Climate Science Glossary

Term Lookup

Enter a term in the search box to find its definition.

Settings

Use the controls in the far right panel to increase or decrease the number of terms automatically displayed (or to completely turn that feature off).

Term Lookup

Settings

All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

Home Arguments Software Resources Comments The Consensus Project Translations About Support

Bluesky Facebook LinkedIn Mastodon MeWe

Twitter YouTube RSS Posts RSS Comments Email Subscribe


Climate's changed before
It's the sun
It's not bad
There is no consensus
It's cooling
Models are unreliable
Temp record is unreliable
Animals and plants can adapt
It hasn't warmed since 1998
Antarctica is gaining ice
View All Arguments...



Username
Password
New? Register here
Forgot your password?

Latest Posts

Archives

Recent Comments

Prev  1001  1002  1003  1004  1005  1006  1007  1008  1009  1010  1011  1012  1013  1014  1015  1016  Next

Comments 50401 to 50450:

  1. This is Global Warming - A Lesson for Monckton and Co.
    dana 1981 (-argumentative wordplay snipped-). Regarding your cited paper 'Nuccelli et al 2012' - is John Church the only recognised climate scientist among the co-authors? (-reverse argument from authority snipped-).
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] "...is John Church the only recognised climate scientist among the co-authors..."

    Non sequitur. As noted, arguments from authority used as denigration do not advance the dialogue. If you have nothing positive to add to this conversation, then refrain from detracting from it. Please thoroughly review this site's Comments Policy before composing any future comments.

