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Readers may recall my original post, Nature’s ugly decision: ‘Deniers’ enters the scientific literature. followed by Dr. Paul Bain Responds to Critics of Use of “Denier” Term (with thanks to Jo Nova, be sure to bookmark and visit her site) Dr. Robert G. Brown of Duke University, commenting as rgbatduke, made a response that was commented on by several here in that thread. As commenter REP put it in the update: It is eloquent, insightful and worthy of consideration. I would say, it is likely the best response I’ve ever seen on the use of the “denier” term, not to mention the CAGW issue in general. Thus, I’ve elevated it a full post. Please share the link to this post widely. – Anthony
Dr. Robert G. Brown writes:
The tragic thing about the thoughtless use of a stereotype (denier) is that it reveals that you really think of people in terms of its projected meaning. In particular, even in your response you seem to equate the term “skeptic” with “denier of AGW”.
This is silly. On WUWT most of the skeptics do not “deny” AGW, certainly not the scientists or professional weather people (I myself am a physicist) and honestly, most of the non-scientist skeptics have learned better than that. What they challenge is the catastrophic label and the alleged magnitude of the projected warming on a doubling of CO_2. They challenge this on rather solid empirical grounds and with physical arguments and data analysis that is every bit as scientifically valid as that used to support larger estimates, often obtaining numbers that are in better agreement with observation. For this honest doubt and skepticism that the highly complex global climate models are correct you have the temerity to socially stigmatize them in a scientific journal with a catch-all term that implies that they are as morally reprehensible as those that “deny” that the Nazi Holocaust of genocide against the Jews?
For shame.
Seriously, for shame. You should openly apologize for the use of the term, in Nature, and explain why it was wrong. But you won’t, will you… although I will try to explain why you should.
By your use of this term, you directly imply that I am a “denier”, as I am highly skeptical of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (not just “anthropogenic global warming”, which is plausible if not measurable, although there are honest grounds to doubt even this associated with the details of the Carbon Cycle that remain unresolved by model or experiment). Since I am a theoretical physicist, I find this enormously offensive. I might as well label you an idiot for using it, when you’ve never met me, have no idea of my competence or the strength of my arguments for or against any aspect of climate dynamics (because on this list I argue both points of view as the science demands and am just as vigorous in smacking down bullshit physics used to challenge some aspect of CAGW as I am to question the physics or statistical analysis or modelling used to “prove” it). But honestly, you probably aren’t an idiot (are you?) and no useful purpose is served by ad hominem or emotionally loaded human descriptors in a rational discussion of an objective scientific question, is there.
Please understand that by creating a catch-all label like this, you quite literally are moving the entire discussion outside of the realm of science, where evidence and arguments are considered and weighed independent of the humans that advance them, where our desire to see one or another result proven are (or should be) irrelevant, where people weigh the difficulty of the problem being addressed as an important contributor (in a Bayesian sense) to how much we should believe any answer proposed — so far, into the realm where people do not think at all! They simply use a dismissive label such as “denier” and hence avoid any direct confrontation with the issues being challenged.
The issue of difficulty is key. Let me tell you in a few short words why I am a skeptic. First of all, if one examines the complete geological record of global temperature variation on planet Earth (as best as we can reconstruct it) not just over the last 200 years but over the last 25 million years, over the last billion years — one learns that there is absolutely nothing remarkable about today’s temperatures! Seriously. Not one human being on the planet would look at that complete record — or even the complete record of temperatures during the Holocene, or the Pliestocene — and stab down their finger at the present and go “Oh no!”. Quite the contrary. It isn’t the warmest. It isn’t close to the warmest. It isn’t the warmest in the last 2 or 3 thousand years. It isn’t warming the fastest. It isn’t doing anything that can be resolved from the natural statistical variation of the data. Indeed, now that Mann’s utterly fallacious hockey stick reconstruction has been re-reconstructed with the LIA and MWP restored, it isn’t even remarkable in the last thousand years!
Furthermore, examination of this record over the last 5 million years reveals a sobering fact. We are in an ice age, where the Earth spends 80 to 90% of its geological time in the grip of vast ice sheets that cover the polar latitudes well down into what is currently the temperate zone. We are at the (probable) end of the Holocene, the interglacial in which humans emerged all the way from tribal hunter-gatherers to modern civilization. The Earth’s climate is manifestly, empirically bistable, with a warm phase and cold phase, and the cold phase is both more likely and more stable. As a physicist who has extensively studied bistable open systems, this empirical result clearly visible in the data has profound implications. The fact that the LIA was the coldest point in the entire Holocene (which has been systematically cooling from the Holocene Optimum on) is also worrisome. Decades are irrelevant on the scale of these changes. Centuries are barely relevant. We are nowhere near the warmest, but the coldest century in the last 10,000 years ended a mere 300 years ago, and corresponded almost perfectly with the Maunder minimum in solar activity.
