Richard Milne on the divergence problem
Nov 14, 2011
Bishop Hill in Climate: MWP

This lecture from Dr Richard Milne is being commented on in the Paul Nurse thread. I'd actually come across it a couple of weeks ago, when it appeared on a Skeptical Science thread, but I'd held off posting about it because Ben Pile and I were supposed to be facing Dr Milne at a debate at Edinburgh University next week. Unfortunately the debate has now been cancelled, so here is the video.

Look out for the discussion of the divergence problem, which Dr Milne appears to think is a problem affecting bristlecone pines (there is discussion of a divergence in the Salzer paper he cites, but it's a divergence between ring widths and densities IIRC - nothing to do with hide the decline at all). Look out also for how he moves on very quickly over the question of whether the divergence problem can be shown to be a problem unique to the late twentieth century.

Amazing the things that Skeptical Science thinks are reliable, isn't it?

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