CDZ Climate Change effects already here, yet denial persists

[westwall]

The reason that it is important to keep track of how well the predictions are being met is to have an understanding of whether the effects if global warming/climate change are exaggerated or not.

I understand that, but given the nature and scale of the subject under discussion, it's just absurd to demand accuracy down to a score or two of years. In the scheme of planet-level processes and events, the entirety of human existence is but a "blink" temporally speaking.

I get that people want to know if they need to, say move from Miami, New Orleans, Houston or London this year or ten years from now, but in consideration of the processes and the object of them -- the Earth's ecosystems -- that level of precision is irrelevant and not realistically capable of being produced.

It's unfortunate that human lifespans aren't longer than they are, but that is what it is. How will future generations view us when they look back and see that we had enough pertinent, even if incomplete or imperfect, information at our disposal to have done something to avert setting off the spiral that resulted in "the mess" of a planet they inherited from us? Now what if those future generations are not 200 years distant from us, but instead our kids or grandkids?

Of course commencing to do something about climate change could all be for naught. But consider the consequence of that: new industries and innovations come about, new industries that would not have come about as quickly had we not been making such a concerted effort to implement lower impact ways of living our lives. That drives demand and catalyzes the creation of new suppliers, which in turn creates new jobs, which puts money in people's pockets. At the outset, the innovations will cost more. Over time, the innovations become ubiquitous and the price goes down just as happened with cell phones, phone calls, flat screen televisions, wrist watches, etc.

• The first quartz watches weren’t cheap. Some were even marketed as high-tech luxury timepieces. The first Astrons sold for $1,250 (the price of a Japanese compact car at the time), while early Pulsars cost $2,100. Thin watches produced by the Swiss and Japanese in the mid-1970s sold for $3,500 and $5,000, respectively. Today, one can buy a comparable quartz watch for $100 or less. I've actually received really inexpensive ones as "goody bag" gifts at fundraising events. The case build of them is lame, but their timekeeping ability is as good as most any quartz watch one can buy.
  
• In the 1970s, I recall seeing one our phone bills; it was ~$115. The bulk of that cost was due to long distance calls to Mississippi, California and Louisiana. IIRC, call-waiting and touch tone dialing were "big deal" features. Heck, back then, just calling from D.C. to Baltimore was long distance. Now what does one pay for long distance domestic calls? Nothing.

So when I consider the climate change issue, what drives my thoughts are the cost and benefits of doing nothing and later being found to have been wrong do nothing versus the cost and benefits of trying to do something and later being found to have been wrong to have tried. In that gamble/calculus, trying bests doing nothing.

It is I agree with you. However, the fraud that is being perpetrated relies on the fact that people will be long dead before they can figure out that they were ripped off. There ARE short term predictions that can be made (guess what, every single one of them have failed) and the fact that they have indeed all failed further proves that the theory of CO2 derived AGW is hogwash.

CO2 is most certainly a GHG, but in the vanishingly small amounts that it exists in our atmosphere it is simply not capable of having more than a tiny effect. An effect so small that it is not even measurable.

 

[Damaged Eagle]

The sun and the oceans are the main drivers of heat retention for the earth.

A boiler filled with water (oceans) will retain heat much better than a boiler filled with air.

If the earth did not have oceans we would see variations in temperature similar to what Mars experiences during a full day. The fact that our atmosphere is slightly thicker than Mars helps slightly to help retain heat so the variations from day to nighttime are not as severe. However for the effects of CO2 to be noticeable the atmosphere would have to be a thick as soup like Venus's atmosphere.

Of course any physicist or astronomy major could tell you this... Oh wait!!!!! Weren't the physicists and astronomers some of the first scientists to bail out of supporting the global warming stuff?

I do believe they were.

But don't mind me I'm just a backwards country boy and wouldn't know anything about physics or astronomy.

*****CHUCKLE*****

 

[320 Years of History]

So I see you won't simply grant me the one simple request I made of you.

I guess I have to reply to you, but make no mistake, I'm going to do so in as simplistic way possible because I really don't see your remarks to me on this topic as deserving of my time or efforts to rigorously respond to.

My frustration issues from the absolute certainty that you don't know enough about the topic of climate change in general, even though you may consider yourself as knowing quite a lot and may indeed know a lot relative to various others, you don't know enough to engage upon the lines of argument you've pursued, at least that you've pursued in responding to me.

there's this is a scientific axiom, it is called "Occams Razor" I suggest you look it up and apply what it means to the current rise in temperature. Go ahead, i dare you....

Oh, Lord. That you raised Occam is yet another indication of why I have no desire to participate in a conversation with you on this topic. Nobody with any scientific "chops" would challenge another to consider climate change analysis and their conclusions within the context of Occam's razor.

Occam's Razor is a heuristic technique. A heuristic technique is one that is neither expected nor assured of being "on point," but that is thought to be sufficient as a near term and practical approach to evaluating a problem. It's great that you know a little something, for example, about Occam's razor. Really, it is, but that isn't why I find having this conversation with you irritating and boring. It'd be different were you to request sources of rigorous information, but that not what you've done.

You've actually posed very weak arguments and refutations in a manner that suggests they have some scientific/intellectual merit. They just don't, and you clearly don't realize they don't. Moreover, you've presented this foolishness about "apply what [Occam's razor] means" in the context of climate change research methodology and results with a tone of arrogance -- "Go ahead, I dare you" -- that you have no business having. It's one thing when someone is arrogant and knows "inside out" what they are talking about. Audience members may not care much for the arrogance, but at least the speaker knows what s/he his talking about and presents cases borne of genuine cognitive rigor. So far, that's not been the nature of the remarks you've tossed my way. (I haven't and won't read what you've written in response to other members' remarks.)

Anyway, I'm going to reply to the "Occam" question with a little bit of depth because it may be useful to others beyond just yours and my interaction. After you raised Occam, I looked quickly on the Internet and found that there are enough folks prattling on sophomorically about Occam and climate change that it's worth addressing it beyond merely replying to your having done so.



Climate skeptics often enough invoke Occam’s razor to claim that because their idea/model/theory/analysis is simpler than someone else’s that their’s is therefore correct, and the other is consequently wrong. Firstly, according to Wikipedia,

In science, Occam’s razor is used as a heuristic (general guiding rule or an observation) to guide scientists in the development of theoretical models rather than as an arbiter between published models. In the scientific method, Occam’s razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic or a scientific result...​

....which indicates -- as would be obvious to many -- Occam’s razor is not a suitable way to differentiate between different models.

Occam’s razor, however, is a perfectly sensible idea. If one wants t to understand something, it is best to make one's model/theory/analysis as simple as possible. One shouldn’t include things that aren’t necessary or that aren’t physically motivated. It doesn’t, however, mean that one can, for example, ignore an important bit of physics simply because one thinks it would make one's model too complicated. Also, Occam's razor not something that I’ve ever seen a credible scientist use to justify why their model is the best possible model.

There are two common cases where climate skeptics invoke Occam's razor. One is in assuming that CO2 concentrations were increasing linearly with time (which a quick look at the data shows is not a particularly good assumption) and then concluding by saying that because this analysis was the most simple, it therefore was the most likely. The other is where folks aim to argue, as you have (sloppily and incompletely) sought to do above, that because the trend in the temperature anomaly data is not statistically significant (i.e., it could be positive or negative), Occam’s razor tells us that the most likely trend is zero degrees centigrade per decade.

Well, no it doesn’t. The actual data analysis tells us what the most likely trend is, not some guess based on a philosophical construct that is simply intended to guide us when developing models or carrying out some data analysis.

Three axioms presupposed by the scientific method are realism (the existence of objective reality), the existence of observable natural laws, and the constancy of observable natural law. Rather than depend on provability of these axioms, science depends on the fact that they have not been objectively falsified.

Occam’s razor and related appeals to simplicity are epistemological preferences, not general principles of science. The general principle of science is that theories (or models) of natural law must be consistent with repeatable experimental observations. This principle rests upon the unproven axioms mentioned above. Occam’s razor supports, but does not prove, these axioms.

There are many examples where Occam’s razor would have picked the wrong theory given the available data. Simplicity principles are useful philosophical preferences for choosing a more likely theory from among several possibilities that are each consistent with available data. However, anyone invoking Occam’s razor to support a scientific preference should be aware that future experiments may well falsify the model currently favored by Occam’s razor. One accurate observation of a white crow falsifies the theory that “all crows are black.” Likewise, a single instance of Occam’s razor picking a wrong theory falsifies the razor as a general principle.

In addition, Occam’s razor fails to acknowledge that if multiple models of natural law make exactly the same testable predictions, they are equivalent and there is no need for parsimony to choose one that is preferred. For example, Newtonian, Hamiltonian, and Lagrangian classical mechanics are equivalent. Which one of the three would be preferred by Occam’s razor? Is this a justification for saying the other two are wrong? Likewise, how would advocates of simplicity principles arbitrate between wave and matrix formulations of quantum mechanics?

This is what we know. Fourteen thousand years ago there was a mile thick slab of ice sitting on top of where my house is now. Then, all of a sudden it melted away. The planet enjoyed a rapid warming that caused the majority of that continental ice sheet to melt away. In the intervening 14,000 years, there have been MULTIPLE periods of cooling and warming. What caused those?

I presume you are referring to what is called the "Antarctic cold reversal?" If so, you'll find your answer here: The spatial extent and dynamics of the Antarctic Cold Reversal. The study was published last November, yet you penned the post quoted herein in August 2016. It'd have been nice were you to have sought the answer to your question on your own rather than challenging my remarks without having bothered to find out for yourself whether your challenge held any merit.

CO2 has risen and fallen with the temperatures (always lagging by hundreds of years by the way, CO2 has never once increased prior to the onset of global warming, I wonder why that is?) and the ice has come and gone....

What? You aren't seriously asking me that are you? Do you know how wave functions work? Do you mean to intimate that we should not be concerned about CO2 levels until they approach Hadean-Archean levels?

You sit there and ask some question and provide no context for one to answer it. You make unitary statements for which you provide no credible points of reference and that you imply must be the sole cause for one to think or not think "whatever" about climate change as though that sole observation is the "be all end all" to the matter. You don't even attempt to make a rigorous argument be it in support of your statement's merit for being the quintessential factor that makes your position "the" right one and all others incorrect. As I wrote earlier, you clearly have no conception of the scale and scope of this topic.

• Evolution of the Earth's Atmosphere
  
• Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions
  
• The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect
  
• Last time carbon dioxide levels were this high: 15 million years ago, scientists report

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

Something that should always be remembered.

www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/the-us-coast-is-in-an-unprecedented-hurricane-drought-%e2%80%94-why-this-is-terrifying/ar-BBvgoBU?li=BBnb7Kz

The U.S. coast is in an unprecedented hurricane drought — why this is terrifying

It is terrifying because CLimate Change is a hoax and all that Carbon Tax money "MIGHT" go away and liberals will have to go back to work. Bwaaaahaaaahhaaaa, God just wont play the liberals game. www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/18/study-katrina-like-hurricanes-to-occur-more-frequently-due-to-warming

Study: 'Katrina-Like' Hurricanes to Occur More Frequently Due to Warming

Hurricanes the size of Katrina could occur much more frequently due to rising ocean temperatures.

And then again, maybe the liberals have been lying to you along, just so they can make themselves uber rich on your energy tax dollars. That would explain their radical left wing religious zelotry.

godfatherpolitics.com/global-warming-fear-is-about-money-not-science/

Scientists live or die by grant money. A long time ago universities began to realize that there’s big money to be made in doing research for the government

Just follow the money.

 

[westwall]

So I see you won't simply grant me the one simple request I made of you.

I guess I have to reply to you, but make no mistake, I'm going to do so in as simplistic way possible because I really don't see your remarks to me on this topic as deserving of my time or efforts to rigorously respond to.

My frustration issues from the absolute certainty that you don't know enough about the topic of climate change in general, even though you may consider yourself as knowing quite a lot and may indeed know a lot relative to various others, you don't know enough to engage upon the lines of argument you've pursued, at least that you've pursued in responding to me.

there's this is a scientific axiom, it is called "Occams Razor" I suggest you look it up and apply what it means to the current rise in temperature. Go ahead, i dare you....

Oh, Lord. That you raised Occam is yet another indication of why I have no desire to participate in a conversation with you on this topic. Nobody with any scientific "chops" would challenge another to consider climate change analysis and their conclusions within the context of Occam's razor.

Occam's Razor is a heuristic technique. A heuristic technique is one that is neither expected nor assured of being "on point," but that is thought to be sufficient as a near term and practical approach to evaluating a problem. It's great that you know a little something, for example, about Occam's razor. Really, it is, but that isn't why I find having this conversation with you irritating and boring. It'd be different were you to request sources of rigorous information, but that not what you've done.

You've actually posed very weak arguments and refutations in a manner that suggests they have some scientific/intellectual merit. They just don't, and you clearly don't realize they don't. Moreover, you've presented this foolishness about "apply what [Occam's razor] means" in the context of climate change research methodology and results with a tone of arrogance -- "Go ahead, I dare you" -- that you have no business having. It's one thing when someone is arrogant and knows "inside out" what they are talking about. Audience members may not care much for the arrogance, but at least the speaker knows what s/he his talking about and presents cases borne of genuine cognitive rigor. So far, that's not been the nature of the remarks you've tossed my way. (I haven't and won't read what you've written in response to other members' remarks.)

Anyway, I'm going to reply to the "Occam" question with a little bit of depth because it may be useful to others beyond just yours and my interaction. After you raised Occam, I looked quickly on the Internet and found that there are enough folks prattling on sophomorically about Occam and climate change that it's worth addressing it beyond merely replying to your having done so.



Climate skeptics often enough invoke Occam’s razor to claim that because their idea/model/theory/analysis is simpler than someone else’s that their’s is therefore correct, and the other is consequently wrong. Firstly, according to Wikipedia,

In science, Occam’s razor is used as a heuristic (general guiding rule or an observation) to guide scientists in the development of theoretical models rather than as an arbiter between published models. In the scientific method, Occam’s razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic or a scientific result...​

....which indicates -- as would be obvious to many -- Occam’s razor is not a suitable way to differentiate between different models.

Occam’s razor, however, is a perfectly sensible idea. If one wants t to understand something, it is best to make one's model/theory/analysis as simple as possible. One shouldn’t include things that aren’t necessary or that aren’t physically motivated. It doesn’t, however, mean that one can, for example, ignore an important bit of physics simply because one thinks it would make one's model too complicated. Also, Occam's razor not something that I’ve ever seen a credible scientist use to justify why their model is the best possible model.

There are two common cases where climate skeptics invoke Occam's razor. One is in assuming that CO2 concentrations were increasing linearly with time (which a quick look at the data shows is not a particularly good assumption) and then concluding by saying that because this analysis was the most simple, it therefore was the most likely. The other is where folks aim to argue, as you have (sloppily and incompletely) sought to do above, that because the trend in the temperature anomaly data is not statistically significant (i.e., it could be positive or negative), Occam’s razor tells us that the most likely trend is zero degrees centigrade per decade.

Well, no it doesn’t. The actual data analysis tells us what the most likely trend is, not some guess based on a philosophical construct that is simply intended to guide us when developing models or carrying out some data analysis.

Three axioms presupposed by the scientific method are realism (the existence of objective reality), the existence of observable natural laws, and the constancy of observable natural law. Rather than depend on provability of these axioms, science depends on the fact that they have not been objectively falsified.

