Hi Adam (?),
Not sure what the message is that you are conveying, a simple defamation effort or a legal comment?
Bart,
I'm very surprised that you're not sure about the implications of the so-called Hockey Stick graph, because you seem to be a fairly intelligent bloke, despite being skewed towards climate change alarmism.
In summary, the Hockey Stick graph was a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the significance of a previous warm period, known as the Medieval Warm Period, in order to create alarm about our current, slight, global warming, by suggesting that this current warming was unprecedented.
The 'Climategate Emails' also revealed, in conversations between climate scientists and Michael Mann, that the evidence of previous and relatively recent warm periods should be suppressed in order not to introduce skepticism about CO2 being the main driver of the current global warming.
Again, for those who are interested, the following article, from 'Lead Authors' of the IPCC reports, describes the background of the Hockey Stick. The Hockey Stick graph has now been fully debunked
https://judithcurry.com/2014/04/29/ipcc-tar-and-the-hockey-stick/
"We were appointed L.A.s (Lead Authors) in 1998. The Hockey Stick was prominently featured during IPCC meetings from 1999 onward. I can assure the committee that those not familiar with issues regarding reconstructions of this type (and even many who should have been) were truly enamored by its depiction of temperature and sincerely wanted to believe it was truth. Skepticism was virtually non-existent. Indeed it was described as a “clear favourite” for the overall Policy Makers Summary (Folland, 0938031546.txt). In our Sept. 1999 meeting (Arusha, Tanzania) we were shown a plot containing more temperature curves than just the Hockey Stick including one from K. Briffa that diverged significantly from the others, showing a sharp cooling trend after 1960. It raised the obvious problem that if tree rings were not detecting the modern warming trend, they might also have missed comparable warming episodes in the past. In other words, absence of the Medieval warming in the Hockey Stick graph might simply mean tree ring proxies are unreliable, not that the climate really was relatively cooler."Anyway, about the 'hockey-stick curve':
https://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm
Bart,
Here's a quote from that dubious site which claims to be skeptical but obviously isn't.
"What the science says...
Since the hockey stick paper in 1998, there have been a number of proxy studies analysing a variety of different sources including corals, stalagmites, tree rings, boreholes and ice cores. They all confirm the original hockey stick conclusion: the 20th century is the warmest in the last 1000 years and that warming was most dramatic after 1920."
Do you really believe that statement, Bart? How do you interpret it?
The statement appears to me to be implying that all subsequent research involving proxy studies have confirmed the original Hockey Stick conclusion, which is obviously a big lie. Anyone can do a search on the internet to find scholarly research papers which indicate that both the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period were a least as warm as present, and possible warmer.
I have no doubt that there have been a
number of proxy studies that
all confirm the original hockey stick conclusions; but probably a
very small number. The question any thinking person should ask is, "How many proxy studies
do not confirm the Hockey Stick graph." That's the question which skepticalscience.com do not ask and is why their very name is misleading.
Those who have at least a basic understanding of the methodology of science understand that any outliers or inconsistent results in research are the secret behind scientific progress.
Evidence which is inconsistent with prevailing theories has to be explained. If it cannot be explained, then uncertainty must prevail until it is successfully explained. Such explanations might take the form of a new theory, eventually, or an understanding consistent with the existing theory after the application of further rational thought to the anomalies.. That's the nature of scientific process.
The problem for the lay person who is not a scientist, and/or who has little understanding of the methodology of science, is that they have to rely upon news reports. They can't work things out for themselves.
For example, if a climate scientist during a media interview were to state that the current warming period is the most rapid in the past 20 million years, I would immediately wonder how past records based upon inconsistent and conflicting proxy evidence could possibly determine with any accuracy, and with such resolution, that the current rate of warming over a mere couple of centuries was more rapid than any period during the past 20 million years. Nobody with any nous could believe such a statement, especially someone who has an understanding of camera resolution.
Imagine a graph of temperature records which covers 20 million years. To depict rises and falls that took place within a century or two, would require tremendous resolution. The graph would have to be a kilometre wide.
My advice to the lay person is, use your nous or common sense. Nobody has the expertise to analyse all the data gathered from the various disciplines of climatology, but one can assess the reasonableness and sensibility of certain statements and arguments.
If one understands how uncertain and problematic predictions can be with regard to less complex situations, such as human health, medication, and diet, then one should be able to appreciate how much more uncertain issues of climate change can be.