There is absolutely no evidence in this historical record of a third stable warm phase that might be associated with a “tipping point” and hence “catastrophe” (in the specific mathematical sense of catastrophe, a first order phase transition to a new stable phase). It has been far warmer in the past without tipping into this phase. If anything, we are geologically approaching the point where the Earth is likely to tip the other way, into the phase that we know is there — the cold phase. A cold phase transition, which the historical record indicates can occur quite rapidly with large secular temperature changes on a decadal time scale, would truly be a catastrophe. Even if “catastrophic” AGW is correct and we do warm another 3 C over the next century, if it stabilized the Earth in warm phase and prevented or delayed the Earth’s transition into cold phase it would be worth it because the cold phase transition would kill billions of people, quite rapidly, as crops failed throughout the temperate breadbasket of the world.
Now let us try to analyze the modern era bearing in mind the evidence of an utterly unremarkable present. To begin with, we need a model that predicts the swings of glaciation and interglacials. Lacking this, we cannot predict the temperature that we should have outside for any given baseline concentration of CO_2, nor can we resolve variations in this baseline due to things other than CO_2 from that due to CO_2. We don’t have any such thing. We don’t have anything close to this. We cannot predict, or explain after the fact, the huge (by comparison with the present) secular variations in temperature observed over the last 20,000 years, let alone the last 5 million or 25 million or billion. We do not understand the forces that set the baseline “thermostat” for the Earth before any modulation due to anthropogenic CO_2, and hence we have no idea if those forces are naturally warming or cooling the Earth as a trend that has to be accounted for before assigning the “anthropogenic” component of any warming.
This is a hard problem. Not settled science, not well understood, not understood. There are theories and models (and as a theorist, I just love to tell stories) but there aren’t any particularly successful theories or models and there is a lot of competition between the stories (none of which agree with or predict the empirical data particularly well, at best agreeing with some gross features but not others). One part of the difficulty is that the Earth is a highly multivariate and chaotic driven/open system with complex nonlinear coupling between all of its many drivers, and with anything but a regular surface. If one tried to actually write “the” partial differential equation for the global climate system, it would be a set of coupled Navier-Stokes equations with unbelievably nasty nonlinear coupling terms — if one can actually include the physics of the water and carbon cycles in the N-S equations at all. It is, quite literally, the most difficult problem in mathematical physics we have ever attempted to solve or understand! Global Climate Models are children’s toys in comparison to the actual underlying complexity, especially when (as noted) the major drivers setting the baseline behavior are not well understood or quantitatively available.
The truth of this is revealed in the lack of skill in the GCMs. They utterly failed to predict the last 13 or 14 years of flat to descending global temperatures, for example, although naturally one can go back and tweak parameters and make them fit it now, after the fact. And every year that passes without significant warming should be rigorously lowering the climate sensitivity and projected AGW, making the probability of the “C” increasinginly remote.
These are all (in my opinion) good reasons to be skeptical of the often egregious claims of CAGW. Another reason is the exact opposite of the reason you used “denier” in your article. The actual scientific question has long since been co-opted by the social and political one. The real reason you used the term is revealed even in your response — we all “should” be doing this and that whether or not there is a real risk of “catastrophe”. In particular, we “should” be using less fossil fuel, working to preserve the environment, and so on.
The problem with this “end justifies the means” argument — where the means involved is the abhorrent use of a pejorative descriptor to devalue the arguers of alternative points of view rather than their arguments at the political and social level — is that it is as close to absolute evil in social and public discourse as it is possible to get. I strongly suggest that you read Feynman’s rather famous “Cargo Cult” talk:
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
In particular, I quote:
For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a
friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. “Well,” I said, “there aren’t any.” He said, “Yes, but then we won’t get support for more research of this kind.” I think that’s kind of dishonest. If you’re representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you’re doing–and if they don’t want to support you under those circumstances, then that’s their decision.
One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results.
