I said
"historical"
temperatures,
meaning proxy
measurements
made today,
that can be used
indirectly to estimate
past temperatures
in a specific location.
That is real science.
I did not say
"hysterical"
temperatures,
meaning leftists claiming
they can predict the future,
see only a bad climate ahead,
and demand that you
do everything they say,
without question,
even if they are wrong,
because doing nothing
could be a huge risk !
That is junk science -- actually
a political strategy borrowed
from religious leaders, who
claim you will go to hell if you
don't follow their commandments.
That strategy doesn't work on me,
because I've been an atheist for
about 60 years !
For us, there is the secular
alternative "religion" of
the coming climate change
crisis.
You don't have to pack
your bags, and go to hell,
because the entire planet
around you will become
like hell, from climate
change !
A climate crisis
we have been told
is coming,
for the past
50 years, so far,
buy it never arrives ?
A good fairy tale for
a six year old, maybe ?
But that strategy
doesn't work
on me either.
Real scientists are still trying
to figure out the past climate
on our planet, and the causes
of past climate change are still
a list of the usual suspects.
but in no particular order.
The junk science of climate change
is that one variable, man made CO2,
emitted from burning fossil fuels,
controls the future global average
temperature.
And never mind the 4.5 billion years
of naturally caused climate change
before 1975 !
Let's move away from the usual,
always wrong, speculation about
the future climate, and consider
how the past climate can be
estimated with measurements
made today.
Real science.
Complicated.
Not precise.
Many unknowns.
Scientists "reconstruct"
past temperatures, and
sometimes CO2 levels,
with proxy measurements.
Good” proxies can't have
inconsistent and noisy data,
not all of which are “proxies”
for the item being reconstructed.
Geophysicists and geologists
may combine “good” (high
resolution) data, with lower
quality data, rather than
leaving gaps in their studies.
That might be human nature,
but is not good science.
For a type of proxy to be useful
in a reconstruction network,
it needs to have been applied
to many locations.
There are dozens of polar ice
core isotope series,
for one example,
qualifying that proxy class
as being well distributed.
A good proxy
also needs to be
high resolution
and well-dated.
Ice cores are dated
with high accuracy.
Ocean sediments
are not well dated.
Resolution
of ice core, and
other proxies,
deteriorates
with age.
We know the results of the
Canadian glaciers melting,
from around 20,000 to 10,000
years ago -- they left Michigan,
where I live, filled with lakes !
A proxy that covers the build
up, and then melting, of all that
ice (that raised sea level by
about 120 meters, or 400 feet).
would capture a huge
fairly recent event that
you'd want to be visible
in your proxy data.
Antarctic (and Greenland)
ice cores are a very important
example of such proxies.
But remember that
the ice cores are
from glaciers,
which are really
very slow flowing
"rivers of ice"
The source ice,
from deeper sections
of an ice core, can come
from higher elevations,
imparting a bias
to the series.
Changes in elevation
of the Greenland
and Antarctic
ice sheets
(mostly lowering)
result in an important
long-term drift in the
association between
isotopes (d18O, d2H)
and temperature.
Real science is complicated.
Junk climate science is
simple --
gloomy predictions
are merely asserted,
(while wrong past
predictions are
always ignored)
... and
their "proof"
is the usual
'you're too stupid
to be worthy of
a debate with us'
statement,
that's typical
of leftists:
' Because we
are important
federal
goobermint
officials,
with advanced
science degrees,
and we say so! '