Where would we be without science? Today, we live longer than ever before according to the Royal Geographical Society, thanks to pharmaceutical, medical, and health science. Vaccines saves many lives. Physics and electronics have given us satellites, telecommunications, and the Internet. You would not read this blog without them. Chemistry and biology have provided use with all sorts of products, food, and enabled the agricultural (“green”) revolution enhancing our crop yields. The science of evolution and natural selection explains the character of ecosystems, and modern meteorology saves lives and help us safeguard our properties.
So what is science? It’s more than just a body of knowledge. It’s a mindset and strategy to build an understanding of our world. This understanding is extremely valuable for our society, especially when it comes to establishing where we stand and what the likely outcomes will be from perceived future actions.
The scientific method is perfect for resolving uncertainties such as controversial claims about facts. It builds on the principles of transparency, testing, and independent replication. Every scientifically trained scholar should get similar results when the analysis is repeated for a finding that is universally true.
Scientific testing and replicating scientific facts are usually based on data analysis and require an understanding of statistical reasoning and what the data really represent. The data analysis is often the point where differences arise. Climate science is no different to other science, and I have myself contributed to the process of checking the findings in a number of controversial papers (Benestad et al., 2016).
There is always a story behind each conclusion that goes back to its roots. The difference between science on the one hand, and dogma and propaganda on the other, is that the latter is not traceable. In other words, you should be more confident about scientific results and sceptical when it comes to intransparent or undocumented claims.
The scientific community has a well-established system for taking care of scientific findings, mainly through publication of papers in the scientific literature. A scientific paper should provide sufficient information for others to replicate the work done and reproduce results. Scientific results are also presented and discussed at conferences, such as the present American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting. The science presented in conferences, however, is not readily broadcasted to the wider society, partly because of difficult language and partly because of limited media presence.
I strongly believe we need a public voice of scientists and historians (see Defending Climate Science), but there is a concern for the future of Earth and space science. It is not just a potential problem for the science community. This is also a genuine worry that affects the wider society and its right to scientific facts and objective information. It is also an issue when it comes to education.
Science benefits everyone and is part of the fabric of our civilisation. It is therefore unwise to dismiss or twist for short-term benefits. The concept “science denial” has been discussed in the magazine called Physics World (September 2016), Nature, blogs, videos, as well as books, just to mention some examples. One of my favoutites is nevertheless the book with the title ‘Agnotology: the Making and Unmaking of Ignorance‘ by Proctor and Schiebinger
History of science can explain how absurd the notion is regarding global warming being a hoax from China. We only need to search for scientific publications from the past, as I did when I wrote a review about the greenhouse effect, based on a paper from 1931 by the American physicist Edward Olson Hulburt (Benestad, 2016)). There is an excellent historical account of modern climate science American Institute of Physics written by Spencer Weart.
It is also a disservice to our society to close down faculties, such as earth observations and climate science. We need both observations and updated analysis more than ever in the times of unprecedented global warming. They are essential inputs to fact-based decision-making concerning our global environment on which we all depend. Our society has progressed and become great much thanks to science, and it would be a sad story for everyone if we were to undo that.
References
- R.E. Benestad, D. Nuccitelli, S. Lewandowsky, K. Hayhoe, H.O. Hygen, R. van Dorland, and J. Cook, "Learning from mistakes in climate research", Theoretical and Applied Climatology, vol. 126, pp. 699-703, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1597-5
- R.E. Benestad, "A mental picture of the greenhouse effect", Theoretical and Applied Climatology, vol. 128, pp. 679-688, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00704-016-1732-y
Ray @ 190
There are only two things that can increase global temperature on a 100 year timescale? – WOW!
Zebra 196,
Here is a very simple example:
Take the actual warming of 0.9°C in 120 years. Add the symetric cooling after. Then flat temperatures.
The rate of increase would be lost in a Marcott like reconstruction.
And if you think such a scenario is not possible, could you please direct me to the relevant study/blog post/book?