I say that’s also important in giving certain types of government
advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether
drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it
would be better in some other state. If you don’t publish such a
result, it seems to me you’re not giving scientific advice. You’re
being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don’t publish it at all. That’s not giving scientific advice.
Time for a bit of soul-searching, Dr. Bain. Have you come even close to living up to the standards laid out by Richard Feynman? Is this sort of honesty apparent anywhere in the global climate debate? Did the “Hockey Team” embrace this sort of honesty in the infamous Climategate emails? Do the IPCC reports ever seem to present the counter arguments, or do they carefully avoid showing pictures of the 20,000 year thermal record, preferring instead Mann’s hockey stick because it increases the alarmism (and hence political impact of the report)? Does the term “denier” have any place in any scientific paper ever published given Feynman’s rather simple criterion for scientific honesty?
And finally, how dare you presume to make choices for me, for my relatives, for my friends, for all of the people of the world, but concealing information from them so that they make a choice to allocate resources the way you think they should be allocated, just like the dishonest astronomer of his example. Yes, the price of honesty might be that people don’t choose to support your work. Tough. It is their money, and their choice!
Sadly, it is all too likely that this is precisely what is at stake in climate research. If there is no threat of catastrophe — and as I said, prior to the hockey stick nobody had the slightest bit of luck convincing anyone that the sky was falling because global climate today is geologically unremarkable in every single way except that we happen to be living in it instead of analyzing it in a geological record — then there is little incentive to fund the enormous amount of work being done on climate science. There is even less incentive to spend trillions of dollars of other people’s money (and some of our own) to ameliorate a “threat” that might well be pure moonshine, quite possibly ignoring an even greater threat of movement in the exact opposite direction to the one the IPCC anticipates.
Why am I a skeptic? Because I recognize the true degree of our ignorance in addressing this supremely difficult problem, while at the same time as a mere citizen I weigh civilization and its benefits against draconian energy austerity on the basis of no actual evidence that global climate is in any way behaving unusually on a geological time scale.
For shame.
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As a skeptic, I question not only the C in CAGW, but also the G in AGW. Certainly, UHI and land-use changes have probably resulted in localized heating, but that’s a long way from a global effect.
A valid point — I too believe in local warming even more than I believe in global warming — but…
The UAH dataset is truly global, and shows at least a 30 year slight warming trend. The best-guess climate reconstructions — not MBH, but any of the many that were extant pre-Mann and hockey stick, even in the IPCC reports, all of which still had the MWP and LIA and were really (IMO) unbiased do show fairly systematic warming over the 20th century, with a bobble down from the late 40’s through the early to mid 70s. This latter record, while not as reliable as UAH lower troposphere, I find pretty believable.
Paradoxically — and where I think we agree, and I’m almost certain Anthony would agree — the land record becomes somewhat less reliable in the latter part of the 20th century, because the world economy was booming, weather stations were proliferating, and the weather stations upon which much of the most recent temperature estimates have been made have been corrupted by poor siting, local sources of heat, blankets of CO_2 and H2O from nearby dwellings and “civlization” — UHI and then some. IIRC, there are some impressive studies out there of stations (in California?) far from UHI corruption that suggest that they only show a small fraction of the “warming” that the urban sites show. And at best, one is still left with only a highly biased sample of sites from high population density areas of some moderate fraction of the land area of the planet, when 70% of the planet is water and SSTs are even worse as far as being reliably known in the past.
All of this has changed with UAH LTT and — more recently — with ARGO, although the latter will take some time to settle out and tell a coherent story. The UAH baseline is pitifully short; ARGO is almost non-existent. In 20-40 years (when I’m either very old or dead) we’ll maybe know. In the meantime, I think it most plausible that there has been modest warming for the last 150 or so years, with some small fraction of the total — 0.3 to 0.5 C out of perhaps 1.5 C — attributable to CO_2. It is what caused the rest of the warming that is the interesting question, the elephant in the room. Just as it is what caused the systematic 2-3 C peak to peak fluctuations in temperature across most of the Holocene (warmest of the Holocene Otimum to coldest of the LIA) that is the real undiscussed elephant in the GW discussions. Until you know what caused (and can predict and explain) the large fluctuations and trends, how can you reliably determine what fraction of the rest is attributable to ACO_2? And until one has not a carbon cycle model that works — many work — but a carbon cycle that works and can be proven relative to the others that work in some way, we won’t even reliably know how much of the atmospheric CO_2 is “anthropogenic” versus how much is there due to a thermal shift in the properties of the many large sources and sinks — notably the ocean and soil — that buffer atmospheric CO_2 and establish the equilibrium concentration in the first place.
