In a paper “Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation”, Shakun et al. (Nature 2012) contend that rising temperature at the end of the last Pleistocene glaciation were preceded by increasing atmospheric CO2.
In his usual masterful fashion, Willis Eschenbach has dug deeply into the data used in the paper and shredded the conclusions in it (seehttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/06/a-reply-shakun-et-al-dr-munchausen-explains-science-by-proxy/
and http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/07/shakun-redux-master-tricksed-us-i-told-you-he-was-tricksy/#more-60932/. So rather than dwell on the things that Willis has already shown so well, I thought I’d take a look at some of the assumptions and misconceptions that paper is built upon.When reading a paper like this, I always like to ask myself, what are the basic assumptions that underlie the methodology involved? What contentions are simply stated as fact or generated in a computer model, rather than demonstrated with real, physical evidence? I will confess here that I don’t believe computer models really proveanything. Sure, they can suggest many things and point out areas of interest, but I live the real world and prefer real physical evidence upon which to base important conclusions. That doesn’t mean I discount models out of hand—it simply means that I look for physical evidence to confirm or deny what the models are saying. So I asked myself a series of questions about the basic issues in this paper. Here are some of the questions that I came up with (the answers follow).
