You're still conflating two different questions, mhaze.

Whether temperatures were sometimes higher during the Holocene is a question about levels. Whether the climate system is being forced more rapidly today is a question about rates and dynamics. Marcott explicitly says his reconstruction cannot resolve the latter.

Saying "temperatures were exceeded X% of the time" does not address how fast those changes occurred, under what forcing, or whether they are comparable to the modern, instrumentally observed rise. That distinction isn't pedantry - it's the core of the issue.

Disagreeing with the inference you're drawing from those graphs isn't "refusing to see the data". It's refusing to collapse a rate question into a level statistic.

At this point we're just going around in circles. Do you have any new material? This is the third time we've been through all this.

A bad argument doesn't improve just because you left it to sit for a while.

"Saying "temperatures were exceeded X% of the time" does not address how fast those changes occurred"

That's because I don't accept that its being rising at a rate that can be 1/ compared to past rises and 2/ found to be rising faster than in the past.

You want me to accept your claims as established and then address it from that viewpoint. Nup.

Really what you, and a lot of the we're-all-gunna-die crowd, are doing is the equivalent of the 'God of the gaps' philosophy. Since there is no data as to the rate of rise in previous periods, that lack of knowledge is parlayed into claims that can be neither proven nor refuted, a very unscientific approach. And then, having made these unscientific claims, tried to use them to refute actual science data.

I've seen more than once over the decades that the great scare has been around. When the data is vague, the alarmists fill the gaps with their wishes rather than data. Then real scientists go out and get the data disproving the claims. Whereupon a new gap in the data is found and filled with alarmist wishes.

We were once told that current temperatures were the highest since the age of the dinosaurs. Then when that was disproven they moved, without drawing a breathe, to claims that its rising faster based on wishes, not data. Similarly with ocean temperatures. We were told that they were warming above anything we'd seen before. Then there was an effort to measure the upper layers and when that failed to meet their wished for evidence, they just asserted that the warming was really in the deep ocean. Now that that's been disproven, you move to claims based on precisely zero evidence, that the oceans are warming faster than ever before.

T'was always thus.

And there's the crux of our disagreement, mhaze:

//I don't accept that it's been rising at a rate that can be 1/ compared to past rises…//

You're not disputing a conclusion; you're rejecting the possibility of comparison altogether. Uncertainty in past data constrains what can be inferred - it doesn't license the claim that nothing meaningful can be inferred at all.

//You want me to accept your claims as established and then address it from that viewpoint.//

No. What I'm asking you to accept is that comparative inference under uncertainty is possible. That's a methodological premise of science, not a conclusion smuggled in by assertion. Rejecting that premise effectively opts out of inference - including the inferences you make when you say present conditions are "unremarkable".

//This is the equivalent of the ‘God of the gaps' philosophy.//

Your analogy is backwards.

"God of the gaps" fills ignorance with unfalsifiable claims. What's happening here is the opposite: you're using uncertainty as a veto on inference. That's an argument from ignorance, not a defence against it.

//Since there is no data as to the rate of rise in previous periods…//

There is data, but it is lower-resolution. Lower resolution smooths short-term variability; it does not make rates unknowable. That bias works against detecting rapid past change, not in favour of inventing it.

//We were once told… then they moved…//

This is narrative, not evidence.

No specific papers or analyses are cited - just a recurring story about "alarmists". That may explain your scepticism, but it doesn't substitute for engaging the actual scientific constraints.

At this point the disagreement isn't about individual datasets. It's about whether scientific inference under uncertainty is legitimate at all. Science proceeds by bounding uncertainty, not by declaring change unknowable whenever past data aren't perfect.

Once comparison is rejected in principle, disagreement about evidence is no longer possible.

Do you hear yourself?

We know as a matter of fact that current temperatures are not close to the highest during the Holocene. We know for fact that ocean temperatures are at the lower end of the 4.5 million year history.

Yet you disregard these facts because of some made-up assertions based on inference. Drawing inferences in the face of lack of knowledge is fine. But using those inferences to disregard established facts is the opposite of science.

mhaze,

The problem is that you’re drawing a false line between “established facts” and “inference”.

Claims about Holocene temperature rankings or multi-million-year ocean trends are themselves products of proxy reconstruction, smoothing, and interpretation. They are already inference-laden. Treating them as brute facts while dismissing dynamical and rate-based inference as “made-up” is an arbitrary distinction, not a scientific one.

Nothing I’ve said “disregards” those reconstructions. What I’ve rejected is the leap from levels to dynamics - from “sometimes higher” to “therefore modern change is unremarkable”. That leap is precisely where physics and rate constraints matter.

Science doesn’t stop at ranking past values. It asks how fast systems change, under what forcing, and whether those changes are comparable. Refusing to engage that question while accusing others of “disregarding facts” is just another way of avoiding it.

Science really isn’t your forte, is it?

Let's clear the fog, mhaze.

It's no secret that you rely on performative confidence and the fog of thread length to blur what's occurred in a debate. So I thought we could get our little right-wing friend to help clear the air for us...

Question:
In the attached debate, who out of mhaze and John Daysh is arguing the position most grounded in reality and the science?

Grok:
John Daysh is arguing the position that is most grounded in reality and the science.

...

Overall Evaluation

• Strengths of John Daysh's Position: Consistently emphasizes context, physics (e.g., forcing vs. equilibrium, rates vs. levels), and how science works (self-correction, bounding uncertainty). Aligns with mainstream evidence from bodies like IPCC, NOAA, NASA, and journals (Nature, Science). Avoids cherry-picking or overextrapolating single papers/datasets.

• Weaknesses of mhaze's Position: Relies on misinterpretations (e.g., using deep-time data to dismiss modern trends), unsubstantiated claims (e.g., Neukom "debunked" without sources), and narrative framing ("hysteria unravelling") over evidence. Ignores rate dynamics, a core of climate impact science (e.g., AR6 WG1). This echoes common denialist tropes (e.g., "it's cooled before," "alarmists pivot to rates") but doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

• Why Not a Tie? The debate isn't balanced; mhaze starts with a conclusion (scare unravelling) and fits data to it, while John Daysh engages the claims methodically, pointing to evidential gaps. Science favors the latter: Testable, contextual, and aligned with the weight of data.

http://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5LWNvcHk_30f09106-2107-429e-a3a0-e0aa9e65858c
http://drive.google.com/file/d/1gQtEBqQ-CY6dM78wSmzSilVfYhWEjj4A/view

"Do you hear yourself?" - mhaze