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and data analysis that is every bit as scientifically valid as that used to support larger estimates, often obtaining numbers that are in better agreement with observation.
Actually, this bit is simply wrong, as it pertains to CLIMATE science. It is the opinion of a physicist of course… and that brings into play the “arrogance of physicists”…
http://arthur.shumwaysmith.com/life/content/the_arrogance_of_physicists
One has to consider too, that while the temperatures we are experiencing are not remarkable for the PLANET, our civilization needs to survive a while longer before we can get access to any others, or to fully control the climate on this one. Right now we are doing an excellent job of killing ourselves by accident, as without our civilization, our population will be cut to a tenth of what is currently supportable… if that.
“There is absolutely no evidence in this historical record of a third stable warm phase”
No, and there is no historical precedent for the CO2 content being pushed up at this rate, 50 TIMES faster than any known natural process and replacing in 150 years the CO2 sequestered over the span of 3-4 MILLION years. We are in fact, in utterly unknown territory. That there is no historical precedent is no surprise. We aren’t going to see the next glaciation Dr Brown, the possibility of that happening is finished. We are very likely going to see ourselves lifted OUT of this “Ice Age” purely on the basis of what we have done SO FAR… as there were no periodic glaciations 3-4 million years ago… the real question is now how fast and how far we will drive the climate out of the zone IN WHICH OUR CIVILIZATION EVOLVED.
“We do not understand the forces that set the baseline “thermostat” for the Earth before any modulation due to anthropogenic CO_2,”
Speaking for yourself. If you actually studied Climate Science instead of forming an opinion based solely on your understanding of physics, and the opinions of people who are lying to you about (among other things) the skill of the models to predict what will happen and what HAS happened.
Calling you names? No need. I don’t actually know why you think what you think. It would be interesting to find out, but it very clearly is NOT the result of honest investigation of the facts around this debate. That idea was given the lie by several of the errors you have embraced.
You have made it clear that you are incapable of doing even the simplest risk analysis with respect to this experiment we are conducting with the climate of the only habitable planet we can reach.
We all live in Bhopal now. You, and Anthony Watts, and all your libertarian followers of this antiscience have seen to that.
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Before the world went crazy, pouring money down the drain on climate forecasting, we managed to eradicate smallpox and polio. The third most deadly disease on the planet, malaria was eradicated from the developed world, but once we were safe we banned this technology. As a result malaria continued to ravage the third world.
For a very small fraction of what we spend each year on climate science we could eliminate malaria worldwide. Erase this scourge from the planet. The real deniers are those that fail to see this simple truth. The money we spent on climate science today is money not being spend somewhere else. Climate science is killing far more people than it saves.
Just a slight correction to an otherwise excellent post, Dr. Brown: You mention that “Sea level rise is currently measured to be at most 3 mm/year, …” when in fact tide gauges ubiquitously struggle to measure half that rise almost everywhere. You would be correct in saying “Sea-Level rise is currently adjusted in multiple ways to report (not measure) a 3mm annual rise.”
Here I must respectfully disagree.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
I have no good reason to doubt the satellite data, do you?
Or if you prefer:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/07/22/sea-level-rise-an-update-shows-a-slowdown/
See especially Figure 3, that includes both satellite and tide gauge results (and shows that they don’t crazy disagree). SLR varies considerably with fourier components (eyeballing) around 16y and 11y and with a MEAN of around 2 mm a year over the last century. These are gauge averages in the latter case, obviously. Overall it has mostly grown, but rarely been negative. Currently we are around 3mm/year and descending.
This makes some sense if in fact SSTs are stable to falling; a large part (IIRC, by far the larger part) of SLR comes from thermal expansion of the water, not “melting glaciers”. Also one has to melt a helluva lotta ice — none of it floating sea ice formed by freezing ocean water in the first place — to raise sea level a sliver. There are a lot of square meters of ocean surface.
rgb
Christopher Hanley says:
I hope you understand from the 10:10 video, that the only reason for the lack of the same dire consequences is that they don’t (yet) have the power to do so.
David Thomas
It’s quite “nippy” here in SW Western Australia unless. Hard to keep the inside of the house warmer than 14°C during the day.
One can observe from the various warming and cooling cycles that warming is slower than cooling. i.e. the “gain” of the “climate system” response is biased to cooling. Prevalence of glacial periods over the past million years shows that it’s been cold longer than it has been warm.
