(Note: this originally published on Dr. Spencer’s blog on April 25th, and I asked if I could reproduce it here. While I know some readers might argue the finer points of some items in the list, I think it is important to keep sight of these. – Anthony)
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
There are some very good arguments for being skeptical of global warming predictions. But the proliferation of bad arguments is becoming almost dizzying.
I understand and appreciate that many of the things we think we know in science end up being wrong. I get that. But some of the alternative explanations I’m seeing border on the ludicrous.
So, here’s my Top 10 list of stupid skeptic arguments. I’m sure there are more, and maybe I missed a couple important ones. Oh well.
My obvious goal here is not to change minds that are already made up, which is impossible (by definition), but to reach 1,000+ (mostly nasty) comments in response to this post. So, help me out here!
1. THERE IS NO GREENHOUSE EFFECT. Despite the fact that downwelling IR from the sky can be measured, and amounts to a level (~300 W/m2) that can be scarcely be ignored; the neglect of which would totally screw up weather forecast model runs if it was not included; and would lead to VERY cold nights if it didn’t exist; and can be easily measured directly with a handheld IR thermometer pointed at the sky (because an IR thermometer measures the IR-induced temperature change of the surface of a thermopile, QED)… Please stop the “no greenhouse effect” stuff. It’s making us skeptics look bad. I’ve blogged on this numerous times…maybe start here.
2. THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT VIOLATES THE 2ND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. The second law can be stated in several ways, but one way is that the net flow of energy must be from higher temperature to lower temperature. This is not violated by the greenhouse effect. The apparent violation of the 2nd Law seems to be traced to the fact that all bodies emit IR radiation…including cooler bodies toward warmer bodies. But the NET flow of thermal radiation is still from the warmer body to the cooler body. Even if you don’t believe there is 2-way flow, and only 1-way flow…the rate of flow depends upon the temperature of both bodies, and changing the cooler body’s temperature will change the cooling rate (and thus the temperature) of the warmer body. So, yes, a cooler body can make a warm body even warmer still…as evidenced by putting your clothes on.
3. CO2 CANT CAUSE WARMING BECAUSE CO2 EMITS IR AS FAST AS IT ABSORBS. No. When a CO2 molecule absorbs an IR photon, the mean free path within the atmosphere is so short that the molecule gives up its energy to surrounding molecules before it can (on average) emit an IR photon in its temporarily excited state. See more here. Also important is the fact that the rate at which a CO2 molecule absorbs IR is mostly independent of temperature, but the rate at which it emits IR increases strongly with temperature. There is no requirement that a layer of air emits as much IR as it absorbs…in fact, in general, the the rates of IR emission and absorption are pretty far from equal.
4. CO2 COOLS, NOT WARMS, THE ATMOSPHERE. This one is a little more subtle because the net effect of greenhouse gases is to cool the upper atmosphere, and warm the lower atmosphere, compared to if no greenhouse gases were present. Since any IR absorber is also an IR emitter, a CO2 molecule can both cool and warm, because it both absorbs and emits IR photons.
5. ADDING CO2 TO THE ATMOSPHERE HAS NO EFFECT BECAUSE THE CO2 ABSORPTION BANDS ARE ALREADY 100% OPAQUE. First, no they are not, and that’s because of pressure broadening. Second, even if the atmosphere was 100% opaque, it doesn’t matter. Here’s why.
6. LOWER ATMOSPHERIC WARMTH IS DUE TO THE LAPSE RATE/ADIABATIC COMPRESSION. No, the lapse rate describes how the temperature of a parcel of air changes from adiabatic compression/expansion of air as it sinks/rises. So, it can explain how the temperature changes during convective overturning, but not what the absolute temperature is. Explaining absolute air temperature is an energy budget question. You cannot write a physics-based equation to obtain the average temperature at any altitude without using the energy budget. If adiabatic compression explains temperature, why is the atmospheric temperature at 100 mb is nearly the same as the temperature at 1 mb, despite 100x as much atmospheric pressure? More about all this here.
7. WARMING CAUSES CO2 TO RISE, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND The rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 is currently 2 ppm/yr, a rate which is 100 times as fast as any time in the 300,000 year Vostok ice core record. And we know our consumption of fossil fuels is emitting CO2 200 times as fast! So, where is the 100x as fast rise in today’s temperature causing this CO2 rise? C’mon people, think. But not to worry…CO2 is the elixir of life…let’s embrace more of it!
