1. If archeological artifacts are found in retreating glaciers...?

Question

1. If archeological artifacts are found in retreating glaciers, what does this tell us about past climate changes?

That:

A. Temperatures today are no warmer than they were in the past. Cold intervening years formed glaciers over top of the artifacts.

B. It may have been warmer in the past. It may have been colder in the past. Precipitation buried the artifacts and they became part of existing glaciers.

C. Something else (please elaborate)

This question related to several answers that source climateaudit.org: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=434

2. What do these stories tell us about recent climate change and the fact that 200 years of scientific understanding proves that greenhouse gases prevent some energy (outgoing radiation) from escaping Earth's atmosphere? Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases increase global warming.

Answer 1

that the earth is thaking a big change of the worst it can get and woste and noone is going to change my mind because it is already happing to us right this very moment in time.

Answer 2

I'll take the something else for now.   Ever been on a pond in late winter/spring?   Leaves are darker than the ice, so warm up from the sun and melt their way down through the ice.   Ice is also a fluid believe it or not.   Heavy objects slowly sink down through ice just by their weight alone even if its still very cold all the time.      In this case, it tells nothing about past climate change, just that some guy lost something on the ice he was walking across  years ago and it sunk down due to a number of possible factors.

Answer 3

It means that climate variations is natural, and if you want to prove that this warming is unnatural, explain what caused the past natural variations, and why those conditions are not present today.  They could not do that, and why they rewrote history and came out with the hockey stick graph.

Edit:  Dana:  How can solar variation cause temperatures to be warmer in the past, when solar output is greater now?  Any body who studies science knows there is a difference between trends and levels.  The trend is slightly down, but the level is still high. There is a reason why the IPCC does not acknowledge the sun as a past contributor of climate change.

Edit:2  In your answer to crazy conservative, that would have to be the IPCC.  That is what the hockey stick is all about.

Answer 4

It goes to show the pro AGW loonies are blatant liars when they talk about unprecedented temps.

Answer 5

Glaciers basically flow like a river but in ultra slow motion the speed varies depending on the slope they are on and the thickness of the ice. Anything under the glacier would be destroyed by the weight and movement of the ice.

Items found in glacier are most likely dropped on the ice at some time in the past, covered by snow over time,depending on snow accumulation they move down into the glacier.

This can be seen in Antarctica, remote drilling stations that were built on the surface 20-30 years ago are now under ground stations by many meters. The American station at the south pole is designed so that it can be jacked up each year to stop this effect.

Answer 6

Well, first off there is no 200 year scientific agreement that greenhouse gases are  causing global warming.  That is a blatantly wrong statement.  It's really a guess, at best, and a very weak guess.  There is no data anywhere proving global warming.

Glaciers are moving things.  Not just melting, they do move.  I've stood on them and seen the rate of retreat due to both melting and movement over the span of many years.  Artifacts are not often found in glaciers, at least not manmade ones.  The glaciers were formed years before man was here.  But they do reveal 'lost' articles sometimes.  And these might be found a mile or more from where they were lost.  A good example is the examination of plane crashes in both Greenland and the Andes.  They can be a great distance from their original point of impact when they're finally found.  It really says nothing about past climate change.

Answer 7

1) B - who knows why they're there.

2) The discovery of these artifacts doesn't tell us anything about climate change.  Even if the climate was warmer in the past, so what?  What caused that warming?  Did solar output increase during that period?  Does it mean greenhouse gases don't cause warming?

Answer 8

More interesting question - why haven't the ice around the finds of the travelers through mountain passes not melted in the 2000 years it has been there - until now?

Almost makes you think there is something different about the climate of the last 20 years -  compared with the two millennium before?