(we are running in circle, I know…)
Thanks.
Romain 202,
When I gave you my example, you did not do as I asked and describe what the Marcott plot would look like, but you agreed that the temperature change would be “detected”.
Now, you are saying “the rate” would be “lost”.
That is not an honest answer, that is a troll answer. I never suggested the Marcott plot would be identical to the true temperature plot; that is obvious, since I asked you to show the difference between true temperature and Marcott in the first place.
Your 100 years up 1.0C and 100 years down would still be “detected” as an anomaly. In fact earlier you gave an example like this and said that it would show up as .5C– so, where is that .5C change on the Marcott plot?
If this is what you think of as a “precedent”, then we don’t even need the other reasons why it didn’t happen.
Keith Woolard: “There are only two things that can increase global temperature on a 100 year timescale? – WOW!”
Those are not forcings/causes. All I am saying is that you either have to have a very large source of energy to warm the fricking planet or the planet is effectively decoupled into a segment with small thermal mass that warms rapidly and one that is effectively thermally inert. The evidence we have–not least the data on warming in the deep ocean–favors the former. However, if the latter is true, then we are in the soup as we know that anthropogenic CO2 is putting a whole helluva lot of energy into the system.
What you and Romain are doing is playing “God of the Gaps”. Because you have no evidence to support your side of the argument, you retreat to where there is as yet no evidence at all.
This whole discussion is about temperature change, not temperature.
Why you believe I didn’t know that is a huge mystery. Thanks for not answering my question and replying with your new question. (sigh) It clarifies what the real problem is here.
Keith @ 199:
You say “I know you can transform with non-evenly spaced samples”, but at #185 you said “Yes, I know to do an FT or an FFT requires a constant sample rate”.
Unfortunately, you can’t seem to decide on what you know.
You are also now saying “The only reason I brought up Nyquist is it is a simple concept that explains the limitations of sub-sample interpolation.”, yet I pointed you to a web site that shows that Nyquist does not create the same limitation on non-uniformly-space samples – you can identify features that occur at sub-Nyquist intervals. So, your “simple concept” does not explain what you want it to explain.
I’m afraid your credibility is shot.
I am not interested in the details of the discussion about whether warming in recent decades is “unprecedented” by some definition, or whether past brief spikes may not be evident in some reconstructions. So have at it if you are interested. Seems to me the larger questions run along different lines. Is there any good reason to believe that current warming is a brief spike? Is there any good reason to anticipate a decade (for non-specialists, it’s easiest to stick to calendar decades, 2010-2019 and the like) that will be no warmer than the last, barring very large volcanic eruptions, or more importantly, several decades in a row that fail to show an upward trend of 1-2 degrees per century, or even more? If you don’t believe the past century, and especially the steady decadal rise since the 1970’s, indicates a problem yet, how many more decades would it take to indicate a problem worth combating to you? If you do recognize the current steady rise, along with the evidence it will continue, and find that a problem worth combating, then we’re on the same side about the important things, and I don’t have a beef.
Thomas, 198,
There was no need for your condescending trivialities. No need to bring Hitler into this neither.
I can only hope you feel better now.
As for the actual added value of your diatribe, I can’t see any.
Zebra, 203,
If you could stop the troll meme, that would be great.
“Your 100 years up 1.0C and 100 years down would still be “detected” as an anomaly.”
Not necessarily. Resolution problem. The rate of increase would be lost for sure, and the reconstruction could even be close to flat (like the original Marcott). Anything lasting only a century could be entirely lost.
My 0.5 degrees increase upthread was just an example of data smoothing, don’t use it for anything else.
Ray Ladbury 204,
This is a fair summary, thanks.
As for the “God of the gaps”, that is a stretch! I am not using gaps in knowledge to prove anything. My only problem is that people don’t even acknowledge there is a gap!