8. THE IPCC MODELS ARE FOR A FLAT EARTH I have no explanation where this little tidbit of misinformation comes from. Climate models address a spherical, rotating, Earth with a day-night (diurnal) cycle in solar illumination and atmospheric Coriolis force (due to both Earth curvature and rotation). Yes, you can do a global average of energy flows and show them in a flat-earth cartoon, like the Kiehl-Trenberth energy budget diagram which is a useful learning tool, but I hope most thinking people can distinguish between a handful of global-average average numbers in a conceptual diagram, and a full-blown 3D global climate model.
9. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE Really?! Is there an average temperature of your bathtub full of water? Or of a room in your house? Now, we might argue over how to do the averaging (Spatial? Mass-weighted?), but you can compute an average, and you can monitor it over time, and see if it changes. The exercise is only futile if your sampling isn’t good enough to realistically monitor changes over time. Just because we don’t know the average surface temperature of the Earth to better than, say 1 deg. C, doesn’t mean we can’t monitor changes in the average over time. We have never known exactly how many people are in the U.S., but we have useful estimates of how the number has increased in the last 50-100 years. Why is “temperature” so important? Because the thermal IR emission in response to temperature is what stabilizes the climate system….the hotter things get, the more energy is lost to outer space.
10. THE EARTH ISN’T A BLACK BODY. Well, duh. No one said it was. In the broadband IR, though, it’s close to a blackbody, with an average emissivity of around 0.95. But whether a climate model uses 0.95 or 1.0 for surface emissivity isn’t going to change the conclusions we make about the sensitivity of the climate system to increasing carbon dioxide.
I’m sure I could come up with a longer list than this, but these were the main issues that came to mind.
So why am I trying to stir up a hornets nest (again)? Because when skeptics embrace “science” that is worse that the IPCC’s science, we hurt our credibility.
NOTE: Because of the large number of negative comments this post will generate, please excuse me if I don’t respond to every one. Or even very many of them. But if I see a new point being made I haven’t addressed before, I’ll be more likely to respond.
Dr. Spencer said he hopes to reach the open minded skeptic, not the died in the wool “slayer” type
IMV he paints with a brush to broad, and so cannot convince any thinking skeptic with his simplified over broad list. (I appreciate much of what Dr. Spencer does.)
I invite any of the truly educated scientific minded commentators here to read E.M.Smith says: May 1, 2014 at 8:26 am, including his links’ I woud follow your discussion with EM on his criticsms of why the list is neither helpful or constructive with full open minded attention.
Jimbo for instance (BTW I learn from, and appreciate most all of your posts), fully supports
Dr. Spencer’s list regarding “average temperature, and wishes no one would make that argument.
I highly suggest he read E.M.Smith’s comment and link (Perhaps you will benefit from it, as I have benefited from your comments.)
In the end I discuss some of the controversial aspects from a purely academic perspective. If I am debating an alarmist, (not Dr. Spencer certainly, as he is no alarmist, but a genuine skeptic of CAGW ) I focus on the lack of any harmful consequences, the failure of the models, and the benefits of CO2, all well supported in the scientific literature and the willful misbehavior of the alarmist.
Anthony
it might be worth providing a permanent link to this post similar to the Sea Ice page and other links.
I haven’t read all the comments but I’m inclined to agree with E.M.Smith. I think Roy’s idea is a good one, but several of his points seem to need clarification and amplification, in particular point 7, where, as several commenters have pointed out, the truth depends on the time-scale. The 100 ppm or so difference between glacial and interglacial atmospheric CO2 levels is mainly attributable to the varying solubility of the gas in warming or cooling oceans, but the 20th century rise in atmospheric CO2 cannot be explained in this way.
7. WARMING CAUSES CO2 TO RISE, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND The rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 is currently 2 ppm/yr, a rate which is 100 times as fast as any time in the 300,000 year Vostok ice core record. And we know our consumption of fossil fuels is emitting CO2 200 times as fast! So, where is the 100x as fast rise in today’s temperature causing this CO2 rise?
Hello Roy,
I suggest that temperature drives CO2 in nature because CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales and the only significant signal I can detect in the CO2 curve is its ~9 month lag AFTER (LT) temperature.