Occam’s razor and related appeals to simplicity are epistemological preferences, not general principles of science. The general principle of science is that theories (or models) of natural law must be consistent with repeatable experimental observations. This principle rests upon the unproven axioms mentioned above. Occam’s razor supports, but does not prove, these axioms.

There are many examples where Occam’s razor would have picked the wrong theory given the available data. Simplicity principles are useful philosophical preferences for choosing a more likely theory from among several possibilities that are each consistent with available data. However, anyone invoking Occam’s razor to support a scientific preference should be aware that future experiments may well falsify the model currently favored by Occam’s razor. One accurate observation of a white crow falsifies the theory that “all crows are black.” Likewise, a single instance of Occam’s razor picking a wrong theory falsifies the razor as a general principle.

In addition, Occam’s razor fails to acknowledge that if multiple models of natural law make exactly the same testable predictions, they are equivalent and there is no need for parsimony to choose one that is preferred. For example, Newtonian, Hamiltonian, and Lagrangian classical mechanics are equivalent. Which one of the three would be preferred by Occam’s razor? Is this a justification for saying the other two are wrong? Likewise, how would advocates of simplicity principles arbitrate between wave and matrix formulations of quantum mechanics?

This is what we know. Fourteen thousand years ago there was a mile thick slab of ice sitting on top of where my house is now. Then, all of a sudden it melted away. The planet enjoyed a rapid warming that caused the majority of that continental ice sheet to melt away. In the intervening 14,000 years, there have been MULTIPLE periods of cooling and warming. What caused those?

I presume you are referring to what is called the "Antarctic cold reversal?" If so, you'll find your answer here: The spatial extent and dynamics of the Antarctic Cold Reversal. The study was published last November, yet you penned the post quoted herein in August 2016. It'd have been nice were you to have sought the answer to your question on your own rather than challenging my remarks without having bothered to find out for yourself whether your challenge held any merit.

CO2 has risen and fallen with the temperatures (always lagging by hundreds of years by the way, CO2 has never once increased prior to the onset of global warming, I wonder why that is?) and the ice has come and gone....

What? You aren't seriously asking me that are you? Do you know how wave functions work? Do you mean to intimate that we should not be concerned about CO2 levels until they approach Hadean-Archean levels?

You sit there and ask some question and provide no context for one to answer it. You make unitary statements for which you provide no credible points of reference and that you imply must be the sole cause for one to think or not think "whatever" about climate change as though that sole observation is the "be all end all" to the matter. You don't even attempt to make a rigorous argument be it in support of your statement's merit for being the quintessential factor that makes your position "the" right one and all others incorrect. As I wrote earlier, you clearly have no conception of the scale and scope of this topic.

• Evolution of the Earth's Atmosphere
  
• Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions
  
• The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect
  
• Last time carbon dioxide levels were this high: 15 million years ago, scientists report

Ahhhhh, that's where you are wrong. In ANY scientific discussion Occam is ALWAYS going to raise his head. There is another scientific axiom called the Principle of Uniformitarianism. That holds that what we are seeing today, has happened in the past, and the causes today, are most likely the same causes as the last time. That's why climatologists have tried like heck to disappear the historical record. The historical record doesn't support their tall tales.

That's why they resort to political terms like "consensus".

Here's a real simple test for you. If the effects are being seen now for your so called AGW, please show us a time when the exact same things have never happened before.

 

[flacaltenn]

the minority of scientists who predicted global cooling

I may be confusing things -- I'm right now checking to make sure my recollection is accurate -- but I think those scientists predicted that the planet would cool after the effects of the warming -- e.g., immense freshwater ice melt that raises sea levels and halts the Gulf Stream -- "do their thing." Frankly, I'd just as soon let things go that far.

They are the very same scientists who proclaimed that the North Pole would be ice free by 2013.

Al Gore Forecasted “Ice-Free” Arctic by 2013; Ice Cover Expands 50%

Al Gore Forecasted “Ice-Free” Arctic by 2013; Ice Cover Expands 50%

Then, when that didn't happen, they pushed it out to 2016.....



US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016


US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016 | Nafeez Ahmed



In the real world, the world where charlatans are vilified and ridiculed, the AGW supporters are so bad in their predictions that a well known charlatan, Sylvia Brown, had a better accuracy rate than these so called scientists.

Good lord. You actually responded to my remarks by stating that scientists are off by some quantity of years with regard to predicting the rate of a global scale process. I realize we are living in the midst of that process, but that we are does not alter the fact that we are yet discussing a global planetary process.

• Do you honestly think that anyone 10K years from now will zoom in on whether the predictions were off by 3, 10, 20 or even 50 years?
• Do you honestly think that it matters in precisely what year the Permian extinction occurred?
• Does it matter whether the European bronze age ended precisely in 600 BC, 597 BC or 603 BC? Or that the bronze age ended in other parts of the world precisely in 1200 BC, 1230 BC, or 1170 BC?

Please stop talking to me about this. Why? Because the nature of your remarks above indicate you are concerned with whether the effects of climate change happen this year or next year, and that you'd even present remarks of that ilk informs me that you are unwilling to apply a rational temporal perspective to matter.

In considering and addressing matters that transpire on a planetary scale, one must always be cognizant of the vastly and literally larger than life scale of the events and processes under discussion. Your and anyone else's puerile comments about whether some specific event occurs in 2013 or 2016 shows a unwillingness to retain that level of temporal perspective with regard to the scope of events transpiring as part of the the matter at hand.
I truly don't care to engage in conversations with folks who exhibit pontifically such profound contextual myopia on any topic. It really doesn't matter why they do so; what matters in this regard is that they do so. Therefore, I'm politely asking you to refrain from replying to my posts on this topic because I cannot use the "ignore" feature with you.

You must not be following the MYRIAD of wild ass claims and exaggerations that are being made TODAY by the leadership of the GW movement. LARGELY the UN IPCC and the various Climate Conferences that have convened to assess monetary reparations on their PERCEIVED list of LIKELY damages.

Just a couple months ago -- the press was FLOODED with breathless cries of "only 246 days left to SAVE THE PLANET" --- which corresponded of course to the opening of the Paris Climate Talks. And literally dozens of PAID AUTHORITIES claiming that a 2 degC "trigger" would preclude "fixing" CC AT ALL. Because the Earth would commit planetcide on it's own. And that the time to stop that 2degC trigger might have already passed.

So don't go flailing wildly at skeptics who point out the BASELESS hysteria about things happening in a mere 20 or 50 year time frame. It's NOT US who are constantly confusing scientific projections with hysteria and propaganda. And it IS significant when these charlatans FAIL to produce the magic for the natives.

 

[flacaltenn]

As I wrote earlier, you clearly have no conception of the scale and scope of this topic.

• Evolution of the Earth's Atmosphere
  
• Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions
  
• The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect
  
• Last time carbon dioxide levels were this high: 15 million years ago, scientists report

It's that last article you cited that shows you have little understanding of the ACTUAL science behind the hype.

The claim that an 800,000 yr Ice Core study can show the complete VARIANCE in CO2 levels is false. At least, it has not been done yet. Because in a study that LONG -- the data (ice slices) are too UNDERSAMPLED to have sufficient TEMPORAL resolution to show anything about levels or rates that existed in LESS than 300 or 500 year periods. In essence -- THAT record is a wandering "mean value" of Atmos CO2. So a 100 yr event like OURs -- would NEVER be captured in the article you quoted. And even 200 yr event would never show the full RANGE of peak variance (or rise/fall rates) . (those metrics would be greatly attenuated)

HOWEVER -- if you focus on SHORTER time spans, take more slices and control carefully for the MIGRATION of CO2 in the slices due to ice accumulation rates or just physical migration -- YOU DO see more variance on these long terms means (or averages).

YET -- that doesn't stop the enrolled activists from making the headline and the CLAIMS you cited. They are UNCOUPLED from any actual technical details of what that data really represents.

I can show you wild swings in CO2 during man's early time on Earth. Perhaps +/- 75ppm in a matter of a couple 100 years --- but those are PRECISE (and hi resolution) short time scale studies of ice cores.

You're not as far along as you IMAGINE you are. Data processing and analysis is my LIFE. And it's NOT difficult to go from analyzing dolphin sounds or extracting images from noise to understanding how ice core data is collected and processed. Not at all..

 

[GaryDog]

the minority of scientists who predicted global cooling

I may be confusing things -- I'm right now checking to make sure my recollection is accurate -- but I think those scientists predicted that the planet would cool after the effects of the warming -- e.g., immense freshwater ice melt that raises sea levels and halts the Gulf Stream -- "do their thing." Frankly, I'd just as soon let things go that far.

They are the very same scientists who proclaimed that the North Pole would be ice free by 2013.

Al Gore Forecasted “Ice-Free” Arctic by 2013; Ice Cover Expands 50%

Al Gore Forecasted “Ice-Free” Arctic by 2013; Ice Cover Expands 50%

Then, when that didn't happen, they pushed it out to 2016.....



US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016


US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016 | Nafeez Ahmed



In the real world, the world where charlatans are vilified and ridiculed, the AGW supporters are so bad in their predictions that a well known charlatan, Sylvia Brown, had a better accuracy rate than these so called scientists.

Good lord. You actually responded to my remarks by stating that scientists are off by some quantity of years with regard to predicting the rate of a global scale process. I realize we are living in the midst of that process, but that we are does not alter the fact that we are yet discussing a global planetary process.

• Do you honestly think that anyone 10K years from now will zoom in on whether the predictions were off by 3, 10, 20 or even 50 years?
• Do you honestly think that it matters in precisely what year the Permian extinction occurred?
• Does it matter whether the European bronze age ended precisely in 600 BC, 597 BC or 603 BC? Or that the bronze age ended in other parts of the world precisely in 1200 BC, 1230 BC, or 1170 BC?

Please stop talking to me about this. Why? Because the nature of your remarks above indicate you are concerned with whether the effects of climate change happen this year or next year, and that you'd even present remarks of that ilk informs me that you are unwilling to apply a rational temporal perspective to matter.

In considering and addressing matters that transpire on a planetary scale, one must always be cognizant of the vastly and literally larger than life scale of the events and processes under discussion. Your and anyone else's puerile comments about whether some specific event occurs in 2013 or 2016 shows a unwillingness to retain that level of temporal perspective with regard to the scope of events transpiring as part of the the matter at hand.
I truly don't care to engage in conversations with folks who exhibit pontifically such profound contextual myopia on any topic. It really doesn't matter why they do so; what matters in this regard is that they do so. Therefore, I'm politely asking you to refrain from replying to my posts on this topic because I cannot use the "ignore" feature with you.

You must not be following the MYRIAD of wild ass claims and exaggerations that are being made TODAY by the leadership of the GW movement. LARGELY the UN IPCC and the various Climate Conferences that have convened to assess monetary reparations on their PERCEIVED list of LIKELY damages.

Just a couple months ago -- the press was FLOODED with breathless cries of "only 246 days left to SAVE THE PLANET" --- which corresponded of course to the opening of the Paris Climate Talks. And literally dozens of PAID AUTHORITIES claiming that a 2 degC "trigger" would preclude "fixing" CC AT ALL. Because the Earth would commit planetcide on it's own. And that the time to stop that 2degC trigger might have already passed.

So don't go flailing wildly at skeptics who point out the BASELESS hysteria about things happening in a mere 20 or 50 year time frame. It's NOT US who are constantly confusing scientific projections with hysteria and propaganda. And it IS significant when these charlatans FAIL to produce the magic for the natives.

You keep conflating some valid concerns of hyperbole by some who are promoting climate talks and the release of climate studies with the actual science itself. Just because some exaggerate a claim or others cannot pin down a model or prediction to a degree of certainty that you demand doesn't meant the entire "movement" (that term also is used by you to attempt to discredit the very real science) is bunk. You are searching for holes to poke in the theory, rather than analyzing the findings hollistically. "Oh, it's cooled down since 1998" replaces reams of analyses regarding an entire spectrum of atmospheric, geographic and biological changes in the planet that can be easily attributed to carbon emissions.

You simply are intimidated by the science, and you use the shrill cry of a few to dismiss the entire issue. It's misguided and stupid.

 

[flacaltenn]

the minority of scientists who predicted global cooling

I may be confusing things -- I'm right now checking to make sure my recollection is accurate -- but I think those scientists predicted that the planet would cool after the effects of the warming -- e.g., immense freshwater ice melt that raises sea levels and halts the Gulf Stream -- "do their thing." Frankly, I'd just as soon let things go that far.

They are the very same scientists who proclaimed that the North Pole would be ice free by 2013.

Al Gore Forecasted “Ice-Free” Arctic by 2013; Ice Cover Expands 50%

Al Gore Forecasted “Ice-Free” Arctic by 2013; Ice Cover Expands 50%

Then, when that didn't happen, they pushed it out to 2016.....



US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016


US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016 | Nafeez Ahmed



In the real world, the world where charlatans are vilified and ridiculed, the AGW supporters are so bad in their predictions that a well known charlatan, Sylvia Brown, had a better accuracy rate than these so called scientists.

Good lord. You actually responded to my remarks by stating that scientists are off by some quantity of years with regard to predicting the rate of a global scale process. I realize we are living in the midst of that process, but that we are does not alter the fact that we are yet discussing a global planetary process.

• Do you honestly think that anyone 10K years from now will zoom in on whether the predictions were off by 3, 10, 20 or even 50 years?
• Do you honestly think that it matters in precisely what year the Permian extinction occurred?
• Does it matter whether the European bronze age ended precisely in 600 BC, 597 BC or 603 BC? Or that the bronze age ended in other parts of the world precisely in 1200 BC, 1230 BC, or 1170 BC?

Please stop talking to me about this. Why? Because the nature of your remarks above indicate you are concerned with whether the effects of climate change happen this year or next year, and that you'd even present remarks of that ilk informs me that you are unwilling to apply a rational temporal perspective to matter.

In considering and addressing matters that transpire on a planetary scale, one must always be cognizant of the vastly and literally larger than life scale of the events and processes under discussion. Your and anyone else's puerile comments about whether some specific event occurs in 2013 or 2016 shows a unwillingness to retain that level of temporal perspective with regard to the scope of events transpiring as part of the the matter at hand.
I truly don't care to engage in conversations with folks who exhibit pontifically such profound contextual myopia on any topic. It really doesn't matter why they do so; what matters in this regard is that they do so. Therefore, I'm politely asking you to refrain from replying to my posts on this topic because I cannot use the "ignore" feature with you.

You must not be following the MYRIAD of wild ass claims and exaggerations that are being made TODAY by the leadership of the GW movement. LARGELY the UN IPCC and the various Climate Conferences that have convened to assess monetary reparations on their PERCEIVED list of LIKELY damages.

Just a couple months ago -- the press was FLOODED with breathless cries of "only 246 days left to SAVE THE PLANET" --- which corresponded of course to the opening of the Paris Climate Talks. And literally dozens of PAID AUTHORITIES claiming that a 2 degC "trigger" would preclude "fixing" CC AT ALL. Because the Earth would commit planetcide on it's own. And that the time to stop that 2degC trigger might have already passed.

So don't go flailing wildly at skeptics who point out the BASELESS hysteria about things happening in a mere 20 or 50 year time frame. It's NOT US who are constantly confusing scientific projections with hysteria and propaganda. And it IS significant when these charlatans FAIL to produce the magic for the natives.