  2. The Y-Axis of Evil
    I've seen similar trolls on Slashdot: . Note that the average depth of the ocean is 3790 meters. Graph that including zero, and I think it is safe to say that a 0.1% increase would look like no change at all -- a mere 3.79 meters.
  3. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    Michael @ 4: Somehow the myth of Sandy as just another storm has persisted…check Jeff Masters’ blog for a more fact based look: This is a storm that essentially simultaneously blew over things in Indiana and Nova Scotia, 1500 miles apart. http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2293 Science Michael, bring us some science….as scaddenp suggests….
  4. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    Perhaps Michael would like to point us instead to published science that supports his point of view. That would be a worthwhile topic of conversation. Even perhaps pointers to where this site is making claims that are not supported by published science might be educational.
  5. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    Rob @10, typically, as you know, the constant barrage of insults, accusations of fraud, and/or conspiracy against climate scientists and their defenders in both blogs and commentary on denier sites is invisible to their perpetrators. Despite the barrage of invective they hurl, they are always ready to take insult on the slightest pretext.
    Moderator Response: (Rob P) Please focus on the science. Michael's attempts to draw readers attention away from the facts (blimp-pointing) should be ignored.
  6. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    Look, rather than me speaking for Boswarm, let us ask him if he will clarify what exactly he meant by his statement.
  7. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    Michael of Brisbane @4, 1) Weather is actually becoming extreme, as illustrated by the 2010 Moscow heatwave (a on in a thousand year event, according to the Russian weather service); or the recent heatwaves and droughts in the United States. Deniers like to play the silly game that just because there is a one in a thousand chance of an event occurring without global warming, therefore global warming did not contribute to the event. That reasoning is, of course, simply denial. 2) Hurricane Sandy was unprecedented in its diameter, and exceptional in terms of its Accumulated Cyclone Energy for a Hurricane making landfall so far north. Just because it is not unprecedented by all measures does not make it "not unusual in any way". 3) The Age article was a disgrace, trotting out denier talking points with no evidence of independent thought of analysis. The simplest case of this is the claim that the last 16 years represents a "pause" in global temperature rise, base on the fact that the continuing positive trend over that period is statistically indistinguishable from zero. That claim is, first, nonsensical. The trend over teh same period is also statistically indistinguishable from rates of warming higher than those predicted by the IPCC. If the inference from being statistical indistinguishable from zero is valid; then so also is the parallel and opposite inference. Denier's who push this claim, therefore, avoid contradiction only by selective and inconsistent reasoning. What is more, they do so only by a massive and deliberate cherry pick of an interval with an extreme El Nino at the start and multiple strong La Nina's at the end - a circumstance that should lead to a strong cooling trend. Instead we have a weak warming trend indicating a strong underlying trend. The extent of the cherry pick is made clear by comparing the trend over the last 32 years to that of the first 16 years of that period. The 32 year trend (0.158 C per decade) is appreciably greater than that of the first (0.093 C per decade) and last (0.87 C per decade) 16 years of that interval. The closeness of the 16 year trends shows that, by denier reasoning, warming occurred in neither the first 16 years, nor the second. Therefore, deniers are logically committed to the claim that there has been no warming over the last 32 years, despite the strong warming trend. The simple fact is that if you allow yourself to play silly buggers by deliberately misinterpreting statistical facts, and cherry picking your data, you can pretend to prove anything you desire. This is something deniers take full advantage of. 4) I am unimpressed that you take offense to a term first used in writing the English language 400 years before the Holocaust. Because of its ancient history, the pretense and manufactured outrage about the supposed imputation that deniers of climate science are the moral equivalents of holocaust deniers is ludicrous. Frankly, I take offense at the denier's blatant attempt to manipulate the language so that a plainly accurate descriptive term will not be applied to them. Indeed, I take greater offense at the retreat from rationality inherent in the entire climate science denying movement - a retreat from rationality that will have real, and harmful consequences to my children, and theirs.
  8. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    Michael @4... Clearly you do not live in the NY region. Nor are you paying attention to what the science is saying about weather extremes.
  9. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    @ Michael. Have you actually read/studied the most used used climate myths on this site. They are available for your perusal anytime. Just scroll to the top of the screen and look left, where it says in BOLD RED printing. Most used climate myths. As for Boswarm's term "allowing". Try looking up the meaning of the word "irony". OK ? Now be a good boy and do your homework.