Bob, clutching at straws. There are many ways to transform a time signal to the frequency domain (or pseudo-frequency) I said FT (meaning the classical mathematical way and FFT. Sure there is DFT, and Laplace and a host of others. But again that is all irrelevant. Tamino’s error is he showing you can find periodicities, not that you can reconstruct an unknown signal from sparsely sampled datapoints. Take up my challenge – put the proxy portion of Marcott through Tamino’s hyper-clever transform and show me the solar cycle. That is something we know is there and so you should be able to see it. What I am saying is there is stuff in there we don’t know, can’t see and probably never will.
Thomas@205 :-
“If I have this right, then your opinion is that the ‘evidence/info’ based on ‘proxies’ for Temp going back 10-20K years is insufficient to logically or reasonably conclude today’s temps are ‘unprecedented’ in this time frame?”
that is why
@210 Keith Woollard “that is why”
Well at least I accurately understand what you mean.
Now your problem is to turn your “opinion” into a valid peer-reviewed paper/s and convince this field of science why your opinion is the more correct one by using evidence and rational analysis of that evidence in a compelling argument.
Good luck with that.
208 Romain, well you’re welcome to your opinions. I simply say no one likes being shown up for their faulty arguments and having what they actually said repeated back to them, so it’s clearer how little logic was contained in it in the first place.
Please try and find the point of difference between rhetoric/sophistry and genuine dialectical discussions. Maybe you’re right but just saying is is hardly convincing. (I get that complaint all the time myself) The tough issue is having everyone on the same page and who already agree with the basic knowledge/evidence in an objective sense.
On social media emotions rule (unfortunately) and social graces were abandoned years ago in favour of ego protection and time saving. :-)
Good luck with your opinions and theories.
Woolard, you’re assuming the 11-year Solar cycle (or the 22-year) has a measurable effect on Earth’s mean global annual surface temperature. It probably doesn’t. Want the math?
Romain 208,
You have now officially failed the test.
“resolution problem”…..”data smoothing”….”close to flat”
Can you provide any numbers or methodology to demonstrate your conclusions? What’s the difference between a “resolution problem” and “data smoothing” as you understand it? (Complete sentences please.)
It is obvious that you don’t know what you are talking about here. Keith Woollard knows a little more jargon but is playing the same troll game.
God of the gaps is not exactly the correct term– what you two are doing is equivocation and moving the goalposts. If you wanted to have a serious discussion, you would specify a lower bound to the physical phenomenon being measured. Are we also required to provide “a study” with appropriate resolution to prove that… the global mean surface temperature did not go up 1C in 1 second, and then down 1C in 1 sec, sometime in the past? Where does it end?
So, is it possible for the current energy increase in the global climate system, which has been caused by anthropogenic CO2, to return to pre-industrial in 100 years? Absolutely no. (Maybe in 500 if humans radically change their behavior and intervene.) Would that also be true for some hypothetical case in the past 10K years, where something other than CO2 caused the energy increase which caused the temperature increase? Absolutely yes. The latter is true both because of physical constraints and because it would have showed up as an anomaly in Marcott.
Keith Woolard @ 209:
Please remember that I first entered this discussion when I commented on your use of an argument I characterized as “but Nyquist…” . You have now (it seems to me) backed away from making that claim, after making a couple of more inconsistent claims that I have pointed out, and you are in the process of trying to shift the goalposts.
Now, you want to see solar cycles in Marcott – I presume you mean 11- and 22-year cycles, rather than the 10,000-100,000-year cycles associate with Milankovitch theory that clearly could be detected?. Even now, when we have detailed data on short-term solar cycles and temperatures, we can tell that such solar cycles do not have any significant effect on multi-decadal climate variation. Thus, physics tells us that the cycle you have selected would not be detectable even with higher temporal resolution. In addition to shifting goalposts, you are working your way through the common techniques of climate myths by setting Impossible Standards. Arguing that I probably won’t see a flea in my living room is not going to convince me that I can’t see an elephant either.