You keep conflating some valid concerns of hyperbole by some who are promoting climate talks and the release of climate studies with the actual science itself. Just because some exaggerate a claim or others cannot pin down a model or prediction to a degree of certainty that you demand doesn't meant the entire "movement" (that term also is used by you to attempt to discredit the very real science) is bunk. You are searching for holes to poke in the theory, rather than analyzing the findings hollistically. "Oh, it's cooled down since 1998" replaces reams of analyses regarding an entire spectrum of atmospheric, geographic and biological changes in the planet that can be easily attributed to carbon emissions.

You simply are intimidated by the science, and you use the shrill cry of a few to dismiss the entire issue. It's misguided and stupid.

That's not a shrill cry. That IS GW movement. It's the socio-political side of the movement. The folks that are driving the bus. It's Obama and IPCC and international agreements and the MEDIA. So --- it has to be dealt with on a couple different levels. OBVIOUSLY. And I'm fully prepared to discuss both.

If you PREFER the science as I do ---- we can stick to that. But when 320 starts accusing skeptics of dealing in 20, 60 year perspectives -- That's because that is the state of PUBLIC knowledge about the matter. BECAUSE of intense and INTENTIONAL misrepresentation of the science.

We've been looking for a couple GOOD warmers who CAN discuss the science. Haven't found any yet..

 

[westwall]

the minority of scientists who predicted global cooling

I may be confusing things -- I'm right now checking to make sure my recollection is accurate -- but I think those scientists predicted that the planet would cool after the effects of the warming -- e.g., immense freshwater ice melt that raises sea levels and halts the Gulf Stream -- "do their thing." Frankly, I'd just as soon let things go that far.

They are the very same scientists who proclaimed that the North Pole would be ice free by 2013.

Al Gore Forecasted “Ice-Free” Arctic by 2013; Ice Cover Expands 50%

Al Gore Forecasted “Ice-Free” Arctic by 2013; Ice Cover Expands 50%

Then, when that didn't happen, they pushed it out to 2016.....



US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016


US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016 | Nafeez Ahmed



In the real world, the world where charlatans are vilified and ridiculed, the AGW supporters are so bad in their predictions that a well known charlatan, Sylvia Brown, had a better accuracy rate than these so called scientists.

Good lord. You actually responded to my remarks by stating that scientists are off by some quantity of years with regard to predicting the rate of a global scale process. I realize we are living in the midst of that process, but that we are does not alter the fact that we are yet discussing a global planetary process.

• Do you honestly think that anyone 10K years from now will zoom in on whether the predictions were off by 3, 10, 20 or even 50 years?
• Do you honestly think that it matters in precisely what year the Permian extinction occurred?
• Does it matter whether the European bronze age ended precisely in 600 BC, 597 BC or 603 BC? Or that the bronze age ended in other parts of the world precisely in 1200 BC, 1230 BC, or 1170 BC?

Please stop talking to me about this. Why? Because the nature of your remarks above indicate you are concerned with whether the effects of climate change happen this year or next year, and that you'd even present remarks of that ilk informs me that you are unwilling to apply a rational temporal perspective to matter.

In considering and addressing matters that transpire on a planetary scale, one must always be cognizant of the vastly and literally larger than life scale of the events and processes under discussion. Your and anyone else's puerile comments about whether some specific event occurs in 2013 or 2016 shows a unwillingness to retain that level of temporal perspective with regard to the scope of events transpiring as part of the the matter at hand.
I truly don't care to engage in conversations with folks who exhibit pontifically such profound contextual myopia on any topic. It really doesn't matter why they do so; what matters in this regard is that they do so. Therefore, I'm politely asking you to refrain from replying to my posts on this topic because I cannot use the "ignore" feature with you.

You must not be following the MYRIAD of wild ass claims and exaggerations that are being made TODAY by the leadership of the GW movement. LARGELY the UN IPCC and the various Climate Conferences that have convened to assess monetary reparations on their PERCEIVED list of LIKELY damages.

Just a couple months ago -- the press was FLOODED with breathless cries of "only 246 days left to SAVE THE PLANET" --- which corresponded of course to the opening of the Paris Climate Talks. And literally dozens of PAID AUTHORITIES claiming that a 2 degC "trigger" would preclude "fixing" CC AT ALL. Because the Earth would commit planetcide on it's own. And that the time to stop that 2degC trigger might have already passed.

So don't go flailing wildly at skeptics who point out the BASELESS hysteria about things happening in a mere 20 or 50 year time frame. It's NOT US who are constantly confusing scientific projections with hysteria and propaganda. And it IS significant when these charlatans FAIL to produce the magic for the natives.

You keep conflating some valid concerns of hyperbole by some who are promoting climate talks and the release of climate studies with the actual science itself. Just because some exaggerate a claim or others cannot pin down a model or prediction to a degree of certainty that you demand doesn't meant the entire "movement" (that term also is used by you to attempt to discredit the very real science) is bunk. You are searching for holes to poke in the theory, rather than analyzing the findings hollistically. "Oh, it's cooled down since 1998" replaces reams of analyses regarding an entire spectrum of atmospheric, geographic and biological changes in the planet that can be easily attributed to carbon emissions.

You simply are intimidated by the science, and you use the shrill cry of a few to dismiss the entire issue. It's misguided and stupid.

flacaltenn knows more about science than you ever will. Trust me, neither he, nor I are intimidated by science. We LOVE science, we have both made our careers in the scientific arena. What we despise are charlatans who violate every scientific principle (thus damaging science overall) in pursuit of a political goal. The "studies" you love to quote are overwhelmingly computer model derived. That means they are not real.

Do you understand the difference between empirical data and a computer model?

 

[320 Years of History]

The claim that an 800,000 yr Ice Core study can show the complete VARIANCE in CO2 levels is false. At least, it has not been done yet. Because in a study that LONG -- the data (ice slices) are too UNDERSAMPLED to have sufficient TEMPORAL resolution to show anything about levels or rates that existed in LESS than 300 or 500 year periods. In essence -- THAT record is a wandering "mean value" of Atmos CO2. So a 100 yr event like OURs -- would NEVER be captured in the article you quoted. And even 200 yr event would never show the full RANGE of peak variance (or rise/fall rates) . (those metrics would be greatly attenuated)

You know, it seems never to fail that if I provide a simple "layman's" variant of a scholarly study, such as the one to which you referred someone having a predilection for a differing point of view will invariably attempt to discredit the researcher's results, inferences and conclusions with some "pearl" of what they presumably think is a flash of brilliance or perhaps just, as they see it, common sense. In your case here, you've remarked on a brief summarization of one such report and the methodology that underpins it -- while you notably had nothing to say about the other three references I shared -- and concluded that the methodology used (or not used) is sufficient to refute the entire body of conclusions offered by paleoclimatology.

Moreover, you didn't submit any reference that matches the credibility of the study underlying the summary to which I linked as though we all are supposed to take your word for it rather than that of the researchers who performed the study. The temerity of your having done that is astounding. Even the Pope doesn't accord himself that degree of infallibility.

On other occasions when, on the other hand, I present a full study, folks just don't read the thing -- and it's very clear when they don't for their remarks don't align with or address the specific content of the study and do so in contextually accurate/relevant way -- yet they exhibit the gall of continuing to refute the findings. Like you, they share their opposing point(s) -- often, as is the case with the other member, with less coherence than you displayed in the post quoted in part above, but all the same without any reference to the methodology used to arrive at the reported findings or to anything that credibly invalidates that methodology -- of view as though we readers here are to accept them as "the" authority on the matter. Now they may be among "the" authorities on a given matter, but if that's so, then where's their research that shows as much and/or that refutes the content of the studies with which they take exception? One'd think they'd at least link to them regardless of whether they claim to be the/an author of them.

Lastly, to date, I've seen plenty of folks hone in on "this or that" element of uncertainty associated with the measurements and methods of climate science. I have yet to see anyone address in detail how or why those factors they cite -- such as the temporal resolution factor you've raised -- should be rightly weighted so as to invalidate the findings and inferences drawn by researchers (apparently just shy of 100% of them) into climate change. Knowledgeable and sage readers may be willing to accept others' cogently and credibly made assertions in that regard, but certainly not on the basis of a handful of short, often incoherent and ambiguous paragraphs (if that) bolstered by nothing other than the writer's mere say so.


As far as I can tell -- you've not shared enough thought for it to be unambiguous -- the driver to your remarks is the timescale uncertainty extant in ice core air bubble analysis. In general, for ice core timescales based on counting of seasonal cycles (in δ18 O, sulfate, etc.), uncertainty will increase with depth (i.e. time) in an ice core. However, near volcanic marker horizons of independently-known age (e.g. the Tambora eruption of 1815) this uncertainty will be reduced. The magnitude of the uncertainty depends on the degree of ambiguity in identifying seasonal markers, and the likelihood of missing layers; both are functions of snow accumulation rate and, to a lesser extent, location. In general, where snow accumulation rates are <10 cm (ice equivalent)/year, identification of annual layers begins to be problematic.

Steig et al. emphasized the need to distinguish absolute accuracy from relative accuracy. In the 200-year-long U.S. ITASE ice cores from West Antarctica, they showed that while the absolute accuracy of the dating was ±2 years, the relative accuracy among several cores was <±0.5 year, due to identification of several volcanic marker horizons in each of the cores. In this case the cores can be averaged together without creating additional timescale uncertainty, since any systematic errors in the timescale would affect all the cores together.

Without exception, it appears to me that you and every other "denier" of the existence and impacts of climate change derive from two root causes:

• Awareness that some degree of uncertainty exists.
• Failure to distinguish between relative and absolute accuracy.

While nobody can stop you from "driving down that road," the folks who
(1) aren't "mental midgets" and/or
(2) who care more about the "big picture" of planetary scale climate change than they do about "blips" here and there, and/or
(3) who don't have some vested interest in maintaining the status quo
will see that is a damning flaw in the lines of argument folks here have put forth, including your "temporal resolution" line, which is admittedly a relevant consideration even if you've overvalued its importance in the greater scheme of things. How so? What you've done is assume that ice core observations lead to the predictions about climate change. That's a major failing. The predictions about climate change come from models and simulations. Ice core data is used to verify the accuracy of the predictions the models/simulations have made. You've gotten totally backwards the role and relevance of ice core air bubble analysis.

Red:
"Show[ing] the complete variance" in historic CO2 levels requires not sampling to "this or that" degree of temporal resolution and making rational inferences based on the degree confidence corresponding to the sampling approach used, but rather 100% population observation. If observations taken from the entire population of air bubbles available for all 800K years for which we have ice cores is the level of confidence you require to feel comfortable that science's claims about the causes and occurrence and stated implications of climate change, well, you do.

More reasonable and rational folks don't. They don't and won't because by the time they've done that for 800K years of ice and air, if the calamity foreseen is happening, even if a bit slower from a human temporal standpoint, it may well be too late to anything about it. The time to do something to ameliorate the ill effects of, say, a hurricane is not when the thing is making landfall. The same principle is so re: planetary climate change's effects, but the requisite lead times are far, far greater.

You and the other member are advocating for doing nothing because we are not yet 100% certain. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't cotton to that rationale. The matter scale and scope (temporal and physical) -- given that I don't have another planet to go to and there are no landmasses on this one that would be unaffected -- the level of certainty we have is good enough. I might feel differently were the matter one of a bad storm and localized flooding (even to somewhat regional extent, like, say, just Florida, or several islands), but that's not at all the scale we're talking about.

Blue:
As far as I know, establishing the levels of temporal resolution you seem to demand over the span of the past 800K years has not been part of the epistemological scope of past studies of ice core air bubbles. Though I will not attempt to with 100% certitude and in a "broad brush" way address why that has been so, I'm of a mind that ice core analysis reliable at the level of detail at which it's been performed.

• Reliability of ice-core science: historical insights -- The purpose and conclusion are briefly noted below....I'll leave it to you to read the reasons for the conclusion.
  • The Journal of Glaciology is a disciplinary or archival journal. More often than not, papers with the highest impact and highest press coverage are published elsewhere, but the fundamental science underlying those ‘news’ papers is published in the Journal or the Annals of Glaciology. The value of such disciplinary journals is too often underestimated; they represent an absolutely essential part of science.
    
    Based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience, I doubt that the public has ever had a deep and broad understanding of the large number and great strength of the procedures we scientists use to make it as hard as possible for us to fool ourselves. However, I believe that over my career there has been a decrease in the number of people willing to assume that we have such procedures and that we do due diligence implementing them....
    
    ....More work remains to be done, and as increasingly precise measurements on increasingly small samples are developed, some of the issues discussed above may become more important. However, the main results of ice-core science have not been overturned despite being tested in many ways by many groups over many years and decades, and the main results are based strongly on physical understanding of relatively simple systems. Thus, these results are especially robust.
    
    Knowledge of history, including the history of papers published in the Journal of Glaciology, shows that ice-core science is indeed reliable. The value of disciplinary journals such as the Journal of Glaciology is shown very clearly.
• Ice cores and climate change
  • Direct and continuous measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere extend back only to the 1950s. Ice core measurements allow us to extend this way back into the past. In an Antarctic core (Law Dome) with a very high snowfall rate, it has been possible to measure concentrations in air from as recently as the 1980s that is already enclosed in bubbles within the ice. Comparison with measurements made at South Pole station show that the ice core acts as a faithful recorder of atmospheric concentrations....
    
    ....Ice cores provide direct information about how greenhouse gas concentrations have changed in the past, and they also provide direct evidence that the climate can change abruptly under some circumstances. However, they provide no direct analogue for the future because the ice core era contains no periods with concentrations of CO2 comparable to those of the next century.
• Testing the effects of temporal data resolution on predictions of the effects of climate change on bivalves -- This is a study that tests one of the falsifiable propositions of climate change, with regard to the relevancy of the available temporal resolution, by taking an implication of the propositions and examining whether they, as would be expected, hold true for a specific species of bivalve. The short is that the expected behavior predictions held true.

That said, I'm aware of some research into achieving even greater levels of temporal resolution.

• Improving the Temporal Resolution Problem by Localized Gridpoint Nudging in Regional Weather and Climate Models
• Ice Cores That Tell the Past
  
• Optimal site selection for a high-resolution ice core record in East Antarctica -- This study details a systematic method for selection of a new ice core site -- in this instance, one with annual resolution and an ice age of 1000–2000 years at 300 m depth.

I'm also aware that abrupt changes can occur in short periods of time; however, logically speaking, that they can and have does not mean the abrupt changes we have observed in recent times are of the same ilk as past ones. And yes, it also doesn't mean they are not. The risk of inaction due to having incorrectly (as judged by hindsight) presumed the current changes are among the "routine" abrupt ones that can occur.

Other:
Various ice core datasets that are available.

You're not as far along as you IMAGINE you are.

I made no quantified attestation of "how far along" I imagine myself to be. My remarks were about the insufficiency -- qualitative and quantitative -- of the comments the other member made. The remarks that member made are of a nature such that s/he was offering illustrations of short term predictive inaccuracy as a basis for the invalidity of scientists' conclusions about the occurrence and impacts of a natural process that the very same scientists describe as one that occurs over a long term. I'm not even taking exception with yours or his/her literal breadth of knowledge on the matter of climate change or science in general. My dismissive remarks accrue in large (not sole) part from the generally inept cognitive rigor with which the other member responded to me.