  10. Michael of Brisbane at 06:53 AM on 30 December 2012
    Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    I think that what will "wake the sleeping masses" is for at least some of the predictions from modelling (and alarm) to actually happen, and for weather to actually become "extreme". Hurricane Sandy was not unusual in any way when compared historically, nor is any weather event that is blamed on AGW nowadays. Thanks Boswarm, for the link to that article in The Age too. (did you really use the word "allowing"??) That article sums up my stance on AGW pretty well. (especially what it says about the use of the word "denier".) I am indeed one of the "sleeping masses" and I am very much awake already, thank you.
  11. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    For some reason I couldn't access the video. May just be my slow system. The only thing that will wake up the masses is a few more Sandys squared. There are already signs that the drought in the USA, Sandy, Arctic ice melt and a couple of other relatively mild events (relative to what is likely coming) are already having an effect on public opinion. I find it very hard to believe that even the most extreme measures at this late date to reduce carbon emissions would stop the brown stuff from hitting the wind pusher.
  12. Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
    Ron, yes the overall decadally (or multi-decadally) averaged ENSO will be small over the coming decades. However ENSO can make a large contribution over a period of several years to a decade (depending on the length of time ENSO persists in an overall positive or negative mode). Can't really say what solar/volcanic influences will be in the coming deades since their variability is (as far as we can say) stochastic outwith the solar cycle. The solar contribution is expected to be small. However a prolonged solar "downturn" can make a persistent (small) contribution to surface temperature. So inspection of the ENSO index indicates it's been largely negative especially during the last 6 or 7 years. Likewise there has been a rather anomalous progression of solar activity with an extended minimulm out of cycle 23. These add up to a significant negative contribution to surface temperature since about 2005/6. So the decadal temperature trend just past is suppressed. That's not difficult to understand I think. However neither of us needs to attempt to characterize these contributions in words since Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) have done the calculations!
  13. IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun
    Tom Curtis #114-That is an excellent point,and I would like to add to your comment: "Rawls, very carefully keeps the two analyses separate to avoid that falsification; but such methods turn his theory into pseudo-science." I would amend that to read "...such methods turn his theory into Pathological Science"
  14. This is Global Warming - A Lesson for Monckton and Co.
    My response is that you're going down the up escalator.
  15. Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
    Ron, read the paper. You're basically saying "I don't agree with the results of FR11 because my eyeballs disagree". Sorry, eyeballs are subject to bias, statistics are not.
  16. Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
    dana 1981 Looking at your post on FR201: The authors conclude by averaging all of the data sets together (Figure 4): "Because the effects of volcanic eruptions and of ENSO are very short-term and that of solar variability very small, none of these factors can be expected to exert a significant influence on the continuation of global warming over the coming decades. ." This says that the effects of ENSO, volcanoes and solar are effectively small to negligible over the coming decades. Yet you conclude that those 3 factors were significant (cooling) effects over the last 2 decades - effectively masking the AGW warming signal with natural cooling factors. Again there are nearly 2 solar cycles in the last 20 years which should neutralize TSI effects which are small anyway according to FR, volcanic chart shown Pinitubo (1993?) as the only major volcanic cooling effect (short term), which leaves ENSO which is also short term and not expected to be decadal factor in the future. So practically the whole case rests on ENSO being a major cooling factor in the past 20 years - so much so that it has flattened the temperature trend from 0.18 down to 0.06 deg/decade. Sorry, I can't see this from the MEI chart from FR 2011 from 1990 - 2010. Neutral to slightly positive over 20 years looks more like it.
  17. This is Global Warming - A Lesson for Monckton and Co.
    dana 1981 Any response to my correction to your statements?
  18. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Chriskoz: don't say this "I become depressed and I really wish that "polar bears" be replaced with "homo sapiens" in their silly, ignorant talk" Don't give up - it's the only way to defeat the mindset of the Cranks above. The collective will win.
  19. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Bernard @26, Denialists often show your temp graph (of the Cenozoic era from d18O proxy) but dress it in precisely opposite ethical considerations: "the Earth was far warmer few My ago, so a little bit of warming ain't bad... Acrtic ice will melt and polar bears will go extinct as the result? So what? Extinctions have always been happening and old species have been replaced by new ones. Polar bear will be replaced by a better species" When I'm looking at such thoughtless crank, and see other egotic cranks or such being our policymakers (i.e. reps in US, libs in Australia), I become depressed and I really wish that "polar bears" be replaced with "homo sapiens" in their silly, ignorant talk. If homo sapiens' collective mindset is determined by the lowest denominator (i.e. a crank above), then this species is not worth living on this planet.