Cooling isn’t all bad. It’ll mean more polar bears and therefore cheaper furs to stay warm. 😉
Robert,
You are a great writer but you have my respect for having the courage of your convictions. Flanked as you are by the Nicholas School of the Enviroment with luminaries such as William Chameides who make presentations to the US congress you are in opposition to powerful forces at Duke university. They will not have the integrity to debate you but they will try to put the skids under you.
One of my greatest regrets after retiring from the Duke university physics department ten years ago is my failure to get to know you better.
@Jimbo June 22, 2012 at 5:24 pm:
That is EXACTLY what I did when I first got into this subject. I was neither a proponent or skeptic. I had no reason to be either. I came in out of curiosity, to find that paper Joanna is talking about. With all the work that one would assume was done, I expected that paper to exist. I fully expected a paper that isolated human factors as the only remaining cause of the warming that seemed to be occurring.
Not finding that paper (I am still looking for it) was my first step to being a skeptic. HOW could anyone assign cause when all the other factors had not then been falsified and thus eliminated?
I am not “a denier leader,” but if that paper existed I would be convinced. They could have had me cheap at the beginning. But not now. Now I would definitely (as Joanna went on to say) demand to see the data, and to see all the processing steps the data underwent, ans would want the data and processing to pass a pretty strict vetting.
The CAGW proponents don’t give a damn about whether I have approved of their work. But they should. As their failings and motivations and tactics have come to light, there are more and more of me out there. They are losing us, a few at a time – and they have no one to blame but themselves.
They are only using the term ‘denier’ because they don’t have the science behind them. And they know it. It is why Steve McIntyre scared the bejeezus out of them, precipitating Climategate. Steve M is Denier Zero, the single, lone skeptic who went viral.
Steve Garcia
P.S. It is a bit unwieldy at points, but Robert Brown’s comments explain our position as well as any I’ve seen. That position is not skeptical any more than it should/would be in any scientific inquiry. There is no skeptical argument that has been made that should not have been considered preemptively by the CAGW scientists themselves and put into writing in their papers. The lack of such self-vetting in itself argues that due diligence has not been done. How could they believe that no one would challenge them eventually on such weak and un-solid work? Did they think that were so far ahead of the curve that no one else but themselves could possibly understand any of it?
But – and this is rather central – all their work was not about collecting evidence or data themselves, but about statistically processing data others had accumulated, and they didn’t know that the world is full of statisticians who could ALL understand what they were doing? If it wasn’t Steve M, then eventually some other statistician would have questioned it all.
They had put themselves out on a limb, and the more they fudged/budged/hid/cherry-picked, then the more they were cutting off that limb. No one forced them to do that (except possibly Michael Mann). They could easily have done solid work. When all is said and done, the remaining residual question will be, “Why didn’t they do due diligence?”
And the answer will come back: hubris, money and careers.
They are scared out of their gourds right now that those careers could end at any time. There are still time bombs out there in the emails. And they know it.
Robert,
On a positive note it seems likely that my contract to deliver courses in North Carolina will be re-instated so I look forward to visiting you in September.
Uh, I think you’re looking at the graph upside down.
I chuckle at the brilliance of so many of these “citizen scientists” as the Royal Society put it in their data sharing report who “ask tough and illuminating questions, exposing important errors and elisions…” I thought I’d hit ’em all: Curry, McIntyre, Mosher, Jeff Id, Lucia, Bishop Hill, Ooh, another dozen or so, I think.
I’ve been so ashamed of climate science, watching it skid slowly into Lysenko-like disrepute for so very long now.
Now, brilliant Robert G. Brown. Whew! Imagine an evening spent with a mind like that!
There may be a new dawn breaking for climate science, a truth which (short term; long term is, of course assured), like a plant breaking through cracks in concrete, wins, exposing the political agenda of governments and so-called climate scientists. (I wonder what it’s like to be trained as a “climate scientist” today. You don’t really have to know anything at all? You just have to believe in “green?”)
I forwarded RGB’s explosion on to several I know in the field, ones who won’t deign to read the blogs (“…like the folk in the waiting room telling the doctor what to do…”), but who, I suspect, still have twitching bones of honesty and integrity, somewhere.
Sometimes I’m amazed I can still be amazed. …Lady in Red
Precisely why proponents of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming refuse to debate. History will not be kind to this delusional movement.
