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Comments 52451 to 52500:

  1. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    Dale: Your analogy does not hold up insofar as you are attempting to ascribe a single causal factor (rainfall) to a phenomenon (a multi-vehicle collision) which necessarily has many contributing causes (weather, baseline road conditions, driver behaviour, conditions of the vehicles involved, and perhaps others). For your analogy to hold, it would have to be the case that previous Arctic summer storms had caused unusual sea ice losses despite comparatively stable ice conditions. The OP notes two pertinent points which I think you have failed to overcome in your attempt to name the August storm in the Arctic as the primary causal agent of the record low:
    In the past, Arctic summer storms similar to the 2012 event did not have a major impact on sea ice extent or September sea ice minimum. [Emphasis mine.] The 2012 record-breaking minimum can be attributed to a number of factors. The summer storm likely played a role, but [the record-breaking minimum occured] primarily because the ice was thinner, weaker, and less extensive to begin with than in prior years due to its long-term human-caused decline. [Emphasis mine.]
    These statements from the concluding remarks are backed up with reference to evidence in the body of the OP, whereas your contrary speculation is not. The two items emphasized, taken together, quite clearly refute your attempted argument by analogy. BWTrainer's criticism appears to me to be more on the mark than not.
  2. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    Dale@11: I disagree. While the 750,000km^2 number can be derived from very simple analysis, it ignores all the other information we have about the system. Estimating from 2007, while useful for providing an upper bound, ignores the Cryosat2, PIOMAS and ice age data, all of which indicate that the ice was thinner than 2007. While a naive analysis says a new record was likely, a less naive analysis will give a stronger result.
  3. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    Dale - "If the storm had not have occurred, would we still have had that minimum ice extent?" (emphasis added) If conditions were different, we would certainly have a different minima - that should go without saying, quite frankly. I believe this falls into the category of a rhetorical question, ie. one asked for the purpose of rhetoric. Follow the trends, look at (as others suggested) predictions prior to the storm. It would likely have been around the 2007 minimum, which I'll note occurred with "perfect storm" of variations towards a minima. That's because the trend is downward, the central expectation is dropping severely. If 2007 did not have all the various factors pushing for low ice, we would have expected about 9mk^2 extent as a minima that year. If we had the same factors in play this year as in 2007, all pushing for low ice (as an "all things equal" comparison), this years minima would of course have been considerably lower than it was.
  4. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    BWTrainer @10 What's with the insult? Is that the only way you can argue? I'm not disagreeing with the downward trend, or the fact that this year would or would not have set a new record. What I disagree with is the assertion in the article that the storm is not responsible for such a large margin. Conditions being ripe for this occur is irrelevant. If a road develops more and more potholes each year and then suddenly one day it rains and there's a major multi-car accident, what caused the accident? The rain of course, not the potholes.
  5. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    Kevin C @8 There's really no need to go elsewhere, just looking at the graphs in the article leads one to what I would say would be a fairly accurate estimate. With rate of melt similar to 2007, and being so close to the 2007 levels up to the storm, it's not unreasonable to estimate that minimum ice extent would be around the 2007 mark (specially considering no conducive weather for faster melt was recorded, except the storm). Thus for the purposes of this article, with the storm ice melt was 750,000 km^2 more than it should've been. Note here: NASA said they estimated from satellite photos that around 500,000 km^2 of ice was churned and broken up by the storm. Sorry, but I have to disagree with the comment in the article the storm wasn't responsible for the large margin. The other conditions are basically irrelevant, because if those other conditions were the cause of the large margin, then you need to justify that the melt would still have been as it was with the storm.
  6. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    Reasoning with fake-skeptic Dale tends to be an exercise in futility, but what the heck, this will only take a minute: That this year set every record is of course important, but it misses the forest for the trees. Look at any graph of extent or volume going back as long as records have been kept, and you see a clear and drastic downward trend. Debating whether 2012 would've been the record in the absence of the storm, or "only" the 2nd or 3rd lowest, really obfuscates the issue.