  20. CO2 effect is saturated
    Now a specific question: In NACAR from Archer web site I keep everything default except I increase the high cloud fraction from zero. The temperature goes down, not up. As an amateur here I have absorbed the "high clouds tend to add to the Greenhouse Effect, low clouds tend to reflect" (over?)generalization. So why does adding high clouds cool in this NACAR program at default settings? I do not think there is a way to ask a question on line with that course.
  21. CO2 effect is saturated
    Never mind, The Archer course web site has many bugs but I am able to at least learn what the parameters do by ignoring the bugs and proceeding as best I can.
  22. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    The sleeping masses won't wake up! The Age is now allowing alternative views. http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/sceptics-weather-the-storm-to-put-their-case-on-climate-20121228-2bz91.html
  23. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    The weather effects of an ice free Arctic, let alone those of sea level rise, will propagate across the planet. Living as I do in the Southern hemisphere will be no defence against an angry planet. One has to wonder what it will take to wake up the sleeping masses. Anyone who is not alarmed by now must be living in an alternative universe where the laws of physics do not apply. Fool's Paradise, my Gran would have called it.
  24. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Rob Honeycutt at #25. Business as usual for a few more decades will likely take us to (and perhaps beyond) temperature territory visited only four times in the last 55 million years. Humans as endotherms are frankly not designed for such conditions, and nor is the environment in which we evolved and on which we rely.
  25. IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun
    The oddest thing in Rawl's new post is his claim that:
    "When the peak level of forcing appears in the rearview mirror, the downward trend in the forcing that begins at that point does not cause cooling. It just causes warming to be a little less rapid. Only when the energy pouring into the climate system falls to the level of the energy escaping back out does the system stop warming. Empirically, that turns out to be mid-afternoon, mid-summer, and approximately the first decade of the 21st century."
    Analyzed logically, that means Rawls in predicting that warming from 1980-2010 (after the peak) will be less than warming from 1950-1980 (before the peak). You can check how that works out on figure 2 above. The simple fact is that the case for the solar origin of twentieth century warming is based on the close, non-lagged correlation between solar activity and temperatures - up till 1980. It is inconsistent to insist that the correlation is lagged post 1980, but not before. Yet if we do not lag it after 1980, the correlation fails, refuting the theory. Alternatively if we lag prior to 1980 so that the period after 1980 does not falsify the theory, the period prior to 1980 does. Rawls, very carefully keeps the two analyses separate to avoid that falsification; but such methods turn his theory into pseudo-science. Finally, there is a much simpler and more direct test of Rawl's hypothesis. If Rawl's is correct, from 1980, the Top Of Atmosphere energy balance should have declined to zero as solar forcing held steady while temperatures rose, driving up outgoing radiation. That would result in the surface heat content falling away towards a plateau. Instead, the rate at which heat has been absorbed by the Earth has increased: Once again, Rawl's only keeps his theory intact by carefully not examining the relevant data that could be used to test it.
  26. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Reading through my post again I was just realizing something. We're already committed to temperatures outside the past 5 million years, regardless of what we do. The question is, how far outside of the Holocene are we going to push it. Just how bad are we going to make this. That is the predicament we face and the choices we are making today.
  27. CO2 effect is saturated
    Hi, Thanks to the help here, and hours of struggling, I can now demonstrate some cool things with Modtran, which if used with care, is a great teaching tool. Potentially that NCAR program on the same website would also be useful. Maybe there is some kind of workshop people hold for users? In my own research field they hold such workshops at synchrotrons to help people hone their software analysis skills. If there were at least a handbook on NCAR with worked examples? Sigh! Just one example of where I go awry here, follows: 1. I find the temperature corresponding to no GHG for the default incoming solar flux. That should be T earth, which averaged over the globe would be about 255 K. 2. I go back to default and put in CO2 375 ppm. 3. The output gives you temperatures associated with various altitudes. 4. If the T earth for the setting you use were 255 K for no GHG - then go back to 3 above and write down the altitude for 255 K 5. Now try 750 ppm. The surface temperature goes up but the altitude for 255 K should go up too. It does this, but.... 6. Check against equation: change in this altitude times lapse rate = change in temperature. 6. I get a much bigger change in temperature using the altitude change method than the actual computed change in temperature. I have a feeling I am careening around in a complex vehicle randomly trying to make sense out of tweaking the controls. I probably need to go someplace to learn this one on one?