However, temperature is not the ONLY driver of CO2, and other factors such as fossil fuel combustion and deforestation are probable major drivers of CO2.
I agree that Earth’s atmosphere is currently CO2-deficient and more is better.
Regards, Allan
“No matter how mean, or cruel, or sinful you have been, every time you breathe out, you make a little flower happy.”
– Shelley Berman
It can be seen that the temperature in the troposphere over the equator falls to -70 ° C in accordance with the a pressure perfectly. So gravity works! The gas is expanded and loses kinetic energy. That is not greenhouse.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_ALL_EQ_2014.gif
If you have gridded anomalies, then you also must have gridded temperatures that are used to calculate those anomalies. One can then average those gridded temperatures over one year and the entire surface and come up with an average, even if it doesn’t mean a whole lot. I did that once, but it’s not worth looking up. Where the average temperature might mean something is for climate models. The global annual average temperature for a model spin up can be several degrees C from this calculated value. But you almost never see that because the standard method for reporting is anomalies and their trends.
According to NASA itself, climate models are unable to compute/estimate absolute global average surface temperature to any better than a 2 C range (or if you like, different climate models differ in their estimates of absolute temperature by roughly this range). Since there are so few models, that isn’t really a very good predictor of the uncertainty. One has to use “models” because of the highly dynamic variability Nick referred to, the sparseness and non-randomness of the sampling grid (especially as one goes back in time) — one is always left interpolating (kriging) a sparse grid over vast surface areas with basically no measurements at all. If you go outside into my yard (1/3 acre) and plant a dozen thermometers and measure temperature for a year, you’ll get a variation of at least 1-2 C in my yard — indeed, a thermometer placed near the house at the top of our southwest-facing driveway is probably going to read 5 C higher than one in the shade of the northeast facing side of the house at the same time, as convected heat rolls up the driveway and into the reflector oven of light bouncing off of the house.
Such variation and site dependence is clearly visible from a glance at nearby personal weather stations — two are listed on Weather Underground that are within about a mile of my house (and each other). One is sited right over somebody’s driveway and always reads 1-2 C “hot” in precisely this way. The other is located at a school, in a field, and is actually pretty good as far as I can tell comparing with my own thermometers.
So perhaps Roy should have added the word “anomaly” to his point 9, because in point of fact there is no such thing as a global average surface temperature known to better than a generous 1 C, and nobody would really be surprised if the error was 2 C if somebody planted a km-scale grid of perfectly housed and sited thermometers all over the globe (including all of the ocean and poles and Tibet and everywhere) and was able to compute a pretty good number instead of a terrible, half-modelled one with many assumptions built into the average.
Does this matter? Well, only if one wants one’s GCMs to be accurate. We all agree that the Earth cools by radiation. A 2 K out of ~288 K error in average surface temperature in a theory of radiation proportional to the absolute temperature makes a rather substantial difference in the Earth’s energy balance equation, one has to say. After all, the CO_2-only projected warming (assuming that somebody has a satisfactory answer somewhere to my objections about the partial pressure vs absolute pressure in the variation of the GHE due to “additional pressure broadening” that is widely asserted) is order of 1-1.5 C, but this is definitely a case where models cannot have their cake and eat it to. There is basically no doubt at all about the net TOA insolation — we know it quite accurately. If the surface temperature is actually 2 K absolute warmer than the models are initialized for they will get the wrong answer, badly!
Hey, the models do generally get the wrong answer, badly. How about that!
As for measuring the anomaly precisely: There I’m willing to believe that it can be done to some precision, but based on what I’ve seen of the models that compute it I am not impressed either with the computations or their assertions of precision. I especially doubt their ability to be extended backwards in time without errors that grow extremely rapidly. To be blunt, I think comparing the current 30-35 year baseline anomalies, obtained with perhaps “decent” surface coverage and with at least a consistent computation of the baseline and no need to correct much for e.g. UHI systematic bias is fair — they may or may not accurately reflect the global anomaly (and given the lack of good agreement between the many computations, I’d have to say they probably aren’t terribly accurate in that regard) but what they are, they are! A metric whose variation over time has some meaning and relevance to the question of whether or not the Earth’s unknown global average surface temperature is increasing, decreasing, whatever, even if the accuracy of the metric is probably not terribly great.