  7. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    I will do a naive comment : maybe calculating and showing the daily/5day average rate of loss of sea ice [i]area[/i] and [i]extent[/i] would be useful for the discussion ? From my (limited) understanding, we should see that the storm did not have a very strong impact on sea ice area (ice is covered by water during the storm, thus fooling the sensors, but reappears thereafter) and a stronger impact on extent. I did not do the calculations, nor I am knowledgeable in Arctic sea ice. I did not see anything on neven's blog about loss rates (but I didn't search that hard). Just thinking aloud.
  8. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    hank_ wrote: "What on earth is a 'fake skeptic'??" Technically, the term 'skeptic' has long been misapplied to the point that 'person who questions' is now common usage regardless of the validity of the 'questions'. However, the original meaning was more along the lines, 'person who questions facts and assumptions to determine the truth'. Thus, people who uncritically accept complete nonsense (e.g. 'global warming has stopped') are not skeptics under the original meaning of the term and when they seek to apply that original, laudatory, meaning to themselves they are being 'fake skeptics'. They are not questioning the facts, but rather latching on to any easily dis-proven lie with which they can shield themselves from the facts. That the term 'skeptic' has been misappropriated by kooks for so long that it now could be taken to mean, 'person who irrationally disputes without factual foundation' isn't relevant as that clearly isn't the meaning the self-styled 'skeptics' are going for.
  9. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    If you are genuinely interested in the answer, head over to Neven's and go through the threads from early August to see what the predictions were - people posted a variety of predictions using a variety of methods. Or check the SEARCH outlooks, which include predictions from experts and amateurs (you may want to weight them by their past reliability, see Dana's review here). Or take the data and make your own hindcast starting from before the storm. It seems to me that volume would certainly have set a new record, and it is more likely than not that NSIDC, CT and Bremen would also have set records even ignoring anything we know about declining thickness and ice age.
  10. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    scaddenp @6 Sorry, but that's not really an answer to my question. If the storm had not have occurred, what would the minimum sea ice extent be?
  11. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Excellent post on the same topic (includes ref to Nuccitelli et al 2012): http://www.wunderground.com/blog/RickyRood/comment.html?entrynum=239
  12. Shakun et al. Clarify the CO2-Temperature Lag
    Hi! The previous discussion seems to have trailed off, so I take the occasion to pick up some comments which describe the "basics" from Shakun, namely Daniel#32, Sphaerica#69, for better understanding. The connection seems to be well explained. But how is, according to Shakun, the physics supposed work when warming drops to cooling? He just seems to have covered the warming part? Also, there may be a difference between the time needed for building up icesheet and the time for melting. How does that figure in the explanations? My background, leading to some connected questions: Coming from the article about climate sensitivity, I have read Hansen&Sato 2011, and they produce matching modelled temperature shifts for the ice core data, based on historic estimated albedo and GHG forcing and current "consensus" climate sensitivity. It looks like a perpetuum mobile after the triggering event. So, I am still unconvinced about the role of the forcing from the insolation event. Its local high radiative forcing seems to be ignored, said to be levelled out globally with the opposite happening on the SH. Isn't that a too easy assumption? A strong local heat is created, and because of the GHG heat trapping function, should have contributed to global warming, compared to a corresponding lower cooling down from a much lower heat level on the SH? Are (natural, global) GHG levels really that fast reactive or even faster reactive than changed albedo from (strong, local) ice sheet alterations? The latter for sure do happen first and thus should direct temperature shifts in a much more dominant way, thereby diminishing the role of the feedback of subsequent albedo/GHG (which first apparently need oceanic processes to even start globally). Which would result in a lower climate sensitivity than current consensus. I understand that albedo usually is part of climate sensitivity, but the special situation here coupled with local insolation makes it seem to be in the beginning more like a (local) driver, resulting of course in more subsequent albedo/ghg/climate feedback. Maybe I stop here, sorry if questions are a bit unsystematic, I am still confused on how things are supposed to play together. I would be happy for some short and clear explanations on my question marks, if possible.