Kurt in Switzerland
It doesn’t really matter whether AGW is true or false, you still damage your credibility by insulting your opponents. If I wrote a paper about CIA propaganda during the Cold War, and referred to the other side as “Commie rats” — not once, but FORTY-EIGHT times — I would hope for my own sake and the sake of the publication that I was submitting it to that a reviewer would catch it and the Editor would privately let me know it wasn’t acceptable. As it is the paper sends a clear message: “Send us all the mud you can scoop up, and we’ll fling it for you!”
davidmhoffer said “The strategy of labelling contrary opinion in the manner that Dr Brown is protesting has been used many times before in history, and has presaged the darkest chapters in the history of man’s inhumanity to man.”
While slightly OT, I’m afraid I disagree. IMHO the “darkest chapters in the history of man’s inhumanity to man” have almost invariably been due to some form of tribalism (racism, ethnicity – call it what you will) as the true source of the inhumanity.
My contention is that for people to enjoy true freedom they must by definition have freedom of speech. Dr Brown apparently seeks to stop others using the label “denier”. I suggest this is misconceived – the label is better just ignored (or perhaps treated as equivalent to “dissenter”, which seems to have a certain badge of honour about it). I agree with Voltaire’s words: “I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Save for that I thought many of Dr Brown’s points were excellently made – but not his conclusion.
“The Earth’s climate is manifestly, empirically bistable, with a warm phase and cold phase, and the cold phase is both more likely and more stable.” Was this written as intended? Or do I just have an aversion to shivering?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png
One of my favorite graphs. Again, I have no good reason to doubt this graph. The methodology used to construct it seems reasonable, and if nothing else it is consistent. It is also fairly generally accepted, I think.
The dashed line, IIRC, is the present, in that thin little sliver of interglacial on the far right. In words: 5 Mya, the temperature was stable in a warm phase (as indeed it had been more or less for a LONG TIME previously). Around 3.5 million years something changed and the Earth started to cool, bobbled back up to “warmish” (like today, not quite as warm as before) and then 2.8 Mya descended into an ice age characterized by an average drop of global temperature of 5-6 C, with minimum temperature excursions as far as 10C colder than the present. We then have to change scale:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
These are Vostok ice core results for the last 450 Ky, fairly reliable, but note well a different temperature scale from the sediment graph before — these show relative swings in Antarctica only, so one has to have some degree of faith in proportionality compared to the rest of the globe. Note well that easily 80% of the time is spent in glaciation, with relatively short, spiky interglacials. Note that we are in the coldest interglacial of the last five — cooler by some 3C compared to peak Antarctic temperatures. We are also almost certainly near the end of the current interglacial, although “near” is anytime between tomorrow (or already started) to a thousand years from now, on the timescale of this graph where a thousand years is the thickness of a line.
So we need to change scales again to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
This sadly doesn’t indicate the YD — see the active thread on the Younger Dryas for a much better picture. Note well that the dark curve is essentially course grain averaged on roughly a 300 year basis, so it is utterly incapable of resolving short term temperature jump — there is (as the text carefully and correctly notes) no reason to think that e.g. 2004 at the end is “unusual” as it is a single year sample and would need to be average with temperatures all the way back to the LIA to contribute to the graph (as it does, at the end of the black line!).
The inset reconstruction over the last 2000 years — note well where it lies on the full Holocene curve, well below the mean throughout — shows that the current warm period is almost exactly the same scale as the — once again smeared and coarse grained averaged and with unknown error bars, as there were no thermometers, only a variety of proxies — medieval warm period. Again, if the MWP had much warmer peaks of 30 to 50 years, they would be absolutely invisible given a ten year smoothing plus uncertainties. Some of the contributing models I find more dubious than others, BTW — this figure is far from free from contention and there are those that hold that the MWP was in fact warmer than today.
But I don’t care — the main point is that there was no anthropogenic warming in the MWP and even so temperatures were almost as warm as today’s. Even if the difference were entirely due to CO_2 how big a difference could it be, given that we were warming from the coldest point in the entire Holocene in the LIA. One excpects to regress towards the mean, if nothing else, and the entire scale from the LIA to the present is less than 1 C.
This is the figure that was replaced by Mann’s hockey stick, which conveniently exaggerated the rise at the end and eliminated the MWP and LIA, making them appear to be nearly constant in temperature and much colder than the present. Not this figure specifically, but even Keith Briffa’s figure (IIRC) in AR1 or AR2 almost precisely agreed with this general curve — this was back when (IMO) most climate researchers were still honest because Mann hadn’t been lionized at their expense. Mann’s hockey stick was the “smoking gun” the IPCC needed to become something other than an ignored, irrelevant UN committee.