One need not be a scientist, or even that familiar with the science topic in question, to know that is just ludicrous reasoning. So however "far along" I imagine myself being, it's far enough along that within this context where I'm not known to anyone, I'll neither offer on the strength of my own knowledge (i.e., citing no credible reference material to support my claim) such a lame argument, nor will I accept an argument of that sort from others who are, for all intents and purposes, strangers to me. I don't hold myself out as a scientist, but even if I were to do so, I'd at least need to share with folks the papers I've published so they can have a legit sense of the nature and scope of my credibility. That's why I routinely provide credible (scholarly) references to support my remarks. I at least have that much respect for others, and I expect that much be accorded to me. But that's not what I received from the other member, and that too contributes to why I asked s/he not respond to my posts on this topic.

For better or worse, I'm just not willing to allow people who either (1) say "stupid sh*t", something befitting what one might expect a child or teen to say, to me or (2) say potentially meritorious "sh*t" in a stupid way, which is again about what a child/teen does. It doesn't really matter to me which approach one offers; I'm not going to be positively or neutrally responsive to either. I deserve better than that of others. I think everyone who cares enough to engage on a topic does; thus I try to give better than that when I share my thoughts. I will not accept less than from others and I with genuine honesty try to not to give less than that to others.

 

[westwall]

The claim that an 800,000 yr Ice Core study can show the complete VARIANCE in CO2 levels is false. At least, it has not been done yet. Because in a study that LONG -- the data (ice slices) are too UNDERSAMPLED to have sufficient TEMPORAL resolution to show anything about levels or rates that existed in LESS than 300 or 500 year periods. In essence -- THAT record is a wandering "mean value" of Atmos CO2. So a 100 yr event like OURs -- would NEVER be captured in the article you quoted. And even 200 yr event would never show the full RANGE of peak variance (or rise/fall rates) . (those metrics would be greatly attenuated)

You know, it seems never to fail that if I provide a simple "layman's" variant of a scholarly study, such as the one to which you referred someone having a predilection for a differing point of view will invariably attempt to discredit the researcher's results, inferences and conclusions with some "pearl" of what they presumably think is a flash of brilliance or perhaps just, as they see it, common sense. In your case here, you've remarked on a brief summarization of one such report and the methodology that underpins it -- while you notably had nothing to say about the other three references I shared -- and concluded that the methodology used (or not used) is sufficient to refute the entire body of conclusions offered by paleoclimatology.

Moreover, you didn't submit any reference that matches the credibility of the study underlying the summary to which I linked as though we all are supposed to take your word for it rather than that of the researchers who performed the study. The temerity of your having done that is astounding. Even the Pope doesn't accord himself that degree of infallibility.

On other occasions when, on the other hand, I present a full study, folks just don't read the thing -- and it's very clear when they don't for their remarks don't align with or address the specific content of the study and do so in contextually accurate/relevant way -- yet they exhibit the gall of continuing to refute the findings. Like you, they share their opposing point(s) -- often, as is the case with the other member, with less coherence than you displayed in the post quoted in part above, but all the same without any reference to the methodology used to arrive at the reported findings or to anything that credibly invalidates that methodology -- of view as though we readers here are to accept them as "the" authority on the matter. Now they may be among "the" authorities on a given matter, but if that's so, then where's their research that shows as much and/or that refutes the content of the studies with which they take exception? One'd think they'd at least link to them regardless of whether they claim to be the/an author of them.

Lastly, to date, I've seen plenty of folks hone in on "this or that" element of uncertainty associated with the measurements and methods of climate science. I have yet to see anyone address in detail how or why those factors they cite -- such as the temporal resolution factor you've raised -- should be rightly weighted so as to invalidate the findings and inferences drawn by researchers (apparently just shy of 100% of them) into climate change. Knowledgeable and sage readers may be willing to accept others' cogently and credibly made assertions in that regard, but certainly not on the basis of a handful of short, often incoherent and ambiguous paragraphs (if that) bolstered by nothing other than the writer's mere say so.


As far as I can tell -- you've not shared enough thought for it to be unambiguous -- the driver to your remarks is the timescale uncertainty extant in ice core air bubble analysis. In general, for ice core timescales based on counting of seasonal cycles (in δ18 O, sulfate, etc.), uncertainty will increase with depth (i.e. time) in an ice core. However, near volcanic marker horizons of independently-known age (e.g. the Tambora eruption of 1815) this uncertainty will be reduced. The magnitude of the uncertainty depends on the degree of ambiguity in identifying seasonal markers, and the likelihood of missing layers; both are functions of snow accumulation rate and, to a lesser extent, location. In general, where snow accumulation rates are <10 cm (ice equivalent)/year, identification of annual layers begins to be problematic.

Steig et al. emphasized the need to distinguish absolute accuracy from relative accuracy. In the 200-year-long U.S. ITASE ice cores from West Antarctica, they showed that while the absolute accuracy of the dating was ±2 years, the relative accuracy among several cores was <±0.5 year, due to identification of several volcanic marker horizons in each of the cores. In this case the cores can be averaged together without creating additional timescale uncertainty, since any systematic errors in the timescale would affect all the cores together.

Without exception, it appears to me that you and every other "denier" of the existence and impacts of climate change derive from two root causes:

• Awareness that some degree of uncertainty exists.
• Failure to distinguish between relative and absolute accuracy.

While nobody can stop you from "driving down that road," the folks who
(1) aren't "mental midgets" and/or
(2) who care more about the "big picture" of planetary scale climate change than they do about "blips" here and there, and/or
(3) who don't have some vested interest in maintaining the status quo
will see that is a damning flaw in the lines of argument folks here have put forth, including your "temporal resolution" line, which is admittedly a relevant consideration even if you've overvalued its importance in the greater scheme of things. How so? What you've done is assume that ice core observations lead to the predictions about climate change. That's a major failing. The predictions about climate change come from models and simulations. Ice core data is used to verify the accuracy of the predictions the models/simulations have made. You've gotten totally backwards the role and relevance of ice core air bubble analysis.

Red:
"Show[ing] the complete variance" in historic CO2 levels requires not sampling to "this or that" degree of temporal resolution and making rational inferences based on the degree confidence corresponding to the sampling approach used, but rather 100% population observation. If observations taken from the entire population of air bubbles available for all 800K years for which we have ice cores is the level of confidence you require to feel comfortable that science's claims about the causes and occurrence and stated implications of climate change, well, you do.

More reasonable and rational folks don't. They don't and won't because by the time they've done that for 800K years of ice and air, if the calamity foreseen is happening, even if a bit slower from a human temporal standpoint, it may well be too late to anything about it. The time to do something to ameliorate the ill effects of, say, a hurricane is not when the thing is making landfall. The same principle is so re: planetary climate change's effects, but the requisite lead times are far, far greater.

You and the other member are advocating for doing nothing because we are not yet 100% certain. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't cotton to that rationale. The matter scale and scope (temporal and physical) -- given that I don't have another planet to go to and there are no landmasses on this one that would be unaffected -- the level of certainty we have is good enough. I might feel differently were the matter one of a bad storm and localized flooding (even to somewhat regional extent, like, say, just Florida, or several islands), but that's not at all the scale we're talking about.

Blue:
As far as I know, establishing the levels of temporal resolution you seem to demand over the span of the past 800K years has not been part of the epistemological scope of past studies of ice core air bubbles. Though I will not attempt to with 100% certitude and in a "broad brush" way address why that has been so, I'm of a mind that ice core analysis reliable at the level of detail at which it's been performed.

• Reliability of ice-core science: historical insights -- The purpose and conclusion are briefly noted below....I'll leave it to you to read the reasons for the conclusion.
  • The Journal of Glaciology is a disciplinary or archival journal. More often than not, papers with the highest impact and highest press coverage are published elsewhere, but the fundamental science underlying those ‘news’ papers is published in the Journal or the Annals of Glaciology. The value of such disciplinary journals is too often underestimated; they represent an absolutely essential part of science.
    
    Based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience, I doubt that the public has ever had a deep and broad understanding of the large number and great strength of the procedures we scientists use to make it as hard as possible for us to fool ourselves. However, I believe that over my career there has been a decrease in the number of people willing to assume that we have such procedures and that we do due diligence implementing them....
    
    ....More work remains to be done, and as increasingly precise measurements on increasingly small samples are developed, some of the issues discussed above may become more important. However, the main results of ice-core science have not been overturned despite being tested in many ways by many groups over many years and decades, and the main results are based strongly on physical understanding of relatively simple systems. Thus, these results are especially robust.
    
    Knowledge of history, including the history of papers published in the Journal of Glaciology, shows that ice-core science is indeed reliable. The value of disciplinary journals such as the Journal of Glaciology is shown very clearly.
• Ice cores and climate change
  • Direct and continuous measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere extend back only to the 1950s. Ice core measurements allow us to extend this way back into the past. In an Antarctic core (Law Dome) with a very high snowfall rate, it has been possible to measure concentrations in air from as recently as the 1980s that is already enclosed in bubbles within the ice. Comparison with measurements made at South Pole station show that the ice core acts as a faithful recorder of atmospheric concentrations....
    
    ....Ice cores provide direct information about how greenhouse gas concentrations have changed in the past, and they also provide direct evidence that the climate can change abruptly under some circumstances. However, they provide no direct analogue for the future because the ice core era contains no periods with concentrations of CO2 comparable to those of the next century.
• Testing the effects of temporal data resolution on predictions of the effects of climate change on bivalves -- This is a study that tests one of the falsifiable propositions of climate change, with regard to the relevancy of the available temporal resolution, by taking an implication of the propositions and examining whether they, as would be expected, hold true for a specific species of bivalve. The short is that the expected behavior predictions held true.

That said, I'm aware of some research into achieving even greater levels of temporal resolution.

• Improving the Temporal Resolution Problem by Localized Gridpoint Nudging in Regional Weather and Climate Models
• Ice Cores That Tell the Past
  
• Optimal site selection for a high-resolution ice core record in East Antarctica -- This study details a systematic method for selection of a new ice core site -- in this instance, one with annual resolution and an ice age of 1000–2000 years at 300 m depth.

I'm also aware that abrupt changes can occur in short periods of time; however, logically speaking, that they can and have does not mean the abrupt changes we have observed in recent times are of the same ilk as past ones. And yes, it also doesn't mean they are not. The risk of inaction due to having incorrectly (as judged by hindsight) presumed the current changes are among the "routine" abrupt ones that can occur.

Other:
Various ice core datasets that are available.

You're not as far along as you IMAGINE you are.

I made no quantified attestation of "how far along" I imagine myself to be. My remarks were about the insufficiency -- qualitative and quantitative -- of the comments the other member made. The remarks that member made are of a nature such that s/he was offering illustrations of short term predictive inaccuracy as a basis for the invalidity of scientists' conclusions about the occurrence and impacts of a natural process that the very same scientists describe as one that occurs over a long term. I'm not even taking exception with yours or his/her literal breadth of knowledge on the matter of climate change or science in general. My dismissive remarks accrue in large (not sole) part from the generally inept cognitive rigor with which the other member responded to me.

One need not be a scientist, or even that familiar with the science topic in question, to know that is just ludicrous reasoning. So however "far along" I imagine myself being, it's far enough along that within this context where I'm not known to anyone, I'll neither offer on the strength of my own knowledge (i.e., citing no credible reference material to support my claim) such a lame argument, nor will I accept an argument of that sort from others who are, for all intents and purposes, strangers to me. I don't hold myself out as a scientist, but even if I were to do so, I'd at least need to share with folks the papers I've published so they can have a legit sense of the nature and scope of my credibility. That's why I routinely provide credible (scholarly) references to support my remarks. I at least have that much respect for others, and I expect that much be accorded to me. But that's not what I received from the other member, and that too contributes to why I asked s/he not respond to my posts on this topic.

For better or worse, I'm just not willing to allow people who either (1) say "stupid sh*t", something befitting what one might expect a child or teen to say, to me or (2) say potentially meritorious "sh*t" in a stupid way, which is again about what a child/teen does. It doesn't really matter to me which approach one offers; I'm not going to be positively or neutrally responsive to either. I deserve better than that of others. I think everyone who cares enough to engage on a topic does; thus I try to give better than that when I share my thoughts. I will not accept less than from others and I with genuine honesty try to not to give less than that to others.

Steig et al, has been demolished so many times, and the unethical behavior of Steig himself acting as a supposed unbiased reviewer of the paper that refuted his, that I find it impossible to take anything you say seriously when you resort to that subterranean level of support for your arguments.

Just sayin...

 

[PredFan]

The climate crisis is already here – but no one’s telling us | George Monbiot

Nothing to see here, right? Just keep commenting on Trump's gaffes, Hillary's emails, Kanye and Taylor, etc.

Climate change has been the rule ever since this planet formed and cooled. No one denies that the climate changes. It's the sun stupid.

 

[320 Years of History]

The claim that an 800,000 yr Ice Core study can show the complete VARIANCE in CO2 levels is false. At least, it has not been done yet. Because in a study that LONG -- the data (ice slices) are too UNDERSAMPLED to have sufficient TEMPORAL resolution to show anything about levels or rates that existed in LESS than 300 or 500 year periods. In essence -- THAT record is a wandering "mean value" of Atmos CO2. So a 100 yr event like OURs -- would NEVER be captured in the article you quoted. And even 200 yr event would never show the full RANGE of peak variance (or rise/fall rates) . (those metrics would be greatly attenuated)

You know, it seems never to fail that if I provide a simple "layman's" variant of a scholarly study, such as the one to which you referred someone having a predilection for a differing point of view will invariably attempt to discredit the researcher's results, inferences and conclusions with some "pearl" of what they presumably think is a flash of brilliance or perhaps just, as they see it, common sense. In your case here, you've remarked on a brief summarization of one such report and the methodology that underpins it -- while you notably had nothing to say about the other three references I shared -- and concluded that the methodology used (or not used) is sufficient to refute the entire body of conclusions offered by paleoclimatology.

Moreover, you didn't submit any reference that matches the credibility of the study underlying the summary to which I linked as though we all are supposed to take your word for it rather than that of the researchers who performed the study. The temerity of your having done that is astounding. Even the Pope doesn't accord himself that degree of infallibility.

On other occasions when, on the other hand, I present a full study, folks just don't read the thing -- and it's very clear when they don't for their remarks don't align with or address the specific content of the study and do so in contextually accurate/relevant way -- yet they exhibit the gall of continuing to refute the findings. Like you, they share their opposing point(s) -- often, as is the case with the other member, with less coherence than you displayed in the post quoted in part above, but all the same without any reference to the methodology used to arrive at the reported findings or to anything that credibly invalidates that methodology -- of view as though we readers here are to accept them as "the" authority on the matter. Now they may be among "the" authorities on a given matter, but if that's so, then where's their research that shows as much and/or that refutes the content of the studies with which they take exception? One'd think they'd at least link to them regardless of whether they claim to be the/an author of them.

Lastly, to date, I've seen plenty of folks hone in on "this or that" element of uncertainty associated with the measurements and methods of climate science. I have yet to see anyone address in detail how or why those factors they cite -- such as the temporal resolution factor you've raised -- should be rightly weighted so as to invalidate the findings and inferences drawn by researchers (apparently just shy of 100% of them) into climate change. Knowledgeable and sage readers may be willing to accept others' cogently and credibly made assertions in that regard, but certainly not on the basis of a handful of short, often incoherent and ambiguous paragraphs (if that) bolstered by nothing other than the writer's mere say so.


