9 thoughts on “XKCD And Climate”

1. XKCD unintentionally illustrates the uncertainty of science. There is still much debate about humans first coming to the Americas via a land bridge.

   Its also amazing how smooth the historic temperature record is but how volatile it looks when there are actual observations.

   1. I actually found it very convincing, until I got to the end. Instead of the “pause” (which is probably the only real data that we are sure of in climate science) he shows a hockey stick.

      Um, really? I guess the extrapolation must have seemed forced when the end of the chart is flat.

      1. It was a cool timeline even with the climate stuff.

2. Morons. Anyone who thinks a trace gas, of which we contribute a minuscule proportion to the overall flows, is a danger is a moron.

3. Anyone confident in making projections should be megarich don’cha think?

4. “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

   Yogi Berra

5. Randall is a big warmista.

6. I’ve learned a long time ago I can’t expect to see other people eye on the eye about some things even if I agree with them most of the time. I also love his column but I’m an AGW skeptic (hah!) and I found this attempt kinda pathetic. They retain the climate data since the time modern hominids around (because it fits their results better) rather than the Quaternary and, even worse, it seems he’s smoothing the data points with a filter. Oh and the extrapolation he makes in the end doesn’t compute.

7. Also,

   I noticed there were no error bars. There should be some form of error estimation for the various time ranges, i.e.
   since satellite measurements
   royal navy measurements
   various historical proxies.

   But no, we get a dot.

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