If the public were ever shown these figures — none of which are, I believe, challenged by climate scientists — there would be profound consequences, because they show what Lazyboy Teenager seems not to want to face — there is absolutely nothing unusual climate-wise about the present except that we live in it!
This could be demonstrated in so many ways, but really, it is pretty obvious.
Now, as for the “bistable” bit — if you look back at the first figure, you’ll see only two states in the last 2 million years — warm phase (interglacial) and cold phase (glaciation). There is no evidence of a warmer phase than the warm phase! Not even back when the average temperature was some 3C warmer than it is today — and that’s as much as the worst case CAGW prediction — and stable. There is no “tipping point”. Even when previous interglacials spiked up 2C to 3C warmer than today, they didn’t stay there because the warm phase is unstable, or rather, it is very stable from above, not so stable to cold excursions.
Now this is something I know a bit about. Underneath this sort of behavior there is a very convoluted phase sheet with at least one fold and a surface or line of stability on a middle unstable sheet or branch. As long as one isn’t too near the folds, one is stable to temperature fluctuations that don’t “cross the line”. However, all things are not equal — something moves the Earth along these sheets over to the real tipping points — the ones that drop warm phase back down to cold or vice versa. The general trend of the Holocene has been cooling from the Holocene Optimum, and it is (as noted) not at all unlikely that we are near the tipping point — down — although we may have saved ourselves with CO_2 for at least a few centuries.
What might trigger a transition? Perhaps an extended Maunder minimum. Perhaps something else. Our problem is that we don’t know why the ice age ended. We don’t know why the Younger Dryas happened as a bobble after the world warmed up. We don’t know why the Holocene is warm or the preceding period of glaciation cold. We don’t know when, or why, the Holocene will end, or whether anthropogenic CO_2 is having any effect on this either way.
The number of things we don’t know that no climate scientist who is honest will claim that we know — is large enough to make me pull my little remaining hair and scream! And this is the basis of our settled science?
LazyboyT — you wanted evidence? Chew on some. Point to the present on any of these graphs and show me how — in perspective — we are in the throes of an extinction event. Any more than the Earth is always in flux in this way. The end of glaciation? Extinction event. The end of the Holocene? You can bet your sweet bippy that will be an extinction event to remember, quite possibly for 1/3 of the human species if it comes on too swiftly.
If the worst nightmares of CAGW come true, and the world warms 3C by the end of the century, that is still a very good thing compared to the end of the Holocene. The latter is wrath-of-god fimbulwinter type stuff, with the temperate zone and breadbasket of the world reduced to an icy desert, with half of Europe, all of Canada and the Northern US, all of Siberia, all of Mongolia, half of China — all gone. In as little as decades. Only if we have a world-spanning civilization, with sound and reliable energy resources can we hope to survive and thrive.
rgb
Dr. Robert Brown says to Dr. Paul Bain:
“But honestly, you probably aren’t an idiot (are you?) and no useful purpose is served by ad hominem or emotionally loaded human descriptors in a rational discussion of an objective scientific question, is there.”
Dr. Brown, from a purely scientific point of view, I think you are rejecting the “idiot” hypothesis prematurely, and with an apparent lack of any supporting evidence.
It is of great offense to use “denier” (even remotely referencing to Holocaust deniers) in any scientific discussion. Yet, supposedly ethical, objective scientists and their supporters are acting as though nothing applies to them (in effect – emulating career politicians). They’re using a label, in an attempt to silence their opponents, meant for cretins who grossly insult those involved in the greatest of human dramas (WWII). It trivializes the lives, untold suffering, and needless deaths of millions upon millions of people.
The European Holocaust was the extermination, on a mass-production scale and method, of over 12-30 million people; not just Jews but, any and all “undesirables” of the Nazi state. Even 70 years later, it is still very difficult to fully comprehend. To illustrate, try reading at least three books on the general course/account of WWII; then continue with at least three to four holocaust accounts such as those by Ann Frank, Primo Levi, and Martin Gilbert (who also wrote an overall history of WWII). After reading a minimum six books on the subject(s), the proverbial surface has only been slightly dusted towards understanding.
