We’re nowhere near climate tipping point

The Climategate

e-mails reveal that tree ring data used by paleoclimatologists to overturn the vast amount of historical evidence for the medieval warm period (MWP) were obtained primarily from only two areas of the earth since those are the only known areas where tree species live a thousand or more years. One is the bristle cone pine from the higher elevations of the western United States. The other is in Siberia, east of the Ural Mountains.

Much of the Russian data was provided to paleoclimatologists by Russian dendrochronologist Stephan Shiyatov. In one e-mail from October 1998, Russian scientist Rashit Hanntemirov states that there is no evidence of moving polar timberline in the last century. (See “Climategate” by Terence Corcoran in the National Post of Canada.)

However, in 2005, the Canadian Journal of Forest Research published an article based on Shiyatov's work that stated a large number of well preserved tree remains can be found 60 to 80 meters above the current tree line, and that the earliest distinct maximum in stand density occurred in the 11th to 13th centuries coincident with the MWP.

If the earth is not as warm now as it was during the MWP, we obviously are nowhere near the tipping point climate alarmists are so worried about.

Frederick Hubler

Cedar Rapids