You clearly have not thoroughly read Tamino’s posts to understand what they do show, and are trying to challenge me to show something else. I am not interesting in what you think I should be doing. As I said: your credibility is shot. Continue to wave your hands as you see fit, but don’t expect anyone to think you’re providing a sound argument.
Keith and Romain,
See, that is the wonderful thing about science–it depends not just on empirical evidence but also on theoretical understanding. Evidently, you are willing to concede that the temperature reconstructions do not provide evidence of such rapid increases in the past. If you are going to contend that such periods are there, but merely not visible, then it is incumbent upon you to propose a mechanism that not only causes such a rapid, sustained rise over a short time period, but than disappears, leaving no trace. What is more, it should be a mechanism that recurs with some regularity, because it could otherwise be dismissed as a rare mechanism that likely has little relevance to current conditions.
This is a rather tall order, but it is how science works. Try it some time.
I can’t assume Mr. Woolard will respond to me, so I’ll just quickly do the math here for those who are interested.
The flux density of sunlight absorbed by the climate system is
F = (S / 4) (1 – A)
where S is the Solar constant and A the Earth’s bolometric Russell-Bond spherical albedo. A good recent value for S (Kopp and Lean 2011) is 1361.5 Watts per square meter, and A is about 0.3 (recent determinations range between 0.28 and 0.33, unfortunately, with very little precision). F is therefore about 238.26 W m^-2.
Kopp and Lean give the recent Solar minimum as S = 1360.8 W m^-2, implying an amplitude of 0.7 W m^-2 and a Solar maximum of 1362.2 W m^-2. Calculating S for minimum and maximum, we find Fmin = 238.14 W m^-2 and Fmax = 238.39 W m^-2.
Earth’s radiative equilibrium temperature is
Te = (F / ε σ) T^4
where ε is the emissivity (always taken as 1.0 at top-of-atmosphere) and σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant (5.670373 x 10^-8 W m^-2 K^-4 in the SI). This gives Te(min) = 254.57 K, Te(max) = 254.64 K.
But of course surface temperatures are higher by about 13% thanks to the greenhouse effect, as mitigated by convection and sensible/latent heat loss to the atmosphere. Let’s say we’re looking for an effect on surface temperatures between 287.66 and 287.74 K.
The curve is, of course, not perfectly regular by any means, either in mean value, amplitude, or wavelength. Mr. Woolard, then, wants us to find a curve in surface temperature of about 0.04 K amplitude spread over a period of 11-22 years, in a curve with a variance probably several times greater than that. If we can’t do that, he says, neither can we detect a 1.0-1.5 K rise which took 100-200 years.
You do the math.
214 Bob Loblaw Arguing that I probably won’t see a flea in my living room is not going to convince me that I can’t see an elephant either.
Excellent retort, not heard that one before. :-)
Do you think Keith and Romain would agree that one doesn’t need to “observe” a flea visually in their living room to be convinced at least one is there after being bitten by it?
BPL @ 213
http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=2353
Bob @ 214.
Yes I have read Tamino’s posts. They are just not very relevant. It is bizarre that there are three posts on the subject and none use real data. His/her/it’s argument is that we can spot a periodic function, therefore we can see all frequencies. Rubbish. Frequency decomposition is not really useful for the climate record unless you are looking for periodic influences.
Do you honestly believe that the global temperature for the last 10,000 years is as smooth as the proxy reconstructions? And that what we see in the last 120 years is only high frequency because of man??
Keith @220:
Now you’re just making me laugh. You mentioned nyquist, first at #172. You then doubled down in #179, saying that “you need to sample that waveform twice“.
In #184, I pointed you to a source (Tamino) that showed that nyquist is not a limiting factor in all cases – it provides evidence that you can (in at least some cases) detect sub-nyquist cycles when doing a Fourier transform on randomly-spaced data. You then tripled-down in # 185 when you said “I know to do an FT or an FFT requires a constant sample rate, and therefore there is an implied strict Nyquist frequency.“.
In #194, I pointed out that FT does not require a constant sample rate, to which you replied in #199 that “I know you can transform with non-evenly spaced samples.