  13. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    Dale, like extreme weather, AGW loads the dice. A good storm could have happened last year and produced similar result. The continued warming means multi-year ice is gone so each bad summer chips away at it. Will next year be lower yet? Probably not. But another big low will happen the next time the weather dice throw bad. Just like you can bet that the next record breaking global temperature will happen with an El Nino rather than in a La Nina year.
  14. The Future We All Want
    Solar domestic hot water is the poster child example of how feckless we are in our energy habits in the United States. Point your browser to the following Google Maps link and cruise around. The location is Sun City, Arizona. Take a look at the rooftops. What's missing? What's under the roof of every single one of those dwellings, consuming about 20% of the household energy input? Meanwhile, Arizona's electrical generation capacity is overwhelmingly powered by fossil fuel including substantial coal generating capacity. Water heaters not using electricity as an intermediary between flaming coal and natural gas are just burning gas directly. When we look at Sun City AZ we're looking at a community of recalcitrant cavemen, just one town of thousands, a few hundred households of hundreds of thousands more. This is basically insane. Solar domestic hot water is deadly dull old-school technology, Joe-the-Plumber state of the art. Dollars and watt-hour equivalents are sleeting down from the sky in positively destructive quantities in Arizona and much of the rest of the United States yet we're so slothful and lazy we won't lay our hands out to grasp any of the free stuff. Crazy. Do we want to be losers? Do we deserve to be losers? Sometimes it seems we convey that impression.
  15. The Future We All Want
    Hi Doug! You raised a very interesting point. Thank you! Yes, solar water heating is by far the best option since this system will reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Coal is the main source of energy in Australia as far as I know which is a problem of major concern. Anyhow modern electric tankless water heaters are very efficient in terms of energy consumption and their units do not emit greenhouse gases.
  16. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    After reading the article I still have this question: If the storm had not have occurred, would we still have had that minimum ice extent?
  17. Doug Hutcheson at 15:48 PM on 18 October 2012
    Global Surface Warming Since 1995
    Shock! Horror! Andrew Bolt and the Murdoch Empire caught misrepresenting the truth! Who would have thought it? Are they not as pure as the driven snow? Are they not so far above us that their pronouncements should be meekly accepted by the inferior rest of us? This is the most humble day of my life.
  18. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    Doug @3 - thanks, fixed. YubeDude @1 - there's not much we can do about climate deniers quote mining, as we saw during Climategate. All we can do is put the quotes in the proper context when that happens.
  19. matthewsmar@gmail.com at 15:08 PM on 18 October 2012
    Global Surface Warming Since 1995
    And Yet... Andrew Bolt (Herald Sun Thur 18 Oct "Theory Grows Colder") continues to use this as proof that the "warmists" are wrong
  20. Doug Hutcheson at 13:56 PM on 18 October 2012
    What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    Very interesting to see how all the factors interact. [pedantry]
    The large swells caused the breakup of large (>1 km) multi-year ice flows up to 5 meters thick, into much smaller flows (100-150 meters).
    I think 'flows' should be 'floes'?[/pedantry]
  21. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    Yubedude, While you've done a great job of illustrating the methods of the denialist mob, I don't think much can be done about it. If you're hoping scientists will or can modify their language to stop people from doing such things, I think it's asking the impossible. About all that can be done is to educate people who are interested in truth and hope enough take interest to spread the word. Truth, especially in complex matters with political implications, is always at a disadvantage. Thanks to Skeptical Science for providing us with so much of what is needed to do the job.