(Aside — I’m skeptical about accuracy not only because of the sparseness of the grid, but because in some sense anomaly computations on a surface grid are looking at fourth order cumulants of the absolute temperature, and the absolute temperature itself is known to terrible accuracy). The anomaly itself is a first order difference (signed) — but only takes meaning when the running second order variance in the natural data is known, and only takes meaning relative to AGW when the data is corrected for natural trends which it isn’t and cannot be, where the sparse data is kriged all over a lat/long grid on a sphere — surely the dumbest possible choice of coordinate system for any sort of numerical spherical integral. The kriging alone is a second order process as one has to again decide how to interpolate/extrapolate the data across vast numbers of empty cells, hence my assertion of fourth order uncertainty. And IMO the remaining accuracy in the process is probably not too great, even for the anomaly — I doubt that even HADCRUT4’s estimate of 0.15 C in modern times is correct, probably too small by a factor of two or even more.)
The fundamental problem comes when one attempts to go back to (say) 1890 and use thermometric data taken back then to estimate the anomaly relative to the modern baseline! Excuse me? Quite aside from the fact that the instrumentation was different, the training and sampling and purpose of the measurement and the location and the local microclimate and… were all different the numbers are blithely “corrected” by somebody who obviously possess a time machine and oracular powers and fed into the same general code as the modern instrumental data and are expected to produce an “anomaly” that can be accurately compared to the modern baseline. And when the anomaly doesn’t match one’s expectations, one can just go back and alter the “corrections” in the remote past. Who can ever challenge you, whatever you do? One can hardly go back in time and get a do-over of the measurement process with modern instrumentation.
This problem is amplified even further when one attempts to go back past the instrumental record using proxies. Then one adds high frequency to low frequency errors, vast uncertainties due to multiple confounding sources of variation, and Manniacal selection of proxies that conform to one’s prior beliefs about the climate while excluding or downweighting proxies that contradict them. The “anomalies” one obtains then are nearly totally meaningless — the probable errors are starting to be as large as the entire range of holocene variation, degrees C.
Hence I “trust” UAH and RSS — clean, consistent measurements with a modern baseline. I trust HADCRUT4 and GISS etc as far as I can throw them — wait, that is roughly back to the UAH/RSS baseline, say the last quarter of the 20th century on — and trust them with a smoothly increasing probable error at all times before that to where I really don’t trust them much prior to 1950 — solidly post-WWII, modern electronics (radar), significantly improved weather monitoring necessitated by WWII (flying and oceanic movements both demanded it), access via improved planes and the needs of war to much of the world that was essentially terra incognita before WWII. Before that they are more “legend” than history, and back in the 1500s and 800s legend degrades to pure myth with the exception of a few comparatively pristine proxies.
rgb
Richard G says:
See…I can do argumentum ad absurdum also.
Not very well.
Did you seriously miss the point?
I’m not arguing that CO2 will kill you, or even harm you. I’m not arguing that 400 PPm does or does not affect the climate.
I’m simply trying to illustrate that the argument (which does exist) purporting that 400 PPM is too small to have any measurable effect is a bogus argument, and providing an illustration to demonstrate it.
Alexander Feht says:
May 2, 2014 at 3:35 am
And, of course, a single link you provided proves it unequivocally for all ages. Give me a break.
How many links do you need to convince you that Antarctic ice core CO2 levels are an accurate, be it smoothed, direct measurement of ancient atmospheric compositions? With a little search you can find many of them. The link I did provide is a nice summary of what ice cores can show and why.
But I know, some people don’t accept ice core measurements, because they don’t like the data. Which is exactly what Dr. Spencer demonstrates with his 10 points…
Roy Spencer says:
May 1, 2014 at 7:26 am
mpainter, Yes, warmer emits more CO2. Even the IPCC admitted that in an earlier report….they showed a plot of how atmospheric CO2 goes up after a warm El Nino, down after a La Nina. But that does not mean that when we pump CO2 into the atmosphere (at 100x the rate we see in the ice core record), that it won’t cause warming. Both directions of causation can happen….it’s not just one or the other.
——————————————
First, let me apologize for the early-morning typo, and for not reading all the comments. But again, I have to disagree: Both directions of causation cannot happen. If warming causes more CO2, and CO2 causes more warming, as long as there is carbon to oxidize from the skin of the earth nothing would stop virtually all the carbon from returning to the atmosphere. There is no evidence of such positive feedback at any time since the advent of photosynthesis.
