yup, it’ll cause real scientists to rethink.
However, it won’t make a ripple in the bottom-O-the-barrel SAT journalist ranks.
To say nothing of our dim-bulb-crat cretinistic loon-O-dent and his math-challenged minions.
Does this mean that the Roman Coliseum wasn’t originally designed to be a giant outdoor ice-skating rink?
It would have been cooler if they drove electric cars and reduced their production of coal and oil. Geeeeez.....even I know that.
Mirabile dictu!
I want to believe this, but I’m having a problem with this 138BC date. Is carbon dating that accurate?
Not carbon dating, but they do a lot of dating by tracking tree rings. For example you can take the wood from an old tree chopped down on a known date and match each ring to a year. Then you can find some older wood that has it's youngest rings matching the widths (and therefore year's weather) with your first tree's older rings so you can get an exact date for that second tree. Keep on getting older and older wood and you can go back pretty far. The tricky part is the assumption that they are all grown locally and therefore had the same growth pattern, so you probably need multiple trees in each era to cross check them.
The 138BC date comes from tree rings not from carbon dating of trees.
Well, I don’t know if carbod dating was involved. It mentioned only the measurement of tree rings from fossilized trees. I see no reason to doubt it.
My Tag line says it correctly!
Now we know why those Roman Warriors wore skirts....ventilation!!
The study of growth rings in trees for the purpose of analyzing past climate conditions or determining the dates of past events.
Because trees grow more slowly in periods of drought or other environmental stress than they do under more favorable conditions, the size of the rings they produce varies.
Analyzing the pattern of a tree's rings provides information about the environmental changes that took place during the period in which it was growing.
Matching the pattern in trees whose age is known to the pattern in wood found at an archaeological site can establish the age at which the wood was cut and thus the approximate date of the site.
By comparing living trees with old lumber and finding overlapping ring patterns, scientists have established chronological records for some species that go back as far as 9,000 years.
Thanks for the elucidation on tree-dating, guys. This is all new to me.
Dendrochronology was developed using pines (conifers) in the southwest US where moisture generally is limiting factor. Further, most of tree growth and thus tree ring density (or thickness) occurs in the springtime. A wet winter will provide a thick ring, but a hot dry summer may not be reflected in the growth ring as most growing has already occurred. This is the point that Dr. Tim Ball has made in response to support of this study (Summary; Trees don’t represent temperature and half a year doesn’t represent an annual record. ).
The over 200 comments to the article at the "Watts Up With That?" blog express deep skepticism that tree rings are a good proxy for temperature for the reasons mentioned above (moisture is usually the most limiting factor and may be too localized or regional to draw worldwide conclusions).
On the other hand this study was conducted in Finland and the author posits that only temperature was a factor based on the late arrival of the growing season at that high latitude.
So the bottom line, in my opinion, is that the study may provide evidence of cooling in the vicinity of the study area, but to extrapolate it over the globe is way too overly simplistic.
Great graph. Thanks for that! :-)
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