Richard: “You say that my explanation of recovery from the Little Ice Age (LIA) was not sufficiently clear for you to understand it.”
I didn’t say that. I wasn’t sure which of your statements was intended to explain your 1998 claim.
“We are nearing the end of the warm phase of the 1500-year-cycle, so the cooling phase of the 1500-year-cycle may have started when we reach the end of the present (cooling) phase of the 60-year-cycle.”
So it’s cycles within cycles. That has a familiar ring. The major problem for this explanation is the weak evidence — much of it anecdotal — for the influence of cycles, at least in recent geologic times, whereas there is strong evidence for the current influence of CO2.
“A “generally accepted view” is not evidence that anything is correct…”
The generally accepted view is among climate scientists, as reflected in IPCC reports, and as I said, this view is supported by the evidence. But this raises an interesting point. Like most people who have an interest in global warming I am not a climate scientist. I know the basics, but in the absence of becoming proficient in the relevant discipline, as a layperson I must settle for taking the word of people who I believe have the best case.
Necessarily, this means that in cases outside of my expertise my most rational course of action will be to accept the generally accepted view, unless that view contains some obvious errors of logic or fact, and what I call ‘proxies’ for trust/distrust. I have found these standards help me to sort out the wheat from the chaff.
