6.22.2006

Plausible

Plausible - 1. believable: believable and appearing likely to be true, usually in the absence of proof
--Encarta

Plausible - 1 seeming reasonable or probable.
--Oxford

Plausible - 1 : superficially fair, reasonable, or valuable but often specious
--Merriam-Websters

Plausible - 1 seeming likely to be true, or able to be believed
--Cambridge

Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium.
--Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years [PDF]

So they are less certain that current temperatures are warmer than any time in the last 100 years, although they find this contention "plausible." They have even less certainty that the 1990s were the warmest decade or that 1998 was the warmest year in 1000 years. We just don't know for sure beyond 1600, is what they are saying.

Of course, the use of the word "plausible" is already morphing into stronger terms, with one scientist on the panel calling it "likely." This will be spun as complete vindication for the hockey stick by its supporters, when it has in fact been consigned to oblivion.
--Iain Murray

However, they nevertheless conclude that it is “plausible” – whatever that means – that the “Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium”. Here, the devil is in the details, as the other studies relied on for this conclusion themselves suffer from the methodological and data problems conceded by the panel. The panel recommendations on methodology are very important; when applied to MBH and the other studies (as they will be in short order), it is my view that they will have major impact and little will be left standing from the cited multiproxy studies.
-- Steve McIntyre

Today’s NAS report reaffirms what I have been saying all along, that Mann's ‘hockey stick’ is broken....Today’s report refutes Mann's prior assertions that there was no Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age. ...

This report shows that the planet warmed for about 200 years prior to the industrial age, when we were coming out of the depths of the Little Ice Age where harsh winters froze the Thames and caused untold deaths.

Trying to prove man-made global warming by comparing the well-known fact that today's temperatures are warmer than during the Little Ice Age is akin to comparing summer to winter to show a catastrophic temperature trend.
--Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) Chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works


...on the other hand:
...my reading of the section that deals with criticisms of Mann et al.'s work (starting at p. 105) is that while these critiques raise some interesting points, they are minor issues, and the committee find's Mann et al.’s original conclusion to be "plausible." I’d bet that the word "plausible" will be oft invoked as one of the take home messages of the report.
--Roger Pielke Jr.

The report clearly lays out a scientific consensus position on the historic temperature record. One element of that consensus is that the past few decades have been the hottest in at least 400 years. There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change – which doesn’t rest primarily on these temperature issues, in any event – or any doubts about whether any paper on the temperature records was legitimate scientific work. The report does show, unsurprisingly, that scientists need to continue to work to develop a more precise sense of what global temperatures were between the beginning of the last millennium and about 1600. Congress ought to let them go about that work without political interference.
-- Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) House Science Committee Chairman

The authors accurately note that, despite those uncertainties, the key conclusions reached by those studies (i.e., that hemispheric-scale warmth in recent decades is likely unprecedented over at last the past millennium) have been substantiated by many other studies, and the confidence in those conclusions appears greater, not lesser, after nearly an additional decade of research
--RealClimate (Michael Mann)