Unless CO2 is directly sensitive to Milankovitch frequencies, and is able to reach back through hundreds-to-thousands-of-years of ice to change isotope-ratios, CO2 has no apparent influence on temperature,
Since the disturbance of soil-carbon with the agricultural revolution, CO2 has been unnaturally high (by icecore standards), yet isotope ratios suggest the poles have cooled since then. Again, no evidence of CO2 influence on temperature.
Since 1979, accurate measurements of global temperaure (thank you, Dr. Spencer) have shown fluctuations well within Holocene norms, while the ongoing industrial revolution has pushed CO2 to levels not seen for millions-or-years of geological time. Again, no evidence of CO2 influence on temperature.
CO2 is opaque to small portions of the EM spectrum, which theoretically should have a small effect on global temperature that plateaus with increasing concentration. Why is it surprising that this effect is apparently in the noise envelope?
R Taylor says:
May 2, 2014 at 4:46 am
Sorry to disagree, but #7 is wrong. Warming does cause CO2 to rise (and cooling causes CO2 to fall), plausibly due to the relative temperature-sensitivities of respiration and photosynthesis in the biosphere.
Dr. Spencer agrees with you that warming increases CO2 in the atmosphere by nature, but there are two aspects on this where he and I and others don’t agree:
– The current increase of 100 ppmv in only 160 years is not natural: the maximum contribution from nature is 8 ppmv from the warming since the LIA.
– That the natural CO2 levels always follow temperature changes doesn’t exclude that an extra increase of CO2 above the temperature dictated equilibrium has some effect on temperature (be it small).
R Taylor says:
May 2, 2014 at 7:25 am
But again, I have to disagree: Both directions of causation cannot happen. If warming causes more CO2, and CO2 causes more warming, as long as there is carbon to oxidize from the skin of the earth nothing would stop virtually all the carbon from returning to the atmosphere.
If the influence of temperature on CO2 is modest (8 ppmv/°C) and the influence of CO2 on temperature is modest (0.9°C/2xCO2), there is no chance of a runaway process. All what happens is that both temperature and CO2 level somewhat higher than if there was no feedback on each other:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/feedback.jpg
I don’t think that the influence of CO2 on temperature is high, the problem is how to separate the temperature increase caused by natural influences (ocean currents,…) from the influence of CO2.
There were two periods of warming in the recent past (near equal in strength) and two periods of “pause”: 1945-1975 and 2000-current. There is a slight difference between the two periods: the period 1945-1975 shows a small cooling, the period 2000-current hardly shows any cooling. That may be the influence of the CO2 increase, assuming that the natural cycle which caused the pause has the same strength…
R Taylor
I agree with you 100%. A much greater impact on the felt temperature is solar activity, which we feel for yourself. Now the cold is in the south of Australia.
This is the blockade vortex below Australia. Height 30 km.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/orthographic=23.44,-79.22,365
If someone gave me the average temps of the desert not knowing what and where it was boy would I be in for a surprise.
Without greenhouse gases, the atmosphere would not be isothermal.
The one molecule atmosphere has a gradient of temperature, this molecule must go faster as it moves toward the ground. When more molecules are present, it might fight this gradient. But we know that conduction and convection can only fight the gradient down to the normal adiabatic lapse rate of around 6.5K/km.
The perpetuum mobile argument does not hold water. It might be possible to make energy from the difference of temperature through this column. But you can also make energy between the warm ground and the cold space. There is already a gradient of temperature there. Based on how our atmosphere “sees” temperature, the ground is warmer than space and a gradient of temperature will appear. If space could warm the top of the atmosphere as efficiently as the ground, no gradient would exist.
Trevor says: May 1, 2014 at 10:41 am
Juergen Michele says:
May 1, 2014 at 6:28 am
Looking at your point 4. :
CO2 in the upper atmosphere blocks outgoing radiation from the earth surface.
But the incoming radiation from the sun in the relevant frequency range is hundredfold compared to the back radiation from earth.
As a consequence more CO2 cools!
You didn’t quite finish your thought here, Juergen, but I THINK you’re trying to say that the solar radiation blocked from entering the atmosphere by CO2 far outweighs the radiation blocked from leaving the atmosphere by CO2. If so, your error here is in assuming that the radiation coming from the sun is identical to the radiation coming from the surface. That assumption is incorrect.