  28. littlerobbergirl at 11:06 AM on 29 December 2012
    Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
    Mark, we who read apocalyptic fiction, from 'death of grass' to 'the year of the flood' know the drill: hole up in the hills until the bad men finish killing each other, try not to look like you are worth robbing, have an emergency exit - a few of us cooperators always survive, but i just dont want us to have to do it again! Ive been preparing for it all my life but like the man said let this cup pass ... Anne - Hey polytunnels! If we put up enough, could we cancel out the albedo change from the arctic ice loss? You can already see the ones in spain from space :)
  29. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Cornelius and villabolo. Spencer's fit was actually a third order polynomial, and many of us disparaged him over the years for the statistical uselessness of prediction that it provided. I suspect that Spencer omits it now because the most recent values for time have reached the point where the record and the polynomial are starting to permanently part ways as the polynomial decends toward y = minus infinity. Of course, Spencer can always go up an order or two - but then he'd be an even greater laughing stock (if such is possible) amongst people with any operant understanding of appropriate curve fitting... Jimspy, 1/1000th of a degree Celsius would simply be a millidegree, just as 1/1000th of a metre is a millimetre!
  30. IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun
    Aside from containing a few dozen ad hominem attacks and personal insults, Rawls' latest post is just an exercise in ignorance. By definition a change in temperature is caused by a change in forcing (dT = lambda*dF). Yes, there is a 'lag' and thermal inertia, but the solar forcing is too small for the temperature response to take more than 5-10 years. Rawls even admits as much, saying "The strongest temperature response to a change in solar forcing is seen with a lag of about ten years (Usoskin et al. 2005)". So how does Rawls figure we're still warming in response to the solar activity increase 60+ years ago? To be blunt, Rawls doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.
  31. IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun
    Rawls has published a response to this post at WUWT (not linked). I noticed that his Cosmic Ray data only goes up to 2001. The graph appears similar to the one in the OP here because Dana used an 11 year average. A close examination of both graphs indicates in the last ten years the GCR count has gone down, the opposite of the effect Rawls claims. Several posters at WUWT have asked for a complete record of the GCR count, it will be interesting to see if Rawls posts one. WUWT does not allow posters to post graphs so I cannot post an up to date graph of GCR.
  32. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Very convincing rebuttal; slam dunk! I would like to see two more charts inserted into the article. Take the last two charts and then "blow" the Y-axis back up. 1) Add a Fig.4b. It would be same as Fig.4 except change the upper & lower Y-axis limits to the Holocene limits. 2) Add a Fig.5b. It would be the same as Fig.5 except change the upper Y-axis limit to equal the BAU red-line (or slightly greater) and change the lower Y-axis limit to equal the Holocene lower limit. Doing so, would allow us to better see the true extent of the temperature changes relative to these properly set boundary limits. ... Excellent article!
  33. The Y-Axis of Evil
    I have to say, I'd thought of this "perception" problem before, or this "opportunity for distortion", and I'd like to propose a solution: declare a new unit of temperature, the "millitherm" - 1/1000th of a degree Celsius. So what we are all trying to avoid is an increase in GAST of 2000 millitherms. Currently we've experienced an increase of 800 millitherms. I know, it's the same thing...but this is a PR game whether we like it or not, and perceptions count. Just my 2000 mils worth.
  34. West Antarctica warming more than expected
    I admit (and regret) that the correlation figure as it is described in the media has been a source of confusion, and the caption associated with it is sometimes downright incorrect. This was the case, in particular, for the initial version of the figure caption in the NCAR press release. Note that this caption has since been amended by NCAR to emphasize that "the color scale represents correlations, not temperatures". To clarify, in the paper we refer to the correlation map as the "footprint" of the Byrd temperature record: the orange-red areas denote where the temperature tends to vary in phase with Byrd temperature on an interannual basis (being warmer-than-normal when it's warmer-than-normal at Byrd, colder-than-normal when it's colder-than-normal at Byrd). The figure should not be interpreted - as it has often been -- as a map of the long-term temperature trends for Antarctica. Such a map is not part of our results. If it were, it would show warming in central West Antarctica, as well as in the Antarctic Peninsula. The fact that, in the correlation map, Byrd temperature doesn't show much of a relationship with temperature in the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) might surprise some. But it can be easily explained. For example, sea-ice conditions have a greater effect on temperatures in the AP than in the West Antarctic interior. Some seasons also show signs of anticorrelation between Byrd and the AP: some anomalies in the wind pattern over the Amundsen Sea cause more warm air advection from the north to the Byrd region, while the AP receives more cold air from the south (or vice versa). If we had temperature records that were long enough to correlate the mean decadal temperatures across Antarctica, then we expect the orange-red area in the correlation map to encompass the AP. David Bromwich