As far as I can tell -- you've not shared enough thought for it to be unambiguous -- the driver to your remarks is the timescale uncertainty extant in ice core air bubble analysis. In general, for ice core timescales based on counting of seasonal cycles (in δ18 O, sulfate, etc.), uncertainty will increase with depth (i.e. time) in an ice core. However, near volcanic marker horizons of independently-known age (e.g. the Tambora eruption of 1815) this uncertainty will be reduced. The magnitude of the uncertainty depends on the degree of ambiguity in identifying seasonal markers, and the likelihood of missing layers; both are functions of snow accumulation rate and, to a lesser extent, location. In general, where snow accumulation rates are <10 cm (ice equivalent)/year, identification of annual layers begins to be problematic.

Steig et al. emphasized the need to distinguish absolute accuracy from relative accuracy. In the 200-year-long U.S. ITASE ice cores from West Antarctica, they showed that while the absolute accuracy of the dating was ±2 years, the relative accuracy among several cores was <±0.5 year, due to identification of several volcanic marker horizons in each of the cores. In this case the cores can be averaged together without creating additional timescale uncertainty, since any systematic errors in the timescale would affect all the cores together.

Without exception, it appears to me that you and every other "denier" of the existence and impacts of climate change derive from two root causes:

• Awareness that some degree of uncertainty exists.
• Failure to distinguish between relative and absolute accuracy.

While nobody can stop you from "driving down that road," the folks who
(1) aren't "mental midgets" and/or
(2) who care more about the "big picture" of planetary scale climate change than they do about "blips" here and there, and/or
(3) who don't have some vested interest in maintaining the status quo
will see that is a damning flaw in the lines of argument folks here have put forth, including your "temporal resolution" line, which is admittedly a relevant consideration even if you've overvalued its importance in the greater scheme of things. How so? What you've done is assume that ice core observations lead to the predictions about climate change. That's a major failing. The predictions about climate change come from models and simulations. Ice core data is used to verify the accuracy of the predictions the models/simulations have made. You've gotten totally backwards the role and relevance of ice core air bubble analysis.

Red:
"Show[ing] the complete variance" in historic CO2 levels requires not sampling to "this or that" degree of temporal resolution and making rational inferences based on the degree confidence corresponding to the sampling approach used, but rather 100% population observation. If observations taken from the entire population of air bubbles available for all 800K years for which we have ice cores is the level of confidence you require to feel comfortable that science's claims about the causes and occurrence and stated implications of climate change, well, you do.

More reasonable and rational folks don't. They don't and won't because by the time they've done that for 800K years of ice and air, if the calamity foreseen is happening, even if a bit slower from a human temporal standpoint, it may well be too late to anything about it. The time to do something to ameliorate the ill effects of, say, a hurricane is not when the thing is making landfall. The same principle is so re: planetary climate change's effects, but the requisite lead times are far, far greater.

You and the other member are advocating for doing nothing because we are not yet 100% certain. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't cotton to that rationale. The matter scale and scope (temporal and physical) -- given that I don't have another planet to go to and there are no landmasses on this one that would be unaffected -- the level of certainty we have is good enough. I might feel differently were the matter one of a bad storm and localized flooding (even to somewhat regional extent, like, say, just Florida, or several islands), but that's not at all the scale we're talking about.

Blue:
As far as I know, establishing the levels of temporal resolution you seem to demand over the span of the past 800K years has not been part of the epistemological scope of past studies of ice core air bubbles. Though I will not attempt to with 100% certitude and in a "broad brush" way address why that has been so, I'm of a mind that ice core analysis reliable at the level of detail at which it's been performed.

• Reliability of ice-core science: historical insights -- The purpose and conclusion are briefly noted below....I'll leave it to you to read the reasons for the conclusion.
  • The Journal of Glaciology is a disciplinary or archival journal. More often than not, papers with the highest impact and highest press coverage are published elsewhere, but the fundamental science underlying those ‘news’ papers is published in the Journal or the Annals of Glaciology. The value of such disciplinary journals is too often underestimated; they represent an absolutely essential part of science.
    
    Based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience, I doubt that the public has ever had a deep and broad understanding of the large number and great strength of the procedures we scientists use to make it as hard as possible for us to fool ourselves. However, I believe that over my career there has been a decrease in the number of people willing to assume that we have such procedures and that we do due diligence implementing them....
    
    ....More work remains to be done, and as increasingly precise measurements on increasingly small samples are developed, some of the issues discussed above may become more important. However, the main results of ice-core science have not been overturned despite being tested in many ways by many groups over many years and decades, and the main results are based strongly on physical understanding of relatively simple systems. Thus, these results are especially robust.
    
    Knowledge of history, including the history of papers published in the Journal of Glaciology, shows that ice-core science is indeed reliable. The value of disciplinary journals such as the Journal of Glaciology is shown very clearly.
• Ice cores and climate change
  • Direct and continuous measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere extend back only to the 1950s. Ice core measurements allow us to extend this way back into the past. In an Antarctic core (Law Dome) with a very high snowfall rate, it has been possible to measure concentrations in air from as recently as the 1980s that is already enclosed in bubbles within the ice. Comparison with measurements made at South Pole station show that the ice core acts as a faithful recorder of atmospheric concentrations....
    
    ....Ice cores provide direct information about how greenhouse gas concentrations have changed in the past, and they also provide direct evidence that the climate can change abruptly under some circumstances. However, they provide no direct analogue for the future because the ice core era contains no periods with concentrations of CO2 comparable to those of the next century.
• Testing the effects of temporal data resolution on predictions of the effects of climate change on bivalves -- This is a study that tests one of the falsifiable propositions of climate change, with regard to the relevancy of the available temporal resolution, by taking an implication of the propositions and examining whether they, as would be expected, hold true for a specific species of bivalve. The short is that the expected behavior predictions held true.

That said, I'm aware of some research into achieving even greater levels of temporal resolution.

• Improving the Temporal Resolution Problem by Localized Gridpoint Nudging in Regional Weather and Climate Models
• Ice Cores That Tell the Past
  
• Optimal site selection for a high-resolution ice core record in East Antarctica -- This study details a systematic method for selection of a new ice core site -- in this instance, one with annual resolution and an ice age of 1000–2000 years at 300 m depth.

I'm also aware that abrupt changes can occur in short periods of time; however, logically speaking, that they can and have does not mean the abrupt changes we have observed in recent times are of the same ilk as past ones. And yes, it also doesn't mean they are not. The risk of inaction due to having incorrectly (as judged by hindsight) presumed the current changes are among the "routine" abrupt ones that can occur.

Other:
Various ice core datasets that are available.

You're not as far along as you IMAGINE you are.

I made no quantified attestation of "how far along" I imagine myself to be. My remarks were about the insufficiency -- qualitative and quantitative -- of the comments the other member made. The remarks that member made are of a nature such that s/he was offering illustrations of short term predictive inaccuracy as a basis for the invalidity of scientists' conclusions about the occurrence and impacts of a natural process that the very same scientists describe as one that occurs over a long term. I'm not even taking exception with yours or his/her literal breadth of knowledge on the matter of climate change or science in general. My dismissive remarks accrue in large (not sole) part from the generally inept cognitive rigor with which the other member responded to me.

One need not be a scientist, or even that familiar with the science topic in question, to know that is just ludicrous reasoning. So however "far along" I imagine myself being, it's far enough along that within this context where I'm not known to anyone, I'll neither offer on the strength of my own knowledge (i.e., citing no credible reference material to support my claim) such a lame argument, nor will I accept an argument of that sort from others who are, for all intents and purposes, strangers to me. I don't hold myself out as a scientist, but even if I were to do so, I'd at least need to share with folks the papers I've published so they can have a legit sense of the nature and scope of my credibility. That's why I routinely provide credible (scholarly) references to support my remarks. I at least have that much respect for others, and I expect that much be accorded to me. But that's not what I received from the other member, and that too contributes to why I asked s/he not respond to my posts on this topic.

For better or worse, I'm just not willing to allow people who either (1) say "stupid sh*t", something befitting what one might expect a child or teen to say, to me or (2) say potentially meritorious "sh*t" in a stupid way, which is again about what a child/teen does. It doesn't really matter to me which approach one offers; I'm not going to be positively or neutrally responsive to either. I deserve better than that of others. I think everyone who cares enough to engage on a topic does; thus I try to give better than that when I share my thoughts. I will not accept less than from others and I with genuine honesty try to not to give less than that to others.

Steig et al, has been demolished so many times, and unethical behavior of Steig himself acting as a supposed unbiased reviewer of the paper that refuted his, that I find it impossible to take anything you say seriously when you resort to that subterranean level of support for your arguments.

Just sayin...

Red:
I see you are just sayin'. I wish you would kindly heed the simple request I made of you to just cease and desist with responding to me. I no longer have any interest in what you have to say. That of all that I wrote, the only thing you had to comment on is Steig is enough to show anyone why I have requested that of you.

 

[JoeMoma]

Guess climate change deniers need to just butt out of this discussion. No counter views allowed here.

 

[westwall]

The claim that an 800,000 yr Ice Core study can show the complete VARIANCE in CO2 levels is false. At least, it has not been done yet. Because in a study that LONG -- the data (ice slices) are too UNDERSAMPLED to have sufficient TEMPORAL resolution to show anything about levels or rates that existed in LESS than 300 or 500 year periods. In essence -- THAT record is a wandering "mean value" of Atmos CO2. So a 100 yr event like OURs -- would NEVER be captured in the article you quoted. And even 200 yr event would never show the full RANGE of peak variance (or rise/fall rates) . (those metrics would be greatly attenuated)

You know, it seems never to fail that if I provide a simple "layman's" variant of a scholarly study, such as the one to which you referred someone having a predilection for a differing point of view will invariably attempt to discredit the researcher's results, inferences and conclusions with some "pearl" of what they presumably think is a flash of brilliance or perhaps just, as they see it, common sense. In your case here, you've remarked on a brief summarization of one such report and the methodology that underpins it -- while you notably had nothing to say about the other three references I shared -- and concluded that the methodology used (or not used) is sufficient to refute the entire body of conclusions offered by paleoclimatology.

Moreover, you didn't submit any reference that matches the credibility of the study underlying the summary to which I linked as though we all are supposed to take your word for it rather than that of the researchers who performed the study. The temerity of your having done that is astounding. Even the Pope doesn't accord himself that degree of infallibility.

On other occasions when, on the other hand, I present a full study, folks just don't read the thing -- and it's very clear when they don't for their remarks don't align with or address the specific content of the study and do so in contextually accurate/relevant way -- yet they exhibit the gall of continuing to refute the findings. Like you, they share their opposing point(s) -- often, as is the case with the other member, with less coherence than you displayed in the post quoted in part above, but all the same without any reference to the methodology used to arrive at the reported findings or to anything that credibly invalidates that methodology -- of view as though we readers here are to accept them as "the" authority on the matter. Now they may be among "the" authorities on a given matter, but if that's so, then where's their research that shows as much and/or that refutes the content of the studies with which they take exception? One'd think they'd at least link to them regardless of whether they claim to be the/an author of them.

Lastly, to date, I've seen plenty of folks hone in on "this or that" element of uncertainty associated with the measurements and methods of climate science. I have yet to see anyone address in detail how or why those factors they cite -- such as the temporal resolution factor you've raised -- should be rightly weighted so as to invalidate the findings and inferences drawn by researchers (apparently just shy of 100% of them) into climate change. Knowledgeable and sage readers may be willing to accept others' cogently and credibly made assertions in that regard, but certainly not on the basis of a handful of short, often incoherent and ambiguous paragraphs (if that) bolstered by nothing other than the writer's mere say so.


As far as I can tell -- you've not shared enough thought for it to be unambiguous -- the driver to your remarks is the timescale uncertainty extant in ice core air bubble analysis. In general, for ice core timescales based on counting of seasonal cycles (in δ18 O, sulfate, etc.), uncertainty will increase with depth (i.e. time) in an ice core. However, near volcanic marker horizons of independently-known age (e.g. the Tambora eruption of 1815) this uncertainty will be reduced. The magnitude of the uncertainty depends on the degree of ambiguity in identifying seasonal markers, and the likelihood of missing layers; both are functions of snow accumulation rate and, to a lesser extent, location. In general, where snow accumulation rates are <10 cm (ice equivalent)/year, identification of annual layers begins to be problematic.

Steig et al. emphasized the need to distinguish absolute accuracy from relative accuracy. In the 200-year-long U.S. ITASE ice cores from West Antarctica, they showed that while the absolute accuracy of the dating was ±2 years, the relative accuracy among several cores was <±0.5 year, due to identification of several volcanic marker horizons in each of the cores. In this case the cores can be averaged together without creating additional timescale uncertainty, since any systematic errors in the timescale would affect all the cores together.

Without exception, it appears to me that you and every other "denier" of the existence and impacts of climate change derive from two root causes:

• Awareness that some degree of uncertainty exists.
• Failure to distinguish between relative and absolute accuracy.

While nobody can stop you from "driving down that road," the folks who
(1) aren't "mental midgets" and/or
(2) who care more about the "big picture" of planetary scale climate change than they do about "blips" here and there, and/or
(3) who don't have some vested interest in maintaining the status quo
will see that is a damning flaw in the lines of argument folks here have put forth, including your "temporal resolution" line, which is admittedly a relevant consideration even if you've overvalued its importance in the greater scheme of things. How so? What you've done is assume that ice core observations lead to the predictions about climate change. That's a major failing. The predictions about climate change come from models and simulations. Ice core data is used to verify the accuracy of the predictions the models/simulations have made. You've gotten totally backwards the role and relevance of ice core air bubble analysis.

Red:
"Show[ing] the complete variance" in historic CO2 levels requires not sampling to "this or that" degree of temporal resolution and making rational inferences based on the degree confidence corresponding to the sampling approach used, but rather 100% population observation. If observations taken from the entire population of air bubbles available for all 800K years for which we have ice cores is the level of confidence you require to feel comfortable that science's claims about the causes and occurrence and stated implications of climate change, well, you do.

More reasonable and rational folks don't. They don't and won't because by the time they've done that for 800K years of ice and air, if the calamity foreseen is happening, even if a bit slower from a human temporal standpoint, it may well be too late to anything about it. The time to do something to ameliorate the ill effects of, say, a hurricane is not when the thing is making landfall. The same principle is so re: planetary climate change's effects, but the requisite lead times are far, far greater.

You and the other member are advocating for doing nothing because we are not yet 100% certain. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't cotton to that rationale. The matter scale and scope (temporal and physical) -- given that I don't have another planet to go to and there are no landmasses on this one that would be unaffected -- the level of certainty we have is good enough. I might feel differently were the matter one of a bad storm and localized flooding (even to somewhat regional extent, like, say, just Florida, or several islands), but that's not at all the scale we're talking about.

Blue:
As far as I know, establishing the levels of temporal resolution you seem to demand over the span of the past 800K years has not been part of the epistemological scope of past studies of ice core air bubbles. Though I will not attempt to with 100% certitude and in a "broad brush" way address why that has been so, I'm of a mind that ice core analysis reliable at the level of detail at which it's been performed.

• Reliability of ice-core science: historical insights -- The purpose and conclusion are briefly noted below....I'll leave it to you to read the reasons for the conclusion.
  • The Journal of Glaciology is a disciplinary or archival journal. More often than not, papers with the highest impact and highest press coverage are published elsewhere, but the fundamental science underlying those ‘news’ papers is published in the Journal or the Annals of Glaciology. The value of such disciplinary journals is too often underestimated; they represent an absolutely essential part of science.
    