  22. What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum?
    What Role Did the Arctic Storm Play in the Record Sea Ice Minimum? Here are a few questions I can’t help but ask that come from the heading: Comments from Arctic Experts NSIDC Director Mark Serreze is quoted as saying, "Apart from one big storm in early August, weather patterns this year were unremarkable. The ice is so thin and weak now, it doesn't matter how the winds blow." How does he qualify “unremarkable” and can he empirically prove that “it doesn’t matter how the wind blows”? You quote SIDC scientist Walt Meier saying, "... Arctic sea ice cover is changing....large areas are now prone to melting out in summer." Isn’t it true that Arctic sea ice has always been a seasonal phenomenon with highs in the winter and lows in the summer? Is it not the nature of ice to go through cycles of melt/freeze, a kind of “changing” as temps rise and fall? Claire Parkinson at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center said, "The storm definitely seems to have played a role in this year's unusually large retreat of the ice.” She appears to disagree, and if there is disagreement between the Arctic Experts… Do you see what I did there? Snip, clip, and disregard the bulk of your offering that details actual science in favor of misquoting Experts who I’ve extracted from context and then asking questions that are plausible yet remain fallacious; questions that give the appearance of being reasonable. The battle is over more than just the facts, science and understanding. After all, I am not trying to convince you or those who do the research and publish the papers; you are all in the minority. I’m going after the hardware store owner who won't check the quote to see if I left something out, the wheat farmer who is great with his hands but not with science text books, and that guy on the subway who reads the WSJ and is worried that his portfolio might take a hit anytime someone suggest AGW is real. Your article is excellent by the way and I appreciate your efforts and synopsis of our current status.
  23. Doug Hutcheson at 11:34 AM on 18 October 2012
    The Future We All Want
    Interesting that in point 5 they say "Gas water heaters should be avoided as they emit greenhouse gasses". In Queensland, govt. regulations now require gas water heaters: we cannot replace our existing electric system with another electric one. I wonder whether the GHG emissions of a gas water heater (storage type, not on-demand) would be greater than the equivalent electric heater, taking into account generation costs and line losses etc. A solar hot water system with heat-pump backup might be the low emission choice, but not cheap.
  24. Eric (skeptic) at 05:38 AM on 18 October 2012
    Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Dana, his book is very serial. All I have seen so far is hints of solar charging, but nothing quantitative and I have not gotten to an explanation of secular warming while answering Rob's question.
  25. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    If I might repost this comment I left on the Met office blog? While responding to one of the "climate has always varied and natural variability swamps the CO2 signal so AGW is insignificant" types, I came up with an analogy I haven't seen before which I think might be worth passing on for others to use when trying to communicate the subtleties of the sophistry being used to fool a too credulous public. I already know the analogy isn't exact, but it does have power to communicate an idea... ______________________________________________ “But the climate is always changing” Of course it is! Within limits. So what? Climate changes, and has changed, due to natural forcings and cyclic variabilities. That clearly demonstrates that it reacts to forcings. Sticking a load of buried then re-oxidised carbon back up there is imposing a long lasting forcing on the planet that steadily forces the climate to change. The physics shows that the C02 forcing is much larger than the orbital Milankovitch forcings that send Earth into and out of ice ages over millennia. I see several others have come on here and pulled the old “natural variability swamps any CO2 signal”. Did you all miss the analogy above between waves on a beach and the tide coming in? How hard was that to understand? Another analogy I just made up would be a fat person eating, in aggregate, just 200 calories a day more than their body burns averaged over 20 years. Over 20 years plus they are going to get to be a morbidly obese 600 pounds! How would you all regard the intelligence of someone watching them who said that the person sometimes binged on 5000 calories a day for weeks, then went on a crash diet for weeks and their weight varied by 50 pounds cyclically but that the steady average one ounce a day weight gain from those unburnt 200 calories is totally “swamped” by their natural cyclic variability, so therefore is unimportant? I don’t think that is very smart. Do all you “natural variability swamps the CO2 signal” types agree now? Small cumulative dietary forcings add up to one obscenely fat individual over time. Climate forcings in the SAME direction mean steadily accumulating heat. Binges and diets give a wide CYCLIC variability of weight month to month. Just as natural oscillating climate variations give a wide variety of temperatures over decadal periods. So what? A fatty in denial of reality could easily pick and choose start and finish points to draw trend lines on the graph of their weight to fool themselves into thinking they were losing weight or stable – that they were doing fine – but they would be deluded…
  26. The Future We All Want
    Great to see updates on progress in international & national policy arenas, and dimensions of CC on international development. More of these type of posts please.
