Tuesday, March 19, 2013

The Wheelchair

UPDATE:  An English version of Jos Hagelaars Dutch  post is now available on Our Changing Climate.  Eli appreciates their recognition that this indeed is the Wheelchair Curve

Jos Hagelaars splicing of the Shakun, Marcott, HadCRUT4 and CMIP5 A1B temperature anomaly reconstructions is clearly going to become iconic.  Icons, like the hockey stick, need names.  Eli was playing around with a few, the beach chair,  the Barca lounger the airplane seat, none quite fit, until the Rabett thought about what we are doing to our world


Oh yes, FWIW, the spike at the end is the instrumental record and the CMIP5 models of our future based on our current behavior and has nothing to do with how accurate the Marcott reconstruction is at recent times.  Indeed that is the strength of Hagelaar's wheelchair, that it uses multiple sources to give us the big picture in one figure. 

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks to me like half a head with a crew-cut (the lump on the right is an ear). So I propose the "head-shot".

Anonymous said...

The English translation of Jos Hagelaars' post, featuring an English wheelchair, is now up: http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/the-two-epochs-of-marcott/

Bart

Anonymous said...

Lump on the *left*. Stupid me.

Anonymous said...

It most definitely is a wheelchair, anyone can see that: The Great Wheelchair of Climate Change.

And we are all perched on its seat - careening towards an uncertain future, giggling like a maniac while shouting: "Make way! Get out of the way, thou stupid inhabitants of the Holocene! All Hail the Great Wheelchair!"

From the not-too distant future we will look back on what once was, a previous geological epoch. The world as it was when our civilisation was born and flowered. The Holocene, the world of our Grandparents, as remote and as strange as the last ice age or the Paleocene.

Albatross said...

It might look like a wheel chair, but it one that is moving bloody fast by climate standards.

My choice is still The Scythe, albeit one with an atypical blade.

In other news, I see that Nigel Persaud still has his knickers firmly tied in a knot. Tough having delusions of grandeur like Nigel has is tough, he now is under the delusion that he knows more than the eminent Professor Mix ;)

Someone should tell Nigel that Marcott et al. was in fact the paleo equivalent of a Honeypot and that he should get out while the going is relatively good.

Anonymous said...

Somebody should superimposed Loehle 2007 on the "Wheelchair".

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Clockwise 90 degrees, and it's the Alfred Hitchcock

Steve Bloom said...

Climate graphics are in the air, it seems.

"A-Team" just posted this over at Neven's. Paleontologists won't be entirely amused, but that problem is easy to fix and won't make it any less effective.

Anonymous said...

I've always preferred the term 'Neocene' myself, since the Anthropocene is going to be brief.

a_ray_in_dilbert_space said...

kT,
Indeed. I suspect the sedimentary layer will be so thin, it might be referred to as the Uncene

raypierre said...

My favored term for the climate period we're bring about is the Obcene

Martin Vermeer said...

> the Obcene

EJO Schrama proposed 'kleptocene' for the current transitional period

Anonymous said...

The kleptoscene is bringing about the Kleptocene?

- Bob

Anonymous said...

I was wondering if it's called 'the wheelchair' because it doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Anyway, here's my take:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/tamino-loses-the-plot-with-new-hockeystick/

EliRabett said...

Nope, because what we are doing to ourselves and our future is crippling.

Anonymous said...

Seriously, "wheelchair" is the most lame name imaginable. The associations invoked are, in my opinion, desastrous for climate communication! The lame jokes from the deniers are audible even now! And remember: A good laugh is not an argument, but nevetheless will pull the audience towards the joker, lame or not.

John Mitchell said...

They said it was the Magnon Line, since it is about the range of time that cro-magnon man took pre-eminence over neanderthal to the point when cro-magnons (us) may lose it's place in this creation.

also similar to the Maginot Line, as in we can't get around this one. . .

Hank Roberts said...

Scythe.

2006
http://www.dragonquestfrontiers.com/sitebuilder/images/scythe-155x299.jpg
2007