Both Holocaust deniers and people thoughtlessly applying the “denier” term to opponents, are evil in the most reprehensible way. Current news/world events are more than ample evidence for this point.
May Dr. R.G. Brown’s message reach the majority of Earth’s population, as an antidote to this corruption.
Dr Brown apparently seeks to stop others using the label “denier”.
Not at all. I seek to stop it from appearing in a scientific journal supposedly devoted to the objective appraisal of evidence because it is de facto evidence that the journal itself has taken sides and is no longer a reliable referee.
To construct a metaphor (inspired by the basketball discussion earlier) — what would we think of a referee that permitted the players on Duke’s basketball team to refer to their esteemed rivals from down the road a bit as “Tar Holes” while they were playing on the court, yet called technical fouls on UNC if they responded by calling Duke players “Blue Ballsies”. Hmm, not a very good referee. Not likely that the game is being judged fairly, or that the better team will win.
That’s what is so absolutely unconscionable about this. Pejorative terms of any sort — terms that refer to people instead of ideas — have no place in scientific journals! Period. Physical Review doesn’t let physicists who don’t believe in the big bang call those who don’t “poopy heads”, even if they are inclined to. The New England Journal of Medicine is respectful even of folk medicine to the extent that it doesn’t generally permit its practitioners to be called “deniers” of modern medical practice, or “witches” in a pejorative sense. I could care less if LazyTAger calls me a denier in a blog — a blog is an informal setting. I wouldn’t care a LOT more if he called me a denier to my face, although normally humans aren’t that rude face to face unless they have a personality disorder, but even that would be his problem more than mine. But if I’m called a denier in a scientific journal, as a scientist this literally disenfranchises me from an entire debate, especially if the journal tacitly endorses it by permitting the term to appear, announcing to the world their lack of objectivity on the issue.
rgb
Too many posts, too tired. I meant call those that do poopy heads.
My own head is poopy, and it’s time for bed.
Of course it has been a really fun thread.
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Lazy Teenager said —
“There is evidence for temperature rises in the geological past of similar rates upward to what we are seeing now. They were extinction events.”
Lazy Teenager:
Would you please name those extinction events caused by temperature rise? Higher temperatures have always been associated with the proliferation of life not its extinction.
Do you even realize that you are making this stuff up? I don’t think you do. Have you ever heard the phrase “magical thinking”?
Descartes said — i think, therefore I am. A “magical thinker” would say — I think it, therefore it is!
Carried to an extreme magical thinkers begin to believe they have the powers of a god. Others, not quite so far gone, believe that they know how to save the world from some looming apocalypse that exists because they think it exists. It becomes their “Cause”. On a more mundane level the common variety of magical thinkers just make assertions for which they have no evidence whatsoever — then stick their fingers in their ears.
So — would you please name those extinction events caused by temperature rise?
Eugene WR Gallun
PS — Maybe you should change your handle to Crazy Teenager.
(Well, to be honest about it i saw the punchline and wrote all the above to lead into it. Sometimes I just can’t help myself.)
He may have been thinking of “no-regrets” measures like encouraging more insulation, encouraging the use of heat pumps, etc.
You are a great writer but you have my respect for having the courage of your convictions. Flanked as you are by the Nicholas School of the Enviroment with luminaries such as William Chameides who make presentations to the US congress you are in opposition to powerful forces at Duke university. They will not have the integrity to debate you but they will try to put the skids under you.
I doubt it. I’m teaching at the Marine Lab in two weeks, which is PART of the Nicholas School.
Also, I’m trying very hard to be so very respectful of the scientists of all sides of the issue. I have no bone to pick with Chameides, nor reason to think that he isn’t honest in his beliefs, any more than (I hope) he has a reason to think that I am less than honest in mine. But as I said above — I’m perhaps not the most brilliant physicist that ever lived. I might not be in the top half. But I’m not an idiot, and I’m not an idiot in a half dozen subjects. Since “scientists agree” that CAGW is proven (although many of my acquaintances do not seem to agree) I can only assume that they would be happy to try to convince me, as I am a ge-nu-ine card-carrying scientist and I am entirely open to being convinced — as long as they will permit me to attempt to convince them the other way, to actively participate in the debate.
They can start with the geological evidence of global temperature variation — Bob Carter’s general spiel. Once they’ve convinced me that global temperatures are unusual, we can start thinking about why…
rgb
Ouch. That stings.
TimC says:
You contention is naive. Lies, in whatever form, which go unchallenged, become the truth.