    Moderator Response: [JH] Prof Bromwich: Thanks for stopping by and posting this clarification.
  35. The Y-Axis of Evil
    This is a truly classic article. Very well expressed. Incidentally you mention that "we are very reliant upon this narrow stable climate to sustain the global agriculture that can support such a vast population of humans." Yup!! and we are virtually certain to be outside this envelope rather soon. What's the corollary to this. You guessed it. The Lovelock number. 1b (0r less??) people on earth. I get all smug (probably without justification) when I realize that I live in the southern hemisphere surrounded by a huge climate moderating ocean. http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/greenland-melting.html
  36. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Cornelius @ #18 I noticed that too. I'm sure he'll put that sine wave back when we get the next La Nina. A volcano or two would also help.
  37. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Cornelius B... Might be interesting to add it back for him to see what it implies about his motivations for removing it.
  38. Cornelius Breadbasket at 04:20 AM on 29 December 2012
    The Y-Axis of Evil
    villabolo @ 17. It was only a few month ago that Dr Spencer overlaid an oscillating sine wave over this graph to make it appear as if the recent warm weather was part of a cycle. He himself included a disclaimer to the effect that it was for comparison purposes only, but his graph was reproduced on many denialist sites that did not include this disclaimer. It is interesting that Dr Spencer has now removed the sine wave.
  39. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Somebody better tell the skeptical Dr. Roy Spencer that his charts are wrong. ;-) Here is a simple analogy for non-experts: Imagine a mountain range that starts with small hills and works its way to taller mountains. Now imagine looking at that mountain range from 50 miles away and being told that there are no tall mountains.
    Moderator Response: [RH] Fixed image width.
  40. The Y-Axis of Evil
    One response to D Boehm is that yes, you can live from 0 to 30 C; you just can't feed yourself for long outside 14 to 16 C.
  41. The Y-Axis of Evil
    In addition to the Denial Depot post pointed to by Bob Loblaw, this post from Dr. Inferno takes on this kind of absurdity with almost exactly the same graph cooked up by Böehm.
  42. The Y-Axis of Evil
    There are an astonishingly large number of examples demonstrating how fake skeptics and those in denial use graphics to mislead their audience. Here is another one Dick Lindzen used recently. Here is an example of Roger Pielke Jnr. misleading people by claiming the damage from Superstorm Sandy was about only half of the current estimate. His misleading graphic has not yet been updated. Other tricks employed by fake skeptics include failing to remove the annual cycle in temperature and sea ice data (for example), failing to apply the inverse barometer correction in sea level data so as to reduce sea-level rise, using uncorrected ENVIROSAT data in order to lower the rate of sea-level rise. The list goes on and on and on. At one point back in 2009 Roger Pielke Snr. was adamant that sea-level rise between 2006 and 2009 had "flattened" and that, by his misguided reckoning, this meant that sea levels was not rising at the upper bound of projections summarized in the IPCC reports. Now look where we are today, global sea level continue to rise at the upper end of the projections discussed in the IPCC assessment reports. [Source] All attempts by fake skeptics, contrarians and those in denial to do whatever it takes to hide the signal in a noisy data time series. They have no credibility and simply cannot and must not be trusted to report the science accurately and correctly, despite what they may try and claim to the contrary.
  43. Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
    Ron King, I think most of your questions are answered in the above post. For the influences of solar, ENSO, and volcanoes, see my post on Foster and Rahmstorf (2011). Akasofu is roughly as close to the measured trend since 2000 as the AR4, but as noted in the post, virtually every natural temperature influence has been in the cooling direction over that timeframe, and when those are filtered out with the Foster and Rahmstorf methodology, he's way off and AR4 is spot on. Climate models include natural variability simulations, but when multiple model runs are averaged together, that natural variability gets averaged out, which is why the multi-model temperature projections are quite smooth.
