mhaze,

Let's push aside the theatrics and slander in your last reply and focus on the substance, shall we?

You've just claimed that variables like ocean temperature are at "very usual levels" and in some cases "close to unprecedented lows". That's not a matter of interpretation or framing. It's either true or it's false.

And it is false.

Observational records show ocean heat content at record highs, with sustained positive energy imbalance. No reputable dataset shows modern oceans at or near unprecedented lows. If you believe otherwise, cite the specific record you think demonstrates this.

As for "rate versus level", that distinction wasn't invented as a rhetorical escape. It's fundamental to impact analysis. Systems adapted to slow variation can fail under rapid forcing even within historically observed ranges. This has been standard across climatology, ecology, and geophysics for decades.

If your argument now rests on the claim that both absolute levels and rates of change are "very usual", then that's the claim to defend. But it needs evidence, not character assessments.

If you'd like to continue, let's do it on that basis.

Over to you...

P. U. Clark et al, 2025: Mean ocean temperature change over the past 4.5 million years

http://cp.copernicus.org/articles/21/973/2025/cp-21-973-2025.pdf

mhaze,

Thanks for the link. But by citing that paper, you're repeating the same mistake I pointed out earlier.

Clark et al. reconstruct mean ocean temperatures over the past 4.5 million years under near-equilibrium conditions. They're explicit about the fact that these changes occur on million-year timescales and under very different boundary conditions to the present.

The paper doesn't claim that modern oceans are "at close to unprecedented lows", nor does it argue that recent warming is insignificant. It also does not dispute the relevance of rates of change.

In fact, a key point of the paper is that the ocean behaves very differently when changes happen slowly over millions of years than when it's forced rapidly, as it is today.

Using a deep-time cooling trend to dismiss concerns about rapid, human-driven warming on century timescales is therefore a category error - and one the authors themselves don't make.

Thanks for filling me in on what the paper doesn't say. As usual you assert that something that isn't proven, proves your point. Since it isn't proven what the rate of change is, you assert it is what you want it to be.

OTOH, perhaps you could just look at the graphs and the data and draw your own conclusions.

No one knows what the rate of change of things like temperatures and sea levels and sea temperatures were in pre-1750 period. As usual the alarmists take the lack of data and assert that their fantasies must therefore be true.

Meanwhile, others also notice that the climate scam is unravelling. From the great Matt Ridley... http://tiny.cc/9yux001

Excerpt... "in the US it is not just the Republicans who have given up on climate change: the Democrat party has stopped talking about it, hardly mentioning it during Kamala Harris’s campaign for president. The topic has dropped to the bottom half of a table of 23 concerns among Swedish youths. Even the European parliament has now voted to exempt many companies from reporting rules that require them to state how they are helping to fight climate change."

On the same lines, these quotes from Germany's Chancellor Merz...

“It was a serious strategic mistake to phase out nuclear power,” Germany is undergoing the “most expensive energy transition in the world.”

“We inherited something that we now need to correct, but we simply don’t have enough energy generation capacity,” Merz added.

Observed... "Following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Germany rejected inexpensive Russian oil and gas in favor of costlier alternatives. This resulted in energy prices soaring for both industry and households.

The German economy has steadily contracted since then."

Maybe they could look to adopting Trump's policies to revitalise their economy....oh wait, it wasn't the policies it was just coincidence. Perhaps the Germans should pray for a similar coincidence.

mhaze,

At this point you've moved from disputing what the paper says to disputing whether rates of change can be known at all. That's a much stronger claim - and it's simply wrong.

We don't need perfect pre-1750 records to identify rates. Multiple independent proxies allow us to bound how fast temperatures and sea levels changed in the past, and those bounds are orders of magnitude lower than what we observe today. That's why rate matters: systems that can adjust to slow change can fail under rapid forcing.

Telling people to "just look at the graphs" isn't a response. Interpreting those graphs using physics and attribution is the entire point of climate science and that's exactly what the Clark et al. paper does, while explicitly distinguishing slow, equilibrium behaviour from rapid, transient response.

Again, you've made the same mistake I pointed out earlier: treating deep-time equilibrium reconstructions as if they speak to modern, rapid anthropogenic forcing.

We don’t need perfect pre-1750 records to talk sensibly about rates. A range of independent proxies lets us put upper bounds on how fast temperatures and sea levels changed in the past, and those bounds are far below what we’re measuring now. That’s why rate matters: gradual change and rapid forcing don’t produce the same outcomes.

The paper doesn't claim that modern oceans are "at close to unprecedented lows", nor does it argue that recent warming is insignificant. It also doesn't dispute the relevance of rates of change. In fact, a central point of the paper is that the ocean behaves very differently when changes happen slowly over millions of years than when it's forced rapidly, as it is today.

As for Ridley, German energy policy, or what political parties choose to emphasise in campaigns: those are sociological and political observations. They don't alter ocean heat, radiative imbalance, or the physical constraints.

The paper is about how the ocean behaved over millions of years under quasi-equilibrium conditions. It does not support the claims you've attached to it, and it doesn't undermine modern climate risk assessments driven by rapid radiative forcing.

Try again.

"Multiple independent proxies allow us to bound how fast temperatures and sea levels changed in the past,"

Just asserting it doesn't make it so. No really, it doesn't. Science says something different. There are any number reasons why proxies can't be accurate to the level you're asserting.

"The paper doesn't claim that modern oceans are "at close to unprecedented lows","

No, the graph does that.

"does it argue that recent warming is insignificant."

No it isn't about that at all.

Why don't you tell us what else it doesn't say. Does it say anything about the Kardashians?

"a central point of the paper is that the ocean behaves very differently when changes happen slowly over millions of years than when it's forced rapidly, as it is today."

Rubbish. Now you're just making it up. Where does it say that?

"As for Ridley, German energy policy, "
Nowt to do with the oceans. I mentioned it as yet another signpost on the road to the unravelling of the great climate scare.