  27. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Further to my above comment, ironically the article that Curry posts (apparently journal articles are not up to snuff for her to use as support for her claims, instead she is relying on a he-said-she-said reported in the media) to try justify her claim of the "pause", includes a statement that calls out the 1997-1998 El Nino start date (the same one used by Rose) as a cherry pick: "Researchers have long argued that using 1998 as a starting point was, then, unfair. "Climate scientists were right that it was a cherry-picked observation, starting with an El Niño and ending with a La Niña," said Robert Kaufmann, a geographer at Boston University who recently studied the hiatus period.." Ultimately what we have is a global radiation imbalance of about 0.6 Wm-2, and so long as there is an imbalance, the climate system will continue to accumulate energy and warm, not always at the same pace, but physics dictates that on time-scales of 20-30 years it must warm. It is not clear to me that Lean acknowledged the "pause" either. In the quote provided by Curry, Lean is instead speaking to the role of the sun in modulating global temperatures. The author claims that Lean attributes the "hiatus" to the sun, but nowhere does Lean explicitly state that. Also, there is a problem with that reasoning, because there was a solar maximum in 2002-2003, so if the sun were the culprit, one could only attribute a slowdown in temperatures after 2003, not since the 97-98 El Nino. Importantly, the warmest year on record, 2010, was observed when the sun was experiencing an unusually prolonged solar minimum. As per usual the "skeptics" (including Curry it seems) want to everyone to focus on the noise and ignore the long-term and much more important big picture.
  28. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Dana @37 and 38, This latest sad saga with Curry would be quite entertaining if this were not such a serious subject. If I were you I really would not be too concerned what someone who is wowed by Salby's misguided ideas or believes David Rose's misinformation articles to be "thought provoking". Perhaps I was too unclear earlier as to what is likely going on here. Curry and Rose have a symbiotic relationship. Rose promotes her and feeds her narcissism, she gives him the sound bites and credibility that he can used to mislead and misinform. I'm beginning to think Curry's indignance about being misrepresented by Rose is a ruse. Additionally, as Dikran Marsupial has accurately noted "Judith Curry demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding about statistical hypothesis testing". That much is very evident when reading her posts. As for Curry trying to weave Trenberth's, Solomon's and Hansen's comments into her narrative. That is disingenuous on her part, because none of them assumes that the increase in global temperatures will be monotonic, and none of them assumes that periodic slow-downs or plateaus suggest that we are not heading for much discomfort and pain in the coming decades if we continue to increase greenhouse gas levels. What is more, using the Solomon quote is inappropriate because Solomon is talking about a shorter and different period than the period cherry-picked by Rose. Solomon was talking about the role of stratospheric water vapor on modulating global temperatures on a decadal scale, specifically their proposed role of cooling between 2000 and 2009, not 1997-2012. And as The Escalator shows one can easily find short-windows with cooling or no warming because of noise in the climate system. Finally, to my knowledge Hansen has not stated that there has been a significant slowdown. And in that quote Curry provides he does not do so either. In fact, Hansen et al. (2010) challenged Solomon's claim of a slowdown: "On the contrary, we conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15 C-0.20 c per decade that began in the late 1970s" If anyone doubts that Hansen is concerned they really should watch this incredible talk that Hansen gave at Ted recently. Curry is playing rhetorical games and misrepresenting her peers' positions by not providing the full context of their positions. That she is doing so is shameful and unprofessional.
  29. Climate sensitivity is low
    Daniel, I do question about reality, and if reality is reality, I am confident that my questions will be answered. scaddenp, Hansen and Sato 2011 are a very difficult to read for me. If I understand their chapter 5 on the Holocene correctly, they use climate forcings calculated from GHG and sea level changes (=ice sheet approximisations) and apply climate sensitivity "consensus" values and thusly produce temperature curves which match the ice core data. Seeing that there is yet another article which again specializes within more details with regards to my questions on the ice core data, I will move on to the discussion of Shakun e.a., link provided by Daniel#295.
