Item — HN Reader

It really seems like you're just trolling and aren't actually interested at all in what's true. Skepticalscience.com is a site created and maintained by a team of climate scientists. https://skepticalscience.com/about.shtml The article that diagram is from is here: https://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period-interm...

While greenland was warmer during the medieval warm period than immediately afterwards, its ice sheet is 400,000 years old. Saying they had "receded" is a stretch, and it is warmer today than it was then. The effect of the medieval warm period was localized to the north atlantic, while the rest of the world was colder, and the north atlantic is already substantially hotter today than it was then.

1 comments

No, skepticalscience.com is a website created by a web dev cartoonist with absolutely no climatology background[1]. I'm also well aware that Greenland's ice sheet is a remnant of the Quaternary Glaciation[2]. What word would you prefer other than "receded" to say that the extent of the ice sheet was less in the 11th century than it was in the 9th or the 20th?

Also, in the opposite spirit of your opening sentence, let me advise you that "It really seems like you're just trolling" is a very weaselly way to insinuate bad faith, and you should try to do better. If you want to call me a liar or a fool just do it. I don't think you could support that accusation based on my use of sources like wikipedia because I am acting in good faith and a spirit of intellectual curiosity, but hey you do you.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptical_Science

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation

He's an assistant professor of climate communication at George Mason University, and has coauthored several textbooks on climate change. https://communication.gmu.edu/people/jcook20

I'm not able to find any source describing the extent of Greenland's ice sheet during the medieval warm period. If you have one, you should post it. All I can find are temperature records which indicate greenland has been hotter than in the medieval warm period since the 1930s.

I have no idea what "assistant professor of climate communication" is supposed to mean, but it sounds like a journalism credential and not a scientific one. I'd wager it was granted in an honorary capacity on account of his website, not because of any scientific work.

I do find myself thinking though how would my intellectual heroes view that? What would Edsgar Dijkstra think of someone identifying as an "assistant professor of computing communication?" What would Richard Feynman think of someone identifying as an "assistant professor of physics communication?" While I can't be sure, abductive reasoning tells me their view would likely be dim to say the least.