…and now in #220, you just dismiss the Tamino posts as “not very relevant” and create a strawman of what Tamino posts and try to dismiss it.
It is easy to see that the one thing that is surely “not very relevant” is your posts.
Ok Bob Et Al, let me paraphrase the last 70 or so comments.
There was a comment that the recent warming was unprecedented in the last (let’s say) 10,000 years. The evidence was reconstructions in the peer reviewed literature. I, and Romain, suggested that the proxy record could not be used to say this due to resolution and smearing. The author of the study agreed due to those same two reasons, as Romain noticed.
But we are, instead, to trust a blogger who wants to remain anonymous, who only uses model data to show a different problem.
Wow, just wow.
Zebra 214,
The difference between the “resolution problem” and “data smoothing”? It is simply that the latter is the direct consequence of the former.
As for complete sentences, here is an attempt:
Say the real signal is a global spike of +1°C in 100 years and -1°C in 100 years. The temporal resolution of the available proxy record is 300 years. Here you have the “resolution problem”: the sampling frequency is lower than the frequency of the signal you try to reconstruct.
Consequence: the reconstructed signal can be anything between +1°C in 300 years then -1 in 300 years to a completely flat signal. This will depend if by chance you sample the signal at the very peak or if the entire 200 years of the spike lays between two sampling points. This is the “data smoothing”.
Of course this is all simplified to the extreme to make you (finally!) understand these concepts. Hope it helps.
“Are we also required to provide “a study” with appropriate resolution to prove that… the global mean surface temperature did not go up 1C in 1 second, and then down 1C in 1 sec, sometime in the past? Where does it end?”
It is really extremely simple: it ends at the actual 0.7°C in 100 years or 0.9°C in 120 years or whatever lates update in global temp you want to use. This is the claim. So this is the resolutions you need. Not 1 second, not 1 minute, not 1 hour, but about 100 years. Not 10°C, not 0.2°C, but about 1°C.
“So, is it possible for the current energy increase in the global climate system, which has been caused by anthropogenic CO2, to return to pre-industrial in 100 years? Absolutely no. (Maybe in 500 if humans radically change their behavior and intervene.)”
If you say so. But that’s not the issue.
“Would that also be true for some hypothetical case in the past 10K years, where something other than CO2 caused the energy increase which caused the temperature increase? Absolutely yes. The latter is true both because of physical constraints and because it would have showed up as an anomaly in Marcott.”
NO! Resolution problem ! See above. Back to square one again. And I still have not seen justification of the physical constraints you are talking about. My turn to ask you to provide complete sentences.
Ray Ladbury, 216,
Fair enough summary. Happy to see that someone understands the issue.
“leaving no trace.”
Well, to be frank, traces may be there. For example in the Vostok record. What is the theory explaining that the Antarctic can have such swings (I am talking about several degrees in several centuries), while the global temp is stable? Do we have a plausible and quantified mechanism at hand? It seems that this site (Vostok) is presently quite closely following the global trend. What was so different a few thousands years ago to make this site at odds with the rest of the globe?
Romain,
I thought this thread was dead, but I see you have finally demonstrated what I guessed in the first place– what you are describing as the resolution issue is simply incorrect, perhaps because you really don’t understand it. You have it backwards; I suggest you do some reading on the actual process.
Also, you asked for physical constraints, and when I gave them you said “it’s not the issue”. But it is, because the physical constraints of what is occurring now apply in the past as well. It’s physics, and nothing has changed in the last 10K years that would suggest a different outcome.
If you wish to continue trolling on this, put it in the Unforced Variations for Feb.
Zebra, 225,
What you have demonstrated is that YOU are the troll, and I have apparently fallen into your trap, because I am genuinely interested in understanding the subject, and I had hoped you would help.
What is incorrect in the resolution issue I described ? In this whole discussion, you haven’t provided anything of substance. You propose exercices, ask to provide clear sentences, to clarify thoughts, which I did. And after that you just say “simply incorrect”.