    Based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience, I doubt that the public has ever had a deep and broad understanding of the large number and great strength of the procedures we scientists use to make it as hard as possible for us to fool ourselves. However, I believe that over my career there has been a decrease in the number of people willing to assume that we have such procedures and that we do due diligence implementing them....
    
    ....More work remains to be done, and as increasingly precise measurements on increasingly small samples are developed, some of the issues discussed above may become more important. However, the main results of ice-core science have not been overturned despite being tested in many ways by many groups over many years and decades, and the main results are based strongly on physical understanding of relatively simple systems. Thus, these results are especially robust.
    
    Knowledge of history, including the history of papers published in the Journal of Glaciology, shows that ice-core science is indeed reliable. The value of disciplinary journals such as the Journal of Glaciology is shown very clearly.
• Ice cores and climate change
  • Direct and continuous measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere extend back only to the 1950s. Ice core measurements allow us to extend this way back into the past. In an Antarctic core (Law Dome) with a very high snowfall rate, it has been possible to measure concentrations in air from as recently as the 1980s that is already enclosed in bubbles within the ice. Comparison with measurements made at South Pole station show that the ice core acts as a faithful recorder of atmospheric concentrations....
    
    ....Ice cores provide direct information about how greenhouse gas concentrations have changed in the past, and they also provide direct evidence that the climate can change abruptly under some circumstances. However, they provide no direct analogue for the future because the ice core era contains no periods with concentrations of CO2 comparable to those of the next century.
• Testing the effects of temporal data resolution on predictions of the effects of climate change on bivalves -- This is a study that tests one of the falsifiable propositions of climate change, with regard to the relevancy of the available temporal resolution, by taking an implication of the propositions and examining whether they, as would be expected, hold true for a specific species of bivalve. The short is that the expected behavior predictions held true.

That said, I'm aware of some research into achieving even greater levels of temporal resolution.

• Improving the Temporal Resolution Problem by Localized Gridpoint Nudging in Regional Weather and Climate Models
• Ice Cores That Tell the Past
  
• Optimal site selection for a high-resolution ice core record in East Antarctica -- This study details a systematic method for selection of a new ice core site -- in this instance, one with annual resolution and an ice age of 1000–2000 years at 300 m depth.

I'm also aware that abrupt changes can occur in short periods of time; however, logically speaking, that they can and have does not mean the abrupt changes we have observed in recent times are of the same ilk as past ones. And yes, it also doesn't mean they are not. The risk of inaction due to having incorrectly (as judged by hindsight) presumed the current changes are among the "routine" abrupt ones that can occur.

Other:
Various ice core datasets that are available.

You're not as far along as you IMAGINE you are.

I made no quantified attestation of "how far along" I imagine myself to be. My remarks were about the insufficiency -- qualitative and quantitative -- of the comments the other member made. The remarks that member made are of a nature such that s/he was offering illustrations of short term predictive inaccuracy as a basis for the invalidity of scientists' conclusions about the occurrence and impacts of a natural process that the very same scientists describe as one that occurs over a long term. I'm not even taking exception with yours or his/her literal breadth of knowledge on the matter of climate change or science in general. My dismissive remarks accrue in large (not sole) part from the generally inept cognitive rigor with which the other member responded to me.

One need not be a scientist, or even that familiar with the science topic in question, to know that is just ludicrous reasoning. So however "far along" I imagine myself being, it's far enough along that within this context where I'm not known to anyone, I'll neither offer on the strength of my own knowledge (i.e., citing no credible reference material to support my claim) such a lame argument, nor will I accept an argument of that sort from others who are, for all intents and purposes, strangers to me. I don't hold myself out as a scientist, but even if I were to do so, I'd at least need to share with folks the papers I've published so they can have a legit sense of the nature and scope of my credibility. That's why I routinely provide credible (scholarly) references to support my remarks. I at least have that much respect for others, and I expect that much be accorded to me. But that's not what I received from the other member, and that too contributes to why I asked s/he not respond to my posts on this topic.

For better or worse, I'm just not willing to allow people who either (1) say "stupid sh*t", something befitting what one might expect a child or teen to say, to me or (2) say potentially meritorious "sh*t" in a stupid way, which is again about what a child/teen does. It doesn't really matter to me which approach one offers; I'm not going to be positively or neutrally responsive to either. I deserve better than that of others. I think everyone who cares enough to engage on a topic does; thus I try to give better than that when I share my thoughts. I will not accept less than from others and I with genuine honesty try to not to give less than that to others.

Steig et al, has been demolished so many times, and unethical behavior of Steig himself acting as a supposed unbiased reviewer of the paper that refuted his, that I find it impossible to take anything you say seriously when you resort to that subterranean level of support for your arguments.

Just sayin...

Red:
I see you are just sayin'. I wish you would kindly heed the simple request I made of you to just cease and desist with responding to me. I no longer have any interest in what you have to say. That of all that I wrote, the only thing you had to comment on is Steig is enough to show anyone why I have requested that of you.

There is the rub isn't it. You use sources that are KNOWN to be foul. Thus, by implication, everything you claim is judged in a similar light. "Once a perjurer, always a perjurer" is the legal term, and in a Court of law, once it is known that you have committed perjury you are no longer a useful witness. For ANYTHING.

If you wish to be taken seriously you must use sources that aren't KNOWN to be false.

 

[320 Years of History]

The claim that an 800,000 yr Ice Core study can show the complete VARIANCE in CO2 levels is false. At least, it has not been done yet. Because in a study that LONG -- the data (ice slices) are too UNDERSAMPLED to have sufficient TEMPORAL resolution to show anything about levels or rates that existed in LESS than 300 or 500 year periods. In essence -- THAT record is a wandering "mean value" of Atmos CO2. So a 100 yr event like OURs -- would NEVER be captured in the article you quoted. And even 200 yr event would never show the full RANGE of peak variance (or rise/fall rates) . (those metrics would be greatly attenuated)

You know, it seems never to fail that if I provide a simple "layman's" variant of a scholarly study, such as the one to which you referred someone having a predilection for a differing point of view will invariably attempt to discredit the researcher's results, inferences and conclusions with some "pearl" of what they presumably think is a flash of brilliance or perhaps just, as they see it, common sense. In your case here, you've remarked on a brief summarization of one such report and the methodology that underpins it -- while you notably had nothing to say about the other three references I shared -- and concluded that the methodology used (or not used) is sufficient to refute the entire body of conclusions offered by paleoclimatology.

Moreover, you didn't submit any reference that matches the credibility of the study underlying the summary to which I linked as though we all are supposed to take your word for it rather than that of the researchers who performed the study. The temerity of your having done that is astounding. Even the Pope doesn't accord himself that degree of infallibility.

On other occasions when, on the other hand, I present a full study, folks just don't read the thing -- and it's very clear when they don't for their remarks don't align with or address the specific content of the study and do so in contextually accurate/relevant way -- yet they exhibit the gall of continuing to refute the findings. Like you, they share their opposing point(s) -- often, as is the case with the other member, with less coherence than you displayed in the post quoted in part above, but all the same without any reference to the methodology used to arrive at the reported findings or to anything that credibly invalidates that methodology -- of view as though we readers here are to accept them as "the" authority on the matter. Now they may be among "the" authorities on a given matter, but if that's so, then where's their research that shows as much and/or that refutes the content of the studies with which they take exception? One'd think they'd at least link to them regardless of whether they claim to be the/an author of them.

Lastly, to date, I've seen plenty of folks hone in on "this or that" element of uncertainty associated with the measurements and methods of climate science. I have yet to see anyone address in detail how or why those factors they cite -- such as the temporal resolution factor you've raised -- should be rightly weighted so as to invalidate the findings and inferences drawn by researchers (apparently just shy of 100% of them) into climate change. Knowledgeable and sage readers may be willing to accept others' cogently and credibly made assertions in that regard, but certainly not on the basis of a handful of short, often incoherent and ambiguous paragraphs (if that) bolstered by nothing other than the writer's mere say so.


As far as I can tell -- you've not shared enough thought for it to be unambiguous -- the driver to your remarks is the timescale uncertainty extant in ice core air bubble analysis. In general, for ice core timescales based on counting of seasonal cycles (in δ18 O, sulfate, etc.), uncertainty will increase with depth (i.e. time) in an ice core. However, near volcanic marker horizons of independently-known age (e.g. the Tambora eruption of 1815) this uncertainty will be reduced. The magnitude of the uncertainty depends on the degree of ambiguity in identifying seasonal markers, and the likelihood of missing layers; both are functions of snow accumulation rate and, to a lesser extent, location. In general, where snow accumulation rates are <10 cm (ice equivalent)/year, identification of annual layers begins to be problematic.

Steig et al. emphasized the need to distinguish absolute accuracy from relative accuracy. In the 200-year-long U.S. ITASE ice cores from West Antarctica, they showed that while the absolute accuracy of the dating was ±2 years, the relative accuracy among several cores was <±0.5 year, due to identification of several volcanic marker horizons in each of the cores. In this case the cores can be averaged together without creating additional timescale uncertainty, since any systematic errors in the timescale would affect all the cores together.

Without exception, it appears to me that you and every other "denier" of the existence and impacts of climate change derive from two root causes:

• Awareness that some degree of uncertainty exists.
• Failure to distinguish between relative and absolute accuracy.

While nobody can stop you from "driving down that road," the folks who
(1) aren't "mental midgets" and/or
(2) who care more about the "big picture" of planetary scale climate change than they do about "blips" here and there, and/or
(3) who don't have some vested interest in maintaining the status quo
will see that is a damning flaw in the lines of argument folks here have put forth, including your "temporal resolution" line, which is admittedly a relevant consideration even if you've overvalued its importance in the greater scheme of things. How so? What you've done is assume that ice core observations lead to the predictions about climate change. That's a major failing. The predictions about climate change come from models and simulations. Ice core data is used to verify the accuracy of the predictions the models/simulations have made. You've gotten totally backwards the role and relevance of ice core air bubble analysis.

Red:
"Show[ing] the complete variance" in historic CO2 levels requires not sampling to "this or that" degree of temporal resolution and making rational inferences based on the degree confidence corresponding to the sampling approach used, but rather 100% population observation. If observations taken from the entire population of air bubbles available for all 800K years for which we have ice cores is the level of confidence you require to feel comfortable that science's claims about the causes and occurrence and stated implications of climate change, well, you do.

More reasonable and rational folks don't. They don't and won't because by the time they've done that for 800K years of ice and air, if the calamity foreseen is happening, even if a bit slower from a human temporal standpoint, it may well be too late to anything about it. The time to do something to ameliorate the ill effects of, say, a hurricane is not when the thing is making landfall. The same principle is so re: planetary climate change's effects, but the requisite lead times are far, far greater.

You and the other member are advocating for doing nothing because we are not yet 100% certain. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't cotton to that rationale. The matter scale and scope (temporal and physical) -- given that I don't have another planet to go to and there are no landmasses on this one that would be unaffected -- the level of certainty we have is good enough. I might feel differently were the matter one of a bad storm and localized flooding (even to somewhat regional extent, like, say, just Florida, or several islands), but that's not at all the scale we're talking about.

Blue:
As far as I know, establishing the levels of temporal resolution you seem to demand over the span of the past 800K years has not been part of the epistemological scope of past studies of ice core air bubbles. Though I will not attempt to with 100% certitude and in a "broad brush" way address why that has been so, I'm of a mind that ice core analysis reliable at the level of detail at which it's been performed.

• Reliability of ice-core science: historical insights -- The purpose and conclusion are briefly noted below....I'll leave it to you to read the reasons for the conclusion.
  • The Journal of Glaciology is a disciplinary or archival journal. More often than not, papers with the highest impact and highest press coverage are published elsewhere, but the fundamental science underlying those ‘news’ papers is published in the Journal or the Annals of Glaciology. The value of such disciplinary journals is too often underestimated; they represent an absolutely essential part of science.
    
    Based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience, I doubt that the public has ever had a deep and broad understanding of the large number and great strength of the procedures we scientists use to make it as hard as possible for us to fool ourselves. However, I believe that over my career there has been a decrease in the number of people willing to assume that we have such procedures and that we do due diligence implementing them....
    
    ....More work remains to be done, and as increasingly precise measurements on increasingly small samples are developed, some of the issues discussed above may become more important. However, the main results of ice-core science have not been overturned despite being tested in many ways by many groups over many years and decades, and the main results are based strongly on physical understanding of relatively simple systems. Thus, these results are especially robust.
    
    Knowledge of history, including the history of papers published in the Journal of Glaciology, shows that ice-core science is indeed reliable. The value of disciplinary journals such as the Journal of Glaciology is shown very clearly.
• Ice cores and climate change
  • Direct and continuous measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere extend back only to the 1950s. Ice core measurements allow us to extend this way back into the past. In an Antarctic core (Law Dome) with a very high snowfall rate, it has been possible to measure concentrations in air from as recently as the 1980s that is already enclosed in bubbles within the ice. Comparison with measurements made at South Pole station show that the ice core acts as a faithful recorder of atmospheric concentrations....
    
    ....Ice cores provide direct information about how greenhouse gas concentrations have changed in the past, and they also provide direct evidence that the climate can change abruptly under some circumstances. However, they provide no direct analogue for the future because the ice core era contains no periods with concentrations of CO2 comparable to those of the next century.
• Testing the effects of temporal data resolution on predictions of the effects of climate change on bivalves -- This is a study that tests one of the falsifiable propositions of climate change, with regard to the relevancy of the available temporal resolution, by taking an implication of the propositions and examining whether they, as would be expected, hold true for a specific species of bivalve. The short is that the expected behavior predictions held true.

That said, I'm aware of some research into achieving even greater levels of temporal resolution.

• Improving the Temporal Resolution Problem by Localized Gridpoint Nudging in Regional Weather and Climate Models
• Ice Cores That Tell the Past
  
• Optimal site selection for a high-resolution ice core record in East Antarctica -- This study details a systematic method for selection of a new ice core site -- in this instance, one with annual resolution and an ice age of 1000–2000 years at 300 m depth.

I'm also aware that abrupt changes can occur in short periods of time; however, logically speaking, that they can and have does not mean the abrupt changes we have observed in recent times are of the same ilk as past ones. And yes, it also doesn't mean they are not. The risk of inaction due to having incorrectly (as judged by hindsight) presumed the current changes are among the "routine" abrupt ones that can occur.

Other:
Various ice core datasets that are available.

You're not as far along as you IMAGINE you are.

I made no quantified attestation of "how far along" I imagine myself to be. My remarks were about the insufficiency -- qualitative and quantitative -- of the comments the other member made. The remarks that member made are of a nature such that s/he was offering illustrations of short term predictive inaccuracy as a basis for the invalidity of scientists' conclusions about the occurrence and impacts of a natural process that the very same scientists describe as one that occurs over a long term. I'm not even taking exception with yours or his/her literal breadth of knowledge on the matter of climate change or science in general. My dismissive remarks accrue in large (not sole) part from the generally inept cognitive rigor with which the other member responded to me.