  30. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Eric @43 - I'm curious, what does Tisdale propose caused the "charging of Pacific ocean heat in the 80's and 90's"? My problem with Tisdale's argument is that it kind of ignores basic physics. He made a comment the other day that it's misleading to look at global data as measurements of global warming because that leads to the assumption that greenhouse gases are responsible for some warming. I really can't take him seriously after that.
  31. funglestrumpet at 01:50 AM on 18 October 2012
    Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    The point about Rose is that his errors would seem to be deliberate. It may be that he has been unduly influenced by Monckton, who makes a habit of such behaviour. If they are deliberate errors and seeing as they have the result of hindering action to combat climate change, we can deduce that his intention is to harm his country. I think that there is a word for such behaviour, but I forget what it is. I know it begins with a 'tr' and ends in 'eason' but the rest escapes me.
  32. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Lionel at #44. I remember wincing when I hear Phil Jones say that. My immediate response was to wonder why he didn't say something to the effect of:
    "There is a 94% chance that the observed planetary trajectory toward warming is not due to random fluctuation: that it is in fact reflecting genuine global warming. With another year's worth of data to discern long-term signal from short-term noise that figure will increase to greater a than 95% chance that the planet is warming."
    Moderator Response: [DB] Closed blockquote html tag (H/T to Composer99).
  33. Eric (skeptic) at 22:59 PM on 17 October 2012
    Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Rob, yes, it's more than just "some". I agree with Tisdale that ENSO is not a "cycle" per se, but disagreed that it can cause secular warming before reading his book. When I finish reading it I will try to answer your question. The part that seemed worth mentioning is that ocean heat storage and release is a highly episodic process. IMO AGW simply adds to the storage episode which then adds to the release episode. Storage can span multiple La Ninas, neutrals and even weak El Ninos.
  34. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    For the record: George Monbiot has, in the past, pulled David Rose up on his tendency to mislead.
  35. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Eric (skeptic)- "It is accepted science that some AGW is stored in the ocean" Some? 93% since the 1960's isn't what I would characterize as some. As for Tisdale, he has some rather unusual ideas about ocean processes. Given that ENSO has probably been around for millions of years, can you summarize how his hypothesis is supposed to work?
  36. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    John Brookes @41 This is the exchange between Phil Jones and Roger Harrabin of the BBC which you have in mind:
    B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
    Found here: Q&A: Professor Phil Jones . The fake skeptics (and I recognise Hank_'s handle and MO from posts at DesmogBlog) never mention that 95% significance level or its significance. If the plane they were about to board had a just less than 95% significant probability of crashing would they continue?
  37. Eric (skeptic) at 21:20 PM on 17 October 2012
    Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    I've been reading Tisdale's ebook which blames recent warming on ENSO. While I disagree with his conclusion and some of his premises (e.g. his claim that back radiation does not really warm the ocean), his description of charging and release of heat is pretty good. Essentially there was a charging of Pacific ocean heat in the 80's and 90's interrupted by El Chichon and Pinatubo that was released in the 1997/98 El Nino. From trough to peak that raised world temperatures by 1C, with a lasting rise of about 0.3C using UAH satellite measurements which measure up in the troposphere and thus show larger swings. That late 1997 peak is an overshoot. It is accepted science that some AGW is stored in the ocean. I think it is also reasonable to assume that ocean heat is released unevenly and can result in large upward swings along with lulls in atmospheric warming especially when measured by satellite which highlights the swings.
  38. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Cornelius don't forget that UKIPs energy policy is primarily based on the idea that AGW doesn't exist or is minimal. Secondly Monckton is a member of UKIP and is or was their science advisor. So any logic in policy is based on the idea that low carbon energy is not needed.