This is just recreational typing for you, it seems.
You did not give any explanation of physical constraints explaining the impossibility of having swings in global temperature in the past 10k years. Why you think you did, I fail to understand.
It really seems you are just a kid, not having a clue about the subject, but having fun contradicting adults, or playing the game “how far can I go in a conversation before people realise I don’t have a clue?” Well, you’ve gone that far, but no further, kid.
Unless you finally want to add substance to your responses?
You know, something more than “it’s physics” or “you have it backwards”…
(and feel free to do it in any thread you like)
Romain,
“the sampling frequency is lower than the frequency of the signal you try to reconstruct.
Consequence: the reconstructed signal can be anything between +1°C in 300 years then -1 in 300 years to a completely flat signal. This will depend if by chance you sample the signal at the very peak or if the entire 200 years of the spike lays between two sampling points. This is the “data smoothing”.
Of course this is all simplified to the extreme to make you (finally!) understand these concepts. Hope it helps.”
So, how did Marcott et al decide on which years to sample and which years to completely ignore? Is this now a conspiracy theory approach– they carefully chose the starting point to hide the 1 degree spike? I can imagine them saying: “Look, a spike at year 4700 BP! Let’s start our sampling to be sure we hit only 4850 and 4550!
If you are actually serious, then you are extremely confused in your thinking.
Also, I explained to you the mechanism by which the current increase in system energy is happening. For the temperature to go back down, we must
1. Stop producing CO2
2. The CO2 must be removed by natural processes.
3. All the accumulated energy must be radiated into space.
Even starting at 2, we are talking about hundreds and hundreds of years. That’s Physics! The planet has not changed that much in the last 10K years, as I said, so why would any processes of the same scale be any more rapid in the past?
Zebra,
Again you are acting like a kid. No conspiracy, nobody is accused of anything. My above simplified example was to make you understand the “resolution problem” and the resulting “data smoothing”. Don’t take it literally. Of course the global average temperature reconstruction is much more complicated than that.
“So, how did Marcott et al decide on which years to sample and which years to completely ignore?”
Marcott et al did not decide anything on the sampling. They took a few decisions, like the re-dating of some records, or re-calibration with more modern methods. But mostly they had to do with what is available: a network of only 73 proxy records with an average resolution of 120 years (but with a wide spread in the resolutions, from a year to several hundreds)
And if you combine these individual resolutions with the corresponding temperature and dating uncertainties and with the spatial resolution, namely that you have 73 proxies to represent the whole planet, you end up with a global average resolution of 300 years at best. Or, if you don’t like the vocabulary I use, consider what the authors of Marcott et al themselves say:
“We showed that no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years, 50% is preserved at 1000-year time scales”
So yes I am serious in questioning the “unprecedented” claim, because it seems we do not have sufficient empirical evidence.(i.e. the adequate resolution in the reconstruction of the past)
Now for your theoretical mechanisms:
The present warming is not the subject, apart from being the reference in the rate and duration of possible (or not?) PAST warmings. So please forget about your 1. and 2. I think we can agree that the CO2 level in the past 10,000 years has been relatively flat, so it cannot be the cause of a warming.
About your 3., it is important to precise which system you consider.
– If it is surface air only (where we have relatively accurate data for the past century), then the accumulated energy could come from oceans and go back there as quickly as it arrived. AND also radiate to space.
– If it is not only surface air temperature, what is it? And what measured accumulated energy are you talking about? This is not anymore about the 0.9°C in 120 years of the present surface air global average temperature.
Romain,
Because it is obvious that English is not your primary language, I have been far more patient than usual, trying to see if this is a vocabulary problem. But as far as I can tell, you are simply Keith Woollard with an accent– you give an answer, and when it is challenged you say “that’s not really what I meant”. Since I am indeed an adult and not a child, I do not find the game of whack-a-mole interesting at all.
So I will give my “translation” of your proposition and leave it at that:
-There was some natural event.
