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Showing posts with label change point analysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label change point analysis. Show all posts

Monday, December 8, 2014

Change points in global surface temperature: and by what magic is earth warming?

Sou | 7:09 PM Go to the first of 28 comments. Add a comment

Quite often you'll read deniers claiming that the earth is warming by magic, or supernatural forces. No denier will ever use the words "magic" or "supernatural". They'll pick a euphemism, like "Little Ice Age" - though how an ice age caused warming I've yet to see anyone explain.

An ice age won't cause cooling or warming. An ice age is a state not a force. Sometimes a fake sceptic will add that it's because of a recovery from an ice age, as if warm was a natural state and cold an unnatural state. Yet that would require an explanation of how earth got into the unnatural state and what forced it out of that unnatural state. A lot of deniers think of climate as a bouncing ball minus the forcing that causes the ball to bounce. And they don't seem to mind that the bounce up in the global surface temperature is showing no sign of bouncing back down, although some of them swear that we're heading for an ice age - any day now.

Occasionally there'll be a vague explanation for the unnatural state, usually something to do with the sun - but with little enthusiasm.  (The sun may have played a minor role during the Little Ice Age, recent research points to the cause of it being heightened volcanic activity, which is thought to have driven changes in the ocean which caused more cooling. See papers below.) And when one asks, well what about the decline in solar forcing recently - why hasn't it cooled down? You'll be lucky to get a response.