  44. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Jennifer Marohasy once posted using the same gambit as D Böehm. It shows ignorance - either wilful or otherwise - of the high school-level* concept of magnitude-of-variation versus consequence. If such folk do not understand the significance appropriate display of the magnitude of variations relative to sequelæ, they should consider the tolerance of humans to changes in core body temperature. Doesn't matter if one describes it in terms of kelvin or celsius - a few degrees way from optimum spells death, and even fractions of a degree have profound effects. Attempting to illustrate the tolerable physiological range on a kelvin scale starting at absolute zero would be nothing short of ridiculous. [*I see after refreshing the thread that bath_ed made the same observation]
  45. It's El Niño
    Ron King. There is no period for which any oscillation has absolutely zero impact on a trend. As periods get longer, the impact gets smaller and smaller. In practice, over 130 years the impact of an ENSO magnitude oscillation is negligible. I haven't done the math required to figure out how long an interval you need to be confident that an ENSO magnitude oscillation would only impact the surface temp trend (for instance) +/- 0.01 c/decade. It'd be a fair bit more than 20 years.
  46. The Y-Axis of Evil
    What an excellent explanation of the difference between global average temperature changes and changes in weather temperature! It's something that can be hard to grasp because it can be counter-intuitive that the difference in global temperature between glaciation and alligators in the Arctic can be less than the day-to-day changes in temperature at a single place. I don't know who D Böehm is or what his or her background is, but for Dr Lindzen, who is an actual scientist, to use such a distortion is unforgivable. Choosing appropriate> values for the X and Y axes was one of the things that was drummed into us in secondary school science and I'm sure it must be a basic of any high school science education. We were always taught that one should choose values that start at or near the smallest data value and end at or near the largest one; for example if you were producing a graph showing people's height it would be absurd to start the Y axis at 0 cm as no person is 0 cm tall.
  47. The Y-Axis of Evil
    KR: Clearly your sock puppet learned from the best - PT Barnum. He's notorious in PR circles for writing letters to the editors of several newspapers using multiple pseudonyms in order to increase awareness of his circus and sway public opinion. He even "criticized" himself under some names so that he could then defend himself under different ones.
  48. Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
    We grow veg for market on a tiny plot (1/4 acre)and have many years of experience of growing plants, but last spring and summer were as difficult as I've ever experienced. It wasn't just the low temperatures and the endless rain, but also the constant low light levels creating ideal conditions for pests and diseases. We're trying to adapt to unpredictable and chaotic weather and seasons by using poly tunnels and hugel culture, which is working to some extend, but are adding their own complications. All in all, growing food is becoming more difficult, more time consuming and the general public still think that anybody can do it after watching "Ground Force" a few times. This cannot end well...
  49. Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
    PS Ooops sorry about not snipping my conclusion but what a riot.... I sound like a denialist..... "My guessing goes like this (I think)"
  50. Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
    Hollow point ammunition..... Bushmaster assualt weapons..... Global warming, meet the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newton CT. The current shortages of weapons and ammunition at US gun stores is not due to government restrictions, but on a surge in demand. When the US population really is hungry, the resulting anarchy will be well-armed, and NRA nuts will feast on liberal tree hugger flesh, at least if you take various rightwing blogs seriously. Community gardens will be plundered, wildlife populations will be poached to decimation, and all will struggle. It makes me very morose, until I start thinking about the Toba catastrophe, and a personal hypothesis, formed after some interesting neuro research a year or two ago into people who tend to respond with fear, vs those who can keep conflicting info in their head at once. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111101173636.htm Think of humans as an "heirloom variety" with different populations having different traits, to better weather changing circumstances. Sure, aggression may benefit the gun nuts initially. But as things get worse, perhaps the genes for cooperation will pass thru a bottleneck of human evolution, like some say occurred after the Toba eruption reduced human pop to a few thousand souls. Add in religion... essentially a culturally accepted mythology.... and there is a chance we can rewrite the script. From a Christian perspective, more of a "stewardship" version of God's post-flood commands to Noah, than the resource exploitation version favored by contemporary industrialists (and consumers). In sum, I am hoping we really do miss those three meals. But only once in awhile, enough to perk people up so that they value good government intervention, instead of simply embracing mob rule. Anyway, in the US, when hunger comes, even the liberal treehugger peace and loveniks will realize just how many guns live on their street. Buckle up, Bones. . My guessing goes like this: I think

Prev  1001  1002  1003  1004  1005  1006  1007  1008  1009  1010  1011  1012  1013  1014  1015  1016  Next


The Consensus Project Website

THE ESCALATOR

(free to republish)


© Copyright 2024 John Cook
Home | Translations | About Us | Privacy | Contact Us