That was not my assumption …
See Fig. 3 in
http://www.newport.com/Introduction-to-Solar-Radiation/411919/1033/content.aspx
Normally incident solar spectrum at sea level on a clear day. The dotted curve shows the extrarrestrial spectrum
or Fig. 4 in
Infrared-Absorbing Gases and the Earth’s Surface Temperature
Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D., Physics
http://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.de/2013/02/infrared-absorbing-gases-and-earths.html
The “backradiation” of H2O and CO2 is much more intense compared to radiation from the earth surface.
More CO2 cools!
Jaakko Kateenkorva says:
May 2, 2014 at 4:47 am
it’s a mystery to me why should all skeptics wear the same tight cap.
—————————————–
IN a normal world this would apply but i believe Mr Spencer is trying to simplify things, if skeptical scientists run all over the place with ideas right or wrong it is hard to get a message across. Best to stick to co2 causes warming but so small as not to be relevant.
What you are up against is a one size fits all from alarmists that has been used for 30 years that is so ingrained with the public that any other ideas would cause confusion.
So Mr Spencer has come down with his Ten commandments and anything else is forbidden for the moment ( Mr TIm Ball’s comment was removed ).
I completely understand.
“it’s a mystery to me why should all skeptics wear the same tight cap”
should say
in a normal world they shouldn’t have to,
I have heard the argument richard uses above and I could not disagree more (that was also by a richard, wonder if it is the same one?) You are encouraged to stick to the politically correct skeptic line and not think and speak for yourself. Think for your self and speak for yourself ^.^
With all due respect to Dr Spencer, I think his # 7 is unproven and probably unprovable. The measurement precision of the Vostok ice cores and of every other non-instrumental record is insufficient to proved that CO2 levels never spiked within their assumed periods.
To take the ice cores as a single example, consider what we would see today if 10,000 years ago there had been an instantaneous spike in CO2 levels. At the time of trapping, there would have been a discontinuity in the CO2 levels within the layers of ice. However, even a small degree of diffusion will cause the trapped CO2 and other gasses to move slightly within the surrounding ice crystals, blurring the line. After thousands of years of blurring, any measurements we could take would be indistinguishable from a much gentler, slower change.
It is possible that the current rate of CO2 increase is truly unprecedented but it has not and I think can not be proven that the current rate of increase has never before occurred.
Congradulations to Roy Spencer for a posting that has led to one of the longest and most stimulating discussions on this blog, ever.
I conclude that the science is NOT settled. ; )
Konrad makes a lot of sense. The only radiative gas that counts is H2O vapor and that is latent heat and thus is the planet cooled. Water moderates temperatures and determines climate and CO2 is of no account, climatically. The data of the last 17 years is conclusive.
Reading through this thread makes me wonder if people have forgotten Feynman?
“Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected. … The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth”.
People seem to think new theories are facts.
Take the ice core records for instance; a long way up thread somebody posted that the ice core records should be discounted because we can can not be sure of the dates that changes occurred. That person then went on to give the latest scientific theory about how long it takes before ice freezes solidly enough to stop molecules of gas moving around.
The ice core records are empirical evidence, they do not lie and all errors are our own. We may be making mistakes in our interpretation of the cores but certain things do not need interpretation; the cores give us a chronology of events even if exact timings are not within our current ability to detect.
Should it be the case that someone can give me evidence to support the idea that it can take 2000 years for ice to completely solidify I will have to have a rethink, until then temperature rises before CO2 levels fact.
Dung says:
May 2, 2014 at 8:19 am
I have heard the argument richard uses above and I could not disagree more (that was also by a richard, wonder if it is the same one?) You are encouraged to stick to the politically correct skeptic line and not think and speak for yourself. Think for your self and speak for yourself ^.^
I don’t mean it in such harsh terms but Mr Tim Ball was snipped and I imagine Mr Watts is weary of opening up a can of worms where that comment/link was going.
So I sort of rest my case.
My apologies richard, I think I misunderstood you ^.^
wary and weary.
Coldish says:
May 2, 2014 at 5:33 am
I haven’t read all the comments but I’m inclined to agree with E.M.Smith. I think Roy’s idea is a good one, but several of his points seem to need clarification and amplification, in particular point 7
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Yes his post is very solid. Roy would do well to read it and comment. EM is a very balanced skeptic.