One need not be a scientist, or even that familiar with the science topic in question, to know that is just ludicrous reasoning. So however "far along" I imagine myself being, it's far enough along that within this context where I'm not known to anyone, I'll neither offer on the strength of my own knowledge (i.e., citing no credible reference material to support my claim) such a lame argument, nor will I accept an argument of that sort from others who are, for all intents and purposes, strangers to me. I don't hold myself out as a scientist, but even if I were to do so, I'd at least need to share with folks the papers I've published so they can have a legit sense of the nature and scope of my credibility. That's why I routinely provide credible (scholarly) references to support my remarks. I at least have that much respect for others, and I expect that much be accorded to me. But that's not what I received from the other member, and that too contributes to why I asked s/he not respond to my posts on this topic.

For better or worse, I'm just not willing to allow people who either (1) say "stupid sh*t", something befitting what one might expect a child or teen to say, to me or (2) say potentially meritorious "sh*t" in a stupid way, which is again about what a child/teen does. It doesn't really matter to me which approach one offers; I'm not going to be positively or neutrally responsive to either. I deserve better than that of others. I think everyone who cares enough to engage on a topic does; thus I try to give better than that when I share my thoughts. I will not accept less than from others and I with genuine honesty try to not to give less than that to others.

Steig et al, has been demolished so many times, and unethical behavior of Steig himself acting as a supposed unbiased reviewer of the paper that refuted his, that I find it impossible to take anything you say seriously when you resort to that subterranean level of support for your arguments.

Just sayin...

Red:
I see you are just sayin'. I wish you would kindly heed the simple request I made of you to just cease and desist with responding to me. I no longer have any interest in what you have to say. That of all that I wrote, the only thing you had to comment on is Steig is enough to show anyone why I have requested that of you.

There is the rub isn't it. You use sources that are KNOWN to be foul. Thus, by implication, everything you claim is judged in a similar light. "Once a perjurer, always a perjurer" is the legal term, and in a Court of law, once it is known that you have committed perjury you are no longer a useful witness. For ANYTHING.

If you wish to be taken seriously you must use sources that aren't KNOWN to be false.

Is there some reason you refrained from sharing the scholarly material that shows Steig's peers in science have discredited him? It it really asking too much for you to have merely posted the link to the peer reviews of the Steig document that I referenced?

More importantly, look at what I referenced from Steig. I didn't highlight or rely upon his actual research into climate change. I made note of his admonition that the distinction between and relevance of/need for absolute accuracy vs. relative accuracy. That's an admonition that any sage researcher, commentator, decision maker, or observer must heed, regardless of the topic. That Steig offered that missive with regard to climate change research has no bearing on the qualitative and quantitative validity of his, or anyone else's, actual research and analysis.

This is now the third (forth?) successive contextually "off point" remark you've made to me. Like the others, this one shows your unwillingness or inability (I have no idea which it is) to think critically before you share whatever thought happens to have popped into your head.

I have a couple specific questions to ask you...

• Why do you refuse to honor my request that you not respond to my posts on this topic?
• Are you truly, at the core of your being, just that disrespectful?

 

[westwall]

The claim that an 800,000 yr Ice Core study can show the complete VARIANCE in CO2 levels is false. At least, it has not been done yet. Because in a study that LONG -- the data (ice slices) are too UNDERSAMPLED to have sufficient TEMPORAL resolution to show anything about levels or rates that existed in LESS than 300 or 500 year periods. In essence -- THAT record is a wandering "mean value" of Atmos CO2. So a 100 yr event like OURs -- would NEVER be captured in the article you quoted. And even 200 yr event would never show the full RANGE of peak variance (or rise/fall rates) . (those metrics would be greatly attenuated)

You know, it seems never to fail that if I provide a simple "layman's" variant of a scholarly study, such as the one to which you referred someone having a predilection for a differing point of view will invariably attempt to discredit the researcher's results, inferences and conclusions with some "pearl" of what they presumably think is a flash of brilliance or perhaps just, as they see it, common sense. In your case here, you've remarked on a brief summarization of one such report and the methodology that underpins it -- while you notably had nothing to say about the other three references I shared -- and concluded that the methodology used (or not used) is sufficient to refute the entire body of conclusions offered by paleoclimatology.

Moreover, you didn't submit any reference that matches the credibility of the study underlying the summary to which I linked as though we all are supposed to take your word for it rather than that of the researchers who performed the study. The temerity of your having done that is astounding. Even the Pope doesn't accord himself that degree of infallibility.

On other occasions when, on the other hand, I present a full study, folks just don't read the thing -- and it's very clear when they don't for their remarks don't align with or address the specific content of the study and do so in contextually accurate/relevant way -- yet they exhibit the gall of continuing to refute the findings. Like you, they share their opposing point(s) -- often, as is the case with the other member, with less coherence than you displayed in the post quoted in part above, but all the same without any reference to the methodology used to arrive at the reported findings or to anything that credibly invalidates that methodology -- of view as though we readers here are to accept them as "the" authority on the matter. Now they may be among "the" authorities on a given matter, but if that's so, then where's their research that shows as much and/or that refutes the content of the studies with which they take exception? One'd think they'd at least link to them regardless of whether they claim to be the/an author of them.

Lastly, to date, I've seen plenty of folks hone in on "this or that" element of uncertainty associated with the measurements and methods of climate science. I have yet to see anyone address in detail how or why those factors they cite -- such as the temporal resolution factor you've raised -- should be rightly weighted so as to invalidate the findings and inferences drawn by researchers (apparently just shy of 100% of them) into climate change. Knowledgeable and sage readers may be willing to accept others' cogently and credibly made assertions in that regard, but certainly not on the basis of a handful of short, often incoherent and ambiguous paragraphs (if that) bolstered by nothing other than the writer's mere say so.


As far as I can tell -- you've not shared enough thought for it to be unambiguous -- the driver to your remarks is the timescale uncertainty extant in ice core air bubble analysis. In general, for ice core timescales based on counting of seasonal cycles (in δ18 O, sulfate, etc.), uncertainty will increase with depth (i.e. time) in an ice core. However, near volcanic marker horizons of independently-known age (e.g. the Tambora eruption of 1815) this uncertainty will be reduced. The magnitude of the uncertainty depends on the degree of ambiguity in identifying seasonal markers, and the likelihood of missing layers; both are functions of snow accumulation rate and, to a lesser extent, location. In general, where snow accumulation rates are <10 cm (ice equivalent)/year, identification of annual layers begins to be problematic.

Steig et al. emphasized the need to distinguish absolute accuracy from relative accuracy. In the 200-year-long U.S. ITASE ice cores from West Antarctica, they showed that while the absolute accuracy of the dating was ±2 years, the relative accuracy among several cores was <±0.5 year, due to identification of several volcanic marker horizons in each of the cores. In this case the cores can be averaged together without creating additional timescale uncertainty, since any systematic errors in the timescale would affect all the cores together.

Without exception, it appears to me that you and every other "denier" of the existence and impacts of climate change derive from two root causes:

• Awareness that some degree of uncertainty exists.
• Failure to distinguish between relative and absolute accuracy.

While nobody can stop you from "driving down that road," the folks who
(1) aren't "mental midgets" and/or
(2) who care more about the "big picture" of planetary scale climate change than they do about "blips" here and there, and/or
(3) who don't have some vested interest in maintaining the status quo
will see that is a damning flaw in the lines of argument folks here have put forth, including your "temporal resolution" line, which is admittedly a relevant consideration even if you've overvalued its importance in the greater scheme of things. How so? What you've done is assume that ice core observations lead to the predictions about climate change. That's a major failing. The predictions about climate change come from models and simulations. Ice core data is used to verify the accuracy of the predictions the models/simulations have made. You've gotten totally backwards the role and relevance of ice core air bubble analysis.

Red:
"Show[ing] the complete variance" in historic CO2 levels requires not sampling to "this or that" degree of temporal resolution and making rational inferences based on the degree confidence corresponding to the sampling approach used, but rather 100% population observation. If observations taken from the entire population of air bubbles available for all 800K years for which we have ice cores is the level of confidence you require to feel comfortable that science's claims about the causes and occurrence and stated implications of climate change, well, you do.

More reasonable and rational folks don't. They don't and won't because by the time they've done that for 800K years of ice and air, if the calamity foreseen is happening, even if a bit slower from a human temporal standpoint, it may well be too late to anything about it. The time to do something to ameliorate the ill effects of, say, a hurricane is not when the thing is making landfall. The same principle is so re: planetary climate change's effects, but the requisite lead times are far, far greater.

You and the other member are advocating for doing nothing because we are not yet 100% certain. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't cotton to that rationale. The matter scale and scope (temporal and physical) -- given that I don't have another planet to go to and there are no landmasses on this one that would be unaffected -- the level of certainty we have is good enough. I might feel differently were the matter one of a bad storm and localized flooding (even to somewhat regional extent, like, say, just Florida, or several islands), but that's not at all the scale we're talking about.

Blue:
As far as I know, establishing the levels of temporal resolution you seem to demand over the span of the past 800K years has not been part of the epistemological scope of past studies of ice core air bubbles. Though I will not attempt to with 100% certitude and in a "broad brush" way address why that has been so, I'm of a mind that ice core analysis reliable at the level of detail at which it's been performed.

• Reliability of ice-core science: historical insights -- The purpose and conclusion are briefly noted below....I'll leave it to you to read the reasons for the conclusion.
  • The Journal of Glaciology is a disciplinary or archival journal. More often than not, papers with the highest impact and highest press coverage are published elsewhere, but the fundamental science underlying those ‘news’ papers is published in the Journal or the Annals of Glaciology. The value of such disciplinary journals is too often underestimated; they represent an absolutely essential part of science.
    
    Based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience, I doubt that the public has ever had a deep and broad understanding of the large number and great strength of the procedures we scientists use to make it as hard as possible for us to fool ourselves. However, I believe that over my career there has been a decrease in the number of people willing to assume that we have such procedures and that we do due diligence implementing them....
    
    ....More work remains to be done, and as increasingly precise measurements on increasingly small samples are developed, some of the issues discussed above may become more important. However, the main results of ice-core science have not been overturned despite being tested in many ways by many groups over many years and decades, and the main results are based strongly on physical understanding of relatively simple systems. Thus, these results are especially robust.
    
    Knowledge of history, including the history of papers published in the Journal of Glaciology, shows that ice-core science is indeed reliable. The value of disciplinary journals such as the Journal of Glaciology is shown very clearly.
• Ice cores and climate change
  • Direct and continuous measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere extend back only to the 1950s. Ice core measurements allow us to extend this way back into the past. In an Antarctic core (Law Dome) with a very high snowfall rate, it has been possible to measure concentrations in air from as recently as the 1980s that is already enclosed in bubbles within the ice. Comparison with measurements made at South Pole station show that the ice core acts as a faithful recorder of atmospheric concentrations....
    
    ....Ice cores provide direct information about how greenhouse gas concentrations have changed in the past, and they also provide direct evidence that the climate can change abruptly under some circumstances. However, they provide no direct analogue for the future because the ice core era contains no periods with concentrations of CO2 comparable to those of the next century.
• Testing the effects of temporal data resolution on predictions of the effects of climate change on bivalves -- This is a study that tests one of the falsifiable propositions of climate change, with regard to the relevancy of the available temporal resolution, by taking an implication of the propositions and examining whether they, as would be expected, hold true for a specific species of bivalve. The short is that the expected behavior predictions held true.

That said, I'm aware of some research into achieving even greater levels of temporal resolution.

• Improving the Temporal Resolution Problem by Localized Gridpoint Nudging in Regional Weather and Climate Models
• Ice Cores That Tell the Past
  
• Optimal site selection for a high-resolution ice core record in East Antarctica -- This study details a systematic method for selection of a new ice core site -- in this instance, one with annual resolution and an ice age of 1000–2000 years at 300 m depth.

I'm also aware that abrupt changes can occur in short periods of time; however, logically speaking, that they can and have does not mean the abrupt changes we have observed in recent times are of the same ilk as past ones. And yes, it also doesn't mean they are not. The risk of inaction due to having incorrectly (as judged by hindsight) presumed the current changes are among the "routine" abrupt ones that can occur.

Other:
Various ice core datasets that are available.

You're not as far along as you IMAGINE you are.

I made no quantified attestation of "how far along" I imagine myself to be. My remarks were about the insufficiency -- qualitative and quantitative -- of the comments the other member made. The remarks that member made are of a nature such that s/he was offering illustrations of short term predictive inaccuracy as a basis for the invalidity of scientists' conclusions about the occurrence and impacts of a natural process that the very same scientists describe as one that occurs over a long term. I'm not even taking exception with yours or his/her literal breadth of knowledge on the matter of climate change or science in general. My dismissive remarks accrue in large (not sole) part from the generally inept cognitive rigor with which the other member responded to me.

One need not be a scientist, or even that familiar with the science topic in question, to know that is just ludicrous reasoning. So however "far along" I imagine myself being, it's far enough along that within this context where I'm not known to anyone, I'll neither offer on the strength of my own knowledge (i.e., citing no credible reference material to support my claim) such a lame argument, nor will I accept an argument of that sort from others who are, for all intents and purposes, strangers to me. I don't hold myself out as a scientist, but even if I were to do so, I'd at least need to share with folks the papers I've published so they can have a legit sense of the nature and scope of my credibility. That's why I routinely provide credible (scholarly) references to support my remarks. I at least have that much respect for others, and I expect that much be accorded to me. But that's not what I received from the other member, and that too contributes to why I asked s/he not respond to my posts on this topic.

For better or worse, I'm just not willing to allow people who either (1) say "stupid sh*t", something befitting what one might expect a child or teen to say, to me or (2) say potentially meritorious "sh*t" in a stupid way, which is again about what a child/teen does. It doesn't really matter to me which approach one offers; I'm not going to be positively or neutrally responsive to either. I deserve better than that of others. I think everyone who cares enough to engage on a topic does; thus I try to give better than that when I share my thoughts. I will not accept less than from others and I with genuine honesty try to not to give less than that to others.

Steig et al, has been demolished so many times, and unethical behavior of Steig himself acting as a supposed unbiased reviewer of the paper that refuted his, that I find it impossible to take anything you say seriously when you resort to that subterranean level of support for your arguments.

Just sayin...

Red:
I see you are just sayin'. I wish you would kindly heed the simple request I made of you to just cease and desist with responding to me. I no longer have any interest in what you have to say. That of all that I wrote, the only thing you had to comment on is Steig is enough to show anyone why I have requested that of you.

There is the rub isn't it. You use sources that are KNOWN to be foul. Thus, by implication, everything you claim is judged in a similar light. "Once a perjurer, always a perjurer" is the legal term, and in a Court of law, once it is known that you have committed perjury you are no longer a useful witness. For ANYTHING.

If you wish to be taken seriously you must use sources that aren't KNOWN to be false.

Is there some reason you refrained from sharing the scholarly material that shows Steig's peers in science have discredited him? It it really asking too much for you to have merely posted the link to the peer reviews of the Steig document that I referenced?

More importantly, look at what I referenced from Steig. I didn't highlight or rely upon his actual research into climate change. I made note of his admonition that the distinction between and relevance of/need for absolute accuracy vs. relative accuracy. That's an admonition that any sage researcher, commentator, decision maker, or observer must heed, regardless of the topic. That Steig offered that missive with regard to climate change research has no bearing on the qualitative and quantitative validity of his, or anyone else's, actual research and analysis.

This is now the third (forth?) successive contextually "off point" remark you've made to me. Like the others, this one shows your unwillingness or inability (I have no idea which it is) to think critically before you share whatever thought happens to have popped into your head.

I have a couple specific questions to ask you...

