A paper published online today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds a strong influence of shifts in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) on changes in snow cover of the distant Tibetan Plateau over the past 200 years. Major shifts occurred in the 1840s, 1880s, 1920s, and 1960s with CO2 levels well below Hansen’s fictitious “safe limit” of 350 ppm. Ocean oscillations such as the AMO are not incorporated in climate models, but nonetheless have large effects upon climate change as demonstrated by this paper and others. Meanwhile, the IPCC claims they can’t explain climate change based on natural forces, allows no competing hypotheses, and thus proclaims man-made CO2 as the default climate control knob, while conveniently ignoring ocean oscillations and other natural influences. Although ocean oscillations are poorly understood and scant research is being done to understand this large natural climate forcing, the IPCC and fellow alarmists cannot rightfully claim that only man-made CO2 explains climate change over the past century.
The paper also finds not surprisingly that cold phases are associated with more snow and warm phases with less snow, making a mockery of the claims of Jeff Masters, Mark “death spiral” Serreze, Al Gore and others that warming causes more snowfall
Hmmm. Seems to bolster my arguments to Larry that too little is known of several different factors, other than somewhat accurate CO2 emission numbers from man’s activities, to definitively state that the cause, or even majority of the cause, of CO2 increases seen within the near past are due to man, entirely, or otherwise.