Discontinuity of a continuous variable is a huge no no!!!
Hello,
I'm sorry, I don't understand, could you be more specific. If you talk about physical values, there is a continuity, but if you talk about data points, the line inbetween is just a creation of our imagination in order to be as close as possible of the reality.
If you talk about trends, there is no need for continuity. You see that in nature everywhere. For example :
- if you make a long term trend on the water level of a river, it will be flat, but it is not going to help you to predict how long ships can go under the bridge when water level is going up.
- the hockey stick temperature graph is a discontinuity in the earth temperature trend.
- if ou make a long term (millions of years) linear trend on earth temperature, the hockey stick will be just normal in the picture, but it’s not going to help you very much. If you make different trends for the warmer, colder and changing periods, you get interesting information.
- sea level also doesn’t have a stable linear behavior.
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/- even for sea ice extent, I believe that it was more or less stable until it started to decrease dramatically.
It is always possible to create a mathematical formula where data would fit, it’s probably what is done when climate models are created. This is a very efficient method if you are in a stable context with predictable events where many things can be neglected because it is only a short time event and because you have a limited possibility of controlling the process, for example to calculate the trajectory of a rocket in order to send satellites around earth, but climate models just give general information which doesn't reduce their value.
I don’t have a problem if you think that my calculation doesn’t make sense, I agree that having such a short period of data is a good argument in that direction and I believe that a result that can’t be explained has a high probability of being wrong, but I don’t agree that I can’t do it. I don’t believe that my calculation gives more arguments to climate deniers because the step theory could be a very strong argument against climate denial (just wait, it will move soon, it’s not linear). The thing I don’t like in this step theory is that you can scare people with some kind of apocalyptic speech (the sky is going to fall on our heads for the people who read Asterix and Obelix).
I believe that I said more or less what I could on this subject and I feel that I am a little bit out of topic. If you have comments to my points, please do them, but if I don't answer, it's because I don't have any thing specific to add.
Thank you all,
Etienne