  39. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    The first thing I noted when I tried to produce the articles graph was that while they spoke of "since the start of 1997", the graph started late in 1997. I presume this was to avoid a cold start to the graph, but there may have been other reasons (I just can't think of any though). A couple of years ago, someone forced Phil Jones to concede that there had been no significant warming since 1995, and the "skeptics" made a song and dance about it. I suggest that from now on we just insist that any "no warming since" statement must start in 1995. A fake skeptic is anyone who thinks Christopher Monckton is a member of the house of lords.
  40. Cornelius Breadbasket at 19:07 PM on 17 October 2012
    Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Paul D @ 16 and John Russell @ 24 Thank you. I will be composing a response to the UKIP policy document and may ask again for help with a review.
  41. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    A "fake skeptic" is a person who is skeptical about anything they dont like but laps up anything they like without switching on any critical faculty at all. This is frankly normal human behavior but a decent science education should give a person the tools to avoid it (esp the scientific method). A true skeptic critically examines all evidence (eg most working scientists).
  42. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    If you want to know specifically what I think about Curry's post, I posted comments here and here. But I doubt I'll waste much more time there, because I feel as though I'm arguing with somebody who's criticizing an article she didn't even bother to read/understand.
  43. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    hank @36 - yes, I read Curry's post and was impressed that she criticized me as 'needing to raise the level of my game' while herself managing to ignore nearly all of the points that I made in my post. She focuses entirely on the one point in Rose's article that's almost technically correct - that global surface temperatures have been pretty flat over the past 15 years, ignoring the fact that he wrongly equates this with "global warming" - manages to miss the point that I already acknowledged that the warming of surface temperatures has slowed (and discussed why that happened), ignores the fact that global warming has continued as measured by global heat content, etc. etc. I'll put it kindly and say I was not impressed by Curry's response.
  44. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    @Albatross What on earth is a 'fake skeptic'?? @Dana Have you read Dr. Judith Curry's latest post? She urges Climate hardliners, such as yourself, to; "Use this as an opportunity to communicate honestly with the public about what we know and what we don’t know about climate change. Take a lesson from these other scientists that acknowledge the ‘pause’, mentioned in my previous post (Candid comments from global warming scientists)" She goes on to quote Trenberth, Hansen and other prominent Scientists/activists who have acknowledged the 'pause'. Hank.
  45. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    Apparently, like potato chips, one was not enough. But in the end, there can be only one.
  46. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    DB, are you suggesting that SA Dean returned with a mask? That's pretty lame.
  47. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    sceptical wombat @6 wrote: Curry has consistently argued that a great deal of the increase we have seen (not to mention melting ice in the Arctic) may be attributable to the AMO and the PDO. These are convenient because the AMO in particular goes for multiple decades so even 30 years of increase can still be attributed to them. I'm intrigued by this; surely for any kind of oscillation to increase (say) global surface temperatures, then some other part of the planetary system must be cooling: if it isn't then its not an oscillation of heat at all. Does Curry have a candidate for this - or is it just waffle ?
  48. It's not us
    " clearly we have no common basis for discussion" Sorry, you saying that your graph does not show a warming trend despite it being demonstrated that it does and that you believe the globe only consists of surface atmosphere? You are admitting that you prefer your preconceptions to reality? Not many people have been prepared come right out and say that.
  49. Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
    JosHag @28 - the IPCC (the basis of Figure 2) is the gold standard review of the best scientific literature to date, so it's hard to go wrong using that as your basis. Church does great work, but his is just one study, whereas the IPCC is a review of the body of literature. Neven @30 - wow, Curry calling Rose "thought provoking". That's rather appalling. More like thought diminishing.
  50. Climate sensitivity is low
    "we don't know the physical trigger process" How on earth do you deduce that? The physical trigger is change in insolation distribution in the northern hemisphere, which in a low CO2 atmosphere sets up a web feedbacks on albedo and GHG. Untangling this web quantitatively has been a slow process. Have a look at fig 6 of Hansen and Sato 2011 and tell me again that this isnt understood.

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