No, but you would expect to see both, pre-Holocene and Holocene optimum, in many places.

Even if you carefully choose the temporal resolution that best fits your message, I think you'll find it very hard to find a higher modern dT/dt, given that you use the same resolution then and now. If you use a higher temporal resolution both the modern warming and its warming rate become less severe.

I need to move up to 300 years and above, and if you do that to modern temperatures, the AGW signal gets pretty lost. Sorry.

Nono. Well, yes, more, but my 2x was a comparison between the amplitude of the multi-decadal cycle against the long term local trend over a century (The exact factor will of course depend on the smoothing used. 30y gives about 2x, but using a 30y average for a 60y cycle mutes the amplitude, so it seems best to say at least 2x).

If you compare the 1910 to 1940 30y trend against the 30y global trend of the same period (e.g. 30y HadCRUT4), it's more like 7x (and 8x if I chose 1905-1945 instead). That's precisely why I warn against interpreting the Arctic warming of the past decades without an understanding of a possible multi-decadal cycle. If you look at the rate of the 30y mean in the 20's and 30's, it's approaching 7C/century.

Mmm, well I don't, and neither do the people who actually study this kind of thing for a living. They were extremely surprised to see such old vegetation at all.

The pre-Holocene moss doesn't stick around for very long after it has been re-exposed.

just a heads-up though that high resolution means short interval between points

We're starting to approach a good synthesis of the reasons why I and many others call this period of warming unprecedented, but it may take a few steps as we proceed through them each at a time.

We never claim that our data demonstrates Arctic-wide unprecedented warming, despite what Wyatt writes. Read the ms carefully, please. Our current research is expanding this study to other Arctic regions to evaluate the spatial domain of the Baffin Island pattern

Observed increases in ocean heat content (OHC) and temperature are robust indicators of global warming during the past several decades. We used high-resolution proxy records from sediment cores to extend these observations in the Pacific 10,000 years beyond the instrumental record. We show that water masses linked to North Pacific and Antarctic intermediate waters were warmer by 2.1 ± 0.4°C and 1.5 ± 0.4°C, respectively, during the middle Holocene Thermal Maximum than over the past century. Both water masses were ~0.9°C warmer during the Medieval Warm period than during the Little Ice Age and ~0.65° warmer than in recent decades. Although documented changes in global surface temperatures during the Holocene and Common era are relatively small, the concomitant changes in OHC are large.

Welp, it was 10 degrees warmer today than it was yesterday, therefore it must have been 300 degrees warmer 30 days ago. Oh wait...

You're either a complete troll, or you haven't the slightest clue how math or science work, or what this thing called a "trend" is.

Looking decades into the future, yes, I think the window for ice free summers is soon closing with the next one opening in the latter part of the 21st century (see previous discussion). But it hasn't closed yet. "Perfect storm" conditions could wipe the ocean clear up to the North Pole next year or even much later. You never know.

Paper finding the early Holocene oceans quite much warmer than the last century:

Thanks! I haven't read the full paper yet (I've been very busy with my own papers lately, so sorry for the delays!) but judging by the abstract this is great information, and supports the consensus that the HTM was a couple degrees warmer than the 20th century average.

I like to portray his argument in visual format.

I haven't either, but it seems to suggest that much heat can "hide" in the oceans, which we keep hearing about now during the "pause".

If so, it could explain an open Arctic Ocean and still open up possibilities that there was more land ice during the Holocene optimum than we assume.

Indeed! [image]
Anyone can pick their doomsday scenario of choice. And they do.

It is possible that the 2013 rebound was the turn until the next cycle. But as long as some people claim that we hit bottom every time the cat bounces, someone will eventually be right. So if they turn out to be right, I'll give them no credit for their predictive skills.

You say that as if it is/was a mere hypothesis.

[H]ypotheses non fingo. Quicquid enim ex phaenomenis non deducitur, hypothesis vocanda est; et hypotheses seu metaphysicae, seu physicae, seu qualitatum occultarum, seu mechanicae, in philosophia experimentali locum non habent. In hac philosophia propositiones deducuntur ex phaenomenis, et redduntur generales per inductionem. Sic impenetrabilitas, mobilitas, et impetus corporum et leges motuum et gravitatis innotuerunt. Et satis est quod gravitas revera existat, et agat secundum leges a nobis expositas, et ad corporum caelestium et maris nostri motus omnes sufficiat.

The fact that heat is transferred to the oceans does not affect our conclusions about prehistorical land or sea ice which are arrived at through observation. There is modeling, too, but most models these days do ocean-atmosphere interactions.

The red trend line in your image is also physically meaningful -- it's the long term trend towards what would be the next ice age if not for human activity.

The IPCC uses phrases like "very likely" meaning 90% probability or more. For natural science I think such a figure is extremely weak. If there for every action was an opposite reaction only 90% of the time, or if you dropped a stone and 1 in 10 times it would fly into the air, I don't think Newton would have made his theory.

Are you saying that human induced warming will cancel the next ice age?

I don’t see any problems other than that you continue to feel capable of forming opinions and arguments on a subject for which you are neither academically nor professionally involved in. Even a historical understanding of climate science may help you here.

It draws attention to a couple of problems. First that temperature measured a couple of metres above ground globally has been chosen as the metric for global warming (e.g. the two degree target). Second that the models didn't in general predict that the heat would go into "hiding" from the late 90's. That doesn't reduce the likelihood that this is exactly is happening, the problem is more on the philosophical level. If this can happen unpredicted, it also means that if surface temperatures perfectly obey warming models, we must likewise with great precision independently know what the heat exchange was between air and ocean to exclude the possibility that this didn't mask an incorrect model (like oceans today mask temperatures from a presumed correct model).

N% confidence level does not simply mean a finding was reproducible N% of the time (so you can ditch the stuff about Newton and philosophy, but thank you for your effort.) It means rather that as experts in the field, they have examined, either by qualitative or quantitative means, the type, amount, quality, and consistency of evidence, and conclude “based on this evidence, we are N% confident that this result is correct.”

If you want to disqualify me from reasoning about science, try at least to link what you write a bit more explicitly to what I wrote.

So if Newton was N% confident about his laws, how many % of the time should we expect to reproduce the predictions of the laws? This is getting weird. Well, the answer is 100%, as any other number mean would that Newton was wrong. The point was, if he was 95% confident, he would likely call it a hypothesis having no place in science (hypotheses have later become quite accepted as part of the scientific method, though).

You question the correctness of the models because they did not predict the slowdown of atmospheric temperature due to this mechanism of transfer of heat between atmosphere and ocean. Of course they didn't. The ability to model it did not even exist at the time and we are still very much unable to completely model such variability even today.