-This event caused a phenomenon which caused energy in the measured climate system to increase, resulting in a change in temperature. (We agree that CO2 was not involved, and in fact I said that at the outset. I only claim that the scale or magnitude of this phenomenon would be similar to that of CO2 today)
-This phenomenon caused energy to be transferred from the colder deep ocean to the warmer surface.
-Then, “suddenly” (in terms of the magnitude of the energy change) this phenomenon either stopped and was replaced, or reversed itself, and restored some of the energy to the deep ocean– by coincidence (?), the exact amount to restore the initial condition when radiation to space is included.
-Also by coincidence (?), the entire cycle of this massive natural phenomenon took the exact time that would cause Marcott, according to your interpretation, to miss it.
-Now, if we don’t wish to violate the fundamental principles of Thermodynamics, this would require something I call “God’s Little Heat Pump”. That’s Physics.
-So, we must also conclude that the (analogous) elements of GLHP– heat exchange structures, compressor, working fluid, and the energy source to operate it…– somehow existed for this time period and then vanished without a trace, even though, again, we are talking about large magnitudes.
Perhaps, if you are not familiar with heat pumps, you should begin by a little research. Then you can try to imagine how GLHP would have existed as a natural, not supernatural, phenomenon in the last 10K years.
Thanks for the conversation, and I hope you continue your education through other than Denialist blogs.
Zebra,
“when it is challenged you say “that’s not really what I meant”.”
No, I am just telling you to stop using my responses out of context, especially if it is for accusing me of conspiracy theory.
“This event caused a phenomenon which caused energy…”
No need to complicate the matter, drop the “event” and start with “a natural phenomenon caused energy…”
“-Then, “suddenly” (in terms of the magnitude of the energy change) this phenomenon either stopped and was replaced, or reversed itself, and restored some of the energy to the deep ocean– by coincidence (?), the exact amount to restore the initial condition when radiation to space is included.”
Do you question similarly all the natural cycles in nature?? And do you keep marveling at the fact that you come back to the ground after a jump?
“-Also by coincidence (?), the entire cycle of this massive natural phenomenon took the exact time that would cause Marcott, according to your interpretation, to miss it.”
Which coincidence? What exact time?
What exactly do you dispute in the “no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years, 50% is preserved at 1000-year time scales”? (quote from the Q&A of Marcott et al)
-Now, if we don’t wish to violate the fundamental principles of Thermodynamics, this would require something I call “God’s Little Heat Pump”. That’s Physics.
Back to your grandiloquent “that’s physics”…
“-So, we must also conclude that the (analogous) elements of GLHP– heat exchange structures, compressor, working fluid, and the energy source to operate it…– somehow existed for this time period and then vanished without a trace, even though, again, we are talking about large magnitudes.
Perhaps, if you are not familiar with heat pumps, you should begin by a little research. Then you can try to imagine how GLHP would have existed as a natural, not supernatural, phenomenon in the last 10K years.”
The energy source to operate your analogous heat pump is the sun. Here is your “God’s Little Heat Pump”. And it’s not that it appears or disappears (or even fluctuate itself). It is fairly constant, but it is stored at different rates and in different forms across the earth. And it is also redistributed in many ways (thermohaline circulation, gulf Stream, hurricanes, trade winds, to name a few), some of which we don’t fully understand yet.
We have ENSOs having measured impacts of 0.x degree on global temp. And this is just one of the many phenomena going on on earth. What makes you think that everything should be so stable?
Hopefully, you are willing to stipulate the laws of physics, and that we live in a physical world. Given those stipulations, then the energy to warm an entire planet must come from somewhere. You posit the Sun, and yet, we do not have any evidence of such large fluctuations on such short time scales. And even more important, we have evidence that contradicts solar irradiance as a cause of current warming.
The bottom line is that you are positing some undetected, and indeed undetectable mechanism. You have no idea what it might be–or at least you haven’t suggested any candidates. Now, pray, how is this scientific?