• Why do you refuse to honor my request that you not respond to my posts on this topic?
• Are you truly, at the core of your being, just that disrespectful?

Here you go. I would think that someone claiming to be on top of research would KNOW this.
Retraction Watch
Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process

Paper claiming hottest 60-year-span in 1,000 years put on hold after being published online


Paper claiming hottest 60-year-span in 1,000 years put on hold after being published online - Retraction Watch

 

[320 Years of History]

You know, it seems never to fail that if I provide a simple "layman's" variant of a scholarly study, such as the one to which you referred someone having a predilection for a differing point of view will invariably attempt to discredit the researcher's results, inferences and conclusions with some "pearl" of what they presumably think is a flash of brilliance or perhaps just, as they see it, common sense. In your case here, you've remarked on a brief summarization of one such report and the methodology that underpins it -- while you notably had nothing to say about the other three references I shared -- and concluded that the methodology used (or not used) is sufficient to refute the entire body of conclusions offered by paleoclimatology.

Moreover, you didn't submit any reference that matches the credibility of the study underlying the summary to which I linked as though we all are supposed to take your word for it rather than that of the researchers who performed the study. The temerity of your having done that is astounding. Even the Pope doesn't accord himself that degree of infallibility.

On other occasions when, on the other hand, I present a full study, folks just don't read the thing -- and it's very clear when they don't for their remarks don't align with or address the specific content of the study and do so in contextually accurate/relevant way -- yet they exhibit the gall of continuing to refute the findings. Like you, they share their opposing point(s) -- often, as is the case with the other member, with less coherence than you displayed in the post quoted in part above, but all the same without any reference to the methodology used to arrive at the reported findings or to anything that credibly invalidates that methodology -- of view as though we readers here are to accept them as "the" authority on the matter. Now they may be among "the" authorities on a given matter, but if that's so, then where's their research that shows as much and/or that refutes the content of the studies with which they take exception? One'd think they'd at least link to them regardless of whether they claim to be the/an author of them.

Lastly, to date, I've seen plenty of folks hone in on "this or that" element of uncertainty associated with the measurements and methods of climate science. I have yet to see anyone address in detail how or why those factors they cite -- such as the temporal resolution factor you've raised -- should be rightly weighted so as to invalidate the findings and inferences drawn by researchers (apparently just shy of 100% of them) into climate change. Knowledgeable and sage readers may be willing to accept others' cogently and credibly made assertions in that regard, but certainly not on the basis of a handful of short, often incoherent and ambiguous paragraphs (if that) bolstered by nothing other than the writer's mere say so.


As far as I can tell -- you've not shared enough thought for it to be unambiguous -- the driver to your remarks is the timescale uncertainty extant in ice core air bubble analysis. In general, for ice core timescales based on counting of seasonal cycles (in δ18 O, sulfate, etc.), uncertainty will increase with depth (i.e. time) in an ice core. However, near volcanic marker horizons of independently-known age (e.g. the Tambora eruption of 1815) this uncertainty will be reduced. The magnitude of the uncertainty depends on the degree of ambiguity in identifying seasonal markers, and the likelihood of missing layers; both are functions of snow accumulation rate and, to a lesser extent, location. In general, where snow accumulation rates are <10 cm (ice equivalent)/year, identification of annual layers begins to be problematic.

Steig et al. emphasized the need to distinguish absolute accuracy from relative accuracy. In the 200-year-long U.S. ITASE ice cores from West Antarctica, they showed that while the absolute accuracy of the dating was ±2 years, the relative accuracy among several cores was <±0.5 year, due to identification of several volcanic marker horizons in each of the cores. In this case the cores can be averaged together without creating additional timescale uncertainty, since any systematic errors in the timescale would affect all the cores together.

Without exception, it appears to me that you and every other "denier" of the existence and impacts of climate change derive from two root causes:

• Awareness that some degree of uncertainty exists.
• Failure to distinguish between relative and absolute accuracy.

While nobody can stop you from "driving down that road," the folks who
(1) aren't "mental midgets" and/or
(2) who care more about the "big picture" of planetary scale climate change than they do about "blips" here and there, and/or
(3) who don't have some vested interest in maintaining the status quo
will see that is a damning flaw in the lines of argument folks here have put forth, including your "temporal resolution" line, which is admittedly a relevant consideration even if you've overvalued its importance in the greater scheme of things. How so? What you've done is assume that ice core observations lead to the predictions about climate change. That's a major failing. The predictions about climate change come from models and simulations. Ice core data is used to verify the accuracy of the predictions the models/simulations have made. You've gotten totally backwards the role and relevance of ice core air bubble analysis.

Red:
"Show[ing] the complete variance" in historic CO2 levels requires not sampling to "this or that" degree of temporal resolution and making rational inferences based on the degree confidence corresponding to the sampling approach used, but rather 100% population observation. If observations taken from the entire population of air bubbles available for all 800K years for which we have ice cores is the level of confidence you require to feel comfortable that science's claims about the causes and occurrence and stated implications of climate change, well, you do.

More reasonable and rational folks don't. They don't and won't because by the time they've done that for 800K years of ice and air, if the calamity foreseen is happening, even if a bit slower from a human temporal standpoint, it may well be too late to anything about it. The time to do something to ameliorate the ill effects of, say, a hurricane is not when the thing is making landfall. The same principle is so re: planetary climate change's effects, but the requisite lead times are far, far greater.

You and the other member are advocating for doing nothing because we are not yet 100% certain. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't cotton to that rationale. The matter scale and scope (temporal and physical) -- given that I don't have another planet to go to and there are no landmasses on this one that would be unaffected -- the level of certainty we have is good enough. I might feel differently were the matter one of a bad storm and localized flooding (even to somewhat regional extent, like, say, just Florida, or several islands), but that's not at all the scale we're talking about.

Blue:
As far as I know, establishing the levels of temporal resolution you seem to demand over the span of the past 800K years has not been part of the epistemological scope of past studies of ice core air bubbles. Though I will not attempt to with 100% certitude and in a "broad brush" way address why that has been so, I'm of a mind that ice core analysis reliable at the level of detail at which it's been performed.

• Reliability of ice-core science: historical insights -- The purpose and conclusion are briefly noted below....I'll leave it to you to read the reasons for the conclusion.
  • The Journal of Glaciology is a disciplinary or archival journal. More often than not, papers with the highest impact and highest press coverage are published elsewhere, but the fundamental science underlying those ‘news’ papers is published in the Journal or the Annals of Glaciology. The value of such disciplinary journals is too often underestimated; they represent an absolutely essential part of science.
    
    Based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience, I doubt that the public has ever had a deep and broad understanding of the large number and great strength of the procedures we scientists use to make it as hard as possible for us to fool ourselves. However, I believe that over my career there has been a decrease in the number of people willing to assume that we have such procedures and that we do due diligence implementing them....
    
    ....More work remains to be done, and as increasingly precise measurements on increasingly small samples are developed, some of the issues discussed above may become more important. However, the main results of ice-core science have not been overturned despite being tested in many ways by many groups over many years and decades, and the main results are based strongly on physical understanding of relatively simple systems. Thus, these results are especially robust.
    
    Knowledge of history, including the history of papers published in the Journal of Glaciology, shows that ice-core science is indeed reliable. The value of disciplinary journals such as the Journal of Glaciology is shown very clearly.
• Ice cores and climate change
  • Direct and continuous measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere extend back only to the 1950s. Ice core measurements allow us to extend this way back into the past. In an Antarctic core (Law Dome) with a very high snowfall rate, it has been possible to measure concentrations in air from as recently as the 1980s that is already enclosed in bubbles within the ice. Comparison with measurements made at South Pole station show that the ice core acts as a faithful recorder of atmospheric concentrations....
    
    ....Ice cores provide direct information about how greenhouse gas concentrations have changed in the past, and they also provide direct evidence that the climate can change abruptly under some circumstances. However, they provide no direct analogue for the future because the ice core era contains no periods with concentrations of CO2 comparable to those of the next century.
• Testing the effects of temporal data resolution on predictions of the effects of climate change on bivalves -- This is a study that tests one of the falsifiable propositions of climate change, with regard to the relevancy of the available temporal resolution, by taking an implication of the propositions and examining whether they, as would be expected, hold true for a specific species of bivalve. The short is that the expected behavior predictions held true.

That said, I'm aware of some research into achieving even greater levels of temporal resolution.

• Improving the Temporal Resolution Problem by Localized Gridpoint Nudging in Regional Weather and Climate Models
• Ice Cores That Tell the Past
  
• Optimal site selection for a high-resolution ice core record in East Antarctica -- This study details a systematic method for selection of a new ice core site -- in this instance, one with annual resolution and an ice age of 1000–2000 years at 300 m depth.

I'm also aware that abrupt changes can occur in short periods of time; however, logically speaking, that they can and have does not mean the abrupt changes we have observed in recent times are of the same ilk as past ones. And yes, it also doesn't mean they are not. The risk of inaction due to having incorrectly (as judged by hindsight) presumed the current changes are among the "routine" abrupt ones that can occur.

Other:
Various ice core datasets that are available.

I made no quantified attestation of "how far along" I imagine myself to be. My remarks were about the insufficiency -- qualitative and quantitative -- of the comments the other member made. The remarks that member made are of a nature such that s/he was offering illustrations of short term predictive inaccuracy as a basis for the invalidity of scientists' conclusions about the occurrence and impacts of a natural process that the very same scientists describe as one that occurs over a long term. I'm not even taking exception with yours or his/her literal breadth of knowledge on the matter of climate change or science in general. My dismissive remarks accrue in large (not sole) part from the generally inept cognitive rigor with which the other member responded to me.

One need not be a scientist, or even that familiar with the science topic in question, to know that is just ludicrous reasoning. So however "far along" I imagine myself being, it's far enough along that within this context where I'm not known to anyone, I'll neither offer on the strength of my own knowledge (i.e., citing no credible reference material to support my claim) such a lame argument, nor will I accept an argument of that sort from others who are, for all intents and purposes, strangers to me. I don't hold myself out as a scientist, but even if I were to do so, I'd at least need to share with folks the papers I've published so they can have a legit sense of the nature and scope of my credibility. That's why I routinely provide credible (scholarly) references to support my remarks. I at least have that much respect for others, and I expect that much be accorded to me. But that's not what I received from the other member, and that too contributes to why I asked s/he not respond to my posts on this topic.

For better or worse, I'm just not willing to allow people who either (1) say "stupid sh*t", something befitting what one might expect a child or teen to say, to me or (2) say potentially meritorious "sh*t" in a stupid way, which is again about what a child/teen does. It doesn't really matter to me which approach one offers; I'm not going to be positively or neutrally responsive to either. I deserve better than that of others. I think everyone who cares enough to engage on a topic does; thus I try to give better than that when I share my thoughts. I will not accept less than from others and I with genuine honesty try to not to give less than that to others.

Steig et al, has been demolished so many times, and unethical behavior of Steig himself acting as a supposed unbiased reviewer of the paper that refuted his, that I find it impossible to take anything you say seriously when you resort to that subterranean level of support for your arguments.

Just sayin...

Red:
I see you are just sayin'. I wish you would kindly heed the simple request I made of you to just cease and desist with responding to me. I no longer have any interest in what you have to say. That of all that I wrote, the only thing you had to comment on is Steig is enough to show anyone why I have requested that of you.

There is the rub isn't it. You use sources that are KNOWN to be foul. Thus, by implication, everything you claim is judged in a similar light. "Once a perjurer, always a perjurer" is the legal term, and in a Court of law, once it is known that you have committed perjury you are no longer a useful witness. For ANYTHING.

If you wish to be taken seriously you must use sources that aren't KNOWN to be false.

Is there some reason you refrained from sharing the scholarly material that shows Steig's peers in science have discredited him? It it really asking too much for you to have merely posted the link to the peer reviews of the Steig document that I referenced?

More importantly, look at what I referenced from Steig. I didn't highlight or rely upon his actual research into climate change. I made note of his admonition that the distinction between and relevance of/need for absolute accuracy vs. relative accuracy. That's an admonition that any sage researcher, commentator, decision maker, or observer must heed, regardless of the topic. That Steig offered that missive with regard to climate change research has no bearing on the qualitative and quantitative validity of his, or anyone else's, actual research and analysis.

This is now the third (forth?) successive contextually "off point" remark you've made to me. Like the others, this one shows your unwillingness or inability (I have no idea which it is) to think critically before you share whatever thought happens to have popped into your head.

I have a couple specific questions to ask you...

• Why do you refuse to honor my request that you not respond to my posts on this topic?
• Are you truly, at the core of your being, just that disrespectful?

Here you go. I would think that someone claiming to be on top of research would KNOW this.
Retraction Watch
Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process

Paper claiming hottest 60-year-span in 1,000 years put on hold after being published online


Paper claiming hottest 60-year-span in 1,000 years put on hold after being published online - Retraction Watch

Please now answer the two specific questions I asked you....

Fine, Steig's research is lame. What has that to do with the merit of the general admonition regarding the two dimensions of critical analysis he wrote of? Those two dimensions are the only statements of his that were germane to my mention of Steig.

 

[westwall]

Steig et al, has been demolished so many times, and unethical behavior of Steig himself acting as a supposed unbiased reviewer of the paper that refuted his, that I find it impossible to take anything you say seriously when you resort to that subterranean level of support for your arguments.

Just sayin...

Red:
I see you are just sayin'. I wish you would kindly heed the simple request I made of you to just cease and desist with responding to me. I no longer have any interest in what you have to say. That of all that I wrote, the only thing you had to comment on is Steig is enough to show anyone why I have requested that of you.

There is the rub isn't it. You use sources that are KNOWN to be foul. Thus, by implication, everything you claim is judged in a similar light. "Once a perjurer, always a perjurer" is the legal term, and in a Court of law, once it is known that you have committed perjury you are no longer a useful witness. For ANYTHING.

If you wish to be taken seriously you must use sources that aren't KNOWN to be false.

Is there some reason you refrained from sharing the scholarly material that shows Steig's peers in science have discredited him? It it really asking too much for you to have merely posted the link to the peer reviews of the Steig document that I referenced?

More importantly, look at what I referenced from Steig. I didn't highlight or rely upon his actual research into climate change. I made note of his admonition that the distinction between and relevance of/need for absolute accuracy vs. relative accuracy. That's an admonition that any sage researcher, commentator, decision maker, or observer must heed, regardless of the topic. That Steig offered that missive with regard to climate change research has no bearing on the qualitative and quantitative validity of his, or anyone else's, actual research and analysis.

This is now the third (forth?) successive contextually "off point" remark you've made to me. Like the others, this one shows your unwillingness or inability (I have no idea which it is) to think critically before you share whatever thought happens to have popped into your head.

I have a couple specific questions to ask you...

• Why do you refuse to honor my request that you not respond to my posts on this topic?
• Are you truly, at the core of your being, just that disrespectful?

Here you go. I would think that someone claiming to be on top of research would KNOW this.
Retraction Watch
Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process

Paper claiming hottest 60-year-span in 1,000 years put on hold after being published online


Paper claiming hottest 60-year-span in 1,000 years put on hold after being published online - Retraction Watch

Please now answer the two specific questions I asked you....

Fine, Steig's research is lame. What has that to do with the merit of the general admonition regarding the two dimensions of critical analysis he wrote of? Those two dimensions are the only statements of his that were germane to my mention of Steig.

Steig is also unethical. Thus, NOTHING he presents is useful, nor germane to ANYTHING. That's the point.