Why Splicing Modern Climate Data onto Proxy Data is Unethical and Unscientific
The allure of seamlessly blending modern, instrumental climate records with paleoclimate data obtained through proxies like tree rings and ice cores is undeniable. It promises a comprehensive view of Earth’s thermal history, stretching back millennia. However, before succumbing to this tempting shortcut, we must acknowledge its profound ethical and scientific challenges. This article delves into these challenges, arguing that splicing modern data onto proxies is, at best, dubious science and, at worst, a gross misrepresentation of Earth’s climatic past.
The first, and perhaps most significant, hurdle lies in calibration. Proxy data, unlike meticulously recorded instrumental readings, reflect complex relationships between environmental factors and the proxy itself. Tree ring width, for instance, is influenced not just by temperature but also by precipitation, sunlight, and even insect outbreaks. This intricate interplay makes it exceedingly difficult to isolate the temperature signal with sufficient accuracy. Simply splicing modern data, obtained through direct temperature measurements, onto these proxies ignores this intricate web of influences, potentially skewing the reconstructed temperature record.
For example, oxygen isotope ratios are valuable tools for paleoclimate studies, but calibrating them to absolute temperatures is fraught with complications. Different materials, like ice cores and foraminifera, incorporate isotopes in distinct ways, requiring specific calibration equations. Additionally, environmental factors like salinity and evaporation can influence the oxygen isotope signature, introducing uncertainties and requiring corrections based on the specific context. Finally, choosing a reference period for calibration is crucial as this can introduce biases.
Modern instrumental data and proxy data are fundamentally different beasts. Instrumental data provides direct, continuous measurements of temperature at specific locations. Proxy data, on the other hand, offers indirect, often discontinuous, and geographically averaged estimates. Averaging temperatures across vast regions over long timescales masks crucial local and short-term variations, crucial for understanding climate dynamics. The inherent heterogeneity of proxy data makes it a poor match for the precise, point-specific nature of modern instrumental readings.
Furthermore, proxies respond to temperature with varying lags and lead times. Tree rings, for example, might reflect temperatures from the prior summer, not the contemporaneous period. Splicing modern data directly onto such proxies ignores these temporal offsets, potentially creating a misleading impression of synchronic relationships that simply don’t exist.
The ethical implications of splicing modern data onto proxies are far-reaching.
By presenting a seemingly seamless record of warming, such reconstructions can downplay the complexity and nuances of Earth’s past climate. They fuel simplistic narratives of inevitable and linear warming, overlooking the role of natural cycles and amplifying anxieties about anthropogenic climate change. Such narratives are weaponized by various agendas, hindering constructive discourse and informed policy decisions.
Moreover, by obscuring the inherent uncertainties and limitations of proxy data, splicing can create a false sense of precision and confidence. This risks undermining public trust in scientific methods and fostering skepticism toward legitimate, evidence-based research on climate change.
In summary, splicing modern climate data onto proxy data is scientifically questionable due to differences in the nature of the data, calibration challenges, and resolution differences. Ethically, it risks data misrepresentation, has serious policy implications, can erode public trust, and may violate norms of scientific transparency and reproducibility.
Source: Substack
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
If one would compare Modern Climate Data WITH Proxy Data such as tres rings one would being doing SCIENCE. For I believe, with a little effort if one did this one could easily unravel the”complex relationships between environmental factors and the proxy itself. Tree ring width, for instance, is influenced not just by temperature but also by precipitation, sunlight, and even insect outbreaks.”
I have owned a 7 acre natural laboratory of ponderosa pine trees. Some my pine trees had a natural disease of these trees. So, I can take my chain saw and compare tree ring widths of these diseased trees with the healthy trees which stood within 20 feet of each other. These pine trees have a long tap root which extends deep into the ground and this allow them to survive in areas of low normal precipitation. And it is easy to see there is major obvious influence of this factor upon tree ring width. My natural 7 acre laboratory burned in a wildfire, as did the 13 additional acres of sagebrush.
Now I suspect some readers have read that climate change is causing more frequent wildfires . However I would like such people with this idea to explain how it is that a ponderosa pine tree with a 1000 tree rings has ever been found.
Many acknowledge that weather is clearly variable and that what we term CLIMATE is cyclic. And I believe if one observes certain facts one must agree. we humans talk all the time about the very variable, even complex, weather but lt seems no one has ever changed it much. But we have dammed rivers and streams and changed the stagebrush to green alfalfa or pumped water from beneath the earth’s surface with the same result.
Have a good day
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Kevin Doyle
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Please, remind me in the year 1800, how many locations worldwide had detailed meteorological records?
The only one of which I am aware was the British Royal Navy. Naval Ships’ Log Books, recorded at Greenwich Maritime Museum, which traveled the world for centuries, recorded daily day-time and night-time temperatures at sea and in all ports visited.
Strange observation. The temperatures recorded in Kingston, Jamaica in 1740 are identical to the same weather reports today.
Who should we believe? Actual Naval records for three hundred years; or ‘Doomsday’ assertions by self-proclaimed ‘Climate Scientists’?
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Bevan Dockery
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Why struggle with data ? The fact is the CO2 does not generate heat so it cannot raise the temperature of anything.
Furthermore there is no glass structure enclosing the Earth so there is no “greenhouse effect”. The later is based on the claim that atmospheric radiative gases back-radiate heat from the Earth towards its surface but that is plainly false. Photons emitted by radiative gases do not come equipped with direct finders, they are not sentient beings such as homing pigeons. They must radiate at random in all directions of 3-dimensional space and, as they are above the Earth’s surface, more that 50% of the emitted radiation must head out into space. That is, they cool the Earth.
Lets stop playing number games and just consider the facts.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Devan,
You ask: “Why struggle with data?”
Because measured data is the basis of QUANTITATIVE SCIENCE.
Have a good day
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Bevan Dockery
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Thank You Jerry,
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Bevan Dockery
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But how do you measure the heat produced by CO2, the “Greenhouse Effect” or “Back-radiation”? There is none so there is nothing to measure, the so-called data is all fiction.
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Robert
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Not to mention the mineralization in Various areas where I have observed in my lifetime tremendous differences in different soils and geology in the health and growth rate of trees as well as southern exposure hill sides. There are so many variables one could think of in tree growth rings that have nothing to do with temperature. I always think of the variables the more there are the more I smell bullshit.
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